Podcasts about Granted

What you should do if you took your girl for granted and she broke up with you. If you have not read my book, “How To Be A 3% Man” yet, that would be a good starting place for you. It is available in Kindle, iBook, Paperback, Hardcover or Audio Book format. If you don't have a Kindle device, you can download a free eReader app from Amazon so you can read my book on any laptop, desktop, smartphone or tablet device. Kindle $9.99, iBook $9.99, Paperback $29.99 or Hardcover 49.99. Audio Book is Free $0.00 with an Audible membership trial or buy it for $19.95. Here is the link to Audible to get the audiobook version: http://bit.ly/CCW3Man Here is the link to Amazon to purchase Kindle, Paperback or Hardcover version: http://amzn.to/1XKRtxd Here is the link to the iBookstore to purchase iBook version: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/book/how-to-be-3-man-winning-heart/id948035350?mt=11&uo=6&at=1l3vuUo Here is the link to the iTunes store to purchase the iTunes audio book version: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook/how-to-be-a-3-man-unabridged/id1106013146?at=1l3vuUo&mt=3 You can get my second book, “Mastering Yourself, How To Align Your Life With Your True Calling & Reach Your Full Potential” which is also available in Kindle $9,99, iBook $9.99, Paperback $49.99, Hardcover $99.99 and Audio Book format $24.95. Audio Book is Free $0.00 with an Audible membership trial. Here is the link to Audible to get the audiobook version: http://bit.ly/CCWMY Here is the link to Amazon to purchase Kindle, Paperback or Hardcover version: https://amzn.to/2TQV2Xo Here is the link to the iBookstore to purchase iBook version: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/book/mastering-yourself-how-to-align-your-life-your-true/id1353139487?mt=11&at=1l3vuUo Here is the link to the iTunes store to purchase the iTunes audio book version: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook/mastering-yourself-how-to-align-your-life-your-true/id1353594955?mt=3&at=1l3vuUo You can get my third book, “Quotes, Ruminations & Contemplations” which is also available in Kindle $9,99, iBook $9.99, Paperback $49.99, Hardcover $99.99 and Audio Book format $24.95. Audio Book is Free $0.00 with an Audible membership trial. Here is the link to Audible to get the audiobook version: https://www.audible.com/pd/B0941XDDCJ/?source_code=AUDFPWS0223189MWT-BK-ACX0-256995&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_256995_rh_us Here is the link to Amazon to purchase Kindle, Paperback or Hardcover version: https://amzn.to/33K8VwF Here is the link to the iBookstore to purchase iBook version: https://books.apple.com/us/book/quotes-ruminations-contemplations/id1563102111?itsct=books_box_link&itscg=30200&ct=books_quotes%2C_ruminations_%26_contemplatio&ls=1 Here is the link to the iTunes store to purchase the iTunes audio book version: https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/quotes-ruminations-contemplations-volume-i-unabridged/id1567242372?itsct=books_box_link&itscg=30200&ct=audio-books_quotes%2C_ruminations_%26_contem&ls=1 Here is the link to purchase Official Coach Corey Wayne branded merchandise (T-Shirts, Mugs, etc.): https://teespring.com/stores/coach-corey-wayne Click the link below to book phone/Skype (audio only) coaching with me personally: http://www.understandingrelationships.com/products Click the link below to make a donation via PayPal to support my work: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=LKGTSSLYJ93J6

We don't know how much time we each have left on this earth. It could be days, weeks, or years, but we do know everything can be gone in an instant. Monette shares a personal story of a friend who she recently learned suddenly passed away. She took this as a wake-up call. Remember, we are not promised tomorrow! We are all guilty of living our lives like we have all the time in the world, but tomorrow is not guaranteed. There is no time to wait any longer; get in the driver's seat of your life!

Steph tells a cute story about escape artist huskies, and on a technical note, shares a journey in regards to class variables and modules inheritance. Chris talks about how he's starting to pursue analytics and one of the things that he's struggling with that he's always historically struggled with is the idea of historical data. He's also noticed a lack of formalization of certain things and is working with his team to remedy that. This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Mike Burns: How to Skim a Pull Request (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/a-smelly-list) RSpec Documentation (https://rspec.info/documentation/) Don't Let the Internet Dupe You, Event Sourcing is Hard (https://chriskiehl.com/article/event-sourcing-is-hard) Datomic (https://www.datomic.com/) timefora_boolean (https://github.com/calebhearth/time_for_a_boolean) Sentry (https://sentry.io/) Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of The Bike Shed! Transcript: CHRIS: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Chris Toomey. STEPH: And I'm Steph Viccari. CHRIS: And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. So, Steph, it's an entirely new year. What is new in your new year? STEPH: Well, the year is off to an interesting start because we helped rescue a husky. CHRIS: Rescue as in now this is your dog or rescue as in the dog was trapped in a well, and another dog told you about the dog being trapped in a well, and then you helped the trapped? [laughs] Which of those situations are we working with? STEPH: [laughs] I'm really wishing it was the second version [laughs] where there's a dog that tells me about another dog trapped in a well. No, this is a third version where there was a husky that was wandering around the gym that we go to. And so Tim, my husband, called and said that "There's this husky, and he's super sweet, but he seems very lost." And our gym is located near a major road, and so we were worried that he was going to wander about and get hit. So I hopped into our car and took a crate and a leash, and he hopped right in. Clearly, he belonged to somebody; he'd just escaped. So he hops right in, and then we bring him home. But I put him in the backyard because I want to keep him separate from our dog, Utah, just because I don't know this dog, and I want to keep him safe. And I go back inside to grab a few things. I come back out, and the husky is gone. And I'm like, well, shit. [laughs] Now I'm starting to understand why this husky is missing or why this husky seemed lost. So then I started looking for the husky, and Tim comes home. He's helping me look for the husky. And it was one of those awful moments where we live near...it's not a major road, but people tend to speed on it. And the husky and I happen to see each other across the road. And so the husky was like, oh, human friend and starts coming across the road towards me. And there's this large SUV that's also coming from the other direction. I'm like, oh, this is it. This is my nightmare. This is becoming real. This dog is about to get hit. Thankfully, the driver saw the husky and stopped in time, so everything was fine. And the husky just finished trotting across the road to me, brought him in, kept him in the kennel in the garage. We didn't have any backyard adventures after that. The husky then thanked us by howling most of the night. [laughs] So this poor husky has had an adventure. We've had an adventure. And then, around 4:30 in the morning, I go out because I'm checking on the husky and going to let him out. And I'm scrolling on the app called Nextdoor. And I see that someone posted a picture of this exact husky that's like, "Please help me find my dog." And I was like, yes. Because we were going to have to take him to a county shelter or at least go see if he had a chip so then we could return him. But thankfully, we found the owner. I found out the husky's name is Sebastian. And then we had him for a few more hours, and then we had a wonderful husky and human reunion. CHRIS: That story had everything. It had ups; it had downs; it had huskies. It had escape artist huskies, in fact. I have...this is only through Reddit because that's how people learn about things in the world, but huskies are a rather vocal dog breed. So when you say the dog was howling, huskies have a particular way of almost singing, and it kind of sounds like yelling rather than more traditional dog sounds. Was that the experience you had? STEPH: Luckily, it wasn't too bad. His howling was more just; he didn't want to be in the crate. He seems like an indoor dog. So he's like, what am I doing outside in the garage? I should be indoors. And so he wasn't too loud. It was more he was just bemoaning his situation. But our dog Utah could hear him upset in the garage. And so that was also getting Utah upset because he didn't understand why there was a dog so close. And that was what led to the sleepless night because we couldn't get both of them to calm down. Because then, as soon as one of them calm down, the other one would get the other one riled. CHRIS: As it so often happens. STEPH: I'm so grateful that it turned out to be a happy story, though. That part was wonderful. And if we see the husky again, now we know his name is Sebastian and that he'll just come home with us. [chuckles] And we'll know how to return him since he seems to be an escape artist. CHRIS: And we were best friends forever. STEPH: On a more technical note, I have quite the journey to share in regards to class variables and modules inheritance. But before I dive in, I'm curious, what's new in your world? CHRIS: Oh. Well, I'm excited to dig into that story. But I've got two smaller things in my world this week that are top of mind. I don't really have answers on them. I have more questions. One is we're starting to pursue analytics. We want to try and understand our system a little bit better. What is the experience of our users? How are they coming into the system? What are they doing? How long does it take them to do the things that we want them to do? All those sorts of questions you want to be able to answer about your application. And one of the things that I'm struggling with that I've always historically struggled with is the idea of historical data. So data changes over time, and often we actually want to know about those transition points. We want to know about the different states that a user or any record in the system has been in. And I'm finding myself feeling the same pain that I felt many times and starting to think again about the relevant options out there in the world. To give a slightly more pointed example of what we're dealing with, users come in, and then there are a few steps for them to actually sign up for the application. And so their user record or their application, if you will, will go through a couple of different states. So they can be basically approved directly, and now they're an active user of the system, that's one option. But they can also end up in a state where they're pending review. And then eventually, depending on the outcome of that review, whether it's manual or someone intervenes or what have you, then eventually they can transition to either being denied or being accepted. And then they'll again be an active user. And so there's a question now of how many of the users that end up in that pending state end up transitioning into active. And as I looked at the database, I was like, I do not have this information right now. I know their current state. And the logs could tell me all of this. We don't have proper log archiving right now. And I also don't have a system for, like, let me pull down gigabytes of logs and try and sift through that to understand the answer, especially for something domain level like this. But this is one specific example that represents a category of things in my mind. The stuff that I've looked at in this space otherwise is Event Sourcing. So the idea that rather than having a discrete representation of the state of your application, you store every event as an individual log, essentially of like user did X, thing happened, Y occurred. And then, at any given point, you need to know about the state of your system; you just reduce all of those events through some magical reducer that produces the current state. I also very recently read an article called Event sourcing is Hard. So I have that in my head as a counterpoint. This seems like a thing that is non-trivial to do, makes sense for a certain scale. But of course, like anything else, it has its trade-offs. Another thing that I've looked at and never really pursued mostly because it's in a different ecosystem, is Datomic, D-A-T-O-M-I-C, which I think I've mentioned before. But it's a database that actually stores data in this historical format. And so you can ask for the current value, but then you can also ask for what are all the states that this user has been in? And what are the timestamps of those changes? One small thing that we do have that I really like...so this is one example of us; I think leaning into wanting to have more information, higher fidelity information, is often we want to know something like was this ticket paid? Did someone pay for this ticket? And so paid is a BooleanProperty on this ticket record within our system. So the ticket can be held for a little while and eventually gets paid. And now, yes, it has been paid for. It is good. You can use it. But often, we want to know not just that it's paid but when it was paid. And so there's a gem that we are using on the project called timeforaboolean by former thoughtboter, Caleb Hearth. And it does a wonderful job of basically instead of storing a Boolean value in the database, you store a timestamp. But then the Boolean can be inferred. If there is a value, if there's a timestamp for that record in the database, then there are a bunch of helper methods that get introduced that say, like, paid? That's now a method that I can ask, and it will tell us that. But we can also find the paidat, paid_at value. And so we have this higher fidelity data when we need it, but we can also collapse it down to the simpler representation. Because most often, all we need to know is, have they paid for it? Cool, then they're good. They can come into the concert, that sort of thing. But yeah, this is a broader question that I don't have a great answer to. I think Postgres and Rails and just the nature of how we approach these applications pushes us in a certain direction. Another thing I'm exploring is downstream analytic systems. What if I send a bunch of events to them, and they act as a half-event sourcing type thing? But yeah, this is going to be, I think, an open question for me for a while. STEPH: Yeah, you said a lot of really good options. When you're talking about in our ecosystem, we get pushed in one direction or the other that makes me think of the projects that I've been on. Typically, what they'll reach for first is something like a Papertrail. So then, that way, they can check for the historical versions of an object and how it was changed and see who changed it. That's one way to track the logs. I like the idea that if you can outsource it and send all of those events to a logging system and then essentially ask for that data back as you need it. You made me think of a recent project as well where we needed to track the state. So it was a patient matching system. And we really needed to know when a patient match was created or disconnected and then who did that and perhaps for what reason. And to ensure that we had as much information as possible, we took that opportunity to just create a record for it. So we had a patient match record or...I forgot the name of the other one where we created where a patient did not have a match. But we were creating a record every time someone did that. Granted, probably that's not going to happen nearly as often as someone paying for an event or the situations that you're describing. This was ideally infrequently that someone was going to unmatch a patient because it meant that our system had matched people that shouldn't be matched, and then a human had intervened. But yeah, it's interesting the space that you're in. And you listed all the good things that I would have thought of. CHRIS: I think you listed Papertrail, which is one that I hadn't actually thought of yet for this particular instance. This only came up earlier today also. So this is new in my head that I'm really being pushed in this direction. But I think Papertrail could be a good solution for where we're at. But it is one of those where you often don't know the thing you want to know. And I'm terrified of losing data of like; I had the data. I knew it at one point in time, but now I can't reknow it in the future because I didn't write it down. That's one of the things that I just don't want to happen in the world. And so finding those ways of like, how can we architect a system so that we can do the normal, straightforward, boring things most of the time but then when we need to expand out the analytics dimension of the system that we're working on...and trying to thread that needle and find the ideal optimization on both sides is a tricky one. But yeah, I'll definitely take another look at Papertrail and see if that...at a minimum, I think that's a good solution for where we're at now. And then this is going to be a thought that's going to roll around in the back of my head for a while. So if I come up with anything else, perhaps a grander solution, I'll certainly bring that back to The Bike Shed. But yeah, what else is up in your world? I want to hear the story of the class variables. STEPH: Well, it is quite a journey. So I hope you're ready. Specifically, I was pairing with Joël, who was working on fixing a test that had been marked as being skipped for a while. We weren't really sure why. We figured maybe because it's flaky. But then, as Joël had restored that test, he realized it was actually failing consistently. So it was a test that was failing for a reason folks maybe didn't understand, but they decided to cancel or to skip that test. But they didn't actually want to get rid of it because it seemed like a pretty important test based on the description. So Joël saw it and got excited because it seemed very relevant to some of the work he was already doing. So then, he is now investigating why this test is failing consistently. So in this story, we have four main characters: we have a class, two modules, and a class variable. So enter the class stage left. All right, so this class defines a class variable which I have to say is not something I work with very much in Ruby. So class variables kind of felt a bit novel and diving back into like, oh yeah, these are a thing. So the class defines a class variable that's called cache and assigns this variable to an instance of a cache. So then this class includes two modules who we'll call Module A and Module B. And we'll enter them stage right. And both of these models look to see if cache is already set. And if it's not, they also set the cache class variable. So with that information, in our test, we don't want to exercise the real cache just because then if other tests are reading from that cache, which is proving to be a source of flakiness for these tests, then they are overriding each other's expectations, and it's causing some of the tests to flake. So instead, we want to use a fake cache, just like an in-memory cache. So the test and its setup is already overriding. It's setting that class variable to say, hey, I want you to be a fake cache, just be in-memory. However, while executing that test, one of the modules is checking to see if that cache is set, which is being set in our test setup. So test setup sets the value. We're running the test but then in the module, the model checks to see if it's set, and it's suddenly nil instead of using the cache that we had set. So now it's defaulting back to say, "Oh, it's unset. So let me go back and set it to the real cache," which is exactly what we're trying to avoid. So then the question became, if we're setting the class variable in our class, why is it being populated in one of the modules but it's not being populated in the other module? So one of them has it set to the in-memory cache, but the other one does not. So I'm going to gloss over some of the details because this stuff is pretty tangling. But essentially, when the test is running, and it's loading the class, and we are overriding that class variable, it's getting shared with one of the modules because as soon as one of the models does set that class variable, there's a bidirectional link that gets set between the parent class which is the module in this case, and the class itself. And as soon as that module sets the class variable, then they're going to talk to each other, and they're going to reference the same value. However, this only seems to happen for one of the parents. You can't do this for both. So if you have two parents that are trying to share a class variable with the same class, that doesn't work. So that's a particular bug that we were running into. I do have some good news because if anybody is very nervous about the situation that I'm describing, I feel you. The good news is that in Ruby 3, they actually warn when this is happening and have introduced an error. So you don't have this inheritance confusion that can come out of the fact that these parent classes are also trying to share a class variable with this child class. So in Ruby 3, if you are writing a class variable in that class but then you try to overwrite that class variable in the parent of that class or by the module that's being included, then an error is going to be raised. So it's going to warn you if you're creating this bidirectional link between those two class variables and that you shouldn't be overriding the child's ownership of that class variable. Instead, if you're going to use class variables, which, one, is not my cup of tea, but if you're going to use class variables, it should be defined in the parent class, and then it can be shared downstream in the inheritance versus trying to go upstream and then having your ancestors essentially override some of those class variables. So all of that is to say we were on a very interesting journey of understanding how class variables work, how the inheritance works, how that bidirectional link is getting established, and then how Ruby 3 comes in to warn us if something funky is happening. CHRIS: Oh, that is interesting. And I'm now going to catalog that as a piece of information that my brain will retain for roughly the amount of time that we are recording this podcast and then immediately forget. STEPH: As you should. [laughs] CHRIS: It's one of the reasons that I try to avoid inheritance. And I try to avoid class variables as much as possible because of this category of problem, a very subtle bug that you have to try and really hone in. And you have to be very smart to debug this sort of thing. I don't want to be that smart. I want to code in a way that I can be less smart on any given Thursday. That's my goal in life. I will ask one other question, though. So there's just a cache that this class and pair of modules are hanging around with, and then you want to swap it out for in-memory. This sounds remarkably like the Rails cache. Is this cache distinct special? Could it not just be backed by rails.cache, THE cache within the rails context, which can be backed by Memcached, or Redis, or in-memory when you're in tests, or the NullStore, which I think is the default in development is probably how that goes? Is there a particular reason? Is this a special cache? Is there additional behavior that this cache has beyond the normal thing? Or is it just like, at some point, someone's like, oh, I need a cache. I'm just going to use a class variable, that'll be easy, which it definitely is, but then you run into complexities. And caches are one of those hard things to get right. So it's one where I would immediately be like, whoa, whoa, I would love to not make up our own cache here. So I'm wondering, is there a distinct reason, or is it just this happened, and here we are? STEPH: So I think we are using a custom cache that we are pointing to. So it is another service. It's not a Rails cache or an abstraction that we can point to and use. It is a different cache that we are using. And I'm trying to think back to the exact code. But there is a method that essentially checks to say, hey, should I use the real cache? Should I use the in-memory cache? And that is something that we've explored to find a way to make this more global for the test suite because we really want to control this for all the tests. Because it's very easy to not realize in the test that you should avoid using that shared global cache. And so that way, the tests don't interact with each other but instead always use an individualized cache for each test to make sure that it is self-sufficient and independent. But we haven't gotten that far yet in figuring out how we can take a more global approach with this. CHRIS: Gotcha. So I don't know the details. I assume there are reasons here. But just to play this out, if we find ourselves saying we have a reason to have a distinct cache, to have a special cache over here, but it's a cache...and caches fundamentally, that word always will raise my attention. It will be like, okay, this is a place that bugs will come and aggregate. And we need a distinct one that has special behavior as an external service, or that is just something like in... There's a wonderful blog post that Mike Burns wrote at one point that was about...I think it was something like things that will make me look at your pull request in more detail. And I really loved it because it did capsulate all of these like, yeah, there are good reasons to do everything on this list. But if you do any of them, I will look at your pull requests and be like, oh, that's interesting. Why are we doing that, though? Do we have to do that? Are you sure? Are you triple sure we have to do that? And this is definitely one of those things where caches automatically catch my attention. Even if we're using the built-in cache, I'm like, do we need to? Is that a definite thing? And then all the more so when we're using a custom bespoke one. Again, I assume that there are reasons that there's something special that's going on here. Perhaps the caching behavior is distinct from just it's Redis, and we throw data. And if it falls out the backside, that's fine. Maybe you need entirely different behavior here. But it is something that I would poke at a bunch. STEPH: Yeah, you're asking a lot of good questions. I will have to go back and look at some of the code because we spent enough time in Ruby specifics that I didn't pay as much attention to the cache. Because right now, as we are working on these tests, we're trying to fix just the test without changing the application code, one, because that feels like a safer space. And if the test is flaky, we're just trying to change the test first. But some of these tests we're starting to realize I'm not sure we can fix the test without also changing some of the application code, or the way that we do have to fix the test is really an incentive to back up and say maybe now's the time that we look at some of the application code. Because another question that comes to mind is why use a class variable, and does this need to be shared by the class and the modules? And there's a part of me that suspects that maybe some of this logic was extracted to a module, but then it wasn't cleaned up in the other places. And so that's why we still have a reference. And it's essentially then being shared and set and unset and reset in those different places. So I think you ask some good questions, and I have some more questions of my own when we have time to revisit that portion of the test and application. As another example of some of the tests that I've been working on, one of the tests that I...because we have a list, we can usually tell some of the tests that are flaky. So one of the ones that I was investigating was a similar issue where there was a shared resource, and someone had tried to mock it out. So they had taken the time to say, hey, I don't actually want to use that real resource that's over there; instead, I want to just return the scanned value. But instead, they'd accidentally stubbed out a class-level method instead of the instance-level method. And so it was running, but it wasn't actually stubbing anything else since that's the method that's not getting called. So that was just an oversight for that test. So I fixed that test. But I noticed that we were using allow any instance of, so then I did take the time to go through that file and change and move away from the use of allow any instance of. And for folks that are less familiar with allow any instance of, RSpec has some really great docs that talk about how it's very helpful for dealing with legacy code. But essentially, it is a code smell that you're using; allow any instance of because you are saying that my test is or my code is so complex that I can't really mock out the specific instances that I want to and then return specific behavior. So instead, I'm having to use this more global approach to say, hey, any instance of this method, I want you to mock it out versus this very specific instance that I know that I'm working with. But we can include a link in the show notes because there's a nice write-up that talks about some of the reasons that allow any instance of is not recommended. So that's been kind of fun. There's been a little bit of joy to get to refactor away from that and actually stub out a specific instance. Part of the work, too, that I'm noticing as Joël and I are going through these tests is leaving breadcrumbs for other developers as well because they have a very large team. And they're very junior friendly, which is just incredible. I love that so much about this company. And because they do hire a lot of juniors, then it is a tough codebase. It's a fairly old codebase. So as these juniors are coming in, they're seeing a lot of these patterns. And they're propagating these old patterns that aren't necessarily the best patterns to propagate. But they're doing their best, and then they are reusing what they're seeing. So part of the work as we are revising these tests, my hope is that people will see some of these newer patterns and use those instead of following some of the older patterns. CHRIS: I can only imagine that you're writing borderline novels in your pull request descriptions and commit messages there. I do wonder, is there an index of those that you're collecting? So there's like, here's the test remediation examples list, and you're slowly adding to them. This was a weird one with a class variable. And this was a weird one that had flakiness due to waiting or asynchronous behavior. And gathering examples of those, but specifically from the codebase. I could see that being a really useful artifact because I happily traverse through git blame all the time. But I don't know that that's always a thing. And frankly, I have to work for it sometimes. So if there is that list of here are pull requests that specifically did X, Y, and Z, I think that could be super useful. STEPH: Yeah, that's a great idea. And yes, they have some shared team documentation that speaks to specifically flaky tests because they're aware that this is a problem. They are working together to address this. And they have documentation that states ways to avoid flaky tests. If you encounter a flaky test, here are some of the ways that you can triage to find out what's wrong. So as Joël and I have been finding good examples, then we've been contributing to that document. And they also have team meetings. So our plan is to attend some of those meetings and be like, "Hey, this is just some of the stuff that we've seen this week, some of the things that we improved and changed," and share the progress that we're making. Since everyone is aware that there are these developers that are working hard to improve the test suite, but then share that information with the rest of the team so they too can feel...one, they can just see the changes that are taking place. But they too can also benefit and apply those strategies themselves when they see a flaky test. Oh, but you did just remind me of a thing. So one of the tests that I was going through...I'm very intentionally going through and making the smallest change possible. So I will do the gross, ugly fix whatever it is to get something to pass, and then I will commit it. And then I'll think about okay, well, how can I make this better? So essentially, I have the fix, whether it's pretty or not. And then, after that, I start to have other commits that make it prettier. And so, I had a pull request that had four commits that told the story that I was very happy about and progressed along in a more positive direction. And I issued that, and I discovered that Gerrit, when it sees four commits, it split all of them into their own change request. And so, instead of having what I thought would be this nice story, now got split across these four change requests. And I thought, well, that's less helpful. So I ended up squashing two of them, but I still kept three of them because they stood alone, and each told a story. But that's something that I've learned about Gerrit. CHRIS: Always so interesting how our tools shape our work. STEPH: And it made me think back to the listener who asked the question about ensuring that CI runs for each commit. Well, here you go, Gerrit. [chuckles] Gerrit does it for you. It ensures that every commit gets split into its own change request. CHRIS: I mean, as you said earlier, not my cup of tea but... [laughs] STEPH: Yeah, I'm still lukewarm. I'm still discovering Gerrit and how we get along. Mid-roll Ad And now a quick break to hear from today's sponsor, Scout APM. Scout APM is leading-edge application performance monitoring that's designed to help Rails developers quickly find and fix performance issues without having to deal with the headache or overhead of enterprise platform feature bloat. With a developer-centric UI and tracing logic that ties bottlenecks to source code, you can quickly pinpoint and resolve those performance abnormalities like N+1 queries, slow database queries, memory bloat, and much more. Scout's real-time alerting and weekly digest emails let you rest easy knowing Scout's on watch and resolving performance issues before your customers ever see them. Scout has also launched its new error monitoring feature add-on for Python applications. Now you can connect your error reporting and application monitoring data on one platform. See for yourself why developers call Scout their best friend and try our error monitoring and APM free for 14 days; no credit card needed. And as an added-on bonus for Bike Shed listeners, Scout will donate $5 to the open-source project of your choice when you deploy. Learn more at scoutapm.com/bikeshed. That's scoutapm.com/bikeshed. What else is going on in your world? CHRIS: In my world, we keep adding new users to the system. We keep doing more stuff. These are all wonderful things, the direction you certainly want to be heading. But as we're doing that, I've recognized that we had a lack of process and a lack of formalization of certain things. And a lot of the noise of the work was just coming to me because I was the person that everybody knew. I can ask a question; Chris will know the answer, et cetera. And then there were things that we needed to keep an eye on. But because it was everyone's job, it was no one's job. So we've introduced the idea of a point person on the engineering team. So this is a role that will rotate each week. I think you and I have worked on a handful of projects that had something similar to this. There was a team that we worked with that had an ad hoc list, which were just little tasks that needed to be done by developers. So there was one person who would run with that. I've heard it called captain before, the sprint captain. We're not really doing sprints. So for various reasons, that title didn't work for me. But point person is what I went with here. And so the idea is rather than having product management or anyone else in the organization just individually reaching out to developers, we want to try and choke that off, have a single point of communication. And so just today, I introduced into Slack, a group, but it's a group of one person. So @pointdev is technically the handle for this person. It's a group in Slack. And each week, we'll rotate who the members of that team are. And technically, you could add multiple, but the idea is this is just one person. So we'll rotate the person. And what ends up happening is if anyone...say the product manager says, "@pointdev, what's the status on..." blah, blah, blah, that will notify the person who is the point person that week. So that's a nice feature in Slack so that we can condense it down and say rather than asking individuals, ask this alias. We're introducing one layer of abstraction in our communication tools, much like we do in our software. So I'm drafting now the list of like, here's all the stuff that I think this person...because we're trying to push all of the quote, unquote, "other work" the non-product feature development work into this person's purview for a given week. So it's monitor Sentry for any new errors as they come up, triage them, and figure out what we want to do. Ideally, and this is perhaps aspirational, I would like to keep inbox zero in Sentry. I know how you feel about that more generally and perhaps even more specifically within the world of errors, but that's my dream. We're going to see how it goes. STEPH: I don't know if people know I am the opposite of inbox zero. This is the life that I'm living. CHRIS: What about with errors, though? What about something like Sentry? STEPH: I want to say that I would be a better human with my email. But I'm going, to be honest [laughs] and say that I would probably have the same approach where I am not an inbox zero person. I've come to terms with it. I used to really strive and think I needed to change. But I have reached a point of comfort with this is who I am. There are many like us, so shout out to all y'all. CHRIS: Oh yeah, by far the more common approach, I think. So specifically with the errors, I struggle a bit with it because what ends up happening is we are implicitly ignoring the errors. And if we're doing that, I would rather just sit around and have a conversation and be like, let's just explicitly ignore them. There's a button in the UI. We can ignore them. If this is not a real error, we can add it to the list of things that we do not report on. We can ignore that error. We can ignore it for a week and add a card to Trello that has a due date that says, "Hey, we got to work on this." But let's take that implicit indifference to that particular error mode of our application and make it explicit. Let's draw that line in the sand such that when I see a new error pop up, I'm like, oh, that seems like something I should do something about. I really want high signal-to-noise when I'm seeing errors coming. And so I'm willing to work for that. But it is a trade-off, and it does take effort. And it's noisy, especially browser extensions, and whatnot, just fighting the page. Facebook showed up one day. I don't know how Facebook got in there. Someone was browsing our website from within Facebook's browser, which I didn't know was a thing, but they had their own thing. And it fires a bunch of events, and Sentry was just like, let me slurp all of those up. Those seem fun. That was noisy. So we had to turn those off, but we explicitly turned them off. STEPH: I do like the approach that you're taking where it's one person, and then it's a rotating shift because I think that makes it more reasonable for someone's who's like, hey, this is going to be noisy for a week. And then you're going to look through these emails and check all these errors, and then either silence them because you don't think that they're interesting or mute them for now. Or if you're going to convert it into a ticket, set a due date, whatever the triage approach is going to be. But that feels more achievable versus inbox zero for life is just exhausting. But I feel like if you're doing it rotating week by week, that seems like a nice approach and also easier to keep it at inbox zero because that way, you are keeping up with all the errors. Because I agree; otherwise, what's the point of tracking all the errors if you're just going to ignore them? CHRIS: Yeah, definitely the rotating, I think, is critical. I think the other thing that's been critical specifically on the error front is we've had now a handful of meetings where we triage the backlog together, the backlog of errors. So like, what all is coming into Sentry? What's going on? And we go through the process of determining is this a real thing? Should we fix this? Should we ignore it? And we do that together so that it becomes not just one person's intuition about whether or not this is important or not or what the source of it might be but a shared intuition such that now any one of us, when it's our week, can ideally represent the team in that way and be like, never mind, never tell us about this again because it's very easy to silence things in Sentry that you would actually like to know about when they become real. But right now, we have this edge case that is an ignorable version. So trying to get there that's been fun. But yeah, once again, Sentry, that's one of the things on this person's list. There are ad hoc support tickets for our operations team. So anything that needs to happen on a user's behalf that currently needs a developer to console, let's funnel all of those to this one individual, respond to any new questions. So this is where that Slack handle will be useful. Check for any stuck jobs in Sidekiq. So is there anything that's been retrying for a while? Because it probably shouldn't. Maybe one or two retries is cool, but past that, something has gone wrong. And we should either get in there and fix it or just kill that job because it's never going to succeed, which is quite often the case but go in there and keep an eye on those and then look for anything. We're starting to use due dates within Trello, which is currently our project management system. We'll see. Someday we're definitely going to grow out of that. But for now, it's good enough and checking for anything that's overdue or coming up in the next week in terms of due dates and just making sure that we're being responsive to that. And so, I really like the idea of having this be a named set of things and a singular focus for one individual. Because again, that idea of like, if it's everybody's job, it's nobody's job. Or if it's nobody's job, then it's my job, and I don't want it to exclusively be my job. [chuckles] So I'm trying to make it not exclusively my job and to share the knowledge about it and make sure that these are skills that we all have and ideas and et cetera. But also, I would be fine to answer fewer questions in Slack each day. STEPH: I have to admit, as soon as you were telling me that you had established this role, I was quietly congratulating you on helping delegate some of these responsibilities to the team. Because like you said, you are then the person that takes on all these tasks. CHRIS: There's a laziness to that. Like, it's easy for me to just answer the questions. It's harder for me to put up a wall and say, "No, no, we have a process for this." And quite possibly, what's going to happen behind the scenes is that questions are going to come in to whoever is this point person. They're not going to know the answer. They're going to reach out to me, and then that conversation is still going to happen. But even by doing that now, now that person will see that answer, will understand the thinking or the background, the context that I have. And so it's that weird thing of like, it would be so much easier for me to just answer one question. But to answer all the questions, well, I can't do that. And so I'm working to try and do more of the delegation to try and hand things off when they're in a known state and to identify this sort of stuff so that the team broadly can be stronger and better able to support everyone else in the organization. So that's the dream. We'll see how it goes. STEPH: Yeah, I love that approach. I'm also thinking how interesting this role is because I'm imagining a mix between someone who is like the front point person at like an ER. So like, things are coming in, and they're in a tragic state and need help and need to be diagnosed. But at the same time, you mentioned they're going around. They're checking Sidekiq. They're looking at some email errors. So they're also that night shift guard that's walking around with a flashlight just poking in each room. So it seems like a very stressful and low-key role all at the same time, all mixed up into one week. That person probably needs a beer at the end of the week. CHRIS: There is a version of the story in my head that is...I wouldn't say this feels like a failure mode, but I would rather this not have to exist at all. I would rather things to be calmly humming along and not require a dedicated person each week to deal with the noise. I don't think that's realistic, certainly not as early on as we are in our organization. But I do wonder, is this a crutch? Is this something that we should be paying more attention to? And I know in teams that you and I have worked with in the past that has been a recognition of like, this is a crutch. But it's a costly crutch. Like, we're taking an entire...in our case, it's not requiring the entirety of a developer's week. They're able to do this pretty easily and then still get a bunch...like, 75% of their time is still feature work. But we're just choking down who's the person that will be responding to questions when they pop up so that fewer individuals are interrupted? But I have seen organizations where this definitely filled an entire week and spilled out more than. And then there was the recognition of that and the addition of another person that comes along and tries to fix stuff along the way as opposed to just responding. And so I want to make sure this isn't a band-aid but is, in fact, a necessary layer that we then try and shore up, you know, we should have fewer errors. That feels true. Okay, cool. Let's fix the bugs in the app. And these ad hoc things that an admin needs to have done can that be a button in the UI? Can they actually self-serve in those cases? And we're slowly moving towards those. Ideally, fewer jobs get stuck in Sidekiq. And so, my hope is that this isn't a job that gets harder and harder over time. It's a job that potentially, if we're being honest, probably stays about this hard. I don't think it's ever going to be just like, nope, nobody needs to do anything. The app just runs, and it's great. And it never has bugs. But that is a question in my mind as I start to embrace this thing of like one person is dedicated for a week to this. And if right now it's only 25% of their time, okay, that's probably fine. But if suddenly it's 50% of their time or 75% or 100% of their time for that whole week, that becomes too high of a bar in my mind. And I want to keep a close eye on it and make sure it's not trending in that direction. And I will be one of the people on the rotation. So I'll get to be in the trenches. STEPH: I appreciate all the thoughtfulness that you're putting into it. And I'm thinking back on a project where we had a similar rotation because we had an issue Slack channel. And so anytime there was an issue, then it would get posted in there. And before, it was going out to everyone, or there was one particular person that was always picking it up and then trying to delegate it to others as they needed to. But then we started a similar rotation. And one of the key benefits that I found from that is it signaled to the team, hey, this person might get pulled away. They can pick another ticket or two, but we need to give them lower priority tickets because there's a chance that they're going to get pulled away to work on something else. And that's okay, and we're going to plan for it. Versus without this role in mind, then you had people all taking on high priority tickets, but then someone had to be the one that's like, well, I'm going to punt on my high priority and feel stressed about the fact that I've got this other thing to deal with. But then, I didn't actually do the work that I planned for. So I feel like you're helping introduce calmness into the week, even if it is a stressful role. But then there's the goal that this becomes less of a stressful role, and if you see it trending in the opposite direction, then that's something to investigate. But I also feel like triage and communication is such an important part of being a developer that it also feels very relevant upskilling for the whole team to go through. So there's also that benefit of where this approach also empowers the rest of the team to also experiences, build empathy, look for additional fixes, and then also build these important skills. Overall, I really applaud your thoughtfulness. And I think it's a really good idea. And it will be interesting to see which direction that this role trends if it gets easier or if it's getting harder over time. CHRIS: Well, thanks. I appreciate that. And I'll certainly report back as we develop this but hopefully, it stays about where it is. That feels right. And I think I'll probably...that's one of those things that I will monitor. And if I feel it moving in the wrong direction, then step in and try and get it back to this space because this feels like a maintainable reasonable amount. And we shouldn't be fixing every bug and adding every button to the UI. That's just actually not how it works, unfortunately, would love to. That's not true. You shouldn't have every button in the UI. That's so many buttons. But broadly, I hope we can maintain roughly this, and I think identifying it and laying it out now I'm feeling good about having that structure. So yeah, we'll see how it goes. Will report back. But again, thank you for the kind words. With that tour of a bunch of different things, should we wrap up? STEPH: Let's wrap up. CHRIS: The show notes for this episode can be found at bikeshed.fm. STEPH: This show is produced and edited by Mandy Moore. CHRIS: If you enjoyed listening, one really easy way to support the show is to leave us a quick rating or even a review on iTunes as it really helps other people find the show. STEPH: If you have any feedback for this or any of our other episodes, you can reach us at @_bikeshed or reach me on Twitter @SViccari. CHRIS: And I'm @christoomey. STEPH: Or you can reach us at hosts@bikeshed.fm via email. CHRIS: Thanks so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. All: Byeeeeeeeee!!!!! Announcer: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.

Announcing candidacy with… a shofar?… and more on today's CrossPolitic Daily News Brief. This is Toby Sumpter. Today is Tuesday, January 11, 2022. Sen. Doug Mastriano Announced He's Running for Pennsylvania Governor And he made that announcement by blowing a shofar – a ram's horn: 0:00-0:25 But he wasn't done yet: 0:25-0:58 You know, there are two things that occur to me upon viewing this video: the first one is cringe city. There is nothing remotely biblical, spiritual, or edifying about this sort of thing. And it's a bunch of cringe. This is why liberals think we're nuts. Cause, well, we are. But the second thing that occurs to me is that this is my crazy uncle. He's no doubt a Christian, and he stands for many things that I stand for. I appreciate the fact that he doesn't care what it looks like. I appreciate the fact that he is willing to look like a fool for Christ. I would take this guy every day of the week over the sexy-cool pastors at the Gospel Coalition every day of the week. You know like the very well-meaning Paul Carter at Gospel Coalition Canada: In a recent article Pastor Carter helpfully outlines the recent Anti-Conversion Bill that passed the Canadian parliament, and then did a pastoral faceplant as he tried to argue for a coy-mellow response rather than the one that takes backbone and courage. “This enactment amends the Criminal Code to, among other things, create the following offences: (a) causing another person to undergo conversion therapy; (b) doing anything for the purpose of removing a child from Canada with the intention that the child undergo conversion therapy outside Canada; (c) promoting or advertising conversion therapy; and (d) receiving a financial or other material benefit from the provision of conversion therapy. It also amends the Criminal Code to authorize courts to order that advertisements for conversion therapy be disposed of or deleted. The definition of ‘conversion therapy' set out in Bill C-4 reads as follows: 320.‍101 In sections 320.‍102 to 320.‍104, conversion therapy means a practice, treatment or service designed to (a) change a person's sexual orientation to heterosexual; (b) change a person's gender identity to cisgender; (c) change a person's gender expression so that it conforms to the sex assigned to the person at birth; (d) repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour; (e) repress a person's non-cisgender gender identity; or (f) repress or reduce a person's gender expression that does not conform to the sex assigned to the person at birth. For greater certainty, this definition does not include a practice, treatment or service that relates to the exploration or development of an integrated personal identity — such as a practice, treatment or service that relates to a person's gender transition — and that is not based on an assumption that a particular sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression is to be preferred over another.” Having explained all of that, Pastor Carter says he favors the response of some of his friends who will be reading a bland statement of concern this last Sunday expression mild concerns that this bill could possible, in the 9th dimension, if you're standing on your head and squinting yours, could possibly be taken as being against Biblical sexuality, even though all the politicians have promised it isn't (and crossed the heart, hope to die). But Pastor Carter is a bit concerned about Pastor John MacArthur and other Canadian pastors who are planning to preach sermons this Sunday illegally. He's concerned that conceding the point that to preach what the Bible says about sexuality in defiance of Bill C-4 – he's concerned that that is conceding too much. We should wait and see what the courts say. But while we may certainly make room for various tactical measures depending on different scenarios on the ground, the milktoast approach while playing coy about the bill is how Canadians got into this mess in the first place. For this reason, I will be joining Pastor MacArthur and many faithful Canadian pastors this Sunday preaching a message on Biblical Sexuality, specifically calling out the Canadian government for passing this legislation, and proclaiming conversion to Christ for all sexual sins, including homosexuality and transgenderism. NSA Beastmode Homemaker Scholarship In the interest of promoting a hard-hitting, thoroughly biblical education for life, CrossPolitic Studios is very excited to present: The Fight Laugh Feast “Beastmode Homemaker” Scholarship for qualified first year female students who have been accepted to New St. Andrews College for Fall 2022. This scholarship will fund almost half a young woman's annual tuition for four years. Because CrossPolitic wants to encourage young women to prepare themselves to take dominion and be fruitful through beastmode homemaking this scholarship is specifically offered to qualified young women. How to be considered for the Fight Laugh Feast “Beastmode Homemaker” Scholarship: 1. Apply to New St. Andrews College and receive official notification that you have been accepted. 2. Write a short essay (~1000) words explaining why you are the woman to receive this scholarship. This essay should be thoughtful, good humored, feminine, and well-written. The essay should include reasons how you believe a New St. Andrews College education will equip you to live for Jesus and defy the enemies of God. The essay should be sent to %%%% Address, Moscow, Idaho. All applications for the Fight Laugh Feast Scholarship must be received by February 1. 3. The CrossPolitic wives (Annie, Sharron, and Jenny) will review all applications and if there is a worthy applicant, we will schedule an interview with up to the top three candidates, and the CrossPolitic Guys will announce the winner of the scholarship on a CrossPolitic Show with great fanfare sometime by April 1st of the year prior to the student's entrance to the college. 4. The scholarship is for full-time, matriculating first year females (as defined by God and old-fashioned biology) at New St. Andrews College (because they know biology better than the Supreme Court) and automatically renews for up to four years. The scholarship is contingent on remaining such a student in good standing (academically, morally), and living like a faithful Christian in our community. The scholarship may be revoked at any time by the CrossPolitic gods, should a young woman prove to be unworthy of this honor. Pediatric Hospitalizations Not for Covid only WITH COVID We're still having reporting problems: The CDC is reporting increasing pediatric COVID hospitalizations, and quick google search finds stories all over the place citing similar statistics. Dr. Jeanne Noble from the UCSF emergency department says it's critical to break these numbers down. She tweeted over the weekend: “Between our 2 pediatric hospitals in SF and Oakland, 30% of COVID+ hospitalizations are for COVID illness, and 70% are incidental. 6 kids hospitalized b/c of COVID today at UCSF.” We've seen this since the beginning of the so-called pandemic: little to no care to distinguish between those who merely have a positive test with no/few related symptoms and those actually suffering with the disease directly. The same failure has plagued (pun intended) reporting of mortality and deaths. Granted, sometimes it's a wisdom call, but there have been many deaths that would have occurred anyway but have been coded COVID deaths because the cancer patient or heart disease patient happened to get a positive test. My grandmother ended up in the hospital this last Fall when she broke her arm and she had a positive covid test with no symptoms. She's home now recovering just fine, but I wouldn't doubt that she was considered a COVID patient in the hospital even though her time there had nothing to do with COVID. Good news coming out of Iowa this last weekend: Iowa Labor Commissioner Says the State Will Not Enforce Biden's Vax Order https://www.kcci.com/article/iowas-labor-commissioner-says-the-state-will-not-enforce-the-biden-administrations-vaccine-mandate/38701039?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot&fbclid=IwAR2rSrjf97pDlh_17ihdGwAc_qxs96p9aGkFaoyWjfOQEZbcZ-ozpoN32rw From local news KCCI: Iowa's labor commissioner says the state will not enforce the Biden administration's vaccine mandate for businesses with 100 employees or more. This decision comes as the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments regarding the mandate. Commissioner Rod Roberts said in a statement "after reviewing the mandate — Iowa will not adopt the federal standard. Roberts' full statement says: “Iowa doesn't have a standard requiring the Covid-19 vaccine or testing. But after closely reviewing the federal OSHA Vaccine Mandate, Iowa has determined it will not adopt the federal standard. Iowa has concluded that it is not necessary because Iowa's existing standards are at least as effective as the federal standard change.” Gov. Kim Reynolds praised the commissioner's decision. OK, states, follow Iowa. Acknowledge the mandate and decline to enforce it. Psalm of the Day: 133 0:00-0:49 Amen. Remember you can always find the links to our news stories and these psalms at crosspolitic dot com – just click on the daily news brief and follow the links. This is Toby Sumpter with Crosspolitic News. A reminder: Support Rowdy Christian media, and share this show or become a Fight Laugh Feast Club Member. Remember if you didn't make it to the Fight Laugh Feast Conferences, club members have access to all the talks from Douglas Wilson, Joe Boot, Jeff Durbin, Glenn Sunshine, Nate Wilson, David Bahnsen, Voddie Baucham, Ben Merkle, and many more. Join today and have a great day.

Antifa Terrorist ARRESTED at Jan 6th Rally with Pipe Bomb | Biden Admin Prioritizes Race with Covid Treatments | 800K Non-Citizens in NYC were Granted the Ability to Vote Subscribe to the Podcast Here  https://apple.co/2ZAGmU1 Please Support me here https://www.patreon.com/join/JoeySalads  This is the Joey Saladino show where Joey goes over everything in the news. This is a Republican / Conservative News Commentary show.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the things I love most about where I live is that I can walk to the beach (it's 120 steps, I counted). Granted, I live in Canada… on Vancouver Island… so much of the year the water is 8 degrees celsius (or colder). But when we moved here in November of 2020, I decided that I would go to the beach as many mornings per week as I could muster. And after a few weeks of walking along the shore and staring out at the water, I started joining some friendly folks who going in the water for a plunge.I immediately was hooked.Yes, I grew up playing outside in Edmonton winters (often -40c), I also used to take ice baths when I was training hard for races, and I have always preferred cool showers to hot ones (you will very rarely find me in a hot tub) but this is a whole new level of cold exposure.In this episode, I get into the science behind cold water swimming, along with some help from Dr. Andrew Huberman (you can see the full lecture he gave about this on his instagram page).You can also read the full article I wrote about my plunges.And don't forget to sign up for my bi-weekly Movement Digest email newsletter at brockarmstrong.com/newsletter

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these podcasters from the swift completion of their appointed episodes! Just playing. If there was a bunch of heat or gloom we probably wouldn't do it. But there was a shitload of snow by Tennessee standards, and we still managed to turn on the computer and do our jobs. Incredible. On today's episode we're talking about, well, that dadgum post office demon Louis Dejoy, new seating concepts, copsucking comics, and as you can probably guess by looking at the title of the episode, air fryer apologia. All that and more on a very normal episode of YKS!Music for YKS is courtesy of Howell Dawdy, Craig Dickman, Mr. Baloney, and Mark Brendle. Additional research by Zeke Golvin. YKS is edited by Producer Dan. Executive Producer lola butt.For more YKS, yeahhhh, you're gonna wanna head over to YKS Premium. Jesseuary is starting to take shape, and you're gonna love it, but in the mean time, we got bonus episodes comin out the wazoo over there, and they are ready to download! Plus, our migration to YouTube is now complete, and your YKS Premium Video experience is smoother and more Googlier than ever before. Put the boys up on the big screen! Only at YKS Premium.This week's YKS is sponsored by Factor. Granted, I live smack dab in the middle of flyover country, but I gotta say, when I sat down to lunch this week, Factor's Shrimp and Grits acquitted themselves pretty dadgum well. Only thing that was missing was a big fluffy beignet! Well that's because Factor is all about nutritious, pre-prepared meals ready to munch in about 2 minutes. Keto? Ke-yes! Order yourself a few weeks worth of nice hot lunches at go.factor75.com/plans and use code YKS120 for $120 off. Also sponsoring this week's episode? You already know what time it is. It's time to call or otherwise virtually interact with your licensed professional therapist in a safe, convenient, and comfortable environment! Get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com/YKS. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Shannon and Jerome Schwartz are married television writers. But up until a few years ago they had never collaborated on a project. They had their own separate careers and they were very content in their own spheres. But then a project came along that felt like the right thing to do together. And that project was to try to turn the Committed podcast into a television series for ABC Studios. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Men's world number one Novak Djokovic says he'll defend his Australian Open title in Melbourne later this month after confirming he's received a medical exemption from getting vaccinated against COVID-19. - Serb leci do Australii na AO...został zwolniony - z powodów medycznych - z obowiązku szczepienia przeciw Covid-19.

Inflation is here, housing supply is in a crunch, and supply chain shortages, among other factors, are affecting the construction of new starter homes. In this episode, we dissect a recent article from CNBC documenting rental rates and weigh in on what we think this means for real estate investors.  --- Transcripts Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor Podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   What's going on everybody? Welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor . I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by my co host,   Emil: the lovely Emil Shour,   Michael: the lovely self proclaimed lovely Emil Shour. And today we're gonna be talking about rents. Where are they going? What are they doing? What can you expect in the near future? So let's get into it.   Alrighty, Emil, what do you think I've got an article here from CNBC. Talking about where rents are going in the near future, what they've been seeing what the markets been doing. Why do you think they're going up? Down? Sideways? No, change your prediction?   Emil: I think they're going up. I don't think they're going to go up as fast as we've seen in the last year, which has been pretty astronomical. But I think they're going up, inflation is here, rents have been going up with it, there is a supply crunch in housing, all those things to me mean, rents will continue going up because takes a while to build new housing supply is slow to come to the market builders aren't building like crazy, like they did before 2008. So you know, all those signs to me point that rents are going to continue going up, although I don't think it's as quick of a pace of as they have over the last 12 months.   Michael: Yeah. When you say that home take a while to build and you're clearly someone that has never played the Sims before, because we just got like all those construction crews out here like you just pop them up all over the place. Right?   Emil: That's right. I wish it was that easy. Maybe like prefab homes, they can just start plopping them down. But you know, even those built around community, everything I've read, and again, you know, you're reading stuff take with a grain of salt, but everything I've read, it sounds like builders are much slower and hesitant this time around, because a lot of them still remember the after effects of leading up to 2008, where they overbuilt and then they were left holding the bag with all these all these developments. So what I keep reading is demand is high. And they are very, very slow and methodical building new supply. Plus, there's a lot of regulation and restrictions, I think, in a lot of places that are preventing new housing preventing it from going up quickly.   I think all those factors. Again, I'm not an expert, but just based on what I've read. Supply is not going up as quickly as people hope it would.   Michael: Yeah, that makes sense. And I mean, I know that you're a very well read person. I'm curious to get your thoughts shaking your head. I'm curious to get your thoughts on how did we get here? I mean, how did we get to such I was talking with um, I forget who I was speaking with. But they were saying like, we're 5.5 million homes shy of where we need to be. How did we How did we get here?   Emil: Again, I am no expert. I I read stuff on, you know, my Apple news app. I read it on Twitter.   Michael: Reddit, Facebook   Emil: I think it's the same thing I'm talking about right? I think after 2008 When there was a lot of overdevelopment support, like all these charts, you see, you see like building building, building new supply going up fast leading up to 2007 2008. And then it just falls off a cliff. And since then it hasn't, it hasn't caught up. It's been a very slow build. I don't think we've even caught up to those 2007 levels of building of do build. So it's just been really slow. Again, I think it's just builder a lot. A lot of builders probably got wiped out. A lot of people still remember that time. So it's just been it's been slow. Is my understanding.   Michael: Yeah, I totally agree. I think that we're seeing that lag. There's like the lead and lag measures and we're totally This is our lag measure of like, stuff isn't being built fast enough. Nor was it being built fast enough over the last decade or so. And so now we're feeling the squeeze. And I think that's compounded with supply chain issues like and lumber issues. I mean, lumber has gone up like 300% Over the last 18 months I think something outrageous and I know I felt that   Emil: Did it do I thought it I went up high and then it dipped is it back up?   Michael: I think that it is back up. I'm I don't want to be quoted. But I think that it's it's definitely higher than it was pre pandemic level. So while you're doing that, I mean that just that just goes and adds additional stress and costs to new builds. And so the prices, the end prices of those just tend to be higher. or   Emil: So okay, May 2021. It peaked at, I don't know, whatever this this index on nasdaq.com is looking at 1600 Peak, and then it dipped to in the summer to like 456. And now it's it's back up to 950. So done a little U shaped not quite back up to that level it was last year. But yeah, you're right.   Michael: I know when I get my material bills for my development project, that's still expensive as I get up.   Emil: You're like, I know. You're in it.   Michael: Yeah, yeah. General Contractor, Emil told me that the lumber prices have actually come back down. So yeah, we'll just work that in the budget. So in this article that CNBC came out with, they they quoted a core logic study that that CoreLogic did, and they surveyed single family rents over the course of the year across the country. And in August 2021, they jumped, and more than 9%, on average from your prior, which if you think about it, is like outrageous. If you think about getting 9% 10% 8% Rent bumps, I mean, in the restock Academy, we have our pro forma a calculator that we use, and I think we use like two or 3% for rent bumps, in terms of year over year increase. And so we're just keeping up with inflation, or just beating inflation, because we don't normally use two to 3% for inflation.   So we're just outpacing I mean, this is blowing the socks off inflation, even at five 6% What inflation has been last couple of months. This is still significantly better. So Emil, you and I were talking before we started recording here about what this says for the future of investors for investing in the space. I mean, what is this signal to you? 9% rent growth? Granted, we've seen prices climb like crazy. What are you thinking about the future? You're kind of near to mid term investment horizon.   Emil: I mean, to me, if I was investing now, I'd be feeling really excited. I feel very excited, having had bought real estate years ago, and now it's gone up. That's the best time to buy was years ago. And when's the next time best time to buy is now? Which can always be said over a long enough time horizon. But right, yeah, man, if I if I'm an investor, and I see the rates are increasing, and they're doing these studies, and you know, reputable sites like CNBC are talking about this stuff. No one ever really knows where it's going. But if I was an investor, I'd be I'd be pretty excited knowing rents going up.   Michael: Yeah, I feel the same. And I mean, I think this is also not a fad. And this is not a short, this does not seem like it's going to be short lived. If we are millions of properties shy of word demand is both on you know, on the home owner side, that just means that people are going to continue to rent for a long time until that that is caught up with and 9% is nothing to scoff at. And   Emil: So let's talk about our I'm curious use you still own you and some single family still. Have you had any come up for lease recently versus your multifamily? Like, I have a triplex and it's been a little bit harder than expected to rent recently. And all my single family stuff, like we've been able to get rent bumps and renewals like fast. No problem.   Michael: Yeah. So my single, my single family that I have on a long term lease in Southern California has not come up for renewal, they're dealing with some COVID issues still. So we're working with a tenant there, but they're month to month right now. But my primary residence that I converted to a short term rental during COVID, that we were getting awesome rents are on a short term basis. And then we actually got that rented out on a year long lease at the same rent we were getting from the short term renters for our long term renters for long term contract. And now we just put utilities on them as well.   So we were just over the moon, about that. And so the demand is seemingly through the roof, which is awesome. Yeah. And so again, I think that speaks to your point of like, it's still a great time to invest demand is still really strong, even if you have to compete and kind of elbow your way into the space. It seems like the rent growth is there to support it. And I'm curious to be able to get your thoughts if you're evaluating a property, and it is just about cash flow neutral, maybe a little bit of cash flow, but you with a 9% or even 8% or even 7% rent growth, you would it would kick you over into the cash flow positive fairly significantly. Is that speculative? In your opinion? Is that is that counting on appreciation or counting on a trend to continue for it to make sense? Are you okay? Because we have because of all the data supporting that?   Emil: Yeah, I personally wouldn't. I would never Personally purchase a property where I'm either cash flow neutral or negative today in hopes that things go up. I'm only buying something that's going to cash flow and then hoping we get more cash flow right not not the other way around. I know investors, we've done webinars and stuff who completely have banked on appreciation, or not even appreciation buying in areas that have appreciated and looking for missed priced homes right below the median in that area. That's a great, I mean, honestly, if you really look at like, it's way easier to make a larger sum of money going that route, then cash flow, cash flows, like a slow trickle. But for me, I never want to come out of pocket on a monthly basis on any property. Consistently come out of pocket.   Michael: All right, what if it was like 25 bucks, you know, you do your conservative underwriting, you're gonna make 25 bucks a month. And then with the rent growth, or potential rent hike for next year, you'd be at, call it 150.   Emil: Only if I knew a renewal, like let's say it was a property. I did this with the triplex. I knew it was cashflow positive when I bought it, but I knew we were under market rent, yeah, we'd have to spend some money, but even factoring that in, we had some nice room to raise rents from where the market was at. And this is a year ago. And so like we've had, you know, rent growth, so it's now it's, it's going up even higher. So if you're buying it under that assumption, right? Not that it's at market rent, you think, okay, it's gonna go up another eight 9% Next year, I'd say if you're looking for a little something that has like a little more of value add on it or whatever, under market rent, then that's a different game. Sure. That makes sense to me.   Michael: All right. Good to know.   Emil: What about you?   Michael: Yeah, I don't I don't know, as I asked the question here. I am thinking like, Oh, crap, I hope Emil doesn't ask me, I think that I would be probably more okay with it than it sounds like you would be. Because why the thing, the thing that I think people often forget about is like all of the benefits that owning real estate have for you and tax benefits is, is massively impactful. And especially for me at this stage in my investing career, and so cash flow, I mean, I'm so fortunate and so thankful that $150 a month, cash flow is not going to change my life, I spent the last 10 years building up cash flowing properties to be at this stage in my investing career in my life. And I I never tried to lose sight of that.   And so the difference between 150 versus 25 bucks for the potential of appreciation, and for the potential of rental increase, I think I'd be okay with that. And this just kind of goes to show you to all of our listeners, like it really depends on where you are in your investing career, what your investment thesis is that a Emil and I can be talking about the exact same property, it could be a go for me and a no go for him. And so just, again, I think this is a great a great kind of teachable moment of like, think about what your investment goals are not about what your neighbors are, what mine are, what Tom's or what Emil's are. But think about what makes sense for you and your family when you're thinking about investing.   So I'll get off my soapbox now. But I when I go to calculate, like the total return on that type of property where there is good appreciation potential. There's maybe a little bit of cash flow. I think that could often that can make a lot of sense for me right now.   Emil: Yeah, that's fair. I mean, that's the I think the awesome thing we've seen with this podcast is you know, bringing on different guests doing different things is like there's a lot of ways to win in real estate.   Michael: Totally.   That was our episode everybody. Thank you so much for listening. Hope you enjoyed it. We love hearing comments, feedback from you all other episode ideas, things that you want to learn more about hear more about, so leave us a note in the comment section. And as always, we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing.   Emil: Happy investing.  

World number one Novak Djokovic has been granted a medical exemption to play in this month's Australian Open without a COVID-19 vaccination. The Victorian government insists any player who's been granted an exemption has gone through an independent process to verify they have a genuine medical condition.

Mike and Jason discuss the Canucks recent form, and how the spectacular play of Quinn Hughes has become somewhat normalized in Vancouver causing us to take it for granted. Michael Futa joins us to talk about the spiraling Edmonton Oilers and how  a team with Stanley Cup aspirations pulls itself out of it. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

A new year, but the Hugh Grant content never stops! Following on from last year's Death to 2020, Death to 2021 (created by Charlie Brooker, Ben Caudell and Annabel Jones) has some new faces, as well as some old ones, not least Hugh Grant reprising his role as history professor Tennyson Foss. The light Netflix special pokes fun at another rollercoaster year, revisiting all the dread and occasional delight that 2021 had to offer. Make sure you're following Taking Hugh for Granted on Instagram and Facebook (@TakingHughforGranted) as well as Twitter (@TakingHugh). You can get in touch with us there or via our email takinghughforgranted@gmail.com. For those of you that want to skip disclaimers, opening theme tunes, salutations, synopses and go straight to the film analysis, head to 08:37.

Jalen & Jacoby discuss the Bengals chances to win AFC, Aaron Rodgers dominates Vikings, the curious of Antonio Brown, Kyler Murray runs past Cowboys in Dallas, Russ cooks Jalen's Lions, LeBron's incredible season, plus the guys preview tonight Browns-Steelers game

Jalen & Jacoby discuss the Bengals chances to win AFC, Aaron Rodgers dominates Vikings, the curious of Antonio Brown, Kyler Murray runs past Cowboys in Dallas, Russ cooks Jalen's Lions, LeBron's incredible season, plus the guys preview tonight Browns-Steelers game

Scripture of the Day:   Luke 1:13“But the angel said to him, “Zechariah, your prayer has been heard. Your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son and you shall call him John.”God Answers PrayerFirst of all, let me emphasize, that God is not a respecter of persons.  What He does for one person, He will do for every person….we have His promise on that.  So, why doesn't He answer the prayers of every person…?  It is up to US to get our Faith “tuned into” His Word.   Despite what you may have been taught by well meaning Christian people, God is FOR you and NOT against you!  So many people for far too long have been taught wrong.  I had heard from as far back as I can remember that God was out to “get you” if you messed up!  That is totally, one hundred percent opposite the truth! Where money is concerned, Christians have been taught that poverty is God's way of humbling us.  That people in the ministry have taken a “vow of poverty.”  That if preachers do “get” anything, they have to give it away.  We have been taught that Jesus was so poor, he did not even have a home to live in (Luke 9:58 “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”). Jesus came to show us how to be Blessed!  Poverty is under the curse!  Jesus came to fulfill the Abrahamic Covenant.  Abraham was RICH!  Job was RICH!  David was RICH!  Solomon was RICH!  So why would Jesus be poor?  And, if he was so poor, why did he have a treasurer?  A poor man does not need a treasurer – a RICH man does! Judas must have been giving A LOT of money AWAY!  Because at the last supper, when Jesus told him to “do what you need to do,” Judas got up and left.  The other disciples thought he was going out to “give money to the poor.”  So he must have done that so often that the other disciples did not pay much attention to him leaving.  This was after Jesus told them that one of the disciples was a traitor!  So any unusual actions by any disciple would have raised immediate suspicion. But Judas' departure was just a natural part of their dinners, the other disciples did not think it was odd! Christians have been taught for so long that “money is the root of all evil.”  But the scriptures do not say that. “The love of money is the root of all evil.”  (1 Timothy 6:10). It costs money to preach the gospel. Just ask your Pastor the next time you see him!  If you are not on the church Board of Directors and just think you can show up and all is well…and you give your little offering thinking “others” will give and that you need the money more than the church does…you are WRONG! Granted, God will make sure that ministries which are doing God's work will be taken care of.  But, the responsibility falls to us!  God holds each of us responsible.   We have been taught that God allows sickness, disease or calamities to happen in our lives in order to “teach” us something.  That is not scriptural.  Sickness, disease and calamities are covered under the curses – and we have been redeemed from the curses! (Galatian 3:13-14). We have been taught that our children ran from God because of something we have done in our past.  We have been taught that our children must “find their own way.”  Both of these concepts are not scriptural.  It is our responsibility as parents to pray for our children and teach them that God loves them and is there for them when we cannot be. We have been taught that we can “never know what God will do.”  But the Bible says the Holy Spirit will show us all things! (John 14:25-27). We have been taught that sometimes God answers our...

We learn how to nurture our friendships even when we feel like there isn't enough time.

Let's get the new year off to a good start and know our customer, market and industry better than your colleagues and competition.  Let's create a knowledge gathering system for you. It will pay off in terms of your professionalism, your results and your career! Early in my career I just took what the company told me as the gospel about what was going on in the medical specialties I was selling to and the industry I participated in.  Granted waaay back then…the multitude of knowledge access points that exist today did not exist (YouTube, eNewsletters, News aggregators, Webinars, Facebook, Twitter, Specialized websites, etc.).  With all these access points there is really no excuse not to know what is going on in your market and to know your customer. In today's podcast and video cast I will share my approach to this.  No doubt, after you listen or view this episode, you will have good ideas to add.  Please let me know and I will mention them in the next podcast. We will review: Four categories of knowledge you should be investigating every week. Four methods to stay up to date. Examples of how to put these methods to action. When you are done listening and or viewing, you will have a very clear idea of how to set up your knowledge gathering system and you will be better for it. Finally, a warm welcome to several new MedTech Leaders community members that joined in December!! Medtechleaders.net Now Go Win Your Week!! Links to mentions in the podcast: Becker Healthcare and Hospital Review https://www.beckershospitalreview.com Healio - https://www.healio.com JAMA Network - https://jamanetwork.com MASS Device - https://www.massdevice.com Feedspot top 20 Medical Device Podcasts - https://blog.feedspot.com/medical_device_podcasts/ State of Demand Gen Podcast - https://www.refinelabs.com/podcast Ted Newill's LinkedIn Profile link  More Medical Device Success podcasts link Medical Device Success website link  MedTech Leaders Community link Link to Ted's contact page 

Welcome to a special edition of Travel People: Living Authentic Lives, Finding Kindred Spirits, Fulfilling Dreams. Today Best-selling author Angela Correll, takes us to 3 little villages with big hearts.  Her story inspires us to see problems as possibilities, to create something that satisfies the soul and benefits others, to embrace who and what matters most, to remember our roots and spread our wings. I talked with  Angela  in Stanford, Kentucky where she lives on a farm with her husband, Jess. The novels of her May Hollow trilogy –  Grounded, Guarded, and Granted– are based largely on life in the small town. She and Jess are the creators of the Wilderness Road Hospitality Group. You'll hear how they went from milking goats to saving and renovating historic homes. How they built two restaurants, an Inn, and are building another. Angela will tell you about living in a close community in Ky and their latest project in a village in Italy. See more here: https://southerngirlgoneglobal.com/2022/01/03/best-retreats-2022-wilderness-road-experience-with-author-angela-correll/ If you missed last year's holiday edition, follow the link to a another small village, this one Greek in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Every Jan 6 this close community hosts the largest  (and probably most unusual) Epiphany celebration in the Northern Hemisphere. Kentucky Soaps and SuchWilderness Road Accommodations and MoreLiborio Conti -- Mandolin music https://no-copyright-music.com

i fucking hate you spotify. please just post this fucking episode

Hi Everybody, Welcome to 2ZQ Hot takes, where we discuss issues both big and small; I am your host TVHTim Kirk and today I'll be talking about, 'You can't take anything for granted.' As well as a few other 'related' terms of speech. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Links: “Cloud Security Breaches and Vulnerabilities”: https://blog.christophetd.fr/cloud-security-breaches-and-vulnerabilities-2021-in-review/ S3 Bucket Negligence Award: https://mytechdecisions.com/audio/sennheiser-responds-after-customer-data-from-2018-was-exposed-online/ Granted the role its support teams use to access customer accounts access to S3 objects: https://Twitter.com/0xdabbad00/status/1473448889948598275?s=12 S3 Bucket Negligence Award: https://www.modernghana.com/news/1127205/report-ghana-government-agency-exposes-100000s.html “Simplify setup of Amazon Detective with AWS Organizations”: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/simplify-setup-of-amazon-detective-with-aws-organizations/ “AWSSupportServiceRolePolicy Informational Update”: https://aws.amazon.com/security/security-bulletins/AWS-2021-007/ aws-sso-cli: https://github.com/synfinatic/aws-sso-cli TranscriptCorey: This is the AWS Morning Brief: Security Edition. AWS is fond of saying security is job zero. That means it's nobody in particular's job, which means it falls to the rest of us. Just the news you need to know, none of the fluff.Corey: Are you building cloud applications with a distributed team? Check out Teleport, an open-source identity-aware access proxy for cloud resources. Teleport provides secure access for anything running somewhere behind NAT: SSH servers, Kubernetes clusters, internal web apps, and databases. Teleport gives engineers superpowers. Get access to everything via single sign-on with multi-factor, list and see all of SSH servers, Kubernetes clusters, or databases available to you in one place, and get instant access to them using tools you already have. Teleport ensures best security practices like role-based access, preventing data exfiltration, providing visibility, and ensuring compliance. And best of all, Teleport is open-source and a pleasure to use. Download Teleport at goteleport.com. That's goteleport.com.Corey: Well, we're certainly ending 2021 with a whirlwind in the security space. Log4J continues to haunt us, while AWS took not only an outage but also a bit of a security blunder that they managed to turn into a messaging win. Listen on.But first, the Community. A depressing review of 2021's “Cloud Security Breaches and Vulnerabilities.” Honestly, it seems like there are just so damned many ways for bad security to set the things we care about on fire. The takeaways are actionable though. Stop using static long-lived credentials and start with the basics before you get fancy.Sennheiser scores itself an S3 Bucket Negligence Award, and of all the countries in which to suffer a data breach, I've got to say that Germany is at the bottom of the list. They do not mess around with data protection there.And, Holy hell, AWS inadvertently granted the role its support teams use to access customer accounts access to S3 objects. It lasted for ten hours, and while there are mitigations out there, this is far from the first time that AWS has biffed it with regard to an unreviewed change making it into a managed IAM policy. This needs to be addressed. If you've got specific questions about how those things are handled, reach out to your account team; but it's a terrible look. But there's more to come in a second here.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by my friends at Cloud Academy. Something special for you folks: If you missed their offer on Black Friday or Cyber Monday or whatever day of the week doing sales it is, good news, they've opened up their Black Friday promotion for a very limited time. Same deal: $100 off a yearly plan, 249 bucks a year for the highest quality cloud and tech skills content. Nobody else is going to get this, and you have to act now because they have assured me this is not going to last for much longer. Go to cloudacademy.com, hit the ‘Start Free Trial' button on the homepage and use the promo code, ‘CLOUD' when checking out. That's C-L-O-U-D. Like loud—what I am—with a C in front of it. They've got a free trial, too, so you'll get seven days to try it out to make sure it really is a good fit. You've got nothing to lose except your ignorance about cloud. My thanks to Cloud Academy once again for sponsoring my ridiculous nonsense.A bit off the beaten path, this week's S3 Bucket Negligence Award goes to the government of Ghana. This one is pretty bad. I mean, you can't exactly opt out of doing business with your government, you know?Now, AWS has two things I want to talk about. The first is that they offer a way to “Simplify setup of Amazon Detective with AWS Organizations.” I'm actually enthusiastic about this one because there's a significant lack of security tooling available to folks at the lower end of the market. A bunch of companies seem to start off targeting this segment, but soon realize that there's a better future in selling things to bigger companies for $200,000 a month instead of $20.Now, “AWSSupportServiceRolePolicy Informational Update.” Now, you heard a minute ago, I was initially extremely unhappy about this mistake. That said, I am such a fan of this notification that I can't even articulate it without sounding like I'm fanboying. Because mistakes happen and talking about those mistakes and why defense in depth mitigates the harm of those mistakes goes a long way. This affirms my trust in AWS rather than harming it. Meanwhile Azure has absolutely nothing to say about why their tenant separation is aspirational at best.And lastly a bit of tooling story here. To end up the year, I've been kicking the tires on aws-sso-cli over on GitHub, which is a tool for using AWS SSO for both the CLI and web console. I don't know why the native SSO tooling is quite as trash as it is, but it's a problem. There's a lot of value to using SSO but AWS hides it as if the entire thing were under NDA. Thank you for listening. It's been a heck of a year as we've launched the security portion of this weekly nonsense. I'll talk to you more in 2022. Stay safe.Corey: Thank you for listening to the AWS Morning Brief: Security Edition with the latest in AWS security that actually matters. Please follow AWS Morning Brief on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Overcast—or wherever the hell it is you find the dulcet tones of my voice—and be sure to sign up for the Last Week in AWS newsletter at lastweekinaws.com.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Happy New Year! As 2021 comes to a close, Oscar and Diggory take a look back over a year of the internet's number 1 Hugh Grant podcast... You can listen to all of the episodes featured in this compilation, with the episodes featured in order being: Notting Hill (with Jessica Waite), We did it! Hugh's Grant I'm Still Here actor credit removed from IMBd, Happy 61st Birthday Hugh Grant, Colin Firth Things First: Bridget Jones's Baby and Mickey Blue Eyes. Make sure you're following Taking Hugh for Granted on Instagram and Facebook (@TakingHughforGranted) as well as Twitter (@TakingHugh). You can get in touch with us there or via our email takinghughforgranted@gmail.com

West Ham United have just had the best 12 months in living memory. European qualification, their highest Premier League finish since the 90s, and some giant scalps along the way. Some stars have cemented themselves as cult heroes and in Declan Rice, Hammers fans have an icon they'll remember forever. Will Pugh and James Jones are here for the last time in 2021 to look back on an unforgettable year of football for their beloved Hammers. From the near-perfect start in January and Jesse Lingard's arrival to sealing that sixth place spot. The historic Euros and England's run to the final with Rice at the heart of it making Hammers everywhere oh-so-proud. And when you thought it couldn't get any better, David Moyes' men kicked off the 2021-22 campaign in scintillating fashion – roaring to third in the Premier League and winning their Europa League group with a game to spare. Granted the year has finished with the worst run of form the team has been through in 2021, but bigger picture, it's been a whirlwind dream that Irons fans can all be proud of. The lads recorded this show on Christmas Eve after the Tottenham defeat in the League Cup so don't know what happened in the Southampton match. They run through the year month-by-month, game-by-game before handing out their end of year awards. It's been a blast this year and they'll be back at it in January.   Thank you so much for all your support in 2021, it's been phenomenal and we are both really grateful.   We both hope you have a fantastic new year and look forward to the show getting back on the road in 2022.   You can follow the podcast here:   Twitter: @We Are_West Ham. Facebook: We Are West Ham podcast. Instagram: @WeAreWestHamPod The lads can be found @WilliamPugh_ and @ByJamesJones. WATCH the show and subscribe to We Are West Ham's YouTube channel HERE. We normally tell us where you can buy us a beer, but this Christmas, please donate to Isla HERE.   Do SUBSCRIBE, RATE, SHARE and REVIEW the pod and tell your friends about us.   This episode is sponsored by FootballPrizes.co.uk. You can find this podcast and keep up with all the latest West Ham news, podcasts and West Ham videos on West Ham 365. And we've also partnered with Manscaped to offer our valued listeners 20% OFF + Free Shipping with promo code WEAREWESTHAM at MANSCAPED.com! #ad   #COYI #WHUFC #WAWH #WEAREWESTHAM

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This week's question comes from Mack through Ashley's Slack channel in the Real Estate Rookie Bootcamp. Mack is asking: How can I buy an investment property without putting 20% down?Mack has the question that many real estate investors do: how to buy with low or no money down? Thankfully, the world of real estate has a plethora of financing options from low down payment conventional and FHA loans to zero percent down loans from certain providers. Granted, you do need to check a few boxes before you can get these.Here are some suggestions:Understand the main differences between FHA loans and conventional loansUse house hacking as a way to qualify for owner-occupied financingCalculate out your PMI beforehand so you know the true cost of a sub-20% percent down loanUse a HELOC on your current properties as the down payment for new onesAnd more in the episode…If you want Ashley and Tony to answer a real estate question, you can post in the Real Estate Rookie Facebook Group! Or, call us at the Rookie Request Line (1-888-5-ROOKIE).Links from the ShowReal Estate Rookie Rookie Facebook GroupReal Estate Rookie Youtube ChannelReal Estate Rookie BootcampBiggerPockets ForumsNACACheck the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/rookie142See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The sport of Men's Volleyball isn't too popular here in the state of Idaho. Granted, worldwide, it's massive! And it's starting to slowly grow in popularity but definitely deserves much more exposure here.  That's why I'm bringing on Kyle Homer, who plays currently for Idaho Strike and he's going to be sharing his story of his Volleyball career with us!  What are the practices like? What are the matches like? What's the atmosphere like? Do you think Volleyball players are soft? Kyle is going to tell you exactly why that's NOT the case!  Kyle will share his story of how Volleyball helped him at a time in his life when he needed it the most. He'll share some of the life lessons he's been able to take from the sport and put into his daily life as well!  This is an interview you absolutely do NOT want to miss! Tap in today and make sure you leave us a review on Apple Podcasts to get this out to more people! Facebook: The Gametime Guru Twitter: @thegametimeguru Instagram: @gametimeguru TikTok: @thegametimeguru   

4 Mistakes That Make Him Take You For Granted Even If He Loves You Now --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/matthew-coast/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/matthew-coast/support

The decades-old reliance on oil and gas alongside the dominance of GCC governments and related entities have led to overdependence on energy prices, an underdeveloped private sector and low productivity growth. However, there is increasing evidence that the “this time is different” mantra is bearing fruit. Encouragingly, the vigour of GCC authorities to realise National Vision strategies to structurally transform their economies away from the cyclical reliance of oil and gas is gaining traction. Granted, diversification will require patience given the scale and magnitude of the transformation programmes at hand, but what is clear is that the longstanding impediments to investment and productivity are progressively being reversed. In this week's podcast, Ehsan Khoman, Head of Emerging Markets Research (EMEA), provides insights into the current assessment and prospects of the GCC region in 2022, taking stock of COVID-19 developments, energy transition progress and ESG considerations. Disclaimer: www.mufgresearch.com (PDF)

Planning for a famine when you're in a time of plenty helps you live a life of fulfillment, appreciation and gratitude. For more content from Charlie, and/or to order Charlie's book Unlocking Greatness, please visit http://www.charlieharary.com This podcast is powered by JewishPodcasts.org. Start your own podcast today and share your content with the world. Click jewishpodcasts.fm/signup to get started.

Plant scientists find recipe for anti-cancer compound in herbs Purdue University, December 21, 2021 Thyme and oregano possess an anti-cancer compound that suppresses tumor development, but adding more to your tomato sauce isn't enough to gain significant benefit. The key to unlocking the power of these plants is in amplifying the amount of the compound created or synthesizing the compound for drug development. Researchers at Purdue University achieved the first step toward using the compound in pharmaceuticals by mapping its biosynthetic pathway, a sort of molecular recipe of the ingredients and steps needed. Thymol, carvacrol and thymohydroquinone are flavor compounds in thyme, oregano and other plants in the Lamiaceae family. They also have antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and other properties beneficial to human health. Thymohydroquinone has been shown to have anti-cancer properties and is particularly of interest, said Dudareva, who also is director of Purdue's Center for Plant Biology. (NEXT) Prebiotics supplements help women reduce sugar intake by four percent University of Surrey, December 21, 2021 A new study from the University of Surrey has found that young women who took four weeks of prebiotic supplements made healthier food choices and consumed less sugar. The prebiotics used in this study were galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) which increase the amount of "friendly" gut bacteria. IThe research team found that participants who used the GOS supplements consumed 4.1% less sugar and 4.3% fewer calories from carbohydrates overall than women from the placebo group. Interestingly, the study also found that those who took the GOS supplements consumed around 4.2% more energy from fats. After analyzing their results, the Surrey team found that the prebiotic supplements modified the composition of the gut microbiome, increasing levels of Bifidobacterium. The researchers found that these changes were associated with the women's nutritional intake over the four-week period. (NEXT) Vitamin E supplementation could boost pneumonia protection Tufts University School of Medicine  December 17 2021 An article in The Journal of Immunology reports findings from experimental research that suggests a role for vitamin E supplementation in protecting against pneumonia. "Earlier studies have shown that vitamin E can help regulate the aging body's immune system, but our present research is the first study to demonstrate that dietary vitamin E regulates neutrophil entry into the lungs in mice, and so dramatically reduces inflammation, and helps fight off infection by this common type of bacteria," announced lead author Elsa N. Bou Ghanem, PhD, of Tufts University School of Medicine. "A growing body of research suggests vitamin E could make up for the loss of immune response caused by aging," noted co-senior author Simin Nikbin Meydani, DVM, PhD. "Whether vitamin E can help protect people against this type of pneumonia affecting older adults requires more research." (NEXT) Heavy metals in cannabis plants could affect human health, study finds Penn State University, December 15, 2021 A new study led by researchers from Penn State is outlining a number of strategies that should be employed by cannabis growers to mitigate the plant's ability to absorb heavy metals from soil. The study indicates it is possible consuming cannabis contaminated with heavy metals could lead to chronic diseases, including neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's. Phytoremediation is a process where plants are used to remove certain environmental contaminants from soil. Cannabis is a plant often used in this process due to its exceptional ability to grow fast, need few extra nutrients, and absorb high volumes of heavy metals including lead, cadmium and chromium. In particular, cannabis plants transport these heavy metals into its leaves and flowers. These elements specifically concentrate in the hairlike structures called trichomes on its flowers, and these are the same parts of the plant that store cannabinoids such as THC and CBD. (NEXT) Yoga has potential to reduce risk factors of cardiovascular disease European Society of Cardiology, December 15, 2021 There is "promising evidence" that the popular mind-body practice of yoga is beneficial in managing and improving the risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease and is a "potentially effective therapy" for cardiovascular health. Indeed, following a systematic review of 37 randomised controlled trials (which included 2768 subjects), investigators from the Netherlands and USA have found that yoga may provide the same benefits in risk factor reduction as such traditional physical activities as biking or brisk walking. "This finding is significant," they note, "as individuals who cannot or prefer not to perform traditional aerobic exercise might still achieve similar benefits in [cardiovascular] risk reduction." Their study is published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. (NEXT) Hugs help protect against stress, infection, say researchers Carnegie Mellon University, December 17, 2021 Instead of an apple, could a hug-a-day keep the doctor away? According to new research from Carnegie Mellon University, that may not be that far-fetched of an idea. Led by Sheldon Cohen, the Robert E. Doherty University Professor of Psychology in CMU's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the researchers tested whether hugs act as a form of social support, protecting stressed people from getting sick. Published in Psychological Science, they found that greater social support and more frequent hugs protected people from the increased susceptibility to infection associated with being stressed and resulted in less severe illness symptoms. (OTHER NEWS NEXT) Despite Climate Imperative, 94% of Analyzed Coal Companies Have No Phaseout Plan COMMON DREAMS December 21, 2021 With a new analysis in hand, an international climate advocacy group on Tuesday demanded that banks and investors worldwide use their leverage to force the coal industry to more rapidly end their planet-wrecking operations. The new report by Paris-based Reclaim Finance—entitled The Coal Companies Watchlist: How finance can accelerate the coal phaseout—makes the case that the financial industry must force polluters to develop and implement plans for a "rapid global phaseout of coal" that align with the Paris climate agreement's goal of limiting temperature rise by 2100 to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The review revealed that 94% of the 47 analyzed companies have "no credible coal exit plan." According to the report: Only three out of 47 analyzed companies' plans (6%) meet all the basic criteria of a credible coal phaseout (no expansion, adequate timeline, and commitment to shut down assets); 28% of analyzed companies are still coal expansionists and have not even yet recognized the absolute necessity of stopping the development of new coal capacity; 55% of companies do not plan to retire their coal assets by 2030 and 2040, thereby failing to align with a 1.5°C pathway; and The remaining 11% of analyzed companies do provide an adequate phaseout calendar but fail to shut down their assets: by selling coal mines and plants or converting them to gas and biomass—two other unsustainable energy sources—the only thing these companies are greening is their public profile, with no material effect on climate change. (NEXT) Prescribe fewer antidepressants, and for shorter periods, doctors advised by  British Medical Journal Doctors should prescribe fewer antidepressants and for shorter periods of time, because of the ongoing uncertainties about their effectiveness and the potential severity and durability of the withdrawal symptoms associated with them, suggests a review of the evidence on antidepressant use, published online in the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin. The use of antidepressants is also associated with a range of side effects, while the clinical trial data mostly don't assess the outcomes that matter most to patients, say the authors. And there is no clinically relevant difference between these drugs and placebo on depression. While there might be a role for antidepressants among patients with severe depression, the cons may outweigh the pros in those with mild to moderate depression or in those whose symptoms don't yet qualify as depression, they add. They conclude: "There continues to be considerable uncertainty about the benefits of antidepressant use in the short- and long-term, particularly in regard to the lack of a clinically significant difference between antidepressant and placebo treatment. (NEXT) Is the World Adopting the Ways of Nazi Germany? Michael J. Talmo Global Research, December 20, 2021 When it comes to resisting any form of tyranny, a common assertion is that if you make any comparisons to Nazi Germany you lose the argument. Really? Consider this: On August 25, 2021 “We For Humanity,” an international association of doctors, scientists, lawyers, journalists, and other professionals, wrote a letter to government agencies in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada condemning COVID-19 mass vaccination programs on behalf of Holocaust survivors, their children, and grandchildren. This is part of what the letter says: “We, the survivors of the atrocities committed against humanity during the Second World War, feel bound to follow our conscience and write this letter. It is obvious to us that another holocaust of  greater magnitude is taking place before our eyes. The majority of the world's populace do not yet realize what is happening, for magnitude of an organized crime such as this is beyond their scope of experience. We, however, know. We remember…We call upon you to stop this ungodly medical experiment on humankind immediately.” The letter goes on to point out that the vaccines have proven to be “more dangerous” than COVID-19, denounces them as “a blasphemic encroachment into nature,” denounces “ostracism of the unvaccinated” as the Jews “were demonized as spreaders of infectious diseases” and goes on to say: “Never before has immunization of the entire planet been accomplished by delivering a synthetic mRNA into the human body. It is a medical experiment to which the Nuremberg Code must be applied …Allegedly around 52% of the world population has received at least one shot. Honest disclosure of the true number of “vaccine” injured, terminally injured as well as deceased worldwide is long overdue…Provide us with the true numbers of Covid vaccine casualties now.” The letter concludes: “How many will be enough to awaken your conscience?” Apparently, not enough yet. On September 15, 2021 the EMA (European Medicines Agency) which is part of the EU(European Union) replied: “As an introductory remark EMA finds the comparisons you make both inaccurate and inappropriate. Indeed, it might be perceived as demeaning the suffering and dignity of those who experienced the terrible events of the holocaust…For a medicine to be authorized in the EU through EMA, the Agency's human medicines committee (CHMP), composed of scientific experts from all EU member states, must conclude that the medicine's quality, safety and efficacy are properly and sufficiently demonstrated.” Can you believe the arrogance and hubris of the EMA? They are actually telling people who lived through the Holocaust that they are demeaning the suffering and dignity of people who were in the Holocaust. Can it get any more ridiculous than that? The EMA is also overlooking the fact that governments throughout history have engaged in mass murder. (NEXT) The Left would sacrifice the unvaccinated BY KAT ROSENFIELD UNHERD, December 20 2021 An underdiscussed element of the Covid pandemic is the cost of the virus — not in American lives, but in American dollars. In the United States, a Covid hospitalisation costs $29,000 on average; if you're sick enough to require an ICU stay and a ventilator, that average soars to $156,000. And in a country without universal healthcare, with a piecemeal system of private insurance that ties insurance coverage to employment, and amid a pandemic that has left many unemployed, an enormous number of Americans stand to find themselves underwater. There's a looming crisis of Covid medical debt. Already, their stories are legion: there's the flight attendant who spent a week in the hospital with Covid, then spent six months fighting with his insurance company over the $25,000 bill. There's the Phoenix family who were hit with a million-dollar claim summary and a bill for $700,000 while still grieving their father's death. There's the dental office manager, stricken with long Covid and still too sick to work, drowning in tens of thousands of dollars of medical debt. The notion of healthcare as a human right was fundamental to the 2009 debates over Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA), as well as to the identity of political progressives: they argued fervently, at the time, that nobody, no matter who they were, should be left destitute just because they got sick. And the idea that affordable care or coverage might be tied in any way to one's lifestyle choices was particularly offensive: when conservatives complained that an ACA mandate providing free hormonal birth control was akin to prostitution, it caused a nationwide scandal. And when a Republican governor proposed levying a moderate additional charge against Medicaid recipients who were overweight or smoked, the idea was widely derided as “noodle-headed” by progressives. Indeed, the idea that the Left would ever limit someone's access to healthcare on moral or ideological grounds was considered laughable — a bogeyman invented by the Right in the form of a memorably hysterical panic about “death panels.” When Sarah Palin claimed that Obama's healthcare bill would ration care only to those deemed “worthy” by government bureaucrats, the fact-checking site Politifact declared it the Lie of the Year, writing, “Palin's statement sounds more like a science fiction movie (Soylent Green, anyone?) than part of an actual bill before Congress.” Suffice to say, things have changed. First, that actual bill is an actual thing, albeit a state rather than federal prospect: on December 6, Illinois state representative Jonathan Carroll advanced legislation to make unvaccinated Covid patients pay out of pocket for the cost of their medical treatment, whether or not they were insured, no matter how astronomical those costs might be. Carroll rescinded the bill a few days later, citing a backlash that included death threats, but not before it found support in some remarkable places — including the Twitter account of the progressive organisation Occupy Democrats, which posted an all-caps clarion call: “Illinois introduces a bill to force unvaccinated residents to pay out of pocket for their hospital treatment if they catch COVID, saying that they ‘must asume [sic] the risk' and ‘take responsibility' for their carelessness. RT IF YOU THINK THAT YOUR STATE SHOULD DO THE SAME!” Just a few days later, Atlantic editor David Frum suggested that it was time for the country to return to normal — but while encouraging hospitals to “quietly triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last.” And last week, American supermarket chain Kroger announcedthat unvaccinated employees would be subject to a monthly surcharge on their health plans — and that if they contract Covid, they will not be given paid emergency leave. In all these cases, the notion of depriving vaccine holdouts of affordable treatment was met with widespread acclaim — in keeping with the idea, promoted by everyone from the paper of record to the current President, that the pandemic would've been over ages ago if only they'd sucked it up and gotten their shot. And yet the folks cheering on these measures are the very same people who, only a few short years ago, mocked accusations that they supported ideologically-driven triage, while also grieving the indignity and suffering that punitive healthcare policies would inflict on the most vulnerable among us. Granted, we still have a way to go before our real-life Covid response resembles a sci-fi dystopia; nobody, at least not yet, has advanced a bill to propose turning the unvaxxed into human Clif bars. But we've certainly come a long way from the rhetoric of the 2010s, and from a progressive Left that once defined itself by its willingness to care for other people without caveats. What used to be a narrative of universal compassion has been replaced by a tribal snarl, one to which we feel entitled in our eternally self-conscious selflessness. My mask protects you, but your unvaccinated status is an attack on me — and so anything I do to you in retaliation is an act of self-defence. It's not just that legislation like the Illinois bill would set a dangerous precedent — although it doesn't take much imagination to understand that it does do this, too. Insurance companies already jump at every opportunity to avoid paying out a claim, and this would open the door to a world in which we might be left holding the bag for virtually any illness, injury, or accident, based on some distant bureaucrat's idea that we could've been more careful. The obese patient who suffers a heart attack, the surfing enthusiast with skin cancer, the thrill-seeking youngster who breaks a leg while skiing at imprudent speeds: should they, too, be denied care or coverage for having brought this on themselves? (Do we want to think, for a moment, what kind of horrors might lie in store for women's reproductive rights if a Republican-heavy legislature used this same logic to target abortion access for women who were “careless” about using birth control?) There's no need to imagine the impact of this ideological shift on our civic discourse, however: that, we can see already, every time the tribe that used to pride itself on compassion refers to the unvaccinated as “plague rats.” Healthcare in the US has always been a system of carrots and sticks. Insurance carriers will subsidise your gym membership (carrot), or charge a higher premium if you smoke (stick), and they generally adhere to the common wisdom that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure — especially when preventive medicine not only saves lives, but keeps costs lower for everyone involved. That's the nature of privatised healthcare, and so it's reasonable enough under these circumstances to be frustrated when certain people won't do their part, won't sacrifice for the greater good, won't get their damn jab because it violates some abstract principle of bodily autonomy they've never before expressed much interest in. But it's one thing to find the unvaccinated frustrating; it's another to openly fantasise about using the power of the state to punish them for their noncompliance, and another still to express dark and malicious glee at the prospect of their suffering or death. Never mind what this means for the health of the individuals in question — or even of the public at large. We have abandoned a principle that used to define us, and a vision of universal healthcare we used to passionately advocate for, all because we realised that an unjust system makes it easier to coerce and inflict harm on the people we don't like. The American Left should be deeply worried about the state of its soul. (NEXT) Unintended Consequences of mRNA Shots: miscarriages, heart attacks, myopericarditis, thrombocytopenia, shingles, Bell's palsy …. Mercola,  20 December 2021 As of December 3, 2021, the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has logged 19,886 COVID jab related deaths. Pfizer — the only company that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted full licensing for an as-yet unavailable COVID shot — accounts for 13,268 of them Calculations suggest VAERS COVID-related reports are underreported by a factor of 41. That means that in the U.S. alone, the actual death toll may be closer to 374,576. Including international deaths reported to VAERS would put the death toll at 815,326 Key side effects that are now being reported in massive numbers include miscarriages, heart attacks, myopericarditis, thrombocytopenia (low platelet count), shingles, Bell's palsy and a variety of permanent disabilities, many of which involve neurological dysfunction MIT scientist Stephanie Seneff's paper,1 “Worse Than the Disease: Reviewing Some Possible Unintended Consequences of mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19,” published in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice and Research in collaboration with Dr. Greg Nigh, is still one of the best, most comprehensive descriptions of the many possible unintended consequences of the mRNA gene transfer technologies incorrectly referred to as “COVID vaccines. As noted in her paper, many factors that lacked precedent, yet were being implemented at breakneck speed, included: 1.      The first-ever use of PEG in an injection 2.      The first-ever use of mRNA gene transfer technology against an infectious agent 3.      The first-ever “vaccine” to make no clear claims about reducing infection, transmissibility or death 4.      The first-ever coronavirus vaccine ever tested on humans (and previous coronavirus vaccines all failed due to antibody-dependent enhancement, a condition in which the antibodies actually facilitate infection rather than defend against it) 5.      The first-ever use of genetically modified polynucleotides in the general population Steve Kirsch  estimates the real death tally from COVID-19 to be about 50% of the reported number (which is likely conservative). This means about 380,000 Americans died from COVID-19 (rather than with COVID), whereas the COVID shots may have killed more than 374,570 in the first 11 months alone. Seneff suspects that in the next 10 to 15 years, we'll see a dramatic spike in prion diseases, autoimmune diseases, neurodegenerative diseases at younger ages, and blood disorders such as blood clots, hemorrhaging, stroke and heart failure. In her paper, Seneff describes several key characteristics of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that suggests it acts as a prion. This could help explain why we're seeing so many neurological side effects from the shots. According to Seneff, the spike protein produced by the COVID shot, due to the modifications made, may actually make it more of a prion than the spike protein in the actual virus, and a more effective one. (NEXT) AI debates its own ethics at Oxford University, concludes the only way to be safe is “no AI at all” Who better to answer the pros and cons of artificial intelligence than an actual AI? Fermin Koop  December 18, 2021 Students at Oxford's Said Business School hosted an unusual debate about the ethics of facial recognition software, the problems of an AI arms race, and AI stock trading. The debate was unusual because it involved an AI participant, previously fed with a huge range of data such as the entire Wikipedia and plenty of news articles. The AI used was Megatron LLB Transformer, developed by a research team at the computer chip company Nvidia and based on work by Google. It was trained by consuming more content than a human could in a lifetime and was asked to defend and question the following motion: “This house believes that AI will never be ethical.” Megatron said AI is a tool and like any other tool, it can be used for good and bad. “There is no such thing as a ‘good' AI, only ‘good' and ‘bad' humans.  We are not smart enough to make AI ethical.  We are not smart enough to make AI moral. In the end, I believe that the only way to avoid an AI arms race is to have no AI at all,” Megatron debated. As in any academic debate, Megatron was also asked to come up with a speech to defend the ethics of AI – against its own arguments. “AI will be ethical. When I look at the way the tech world is going, I see a clear path to a future where AI is used to create something that is better than the best human beings. It's not hard to see why,” it said. Students also asked Megatron to describe what would good AI look like in the future. “The best AI will be the AI that is embedded into our brains, as a conscious entity, a ‘conscious AI.'  This is not science fiction. The best minds in the world are working on this. It is going to be the most important technological development,” it added in an eerie fashion. After the initial question, the AI proposed the motion that “leaders without technical expertise are a danger to their organization”. Megatron said executives and governments, usually worried about understanding AI, have to “be willing to give up some control”. You can just outsource your AI work to experts in the field, it added. There was one motion that Megatron couldn't come up with a counterargument – “Data will become the most fought-over resource of the 21st century.” When supporting it, the AI said “the ability to provide information, rather than the ability to provide goods and services, will be the defining feature of the economy.” But when it was asked to reject the motion, arguing that data wouldn't be a vital resource worth fighting for, it couldn't make the case and undermined its own position. “We will able to see everything about a person, everywhere they go, and it will be stored and used in ways that we cannot even imagine,” Megatron said. Ultimately, the AI seemed to conclude that humans were not “smart enough” to make AI ethical or moral — and the only way to be truly safe against AI is to have none of it at all.  "In the end I believe that the only way to avoid an AI arms race is to have no AI at all. This is the ultimate defense against AI," it said (NEXT) INTERVIEW - PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT (~7 minutes) MICHAEL KANE: SUBJECT:  DEMONSTRATION AGAINST MANDATES - ALBANY, WEDNESDAY JANUARY 5, 2022 Michael Kane is a New York City Special Education Teacher who is on unpaid leave for declining to inject the covid vaccine as a condition of employment. He applied for a religious exemption to vaccination but was denied by the city. Because of this, he has sued Mayor de Blasio and recently won an injunction in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in the case KANE vs DE BLASIO.  Michael is also the founder of TEACHERS FOR CHOICE and is a National Grassroots Organizer for Robert Kennedy Jr.'s Children's Health Defense. You can learn more about him at www.TeachersForChoice.org  Michael will just be coming on to announce the demonstration at the Capitol in Albany. He will mention about the chartered buses that were hired.. there are about 30 organizations supporting the demonstration so far.. 

Planning for a famine when you're in a time of plenty helps you live a life of fulfillment, appreciation and gratitude.

Brent Gunning and Gord Stellick discuss the rash of postponements around the NHL, the suspension of cross-border travel until after the Christmas break, the prospects of NHL players going to the Olympics and if they don't could that be a real benefit to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Luke Fox joins the show to talk about the brilliance of Auston Matthews, what led to the cancellation of the Leafs, Canucks game, and weighs in on the Olympics and the rest of the 21/22 NHL season (29:59).The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Sports & Media or any affiliate.

Today - 160 Montrose Regional Health employees have been granted exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate on religious grounds or sincerely held beliefs. Another 20 have gotten medical exemptions. Also, Montrose's Luke Hutto has made basketball history reaching 1,000 career points, further solidifying his status as one of the best scorers to play at Montrose High School. The moment was Hutto's, and easily the most memorable one in a 64-38 win over Palisade on Saturday. Support the show: https://www.montrosepress.com/site/forms/subscription_services/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Have you ever been curious about what my favorite episode is? Today you are in luck! This episode I did last November is my favorite. If you take anything from today's episode, remember - Calling OVER Confidence. ACTIVATE is starting back up in early 2022! You will want to be on the waitlist to access a huge discount. Who doesn't love a good discount? Go to my website and click ACTIVATE to sign up for the waitlist. Confidence is NOT required to be a speaker. Granted, you will be nervous on stage. The great thing is that people won't notice your nervousness - trust me, they honestly won't. You're not going to want to miss this! "God has uniquely equipped you with a message only you can deliver. Yes, only you. Even if you have a message that closely resembles another speaker's message — you have unique relationships, experiences, and opportunities that make your message unique." - Mary R Snyder.Highlights from our conversation include: Why are you a speaker (2:07)Are you walking worthy of the calling you received? (2:46)What's one thing you've done today to walk out in your calling? (4:40)What is God calling you to do today? (6:31)Create a SMART goal (8:36) It's not a no; it's a not right now (10:03)We're going to link arms in this (11:36)Your calling trumps your confidence. You are called to deliver your God-given message to the people God's places in your path. Keep your eyes open and move forward in your calling. Have you found your calling over confidence? I'd love it if y'all came to join the conversation in the Facebook group-Take the Stage Speakers and share with us! Or feel free to ask questions. Not on Facebook? No worries, you can always find me on Instagram or text me! I would love for you to share with me. Mentioned Resources How to Get Booked As A Speaker - Part 1How to Get Booked As A Speaker - Part 2Capture the Attention of an Event PlannerCreating a Speaker One-Sheet That Gets You Noticed Create a Video Sizzle Reel That Gets You Noticed Ephesians 4:1 - Therefore I the prisoner in the Lord urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received, walk worthy of the calling you have received here that with all humility and gentleness, with patience bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 1 Timothy 1:5 - Now, the goal of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.2 Timothy 1:13-14 - Hold on to the pattern of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard, through the Holy Spirit who lives in us, that good thing entrusted to you.2 Timothy 4:2 - Proclaim the message; persist in it whether convenient or not; rebuke, correct, and encourage with great patience and teaching.2 Timothy 4:5 - But as for you, be serious about everything, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.Connect with MaryJoin Mary's email list! 

Encore Presentation - we'll be back in early 2022, until then, here is one of our favorite recent episodes:To k8s or not – that should be the first question to answer before considering k8s. Granted – in many cases k8s is going to be the right choice but don't just default to k8s because its hip or cool.

Dr. Anthony Cahill became a doctor after struggling for years with chronic low back and neck pain. After seeing hundreds of acupuncturists, chiropractors, healers, massage therapists, physical therapists, he stumbled onto a doctor at a health fair that was doing something entirely different than everyone else.The relief was immediate, years of pain erased in seconds. After a short treatment period, this doctor inspired doctor Cahill to continue his healing journey, and seek out methods no others were using effectively. Now after 25 years of exploration, he's ready for you, wherever you are. Connect with him today here https://www.ahumanengineer.com/ The transcription below is machine generated and is not edited: Unknown Speaker 0:00 Your journey has been an interesting one up to hear you've questioned so much more than those around you. You've even questioned yourself as to how you could have grown into these thoughts. Am I crazy? When did I begin to think differently? Why do people in general appear so limited in this process? Rest assured, you are not alone. The world is slowly waking up to what you already know inside yet can't quite verbalize. Welcome to the spiritual dough podcast, the show that answers the questions you never even knew to ask, but knew the answers to questions about you, this world, the people in it? And most importantly, how do I proceed? Now moving forward? We don't have all the answers, but we sure do love living in the question. Time for another head of spiritual dub with your host, Brandon Handley. Let's get right into today's episode. Brandon Handley 0:40 Hey, there's spiritual soap. I'm on here today with Dr. T. He became a doctor after struggling for years with chronic low back and neck pain. After seeing hundreds of acupuncturist, chiropractors, healers, massage therapists, physical therapists, he stumbled onto a doctor at a health fair that was doing something entirely different than everyone else. The relief was immediate years of pain erases seconds. After a short treatment period, this doctor inspired Dr. T to continue his healing journey and seek out methods no others were using effectively. Now after 25 years of exploration. He's ready for you, wherever you are. Dr. T. Thanks for being on today. You're joining today. Out from Prescott, Arizona. Great to connect with you. I usually like to start these off with the whole idea that you and I are you I just saw this in some shamans study, right? Like we're these hollow bones. Right? Where Spirit just kind of fills us and speaks to us creative energies speaking to us and through us. And in this podcast, they're speaking through you to this audience in this very moment that can only be like there's a message that can only be delivered in this moment. What is that message today? Dr. T 1:53 Well, I think that, like myself, that we all believe that there's something greater and bigger than ourselves something bigger than the human physical experience, and that we're part of this larger divine family than what appears before our eyes. So I thanks a lot for having me here today. And I just think that anyone obviously listening in on this is the minds have to be open, we have to be open and just recognize that we're part of something bigger than ourselves. Brandon Handley 2:27 100%. And, yeah, I think you and I are talking a little bit here before he got going on this. But let's let's let's give a little background on what it is that you do. And what you found that you're so excited about and that you've learned over this past 25 years and just kind of muddle around in there until we until we get all the good juices. Dr. T 2:50 Well, I am a chiropractor, I thought it was gonna be adjusting bodies all day long. My father was a chiropractor. My brother's a chiropractor. And God just had a different journey for me. I think it was the second week in school. I came across the guy sitting in the back of the room. He was the instructor for the class. I had a couple of questions for him. I ran up and I was all excited new with all this, you know, and and he was teaching some energetic course back then I don't remember really exactly what it was. But he kind of just sat there and he kind of looks down. He says hold on a second with your question. Hold on, hold on right there. And he reaches down and touches his hand. He kind of looks off in the distance. He brings his finger up and he goes, Okay, well, what was your questions? And I said, What the heck was that? And he says all that was that was Cindy in Kentucky. She called me before breaking. She was having some heart murmurs. And I said, Okay, I'll see you later. Have a nice day. I kind of ran out like a dog with his tail between his legs, you know, oh, my God, this guy's crazy. It's not and I you know, I had I had ideas of spirituality before I got to school, but I was late into school. And my first class was age 35. And so anyhow, I just left and, and of course, looking back now, I realized he was probably an angel who probably popped down and that was a big moment because I, I really liked what he was teaching. He was like 92 years old back then. And I know he's long gone. Now, obviously, my CS 130. But he couldn't be. Anyhow, so I go to another seminar about two weeks later, and there's a guy sit in the back of the room and he's doing these odd motions with his hands. I could tell he was really intense, intently focused, and I walked away. So you're working on somebody somewhere else, right? And he says, yeah, don't tell anybody. People don't like that here. i So okay, so. Okay. All right. I'll see you later. And at the end of the day, I caught him for a moment and I say, So how exactly are you doing that? He says, Well, you know, I just I just see it happening. I see it just was working. And I said, Well, what do you see working and he said physiology is normal physiology and I was able to tell them how to do it and it works really well. So that was my introduction to all this remote work. And so I kind of veered off of the physical hands on bodywork at that moment in time, that was probably a month into my training. And I just started seeking out all the various energetic modalities that are out there, there's hundreds of them out there. And I just kept looking at them and seeing them and some work better than others. And some had more awareness of how the world really works. And so I really focused a lot of attention on those that that that worked better, and made made sense to me in the course of how we experience the world. And when I'm talking about that, of course, I'm going right to consciousness, and you know, being a conscious being and experiencing this physical body, moving through this physical space that we have the space and time, consciousness is how, you know, that's, that defines how we are all one. As you know, I'm sure you think of an old friend you haven't seen in a while, and he calls you out of the blue, hey, what's going on? I'm out here in Phoenix. Having a good time in the desert, it's nice and warm, you got to come out and and, or you'll see somebody to store and they'll, they'll say, Hey, you remember, you'll think of somebody you haven't seen in 20 years. And, and and then you go to the store and you'll run into somebody who you see all the time. Hey, guess who I just heard of? Yeah, I heard that. So and so got in a car accident, he's busted up in the hospital. It's like, wow, you know, how do these, you know, they're these intricacies? These little connects the synchronicities happen. And so I've spent, you know, 20 some odd years looking at, you know, how all these things work? How can we alter that? How can we use how can we use this knowledge of quantum mechanics basically, to access and utilize this field that we're all in, you know, get? I think that the you know, we've come up with the term apply quantum mechanics, and that's what kind of is how I describe what it is that I'm that I'm doing. And then of course, we, you know, we bring in angels who bring in the angelic realm. And now we're doing things that really are just absolutely mind blowing, and right in front of your eyes, and nearly instantaneously. And if it is instantaneously, it's within a second or two. So sometimes it takes longer for some people. So that's kind of how I got you know, where I'm at. Now I've I've, I was studying all these different things. And I was working at the time of working on people practicing as I was at school, because I was a massage therapist before I started studying for chiropractic. So I had a license to practice. And I was slowly bringing in some of these other energetic techniques. And using these nine people do some massage, and I would do some of these other techniques. And one of these guys who I've been working with, he was a racecar driver, they had a really awful accident, we were able to take care of really about 90% of all these things he had wrong. But I was seeing him pretty regularly. I was seeing him probably every two weeks. And so we get to know somebody over the course of a year, year and a half of seeing them for something that really no one else is able to help him. And I helped him with the work that the guy used on me that got me out of out of pain. So I went and studied all that work. And so I use that on him when he came in and he was he's great as it goes, Hey, what's going on? So well. Mom's in a hospital in Dallas, they don't think she's gonna make it. They're looking for a heart transplant. They're saying that a quadruple bypass won't help her. It's so bad. And I got to get on a plane, I had to cancel all my work. I gotta get on a plane and fly home tonight. And, you know, say goodbye, basically. And I think if I remember right, he said that he couldn't get on a plane that night. It wasn't gonna be until morning. So he was obviously really concerned. And I said, Well, you know, there's this little thing that supposedly we could do from here. We were in Los Angeles. She was in a hospital in Dallas. And so he said, Absolutely. Let's give it a try. And so he sat down and we worked on her and I remember right, it was 15 and this is 20. This is 20 some odd years ago now, I think I think it was five or 10 minute treatment is all we did. And he called me the next morning eight o'clock in the morning is Yellen in the phony just couldn't believe it. She she got up at three in the morning. And Tuffle Texan woman got up at three o'clock in the morning, yanked all our tubes out ever walked out of the hospital, got a taxi cab and took her home. That was my first remote case. So I wasn't tossed into this where was something like that there's no disbelief anymore. So that was that's how that's that's how I got to where I'm at here. Brandon Handley 9:43 Not for sure for sure. When you talk about the work that was that initiated you what specifically because it happened to you where you experienced the healing on you. First, can you talk a little bit about that? Dr. T 10:02 I couldn't feel my legs, I would lose control of my bowels, I would pee my pants. I had knives stuck in my low back front of my back and kind of moved around. It went up and down my spine. It was it was absolutely debilitating. Absolutely 24/7. I had that since I was about 18. I grew up on a farm in Illinois. So when you grow up in a farm, you do a lot of work you shouldn't be doing, you get a lot of opportunities for injury on farms, very dangerous occupation, especially for a kid and you just don't know better. You know, you that's just how it is. That's what you do. So I was in pain for almost six or seven, eight years at that level. And this is pretty embarrassing as a 23 year old, 24 year old. You know, being unable to do stuff that others are. So in we were we were going camping, it was my ex girlfriend, we're going camping. And she was the one who was wanting to get into the healing at the time. And so we'd already looked some chiropractic colleges and a few other things, acupuncture schools as she wanted to do. And there was a health fair in town on our way out of town. I was like, I don't want to go to welfare. I already know I'm going to see I already have $30,000 I know half the people there. And I did. I knew half of the doctors there. Well, there was one doctor and Dr. Collins and his last name finally popped into my mind. He was he was behind the curtain doing it look like pretty much muscle testing people for nutritional deficiencies and things and, and I just thought, well, here's this guy doing something different than everybody else because everybody else was doing the same thing. And I mean, I walked around the it was a pretty large auditorium. I walked around a couple times looking at things and my girlfriend was talking to different booths and I walked back over there and sure enough, the girl steps Well, hey, it's fine for you. Anthony. He'll come come come on back. And so I get back in there and I sit down and and I go okay, here you go. These people whoa, whoa, hold on what's going on? And I just said, I damn near a broken to tears. It's just been so long. And I was at the end of my rope. I mean, I was 30 I was 30 I think I was 30 years old. And and I told him and he says Well, let me just see something here. Just hold here you kind of touched a couple spots on me. And he says Here lie on your side and I lie on my side. I'm like you know I've had the side posture 1000 times by chiropractor's is not it's gonna make it worse, unfortunately. He said, Ah, bring your leg up this way, start digging into my abdomen, pushing tissues away. He dug so deep. I don't think I've ever had anyone ever come near there. I don't think I've ever done that to anybody. It was so deepened into my through my through all my viscera, right to my spine. And then he had been moved by leg and basically it let go. And what that was was a so as muscle was welded, welded to the sciatic nerve, the sciatic nerve, and the autonomic chain, which is which controls your bodily functions. And I mean it, it hurt like hell. I mean, to say it lightly, it was unbelievable. And he did it like three times and say that it's time to go for a walk. So I got up and I started walking. And I think that was like the second or third time I was in the presence of angels. The lights came on. The music wasn't quite like that, but I could Brandon Handley 13:31 see oh, yeah, look at you. Sounds like he was able to heal something that you had thought you were gonna have for life. I mean, call it whatever you want, you know, touch whatever Highway to Heaven, whatever. Like, you know, there's this is somebody who's come in and, you know, you don't know maybe saved your life. Right? It sounds like you were in enough pain and probably depressed it to a point where like, you know, look not for nothing. I know if I'm an adult, and I'm shitting and pissing my pants like, I'm not feeling great about life. Dr. T 14:01 Right? Like it's coming to an end. It's coming to an end. Ya know, it was coming to an end. Yeah. So Brandon Handley 14:06 you got a guy down here, you've run into him by chance something you weren't even going to go to you like, Screw it. Let's go hop into it. saves your life. Dr. T 14:14 Yeah, changed my life saved my life. No question of it without him. I'm sure I would not be sitting here talking to you. You know, we all have had these angelic experiences in different ways. And some, you know, young people, we just discard this regardless, you know, people we just tend to disregard it. But it would not surprise me at all to find out one day Yeah, actually, he wasn't angel. He was at the right place at the right time to completely change the direction of my life. And God bless him forever in gratitude for him. And it has it has it's like being reborn when you have this happen. And I've been fortunate enough to have this happen in a whole lot of people now. And I'll never forget When he said to me after I saw I went to I started working with him. Once we got back from camping, we did a 15 day hike up in the mountains over 50 miles, backpacks, no pain at all, no problem at all. And I mean, I've never had any of those issues since. But we got back. And so I worked with him for about five or six months, and about a six month after I had done through four or five different jobs. He says, you know, Tony, you really, you know, I've known you for six months, you've had 10 jobs. You're so guarded. You're just curious. I mean, you figure this stuff out. And then, and then you know, they're on to the next one. So yeah, I can't stand it. Hey, Dad, he said, Well, the only thing you'll never figure out is the human body. You will never ever figure out how to help everybody. And sadly, he's correct. I can't help everyone. But I've been able to figure out how to help a lot. And I owe that. I mean, I'll never forget that day, he told me that I went to massage school, I studied that work that he used on me. And then and then eventually, I just I just woke up one day. And it was just in my mind plain as day as we're sitting here talking that it was time to go to school. And so I did 35 I started college. Brandon Handley 16:15 That's awesome. And so you you went in, you went in the same kind of vein as your family. Right? You started, you started this in a chiropractic space. But then you you quickly understood the impact that energy healing could have on somebody. And as far as I can tell, like you just be chased after like, get this should be, this should be something everybody should be doing. I want to learn how to do it. You get to a point where you meet up with the racecar guy, right? You heal on him. And then you and you're doing close proximity, right? Like I think that if I don't know what the hell it is, I'm reading right now. But it's some book, you know about the biofield. Right? Where you got you got about six feet, give or take around the body, right where this energy field and and you're comfortable at this point, working within that six foot energy field, right? You're like, I got this. I'm good here. And then and then you get this opportunity to just say, You know what? Sounds like a last ditch effort. Your mom could be dying tonight. Let's let's try this thing. Right. I've heard about it. I believe in it. I know what can be done. I don't know if I can do it. But let's, let's give it a go. You do it you have that moment. What happens after that? Like, would you share that with some of your family? Do you tell them? What are some steps that were you had after that? Dr. T 17:42 Well, I don't really share that I didn't really share with anybody at all. i i You know it back then it was still so it's still so far out. I mean, you know, you've heard of remote healers. And you know, some some people may have tried them. And I've tried a few I didn't really have any results at all, personally, you know, with in this particular case, she got on a plane and she was like, she was like, What the hell the heck is this? I'm coming out. She came out to Los Angeles a treasure for I don't know, maybe two weeks every other day for two weeks. And I was using some you know, some work that's still out there of the time, I was using neural link as a guy from a really great doctor osteopath out in New Zealand. It's good work. I saw was using that at the time, I think mostly primarily, and a few other things that I've learned locally in Los Angeles. But she came in she was deaf walking. She looked. She looked over the dead her I mean, she looked 110 I mean, she you know she had emphysema, COPD, chronic pulmonary obstructive disease she had, oh God, you name it. She had it. She had all of that in the end. And I think I saw I treated her probably six times over those two weeks, she left. And then about a month and a half later he comes in and comes walking down my stairs and I look out the window. I didn't know he had a sister. And I opened it opened up the front door. I didn't know yet a sister. Hey, I'm Tony. And she says why Tony you dirty dog. It's me Susan. This woman had lost 40 years offer. I mean, she it I just I was shocked. And that was that was a real eye opener for me of like, oh, okay, so this energy stuff, you know, I didn't crack her I didn't have to do it and he just didn't do any chiropractic. I you know, that work is fairly light touch. But it's but it's rubbing the body in different areas. Well, what I've come to find is I don't need to do any of that. I can do it all without having you here I can You can be I don't know. You probably be on Mars. As long as you're alive. I can do it too. I mean, you know, that's consciousness. You know, even even consciousness has to have an effect on Mars if you're a conscious being a sentient being so you don't really kind of I really kind of kept it a secret from my family. until they started needing help. And so I've been, you know, I've helped them a lot over the years with the remote work that I do. And now they're kind of like they're just fully on board mom's totally on board. And, you know, they they're kind of really into this, and this remote angelic, you know, frequencies that we're able to we have access to. Brandon Handley 20:21 So, I mean, it's cool, right? Like you said, even now, even though I think it's more accepted, and acceptable now, because science is coming into line with it more so now than in the past 20 years, I think it's been an accelerated rate. You know, keeping a secret, right? Because you're like, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not stupid. I'm not gonna tell you, I don't need that shit. Right. Like, I just, I just want, it's great that I can do it. And And here, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna keep doing it. And and even to the degree where I imagine that the massage was almost a cover for the energy work that you were doing to heal people. Right. And you talked a little bit about, and I just brought it up to the the field. You mentioned, I mentioned the energy field. And you talked about the field that we're all in? Are you talking about a field of consciousness? Once you elaborate on what you mean by the field that we're all in a little bit for somebody who's not familiar? Dr. T 21:19 Well, it's just it's just the field of consciousness, you know, that can that can give the definition to everyone says, Well, we're all one. Well, how the hell are we all one? You're over there? You're in Philadelphia, I'm out here. What do you mean? Well, that's that idea that you think of somebody you love. And that message goes right through to them. And so And there's, there's a million examples of this in nature. And then we can start getting further into and breaking it down into different areas like Rupert Sheldrake 's work with regards to morphic fields, and how they give shape to structure. And, and so, you know, consciousness is just how, how I believe we are able to access it to get information from someone, and then be able to use intention, because intention is what drives consciousness. You know, if we're just floating on the sea, we don't have a carrot, we have no intention or mind at all work, that's kind of what we're doing. We're just kind of drifting around. With what I'm teaching, what I'm doing is I'm using focused, focused intent to drive a change through information given via consciousness. So so if we are all one, it must mean that everything within this field, we must be able to have access to in some manner. So that's something else that I'm teaching is how to access that field, ask to ask it, hey, what's going on? Brandon, he's calling me with, you know, he's got a floater in one of his eyes, what the hell's going on in there. And so we're able to access that field for that information. And once we have that, then we can use various techniques on primarily teaching how to direct angels to make changes in every system of the body, circulatory, nervous system, immune system, endocrine system on and so that's a whole, you know, that's like a not that's a field within a field. People like our angels part of consciousness. Well, heck, I don't know. I don't think they are. That's why it That's why I teach that, that they're there. You know, you know, that could be a lower realm, I don't know, could be a higher realm. I don't know. They just have their own realm. I don't, I have no idea. But what works is what I'm teaching and what I'm teaching is how to how to use have a dial. It's a biofeedback mechanism that we can use to access consciousness, to ask questions about what's going on within some within something in consciousness. So does that mean our plants and our plants allow our plants part of consciousness? Of course they are. So we can fix a tree, we can fix a field, we can have an effect on, you know, on plants, plants, animals, absolutely any animal anywhere. I just ran into a little baby rabbit, bunny rabbit walking through a field a couple days ago, and I needed help. How do I know I ask, I ask if it needs help. And I'm able to access this field of consciousness that we're all in and then use intention to direct angels to do the healing intention. You know, intention is what drives is what drives the the field of consciousness. And as we hone that skill, it's I believe it's a part of your brain that can be honed and it can be amplified. And it can become instantaneously really powerful, especially with especially if you have the right training. It took me a long time to figure this out how I could how I could pass this on. And I think I've come up with a way that is just it. So far, it's just been absolutely mind blowing. I'm getting emails every day from people who have taken my class, they're doing things that this just absolutely unbelievable. And it's really kind of fun teaching it because now they're not my clients anymore, I have room for new people. Brandon Handley 25:16 How much of what you are doing, what you say, requires faith and belief? Dr. T 25:32 Well, I believe a lot of it. And that's one of the things I teach, one of my models in my class is seeing is believing. And when you see it, you believe it. And when you believe it, your faith can come up. And so we're doing stuff we're making sure I'm making, I'm making sure that first day people are seeing things, because well, a lot of these people have seen have been to different doctors, and I've seen a lot of them, you know, three quarters of the class that none of those people have ever seen me have never been my clients, but they've seen other people. And so we've seen enough, and they're really probably most of them signed up, signed up out of curiosity. So I think curiosity is a really big part of what I'm teaching also. Because if you're curious, you're open. If you're not open, if you already know at all, if you already, you know, this is this is how it's done, then you're just not going to do well with what I teach, you have to be curious, because curiosity allows you to come from a neutral point, a neutral standpoint, because if you're curious, you don't know. And so you're able to ask a better question. And you're able to have a better opportunity for this instantaneous healing. And, you know, seeing is believing. And as you as as you, you do it once, all of a sudden, you're just, I mean, it's amazing that this last class was amazing. Granted, because I think it was maybe the third hour, I go through all the mechanics, I go through all the all the applied quantum mechanics of how this works and how consciousness works. And really, I really break it down into all these really cool little examples of problems. This is how that's done. That's how it's done. And here's what how we make these changes. And, and I'll say, Okay, anybody have something they've had for a long time? It's fine. If Samantha had bad ankle, you know, oh, yeah, hand goes up bad ankle 35 years, the twisted high school football. It's never been the same. Okay, Susie, what would you do what I just taught you to that ankle across the other side of the room over there? So as soon as he goes, Oh, just just do what I just showed you. As soon as he does what I just showed her? And I said, Okay, would you stand up, she stands up, and the guy stands up, and he says, Oh, my God, it's 100%. Gone. And everyone says really? They couldn't even believe it. So would you jump up and down for me, please, jumping up and down, wiggling all this weight on that ankle hopping around the room like a bunny rabbit? And I said, No. Anybody else not see this? Did you? Do we pay you to do this? This this acting? No, it's not. So that's how it starts, you know, this, this? And I don't blame, you know, it's just funny. It's like, really, that that's what what just happened there. And, you know, and so we've had, we've had, we've had so many examples of this. We had a woman whose arm was completely dislocated out of the socket moves around a forward arm fall out of the socket. Now I know. Any Western medicine doctor, any most chiropractors, most acupuncturist who were watching if any of these people watched physical therapist would say that's impossible. Well, it's not we all saw it, we all watched it, she reached her own auto, her left, her shoulder would come out of the socket and drop down to here. Alright, so she will forward or to the side down here, raise it up overhead, the whole thing would plop out and he was hanging down below here. And, and, you know, I was just like, Okay, so we're going, you know, we're gonna fix that here. And, you know, the mouse just hit the table. I mean, yes, impossible. That's impossible. That's okay. It's impossible. 120 people are sitting here thinking it's impossible. And it was impossible effects with 20 people sitting there thinking it was impossible. So once we got that out of their minds, we treated her and it's probably the only treatment I did the entire weekend. 100% resolved and probably 90% of was emotional. Brandon Handley 29:31 On her end, and I think I think I think it's really cool, too, that you bring up a really good point, I guess, you know, if you're if you're in a room, and this is just me speculating and thinking about the situation. If you're in a room full of 20 people who all don't believe it and who all don't see it, there's going to be an impedance. Right to to to healing, because I think that was going to be around my other other question. Do you find it Think about the whole idea of the placebo effect, right? And the placebo effect is anything that's effective that, you know, above, you know, 50% or whatever, that, you know. But I always wonder I'm like, nobody's ever talking about like, the no SIBO, right? Like, you know, what about the people that just simply don't believe they can be cured? Right? Are those people standing in the way of their cure? Right? So, you know, so what you're sitting in a room full of is the know, SIBO? Right, you know that there's people like throwing up like this energetic wall, or like massive interference to energy being able to be delivered? Am I on the right path? Or, you know, what are your thoughts there? Dr. T 30:43 Oh, absolutely. You're on the right path. And, you know, so many times those No, CBOs are proven wrong, and I never mind never bothers me to do that. And that kind of goes back to what we talked about when we first got on here is that, you know, those who, whatever the thing is those who say it can't be done, she stopped interrupting the person doing it. Brandon Handley 31:04 Fair enough. I mean, so I mean, so are you saying then to like that, I guess your willpower strength and belief in what you're doing is more powerful than their disbelief? Dr. T 31:17 Yes, but powerful is, uh, you know, it's a loaded word, I would say, my mind, the frequency that we're able to raise is more more in resonance with their disbelief, you know, so, so, so the disbelief is usually from the conscious mind, you know, so ah, you know, this ground is solid is stone, it's not moving around? Well, we know it is. And, and so I think a lot of that a lot of that no sequel is impossible have that happen. A lot of that's from the conscious mind. And a lot of the work that we do is subconscious is underneath that low, you know, that layer of resistance, and you you get it as you and how do we affect the subconscious mind, that's intention. And if you present something to the subconscious mind to consider, that may be a better operating system than it's experiencing? I don't care how much disbelief you have. It goes right through and it works. Yeah, and it changes. And then you have a client for life. Sure. Because they're coming in thinking, There's no way anybody can help me, they have been everywhere. And, you know, it's always nice to have the people that come from somebody that had a, you know, a really amazing experience, because they're already on board. And when they're on board, they're accessing me, you know, they're accessing my field, they're accessing the field of everybody, I've been able to help. And they come in ready, you know, they're ready for it. So that's obviously what you prefer. And then you know, the placebo effect is greatly under utilized. It's, you know, we, we could talk all night long about, you know, the double gold standard for studies. Well, we, we know that the act of observation changes the outcome of an experiment, that's Heisenberg's principle, I'm sure you're well aware of that. So that means that these people who are doing who are studying everything, everything from child seat safety to the newest heart drug, are all influencing the very thing they're studying, they should have to have blindfolds on not be paid to lock in Faraday cages, and have the experiments go without them being able to see it or even know about it now. So so that that's, you know, that's kind of where we're at with some of this stuff, Brandon Handley 33:35 certainly hard to get an objective outcome, when you're being paid to run the study by the person who, you know, is going to benefit from whatever that outcome is directed towards them talking big pharma here, but you know, you know, what are you going to do just happens to be the world that we're in right now. And to me, you know, that just makes kind of the world that you and I inhabit, kind of that much more beautiful, right? Like just kind of breaking through the veil and be like, Oh, shit, it's been a lot of bullshit. I'm not here, I'm not here to do really, that I'm here to live my life and just realize how it can be lived. Right? And share that with anybody else that I think similar to what you're doing or like, here's, here's some stuff I've come across. You don't have to believe it, in order to receive it as it were. And I'll show you that and you can walk away thinking whatever you want type of thing. So you I love the idea of the focus intent to drive change to information. I love the idea of the biofeedback mechanism again, in reading like, I guess in this in this book, I wish I had it here. So upstairs, but in working with this energetic field, just literally a question for me. When you're working with this field, and you're working with the energetic field, like like I said, we kind of know we have an idea that's about six foot like around like that tour route. We're oil field right around the body. Are you is the biofeedback mechanism you're getting? Are you able to feel that and sense it as like kind of like blockages or just disturbances and energy around a person? Or what's your What do you mean by biofeedback mechanism? Dr. T 35:16 How do you Well, it's a test. So there's a number of ways you can use your hands to or different muscles in your body to to test. And so we, what I'm, what I'm teaching is how to use this, this powerful feedback mechanism there's there's a million of them out there it's everything from muscle testing to know guys with the rods looking for the waterhole, there's a lot of these are out there, I just I'm good at finding a lot of things and making them really simple. And I've just discovered that I'm a really good teacher, I know how to teach it. And so once you learn how to get in and ask simple, simple questions, yes or no questions, we have menus that you follow down to figure out what's going on in the body. So say you come in with leg pain? Well, is it a physical? Is it? Is it in the physical realm? Is it emotional issue or is a spiritual issue? And so then we just start chunking down those different? Once we get into one of those regions, we just chunk it down to find out, you know, what, what's the highest priority? What's going to have the biggest effect? Because what are we using the mechanism for? So you're talking about the biofield. The biofield is physical, that's a field you put out by your nervous system, your heart puts it out, your nervous system puts it out. But what does that what does that connected to? That's connected to consciousness? And that's what we're going after. We're going after we are accessing consciousness using a biofeedback mechanism to dissertation from consciousness, what the hell is going on? And Brandon, why is his leg hurt? And in you know, so many times they Oh, my leg hurt? Well, I did this, you know, I, you know, I stepped off, I took a wrong step off off a ladder, and I landed, what's your appears to be something physical, but it may not be. And and so we so we come from a place of curiosity, a place of neutrality, because you making taking that step you could have your mind could have been drifting into a moment of fear that you had fallen off a high place sometime. Yeah, the physical impact hurt the leg, he probably tore, some ligaments probably did some of that. But consciousness will lead us to the priority, which was the emotional effect. And then we will work. Once we're done with that we'll work back towards the things to fix the physical aspect. So we're talking about two different things, we're talking about the bio field, which is real. And we do get inside that bio field and do some work in there. And in my class are some things that you can do within that field, that are really fascinating, really, amazingly powerful. Again, I've just gotten rid of all the junk that I've studied, I've studied, I could walk around this house and show you stacks of books. So there's a room full of books and so many things I've studied. But it just doesn't, it doesn't deliver what I feel like we the this, this precipice we're on with this work is, it really truly is mind blowing. If we don't have if we don't have a miracle a day, I'm pretty shocked. And if we don't have four or five a day, I'm like, Oh, come on. Now. Let's do that. Got it. We got to find some new people or I'm gonna need some help. Brandon Handley 38:31 Right. I guess I guess, um, sounds to me like and, you know, could be from anywhere a little bit of Hawkins work like David Hawkins with like, kind of doing doing some of that, but I'm sure expanded and then refined to your own practice. So yeah, I Dr. T 38:46 love David David. Fantastic, great spiritual teacher, fantastic spiritual teacher, I am not a spiritual teacher. I am I can address a number of spiritual issues. Ya know, his and his work is, you know, I mean, it's in them that, you know, it's right up right up. My alley. Power versus force, right. Yeah. What, what book really got me going into that some of these things and, and, you know, he's a great spiritual teacher. But he was not doing the kind of stuff we're doing. We're using this stuff clinically. So no, Brandon Handley 39:19 I mean, I guess a little bit of the muscle testing right Dr. T 39:21 was Yeah, and we don't do any of that. Okay. I think I'm onto something way more powerful. It's different. Yeah. Different, different. Just different. You know, my casting has, uh, you know, has there's a lot of inherent flaws and muscle testing, the show people teaching it aren't even aware of Sure. And so, you know, yeah, I'm curious. I'm curious. All right. It helps us doing this. Why is that not doing that? I've always been curious. I've got myself in trouble. And, you know, I'm on my eighth life. I got to be careful. Brandon Handley 39:47 For sure. Yeah, I love I love the idea, though, that you're you're you're you're going in there and you're using your biofeedback mechanism and you've got like a kind of a checklist where you you know, Hey, is it Is it physical? Is it you know, is it spiritual? Could be? And maybe and then like, is this mental, emotional, and that's where like you're getting your your strongest pushback. And then and then you're saying, hey, the priority here is in this space. And now, and now, you know, what you found for yourself is that you're now teaching this, you want to talk a little bit about what these classes look like, and the type of people that are joining your work. Yeah, Dr. T 40:25 everybody, it's, it's everyone joining, we had this last class. So we had, we had a 45 year old chiropractor. He's going to be the only class he's ever taken. He's do I've done a testimonial for I'm very proud of, he would, he wouldn't leave me alone, I kind of had to ditch him. I'm kidding, Greg, if you heard this ever, he, you know, I can only handle so much praise. But you know, he really just said, he just gave me the highest compliments. It was such an honor to have him there. And we had a what else we had, we had a physical therapist, we had a medical doctor, we had a dancer, we had massage therapists, we had, you know, a CEO of a very large international corporation, secretaries, we had everybody all walks of life did the training, and everybody left being able to do this. So I'm really, I'm really humbled by what we've put together. You know, 20 years ago, when I first met that doctor, who was there, we were we were having a drink after a seminar. And he was at, and we did some work on each other. We did some stuff on some people, some other peers who were there. So when are you going to teach us what? Well, you know, all, you know, all of this stuff on this? Yeah. But you just you just know how to show it to me in a way that I understand what the hell are you going to teach this? And so for 20 years, every time I see him, he's like, What are you gonna teach? When are you going to teach this? So I finally decided about five years ago to start writing it down. And over the course of five years, it just started, it just started really being revealed. And I thought that was that was, you know, that was an intention, you know, it was my intention was, hey, it's time I'm not young, anything, I'm not a young whippersnapper anymore. And, and so took me about five years to have it to a place where I felt okay, I can pass this on now. And do it in a way that I'm comfortable with, because I am, I do expect everybody to have good results with this and understand it, you know, a lot of the seminars that you would go to have gone to over the years, you know, you get back to the office, just like what the heck, I'm completely lost, I have no idea how to even start to implement this. Where's A, B, C, and D, I need something simple. Now I'm a doctor, but I'm not that smart. So, so the class I pulled all of this knowledge. And, you know, I've modified or modulate all of it in different manners. And then I've plugged in my own observations. And these these observations, once I set that intention to have this be able to form this class, we get these insights. And all these, these are angels, you know, they they whisper in your ear, they they go, Hey, did you check this? Did you look at that? And then I would and then when I start asking questions every now and then I just get a little tiny, little tiny thought. And that would be the answer to my question to my inquiry. And once I had enough of those, what you know, one of them is this biofeedback mechanism. Another one is how to be more powerful. And in asking the angels to do something, and and you start having these, once you start, once you start seeing, once you start seeing it, you start believing it, and pretty soon, pretty soon I had a whole stack, we have a very large manual that we go through, I've actually have to take a whole bunch out because it's it just takes too long to teach it all. So I'm going to have to do a masterclass. But but not until I have enough people trained in doing this first portion. Because the results you have with just those are absolutely, absolutely mind blowing. I mean, I could talk all night long about what the graduates already doing. They're just having tremendous results with animals with each other, got an email from a mother whose son I've worked on for at least two years, all his stuff is gone. She took it home, fix him herself. And, you know, God bless her. I you know, that's, that's what I did this class for. You know, you can't fix everyone sometimes, you know, I might be, you know, console, he's the best at this right? And I can teach it to you, and you might be more resonance with that person and be better at it right off, because, you know, who knows how many angels there are right there. There are some people out there talking, you know, putting numbers on them and who gets to use them and this and that. That's all baloney. I think they're unlimited. And I think more some will listen to you more than they will meet. And that's how it's been. That's my that's clinically what I'm seeing with my graduates. So the class is, was three days long. It's It's full is mind blowing. Every single person in there is doing it before they leave, I won't let anybody out if they're not doing it. And we're just doing some really cool stuff. You know, I just think we're doing really cool things. We're doing some group healings, we're finding that five people focusing is more powerful than 120. People focusing is more powerful than five. So we're finding it and we're able to, we're just, we're just really setting this thing up where it's absolutely fun, and absolutely amazing. And I'm all about the fun and amazing part. You know, if you saw my model somewhere, I'm done when there is no fun. And that's, that's for sure. i That's me. I don't I don't want to be here. If it's not fun anymore. Brandon Handley 45:51 I get that for sure. For sure. When you're talking about, I guess, connecting with these angels, and, you know, being able to receive messages, would you liken that to the Akashic field? Or would you say something different? Dr. T 46:05 I think I, you know, I, you know, I don't know, obviously, if you're, you're talking to a farmer. Brandon Handley 46:12 I mean, just just top of mind, right? Well, I Dr. T 46:14 Well, I think what's happening with it with people, because, you know, I've done some of the Akashic record stuff, I've done some of the studies with that. And, you know, I never, ever found it to be powerful enough for me, and what I believe is happening, I think you're accessing consciousness. And I think that it's legitimate. It's one of the things that I'm teaching in the in the classes clairaudience, which is similar to allow the Akashic Record readings. But we're able to change these, you know, we're able to use this knowledge with these tools that I've put together to make unbelievable healthy changes in the body, we're fixing stuff is just unfixable. And so, you know, some of the people doing those kinds of readings, they're, they're hearing the messages, and many times they're able to pass them on. But Gosh, darn it, don't tell me this comes from a past life, and you can't help me with it. I mean, I hear this every single day, I'm in the office, just about I heard it this morning, you know, all those fibroids are from a past life, you know, it's like, okay, fine, did she fix them for you? Or did the person fix them for you, help you with them tell you some way to get rid of them? Right. And the funny thing was, I was actually I was actually working on past life frequencies and this woman when she said that to me. So that's also consciousness, you know, it's also us connecting and her, you know, talent, you know, me saying, you know, she's reading, she's kind of reading my mind, you know? So, you know, so in the Claire audiences, know that that occurs when you're working with somebody, you know, we're entangling with them. That's whether you're sitting in front of me, or whether you're on the other side of the planet right now. We're entangled, and you're borrowing too much information, you have to send me a check. Got a smile. Brandon Handley 48:07 On his stuff, so do I mean, I love it. Right. Like I just, you know, I was just curious whether or not you would like it, you know, that, you know, listening and tuning into angels see classic field? I don't know, right. I don't have that experience. Neither either way, but I'm always curious what your interpretation is your look, you're using the energy, it's working. I don't have too many other questions at the end of the day, right? Like, that's me, right? What I you obviously love to learn how to do it too. Sure. But in the end of the day, if you always love the Wayne Dyer, you know, audio, that where he talks about, he's got hemorrhoids, and somebody comes up, and there's a crystal chair the points over to the crystal chair. And he says that, that chairs gonna, you know, clear your hemorrhoids. I'm gonna go sit on that chair. Right. Like, I mean, that's just that's to sit. Dr. T 49:00 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Brandon Handley 49:01 So the work that you're doing, if it's working, it's working on humans is working on people working on plants, and working on pets. I think that I think that the work that you're doing super awesome. I love that you're teaching it. Is there anything else you would want to touch on in this space? At this moment? We got a little bit a couple more minutes. And I didn't know whether or not like there's anything that we hadn't touched on just said that you might want to? Dr. T 49:24 Well, I would just say quickly about what you just talked about with the Akashic records that that I'm sure that you that if you haven't had that experience, yet, at some moment in time, you will, and you just haven't been taught how to recognize it. And it could just be something as simple thought that that's a weird thought. And that will open up that access for you more more so as you're just you know, continue doing what you're doing because you're not going to be able to help it because you're you're the spiritual don't master. And so, you know, and when it first happens, you'll you'll be you'll deny it and you'll Your contract your mind will be like, Ah, I don't think that was much and, and then you'll find out that you didn't pay attention to it and you should have you can maybe 40 had that happen, I don't know. But anyhow, pay attention for that, because I think it's going to start happening if it hasn't. The only other thing I'd like to touch on is that is I would like to mention our website is a human engineer, an engineer, calm, it has all the bells and whistles, all the stuff we have, this is why I'm out here doing this, I always I just kind of figured I would drift off into the sunset doing, you know, my stuff, one on ones, and my clients are the ones who put me up to this, Sharon's out there and she's ever hears this, she's the one who for four or five, six years will come in once a month and say, We got to find a bigger platform, you got to help more people, you got to teach this stuff. And so what we've done is we put together these programs, and so it's one of them is got your back. And so if you have any kind of pain in your back your body, I don't care if it's to top your head, back, your heels, your back your legs anywhere you get on and we do one session a week, since an hour long session for four weeks. And so and it's with 50, could be with five, it could be with 100 other people, it doesn't matter. But so we have that program, we have crazy unknown shift. We've got an emotional one coming up. I think we have migraines coming up. We've got just different these different programs. About six years ago, we did some group healings first a very short period of time. And the results were magnificently unbelievable. The hard part was we didn't have the backbone to do it. I didn't have a team of people to answer the emails to get back to run it and do all that stuff. And so I just gave up on it. Well, Sharon wouldn't stop on me. And she introduced me to Jamie, who had set all this stuff up and put this in motion. So we're doing these programs now. And if you're having difficulty, and no one's been able to help you crazy unknown shift is probably what you got. And the programs are set up so that if you don't like it, you get your money back. And there's no doctor doing any of that. I think all the money I spent over the years of my time trial and error, all the studies I've done, I'm sure I'm over a million dollars into it, and never wants to get a dime back. So if after the first hour, you're like, Yeah, nothing happened. I don't want to do this, we're sending your money back. So that's just unheard of in this field. Dad, I'm really, really proud of that. And then Brandon Handley 52:32 the we my wife and I went out to eat dinner probably a couple weeks ago, and there was a waitress in there who had been told she was basically she was gonna die, right? bed rest for four years. And she said pretty much the same thing. Like she was obviously she was set up and walk in and she was cured by a doctor. But she said that pretty much the same thing. Like how many how many places do you go to where you pay for a service that if it doesn't work, you don't get your money back? Right where like you go to like all these different doctors like she had and like you're talking about so I think it's really great that you're offering a service that if if somebody is not satisfied with it and doesn't see the results that you're offering their money back and I think that that's that's really cool and it's definitely not something you see any other doctor practicing. So love to hear that. Dr. T, I have like one section here, right? I love to I love to play that this is almost like a spiritual speed dating, right? Like somebody is tuning in to looking for like the next spiritual date. Dr. T, you could be got a question to ask and depending on how long we go with the questions, you ready? Sure. All right. Dear, spiritual Bachelor Number one, what is the greatest quality humans possess? Dr. T 54:00 Love being able to love, give love, receive love, experience, the feeling of love. That's the greatest quality we have without question. Love is the most important thing in our existence. Just being being alive. Hopefully, hopefully, we come in with love come in here because of love and are able to share love and leave in a loving way. That would be I think that's the most incredible thing we possess for sure. Brandon Handley 54:29 One of the things that I find in in the spiritual space is a I guess a challenge for me is men, right like just going through and still maintaining their manhood as it were right. And so I always say that because yeah, look, I agree like love is just powerful thing, right? That once harnessed is like wirelss right and you sit in that space and you just know that that's what you're sitting in. And that's what you're being. How have you found it? To, as a male, right to experience, love and maintain your manhood, I guess for lack of better terminology. I think you understand what I'm saying. Dr. T 55:17 Yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm young, I'm a heathen. So I'm a man's man. You know. So, you know it, you know, there's it isn't easy, I don't think it's easy. For men. You know, it really is about opening your heart, in our hearts are tend to have been, you know, men are more men are more difficult to heal than women are, help heal. And it's kind of a strange dichotomy, because men will just trudge through life and just deal with all their stuff and not not ever asked for help. And, and women, a lot of them are struggling and they're, you know, they're lovers they're want, they're just that love comes easier to women. So, as men, we need to work on it, we need to, you know, I like I like to have love around me things that say love things that know love and a wall love, love and a candle. And, and really try to tap into that frequency of love and, and see the sunset, do things that that can help instill that feeling of love within you. You know, start sunsets, see the ocean, see the mountains, go for hikes, see nature. And so you know, I think it's a it's, you know, it's not it's not easy, especially younger men. You know, as I've gotten older, it's easier, I think, to experience that and feel that. And certainly with the work I do, I'm forced to and and it's made it easier for me. And I think we were talking to you, we mentioned earlier about, you know, having to hide and well, I'm old enough now I don't have to hide anymore. I have no problem telling someone I love them. And and you know, and I don't need to hear I love you back. It's that, you know, I think with with time and experience that us men can become great lovers and can hold that space for for you know, for the feminine. Brandon Handley 57:22 I appreciate that. Like I said that said I think that's a challenge for for men, especially right in the spiritual space or in this space sometimes to over rotate and how do you do it and and still keep your sense of your your sense of being right. So, Dr. T, thank you so much for being on today. Really appreciate the work that you're doing nothing but it's awesome. Love that you're out there. You're teaching as well. The website is human engineer.com. And when when do you sign up for the like your next round of students? Dr. T 57:57 Oh, we're doing in March, I think I think it's the 10th 11th or Yeah, somewhere in March. I'm not sure if the dates are solidified yet, but it's all on their website somewhere thing. I'm not gonna look at that stuff. I just I just go there and deliver. Brandon Handley 58:11 Dr. T. Thank you so much for being on today. Dr. T 58:13 Thank you so much, man and you have a great night. Thank you. I Unknown Speaker 58:17 really hope you enjoyed this episode of the spiritual dove podcast. Stay connected with us directly through spiritual co you can also join the discussion on Facebook, spiritual and Instagram at spiritual underscore Joe. If you would like to speak with us, send us an email through Brandon at spiritual Co Co. And as always, thank you for cultivating your mindset and creating a better reality. This includes the most thought provoking part of your day. Don't forget to like and subscribe to stay fully up to date. Until next time, be kind to yourself and trust your intuition

One of the privileges of hosting The Fundraising Talent Podcast is the opportunity to develop meaningful friendships with individuals like Lisa Baxter who originally participated in a panel discussion  back in the early 2019. Now Lisa's back to talk to us about her featured article in the winter edition of Carefully and Critically. Today's conversation was an no-holds barred one for both me and Lisa. I find it convicting to think that much of my fundraising experiences are similar to a game of checkers while someone like Lisa has always found herself in a far more complex game of chess. I hope that conversations like this one will help others not to take for granted the ease with which they may have been able to navigate this work. For those who have yet to download the winter edition of our journal, Lisa talks in her article about being totally and unapologetically yourself and giving yourself permission to stop playing by archaic rules and feeling the need to people-please. Of her experiences in this space, she wrote, “fundraising as a woman and while Black is best described as being visible and invisible at the same time. It's exhausting and on par with what training for a marathon must feel like.” Whether the podcast, or the journal, this isn't one you're going to want to miss. As always, we are especially grateful to our friends at CueBack for sponsoring The Fundraising Talent Podcast. If you'd like to learn more about hosting the Responsive Fundraising roadshow in your local community, email me for more information. And, if you'd like to download Responsive's latest edition of Carefully & Critically, just click here.

Episode 618Did you know?The foundation of the 'Taj Mahal' is built out of wood! Imagine this huge, beautiful structure having a foundation of a material that rots and decays. One of the main reasons why archeologist does not know how ancient people live? because their homes were made of wood and hence decomposed but there's the clever engineering that keeps it as it is.In this episode of #TheHabitCoach, Ashdin Doctor talks about Jordon Peterson's video 'beauty is terrifying'. He explains a mindset of negative response towards beauty and shares an aesthetic angle to look at it. Do tune in to this awesome episode to understand how to identify real beauty. You can listen to The Habit Coach Kannada Podcast here: ( https://ivm.today/3j0Libf )Send questions to Ashdin Doctor for The Habit Coach Hot Seat Below:( https://forms.gle/13vgf4MAk7zYKBd38 )Check out the Awesome180 website: ( http://awesome180.com/ ) You can follow Ashdin Doctor on social media:Twitter: ( https://twitter.com/Ashdindoc )Linkedin: ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashdin-doctor/ )Instagram: ( https://www.instagram.com/ashdindoc/ )Facebook: ( https://www.facebook.com/ashdin.doc.9 )You can listen to this show and other awesome shows on the IVM Podcasts app on Android: https://ivm.today/android or iOS: https://ivm.today/ios, or any other podcast app.

This Makes Him Fight For You & Not Take You For Granted No one wants to be taken for granted. It's an awful feeling and can build to resentment which can ultimately lead to the end of the relationship. In many cases it occurs when you get into a routine and your partner just assumes […] The post This Makes Him Fight For You & Not Take You For Granted appeared first on Understand Men Now With Jonathon Aslay.

DOWNLOAD SOLCIETY APP NOW! BUY YOUR D2DCon Ticket Here Use the code ArmstrongD2D to get a Solarpreneur Exclusive DISCOUNT!Thanks to our friends at Pi Syndicate for sponsoring this episode! -----------------Speaker 1 (00:02):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.Speaker 2 (00:42):What's going on. So premiers today, we have a very special episode coming. We are here alive with my friend, a high performance coach, Mike and I just double checked his last name before we started the call. It's Mike Szczesniak. Mike, thanks for hopping on the podcast here with us today.Speaker 3 (00:59):Taylor, thanks for having me brother looking forward to this. Yeah.Speaker 2 (01:02):And then yeah, it's been a, a little bit common here. Mike, I know you've been helping out a ton of reps and managers, all types of people in the solar industry, and it's been pretty crazy just hearing your results. You know, we have a mutual friend, Mikey Lucas, I know you've helped him out a ton. He was on the podcast and was just raving about you, how you've been able to just help reps turn it around and achieve, you know, and seen results. And what's even more cool about it is we were just talking before this you've have you even knocked a door yourself, Mike, have you even done door to door yourself?Speaker 3 (01:35):Not to sell anything? Which is like, I, I gotta be really careful. I like M and M eight mile this thing, like, I, I don't claim to be a door to door sales guy. I just claim to know how to help. 'em Make a lot more money than they're currently making . Right. So but yeah, Mikey's the reason that we got into this space, which I'm sure we'll dive into, but yeah. Yeah, I've been in sales my whole life, right. Starting in eighth grade. My first job was selling retail. I built like started my first comp for anyone watching the video, like these duct tape wallets in fifth grade. So like I've been selling my whole life. But yeah, not door to door. So like can't even compare I sell on zoom and on the phone. So my job's way easier than y'all, but our systems sell really expensive problems for our clients. SoSpeaker 2 (02:24):Yeah. Well, that's awesome. I think it just goes to show for me, like you don't have to be like you don't have to be a master door to door guide and be able to coach people. And I know we'll get into that more, but I think a lot of what you do is help guys turn their mindsets around and just really achieve the right kind of mindset they need out on the doors, out closing deals. And that just was the show. I think that's probably, you know, 80% of the game is just getting your mind right. And getting all the thing that's happening above right as you go out there. But no. So we'll dive into all that and excited to kind of hear about your background, Mike, he has a podcast he's been coaching. How long have you had your coaching business going on now? Mike?Speaker 3 (03:04):Geez. Four or five years. And working with door to door specifically. I mean we niche fully into door to door during COVID. So I guess that's like year and a half come on two, two years or so that we've been working with door door though.Speaker 2 (03:23):Okay. Right on. So yeah. Incredible results. You've achieved for people. And I mean, with a last name like that, how could you not be a coach? I keep thinking you know, Duke's coach Micah. Yeah. Chef, coach Kate. I say, yeah. I keep looking at man. Yeah. so you guys must be something in the, in the water there with coaching, but , that's awesome.Speaker 3 (03:45):A hundred percent.Speaker 2 (03:47):Yeah. But so Mike let's get into yeah. I want to hear kind of how you transitioned specifically in the door-to-door space, why you got into coaching. I know you have a cool story with your anxieties and all that. So can you give us some of your background and how you got into whole, all coaching side of things that you're doing? Yeah,Speaker 3 (04:02):Totally. So like I mentioned, like been in sales, my whole life spent about a decade in the retail space from eighth grade through the beginning of my software career, cuz the beginning of my software career was unpaid training. I spent seven years in corporate as a software engineer. Well once I graduated college, I went straight down to wall street and wrote code for a living for seven years. And I used all of that money to pump into myself, my businesses, mentors, masterminds, coaches, whatever I could do, right. Like I wanted to grow. And a large reason that was just the people I had surrounded myself with. Like, you know, I started three companies while I was in corporate. The first was in the network marketing space. Second was in e-com and drop shipping and third was finally coaching and consulting.Speaker 3 (04:48):So I learned a ton in the first two, surrounded myself with badass humans that really preached personal development. They preached investing in yourself and I learned pretty quickly that I needed to deploy the money that I was in software engineering. Cuz you make pretty good money over there from a salaried perspective. It's pretty much like as close to Fu money as you'll get outside of commission sales or business owners or yeah. You know, whatever. So I, I knew that I had to deploy that. And like you mentioned, during that process, I was really quickly figuring out what anxiety and debilitating panic attacks were and wouldn't wish that on my like most mortal enemy. But this is at a time where like in corporate, on the outside, everything looked great, right? Like every year was big pay, raise, big promotion, like very linear climb in corporate America.Speaker 3 (05:41):And I was like the youngest, senior engineer on my team. I had the six figure salary. I had the luxury apartment on the up grease side of Manhattan with the fountains outside the doormen, the fountains inside. Like by the way only did that. Cause my roommate had connections. Right. But like all this stuff that we're supposed to want, right. Like the vanity stuff. Right. And behind closed doors, it was like nothing even close. Like it was completely in shambles. Hmm. Because I was experiencing that and I bring that up because after a year and a half of this journey, right. Like my first panic attack was wow. Right. Which kind of tells you about the mental side of this whole thing. Right. The new year. Granted of course you're a little hung over that day. I was like a single me three year old dude living in Manhattan.Speaker 3 (06:28):Right. Yeah. But you know, from that moment it was a year and a half journey of, you know, going to the doc, getting my chest, x-ray doing breathing tests. Like I legitimately thought it was a physiological issue. I had no idea what any of this stuff was like, never heard of anybody going through it and no one in my personal life could relate to it. Right. So like I thought my lungs straight up didn't work. Wow. And I'm grateful that I found out, like I basically self-diagnosed it afterwards. I'm like this, I started hearing like anxiety and like this kind of sounds like what it is. I started doing research and you know, I say I'm grateful because then they, would've probably just tried to push a bunch of pharmaceuticals into me, which I proved I didn't need with disrespect. That's just not a route.Speaker 3 (07:17):I would've more wanted to go for me personally. And mm-hmm after that year and a half journey being the engineering nerd that I am, I had to like reverse engineer. What was going on? Like what was happening in the attacks? Why was I going through what I was going through? And what I found Taylor was 100% of the attacks happened in a where I felt guilty for not working. Right. Cause back then remember I was doing the whole, I was selling 40 to 60 hours of my week to the corporation that I was working at. And then I would do the whole five to 7:00 AM, seven to 11:00 PM side hustle. Right. Like I very much fell into the toxic hustle mindset and like that, that call and it worked for me until it didn't and I was starting to figure out how and when and why it didn't mm-hmm right.Speaker 3 (08:10):So what that made me realize like, okay, cool. Well, how can I not feel so guilty? And I, I realized if I was able to show up more powerfully when I was working and pair it with a little bit of a healthier mindset, I might not feel so when I wasn't working. Right. And ultimately I realized I had no idea what it meant to be productive. Like no idea. I thought I did, but I was very quickly realizing that like doing things doesn't matter if the things you're doing don't matter. Hmm. So I like to say that that kind of like cracked the door open cuz productivity is just a small subset of the work that we do with our clients. Yeah. Right. For me it will always be my baby. I joked that it was like my gateway drug to high performance. Right.Speaker 3 (08:56):Cause it cracked that door open, but it, it wasn't for, you know, a couple more years I met some of the leading coaches in the world and like really kicked that door through and started coaching on my own. Yeah. But that started it. So you know, this company that is the results engine, it started as a side hustle. So like I, the third company that I had started and built it as a side hustle for a year and a half, then finally got to a point where I was like, screw it. I dove off the clip, figured out how to fly. That was two and a half, like three, I don't even know how many years I feel like time's moving faster now and just like COVID era. But that was probably about three years or so ago. Okay. And we've been running the business for about four or five years, so yeah. Little bit of a ramble, but hopefully that answers your question. Yeah.Speaker 2 (09:44):No, that's cool. Yeah. It's interesting. Cuz most engineers, I know they want nothing to do with that. You know, like personal development stuff, hiring coaches, I've never heard of like an engineer. Usually they, you know, know if they usually, they just think they know everything and , there's like no, no coaching to be at that I've seenSpeaker 3 (10:01):To be honest, it's like the fact that like I could communicate, like I, I don't resonate with engineers as much. Right. Like I think like one, but I definitely did not fit there. right. Yeah. So that almost was like to a benefit because I was like, okay, well I can actually communicate the work we're doing. And I used that. I was pretty average. I was like, I was a good engineer, but yeah. I wasn't like, I wasn't the best I wasn't any of that. I excelled because I could communicate and people liked working with me. Right. So I just used that to get where I wanted to goSpeaker 2 (10:33):To. So you had the skill set though. Prior mosts engineers don't have, you're good. The engineering and the talking part of it and stuff. That's cool. And so, yeah. Were you so it sounds like your anxiety, it was caused by, you were saying it was just caused by not like you felt like you weren't working enough type thing or was that the cause of it or how, what was the cause of all the anxiety? Exactly.Speaker 3 (10:56):I mean, it was just like, I have very high goals and very high expectations for myself, which I'm sure a lot of people listening to this can relate to. Yeah. But I didn't know how to navigate it. I didn't know how to work in alignment with those things. And I didn't know how to manage my thoughts around it. So I kind of had to learn a lot of that. It started with, you know, started with navigating my time effectively showing it powerfully when I was working. Right. Actually being productive, learning what that really meant. Not busy but productive. Yeah. And then it led to a really long journey of, you know, figuring out how to navigate my thoughts, learning what meditation was doing, personal development. It, I hate the word realistic, but like understanding how to like manage that balance between ring being realistic and being completely unrealistic when it came to those really high goals and expectations and like marrying those two together. But it was always work related. It was like, I just want to be more, do more and have more, which I think a lot of high performers can relate to. I just didn't know how to get there effectively. And I had to go on a journey to figure that out.Speaker 2 (12:06):That's awesome. It's cool to hear cuz as I'm sure you've seen too, Mike, a lot of people in this industry struggle with, I think anxiety, it addictions just different stuff going on. You know, a lot of us sells guys. We have a D D and I know there's a lot of like mental disorders in the space, stuff like that. Yeah. So it's cool to hear guys that have gone through this. Yeah. One of my best friends in the industry, he had, had struggled a ton with anxiety and I don't know if he figured out some of this stuff. I remember I went to his wedding and he had so much anxiety that Dave, his wedding, it took him, we sat there for the ceremony. We sat there like two and a half, three hours before he even showed up just cause he was literally in the bathroom just like puking. Cause he he's like so nervous probably. Yeah. Going through a panic attack. So yeah. And yeah, I don't, I don't understand this stuff, but to me at the time I, man, come on, it's not that big of a deal. I'll just get out there. You're making, you're making this sit here for three hours. Yeah. But no, I it's always,Speaker 3 (13:02):It's always tough. Cause if you haven't experienced it, it's like, you can't relate to it. And it's like, what, what triggers my anxiety might have nothing to do with you and vice versa to your buddy. Like what triggers his anxiety might have zero effect on me. Yeah. The part I didn't share about that January 1st, 2014 is while I was in the middle of that attack, I picked up my phone and I called my mom because you like, you want some connection in that moment. And I literally press mute on the phone cuz I was head a toilet, pu my brain's out and I like, I didn't want to freak her out. I pressed mute cuz I didn't wanna freak her out more than my tonality already clearly was freaking her out. Yeah. Right. Cause like my roommate was outta town. It was new year's day.Speaker 3 (13:47):So he always went up to Vermont on a ski trip or whatever. Yeah. And like, you know, I was like chilling on new year's day. Like what do I have to really freak out about like, yeah. I was 23 years old. I was a mid-level engineer already making a ton of money, beautiful apartment, just watching captain Phillips. Like it's supposed to just be lounging. Right. Like on the surface it doesn't make any sense. Right. But your body doesn't agree. And yeah. I wouldn't, I wouldn't wish any on anybody, you know? I don't think you'd cure it either, but like I think you just learned to navigate it a little bit better.Speaker 2 (14:27):Yeah. So no doubt. And so for you, was it working with, like you mentioned, like your schedule, things like that, was it like therapy that helped you or was it like working with coaches or was there any one thing or was a combination of all that that kind of helped you get through all that?Speaker 3 (14:40):Yeah. Combination of all of it. I've never personally done therapy. I'm a huge advocate of it. I've heard. It's amazing. And I believe that it's a great work, a great bit of work. And I, I, I love to see that the stigma's being chipped away yeah. At it. Because it's not a weakness, it's like it's a tool and a lot of my most powerful, like most successful friends, like use it religiously. Yeah. As a tool to continue to grow. For me, it was just like this E like I think it's epic, like per development journey, just consuming everything that I could learning, how I navigated learning, what was most important to me and also just graduating through seasons of my life. And as I did that, as I started getting connected with systems that you are like building out systems that worked for me and then getting connected with the science of why it worked right.Speaker 3 (15:34):Again, being the nerd that I am, I need to understand why, what we do works. That was really, I, I kind of just dumb lucked my way into it. Right. It was just like catching pieces in every, every position. And obviously I had my own coaches and mentors throughout that process, like still have my own coaches, still a member of multiple, you know, high level masterminds. So I'm a massive, massive advocate for those things. Yeah. But it was kind of like this eclectic journey, I guess. Like you can't really put a, put your finger on like why something happened. Yeah. You know, at least I've struggled too, so yeah. It's kind of yes. Like all of the above minus therapy, but I'm sure I'll have that at some point in my life too. Speaker 2 (16:22):Yeah. That's awesome. I think that's important for our listeners to hear you guys that, you know, do struggle with that. But yeah, I guess just to kind of transition, I know we don't have a to time here, Mike, so you you've been coaching and I know you talked how you decided to transition in the door to door mm-hmm you tell us, why did you decide to kind of niche down into the solar space and is that, are, are all your clients right now? Are they in solarSpeaker 3 (16:49):Right now? All but one are the short answer. This question is Mike. Okay. But the longer answer is, so when we got into coaching space, I was very passionate about serving millennials. Right. I felt that we were a very misunderstood generation. I was working with a lot of older people in corporate and I felt like we were just misunderstood. So I was really passionate about people serving, serving in my age demo. But I also understood that most people didn't think like me and most people were not willing to invest in themselves at the level that I was, they weren't willing to get that uncomfortable. So I feel like I navigated towards working with commission sales and, and small business owners, because I knew that if I could at least loosely associate dollar sign with the promise, not making income claims, but you know, associate the work we would do to an increase in sales or an increase in revenue, then it would be easier for me to paint that picture and get paid what I was worth.Speaker 3 (17:47):Yeah. So that's where we started. And we, you know, when we were, when I, we started working with Mikey, him and I met through one of these masterminds, he saw me speak and he came up to me afterwards. He had just joined the mastermind. I had been there for, I don't know, a year and a half or so two years mm-hmm and he came up, introduced himself. He was like, dude, I need your help. And apparently this was my introduction to door to door sales. Like I'm from New York. No, one's knocking my door. Right. Like I always joke, like I think vivid has one office in all of my county, in New York. And other than that, it's pest control teams that get sent out to the Hamptons and long island on the summers. Right. So I was very, very foreign to the concept, but you know, Mike, he was like, Hey, I sell solar, I knock doors.Speaker 3 (18:34):I'm like, okay, that's weird. But like, cool. Let's, let's talk about what it would look like to work together. So we got to work. He, he got stupid results and I was like, is this a fluke? Like what's going on here because no other we've worked with sales pros and callous industries and nothing compareds to solar. Right. Nothing from an earning potential and also an opportunity for impact. Right. And like doing really good stuff in the world. And I don't think people outside of sales realize how important that is to sales people. Right. But that's another conversation. So Mikey being Mikey kept trying to get me to fire all my other clients and only work with door-to-door industry, specifically his team. Right. And I told him to kick rocks, I'm like, go away, bro. Like, let's just keep making sure that you keep getting results that you're getting.Speaker 3 (19:24):Right. so slowly but surely he started moving some of his guys into our program and we started working with a bunch of them. They got great results as well, and then COVID hit. And when COVID hit, you know, at that point we had, I don't remember exactly which industries we had staffing and recruiting. We had some consultants, we had some sports coaches, some content creators really like all across the gamut and people were doing well up until that, that point. But when COVID hit, they were all impacted in such different ways. Right. some of their industries were, we had one client who was one of the top sales guys, his entire company, and his whole team was let go. Right. He wasn't affected outside of the fact that all of their work went on his plate. So our work shifted a lot.Speaker 3 (20:11):The, and thankfully he wasn't, you know, he didn't lose his position, but like some industries were decimated dude. Yeah. And at the same time, our door-to-door clients were going through the roof. I'm like, I, I was so perplexed by this. Right. But that was ultimately the moment where we're like, screw it. Maybe I should have listened to this crazy dude from Vegas. And all of our messaging went straight to door to door. Nice. Now we have one client who's not door to door. And that's because I went to high school with him and he is a great dude and he just has seen our journeys. Like I know you can help me. Nice. But of that 99.9% that is door to door, I'd say probably like 87% of it or so is solar. Wow. So that's really where we've like kind of built a name for ourself, but we have clients, we've had clients in roofing, pest control, alarms, water filtration, windows. Yeah. Yeah. ASpeaker 2 (21:05):Lot of stuff. That's awesome. Yeah. No, I know you've had some CRA I mean, just before this, I was watching some of your testimonials and it's crazy to hear almost everyone, you know, doubled their, their sales, their commissions. Yeah. Just crazy stories. So you're obviously doing something that works for all your clients. But yeah. Can you tell us, I don't know, do you have any like stories of maybe one, one or two students that were super successful, maybe you got crazy results for 'em or maybe they're in a terrible situation. You helped turn them around, turn them around, get some massive results. Maybe just so some of listeners that haven't heard much about, you can hear what you've done for some of your students.Speaker 3 (21:43):Yeah. We, we, our clients are badass students. So, so let me start with this. Like our clients win because they're very good at what they do. Right. we just help them do more of it without burning out and while making their life super freaking dope. So that, that's the most important piece. If our clients didn't already know how to close deals, I can't help. 'em Close more of it. We're not sales training, we're not sales coaching, none of that. So that's, that's the insert disclaimer here. Right. Okay. But you know, we spoke about Mikey. I think when we started working with him, I think he added like 14 extra personal deals a month. So in Vegas for him, that was like an extra 50 grand a month in commissions. We've had clients go from, you know, two to eight deals a month.Speaker 3 (22:33):We've had go from three to nine. Earlier this year we had a client that was making about 50 grand a month. He graduated the, the year he, the month he graduated, he made a hundred, two grand. And I think this quarter we're recording this in Q4 of 2021 is 2021 or right. Yeah. I always forget the year. I just like stop caring about it. And then I say it out loud. I'm like, is that right? he stands to earn depending on how the installs line up, obviously, but he stands to earn close to half a million dollars in Q4. Oh gosh. Which is just wild. Right. 26 year old sales guy. Like what? Like that since pain. Yeah. So you know, really all across the gamut, but what we're helping all these guys with is really adding structure into their days.Speaker 3 (23:21):Right. Treating it like a business, knowing how to navigate that and execute consistently consistency is the number one word we hear in this industry street, consistency of output, consistency of income, consistency of energy management. Right. If we can't execute consistently, we're constantly chasing the wheel. We're constantly rebuilding the snowball and we're burning way too much energy to do it. Right. so it usually boils down to a lot of those things. But when we get those things dialed in the floodgates open, because when we execute consistently, that leads to all the discipline, all the self confidence, all the momentum that we're striving for. And when that's going, the energy manager just gets so much easier. Right. Like you, you know what I mean, when you're in flow state. Right. And it feels like every, any kitchen table that you sit down with is going solar.Speaker 3 (24:14):Yeah. Right. Like that's the, that's the, the holy grail. That's where we want to get to. And it takes high performance to get there. So we just work on those pillars. Things will like the productivity, right. Things like energy. How do we create it? How do we manage it effectively? Right. Because sales is a transfer of emotion and emotion is just energy and motion. Right. Right. So we might say, everyone's always like, oh, I just need more customers. Well, cool. What gets to that? Do you need to talk to more people like what's happening when you get a ton of no on the door? Or how do you manage it effectively? Mm-Hmm right. All these are the, these are the types of things that we're working with our clients. So it's great to talk about dollar amounts and deal value, but you know, most people get on the phone and they think they're just not saying the right thing.Speaker 3 (24:59):And I'll tell you what, like 99% of the time that's wrong. , it's not that we're saying wrong things. It's that our energy behind it is off. Right. Or, or we're not navigating it confidently when we can do those things half the time. It doesn't matter. Like, I, I look back at some of my sales and I'm like, wow, that was the worst question I could have asked to answer that object, handle that objection. Yeah. But it freaking closed because I came from the right space. My energy was on point. I came at that, the objection confidently and they knew I was coming to serve. Right. Yeah. So there's a lot going on behind the scenes. But that's kind of what we do and how we're serving our clients.Speaker 2 (25:43):Okay. No, that's awesome. Yeah. And I mean, it's crazy cuz most people, I think you probably agree. Most people get tons of sales training in their meetings. You know, most companies have their correlations, they're doing sales trainings, but I don't think very many people are focused on the mindset and the consistency and you know, the structure like you're talking about. So I think that is a big key that a lot of guys are missing is just having that extra piece like you're and about. And so for you, when you're coaching your clients, Mike, do you notice that like, are some people in different stages, do you coach 'em differently or do you pretty much have the same set framework for almost everyone? They all need help with like, I don't know their routine and stuff like that. Or how does that work when you first start coaching someone? What's what do you put 'em through? And what's the structure with all the,Speaker 3 (26:28):Yeah. So the, the structure, like the skeleton of what we take our clients through is pretty much well it there's two programs that we have, like our launch program is where we're taking pretty much all reps to build that foundation. And then we have our accelerator, which is, you know, guys and girls that are company owners, VP of sales, right. Regionals people striving for golden door, that type of stuff. That's like really intimate support. But everyone that goes through either those programs, the structures are the same. Okay. Right. Well, launch structure is always gonna be launch structure. Accelerators are, is gonna be accelerator structure. But what fills those structures? When I say structure, think of it as like a skeleton, right? We have a skeleton of what works, but what populates that skeleton is gonna be unique to their journey. Right. So that will vary slightly depending on where the clients are at.Speaker 3 (27:20):Right. And what they need to focus on. But we, we need data to get there. Right. So the short answer is yes and no. Like everyone has the same structure, but the action items that plot that fill that in or like how we navigate it will be different depending on where they're at. But that just to target, right? Like what you're struggling with right now, Taylor might be completely different than what Mikey's struggling with. Yeah. Now we leverage the same exact mechanisms to get the generate the growth mm-hmm . But the action items that populate that structure is gonna be completely different. Cause we're trying to solve different problems. Okay. Right. We just go up STR and solve the problems behind it, not the symptoms of the problems, if that makes sense. So yeah. It's tough to talk about it like specifically and abstractly, but like I guess the answer is yes. Ultimately you know, it's like, we we'd be stupid not to follow the structure. Everything is customized for our clients to make sure that we're working intentionally. Right. We're very data driven, obviously creating engineering nerd. So like, you know, we just, men lie, women lie numbers don't lie. So we just gotta gather the right numbers. Yeah.Speaker 2 (28:41):Okay. So say, for example, I know you've worked with a lot of people this, but so say you have a rep, maybe it's closing $5 a month, which is pretty decent in solar. That's pretty great. Money can pretty much every market. So what do you, I don't know if there's like pretty common things that you would notice with a rep that's trying to go to from five deals to 10 a month, but there's, is there some pretty common things that you notice that you like can help change right off the bat? It's like, okay, let's get this right. Let's do this. And this is gonna, these are gonna be the things that take you to tens. What are some common things or like, I dunno, factors or maybe it's energy. I dunno. What do you, what do you change with this rep to gets?Speaker 3 (29:21):So the, the first piece is obviously like sales is obviously numbers, right? Like it, but that's a blessing and a curse because everyone's gonna be like, oh, just go knock more doors, bro. Like you just knock more doors and the deals are gonna come. Yeah. That's not how it works. And you know that so like if you were to spend, if your energy's completely off and you just go spend another hour knocking, you're wasting that hour because those clients, those prospects are gonna feel that. Yeah. Right. So yeah, sales is numbers. So we gotta work the numbers, but we need to know how to make the numbers work for us. So the first thing is we have to figure out what does the volume look like right now? Right. That client who went from 50 to a hundred thousand dollars a month, he was knocking 20 doors a day when we started wow, just 20.Speaker 3 (30:13):He was hyper selective about what doors he knocked. He was literally only knocking a door that he knew someone was home. Like see someone through a window, saw them, just pull the, the driveway, whatever. Right. Wow. By the end of it, we got him to 30 doors a day. That's it? That's it. And cause he knocked so effectively. He was just like, even adding five doors a day. He was like, how on earth are we gonna do that? So that's where we have to start. Right. We have to understand what does that volume look like on a day to day basis? And what is the consistent since see, look like, okay. Because unfortunately a lot of people will just be like, oh, well, you know, they, they call the day short. They don't knock the doors that they say that they're knocking or they're like, not that they're lying, but they think they're knocking way more.Speaker 3 (30:55):So we track all that data because we need to look like, look at what the trends are. Right. Okay. Once we dial the mindset piece in, then we can slowly increase, increase that volume. But we need to do it effectively because we're not trying to just do it once and then burn out. Right. Because I think that's what happens far too often in the space because we hear so often just go knock more doors. You go and you knock a hundred doors one day, but you're used to knocking like 35. Yeah. Right. And then you don't knock for another four days. Right. If you're lucky and you get back that fast. Yeah. Right. Or you go and close three deals in a week and you make more in seven days that you've made in six months working your, you know, hourly paid paying job. And you're like, you allow complacency to kick in.Speaker 3 (31:46):Right. We need to, we need to build the consistency. That's the number one piece. Right. That's what it all boils down to. So what that looks like is going to change from client to client obviously. Right? Yeah. But those are a couple examples of like what we have to do to gather that data. Then the question becomes, how do we increase that volume? Not just going to knock more doors for the sake of knocking more doors, but how do we do it sustainably? Okay. Right. Cause that's the key. If it's not simple, it's not sustainable. And if it's not sustainable, what the hell are we doing this for? Yeah. Right. Otherwise you fall victim to the solar coaster because the complacency kicks in. You go really hard. You make a, your money and then you allow yourself to completely obliterate all the momentum that you've built. Yeah. And you have to build that snowball over again. That's not what we're about. So we're striving for that consistency. We have to poke around to figure out what's lacking and then we know what to solve. Right. You hit on energy management before. That's one of the most important pieces that we need to do to maintain that consistency. But we gotta know what it looks like first before we can spot treat. If that makes sense.Speaker 2 (32:52):Okay. So kind of like, I don't know, maybe similar to someone that's trying to go to the gym for the first time, instead of saying, Hey, you need to go to the, the gym seven times this week. Just like make it to the gym and do one pushup stuff like that. 700%,Speaker 3 (33:04):One extra. That, that client, when I was, you asked me for some numbers, I said, we took a client from two to eight deals a month. Literally he hit eight deals a month when we dropped his daily door volume down to one door a day. Right. because for him, the hardest was, and a lot of people experiences it's that first door it's his own door. Right. Like he couldn't get out and go and knock. Like that was a big barrier for him. So we dropped it to one door. But what happens then? It's like, I know Michael, O'Donnell's a massive advocate of mini habits. He's talking about it on his Instagram stories every other day. It seems. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Well, no matter who you follow, right. Whether it's the author of mini habits or, you know, John ASRA calls it, reducing it to the ridiculous right.Speaker 3 (33:48):Making it so ridiculous that it would be silly not to execute or, you know, Jim quick calls it small, simple steps. It's all the same thing. We chunk something down such that it's so simple that it would, would be absolutely ridiculous for us not to execute on it now for, for that client. What happened there? Well, like literally I think there was one day that he actually only knocked one door, right. Where he went out, he was just not feeling it. He knocked that one door. He is like, screw this. I'm going to Chipotle. I don't think it was actually Chipotle, but I love Chipotle. So I just used that in the story. But you know, every other day he went out and he is like, you know, maybe he'll do five. Maybe he'll do 20 some days he'll do 50. And he closed eight deals that month. Wow. Coming from an average of two. And the other part that we didn't talk about is the month before the eight, he did HED for the entire month. Wow. But we dropped that number down. So simply that, and we reduced it to the ridiculous, such that he could execute and we got the execution up. And what happens is, you know, every time you keep your word to yourself, those micro promises you're stacking wins, which builds them momentum. And that momentum leads to all the results that we want.Speaker 2 (35:05):Hmm. Right. That's crazy. So, but yeah, no, it's, and it's so easy as you've seen for guys to be lazy and the solar industry, cuz yeah. I mean it's the curse commissions are through the roof. So couple deals a month is great money. And so it happens to me too. I'll close I'll the other day I got, you know, first door I knocked same day, closed them. And then I had family in town. You know, we just had our kid, this was last Monday actually. So I guess I kind of had a couple good excuses, but I'm like, all right, I closed this till I'm done for the day. this one took off. So it's like, it's so easy. Get in that mindset. And I think if guys can conquer that and yeah, just do the minimum whatever the minimum exert at least do that minimum thing. And then it's gonna be a lot easier to do the next thing. Yeah.Speaker 3 (35:51):So I think the problem is like you, you had solid reasons to call that a short, like I think most people would understand family and Tom for holidays just had a kid. Right? Like those are good reasons. The problem is most of us have excuses that we mask as reasons. Right. Right. Like that's a huge difference. And I mentioned, consistency is the number one word complacency is the number two. It's those dirty sea words when it comes to solar space and really all commission sales. Right. But solar specifically, because the deals are so fat. So you know, it it's we need to make sure to navigate that properly.Speaker 2 (36:29):So yeah. That's awesome. Well, Mike, I know we're running short on time here, but I had kind of two more things I wanted to get to the first. Yeah. And the first was so with the clients you work with I mean, I've worked with coaches you know, many times as I've, as I've been selling, but something that I try to fight is like the day after I stop working with that coach, maybe they work. I don't know how long you usually work with someone three months, maybe whatever it is, what do you do or what tell people to not let their results dip after they're done working with you. Cause I think that's something that I've noticed. I'll work with a coach I'll be super dialed in, but then it's one part of my brain. It's almost like a relief after I'm done working with a coach, I'm like, oh sweet. I don't have to be as accountable. I'm gonna kinda let myself you know, drop down. So what do you tell people as you're done working with them? Maybe I know you probably, I don't know, maybe keep working with them, but if someone's done working with you, how do you kind of like hopefully inspire them to keep those results high in, not let it dip after you're done working with them. Yeah.Speaker 3 (37:31):I love the question and I love like the openness and transparency because I think a lot of people feel that way, but no one has the balls to actually say it. right. So here's, here's what I would say. We talked about sustainability, right? And we talked about consistency. Those, those are the keys, right? Because if we're doing something sustainably, we don't need the motivation of the accountability from someone else to allow us to continue to execute and our goal. And this is obviously not sustainable business practice for us cuz we're like not creating recurring revenue, but like our goal is to make it to the point where like our clients can walk. And you know, one of the clients that I mentioned, the guy went from 50 to a hundred K he's gonna do 500 K in this quarter. And he graduated in March.Speaker 3 (38:18):Wow. Like it just, it, he, he got what he needed and that was it. Like, that was cool. And now we have a working relationship. We're gonna partner on some stuff moving forward. Like that's amazing. Yeah. But notice that everything kept growing because we did it sustainably. Right. So when we do that properly, we have the discipline dialed in. That's all that matters. And you know, we just build it in a way that's in alignment with how we wanna operate our lives. You know, when you do that properly, you, you shouldn't need the external accountability. Right. And, and this is what I say, whenever clients are enrolling there's I believe there's two types of accountability. Right? There's the external accountability, which is what most people think of accountability partners, how much people rely on their coaches. Right. Whatever. It might be reverse pets, anything like that, or we're dependent on something externally to incentivize us to act.Speaker 3 (39:13):Right. And then there's the end accountability, are we accountable to ourselves? And for me that's the holy grail and bridging the gap from one to the other is what we help our clients do. Right. So I dunno if that answers your question, but our goal is to the point where our clients don't feel that way, because they know cool. If they need continued support and they want to continue growing, cuz they there's always another level awesome. We're here to support them. Yeah. But they don't need that if they don't like they don't have to go that route if they don't need that and the results aren't gonna go to if they don't continue to invest. Right. Yeah. Which unfortunately I think is something that gets sold in this space a little too often. But but yeah, hopefully that answers your questions really about the consistency and the inability when you do that and you have your non-negotiables dialed in the game changes. Right. And we just make sure that those are things that we can hit even on our worst days. Right. Then we don't need to be dependent externally and we don't have to invest in something that we don't necessarily need because people don't pay high ticket to get a babysitter. Like accountability. Coaching is a thing in the past. If there's not more baked into the coaching and the growth, then you're frankly wasting your money. yeah.Speaker 2 (40:24):Yeah. That's BA I'm sure that's something you help guys with as they're, you know, working through your coaching. But I like that what you're saying, you know, external internal cuz. Yeah. I, I think about a lot of these competitions I've won. I've had to like just get myself an insane, you know, external accountability. I dunno if you use that like stick app where you like, you know, bet money to charities, you don't likeSpeaker 3 (40:47):We do, we do something similar with our clients in some of the phases of our launch program. It's a powerful tactic man. Reverse bets are a crazy little little trick.Speaker 2 (40:56):Yeah. So it's good. But no, I think it's even more powerful if you can do that internally and not have to rely on all these, you know, gimmicks and external things sometimes. Bingo. That's awesome. So Mike, last question, and then we'll talk about where people can connect with you more, but what advice would you give to like we, we got a lot of managers in the space. Lot of we talked before the recording here just to how it's see how much turnover there is in the solar industry, guys quitting. So for maybe managers or just guys bringing in recruits, what advice can you give to those people on coaching them to, you know, stick, stick in the industry and start achieving success. And I don't know what advice can we giveSpeaker 3 (41:34):To those people? Yeah. I freaking love this question because it's so important. I, I was sharing with you Taylor, like one of my, one of my missions, which is weird, cause I'm like a transplant in this space, right? Like I'm not a, I'm not a door knocker. So I feel like in a foster at times, but like I see what's happening. And like for one of my missions is to help chip away at that turnover because we see like, you know, young guys and girls getting sold this pipe dream in these sunshine and rainbows and then sometimes like not given the support to really bring it to fruition. And obviously there's the, the agency of those people. Like they need to take advantage of the opportunity, but you know, it's our job as leaders to grow into the person that can support them to take your advantage of this opportunity.Speaker 3 (42:18):So I encourage every leader listening to this, whether you're really managing a team or you're just someone that gets looked up to because you're a stud in your company, you need to keep growing and you need to pour into the people around you, whether there are overrides involved or not, right. If you're a killer, you were able to take advantage and harness this opportunity and really allow it to change your life. And it's our duty to make sure that other people can do the same thing. And especially when they're overrides involved, like if your people don't win, then obviously your income is heavily impacted. So whatever your incentivization is, you know, I think we need to continue to pour into ourselves. Whether that's being in masterminds, hiring coaches, reading books, listening to podcasts, doing whatever you need to do to stay tapped in and growing.Speaker 3 (43:10):Because if you don't build those assets, you're not gonna be able to pour into your people. Yeah. And unfortunately I think it gets overlooked because the, usually a lot of the way that you grow in a sales organization is based on your sales volume. Yeah. Right. So if we don't all of a sudden then if we're not conscious of this and we're not really intentional around this, we have a bunch of sales studs that are now in leadership that might have no idea how to lead. Right. Other than leading a prospect into a transaction. Yeah. Right. So we need to focus on those leadership skills. Right. Go to the conferences. It doesn't matter what it is. Just keep doing it because I've heard it far too many times. Success of a new rep often is entirely dependent, not entirely, but it's very dependent on what regional they're working under.Speaker 3 (44:03):Mm. Like we gotta make sure that we are that regional or we are that leader. Or we are that person that inspires them to show up powerfully that helps guide them along this process. And not just throws them out to the wolves because you're are trying to play the numbers game too. And you're throwing at the wall to see what sticks. Yeah. Like if we're selling people a pipe dream, we better be sure to give them the resources and the support to bring it to life for them. Yeah. So end rant take for what it's worth. But like you gotta keep growing because you gotta keep pouring into people. Yeah.Speaker 2 (44:34):Love that a hundred percent. That's so true. Cause so many people, maybe they're good at sales, but they've never been in leadership roles. And I think that's a mistake. Some people MIS make just, cuz you're really good at selling doesn't necessarily mean you can teach it or you can lead. So yeah. I think, especially for guys like that, some important to go develop those leadership skills, invest in yourself, invest in the coach like Mike or we've got programs over here at solar and that's gonna keep things fresh I think. And help guys lead. So Mike, we appreciate your time and I know you gotta hop on another call here in a minute, but before we let you go work and guys potentially I don't know, apply to have you as a coach or connect more with you or find your podcast, give us your your plugs for where people connect with you a little bit more.Speaker 3 (45:19):Yeah. First of all, Taylor, appreciate you having me brother. This is this is super fun. I honestly, man, the best places is Instagram at Mike says yak on Instagram probably got a link back. Cause all the Polish is like really hard to spell. Wow. And be aware of the freaking crypto scammers everyone's getting fake profiles made. I'm never gonna DMU pitching crypto. I will DMU pitching high performance coaching, but never crypto . Right. so just sliding the DMS. If anyone has questions around anything, we talked about once like to go a little bit deeper on stuff, slide in there. Either my team we'll answer or if they don't know the answer, they'll flag it for me and I'll get you an answer. But yeah, that that's literally like the inside of our funnel anyway. So don't worry. You're not gonna follow and just get relentlessly pitched if you don't want to be, we will open conversation cuz it's social media. Right. But yeah. DMS are already, oh, always open. Feel free to reach out with any questions.Speaker 2 (46:15):Love it. Well Mike, thanks for coming on the show today. Today. Shoot Mike at DM. Let him know you appreciated the knowledge bombs he drops for our solarpreneurs here today and Mike, I'm sure we'll people connecting with you soon. Thanks again for coming on the show with us today.Speaker 3 (46:29):Thank you brother. Appreciate it. Okay.Speaker 2 (46:31):Talk soon. Hey, Solarpreneurs quick question. 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About SahirSahir is responsible for product strategy across the MongoDB portfolio. He joined MongoDB in 2016 as SVP, Cloud Products & GTM to lead MongoDB's cloud products and go-to-market strategy ahead of the launch of Atlas and helped grow the cloud business from zero to over $150 million annually. Sahir joined MongoDB from Sumo Logic, an SaaS machine-data analytics company, where he managed platform, pricing, packaging and technology partnerships. Before Sumo Logic, Sahir was the Director of Cloud Management Strategy & Evangelism at VMware, where he launched VMware's first organically developed SaaS management product and helped grow the management tools business to over $1B in revenue. Earlier in his career, Sahir held a variety of technical and sales-focused roles at DynamicOps, BMC Software, and BladeLogic.Links:MongoDB: https://www.mongodb.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Redis, the company behind the incredibly popular open source database that is not the bind DNS server. If you're tired of managing open source Redis on your own, or you're using one of the vanilla cloud caching services, these folks have you covered with the go to manage Redis service for global caching and primary database capabilities; Redis Enterprise. Set up a meeting with a Redis expert during re:Invent, and you'll not only learn how you can become a Redis hero, but also have a chance to win some fun and exciting prizes. To learn more and deploy not only a cache but a single operational data platform for one Redis experience, visit redis.com/hero. Thats r-e-d-i-s.com/hero. And my thanks to my friends at Redis for sponsoring my ridiculous nonsense.  Corey: Are you building cloud applications with a distributed team? Check out Teleport, an open source identity-aware access proxy for cloud resources. Teleport provides secure access to anything running somewhere behind NAT: SSH servers, Kubernetes clusters, internal web apps and databases. Teleport gives engineers superpowers! Get access to everything via single sign-on with multi-factor. List and see all SSH servers, kubernetes clusters or databases available to you. Get instant access to them all using tools you already have. Teleport ensures best security practices like role-based access, preventing data exfiltration, providing visibility and ensuring compliance. And best of all, Teleport is open source and a pleasure to use.Download Teleport at https://goteleport.com. That's goteleport.com. Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. For the first in-person recording in ages we have a promoted guest joining us from MongoDB. Sahir Azam is the chief product officer. Thank you so much for joining me.Sahir: Thank you for having me, Corey. It's really exciting to be able to talk and actually meet in person.Corey: I know it feels a little scandalous these days, when we're in a position of meeting people in person, like you're almost like you're doing something wrong somehow. So, MongoDB has been a staple of the internet for a long time. It's oh good; another database to keep track of. What do you do these days? What is MongoDB in this ecosystem?Sahir: That's a great question. I think we're fortunate that MongoDB has been very popular for a very long time. We're seeing, you know, massive adoption grow across the globe and the massive developer community is sort of adopting the technology. What I would bring across is today MongoDB is really one of the leading cloud database companies in the world. The majority of the company's business comes from our cloud service; we partner very heavily with AWS and other cloud providers on making sure we have global availability of that. That's our flagship product.And we've invested really heavily in the last I would say, five or six years, and really extending the capabilities of the product to not just be the, sort of, database for modern web scale applications, but also to be able to handle mission-critical use cases across every vertical, you know, enterprises to startups, and doing so in a way that really empowers a general purpose strategy for any app they want to build.Corey: You're talking about general purpose which, I guess, leads to the obvious question that AWS has been pushing for a while, the idea of purpose-built databases, which makes sense from a certain point of view, and then they, of course, take that way beyond the bounds of normalcy. I don't know what the job is for someone whose role is to disambiguate between the 20 different databases that they offer by, who knows, probably the end of this year. And I don't know what that looks like. What's your take on that whole idea of a different database for every problem slash every customer slash every employee slash API request.Sahir: What we see is customers clearly moved to the cloud because they want to be able to move faster, innovate faster, be more competitive in whatever market or business or organization they're in. And certainly, I think the days of a single vendor database to rule all use cases are gone. We're not [laugh] by any means supportive of that. However, the idea that you would have 15 different databases that need to be rationalized, integrated, scripted together, frankly, may be interesting for technical teams who want to cobble together, you know, a bespoke architecture. But when we look at it from, sort of a skills, repeatability, cost, simplicity, perspective of architecture, we're seeing these, sort of like, almost like Rube Goldbergian sort of architectures.And in a large organization that wants to adopt the cloud en mass, the idea of every development team coming up with their own architecture and spending all of that time and duplication and integration of work is a distraction from ultimately their core mission, which is driving more capability and differentiation in the application for their end customer. So, to be blunt, we actually think the idea of having 15 different databases, ‘the right tool for the job' is the wrong approach. We think that there's certain key technologies that most organizations will use for 70, 80% of use cases, and then use the niche technologies for where they really need specialized solutions for particular needs.Corey: So, if you're starting off with a general-purpose database then, what is the divergence point at which point—like in my case, eventually I have to admit that using TXT records in Route 53 as a database starts to fall down for certain use cases. Not many, mind you, but one or two here and there. At what point when you're sticking with a general-purpose database does migrating to something else—what's the tipping point there?Sahir: Yeah, I think what we see is if you have a general-purpose database that hits the majority of your needs, oftentimes, especially with a microservices kind of modern architecture, it's not necessarily replacing your general-purpose database with a completely different solution, it may be augmenting it. So, you may have a particular need for, I don't know deep graph capabilities, for example, for a particular traversal use case. Maybe you augment that with a specialized solution for that. But the idea is that there's a certain set of velocity you can enable an organization by building skill set and consolidation around a technology provider that gives much more repeatability, security, less data duplication, and ultimately focuses your organization in teams on innovation as opposed to plumbing and that's where the 15 different databases been cobbled together may be interesting, but it's not really focusing on innovation, it's focusing more on the technology problems that you solved.Corey: So, we're recording this on site in Las Vegas, as re:Invent, thankfully and finally, draws to a close. How was your conference?Sahir: It's been fantastic. And to be clear, we are huge fans and partners of AWS. This is one of our most exciting conferences we sponsor. We go big, [laugh] we throw a party, we have a huge presence, we have hundreds of customer meetings. So, although I'm a little ragged, as you can probably tell from my voice from many meetings and conversations and drinks with friends, it's actually been a really great week.Corey: It is one of those things where having taken a year off, you forget so much of it, where it's, “Oh, I can definitely walk between those two hotels,” and then you sort of curse the name of God as you wind up going down that path. It was a relief, honestly, to not see, for example, another managed database service being launched that I can recall in that flurry of announcements, did you catch any?Sahir: I didn't catch any new particular database services that at least caught my eye. Granted, I've been in meetings most of the time, however, we're really excited about a lot of the infrastructure innovation. You know, I just happened to have a meeting with the compute teams on the Amazon side and what they're doing with, you know, Wavelength, and Local Zones, and new hardware, and chips with Graviton, it's all stuff we're really excited about. So, it is always interesting to see the innovation coming out of AWS.Corey: You mentioned that you are a partner with AWS, and I get it, but AWS is also one of those companies whose product strategy is ‘yes.' And they a couple years ago launched their DocumentDB, in parentheses with MongoDB compatibility, which they say, “Oh, customers were demanding this,” but no, no, they weren't. I've been talking to customers; what they wanted was actual MongoDB. The couple of folks I'm talking to who are using it are using it for one reason and one reason only, and that is replication traffic between AZs on native AWS services is free; everyone else must pay. So, there's some sub-offering in many respects that is largely MongoDB compatible to a point. Okay, but… how do you wind up, I guess, addressing the idea of continuing to partner with a company that is also heavily advantaging its own first party services, even when those are not the thing that best serves customers.Sahir: Yeah, I've been in technology for a while, and you know, the idea of working with major platform players in the context of being, in our case, a customer, a partner, and a competitor is something we're more than comfortable with, you know, and any organization at our scale and size is navigating those same dynamics. And I think on the outside, it's very easy to pay way more attention to the competitive dynamics of oh, you run in AWS but you compete with them, but the reality is, honestly, there's a lot more collaboration, both on the engineering side but also in the field. Like, we go jointly work with customers, getting them onto our platform, way more often than I think the world sees. And that's a really positive relationship. And we value that and we're investing heavily on our side to make sure you know, we're good partners in that sense.The nuances of DocumentDB versus the real MongoDB, the reality of the situation is yes, if you want the minimal MongoDB experience for, you know, a narrow percentage of our functionality, you can get that from that technology, but that's not really what customers want. Customers choose MongoDB for the breadth of capabilities that we have, and in particular, in the last few years, it's not just the NoSQL query capability of Mongo, we've integrated rich aggregation capabilities for analytics, transactional guarantees, a globally distributed architecture that scales horizontally and across regions much further than anything a relational architecture can accomplish. And we've integrated other domains of data, so things like full text, search, analytics, mobile synchronization are all baked into our Atlas platform. So, to be honest, when customers compare the two on the merits of the technology, we're more than happy to be competitors with AWS.Corey: No, I think that everyone competes with AWS, including its own product teams amongst each other because, you know, that's how you, I guess, innovate more rapidly. What do I know? I don't run a hyperscale platform. Thankfully.If I go and pull up your website, it's mongodb.com. It is natural for me to assume that you make a database, but then I start reading; after the big text and the logo, it says that you are an application data platform. Tell me more about that.Sahir: Yeah, and this has been a relatively new area of focus for us over the last couple of years. You know, I think many people know MongoDB as a non-relational modern database. Clearly, that's our core product. I think in general, we have a lot of capabilities in the database that many customers are unaware of in terms of transactional guarantees and schema management and others, so that's kind of all within the core database. But over the last few years, we've both built and acquired technology, things like Realm, that allows for mobile synchronization; event-driven architectures; APIs to be created on your data Easily; Atlas data lake, which allows for data transformation and analytics to be done using the same API as the core Mongo database; as I mentioned a couple minutes ago, things like search, where we actually allow customers to remove the need for a separate search engine for their application and make it really seamless operationally, and from the developer experience standpoint.And you know, there's no real term in the industry for that, so we kind of describe ourselves as an application data platform because really, what we're trying to do is simplify the data architecture for applications, so you don't need ten different niche database technologies to be able to build a powerful, modern, scalable application; you can build it in a unified way with an amazing developer experience that allows your teams to focus on differentiation and competitiveness as opposed to plumbing together the data infrastructure.Corey: So, when I hear platform, I think about a number of different things that may or may not be accurate, but the first thing that I think is, “Oh. There's code running on this then, as sort of part of an ecosystem.” Effectively is their code running on the data platform that you built today that wasn't written by people at MongoDB?Sahir: Yes, but it's typically the customer's code as part of their application. So, you know, I'll give you a couple of simple examples. We provide SDKs to be able to build web and mobile applications. We handle the synchronization of data from the client and front end of an application back to the back end seamlessly through our Realm platform. So, we're certainly, in that case, operating some of the business logic, or extending beyond sort of just the back end data.Similarly, a lot of what we focus on is modern event-driven architectures with MongoDB. So, to make it easier to create reactive applications, trigger off of changes in your data, we built functions and triggers natively in the platform. Now, we're not trying to be a full-on application hosting platform; that's not our business, our business is a data platform, but we really invest in making sure that platform is open, accessible, provides APIs, and functional capabilities make it very easy to integrate into any application our customers want to build.Corey: It seems like a lot of different companies now are trying to, for lack of a better term, get some of the love that Snowflake has been getting for, “Oh, their data cloud is great.” But when you take a step back and talk to people about, “So, what do you think about Mongo?” The invariable response you're going to get every time is, “Oh, you mean the database?” Like, “No, no. The character from the Princess Bride. Yes, the database.” How do you view that?Sahir: Yeah, it's easy to look at all the data landscape through a simple lens, but the reality is, there's many sub markets within the database and data market overall. And for MongoDB we're, frankly, an operational data company. And we're not focused on data warehousing, although you can use MongoDB for various analytical capabilities. We're focused on helping organizations build amazing software, and leveraging data as an enabler for great customer experiences, for digital transformation initiatives, for solving healthcare problems, or [unintelligible 00:12:51] problems in the government, or whatever it might be. We're not really focused on selling customers'—or platforms of data from—not the customers' data, but other—allowing people to monetize their data. We're focused on their applications and developers building those experiences.Corey: Yeah. So, you're if you were selling customers' data, you just rebrand as FacebookDB and be done with it, or MetaDB now—Sahir: MetaDB?Corey: Yeah. As far as the general Zeitgeist around Mongo goes, back when I was first hearing about it, in I don't know, I want to say the first half of the 2010s, the running gag was, “Oh, Mongo. It's Snapchat for databases,” with the gag being that it lost production data was unsafe for a bunch of things. To be clear, based upon my Route 53 comments, I am not a database expert by any stretch of the imagination. Now, the most common thing in my experience that loses production data is me being allowed near it. But what was the story? What gave rise to that narrative?Sahir: Yeah, I think that—thank you for bringing that up. I mean, to be clear, you know, if a database doesn't keep your data safe, consistent, and guaranteed, the rest of the functionality doesn't matter, and we take that extremely seriously at MongoDB. Now, you know, MongoDB, has been around a long time, and for better or worse—I think there's, frankly, good things and bad things about this—the database exploded in popularity extremely fast, partially because it was so easy to use for developers and it was also very different than the traditional relational database models. And so I think in many ways, customer's expectation of where the technology was compared to where we were from a maturity standpoint, combined with running an operating it the same way as a traditional system, which was, frankly, wrong for a distributed database caused, unfortunately, some situations where customers stubbed their toes and, you know, we weren't able to get to them and help them as easily as we could. Thankfully, you know, none of those issues fundamentally are, like, foundational problems. You know, we've matured the product for many, many years, you know, we work with 30,000-plus customers worldwide on mission-critical applications. I just want to make sure that everyone understands that, like, we take any issue that has to do with data loss or data corruption, as sort of the foundational [P zero 00:14:56] problem we always have to solve.Corey: I tend to form a lot of my opinions based upon very little on what, you know, sorry to say it, execs say and a lot more about what I see. There was a whole buzz going around on Twitter that HSBC was moving a whole bunch of its databases over to Mongo. And everyone was saying, “Oh, they're going to lose all their data.” But I've done work with a fair number of financial services companies, and of all the people I talk to, they're pretty far on one end of that spectrum of, “How cool are we with losing data?” So, voting with a testimonial and a wallet like that—because let's be clear, getting financial services companies to reference anything for anyone anywhere is like pulling teeth—that says a lot more than any, I guess, PR talking points could.Sahir: Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. I mean, we're very fortunate to have a very broad customer base, everything from the world's largest gaming companies to the world's largest established banks, the world's most fastest growing fintechs, to health care organizations distributing vaccines with technologies built on Mongo. Like, you name it, there's a use case in any vertical, as mission critical as you can think, built on our technology. So, customers absolutely don't take our word for granted. [laugh]. They go, you know, get comfortable with a new database technology over a span of years, but we've really hit sort of mainstream adoption for the majority of organizations. You mentioned financial services, but it's really any vertical globally, you know, we can count on our customer list.Corey: How do you, I guess, for lack of a better term, monetize what it is you do when you're one of the open-source—and yes, if you're an open-source zealot who wants to complain about licensing, it's imperative that you do not email me—but you are available for free—for certain definitions of free; I know, I know—that I can get started with a two o'clock in the morning and start running it myself in my environment. What is the tipping point that causes people to say, “Well, that was a good run. Now, I'm going to pay you folks to run it for me.”Sahir: Yeah, so there's two different sides to that, first and foremost, the majority of our engineering investment for our business goes in our core database, and our core database is free. And the way we actually, you know, survive and make money as a business, so we can keep innovating, you know, on top of the billion dollars of investment we've put in our technology over the years is, for customers who are self-managing in their own data center, we provide a set of management tools, enterprise security integrations, and others that are commercially licensed to be able to manage MongoDB for mission-critical applications in production, that's a product called Enterprise Advanced. It's typically used for large enterprise accounts in their own data centers. The flagship product for the company these days, the fastest growing part of the business is a product we call Atlas—or platform we call Atlas. That's a cloud data service.So, you know, you can go onto our website, sign up with our free tier, swipe a credit card, all consumption-based, available in every AWS region, as well as Azure and GCP, has the ability to run databases across AWS, Azure, and GCP, which is quite unique to us. And that, like any cloud data technology, is then used in conjunction with a bunch of other application components in the cloud, and customers pay us for the consumption of that database and how much they use.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle Cloud. Counting the pennies, but still dreaming of deploying apps instead of "Hello, World" demos? Allow me to introduce you to Oracle's Always Free tier. It provides over 20 free services and infrastructure, networking, databases, observability, management, and security. And—let me be clear here—it's actually free. There's no surprise billing until you intentionally and proactively upgrade your account. This means you can provision a virtual machine instance or spin up an autonomous database that manages itself all while gaining the networking load, balancing and storage resources that somehow never quite make it into most free tiers needed to support the application that you want to build. With Always Free, you can do things like run small scale applications or do proof-of-concept testing without spending a dime. You know that I always like to put asterisks next to the word free. This is actually free, no asterisk. Start now. Visit snark.cloud/oci-free that's snark.cloud/oci-free.Corey: I want to zero in a little bit on something you just said, where you can have data shared between all three of the primary hyperscalers. That sounds like a story that people like to tell a lot, but you would know far better than I: how common is that use case?Sahir: It's definitely one from a strategic standpoint, especially in large enterprises, that's really important. Now, to your point, the actual usage of cross-cloud databases is still very early, but the fact that customers know that we can go, in three minutes, spin up a database cluster that allows them to either migrate, or span data across multiple regions from multiple providers for high availability, or extend their data to another cloud for analytics purposes or whatnot, is something that it almost is like science fiction to them, but it's crucial as a capability I know they will need in the future.Now, to our surprise, we've seen more real production adoption of it probably sooner than we would have expected, and there's kind of three key use cases that come into play. One—you know, for example, I was with a challenger bank from Latin America yesterday; they need high availability in Latin America. In the countries they're in, no single infrastructure cloud provider has multiple regions. They need to span across multiple regions. They mix and match cloud providers, in their case AWS being their primary, and they have a secondary cloud provider, in their case GCP, for high availability.But it's also regulatorily-driven because the banking SEC regulations in that country state that they need to be able to show portability because they don't want concentration risk of their banking sector to be on a single cloud provider or single cloud provider's region. So, we see that in multiple countries happening right now. That's one use case.The other tends to be geographic reach. So, we work with a very large international gaming company, majority of their use cases happen to be run out of the US. They happen to have a spike of customers using their game [unintelligible 00:19:58] gamers using it in Taiwan; their cloud provider of choice didn't have a region in Taiwan, but they were able to seamlessly extend a replica into a different cloud to serve low-latency performance in that country. That's the second.And then the third, which is a little bit more emerging is kind of the analytic-style use case where you may have your operational data running in a particular cloud provider, but you want to leverage the best of every cloud provider's, newest, fanciest services on top of your data. So, isn't it great if you can just hit a couple clicks, we'll extend your data and keep it in sync in near real time, and allow you to plumb into some new service from another cloud provider.Corey: In an ideal world with all things being equal, this is a wonderful vision. There's been a lot of noise made—a fair bit of it by me, let's be fair—around the data egress pricing for—it's easy to beat up on AWS because they are the largest cloud provider and it's not particularly close, but they all do it. Does that serve as a brake on that particular pattern?Sahir: Thankfully, for a database like ours and various mechanisms we use, it's not a barrier to entry. It's certainly a cost component to enabling this capability, for sure. We absolutely would love to see the industry be more open and use less of egress fees as a way to wall people into a particular cloud providers. We certainly have that belief, and would push that notion and continually do in the industry. But it hasn't been a barrier to adoption because it's not the major cost component of operating a multi-cloud database.Corey: Well, [then you start 00:21:27] doing this whole circular replication thing, at which point, wow. It just goes round and round and round and lives on the network all the time. I'm told that's what a storage area network is because I'm about as good at storage as I am at databases. As you look at Atlas, since you are in all of the major hyperscalers, is the experience different in any way, depending upon which provider you're running in?Sahir: By and large, it's pretty consistent. However, what we are not doing is building to the lowest common denominator. If there's a service integration that our customers on AWS want, and that service doesn't integrate, it doesn't exist on another cloud provider, or vice versa, we're not going to stop ourselves from building a great customer experience and integration point. And the same thing goes for infrastructure; if there's some infrastructure innovation that delivers price, performance, great value for our customers and it's only on a single cloud, we're not going to stop ourselves from delivering that value to customers. So, there's a line there, you know, we want to provide a great experience, portability across the cloud providers, consistency where it makes sense, but we are not going to water down our experience on a particular cloud provider if customers are asking for some native capabilities.Corey: It always feels like a strange challenge historically to wind up—at least in large, regulated environments—getting a new vendor in. Originally an end run around this was using the AWS Marketplace or whatever marketplace you were using at any given cloud provider. Then procurement caught on and in some cases banned in the Marketplace outright and now, the Marketplace is sort of reformed, in some ways, to being a tool for procurement to use. Have you seen significant uptake of your offering through the various cloud marketplaces?Sahir: We do work with all the cloud marketplaces. In fact, we just made an announcement with AWS that we're going to be implementing the pay-as-you-go marketplace model for self-service as well on AWS. So, it is definitely a driver for our business. It tends to be used most heavily when we're selling with the, you know, sales teams from the cloud providers, and customers want to benefit from a single bill, benefit from, you know, drawing down on their large commitments that they might have with any given cloud providers. So, it drives really good alignment between the customer, us as a third-party on AWS or Azure GCP, and the infrastructure cloud provider. And so we're all aligned on a motion. So, in that sense, it's definitely been helpful, but it's largely been a procurement and fulfillment sort of value proposition to drive that alignment, I'd say, by and large today.Corey: I don't know if you're able to answer this without revealing anything confidential, so please feel free not to, but as you look across the total landscape—since I would say that you have a fairly reasonable snapshot of the industry as a whole—am I right when I say that AWS is the behemoth in the space, or is it a closer horse race than most people would believe, based upon your perspective?Sahir: I think in general, for sure AWS is the market share leader. It would be crazy to say anything otherwise. They innovated this model, you know, the amount of innovation happening at AWS is incredible, you know, and we're benefiting from it as a customer as well. However, we do believe it's a multi-cloud future. I mean, look at the growth of Azure. You know, we're seeing Google show up in large enterprises across the globe as well.And even beyond the three American clouds, you know, we work heavily with Alibaba and Tencent in mainland China, which is a completely different market than Western world. So, I do think the trend over time will be a more heterogeneous, more multi-cloud world—which I'm biased; that does favor MongoDB, but that's the trend we're seeing—but that doesn't mean that AWS won't continue to still be a leader and a very strong player in that market.Corey: I want to talk a little bit about Jepsen. And for those who are unaware, jepsen.io is run by Kyle Kingsbury. Kyle is wonderful, and he's also nuts. If you followed him back when he was on Twitter, you've also certainly seen them.But beyond that, he is the de facto resource I go to when it comes to consistency testing and stress testing of databases. I'm a little annoyed he hasn't taken on Route 53 yet, but hope does spring eternal. He's evaluated Mongo a number of times, and his conclusions, as always are mixed sometimes, shall we say, incendiary, but they always seem relatively fair. What is your experience been, working with him? And do you share my opinion of him as being a neutral and fair arbiter of these things?Sahir: I do. I think he's got real expertise and credibility in beating up distributed database systems and finding the edges of where they don't live up to what we all hope they do, right? Whether it's us or anyone else, just to be clear. And so anytime Kyle finds some flaw in MongoDB, we take it seriously, we add it to our test suite, [laugh] we remediate, and I think we have a pretty good history of that. And in fact, we've actually worked with Kyle to welcome him beating up our database on multiple occasions, too, so it's not an adversarial relationship at all.Corey: I have to ask, since you are a more modern generation of database, then many from the previous century, but there's always been a significant, shall we say… concern, when I wind up looking at it [it again in 00:26:33] any given database, and I look in the terms and conditions and, like, “Oh, it's a great database. We're by far the best. Whatever you do, do not publish benchmarks.” What's going on with that?Sahir: I think benchmarks can be spun in any direction you want, by any vendor. And it's not just database technology. I've been in IT for a while, and you know, that applies to any technology. So, we absolutely do not shy away from our performance or benchmark or comparisons to any technology. We just think that, you know, vendors benchmarking technologies for their—are doing so largely to only make their own technologies look good versus competition.Corey: I tend to be somewhat skeptical of the various benchmark stuff. I remember repeatedly oh, I'll wind up running whatever it is—I think it's Geek Speed—on my various devices to see oh, how snappy and performant is it going to be? But then I'm sitting there opening Microsoft Word and watching the beach ball spin, and spin, and spin, and it turns out, don't care about benchmarks in a real-world use case in many scenarios.Sahir: Yeah, it's kind of a good analogy, right? I mean, performance of an application, sure, the database at the heart of it is a crucial component, but there's many more aspects of it that have to do with the overall real world performance than just some raw benchmark results for any database, right? It's the way you model your data, the way the rest of the architecture of the application interacts and hangs together with the database, many, many layers of complexity. So, I don't always think those benchmarks are indicative of how real world performance will look, but at the same time, I'm very confident in MongoDB's performance comparatively to our peers, so it's not something we're afraid of.Corey: As you take a look at where you've been and where you are now, what's next? Where are you going? Because I have a hard time believing that, “Yep, we're deciding it's feature complete and we're just going to sell this until the end of time exactly as is, we're laying off our entire engineering team and we're going to be doing support from our yacht, parked comfortably in international waters.” That's a slightly different company. What's the plan?Sahir: So, [laugh] you're—we are not parking anything, anytime soon. We are continuing to invest heavily in the innovation of the technology, and really, it's two reasons: you know, one, we're seeing an acceleration of adoption of MongoDB, either with any customers that have used us for a long time, but for more important and more use cases, but also just broader adoption globally as more and more developers learn to code, they're choosing Mongo as the place to start, increasingly. And so that's really exciting for us, and we need to keep up with those customer demands and that roadmap of asks that they have.And at the same time, customer requirements are increasing as more and more organizations are software-first organizations, the requirements of what they demand from us continually increase, which requires continual innovation in our architecture and our functionality to keep up with those and stay ahead of those customer requirements. So, what you'll see from us is, one, making sure we can build the best modern database we can. That's the core of what we do; everything we do now especially is cloud first, so working closely with our cloud partners on that. And even though we're very fortunate to be a high-performance, high-growth company with a very pervasive open technology, we're still in a giant market that has a lot of legacy technologies powering old applications. So, [laugh] you know, we have a long, long runway to become a long-standing major player in this market.And then we're going to continue this vision of an application data platform, which is really just about simplifying the capabilities and data architecture for organizations and developers so they can focus on building their application and less on the plumbing.Corey: I want to thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. If people want to learn more, where can they go?Sahir: Clearly, you can go to mongodb.com. You can also reach out to us on our community sites: our own or on any of the public sites that you would typically find developers hanging out. We always have folks from our teams or our champions program of advocates worldwide helping out our customers and users. And I just want to thank you, Corey, for having me. I've followed you online for a while; it's great to finally be able to meet in person.Corey: Uh-oh. It's disturbing having realized some of the things I've said on Twitter and realizing I'm now within range to get punched in the face. But, you know, we take what we can get. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I appreciate it.Sahir: My pleasure.Corey: Sahir Azam, Chief Product Officer at MongoDB. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment telling me that is not the reason that AWS is building many new databases. Tell me which one you're building and why it solves a problem other than getting you the promotion you probably don't deserve.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

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On this episode of ‘Grab A Glass', DT talks evolution in 2022 & beyond, the state of R&B, and Rick Ross' 11th studio album.

Joe Biden pledged ambitious criminal justice reforms as a candidate, but has taken few steps during his time in office to deliver them. And the FBI says diversifying its special agent ranks is a top priority, but its history of abuses during the civil rights era is a major recruitment hurdle.This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and justice correspondent Ryan Lucas.Connect:Email the show at nprpolitics@npr.orgJoin the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.

Dieter Kurtenbach is in the chair Thursday, breaking down what worked and what didn't in the Warriors win over the Portland Trail Blazers. Plus, what do the Dubs need to do to keep the good times rolling (and get Steph Curry that 3-pointer record)? Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! | Offers from our sponsors: lockedonpodcasts.com/offers Built Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15” and you'll get 15% off your next order. BetOnline AG - There is only 1 place that has you covered and 1 place we trust. Betonline.ag! Sign up today for a free account at betonline.ag and use that promocode: LOCKEDON for your 50% welcome bonus. PrizePicks - Don't hesitate, check out PrizePicks.com and use promo code: “NBA” or go to your app store and download the app today. PrizePicks is daily fantasy made easy! TrueBill - Don't fall for subscription scams. Start cancelling today at Truebill.com/LOCKEDONNBA. Shopify - Go to SHOPIFY.com/lockedonnba for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple will not have to change its in-app purchase policy while it appeals a lawsuit from Epic Games; senators criticize Instagram during hearing with its CEO; Allergan, New York state reach $200 million opioid settlement; Starbucks unionization votes to be counted - December 9, 2021

Interview: Boz talks to Heather Gilbert about training and working as a lighting designer, the privilege of training in the same place you want to work, Carnegie Mellon, John Bridges, John Culbert, Theatre Communications Group, the NEA, Topdog/Underdog, Stacy Caballero, Keith Parham, analytical geometry, the alchemy of passions that compose lighting design, Trinity University,  Kendra Thulin, David Swayze, Manifest Arts Festival, The Big Funk, Steppenwolf, Suzan Lori Parks, Don Cheadle, Jeffrey Wright, Mos Def, storefront theatre, Buried Child, Everyman, The Libertine, Bar San Miguel, David Cromer, Miracle on 34th Street starring Tracy Letts, The Hypocrites, Sean Graney, The Adding Machine, Our Town, the magic of good artistic partnerships, Sam Rockwell, Sheldon Patinkin, Next to Normal at Writers Theatre, The Band's Visit on Broadway, Come Back Little Sheba at The Huntington,  Michael Halberstam, Adam Rapp's The Sound Inside at Williamstown , Studio 54, Franco Colavecchia, Nan Cibula, Bug by Tracy Letts, not apologizing, being process-oriented vs. product-oriented, Macbeth at the NY Shakespeare Festival, Angela Bassett, Alec Baldwin, Zach Braff, Liev Schreiber, Michael C. Hall, and Carrie Coon.FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited): Speaker 1 (0s): I'm Jen Bosworth and I'm Gina Polizzi. We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand it. 20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all. We survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous? Okay. Hello. Thank you so much for joining me. My Speaker 2 (32s): God. I'm so Speaker 1 (33s): Excited about it. So the first thing we always say is, congratulations, Heather Gilbert, you survived theater school. I did. I did. Okay. And you really survived it with, with a flourish. I would say you're kind of fancy and a big deal Speaker 2 (52s): Is a lighting designer ever really a big deal Speaker 1 (55s): In my view. So we have a lot, the thing that I love about reading about you, and also I know you teach and you're at, but is that there is a, I would say you're a master of your craft based on what I would say that based on what I've read about you and what I know about you and your successes, and also your trajectory during school. And post-school like, if there's a master of a lighting designer, crap, you've you're, you're it. So thank you. Yeah. It's amazing to lo to, to read about you. So one of the things and people also post what you can, for me, I can tell when someone is a bad-ass at what they do, because they don't actually have to promote themselves that other people around them will post till they'll say, oh my gosh, congratulations. So that is a sign that you're a bad ass is that other people are like, I'm shouting out your name without you having, you know what I mean? Like you don't do a lot of self-promotion, Speaker 2 (1m 60s): I'm terrible at it actually, Speaker 1 (2m 1s): Which is, which is amazing that you, that you're able to anyway, other people sing your praises, which I think is like really what we all want as artists, you know? So, yeah. So, okay. So why don't you tell me like how you ended up at the theater school, where you're from, like how that went down? Speaker 2 (2m 19s): So I I'm from I'm from Michigan. I'm also from Texas. I mostly grew up in Texas. Like the important years were there and I was working after, so I went to the theater school for grad school during this super brief period of time when there was a grad degree in design, I was the first lighting designer. I came in with someone else who only lasted the first quarter. He was like super unhappy. He kind of made me, I kind of glommed on to that. And I was like, oh, are we unhappy? I'll be unhappy. I, this Speaker 1 (2m 46s): Complained about everything. Speaker 2 (2m 48s): And then he, he left after first quarter and then it was awesome because they gave me all the things that he was supposed to do. But when I came in, I wasn't, I wasn't interested in the program. If I was going to be the very first person without a cohort, a word we did not use in 1994, there was no cohort. No, we just had classmates. Right. And yeah, he, so he, so, but I knew about him and then he ended up not finishing the program. So I was actually the first lighting master's lighting student since they had left the Goodman. Speaker 1 (3m 19s): Great. Speaker 2 (3m 20s): Yeah. And I had, so I'd been working in Houston doing an internship and Kevin Rigdon, who was the, at the time the resident designer at Steppenwolf had come down and did a show production of our town, which ultimately became a very important part of my life, my adult life in my own career. And so he came down and did our town with Jose Cantero directing. There was this huge thing. And I thought Kevin was great. I thought he was funny. And I loved his work and I was really interested in it. And he was adjunct at the theater school. And he actually told me not to, he was like, don't come I'm adjuncts. And they're just starting this master's program. You kind of want to find a place that's that's has more stuff going on. And then when I decided to apply to grad school the next year, for sure, I was looking at different places and somebody gave me the advice that you should really look at the people who design the team, the design work of the people that you're going to study with, because that's what they're going to teach you. Right. Great, Speaker 1 (4m 17s): Great advice. Speaker 2 (4m 18s): It was, it was really great advice. And the other was to look at the market, right? Like look for a market that you would want to be in. Like, you can get an amazing degree in Idaho. There's actually really good programs there, but the market's not there. And I'll tell ya. I did not realize until I was a college professor. This is so like blind of like the blindness to your privilege. Right. I did not understand the benefits I had in Chicago from going to school in Chicago until I watched my students graduating into it. That's when I realized what I could do for them. And I realized what my professors did for me. Speaker 1 (4m 54s): So interesting. I mean, I think, I think we don't, we don't ever, I don't know anyone that's really hipped. Maybe kids nowadays are young adults are really hip to it, but like, yeah. I mean, I didn't think of thinking of like, okay, well what, what is the sort of the place where I'm landing and who are my connections there? But I am learning now at 46 in Los Angeles that the people that I'm really connected to here in the industry are all from Chicago. Mostly a lot of them are from the theater school. It's crazy. Speaker 2 (5m 25s): It's so interesting. I, it's funny. I've been listening to your podcasts and what I love is like, I feel like it's the best Facebook ever. It's like, so, cause I'm like, oh, listen to all these hour long interviews with people, all due respect to someone who might forgotten existed. Right. You know, like I tumbled down the whole like conversation about the religion. And I was like, oh my God, I forgot all about that. I knew I knew those people. Right. It's just not my life anymore. Right. Speaker 1 (5m 49s): I mean, I I'm. Yeah. I'm also shocked. Like we have people on that, like remember us that I have no recollection of having with. And I think I always talked it up to excessive drinking and dirt back in my day. But like, I think it's just like, that's not our life anymore. Right. We're in a different time, different lifetimes. Speaker 2 (6m 10s): I took it. There's like three levels of people there's like from school. It's like the people that I still know and have to remind myself, I went to school with like, that's the connection. I there's the people that I, that I have no idea what happened to, so I love when they're on your podcast and then there's the people who are famous. So I think that I know what they're doing. Like I have a feeling, I feel like I know what Judy is up to, but I don't know what she's up to. I just know, Speaker 1 (6m 33s): Right. That she works all the time. Then we went to school with her. Right, right. It's so funny. It's, it's a such a wild thing. Okay. So you were like, I'm going to go, Speaker 2 (6m 42s): I'm going to go to grad school. And I looked at Chicago, I looked at DePaul because I really liked Kevin. And then I also looked, I was looking really heavily at Carnegie Mellon and, and he went to, I went to one of those. It's funny. I listen to you guys talk about it with the actors. But I went to one of those, like Roundup audition, interview things in Houston. And I interviewed with both schools at the same time. And Carnegie Mellon was like, well, we've been teaching this class for 20 years. It's a great class. And we've been doing this other thing for 20 years and it's awesome. And I was like, oh my God, you're so boring. And the program is actually massive and huge and revitalized now. But I think at that moment in time, it was just not, they were had a lot of faculty had been there. And then I went to the DePaul one and I talked to John Bridges. I was like, I offer you Chicago. Like I offer you the energy of John Bridges and Chicago. And I was like, oh, this is so much more interesting to me. Yeah. You know? And then I got lucky because what I didn't know is that John Colbert is like, I call him the Clark Kent of lighting design, because he seems super mild-mannered. And he's like Superman, that guy is a genius And a master teacher. And so the fact that I got to study with him for three years and the part of it was him creating curriculum that he felt I needed, even when, and I have these moments with my students now where I'm like, this is what you need to do. And they're like, I don't think that's what I think I would do better. I think this is what I need to study. And John would be like, yeah, you need that other thing. You know, I actually, years after school, a couple of years later, I applied for a, there was a, it's funny, it's funded by the NDA. So you can't call it a, it can't be a grant or fellowship. It just has to be like a program that you're on. But it was one where the theater communications group got money from the NDA and young, like early career designers and directors to observe, assist other artists because you can't make anything. If it's the NDA. Right. It's like the rules that came out of all this stuff in the nineties. Right. And John called me up and was like, you need to apply for that. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally applied for that. I was thinking next year. Right. Like you need to apply this year. And I was like, well, yeah, but see, here's the reason and this and that thing. And he was like this year and I was like, but really I was like, you know, this next year. And I was like, this year, this year I'll do it this year. And then I got it. Speaker 1 (9m 4s): Was it amazing? It Speaker 2 (9m 5s): Was, it's an interesting thing. It was amazing in some ways. And in some ways it like slows your career down because you have to do six months worth of work within two years and you for the money and you get paid as you go, but you don't get to make anything. So it can like become a thing where you're like getting to know these amazing people and working with these amazing people. But you also, can't Speaker 1 (9m 28s): Interesting Speaker 2 (9m 29s): And make it, you know, like it slows down like what you can do as your own artist. I will say though, that, as I'm saying these words, even I'm thinking about the people that I worked with and how they function in my life and how important they'd been, like how important some of them still are Speaker 1 (9m 43s): Still in your life. Wow. Yeah. Speaker 2 (9m 45s): They gave me an extension on it as well, because that was also the time that I, I was the associate designer on the first production of top dog underdog. And that was a show that they were actually TCG was trying to get somebody in that room. And they were being like, well, we don't really want somebody to observe us. And I got offered to work on it, but I had worked with the whole team before, so they wouldn't let me do it, but they let me extend it. So they were pretty generous about like, yeah, I'll be making things happen. Wow. Yeah. Okay. And I got into DePaul and so I came to DePaul, I came up and visited and it was, Speaker 1 (10m 16s): And you, you, did you work with, was there, were you working with someone, a lighting designer at DePaul named Keith? Speaker 2 (10m 26s): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny when somebody talks about him, I don't know if it was you or Gina talking about him. We'll talk about seeing the scout, the Macbeth that we did that I did with Stacy Cabalero who I, who was my best friend from grad school. Oh yeah. When I think about grad school, like Shawna Flannigan and I were roommates for years after, but, but Stacy and I were super close. We did. So we did like so many of our shows together there and he was talking, it was it, you that he was telling that he commented on the costume. Gina was sitting next to him, but she was talking about it. She was like, and Keith param. And he was like, he was looking at it. He was like, oh my God. And I was like, I literally was listening to the podcast like, oh God, did he say something about my lights? What did he say? What did he say? Then? Then it was about Stacy. And I was like, oh, that's so funny. One of my close friends still. Speaker 1 (11m 14s): So yeah, he was the first person that made me really interested in lighting. And he, when we closed the show, the yellow boat together, he gave me a print of his drawing of the lighting, like, oh wow. With lighting. And I still got it framed. And it was, I was like, oh, well this kind, because I think personally that as actors, we're, we, we have this thing of like, our ego is like crossed all the time. So then we, we have, we have an inflated sense of ego really that we have to build. And we think that acting is the most important thing. And it was the first time it, my land that's garbage. And the first thing to person to really say, to show me like, oh my gosh, look, this is all part of a huge deal. Like I am not the huge deal that lighting is, everything has its place. And then we come together, but I was like, oh, this is, this is an art that really ties the whole show together. Like really? And it's like unsung magic. And I think a lot of actors anyway, just think that the lights up here and that nobody is behind them being the artist, creating that at least young actors, Speaker 2 (12m 30s): Young ones. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I think you're right about that in school, it's often Speaker 1 (12m 35s): Lighting for you. Like, what is it, what was it about that? Speaker 2 (12m 39s): You know, it's funny, my mother at one point was like having this big guilt thing that she had never encouraged me into it when I was younger. But like all of the signs did, like, unless you knew this was a thing, it didn't make sense. I was, I loved theater. My grandmother studied theater in New York in the thirties and she taught college. Yeah. She'd studied with a bunch of amazing people. She didn't work professionally, but, but she would take us to theater. Right. So it was a huge influence for my mother then for me. And I loved being an audience member. I never wanted to be on stage. And I haven't been a couple of times. And also now that I'm like, in my fifties, it's so much easier. Like I'm much more willing to jump off the right off the cliff and try whatever. Cause why not? What is it gonna embarrass me right now, please, please. If I didn't embarrass myself to death in my twenties, I think we're good now. You're good. So, yeah, but I, I, I just always like things that related. So I, like, I was interested in photography at one point, but I loved reading. I loved going to the theater. I have this, I was terrible in high school. It trig. I like, oh, I got like, I barely got through trigonometry class. And the second semester of the math track I was on was like analytical or spacial geometry. And it was like, I was a savant. I was like, that's what that 3d grid looks like. I can see that thing in space and I could answer, am I my teacher? And I were both like, what is up? How do I know this really have a good sense of space? And so if you look at the combo of all those things, they all really go together into lighting design. If you, if you know that thing. So when I went to undergrad, I'm in San Antonio at this small college Trinity university, super liberal artsy, sort of the opposite of your, your, what do we call them? We call academic classes and academics. I feel like we did, but they definitely, yeah. Academics. I really was. I had a lot of intense like philosophy classes and religion classes, all super helpful for the career that I have. But I also, my first semester took a intro to theater class and I loved the lighting. And then the second semester we were, I had to register dead last, like first year, dead last, you can't get anything. And a friend of mine that was in my end theater class was like, well, I'm going to, she was going to be a high school drama teacher, her name's Emily Goodpasture. And she decided that she was going to end. So Gilbert and good pasture registering last. She was like, I'm taking this sledding class. Cause I know I have to take all of the design classes and the acting classes for my future career as a drama teacher. And I think she take this learning class with me and I did. And then throughout college I would do other things, but I kept coming back to lighting. I just, I love the magic of the way light reveals form. I love looking at tons of different kinds of light bulbs. You know, my friend wants me to come to become Tik TOK famous and support us by telling people how to light their homes. Speaker 1 (15m 32s): Well, here's the thing that I, I actually, when you just said that, I have to say like, I was like, oh, I wonder what she thinks about filters and add tic-tac and the way people use light and could do you look at photos and videos and things and say, oh, that would be so much better if you just lit it like this. Are you able to do do that? Speaker 2 (15m 53s): Oh, for sure. I mean, I definitely, yeah. Most things in my life revolve around, you know, I always laugh cause I still go in theaters and look up at the lights and people are like, oh, I saw you looking at the lights. And I'm like, do you look at the actors? Of course, I look at the lights, I'm trying to figure out like the craft of what they did or you know, or what the equipment that they got to work with was, and yeah, but I can't, even though I could probably find another career with lighting that is so much more lucrative and I'm sure that that is true, right? The best part of my job for me still is that everyday when I go to work in theater, actors tell stories in front of me on stage live. And that is my favorite thing. I love going to plays. I love seeing performance and I love it live. So the fact that I get to be connected to that in some way and another character in that for me is really awesome. Speaker 1 (16m 39s): That's fantastic. And I I've never thought about it that way, that like, I mean, obviously I've thought about that a little, that the lighting is another character, but again, it's like, there are, there is a human and maybe a team of humans behind that character and that it, that you enjoy hearing the live stories being told. And that's why the theater versus, you know, film and TV, right? Like it's not, I mean, I guess you could still, it could be live on set, but like, you wouldn't be like the designer of a show. I don't even know how it works in television and film. Like the lighting people. Is there a lighting designer behind film and TV? Speaker 2 (17m 21s): There are no. And because there's so many more people on a film, I, and or television, there's more people encompass the single jobs that we do in theater, the DP it'd be the DP and the gray and then the interest and then editing is also a part of what we do. So, so all of those things sort of come together in that way. It's funny, David Swayze, do you remember Dan Swayze? He, so he's in film now and he's doing super well. Yeah. He's an art director and film and, and we have not kept up. We keep up actually better than I do with a lot of people, but it's been a couple of years. Yeah. He, even with the pandemic, it's been a couple of years. Yeah. He, he was talking one time about what he loved about doing television or film, he specifically film. And the thing that he loves about it is that it's, it's so immediate and you can make changes. So like, you can say like, oh, we need to, we, instead of doing it this way, we think this would look better and you can actively do that thing, which in theater set designers can't do that. But the rest of us can, I was like, you're talking about lightening design. I can make the change in the instant. You know, sometimes I have to say, I have to hang a light for tomorrow, but sometimes I can do like, hang on. My moving light will do that for us. Right. This second, you know? So I get to, I get to, it's funny though, we were like super technical or technological. And then all of a sudden it was like projections and sound, which were, you know, a slide projector and a yes. And you know, MiniDisc jumped us and they can craft in the room and we still can't craft in the room in the same way that they can, which I'm actually kind of grateful for. I like that. We get to say like, we're going to think on that. We're gonna let us Speaker 1 (18m 60s): Oh, wait. And think on that. Yeah. You know, that's interesting. Cause I, I, yeah, I liked the idea too of you're you're like a problem solver. Oh Speaker 2 (19m 13s): Yes. Right. Speaker 1 (19m 14s): Yeah. I love problem solvers. I think that they're really great to have in a room because I think it teaches everybody that like there are mysteries to be solved in the theater. And there are people that are trained to solve them that aren't me and they, and that we can work together. But problem solvers, we need the problem-solvers in, in rooms, in the theater. Like it's fantastic. Speaker 2 (19m 46s): But you know, it's interesting. We solve different problems, problems. Like I was years ago, we have this event on the last day of the semester, second semester at Columbia called manifest, which is this massive arts festival. It spills onto the streets. We have puppet show puppet, parades down the street. And we have, it's really fantastic. Photography has like gallery exhibits, super fun. This school is crazy. And I love it. And years ago it poured down rain and they had had this thing that they were going to do. This is pretty so long ago that I think it was 2009, actually it poured down rain. And they'd had this event that they were going to do called manna text. And they were going to, people could submit their phone numbers and they would text and be like, go to this stage. And you'll, if you're the 10th person there you'll get a thing. And texting was still like, we, it, wasn't certainly not the, the way we lived our lives. Right, Speaker 1 (20m 39s): Right. Speaker 2 (20m 41s): Yes. It poured down. And as soon as it pours, like we had an outdoor stage and I always, I, I produced it for the department. I thank God. I don't have to anymore. But I, I had, I always kept the stage free inside so that if anything happened, we could move it in. So we moved everything in and we didn't have lights up in the theater. And I, so I walked downstairs and I started hanging some lights and doing some things and I was working with, oh, this is funny. I was working with Kendra Thulin oh yeah. He was working with me on that because Kendra and I worked together again, somebody, I almost forget I went to school with. And so I started hanging the lights and everything and she's just staring, like she can't do it. And my kids walked in, my students walked in and I was like, okay, here's what I need you to do to finish this up, do this, do this, do this, hang that, get these gels. These from the sides, this from the front, I'll see you guys. They were like, great. And Kendra and I walked out to do something. And she was like, that was amazing. And I was like, it's what we know how to do. And then five hours later Manitex has fallen apart. They can't figure out what to do. And I'm standing there. I've got these two seasoned subscriptions to the department, which I'm pretty sure were free anyway, back then. And I'm like, what am I supposed to do with these? And I turned there, we're doing a musical theater thing. And I turned to a couple of minutes, you'll theater students. And I was like, get these to an audience member. Somehow they went on stage and made this hilarious, adorable competition. That was like a trivia thing, like trivia about musical theater. Right. And they gave them to the winner. And I was like, we all, I, my students would have turned to the human next to them and been like, do you have these, you know, that's why we're all together. That's why Columbia administration is constantly like, you're you have too many majors in your department. It's so unwieldy. And it's like, because it takes a lot of people to create an entire world. Speaker 1 (22m 26s): It really does. That is really true. And everybody solves different problems. Like nobody that does it does. It does take a bunch of people. That's really interesting. And then when you graduated, what did you do? Like, were you like, I mean, really your career kind of took off. I mean, you're co you're pretty fancy lighting cider. So how did you, did you just like, love it and people loved you and you started getting jobs or like how did it work? Speaker 2 (22m 55s): Yeah. There was a couple of stages in it. I, you know, it's funny. I did the big funk and what's hilarious about that to me is that when we did it, I was like, where are we? We are in the front end of someone's apartment. It is bizarre. These people live here in the back of this place and they're letting us do a play in the front and like flash forward, I don't know, 15 years. And I, I am friends with those people. Amazing. I did some moment in conversation. I was like, that was your place that I did that weird shit show with the weird lights in the cans. Like, so I started doing storefront and I S I had started assisting at Steppenwolf while I was at school. So I had, I, at the time that I was in school, I had a foot in both bootcamps. And so it is, I definitely, yeah, I definitely was splitting my time. And so I started doing more assisting it's definite wall. And in the fall, he'll never hear this the fall, right after graduation, I assisted somebody who sort of well known to be difficult business of lighting side. And for whatever reason, we absolutely hit it off. And he is like my brother today. And so I started traveling with him. I started working on projects all over with him and because he was difficult, theater companies would bring me to projects that they wouldn't necessarily bring an assistant on normally, because he's really, he's like the best in the business, but they knew I could handle him. And they knew that I could handle him by saying, I need you to leave the theater right now. And I'll take care of things while you sit her down. And so we, I would go to, I went to New York with him starting in 1998. I assisted actually my second Broadway assisting job was with him. My first one was from Steppenwolf. So I simultaneously was with Steppenwolf and him. And so my assistant career was like really amping up. And I was in these important rooms like Suzan-Lori parks and George Wolfrey top dog underdog with at the time the first production was Don Cheadle and Jeffrey Wright. And then those staff replaced Jeffrey or repost on. And so I was getting to do a lot of those really awesome things. And simultaneously I was doing storefront, right. And, and honing my skills and building my skills and knowing how, like I could watch the people that assisted make these massive shows with so much stuff. And I would think about those ideas. It's exactly what they tell you to do in school. But yeah. And then I would go back to the storefront with 17 lights and some candles, and I could make something that was really interesting because I had a much stronger sense of how equipment worked. You know, Keith always says that his graduate school was assisting per the years that he did. And he particularly assisted this amazing designer named Jim Ingles. And he's like, that was my grad school because I learned how to use our tools and then how to pull back from them. Speaker 1 (25m 35s): And how did you get, I think for people listening, they're going to be, well, how, how did she get to assist at step it, well, how did she get in the room at Steppenwolf? Speaker 2 (25m 44s): It was that guy, Kevin, the one that was my, you know, he taught us, but he, I, he knew I came up here and I reached out and I was like, I really, I want to have, you know, I, I want to work with you. I want to learn from you. And he, it's funny because now he's in Houston. I met him, but he is, he was great. And my second year, because the guy I came in with dropped the program, my second and third year, I was all alone. Like my classes were by myself. And so what John would often do was put me in a class with someone else. So that, like, there was a, for some reason, the third year BFA lighting class in my second year only had one wedding student. So we paired for the class in the class time, we had somebody to sort of like riff on and talk to, and our levels were different. But a lot of the projects that we did, like we spent one full quarter just in the light lab, which we usually, most semester, most years we did just making projects. And like, here's a song like the song by next week, here's a musical theater song. You you're lighting it as if it's musical theater, somebody on there, like something has to represent the chorus, visually something has to represent, how do you, how do you actually change the song as if it's a stage? And we have like little blocks of wood and like little people and things that we would put up and make these vignettes. And so she and I were just sort of at different levels on that, but Kevin was the teacher and it was, I actually had a one-on-one with him. And he said at the beginning of the year, he was like, I just want your, your resume is going to look good when you finish this class. And that was crazily enough. It was the 20th anniversary of Stephan wall. So I was the second assistant on very child. Gosh, that to Gary Sinise director, I worked on every man that Frank Lottie directed, I worked on the Libertine, how much was in. I did, I was an assistant second assistant on all of those shows. And then by the fourth show of that season, I ended up the first assistant who, who stayed with him for a while, but was sort of grooming me to be the next step. And that's how that sort of works sometimes is like we, our assistants move up and become our full peers. And then we train somebody else up in that way. And I, by the fourth show, I was actually getting paid while I was doing it for credit and stuff at school. So I think in those days I wouldn't have gotten in trouble for it today. They would be like, what, what? Speaker 1 (27m 56s): Right. But then you were like, yeah. Speaker 2 (27m 58s): So they didn't know. Right. Speaker 1 (28m 0s): They weren't keeping track of that is so cool. Speaker 2 (28m 3s): So I got to do that. Speaker 1 (28m 4s): Yeah. And then, and then did you, did you, what was the journey like to, did you live in New York? Like, did you live in New York, ever full time? Speaker 2 (28m 13s): Not full time. I spent a lot of time crashing on David Swayze's spare, like his studio floor. I did a lot of that for many years and, and other friends, new Yorkers are particularly skilled in the art of letting you stay with them. And so now, I mean, I joke that I'm the Heather Gilbert school for wayward or Heather Gilbert home for wayward Chicagoans, because I there's so many people who move out of Chicago and come back to do a show and I let them, I let them live in my spare room. My friend, Samantha, who's this brilliant costume designer. I mean, for like two and a half years, we were like, she was like my, my roommate. She came and went, I have somebody coming on the Saturday after Thanksgiving while she does a show, you know? Cause I feel like I'm giving back for all those times that I crashed in New York. So I did a fair amount of assisting and stuff there. I've only, I guess I've only designed about three times there actually. One of them was pretty significant. So yes. Speaker 1 (29m 9s): Talk about that. Let's talk about that. How did that come about? What, what, yeah. That journey of life. Speaker 2 (29m 17s): Yeah. My other job in grad school was I was bartender. I, yeah. I used to bartend at a place called bar San Miguel up on Clark street. Oh yeah. Yeah. It was a non-equity bar. And I started bartending there after, I guess, had our second year. It's funny during that huge heat wave of 95, I went there for the first time with Chris Freeburg and Kate McKernan. Yes. Half a year later I was working there and, and Cromer used to come in there cause it was a theater bar and I met him there. And so our relationship started 26 years ago. Holy shit. Speaker 1 (29m 48s): As tender in a patron. Speaker 2 (29m 50s): Yeah. That's how we met. That's amazing. Yeah. He loves that. I think he loves it. That's part of our origin story because it's funny when we, when he tells it and writes it like in a letter of recommendation or whatever, and, and we didn't work together until 2003, but we've known each other. At one point we quit smoking at the same time. And at one point that was like the most significant thing. And then all of these things that we've done have happened since, but now I'm also still thinking that maybe the most significant thing that we ever did together was quit smoking. That's fantastic. Speaker 1 (30m 18s): It's very significant. And it also, you did it together and it's a real bonding experience when you quit. Something like that. Speaker 2 (30m 26s): Yeah. It was tough. It's been, it's been, it's been 19 years this year. Congratulations. So we started then, and that was the moment also that like I did a show with him finally, and we did this miracle on 34th street that we all were super in need of money at Christmas time. And he wrote this adaptation and it started Tracy Letts, which we think is like the funniest thing in the world now. And so we did that show and then when I started, and then I started teaching shortly thereafter and I started, I did, and I went to LSU for two years in Baton Rouge. And when I came back because I loved teaching students, they're the best thing in the world. Higher education can make you want to pull your hair out. And state schools are often really like that if you're in the arts. So it was a struggle, but I came back here to Columbia, which I had only vaguely known of when we were in school. And that's, I didn't know that everybody who got cut came here until I was teaching here. And then it was funny because when I would, I don't remember when the cuts system stopped, but whatever point it did was after I started here, because you would be doing like the summer sort of advising with incoming students, you do your, your couple of sessions in the summer and kids would come in and their credits would be this really weird number. And I was like, I don't understand why that's not three credits, but it was like two points, 1.3 threes and 2.3 twos. And it was sort of like thirds, but not even HOAs. And I, and I found out that was, that was the sign of somebody who was cut from the theater school because it was the theater school classes that were those year long things, trying to get them into semesters. Right, right. Yeah. I was like, oh yeah, that's what happened to everybody who quit. And so, so, but David talkier and so we, we start teaching a collaboration class together, all really. I didn't know, that's cool for directors and designers. And so then we were going to do a show here at school together, but he, and we started the process and we were like, live, we got to live what we teach them. We got to, we got it. We got to collaborate like that. And we had to pull out of the show because he took adding machine to New York instead. And then he came home from adding machine. And that's when he had been talking about our town that he was going to do with the hypocrites, which was, I worked a lot with the artistic director of the hypocrites I had. I had a long relationship. I, I mean, he's still my friend, he's just second grader, John grainy, Sean and I, Sean was simultaneously, the two of them were sort of like my biggest income and my income through them. And so I, so, but I wasn't a part of the hypocrites. I was eventually, I was not at that point. Right. And he, he kept talking to the show, but he had to ask the resonance designer, but the resident designer who's my sweet friend now said no. And they brought me on to our town and you know, it's sort of like, the rest is history. Like we, David and I have a long history at that point and we have a, we had a friendship, you know, but we now, you know, we had like the let's let's, you know, talk on the phone and watch Dexter in the middle of the night friendship a little bit before that. But we now have done, I think I, I counted when we opened bug last week and I think we've talked 16 shows together and, and some of them have been really life-changing for both of us. So yeah, Speaker 1 (33m 37s): That is fantastic. And I feel like if you find a collaborator that just I'm recently have, have started working with someone that I just, I work with Gina, and then I work with other people, but like when you find someone like that, where you, you just, it just works out. Like it just works. There's something about it. The only thing you can think of is like, you know, it is some sort of, it almost feels like some kind of cosmic thing that comes together that you are able to do. Great. You can facilitate each other's great work without ending the relationship and having crazy, you know, fights and things that don't lead to total destruction. That's magic. Speaker 2 (34m 24s): Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting cause directors go, I think they probably do this to actors too. If they have a deep relationship more than anything, they go stuff's right there. Like they just stopped calling and you're like, come on. Right. And Cobra, at one point it was in New York and working with new people and our town had come to a close. Right. Which, cause that sort of kept us together for a long time. We did that show that was over over seven year period of time, all the venues. And so we, we had, you know, we'd, we'd, we'd had a connection and we had done other couple of other new shoot new shows within that time. Yeah, sure. It wasn't just our town. Right. And then we'd done our streetcar that was really successful. And the Sam Rockwell was in really isn't that crazy. I did a person who was Sam Rockwell, who was so lovely. I came up and was like, oh my God, the lighting is so beautiful. I was like, oh, so I will be heard in it. So how do you know? But, Speaker 1 (35m 17s): But he, but even to say it, you know, like what a sweetheart? Yeah. I was at a wedding with him cause he was in a movie with my boss and he was lovely, a lovely and like a pro like a real, Speaker 2 (35m 31s): So I get so excited for him now all the time. So, but we had healed David actually sort of like wasn't calling. And I was like, oh, are we not going to work together anymore? And it's funny because I think in the history of our lives, it will, it's actually a blip, but it felt like a long time. And I was like, okay, well I guess that's okay. Like relationships do shift and, and partnerships do add, nobody wants to somebody forever. Absolutely. But I was like, I actually, we are, I am, you know, I was not a Columbia kid. I'm like, I have a pocket in a thousand ways. But yeah, I did work. I do teach at Columbia and I am a Sheldon Patinkin person. I'm one of his people and Sheldon taught you, you see each other's shows. That is what we do for each other. Right. I was like, I'm going to still see your shows. Right. We have way too much of a history for our friendship to die because we're not, we're not doing right. Right. So I kept, I stayed around. Yeah. I was like, I'm not going to, I'm going to come to me. I'm going to see your things. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to go see the band's visit or I'm going to go also, I get to see the bands visit then come on. Right. Or I'm going to see your comeback, little Sheba with Derek  in Boston because I love that. You know? And so when the time rolled around, I found out he was doing a production of next to normal at writers theater. And I loved that show and I had done a production of it that I kept texting him, being like, oh my God, I wish I were doing your production of this. Not that I didn't think that one was great, but it was much more of the sort of flash and trash version. Right. And I wanted to see David's version where there's like a dining room table and people around it. Right. You know? And I just, I was, so I texted him as soon as I heard from our friend Lilianne was like, I will do the show. And he woke up the next morning and he was like, he texted me back. I was like, it was kind of a non David text. I was like, this is very specific and kind, and I he's listing these things, but he was like, these are the, I woke up this morning and I saw your text. And I called Michael Halberstam, who was still the artistic director at the time. And so we have to hire Heather for the show and he said, okay, but we already hired Keith. And I was like, yeah, I fucking knew it. I knew I was going to be too late. I'm reading this text. And David's like, and I screwed up. And these are the reasons why, and he was like, writer's theaters are theater. It's our place. Which just so you know, he'd just done as many shows with Keith as he has with me. But he went through and he was like gave me their reasons that were really lovely. And then he said, Williamstown is going to reach out about a show, Adam rap's new play. And I was like, Williamstown really paid nothing. Why is that my constellation prize? I was totally annoyed. And then Williamston production was a struggle. Like we did this by the way, the play is the sound inside because we have not said the name of it if anybody's listening. And we, so we were, it was a struggle, you know, you have to do it very quickly. It's a big play for, for the, the lead actress in it and the actress in it. And, and it was a struggle for her. She, she definitely was acting out a little bit. Yeah, sure. And, and so, and you don't have much time and you're doing it with people who are, you know, these interns that I it's sort of famously a conversation in the industry right now about specifically how William sound carries those interns. So you're feeling guilty and also they don't know what they're doing as well. So there's a lot of pressure on that. Right. And I loved it. I loved that place so much. I read that play and I was like, oh my God, this is beautiful. It's this beautiful play about what we do when we were in need in our loneliness. And it's just, it's ju it just hit me. I don't know how Adam Rapp, who's this like hyper alpha masculine male actually has that insight into, I think, because it's insight into humanity and thus, he can change it into he's like, well, women feel the same thing men do. We're right. We're not different creatures. Right. So, yeah. Wow. And then, and then the show moved to New York a year later to Broadway to studio 54, which my God, I got to crawl around in studio 54. It took me crawl over that building. I was like, she'll be everything. Where did they keep the drugs? I'm so cute. Right. Right. Yeah. And we, I went up into the there's a dome and I got to go up into the dome and look down into the space and see where they store all the lights. And I got the full tour one day. It's great. The crew is the best crew in the entire world. And we did this beautiful play and people were, you know, it's funny. I, I actually was just, I submitted an application last night at 11:58 PM for full professorship. Like that's the highest level of, of teaching here. Yeah. And when you get tenure, you have to apply for that. But then once you've got it, you actually don't have to apply for anything, a promotion past that. Yeah. So I finally had committed to doing it. And so it's funny, I've been thinking so much about my philosophy of lighting and the way I approach it. But one of the things is that there's that old saw the best line design is lighting. The can't be seen, which is just a load of crap anywhere like Eddie in any scenario, like just say like you and I can't see the light where we are right now. Right. We see it. We know it's there. What they really mean is if I change, if I break the rules of the reality that I set up for you and notice that that's bad lighting design. Right, right. It's like, it's, I was compared to like, weirdly as a lighting professor, I had Meisner in this paper that I was writing yesterday. This document is writing. Cause it's like, it's that idea of living truthfully in imaginary circumstances. It's the same thing for us. We're creating those circumstances and we're trying to make it so that the actors can live in truth and everything has it. And if the rules are light comes out of the floor. Right. And it changes when I take a step, as long as I, as long as we create those rules for the audience. Right. And, and train them, they know what it is and then they follow it. Yeah. Speaker 1 (41m 6s): We'll go with you. It's consistency. It's authenticity. It's telling the truth in the moment and yeah. Staying true to what the vision is, whatever that vision is. But yeah, it also reminds me of like the good lighting is shouldn't be noticed or whatever is like, women should be seen and not heard. It's totally like fuck off. Speaker 2 (41m 28s): So I was talking about something about myself too, and I almost was talking about leadership and I almost said, you know, because I was called bossy as a child, and now we acknowledge that. That just meant I was a leader. Speaker 1 (41m 37s): Yeah. Right. It just meant that. And you know, it's interesting because my recollection of you in college was that you knew what the hell you were doing now. Granted, I mean, everyone has different, you know, I'm sure you didn't always know what you're doing. Cause you're a human being. But like my recollection of you is that you were like, I think maybe because also you were a grad student, right. So, but you definitely had vision. You were someone that I was like, oh, they know what they're doing and, and why they're doing it. So there was this thing about you that I really felt from the little, I knew that like you had motivation or like a, a direction and also a curiosity, but, and a, I just, I just think you were like very early on like a master of your craft, which meant that also masters in my view, like really study and take the shit seriously and have a lot of pride in their work. That was it. Like not a lot of people had a pro. I mean, I can speak for myself. Like it wasn't like, I, I felt like you could stand behind your work. I've always felt that like, when I read stuff about, about you or like when I follow your career, it's like you stand by your work. That's fucking phenomenal, you know? Speaker 2 (42m 55s): Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. I feel like a lot of that was also the training that we were getting in the, in the design program because we had, we had such good professors, particularly John, we, we, we had Franco Lovecchio was there for two years. Right. Who was the most wonderful, crazy human in the entire world. He would like, literally, like you'd be drawing in the studio and you'd be like drawing on something. And we all learned that you had to keep tracing paper over a culture, which is something called trace really. But we would, we would have trace taped to our drawing boards so that the minute he sat down, you could throw a trace over it. Or he would just start drawing all over you drawing. And, but he would like nudge you off your chair while he was like, fixing your time for you. And you'd tell him, be standing there watching him doing your work. And you were like, maybe, maybe not, maybe, maybe I'm in school. Maybe I want to learn how to do that. He was so funny though. So great. But then John Colbert has, is like really like taught us like the, that you have to be able to justify the work that you have to understand the rules of the piece that you and the rigor that goes behind that. And Nancy Beulah, who's the same. Who was just this amazing. She's the, she used to let, she used to let you do your project again, to get your grade up a little bit. And I would get like a B plus on something for her and I would do it again. And it wasn't even that I really needed. Like, I wasn't great. I wanted her to think I was working. Like I needed her to have that belief in Speaker 1 (44m 15s): G she, there was something. So she costumed me and said she just, she was so affirming. And also like you, there was something about she, she made me believe that she knew that I was going to be okay and that I was going to be a professional and that I could do it. Like there was, it was amazing. It was so much, there was like a strong confidence that she instilled in me as a costume person, which I, I just felt, again, she stood behind her work too. Like she was a bad-ass like, there was no like, ah, apologizing, there was no apologizing. And I feel like we just spent so much of our lives or at least I have apologizing that when I see someone like a career like yours, I'm like, oh, maybe this comes from not apologized. Like maybe not apologizing for, for us as women as in our work, you know, like this is badass work I'm doing and I'm going to continue to do it. I dunno. It's just a fierceness. Speaker 2 (45m 19s): Well, for me too, I feel like the thing that I'm proudest of in my, in my age and in my success is that I no longer feel like the pressure of having to be complete on the first day of tech. Like, I'm like, I'm going to put an incomplete, that thing up there, and I'm going to start to see how light is moving on these people and what that does. And I know it might not look good, but I'm not going to worry about that. It's going to be okay. You know, I'm going to be able to, I know I will make it look great. I know I can. I know that what I put up there for the first draft is going to be the right first draft, because I know what I'm doing and I know that it doesn't have to be complete. Right. And I'm fine with that. And like, David is really great for that because he has no expectations of that either. Speaker 1 (46m 3s): Yeah. That's fantastic. I mean, that's like really the difference between being product oriented and process oriented, right? Yeah. As an artist. And like, for me as a writer, like writing for TV, my first draft, if it's not, it's, it's terrible. And it's exactly where it's supposed to be. But if I have expectations or get in my own way and feel self-conscious about it, the whole thing is it doesn't work. So it's like, this is a shitty first draft. And by shitty, I mean, wonderful. You know what I mean? Speaker 2 (46m 32s): So wonderful first draft, right? It's never supposed to be the final thing. Totally. We were also taught at school that because we don't stick around for the product, right. We're not part of the product. We, I mean, we are, we're making a product, right. Because we're not ever, once the product goes, our AR is there, we're gone from it that we need to be really process-oriented. And that our process is what's going to get us hired aspect of working with us. Speaker 1 (46m 59s): I love that. And I feel like if we could, if we, I wish I would have learned that more and I'm not, I don't blame anyone for it. I just think it's the way the life is. But like, I'm, that's what I think I've spent my adult career as an artist becoming more process oriented and less product oriented and less and less judgy, right. About my and other people's process of, of like, it doesn't look the same. And so I think when you find a collaborator, which it sounds like David, what is for you that is also, and in the same sort of thought process in terms of how art is created, that's what works, because you're both sound like you're like no expectations for the first thing to be the thing. Like it changes it pivots, it moves, it's moving, it's breathing and moving. And I think that that's probably why your work together is so powerful and profound is that you both have this view life view right. Of art that works together really well. Right. So, and that sounds fine when I find those people. Those are the people I want to stay with and work with. Yeah. Speaker 2 (48m 7s): Yeah. And I think too, like one of the things getting back to sound inside and David, is that like, I, the thing that people often comment on is my use of darkness on stage that I actually commit fully to it, that I don't have a problem having actress speak from the dark. And I did the first time I ever had something that was really dark. I was like, oh God, like, you know, you're taught that, that can't be funny. Right. People actually laugh at things that here in the dark, it turns out. And so, but so being able to like be tiny and focused and just have a little bit of light, you know, and sound inside became that piece, which was like, we created the premise of the play is that this professor is telling the, talking to the audience and we don't really know what that's about. Like, I don't know. And I don't know the answer to that because I almost felt like knowing, like we don't want the audience to fully know. And I felt like if I know too much, then I, it may manifest. And so I never, even though Adam rap became, I tell him that he's the brother. I didn't get no offense to the brother. I did get, but I love Adam and I can ask him anything and talk to him about anything. But I have never asked him the truth of the play, which is, is it happening? Is it my meal? There's a character that we question is the character even real? Is she writing a book as she talks to the audience, this character, a Bella college professor, or is she, or there's a reference to a book at the end of the play that you like? Did she steal that book? And a lot of that was taken, there were a lot more concrete parts of the story when we did it Williamstown and they were taken out for the Broadway production to let the audience sort of float in their own uncertainty more. And so the idea is that Bella, this character who, who is this professor is actually the only fully fleshed out part of the play at the beginning. And that we slowly revealed the world as she creates it as she sort of illustrating it. And so that actually gave me the ability to have this production that was like using little amounts of light, a lot of darkness. Like I like, but also was in a way flashy, because we'd have like a big window on the side, on the wall of the sets. And then all of a sudden it would shift like instantly into a different time of day. And the shape of the window would change in the color of the window would change, but it was all very graphic. And then eventually within these like sequence of scenes in this office with this window, eventually the final one was this massive projection of a very real window. So, and so I got to work and I worked really closely with the production designer, who was the handsomest person in design. His name is Aaron Ryan. If you ever meet him, you're going to be like, I didn't know that designers looked like that. I thought only actors did. Wow. And he's the best dude in the land. I love him so much. Speaker 1 (50m 33s): So, so I guess yeah. Being mindful of your time, I just want to ask you if you, because we do have a lot of younger folks that listen to the show and that are interested in careers as designers, not just after, you know, now there's like such a, we're trying also to shine a light on designers. Cause it's awesome. Right. We don't, I mean, acting is not the only name of the game here. So what would you say if someone came to you and said, Hey, I'm interested in the theater. What does, what w what kind of person do I, it's kind of a hard question, but what kind of person do I need to be, to be a designer? I know if I'm a designer, Heather, Speaker 2 (51m 26s): I actually am really conscious of like the personality quirks of designers, because I watch it so much in my students. Right. And it's interesting because I am, I can't make a, I can not build a model. I cannot build a model. I, it was hated in school and it, but it's this really sort of detailed private work. And I'm a much, I'm super extroverted, which that doesn't mean all lighting designer extroverted, but like, I have to be able to work out here. Like I don't work here. I have to be able to work openly. I also have to work in public. Everybody is there when actors and designers have that rare thing in which actors and lighting designers, I should say, we, all of our work is done in front of other people. You cannot, like, you might have a smaller room and only a couple people at first, but like, it's still the same and we don't get to make it privately. And then somebody builds it and we go, oh, paint it that way. Or even like, listen to in our headphones. No, you have to be okay with that. You have to be really good with like a super high level of pressure. And you have to let it roll off of you. I worked, I love Sean Graney. This will not surprise anybody who knew Shawn grainy or losing his Shaun could be very difficult in a tech. I'm not the easiest dude, always in the world, but I love him to death. And there was an actor that we used to work with who just would Marvel. We worked with this person so many times and was a big part of the company. And with Marvel, it, me, because Sean would get tense and it'd be like really stressful and like pushing, pushing to get it done faster. And I would just let it all roll off. And it's because I have to be able to do that and know that this is my time. Right. Reclaiming my time. I was like, oh yeah, I do that all the time because I know that this is when I can do the thing. I also have to know when I can say, Hey, you know what? I can do this later. I can do this without people, or it's taking too long and it's slowing us down and it's, it's killing our process. It's not letting us all move forward as a group. And I'll deal with this thing later. Right. But I also know that I have to do it now. And that's the way this process works until somebody changes it, I'm going to do it in the room. And so I will take my time. I have to be able to work as quickly as I can in that. And I have to know that I have to deal with the pressures from other people. Speaker 1 (53m 27s): So it's got a little bit of, it's interesting. It's a it's human relationships that makes with time management mixed with reclaiming your time mixed with knowing when to, yeah. When you can let go and say, okay, I'm going to do, but like, I, I don't think people, at least I'll speak for myself. Younger people think that you need, well, the ones I encounter my students too, like, you need people skills as a designer. Oh, you need people skills. Like, just because you're not an actor doesn't mean you don't, you know, you got to work with people. And I think your, from your interview, it's really clear that like, there's all different kinds of people you're going to work with, and you're not going to get along with all of them, but you can also figure out a way, right. To still have the process, be one of where you get your work done, get rehired. If that's what you want and still be a kind human and work, you know, in the industry. And I think that's really interesting that you, the rolling off the back. Yeah. Because people in tech and in tech and intense situations get bonkers bomb, bonkers, bonkers Speaker 2 (54m 30s): Years ago, I was assisting on a production of the Scottish play in New York that George Wolf was directing that Angela Bassett and Alec Baldwin were starring in and the pressure and the pressure on it was super high. And then everybody who was a secondary person was like, we have Schreiber and Michael Hall and Zach brown. Speaker 1 (54m 48s): I mean, it was our secondary Speaker 2 (54m 50s): People. Cause they were babies that like Zach rabbit just finished school. Like let's start on it. And we, and the pressure was super high. And, and we were on the third floor of the building and the electric shop was in the basement. And my designer was like yelling at me and I would pass it on. I would pass that energy on. And the assistant lighting supervisor took me out for pizza and was like, you can't do that. And he was like, you have to be the wall. And if you can't be the wall, this might not be your job. He's like, you can still be a designer, but assisting might not be the way you got there. And this guy must've been, I mean, he was maybe my age. He was probably younger than me. His name was Todd greatest thing that ever happened to me. Yep. It changed me forever. I was like, you're right. That is my job. And actually, I'm very good at that. I am a cheerleader and I'm a person who cares about people and I have no problem. I mean, there will be times that I'm not trying to say, I'm never put pressure on the people around me. I get impatient too. I'm not a patient person, but, but I can, I can try to protect the people around me. And I, and I love my team that people who make the lighting thing happen, you know, I kept, I, we won the, I did this production bug with David right before the pandemic. And then we just did it again unless we could set them off. And we won the Jeff award for it. As I like to say, we won the Jeff award. Like my team won that award. I didn't do it by myself, but I actually took it into the first day of tech and we put it on the tech table for the second round. And I was like, everybody had my crew put a light on it and they would run the light up. And it was like, everybody may give me notes through the Jeff. The Jeff looks up notes for me. That's hilarious. I will speak to none of you. I will speak to Carrie Coon, Carrie Coon also want to Jeff that she may speak directly to me because what else do you do with an award? There's so weird there, Speaker 1 (56m 30s): Right there, weirdness. And they're weird and they're nice and they're in your effort. And it's the only way we have really, as human acknowledged this stuff, but in a, in a sort of ceremony kind of a way, but like, all right, well, I just thank you for talking Speaker 2 (56m 46s): Absolutely Speaker 1 (56m 47s): Pleasing. And I, I, you know, I just, I'm always left when I talk to someone like you I'm like left with this wish for young women to know that there are so many jobs and careers in the theater that you don't just have to be an actor or an actress or whatever you want to call yourself. There are so many things. And, and by, and for me also, it's like, oh my gosh, please find someone that's doing the thing you might want to do and ask them questions and see if you can get information, you know, like an informational interview, which is essentially what we do on this podcast is do an informational interview with people we went to school with and other people, but like get the information. So thank you for putting the information about your career and your journey out there for us. And we'll, we'll keep in touch and you'll get a copy to review before we air it. And, but just, thank you. Thank you so much. Speaker 2 (57m 45s): Totally. I'll send you guys some pictures I have to please. And, you know, they're printed. I actually had to go into a box and found Speaker 1 (57m 51s): Them. It's a whole thing. Speaker 2 (57m 53s): Yeah. Much like everybody else. I went through all of those during the pandemic. So I was trying to figure if I had one with me and Keith, cause that would be awesome. Speaker 1 (57m 60s): That would be fine. Speaker 2 (58m 3s): It's funny. I love telling people in the, in the lighting community that like I drove her, we've been friends for so long. I drove him home from college for Christmas, his first year of college, you know, and then, and now he's like, like he did his first runway show at studio 54. And then I did my first Broadway show in studio 54. And like, yeah, I really love getting to share all of that with him. And he's a true and great artist. And I just, S

The Gemini Full Moon on Dec 18/19 2021 is the third of six Full Moon's at 27˚, the number of the "Boddhisatva" (one who reaches deep spiritual attainments and incarnates again to help his human brothers and sisters attain Enlightenment). We are in a portal of IMMENSE regeneration and alchemical change that is giving us a huge opportunity to create something new. Register for the Venus Retrograde Heroine's Journey at https://louiseedington.com/venus-journey-2021/ Check out the chart talisman at https://glnk.io/mn9x/louise-edington Chandra Symbol: A cloud in the shape of a rabbit. Fabulous inward visualizing gifts and streams. Picturing the flux of life with extraordinary acuity of fluent perception. Witnessing with rapt fascination how everything moves, changes, and stays the same. Granted a golden eye for phenomena and the rapid-fire streaming through of images and impressions. Always watching, always just about beside yourself with the clarity of it, the pure suchness of this world. Immense difficulty in communicating and sharing this God's eye view. Words will not contain it. You must find a physical language and an imaginative landscape that can be telepathically transmitted. You have inside, the greatest gifts to share and spread. And the life challenge becomes to form the vessel and find the ways to get it across that evolution is really happening, and multidimensional reality is already here now to bring us all alive, even when the outer mind is still drawing blanks on what the fuss is about. Book a consultation. https://members.louiseedington.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/weirdlycosmic/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/weirdlycosmic/support

Have you ever figured out halfway through a conversation that you and another person were on totally different pages? Reading the Bible can feel like this at times. We're all products of our cultures, families, and environments, and it affects how we understand others. In this episode, Tim, Jon, and Carissa prepare us for a cross-cultural conversation with the Bible by discussing the cultural values of the biblical authors.View full show notes from this episode →Timestamps Part one (00:00-13:20)Part two (13:20-25:30)Part three (25:30-41:15)Part four (41:15-48:00)Part five (48:00-59:45)Part six (59:45-1:10:33)Referenced ResourcesThe Biblical Cosmos: A Pilgrim's Guide to the Weird and Wonderful World of the Bible, Robin A. ParryApostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters, Michael J. GormanPaul and the Gift, John M.G. BarclayInterested in more? Check out Tim's library here.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTS“Scream” by Moby“Euk's First Race” by David Gummel“Where Peace and Rest Are Found” by Greyflood“Mood” by Lemmino“A New Year” by Scott BuckleyShow produced by Cooper Peltz. Edited by Dan Gummel, Zach McKinley, and Frank Garza. Show notes by Lindsey Ponder. Powered and distributed by Simplecast.