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Following the FA Cup 5th round weekend it's all change again on the outlook for future blanks and doubles in FPL. Clayton joins James for a discussion on how to play Chips during Chip season with a stark warning from James: "You're all f*****" With many of the favourites out of the FA Cup the competition looks wide open and that creates complications for what can happen. There's discussion on the projected blanks and doubles now but with references for why certain things can and can not happen, with concern that we could still be in for some unexpected scheduling. There's discussion on all the chips and when best might be to use them, with awareness of the potential hinderances of some of the more powerful chips as such as the Bench Boost and Assistant Manager. Alternatives are given including a radical potential path for those who may have all their chips left. But not all is lost for those who are short with James of the belief that he can navigate the doubles of 33 and blanks of 34 without a chip... and that's because the predicted doubles may not be as kind as they appear on paper. Tomorrow on on Planet FPL: The Clayton & James Show Today on Patreon: The Midweek FPL Dilemma (AT) For the full Planet FPL schedule this week, including our offering on Patreon view this post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/content-schedule-123512480 Want to become a member of our FPL community and support the Podcast?  Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/planetfpl Follow James on Twitter/x: https://twitter.com/PlanetFPLPod Follow Suj on Twitter/x: https://twitter.com/sujanshah Follow Clayton on Twitter/x: https://twitter.com/claytsAFC Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PlanetFPL Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/planetfpl Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/planetfpl #FPL #FantasyPremierLeague #ChipStrategy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, James Marriott and I discuss who we think are the best twenty English poets. This is not the best poets who wrote in English, but the best British poets (though James snuck Sylvia Plath onto his list…). We did it like that to make it easier, not least so we could base a lot of our discussion on extracts in The Oxford Book of English Verse (Ricks edition). Most of what we read out is from there. We read Wordsworth, Keats, Hardy, Milton, and Pope. We both love Pope! (He should be regarded as one of the very best English poets, like Milton.) There are also readings of Herrick, Bronte, Cowper, and MacNiece. I plan to record the whole of ‘The Eve of St. Agnes' at some point soon.Here are our lists and below is the transcript (which may have more errors than usual, sorry!)HOGod Tier* Shakespeare“if not first, in the very first line”* Chaucer* Spenser* Milton* Wordsworth* Eliot—argue for Pope here, not usually includedSecond Tier* Donne* Herbert* Keats* Dryden* Gawain poet* Tom O'Bedlam poetThird Tier* Yeats* Tennyson* Hopkins* Coleridge* Auden* Shelley* MarvellJMShakespeareTier* ShakespeareTier 1* Chaucer* Milton* WordsworthTier 2* Donne* Eliot* Keats* Tennyson* Spencer* Marvell* PopeTier 3* Yeats* Hopkins* Blake* Coleridge* Auden* Shelley* Thomas Hardy* Larkin* PlathHenry: Today I'm talking to James Marriott, Times columnist, and more importantly, the writer of the Substack Cultural Capital. And we are going to argue about who are the best poets in the English language. James, welcome.James: Thanks very much for having me. I feel I should preface my appearance so that I don't bring your podcast and disrepute saying that I'm maybe here less as an expert of poetry and more as somebody who's willing to have strong and potentially species opinions. I'm more of a lover of poetry than I would claim to be any kind of academic expert, just in case anybody thinks that I'm trying to produce any definitive answer to the question that we're tackling.Henry: Yeah, no, I mean that's the same for me. We're not professors, we're just very opinionated boys. So we have lists.James: We do.Henry: And we're going to debate our lists, but what we do agree is that if we're having a top 20 English poets, Shakespeare is automatically in the God Tier and there's nothing to discuss.James: Yeah, he's in a category of his own. I think the way of, because I guess the plan we've gone for is to rather than to rank them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 into sort of, what is it, three or four broad categories that we're competing over.Henry: Yes, yes. TiersJames: I think is a more kind of reasonable way to approach it rather than trying to argue exactly why it should be one place above Shelly or I don't know, whatever.Henry: It's also just an excuse to talk about poets.James: Yes.Henry: Good. So then we have a sort of top tier, if not the first, in the very first line as it were, and you've got different people. To me, you've got Chaucer, Milton, and Wordsworth. I would also add Spenser and T.S. Eliot. So what's your problem with Spenser?James: Well, my problem is ignorance in that it's a while since I've read the Fairy Queen, which I did at university. Partly is just that looking back through it now and from what I remember of university, I mean it is not so much that I have anything against Spenser. It's quite how much I have in favour of Milton and Wordsworth and Chaucer, and I'm totally willing to be argued against on this, but I just can't think that Spenser is in quite the same league as lovely as many passages of the Fairy Queen are.Henry: So my case for Spenser is firstly, if you go through something like the Oxford Book of English Verse or some other comparable anthology, he's getting a similar page count to Shakespeare and Milton, he is important in that way. Second, it's not just the fairy queen, there's the Shepherd's Calendar, the sonnets, the wedding poems, and they're all highly accomplished. The Shepherd's Calendar particularly is really, really brilliant work. I think I enjoyed that more as an undergraduate, actually, much as I love the Fairy Queen. And the third thing is that the Fairy Queen is a very, very great epic. I mean, it's a tremendous accomplishment. There were lots of other epics knocking around in the 16th century that nobody wants to read now or I mean, obviously specialists want to read, but if we could persuade a few more people, a few more ordinary readers to pick up the fairy queen, they would love it.James: Yes, and I was rereading before he came on air, the Bower of Bliss episode, which I think is from the second book, which is just a beautifully lush passage, passage of writing. It was really, I mean, you can see why Keats was so much influenced by it. The point about Spenser's breadth is an interesting one because Milton is in my top category below Shakespeare, but I think I'm placing him there pretty much only on the basis of Paradise Lost. I think if we didn't have Paradise Lost, Milton may not even be in this competition at all for me, very little. I know. I don't know if this is a heresy, I've got much less time for Milton's minor works. There's Samuel Johnson pretty much summed up my feelings on Lycidas when he said there was nothing new. Whatever images it can supply are long ago, exhausted, and I do feel there's a certain sort of dryness to Milton's minor stuff. I mean, I can find things like Il Penseroso and L'Allegro pretty enough, but I mean, I think really the central achievement is Paradise Lost, whereas Spenser might be in contention, as you say, from if you didn't have the Fairy Queen, you've got Shepherd's Calendar, and all this other sort of other stuff, but Paradise Lost is just so massive for me.Henry: But if someone just tomorrow came out and said, oh, we found a whole book of minor poetry by Virgil and it's all pretty average, you wouldn't say, oh, well Virgil's less of a great poet.James: No, absolutely, and that's why I've stuck Milton right at the top. It's just sort of interesting how unbelievably good Paradise Lost is and how, in my opinion, how much less inspiring the stuff that comes after it is Samson Agonistes and Paradise Regained I really much pleasure out of at all and how, I mean the early I think slightly dry Milton is unbelievably accomplished, but Samuel Johnson seems to say in that quote is a very accomplished use of ancient slightly worn out tropes, and he's of putting together these old ideas in a brilliant manner and he has this sort of, I mean I guess he's one of your late bloomers. I can't quite remember how old he is when he publishes Paradise Lost.Henry: Oh, he is. Oh, writing it in his fifties. Yeah.James: Yeah, this just extraordinary thing that's totally unlike anything else in English literature and of all the poems that we're going to talk about, I think is the one that has probably given me most pleasure in my life and the one that I probably return to most often if not to read all the way through then to just go over my favourite bits and pieces of it.Henry: A lot of people will think Milton is heavy and full of weird references to the ancient world and learned and biblical and not very readable for want of a better word. Can you talk us out of that? To be one of the great poets, they do have to have some readability, right?James: Yeah, I think so, and it's certainly how I felt. I mean I think it's not a trivial objection to have to Milton. It's certainly how I found him. He was my special author paper at university and I totally didn't get on with him. There was something about his massive brilliance that I felt. I remember feeling like trying to write about Paradise Lost was trying to kind of scratch a huge block of marble with your nails. There's no way to get a handle on it. I just couldn't work out what to get ahold of, and it's only I think later in adulthood maybe reading him under a little less pressure that I've come to really love him. I mean, the thing I would always say to people to look out for in Milton, but it's his most immediate pleasure and the thing that still is what sends shivers done my spine about him is the kind of cosmic scale of Paradise Lost, and it's almost got this sort of sci-fi massiveness to it. One of my very favourite passages, which I may inflict on you, we did agree that we could inflict poetry on one another.Henry: Please, pleaseJames: It's a detail from the first book of Paradise Lost. Milton's talking about Satan's architect in hell Mulciber, and this is a little explanation of who or part of his explanation of who Mulciber is, and he says, Nor was his name unheard or unadoredIn ancient Greece; and in Ausonian landMen called him Mulciber; and how he fellFrom Heaven they fabled, thrown by angry JoveSheer o'er the crystal battlements: from mornTo noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,A summer's day, and with the setting sunDropt from the zenith, like a falling star,On Lemnos, th' Aegaean isle. Thus they relate,ErringI just think it's the sort of total massiveness of that universe that “from the zenith to like a falling star”. I just can't think of any other poet in English or that I've ever read in any language, frankly, even in translation, who has that sort of scale about it, and I think that's what can most give immediate pleasure. The other thing I love about that passage is this is part of the kind of grandeur of Milton is that you get this extraordinary passage about an angel falling from heaven down to th' Aegean Isle who's then going to go to hell and the little parenthetic remark at the end, the perm just rolls on, thus they relate erring and paradise lost is such this massive grand thing that it can contain this enormous cosmic tragedy as a kind of little parenthetical thing. I also think the crystal battlements are lovely, so wonderful kind of sci-fi detail.Henry: Yes, I think that's right, and I think it's under appreciated that Milton was a hugely important influence on Charles Darwin who was a bit like you always rereading it when he was young, especially on the beagle voyage. He took it with him and quotes it in his letters sometimes, and it is not insignificant the way that paradise loss affects him in terms of when he writes his own epic thinking at this level, thinking at this scale, thinking at the level of the whole universe, how does the whole thing fit together? What's the order behind the little movements of everything? So Milton's reach I think is actually quite far into the culture even beyond the poets.James: That's fascinating. Do you have a particular favourite bit of Paradise Lost?Henry: I do, but I don't have it with me because I disorganised and couldn't find my copy.James: That's fair.Henry: What I want to do is to read one of the sonnets because I do think he's a very, very good sonnet writer, even if I'm going to let the Lycidas thing go, because I'm not going to publicly argue against Samuel Johnson.When I consider how my light is spent,Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,And that one Talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my Soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest he returning chide;“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”I fondly ask. But patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies, “God doth not needEither man's work or his own gifts; who bestBear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His stateIs Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speedAnd post o'er Land and Ocean without rest:They also serve who only stand and wait.”I think that's great.James: Yeah. Okay. It is good.Henry: Yeah. I think the minor poems are very uneven, but there are lots of gems.James: Yeah, I mean he is a genius. It would be very weird if all the minor poems were s**t, which is not really what I'm trying… I guess I have a sort of slightly austere category too. I just do Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth, but we are agreed on Wordsworth, aren't we? That he belongs here.Henry: So my feeling is that the story of English poetry is something like Chaucer Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, T.S. Eliot create a kind of spine. These are the great innovators. They're writing the major works, they're the most influential. All the cliches are true. Chaucer invented iambic pentameter. Shakespeare didn't single handedly invent modern English, but he did more than all the rest of them put together. Milton is the English Homer. Wordsworth is the English Homer, but of the speech of the ordinary man. All these old things, these are all true and these are all colossal achievements and I don't really feel that we should be picking between them. I think Spenser wrote an epic that stands alongside the works of Shakespeare and Milton in words with T.S. Eliot whose poetry, frankly I do not love in the way that I love some of the other great English writers cannot be denied his position as one of the great inventors.James: Yeah, I completely agree. It's funny, I think, I mean I really do love T.S. Eliot. Someone else had spent a lot of time rereading. I'm not quite sure why he hasn't gone into quite my top category, but I think I had this—Henry: Is it because he didn't like Milton and you're not having it?James: Maybe that's part of it. I think my thought something went more along the lines of if I cut, I don't quite feel like I'm going to put John Donne in the same league as Milton, but then it seems weird to put Eliot above Donne and then I don't know that, I mean there's not a very particularly fleshed out thought, but on Wordsworth, why is Wordsworth there for you? What do you think, what do you think are the perms that make the argument for Wordsworth having his place at the very top?Henry: Well, I think the Lyrical Ballads, Poems in Two Volumes and the Prelude are all of it, aren't they? I'm not a lover of the rest, and I think the preface to the Lyrical Ballads is one of the great works of literary criticism, which is another coin in his jar if you like, but in a funny way, he's much more revolutionary than T.S. Eliot. We think of modernism as the great revolution and the great sort of bringing of all the newness, but modernism relies on Wordsworth so much, relies on the idea that tradition can be subsumed into ordinary voice, ordinary speech, the passage in the Wasteland where he has all of them talking in the bar. Closing time please, closing time please. You can't have that without Wordsworth and—James: I think I completely agree with what you're saying.Henry: Yeah, so I think that's for me is the basis of it that he might be the great innovator of English poetry.James: Yeah, I think you're right because I've got, I mean again, waiting someone out of my depth here, but I can't think of anybody else who had sort of specifically and perhaps even ideologically set out to write a kind of high poetry that sounded like ordinary speech, I guess. I mean, Wordsworth again is somebody who I didn't particularly like at university and I think it's precisely about plainness that can make him initially off-putting. There's a Matthew Arnold quote where he says of Wordsworth something like He has no style. Henry: Such a Matthew Arnold thing to say.James: I mean think it's the beginning of an appreciation, but there's a real blankness to words with I think again can almost mislead you into thinking there's nothing there when you first encounter him. But yeah, I think for me, Tintern Abbey is maybe the best poem in the English language.Henry: Tintern Abbey is great. The Intimations of Immortality Ode is superb. Again, I don't have it with me, but the Poems in Two Volumes. There are so many wonderful things in there. I had a real, when I was an undergraduate, I had read some Wordsworth, but I hadn't really read a lot and I thought of I as you do as the daffodils poet, and so I read Lyrical Ballads and Poems in Two Volumes, and I had one of these electrical conversion moments like, oh, the daffodils, that is nothing. The worst possible thing for Wordsworth is that he's remembered as this daffodils poet. When you read the Intimations of Immortality, do you just think of all the things he could have been remembered for? It's diminishing.James: It's so easy to get into him wrong because the other slightly wrong way in is through, I mean maybe this is a prejudice that isn't widely shared, but the stuff that I've never particularly managed to really enjoy is all the slightly worthy stuff about beggars and deformed people and maimed soldiers. Wandering around on roads in the lake district has always been less appealing to me, and that was maybe why I didn't totally get on with 'em at first, and I mean, there's some bad words with poetry. I was looking up the infamous lines from the form that were mocked even at the time where you know the lines that go, You see a little muddy pond Of water never dry. I've measured it from side to side, 'Tis three feet long and two feet wide, and the sort of plainness condescend into banality at Wordsworth's worst moments, which come more frequently later in his career.Henry: Yes, yes. I'm going to read a little bit of the Intimations ode because I want to share some of this so-called plainness at its best. This is the third section. They're all very short Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,And while the young lambs boundAs to the tabor's sound,To me alone there came a thought of grief:A timely utterance gave that thought relief,And I again am strong:The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,And all the earth is gay;Land and seaGive themselves up to jollity,And with the heart of MayDoth every Beast keep holiday;—Thou Child of Joy,Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy.And I think it's unthinkable that someone would write like this today. It would be cringe, but we're going to have a new sincerity. It's coming. It's in some ways it's already here and I think Wordsworth will maybe get a different sort of attention when that happens because that's a really high level of writing to be able to do that without it descending into what you just read. In the late Wordsworth there's a lot of that really bad stuff.James: Yeah, I mean the fact that he wrote some of that bad stuff I guess is a sign of quite how carefully the early stuff is treading that knife edge of tripping into banality. Can I read you my favourite bit of Tintern Abbey?Henry: Oh yes. That is one of the great poems.James: Yeah, I just think one of mean I, the most profound poem ever, probably for me. So this is him looking out over the landscape of Tinton Abbey. I mean these are unbelievably famous lines, so I'm sure everybody listening will know them, but they are so good And I have feltA presence that disturbs me with the joyOf elevated thoughts; a sense sublimeOf something far more deeply interfused,Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,And the round ocean and the living air,And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:A motion and a spirit, that impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,And rolls through all things. Therefore am I stillA lover of the meadows and the woodsAnd mountains; and of all that we beholdFrom this green earth; of all the mighty worldOf eye, and ear,—both what they half create,And what perceive; well pleased to recogniseIn nature and the language of the senseThe anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soulOf all my moral being.I mean in a poem, it's just that is mind blowingly good to me?Henry: Yeah. I'm going to look up another section from the Prelude, which used to be in the Oxford Book, but it isn't in the Ricks edition and I don't really know whyJames: He doesn't have much of the Prelude does he?Henry: I don't think he has any…James: Yeah.Henry: So this is from an early section when the young Wordsworth is a young boy and he's going off, I think he's sneaking out at night to row on the lake as you do when you with Wordsworth, and the initial description is of a mountain. She was an elfin pinnace; lustilyI dipped my oars into the silent lake,And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boatWent heaving through the water like a swan;When, from behind that craggy steep till thenThe horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,As if with voluntary power instinct,Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,And growing still in stature the grim shapeTowered up between me and the stars, and still,For so it seemed, with purpose of its ownAnd measured motion like a living thing,Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,And through the silent water stole my wayBack to the covert of the willow tree;It's so much like that in Wordsworth. It's just,James: Yeah, I mean, yeah, the Prelude is full of things like that. I think that is probably one of the best moments, possibly the best moments of the prelude. But yeah, I mean it's just total genius isn't it?Henry: I think he's very, very important and yeah, much more important than T.S. Eliot who is, I put him in the same category, but I can see why you didn't.James: You do have a little note saying Pope, question mark or something I think, don't you, in the document.Henry: So the six I gave as the spine of English literature and everything, that's an uncontroversial view. I think Pope should be one of those people. I think we should see Pope as being on a level with Milton and Wordsworth, and I think he's got a very mixed reputation, but I think he was just as inventive, just as important. I think you are a Pope fan, just as clever, just as moving, and it baffles me that he's not more commonly regarded as part of this great spine running through the history of English literature and between Milton and Wordsworth. If you don't have Pope, I think it's a missing link if you like.James: I mean, I wouldn't maybe go as far as you, I love Pope. Pope was really the first perch I ever loved. I remember finding a little volume of Pope in a box of books. My school library was chucking out, and that was the first book of poetry I read and took seriously. I guess he sort of suffers by the fact that we are seeing all of this through the lens of the romantics. All our taste about Shakespeare and Milton and Spenser has been formed by the romantics and hope's way of writing the Satires. This sort of society poetry I think is just totally doesn't conform to our idea of what poetry should be doing or what poetry is. Is there absolutely or virtually nobody reads Dryden nowadays. It's just not what we think poetry is for that whole Augustine 18th century idea that poetry is for writing epistles to people to explain philosophical concepts to them or to diss your enemies and rivals or to write a kind of Duncia explaining why everyone you know is a moron. That's just really, I guess Byron is the last major, is the only of figure who is in that tradition who would be a popular figure nowadays with things like English bards and scotch reviewers. But that whole idea of poetry I think was really alien to us. And I mean I'm probably formed by that prejudice because I really do love Pope, but I don't love him as much as the other people we've discussed.Henry: I think part of his problem is that he's clever and rational and we want our poems always to be about moods, which may be, I think why George Herbert, who we've both got reasonably high is also quite underrated. He's very clever. He's always think George Herbert's always thinking, and when someone like Shakespeare or Milton is thinking, they do it in such a way that you might not notice and that you might just carry on with the story. And if you do see that they're thinking you can enjoy that as well. Whereas Pope is just explicitly always thinking and maybe lecturing, hectoring, being very grand with you and as you say, calling you an idiot. But there are so many excellent bits of Pope and I just think technically he can sustain a thought or an argument over half a dozen or a dozen lines and keep the rhyme scheme moving and it's never forced, and he never has to do that thing where he puts the words in a stupid order just to make the rhyme work. He's got such an elegance and a balance of composition, which again, as you say, we live under romantic ideals, not classical ones. But that doesn't mean we should be blind to the level of his accomplishment, which is really, really very high. I mean, Samuel Johnson basically thought that Alexander Pope had finished English poetry. We have the end of history. He had the end of English poetry. Pope, he's brought us to the mightiest of the heroic couplers and he's done it. It's all over.James: The other thing about Pope that I think makes us underrate him is that he's very charming. And I think charm is a quality we're not big on is that sort of, but I think some of Pope's charm is so moving. One of my favourite poems of his is, do you know the Epistle to Miss Blount on going into the country? The poem to the young girl who's been having a fashionable season in London then is sent to the boring countryside to stay with an aunt. And it's this, it's not like a romantic love poem, it's not distraught or hectic. It's just a sort of wonderful act of sympathy with this potentially slightly airheaded young girl who's been sent to the countryside, which you'd rather go to operas and plays and flirt with people. And there's a real sort of delicate in it that isn't overblown and isn't dramatic, but is extremely charming. And I think that's again, another quality that perhaps we're prone not to totally appreciate in the 21st century. It's almost the kind of highest form of politeness and sympathyHenry: And the prevailing quality in Pope is wit: “True wit is nature to advantage dressed/ What often was thought, but ne'er so well expressed”. And I think wit can be quite alienating for an audience because it is a kind of superior form of literary art. This is why people don't read as much Swift as he deserves because he's so witty and so scornful that a lot of people will read him and think, well, I don't like you.James: And that point about what oft was thought and ne'er so well expressed again, is a very classical idea. The poet who puts not quite conventional wisdom, but something that's been thought before in the best possible words, really suffers with the romantic idea of originality. The poet has to say something utterly new. Whereas for Pope, the sort of ideas that he express, some of the philosophical ideas are not as profound in original perhaps as words with, but he's very elegant proponent of them.Henry: And we love b******g people in our culture, and I feel like the Dunciad should be more popular because it is just, I can't remember who said this, but someone said it's probably the most under appreciated great poem in English, and that's got to be true. It's full of absolute zingers. There's one moment where he's described the whole crowd of them or all these poets who he considers to be deeply inferior, and it turns out he was right because no one reads them anymore. And you need footnotes to know who they are. I mean, no one cares. And he says, “equal your merits, equal is your din”. This kind of abuse is a really high art, and we ought to love that. We love that on Twitter. And I think things like the Rape of the Lock also could be more popular.James: I love the Rape of the Lock . I mean, I think anybody is not reading Pope and is looking for a way in, I think the Rape of the Lock is the way in, isn't it? Because it's just such a charming, lovely, funny poem.Henry: It is. And probably it suffers because the whole idea of mock heroic now is lost to us. But it's a bit like it's the literary equivalent of people writing a sort of mini epic about someone like Elon Musk or some other very prominent figure in the culture and using lots of heroic imagery from the great epics of Homer and Virgil and from the Bible and all these things, but putting them into a very diminished state. So instead of being grand, it becomes comic. It's like turning a God into a cartoon. And Pope is easily the best writer that we have for that kind of thing. Dryden, but he's the genius on it.James: Yeah, no, he totally is. I guess it's another reason he's under appreciated is that our culture is just much less worshipful of epic than the 18th century culture was. The 18th century was obsessed with trying to write epics and trying to imitate epics. I mean, I think to a lot of Pope's contemporaries, the achievement they might've been expecting people to talk about in 300 years time would be his translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey and the other stuff might've seen more minor in comparison, whereas it's the mock epic that we're remembering him for, which again is perhaps another symptom of our sort of post romantic perspective.Henry: I think this is why Spenser suffers as well, because everything in Spenser is magical. The knights are fairies, not the little fairies that live in buttercups, but big human sized fairies or even bigger than that. And there are magical women and saucers and the whole thing is a sort of hodgepodge of romance and fairy tale and legend and all this stuff. And it's often said, oh, he was old fashioned in his own time. But those things still had a lot of currency in the 16th century. And a lot of those things are in Shakespeare, for example.But to us, that's like a fantasy novel. Now, I love fantasy and I read fantasy, and I think some of it's a very high accomplishment, but to a lot of people, fantasy just means kind of trash. Why am I going to read something with fairies and a wizard? And I think a lot of people just see Spenser and they're like, what is this? This is so weird. They don't realise how Protestant they're being, but they're like, this is so weird.James: And Pope has a little, I mean, the Rape of the Lock even has a little of the same because the rape of the lock has this attendant army of good spirits called selfs and evil spirits called gnomes. I mean, I find that just totally funny and charming. I really love it.Henry: I'm going to read, there's an extract from the Rape of the Lock in the Oxford Book, and I'm going to read a few lines to give people an idea of how he can be at once mocking something but also quite charming about it. It's quite a difficult line to draw. The Rape of the Lock is all about a scandalous incident where a young man took a lock of a lady's hair. Rape doesn't mean what we think it means. It means an offence. And so because he stole a lock of her hair, it'd become obviously this huge problem and everyone's in a flurry. And to sort of calm everyone down, Pope took it so seriously that he made it into a tremendous joke. So here he is describing the sort of dressing table if you like.And now, unveil'd, the Toilet stands display'd,Each silver Vase in mystic order laid.First, rob'd in white, the Nymph intent adores,With head uncover'd, the Cosmetic pow'rs.A heav'nly image in the glass appears,To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears;Th' inferior Priestess, at her altar's side,Trembling begins the sacred rites of Pride.What a way to describe someone putting on their makeup. It's fantastic.James: It's funny. I can continue that because the little passage of Pope I picked to read begins exactly where yours ended. It only gets better as it goes on, I think. So after trembling begins the sacred rites of pride, Unnumber'd treasures ope at once, and hereThe various off'rings of the world appear;From each she nicely culls with curious toil,And decks the Goddess with the glitt'ring spoil.This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.The Tortoise here and Elephant unite,Transformed to combs, the speckled, and the white.Here files of pins extend their shining rows,Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux.It's just so lovely. I love a thing about the tortoise and the elephant unite because you've got a tortoise shell and an ivory comb. And the stuff about India's glowing gems and Arabia breathing from yonder box, I mean that's a, realistic is not quite the word, but that's a reference to Milton because Milton is continually having all the stones of Arabia and India's pearls and things all screwed through paradise lost. Yeah, it's just so lovely, isn't it?Henry: And for someone who's so classical and composed and elegant, there's something very Dickensian about things like the toilet, the tortoise and the elephant here unite, transform to combs. There's something a little bit surreal and the puffs, powders, patches, bibles, it has that sort of slightly hectic, frantic,James: That's sort of Victorian materialism, wealth of material objects,Henry: But also that famous thing that was said of Dickens, that the people are furniture and the furniture's like people. He can bring to life all the little bits and bobs of the ordinary day and turn it into something not quite ridiculous, not quite charming.James: And there is a kind of charm in the fact that it wasn't the sort of thing that poets would necessarily expect to pay attention to the 18th century. I don't think the sort of powders and ointments on a woman's dressing table. And there's something very sort of charming in his condescension to notice or what might've once seemed his condescension to notice those things, to find a new thing to take seriously, which is what poetry or not quite to take seriously, but to pay attention to, which I guess is one of the things that great perch should always be doing.Henry: When Swift, who was Pope's great friend, wrote about this, he wrote a poem called A Beautiful Young Lady Going to Bed, which is not as good, and I would love to claim Swift on our list, but I really can't.James: It's quite a horrible perm as well, that one, isn't it?Henry: It is. But it shows you how other people would treat the idea of the woman in front of her toilet, her mirror. And Swift uses an opportunity, as he said, to “lash the vice” because he hated all this adornment and what he would think of as the fakery of a woman painting herself. And so he talks about Corina pride of Drury Lane, which is obviously an ironic reference to her being a Lady of the Night, coming back and there's no drunken rake with her. Returning at the midnight hour;Four stories climbing to her bow'r;Then, seated on a three-legged chair,Takes off her artificial hair:Now, picking out a crystal eye,She wipes it clean, and lays it by.Her eye-brows from a mouse's hide,Stuck on with art on either side,Pulls off with care, and first displays 'em,Then in a play-book smoothly lays 'em.Now dexterously her plumpers draws,That serve to fill her hollow jaws.And it goes on like this. I mean, line after this is sort of raw doll quality to it, Pope, I think in contrast, it only illuminates him more to see where others are taking this kind of crude, very, very funny and witty, but very crude approach. He's able to really have the classical art of balance.James: Yes. And it's precisely his charm that he can mock it and sympathise and love it at the same time, which I think is just a more sort of complex suite of poetic emotions to have about that thing.Henry: So we want more people to read Pope and to love Pope.James: Yes. Even if I'm not letting him into my top.Henry: You are locking him out of the garden. Now, for the second tier, I want to argue for two anonymous poets. One of the things we did when we were talking about this was we asked chatGPT to see if it could give us a good answer. And if you use o1 or o1 Pro, it gives you a pretty good answer as to who the best poets in English are. But it has to be told that it's forgotten about the anonymous poets. And then it says, oh, that was stupid. There are quite a lot of good anonymous poets in English, but I suspect a lot of us, a lot of non artificial intelligence when thinking about this question overlook the anonymous poets. But I would think the Gawain poet and the Tom O' Bedlam poet deserve to be in here. I don't know what you think about that.James: I'm not competent to provide an opinion. I'm purely here to be educated on the subject of these anonymous poets. Henry: The Gawain poet, he's a mediaeval, assume it's a he, a mediaeval writer, obviously may well not be a man, a mediaeval writer. And he wrote Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, which is, if you haven't read it, you should really read it in translation first, I think because it's written at the same time as Chaucer. But Chaucer was written in a kind of London dialect, which is what became the English we speak. And so you can read quite a lot of Chaucer and the words look pretty similar and sometimes you need the footnotes, but when you read Gawain and The Green Knight, it's in a Northwestern dialect, which very much did not become modern day English. And so it's a bit more baffling, but it is a poem of tremendous imaginative power and weirdness. It's a very compelling story. We have a children's version here written by Selena Hastings who's a very accomplished biographer. And every now and then my son remembers it and he just reads it again and again and again. It's one of the best tales of King Arthur in his knights. And there's a wonderful book by John Burrow. It's a very short book, but that is such a loving piece of criticism that explicates the way in which that poem promotes virtue and all the nightly goodness that you would expect, but also is a very strange and unreal piece of work. And I think it has all the qualities of great poetry, but because it's written in this weird dialect, I remember as an undergraduate thinking, why is this so bloody difficult to read? But it is just marvellous. And I see people on Twitter, the few people who've read it, they read it again and they just say, God, it's so good. And I think there was a film of it a couple of years ago, but we will gloss lightly over that and not encourage you to do the film instead of the book.James: Yeah, you're now triggering a memory that I was at least set to read and perhaps did at least read part of Gawain and the Green Knight at University, but has not stuck to any brain cells at all.Henry: Well, you must try it again and tell me what you think. I mean, I find it easily to be one of the best poems in English.James: Yeah, no, I should. I had a little Chaucer kick recently actually, so maybe I'm prepared to rediscover mediaeval per after years of neglect since my degree,Henry: And it's quite short, which I always think is worth knowing. And then the Tom Bedlam is an anonymous poem from I think the 17th century, and it's one of the mad songs, so it's a bit like the Fool from King Lear. And again, it is a very mysterious, very strange and weird piece of work. Try and find it in and read the first few lines. And I think because it's anonymous, it's got slightly less of a reputation because it can't get picked up with some big name, but it is full of tremendous power. And again, I think it would be sad if it wasn't more well known.From the hag and hungry goblinThat into rags would rend ye,The spirit that stands by the naked manIn the Book of Moons defend ye,That of your five sound sensesYou never be forsaken,Nor wander from your selves with TomAbroad to beg your bacon,While I do sing, Any food, any feeding,Feeding, drink, or clothing;Come dame or maid, be not afraid,Poor Tom will injure nothing.Anyway, so you get the sense of it and it's got many stanzas and it's full of this kind of energy and it's again, very accomplished. It can carry the thought across these long lines and these long stanzas.James: When was it written? I'm aware of only if there's a name in the back of my mind.Henry: Oh, it's from the 17th century. So it's not from such a different time as King Lear, but it's written in the voice of a madman. And again, you think of that as the sort of thing a romantic poet would do. And it's strange to find it almost strange to find it displaced. There were these other mad songs. But I think because it's anonymous, it gets less well known, it gets less attention. It's not part of a bigger body of work, but it's absolutely, I think it's wonderful.James: I shall read it.Henry: So who have you got? Who else? Who are you putting in instead of these two?James: Hang on. So we're down to tier two now.Henry: Tier two.James: Yeah. So my tier two is: Donne, Elliot, Keats, Tennyson. I've put Spenser in tier two, Marvell and Pope, who we've already discussed. I mean, I think Eliot, we've talked about, I mean Donne just speaks for himself and there's probably a case that some people would make to bump him up a tier. Henry: Anybody can read that case in Katherine Rudell's book. We don't need to…James: Yes, exactly. If anybody's punching perhaps in tier two, it's Tennyson who I wasn't totally sure belonged there. Putting Tenon in the same tier as Donne and Spenser and Keets. I wonder if that's a little ambitious. I think that might raise eyebrows because there is a school of thought, which I'm not totally unsympathetic to this. What's the Auden quote about Tennyson? I really like it. I expressed very harshly, but I sort of get what he means. Auden said that Tennyson “had the finest ear perhaps of any English poet who was also undoubtedly the stupidest. There was little that he didn't know. There was little else that he did.” Which is far too harsh. But I mentioned to you earlier that I think was earlier this year, a friend and I had a project where we were going to memorise a perva week was a plan. We ended up basically getting, I think three quarters of the way through.And if there's a criticism of Tennyson that you could make, it's that the word music and the sheer lushness of phrases sometimes becomes its own momentum. And you can end up with these extremely lovely but sometimes slightly empty beautiful phrases, which is what I ended up feeling about Tithonus. And I sort of slightly felt I was memorising this unbelievably beautiful but ever so slightly hollow thing. And that was slightly why the project fell apart, I should say. Of course, they absolutely love Tennyson. He's one of my all time favourite poets, which is why my personal favouritism has bumped him up into that category. But I can see there's a case, and I think to a lot of people, he's just the kind of Victorian establishment gloom man, which is totally unfair, but there's not no case against Tennyson.Henry: Yeah, the common thing is that he has no ideas. I don't know if that's true or not. I'm also, I'm not sure how desperately important it is. It should be possible to be a great poet without ideas being at the centre of your work. If you accept the idea that the essence of poetry is invention, i.e. to say old things in a fantastically new way, then I think he qualifies very well as a great poet.James: Yes..Henry: Well, very well. I think Auden said what he said because he was anxious that it was true of himself.James: Yeah, I mean there's a strong argument that Auden had far too many ideas and the sorts of mad schemes and fantastical theories about history that Auden spent his spare time chasing after is certainly a kind of argument that poets maybe shouldn't have as many ideas, although it's just reading. Seamus Perry's got a very good little book on Tennyson, and the opening chapter is all about arguments about people who have tended to dislike Tennyson. And there are all kinds of embarrassing anecdotes about the elderly Tennyson trying to sort of go around dinner parties saying profound and sage-like things and totally putting his foot in it and saying things are completely banal. I should have made a note that this was sort of slightly, again, intensifying my alarm about is there occasionally a tinsely hollowness about Tennyson. I'm now being way too harsh about one of my favourite poets—Henry: I think it depends what you mean by ideas. He is more than just a poet of moods. He gives great expression, deep and strongly felt expression to a whole way of being and a whole way of conceiving of things. And it really was a huge part of why people became interested in the middle ages in the 19th century. I think there's Walter Scott and there's Tennyson who are really leading that work, and that became a dominant cultural force and it became something that meant a lot to people. And whether or not, I don't know whether it's the sort of idea that we're talking about, but I think that sort of thing, I think that qualifies as having ideas and think again, I think he's one of the best writers about the Arthurian legend. Now that work doesn't get into the Oxford Book of English Verse, maybe that's fair. But I think it was very important and I love it. I love it. And I find Tennyson easy to memorise, which is another point in his favour.James: Yeah.Henry: I'm going to read a little bit of Ulysses, which everyone knows the last five or six lines of that poem because it gets put into James Bond films and other such things. I'm going to read it from a little bit from earlier on. I am become a name;For always roaming with a hungry heartMuch have I seen and known; cities of menAnd manners, climates, councils, governments,Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;And drunk delight of battle with my peers,Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.I am a part of all that I have met;Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fadesFor ever and for ever when I move.I think that's amazing. And he can do that. He can do lots and lots and lots of that.James: Yeah, he really can. It's stunning. “Far on the ringing planes of windy Troy” is such an unbelievably evocative phrase.Henry: And that's what I mean. He's got this ability to bring back a sort of a whole mood of history. It's not just personal mood poetry. He can take you into these places and that is in the space of a line. In the space of a line. I think Matthew Arnold said of the last bit of what I just read is that he had this ability in Ulysses to make the lines seem very long and slow and to give them this kind of epic quality that far goes far beyond the actual length of that poem. Ulysses feels like this huge poem that's capturing so much of Homer and it's a few dozen lines.James: Yeah, no, I completely agree. Can I read a little bit of slightly more domestic Tennyson, from In Memoriam, I think his best poem and one of my all time favourite poems and it's got, there are many sort of famous lines on grief and things, but there's little sort of passage of natural description I think quite near the beginning that I've always really loved and I've always just thought was a stunning piece of poetry in terms of its sound and the way that the sound has patented and an unbelievably attentive description natural world, which is kind of the reason that even though I think Keats is a better poet, I do prefer reading Tennyson to Keats, so this is from the beginning of In Memoriam. Calm is the morn without a sound,Calm as to suit a calmer grief,And only thro' the faded leafThe chesnut pattering to the ground:Calm and deep peace on this high wold,And on these dews that drench the furze,And all the silvery gossamersThat twinkle into green and gold:Calm and still light on yon great plainThat sweeps with all its autumn bowers,And crowded farms and lessening towers,To mingle with the bounding main:And I just think that's an amazing piece of writing that takes you from that very close up image that it begins with of the “chestnut patterning to the ground” through the faded leaves of the tree, which is again, a really attentive little bit of natural description. I think anyone can picture the way that a chestnut might fall through the leaves of a chestnut tree, and it's just an amazing thing to notice. And I think the chestnut pattern to the ground does all the kind of wonderful, slightly onomatopoeic, Tennyson stuff so well, but by the end, you're kind of looking out over the English countryside, you've seen dew on the firs, and then you're just looking out across the plane to the sea, and it's this sort of, I just think it's one of those bits of poetry that anybody who stood in a slightly wet and romantic day in the English countryside knows exactly the feeling that he's evoking. And I mean there's no bit of—all of In Memoriam is pretty much that good. That's not a particularly celebrated passage I don't think. It's just wonderful everywhere.Henry: Yes. In Memoriam a bit like the Dunciad—under appreciated relative to its huge merits.James: Yeah, I think it sounds, I mean guess by the end of his life, Tennyson had that reputation as the establishment sage of Victorian England, queen of Victoria's favourite poet, which is a pretty off-putting reputation for to have. And I think In Memoriam is supposed to be this slightly cobwebby, musty masterpiece of Victorian grief. But there was just so much, I mean, gorgeous, beautiful sensuous poetry in it.Henry: Yeah, lots of very intense feelings. No, I agree. I have Tennyson my third tier because I had to have the Gawain poet, but I agree that he's very, very great.James: Yeah, I think the case for third tier is I'm very open to that case for the reasons that I said.Henry: Keats, we both have Keats much higher than Shelly. I think Byron's not on anyone's list because who cares about Byron. Overrated, badly behaved. Terrible jokes. Terrible jokes.James: I think people often think Byron's a better pert without having read an awful lot of the poetry of Byron. But I think anybody who's tried to wade through long swathes of Don Juan or—Henry: My God,James: Childe Harold, has amazing, amazing, beautiful moments. But yeah, there's an awful lot of stuff that you don't enjoy. I think.Henry: So to make the case for Keats, I want to talk about The Eve of St. Agnes, which I don't know about you, but I love The Eve of St. Agnes. I go back to it all the time. I find it absolutely electric.James: I'm going to say that Keats is a poet, which is kind of weird for somebody is sent to us and obviously beautiful as Keats. I sort of feel like I admire more than I love. I get why he's brilliant. It's very hard not to see why he's brilliant, but he's someone I would very rarely sit down and read for fun and somebody got an awful lot of feeling or excitement out of, but that's clearly a me problem, not a Keats problem.Henry: When I was a teenager, I knew so much Keats by heart. I knew the whole of the Ode to a Nightingale. I mean, I was absolutely steeped in it morning, noon and night. I couldn't get over it. And now I don't know if I could get back to that point. He was a very young poet and he writes in a very young way. But I'm going to read—The Eve of St. Agnes is great. It's a narrative poem, which I think is a good way to get into this stuff because the story is fantastic. And he had read Spenser, he was part of this kind of the beginning of this mediaeval revival. And he's very interested in going back to those old images, those old stories. And this is the bit, I think everything we're reading is from the Oxford Book of English Verse, so that if people at home want to read along they can.This is when the heroine of the poem is Madeline is making her escape basically. And I think this is very, very exciting. Her falt'ring hand upon the balustrade,Old Angela was feeling for the stair,When Madeline, St. Agnes' charmed maid,Rose, like a mission'd spirit, unaware:With silver taper's light, and pious care,She turn'd, and down the aged gossip ledTo a safe level matting. Now prepare,Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed;She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray'd and fled.Out went the taper as she hurried in;Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died:She clos'd the door, she panted, all akinTo spirits of the air, and visions wide:No uttered syllable, or, woe betide!But to her heart, her heart was voluble,Paining with eloquence her balmy side;As though a tongueless nightingale should swellHer throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,All garlanded with carven imag'riesOf fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,And diamonded with panes of quaint device,Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings;And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings.I mean, so much atmosphere, so much tension, so many wonderful images just coming one after the other. The rapidity of it, the tumbling nature of it. And people often quote the Ode to autumn, which has a lot of that.James: I have to say, I found that totally enchanting. And perhaps my problem is that I need you to read it all to me. You can make an audio book that I can listen to.Henry: I honestly, I actually might read the whole of the E and put it out as audio on Substack becauseJames: I would actually listen to that.Henry: I love it so much. And I feel like it gets, when we talk about Keats, we talk about, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer and Bright Star and La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and these are great, great poems and they're poems that we do at school Ode to a Nightingale because I think The Great Gatsby has a big debt to Ode to a Nightingale, doesn't it? And obviously everyone quotes the Ode to Autumn. I mean, as far as I can tell, the 1st of October every year is the whole world sharing the first stands of the Ode to Autumn.James: Yeah. He may be one of the people who suffers from over familiarity perhaps. And I think also because it sounds so much what poetry is supposed to sound like, because so much of our idea of poetry derives from Keats. Maybe that's something I've slightly need to get past a little bit.Henry: But if you can get into the complete works, there are many, the bit I just read is I think quite representative.James: I loved it. I thought it was completely beautiful and I would never have thought to ever, I probably can't have read that poem for years. I wouldn't have thought to read it. Since university, I don't thinkHenry: He's one of those people. All of my copies of him are sort of frayed and the spines are breaking, but the book is wearing out. I should just commit it to memory and be done. But somehow I love going back to it. So Keats is very high in my estimation, and we've both put him higher than Shelly and Coleridge.James: Yeah.Henry: Tell me why. Because those would typically, I think, be considered the superior poets.James: Do you think Shelly? I think Keats would be considered the superior poetHenry: To Shelly?James: Certainly, yes. I think to Shelly and Coleridge, that's where current fashion would place them. I mean, I have to say Coleridge is one of my all time favourite poets. In terms of people who had just every so often think, I'd love to read a poem, I'd love to read Frost at Midnight. I'd love to read the Aeolian Harp. I'd love to read This Lime Tree Bower, My Prison. I'd love to read Kubla Khan. Outside Milton, Coleridge is probably the person that I read most, but I think, I guess there's a case that Coleridge's output is pretty slight. What his reputation rest on is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, the conversation poems, which a lot of people think are kind of plagiarised Wordsworth, at least in their style and tone, and then maybe not much else. Does anybody particularly read Cristabel and get much out of it nowadays? Dejection an Ode people like: it's never done an awful lot for me, so I sort of, in my personal Pantheon Coleridge is at the top and he's such an immensely sympathetic personality as well and such a curious person. But I think he's a little slight, and there's probably nothing in Coleridge that can match that gorgeous passage of Keats that you read. I think.Henry: Yeah, that's probably true. He's got more ideas, I guess. I don't think it matters that he's slight. Robert Frost said something about his ambition had been to lodge five or six poems in the English language, and if he'd done that, he would've achieved greatness. And obviously Frost very much did do that and is probably the most quotable and well-known poet. But I think Coleridge easily meets those criteria with the poems you described. And if all we had was the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I would think it to be like Tom O' Bedlam, like the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, one of those great, great, great poems that on its own terms, deserves to be on this list.James: Yeah, and I guess another point in his favour is a great poet is they're all pretty unalike. I think if given Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a conversation poem and Kubla Khan and said, guess whether these are three separate poets or the same guy, you would say, oh, there's a totally different poems. They're three different people. One's a kind of creepy gothic horror ballad. Another one is a philosophical reflection. Another is the sort of Mad Opium dream. I mean, Kubla Khan is just without a doubt, one of the top handful of purposes in English language, I think.Henry: Oh yeah, yeah. And it has that quality of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard that so many of the lines are so quotable in the sense that they could be, in the case of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, a lot of novels did get their titles from it. I think it was James Lees Milne. Every volume of his diaries, which there are obviously quite a few, had its title from Kubla Khan. Ancient as the Hills and so on. It's one of those poems. It just provides us with so much wonderful language in the space of what a page.James: Sort of goes all over the place. Romantic chasms, Abyssinian made with dulcimer, icy pleasure dome with caves of ice. It just such a—it's so mysterious. I mean, there's nothing else remotely like it at all in English literature that I can think of, and its kind strangeness and virtuosity. I really love that poem.Henry: Now, should we say a word for Shelly? Because everyone knows Ozymandias, which is one of those internet poems that goes around a lot, but I don't know how well known the rest of his body of work is beyond that. I fell in love with him when I read a very short lyric called “To—” Music, when soft voices die,Vibrates in the memory—Odours, when sweet violets sicken,Live within the sense they quicken.Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,Love itself shall slumber on.I found that to be one of those poems that was once read and immediately memorised. But he has this very, again, broad body of work. He can write about philosophical ideas, he can write about moods, he can write narrative. He wrote Julian and Maddalo, which is a dialogue poem about visiting a madman and taking sympathy with him and asking the question, who's really mad here? Very Swiftian question. He can write about the sublime in Mont Blanc. I mean, he has got huge intellectual power along with the beauty. He's what people want Tennyson to be, I guess.James: Yeah. Or what people think Byron might be. I think Shelly is great. I don't quite get that Byron is so much more famous. Shelly has just a dramatic and, well, maybe not quite just as, but an incredibly dramatic and exciting life to go along with it,Henry: I think some of the short lyrics from Byron have got much more purchase in day-to-day life, like She Walks in Beauty.James: Yeah. I think you have to maybe get Shelly a little more length, don't you? I mean, even there's something like Ode to the West Wind is you have to take the whole thing to love it, perhaps.Henry: Yes. And again, I think he's a bit like George Herbert. He's always thinking you really have to pay attention and think with him. Whereas Byron has got lots of lines you can copy out and give to a girl that you like on the bus or something.James: Yes. No, that's true.Henry: I don't mean that in quite as rude a way as it sounds. I do think that's a good thing. But Shelly's, I think, much more of a thinker, and I agree with you Childe Harold and so forth. It's all crashing bore. I might to try it again, but awful.James: I don't want move past Coledridge without inflicting little Coledridge on you. Can I?Henry: Oh, yes. No, sorry. We didn't read Coledridge, right?James: Are just, I mean, what to read from Coledridge? I mean, I could read the whole of Kubla Khan, but that would be maybe a bit boring. I mean, again, these are pretty famous and obvious lines from Frost at Midnight, which is Coledridge sitting up late at night in his cottage with his baby in its cradle, and he sort of addressing it and thinking about it. And I just think these lines are so, well, everything we've said about Coledridge, philosophical, thoughtful, beautiful, in a sort of totally knockout, undeniable way. So it goes, he's talking to his young son, I think. My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heartWith tender gladness, thus to look at thee,And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,And in far other scenes! For I was rearedIn the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breezeBy lakes and sandy shores, beneath the cragsOf ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,Which image in their bulk both lakes and shoresAnd mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hearThe lovely shapes and sounds intelligibleOf that eternal language, which thy GodUtters, who from eternity doth teachHimself in all, and all things in himself.Which is just—what aren't those lines of poetry doing? And with such kind of confidence, the way you get from talking to your baby and its cradle about what kind of upbringing you hope it will have to those flashes of, I mean quite Wordsworthian beauty, and then the sort of philosophical tone at the end. It's just such a stunning, lovely poem. Yeah, I love it.Henry: Now we both got Yeats and Hopkins. And Hopkins I think is really, really a tremendous poet, but neither of us has put Browning, which a lot of other people maybe would. Can we have a go at Browning for a minute? Can we leave him in shreds? James: Oh God. I mean, you're going to be a better advocate of Browning than I am. I've never—Henry: Don't advocate for him. No, no, no.James: We we're sticking him out.Henry: We're sticking him.James: I wonder if I even feel qualified to do that. I mean, I read quite a bit of Browning at university, found it hard to get on with sometimes. I think I found a little affected and pretentious about him and a little kind of needlessly difficult in a sort of off-puttingly Victorian way. But then I was reading, I reviewed a couple of years ago, John Carey has an excellent introduction to English poetry. I think it's called A Little History of Poetry in which he described Browning's incredibly long poem, The Ring in the Book as one of the all time wonders of verbal art. This thing is, I think it's like 700 or 800 pages long poem in the Penguin edition, which has always given me pause for thought and made me think that I've dismissed Browning out of hand because if John Carey's telling me that, then I must be wrong.But I think I have had very little pleasure out of Browning, and I mean by the end of the 19th century, there was a bit of a sort of Victorian cult of Browning, which I think was influential. And people liked him because he was a living celebrity who'd been anointed as a great poet, and people liked to go and worship at his feet and stuff. I do kind of wonder whether he's lasted, I don't think many people read him for pleasure, and I wonder if that maybe tells its own story. What's your case against Browning?Henry: No, much the same. I think he's very accomplished and very, he probably, he deserves a place on the list, but I can't enjoy him and I don't really know why. But to me, he's very clever and very good, but as you say, a bit dull.James: Yeah, I totally agree. I'm willing. It must be our failing, I'm sure. Yeah, no, I'm sure. I'm willing to believe they're all, if this podcast is listened to by scholars of Victorian poetry, they're cringing and holding their head in their hands at this—Henry: They've turned off already. Well, if you read The Ring and the Book, you can come back on and tell us about it.James: Oh God, yeah. I mean, in about 20 years time.Henry: I think we both have Auden, but you said something you said, “does Auden have an edge of fraudulence?”James: Yeah, I mean, again, I feel like I'm being really rude about a lot of poets that I really love. I don't really know why doesn't think, realising that people consider to be a little bit weak makes you appreciate their best stuff even more I guess. I mean, it's hard to make that argument without reading a bit of Auden. I wonder what bit gets it across. I haven't gotten any ready. What would you say about Auden?Henry: I love Auden. I think he was the best poet of the 20th century maybe. I mean, I have to sort of begrudgingly accept T.S. Eliot beside, I think he can do everything from, he can do songs, light lyrics, comic verse, he can do occasional poetry, obituaries. He was a political poet. He wrote in every form, I think almost literally that might be true. Every type of stanza, different lines. He was just structurally remarkable. I suspect he'll end up a bit like Pope once the culture has tur

A Note from James: You know what drives me crazy? When people say, "I have to build a personal brand." Usually, when something has a brand, like Coca-Cola, you think of a tasty, satisfying drink on a hot day. But really, a brand is a lie—it's the difference between perception and reality. Coca-Cola is just a sugary brown drink that's unhealthy for you. So what does it mean to have a personal brand? I discussed this with Nick Singh, and we also talked about retirement—what's your number? How much do you need to retire? And how do you build to that number? Plus, we covered how to achieve success in today's world and so much more. This is one of the best interviews I've ever done. Nick's podcast is My First Exit, and I wanted to share this conversation with you. Episode Description: In this episode, James shares a special feed drop from My First Exit with Nick Singh and Omid Kazravan. Together, they explore the myths of personal branding, the real meaning of success, and the crucial question: “What's your number?” for retirement. Nick, Omid, and James unpack what it takes to thrive creatively and financially in today's landscape. They discuss the value of following curiosity, how to niche effectively without losing authenticity, and why intersecting skills might be more powerful than single mastery. What You'll Learn: Why the idea of a "personal brand" can be misleading—and what truly matters instead. How to define your "number" for retirement and why it changes over time. The difference between making money, keeping money, and growing money. Why intersecting skills can create unique value and career opportunities. The role of curiosity and experimentation in building a fulfilling career. Timestamped Chapters: 01:30 Dating Advice Revisited 02:01 Introducing the Co-Host 02:39 Tony Robbins and Interviewing Techniques 03:42 Event Attendance and Personal Preferences 04:14 Music Festivals and Personal Reflections 06:39 The Concept of Personal Brand 11:46 The Journey of Writing and Content Creation 15:19 The Importance of Real Writing 17:57 Challenges and Persistence in Writing 18:51 The Role of Personal Experience in Content 27:42 The Muse and Mastery 36:47 Finding Your Unique Intersection 37:51 The Myth of Choosing One Thing 42:07 The Three Skills to Money 44:26 Investing Wisely and Diversifying 51:28 Acquiring and Growing Businesses 56:05 Testing Demand and Starting Businesses 01:11:32 Final Thoughts and Farewell Additional Resources: Nick Singh and Omid Kazravan's Podcast: My First Exit James Altucher's Book: Choose Yourself Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein: Read Here Tony Robbins' Events: Official Site

A Note from James:You know, I first had Chris Voss on in 2016. Out of the 1500+ podcasts I've done, his is one of the few where I've really followed all the advice. His book Never Split the Difference wasn't just any negotiating book—it's a survival guide for life, built from his time as the FBI's lead hostage negotiator. And trust me, if you're going to take advice from anyone on negotiation, take it from Chris. His tactics don't just work in life-or-death situations—they work in everyday business, personal relationships, and everything in between.Today, Chris is back on the show for the third time. We talk about his documentary Tactical Empathy, available on Amazon Prime, and what makes a truly great negotiator. Trust me, whether you're selling a company or just trying to ask for a raise, you're going to want to listen closely to this one. Negotiation isn't just a skill—it's a way of life, and you'll learn why here.Episode Description:In this episode, James sits down with negotiation expert Chris Voss to dig into the real secrets behind successful negotiating. Drawing from his years as an FBI hostage negotiator, Chris reveals how the techniques he developed to save lives can be applied to everyday negotiations, from asking for a raise to making high-stakes business deals. They also discuss the impact of Chris's documentary Tactical Empathy, which explores the importance of empathy in negotiation. With actionable tips and real-world insights, this episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to improve their negotiation game.What You'll Learn:Why empathy is the most powerful tool in any negotiationHow to use tactical empathy to build trust and get better outcomesThe difference between tactical empathy and manipulationHow understanding neuroscience can give you an edge in negotiationsKey techniques to avoid burnout in high-stress negotiationsTimestamped Chapters:[00:01:30] Introduction to Chris Voss and his journey[00:03:00] The importance of tactical empathy[00:05:25] Chris's experience with a suicide hotline[00:08:00] How to disrupt manipulation in negotiation[00:12:00] Chris's approach to asking for a raise[00:15:00] The role of emotional intelligence in negotiation[00:19:30] Neuroscience and how it applies to negotiating[00:23:58] Triggering neurochemical responses in negotiations[00:27:32] Oxytocin and its role in building trust[00:31:10] Manipulative vs. genuine empathy[00:36:05] Building relationships and timelines in negotiation[00:40:15] How Chris deals with suspects and witnesses in interrogations[00:45:20] Evolution of terrorist organizations post-9/11[00:50:13] Tools of the trade: go-to techniques for negotiation[00:54:45] Using the Ackerman model in bargaining[01:00:09] Emotional bandwidth and hostage situations[01:05:08] Understanding pronouns and decision-makers in negotiations[01:12:26] Using empathy to secure high valuations in business deals[01:16:07] The importance of long-term relationships in negotiation[01:18:26] Final thoughts on anger and negotiationAdditional Resources:Never Split the Difference by Chris VossTactical Empathy Documentary on Amazon Prime ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to “The James Altucher Show” wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn

A Note from James:You know, I first had Chris Voss on in 2016. Out of the 1500+ podcasts I've done, his is one of the few where I've really followed all the advice. His book Never Split the Difference wasn't just any negotiating book-it's a survival guide for life, built from his time as the FBI's lead hostage negotiator. And trust me, if you're going to take advice from anyone on negotiation, take it from Chris. His tactics don't just work in life-or-death situations-they work in everyday business, personal relationships, and everything in between.Today, Chris is back on the show for the third time. We talk about his documentary Tactical Empathy, available on Amazon Prime, and what makes a truly great negotiator. Trust me, whether you're selling a company or just trying to ask for a raise, you're going to want to listen closely to this one. Negotiation isn't just a skill-it's a way of life, and you'll learn why here.Episode Description:In this episode, James sits down with negotiation expert Chris Voss to dig into the real secrets behind successful negotiating. Drawing from his years as an FBI hostage negotiator, Chris reveals how the techniques he developed to save lives can be applied to everyday negotiations, from asking for a raise to making high-stakes business deals. They also discuss the impact of Chris's documentary Tactical Empathy, which explores the importance of empathy in negotiation. With actionable tips and real-world insights, this episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to improve their negotiation game.What You'll Learn:Why empathy is the most powerful tool in any negotiationHow to use tactical empathy to build trust and get better outcomesThe difference between tactical empathy and manipulationHow understanding neuroscience can give you an edge in negotiationsKey techniques to avoid burnout in high-stress negotiationsTimestamped Chapters:[00:01:30] Introduction to Chris Voss and his journey[00:03:00] The importance of tactical empathy[00:05:25] Chris's experience with a suicide hotline[00:08:00] How to disrupt manipulation in negotiation[00:12:00] Chris's approach to asking for a raise[00:15:00] The role of emotional intelligence in negotiation[00:19:30] Neuroscience and how it applies to negotiating[00:23:58] Triggering neurochemical responses in negotiations[00:27:32] Oxytocin and its role in building trust[00:31:10] Manipulative vs. genuine empathy[00:36:05] Building relationships and timelines in negotiation[00:40:15] How Chris deals with suspects and witnesses in interrogations[00:45:20] Evolution of terrorist organizations post-9/11[00:50:13] Tools of the trade: go-to techniques for negotiation[00:54:45] Using the Ackerman model in bargaining[01:00:09] Emotional bandwidth and hostage situations[01:05:08] Understanding pronouns and decision-makers in negotiations[01:12:26] Using empathy to secure high valuations in business deals[01:16:07] The importance of long-term relationships in negotiation[01:18:26] Final thoughts on anger and negotiationAdditional Resources:Never Split the Difference by Chris VossTactical Empathy Documentary on Amazon Prime ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank...

In July 2024, I visited the Ferry Building in San Francisco to sit down with CapitalG partners Jill (Greenberg) Chase and James Luo. As Alphabet's growth-stage VC fund, CapitalG specializes in backing startups that have found product-market fit and are ready to scale with investments ranging from $50M to $200M. We talked about the key signals that indicate a company is ready for growth-stage investment, how CapitalG leverages Google and Alphabet resources to boost its portfolio, and their frameworks for assessing risk and potential returns. We also spent time talking about the importance of go-to-market strategies, team-building, and product partnerships. Whether you're an early-stage founder or curious about what it takes to scale a business to the next level, this conversation offers actionable insights into navigating growth-stage funding. Runtime: 53:05 EPISODE BREAKDOWN (1:57) A general overview of CapitalG and its relationship to Alphabet and Google. (6:11) What are some of the early signals indicating that a company is at growth stage? (8:33) James: “When you get to the later stages, you have a ton of different data points that you don't have at the Series B.” (12:53) Jill: “We talk a lot about the concept of, “are you paid for the risk that you're taking?” (18:53) Jill: “Our job when things aren't going so well is to remind them of the dream and to say, ‘no, we're not giving up.'” (19:30) Which trends and technology are Jill and James following these days? (25:25) James' framework for sizing TAM for growth-stage startups. (30:50) James: “TAM is a judgment call. It's as much art as it is science.” (32:28) Jill on what separates a high-potential AI startup from the rest of the pack. (38:29) Jill: “The way we approach investing at CapitalG is highly thematic and sort of thesis-driven.” (44:50) Why growth-stage investing is similar to park rangers looking for forest fires. (48:45) James: “You're basically never going to find somebody who's amazing at every possible thing that you need to do to run a business.” (51:01) Jill: “It is a huge red flag for me when somebody can't say, ‘yep, I was wrong about this.'” LINKS Jill (Greenberg) Chasejillgreenberg@capitalg.com James Luo CapitalGRobinhood Stripe Magic Rippling San Francisco Ferry Building

A Note from James:You know, it's election season, and guess what?  Everybody is annoyed right now. Do you know why? It's not that their opinions are annoying, I could care less, but everybody wants to know your opinions on everything. And you know what? It's a dangerous time right now. You could have opinions about who should be president, you could have opinions about Israel, you could have opinions about Ukraine, and you see people had opinions and like, okay, my friend has this opinion, I have a different opinion.That's not true anymore. Now people hate you for your opinions, whether you're on the left or the right or whatever. And even worse, nobody ever believes that you're just not interested, that you're neutral. Like I've written for the past 15 years what I think of the presidency. Heck, I've written, I'm even running for president and People say you can't be neutral or not have an opinion on Joe Biden and Donald Trump.If you go to FEC.gov,  I decided I could completely not have an opinion if I ran for president myself, so I filled out all the paperwork and I'm running for president. Officially, not seriously, really, but still to the point where if anyone asked my opinion, I could just say, I don't like either of them because I'm running against them.So anyway, it's very hard to have difficult conversations, which is why I'm so glad my friend Peter Boghossian wrote a book, How to Have Impossible Conversations. And this is valuable stuff to listen to during election time. Here he is.Episode Description:Facts Don't Matter! Over the past year, people are either on one side or another, and they're so into their own beliefs, it's almost impossible to have a reasonable and proper conversation with either side! Do you remember all the impossible conversations that you had with your family or friends? It's always unproductive and doesn't lead anywhere! In this episode, I have Peter Boghossian - an American philosopher, pedagogist, and author - on the podcast to talk about the techniques of talking to people that he described in his book, How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide. ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to “The James Altucher Show” wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn

A Note from James:You know, it's election season, and guess what?  Everybody is annoyed right now. Do you know why? It's not that their opinions are annoying, I could care less, but everybody wants to know your opinions on everything. And you know what? It's a dangerous time right now. You could have opinions about who should be president, you could have opinions about Israel, you could have opinions about Ukraine, and you see people had opinions and like, okay, my friend has this opinion, I have a different opinion.That's not true anymore. Now people hate you for your opinions, whether you're on the left or the right or whatever. And even worse, nobody ever believes that you're just not interested, that you're neutral. Like I've written for the past 15 years what I think of the presidency. Heck, I've written, I'm even running for president and People say you can't be neutral or not have an opinion on Joe Biden and Donald Trump.If you go to FEC.gov,  I decided I could completely not have an opinion if I ran for president myself, so I filled out all the paperwork and I'm running for president. Officially, not seriously, really, but still to the point where if anyone asked my opinion, I could just say, I don't like either of them because I'm running against them.So anyway, it's very hard to have difficult conversations, which is why I'm so glad my friend Peter Boghossian wrote a book, How to Have Impossible Conversations. And this is valuable stuff to listen to during election time. Here he is.Episode Description:Facts Don't Matter! Over the past year, people are either on one side or another, and they're so into their own beliefs, it's almost impossible to have a reasonable and proper conversation with either side! Do you remember all the impossible conversations that you had with your family or friends? It's always unproductive and doesn't lead anywhere! In this episode, I have Peter Boghossian - an American philosopher, pedagogist, and author - on the podcast to talk about the techniques of talking to people that he described in his book, How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide. ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn

The following is a conversation with Erin Kenney, the CEO of Nutrition Rewired. Erin is a registered dietitian with a Master's in nutritional science. She's done an amazing job in building a business that helps people take control of their lives through modulating their diet, improving their gut health and ultimately looking after the gut microbiome. Today's conversation was far-reaching. We talked about fibre, We talked about gums, we talked about artificial sweeteners, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and supplements. This was pretty much an A to Z of what to do to look after your gut health, what works and what doesn't.  I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of the listeners and supporters of the podcast for everything you've done to help us build the name, and the brand, and to get the message out there around microbiome being critically important and gut health being important for wider body health. Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:19 How Erin became interested in gut health 00:04:32 Biggest impacts on Erin's health 00:06:09 Stress and gut health 00:09:22 Does caffeine give us energy? 00:14:46 Bone broth instead of coffee 00:16:06 Coffee and our liver 00:16:48 Taking control of gut health 00:18:42 The role of a good breakfast 00:21:55 Lean muscle mass and women 00:23:07 Importance of protein 00:26:32 Role of supplements 00:29:35 Creating an optimal regime 00:32:33 Ketogenic diets 00:38:34 SIBO 00:46:24 Microbiome testing 00:49:00 Vitamin D 00:51:51 Green powder supplements 00:55:19 Heavy metals 01:01:38 Artificial sweeteners 01:05:58 Gum instead of gluten 01:10:18 Palm oil 01:12:20 Nutrition Rewired   Full Transcript: [00:00:00] JAMES: The following is a conversation with Erin Kenny, the CEO of Nutrition Rewired. Erin is a registered dietitian with a master's in nutritional science. She's done an amazing job in building a business up that helps people take control of their lives through modulating their diet, improving their gut health and ultimately looking after the gut microbiome. [00:00:24] JAMES: Today's conversation was far reaching. We talked about fiber, We talked about gums, we talked about artificial sweeteners, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, supplements. This was pretty much a A to Z of what to do to look after your gut health, what works and what doesn't. I really appreciated how simply Erin put lots of complicated topics for the listener. [00:00:49] JAMES: She podcast so that might explain why she was such a good guest. This is an amazing episode for anyone who's wanting to enter into this field, but we also digged into some [00:01:00] technical aspects, and I learned a lot over the course of the conversation. This is Inside Matters. My name is Dr. James McIlroy. I hope you enjoy it. [00:01:16] JAMES: So how did you get interested then in gut health? [00:01:19] ERIN: It was a very selfish Journey for me, I, from a very young age, struggled with digestive issues. They had to take me off of being breastfed when I was a baby and got on to formula fed. And, you know, I was struggling with a ton of digestive issues. And basically they just slapped me with a diagnosis of lactose intolerance. [00:01:42] ERIN: And basically what most of my childhood, struggling with horrible pain, horrible bowel movement. I will honestly say that a majority of my childhood was spent in the bathroom because Of how bad things were with my gut and [00:02:00] I really didn't have much help, you know, it was kind of just, you know, let's watch out for dairy and let's watch out for, you know, triggers and things like that, but it was kind of just, you know, take elodium and, and hope for the best. [00:02:13] ERIN: So, fast forward, you know, as I started to get older, I was a full time athlete, I was, you know, in high school, and really wanted to start taking care of myself. I struggled with mental health issues, I lost my father to his battle with mental health struggles, and it started to connect with me that on the days when my stomach was at its worst, my mental health was also at its worst. [00:02:42] ERIN: And so I was starting to make these connections and, you know, learn and, Spent a lot of time on Google, which, you know, we all know is not a reputable source of information. But nonetheless, I was, I was interested in, in seeking alternative ways to help [00:03:00] support my body. And when I went to college, I didn't really know what I wanted to major in. [00:03:05] ERIN: And I thought, you know, nutrition sounds like something that I could use some support with, considering everything that I'm going through and. You know, the things that I've read online and from there on out, it was just about healing myself. I learned, you know, after being on a decade of medications from birth control to fix the hormone imbalance, from PPI's to address the chronic acid reflux, you know, it was just being thrown medication after medication because doctors were just treating symptoms. [00:03:40] ERIN: So I, I've dedicated all my time to researching about, you know, the gut microbiome and nutrition. And then I was in school for nutrition. And I started following people in the field who were talking about these things, talking about the gut microbiome, talking about how nutrition impacts mental health. I [00:04:00] just lit up, you know, it was, it was like, for the first time in my life, someone was speaking to me and, you know, I felt validated too, for so many years, it's like, oh, it's just all in your head, you just gotta, you know, stop eating dairy, and I have now, Basically built a business on helping individuals get to the root cause of their digestive issues and imbalances because of everything that I went through. [00:04:25] ERIN: So I'm incredibly passionate about what I do and I'm just really excited to chat with you today. [00:04:32] JAMES: So what were some of the key things then as you went along your own journey that made the biggest impact to your own health? [00:04:39] ERIN: I will highlight a very important one that I think a lot of people don't consider and that's stress. [00:04:45] ERIN: It's Uh, you know, there was a lot of stress in my life and I was kind of putting that on the back burner as something that, yeah, you know, I'm stressed, I'm, you know, working out intensely and doing all this stuff, but that [00:05:00] can't, you know, that's not going to make a huge difference. So I really had to prioritize stress as one of them. [00:05:06] ERIN: Diet, as we all know, you know, is incredibly important. My diet was Not supportive of what I needed for my body. I played around with a plant based diet, and I have no shame for anybody who is, who loves their plant based diet, but for me it was not the right fit. I needed a plant forward diet, but I also needed protein. [00:05:30] ERIN: I needed to really hone in on, like, focusing on diversity of what I was eating. I was eating a lot of the same things over and over again. I think a lot of us can get into a rut pretty easily with that. And then I learned, you know, how much diversity our gut needs in terms of the microbiome. So stress, diet was huge. [00:05:50] ERIN: And then I had to address imbalances. I had small intestinal bacterial overgrowth because I was On proton pump inhibitors long term, I had yeast [00:06:00] overgrowth. Uh, so a lot of these things I learned from stool testing and I was able to Going [00:06:09] JAMES: back to the stress then. So how do people identify if their stress levels are too high? [00:06:15] JAMES: And you mentioned exercise, maybe exercise is a double edged sword. If you do too much, it might be actually a big stress on your body. So what are your tools and tips then for stress management? I guess a little bit is good for you, right? But too much is detrimental. [00:06:31] ERIN: Sure. Yeah, we call that eustress, right? [00:06:33] ERIN: It's that, that, that period where you're kind of in that Goldilocks sweet spot where stress is, is beneficial. It helps us grow. It's good for inflammation. But in terms of my own journey, I, I would love to say that I had this like, you know, lovely revelation of your stress and you need to pull back. It was. [00:06:53] ERIN: One of those moments, I say this to clients all the time, it's if you listen to your body when it whispers, you don't have to hear [00:07:00] it when it screams. And I was at the screaming point where I was running seven to ten miles a day and You know, I got to a point where I couldn't barely even walk because I was just like so obsessed with how exercise made me feel, how good it was for my mental health. [00:07:16] ERIN: So I was basically forced in to loving yoga. It wasn't love at first. It was a, it was, it was not love at first. It was a rocky relationship to begin with, but I thought this is the only thing I can do. Yoga is the only thing that I physically can do that's going to support my mental health and I just fell in love with it. [00:07:37] ERIN: And to this day has always been an incredible stress management technique for me because not only do I get to move my body, but I'm doing it in a way that's not inflammatory. I'm doing it in a way where I'm, I'm like feeling everything of what's going on in my muscles and how tight I am and breath, right? [00:07:57] ERIN: I'm breathing. So a lot of times [00:08:00] people will say, I'm just not good at meditation. And I'll say, well, have you tried yoga? Have you tried walking or yoga? Like those are also forms of meditation because you have to focus on your breath. If you're in a down dog position and you're sweating and you're tired, the only way you're going to get through that pose is that you're going to breathe. [00:08:20] ERIN: So meditation has been, meditation and yoga have been incredible assets to my healing journey, but also just the way that I Manage my stress now and also just the awareness of what is my threshold for stress and what are some of the signs that come up for me when I know I've hit my breaking point and become more irritable towards the people that I love. [00:08:45] ERIN: My sleep starts to suffer. My digestion starts to go off a little bit. So these are kind of my. Red flags of, Hey, Aaron, let's check in with yourself. You might be doing a little too much. So are those [00:08:59] JAMES: [00:09:00] the sort of whispers then before the screams, the irritability, the sleep? Yeah. [00:09:05] ERIN: And for females to even males, people think, yeah, changes in hormones, like you'd notice changes in your menstrual cycle or your libido, like those types of things can, can also take a hit when you're dealing with chronic stress. [00:09:22] JAMES: Cause I guess a lot of people think, Oh, well. You know, I'm a little bit tired today. I'll just drink more coffee or I'm a little bit sore today. I'm just gonna train more But what you're saying is maybe you need to just slow down to perform [00:09:34] ERIN: better. Exactly. And I also love to talk to clients about how caffeine actually works. [00:09:41] ERIN: Caffeine doesn't give us energy. It actually blocks these adenosine receptors in our brain. And these adenosine receptors are like those little whispers of us hearing the signal that we're tired. And once that caffeine wears off, those [00:10:00] adenosine receptors don't go away. They're still there to then tell our brain, hey, we're really tired. [00:10:07] ERIN: So I always Tell people that, that you're not giving yourself more energy by loading up on caffeine, you're decreasing your perception of how tired you are, which is allowing you to push through something, whether it's a workout or a long, you know, night at work. And over time, especially your body is going to shut down. [00:10:33] JAMES: As an avid coffee drinker, I'm sort of running through my head, am I drinking? I'm not listening to the whispers, but have you got recommendations then for your clients around coffee and caffeine, like some rules or suggestions in terms of when to drink, how much to drink? Cause that could be really interesting for the listeners on Inside Matters. [00:10:52] ERIN: My number one tip is that, and I say this to clients, you have to eat a full breakfast before you have your [00:11:00] cup of coffee. And when we do this experiment, sometimes my clients will say, after I had, [00:11:10] ERIN: they'll say, I didn't, I didn't even want my cup of coffee after I had my breakfast. And it's because we're not using artificial fuel, right? We're eating. Some nice eggs with, you know, some sweet potatoes and avocado and, you know, we're energized and now we don't have this craving for a stimulant. And I'm not shaming caffeine completely, especially coffee. [00:11:36] ERIN: There's numerous health benefits in addition to the microbiome, but it's, it's evaluating that relationship with it. And so. So I always say, no coffee until you've had a, a, a full breakfast. Coffee does not count as breakfast. I tell them no caffeine after noon. Uh, the researcher, Michael, is it, oh, Matthew Walker. [00:11:58] ERIN: He talks about [00:12:00] metabolism of caffeine and, you know, the half life and how long that caffeine can stay in your system. And You could be laying in bed at night if you had your cup of coffee at 3 p. m., and you're still metabolizing it in the middle of the night, impacting your quality of sleep, and then the cycle just starts again, right? [00:12:18] ERIN: You wake up, you're exhausted, you're groggy, and that's because That's You know, that the later in the day that can impact your sleep. [00:12:27] JAMES: So someone maybe like me who wakes up in the morning and finds a way over to the coffee. I know myself. It just, it's like part of the routine and I kind of love it to be honest, but so someone's addicted to that morning routine and they come to you and they become a client. [00:12:45] JAMES: How do you get them to break that cycle and get into the routine of. I don't know, maybe cold shower and then they come in, they've had their breakfast, then they have their coffee. Is it a slow process or do you just say, right, that's it, cold turkey. [00:12:58] ERIN: I'm never, [00:13:00] I'm never militant with my clients ever because I'm also human and the I also understand that, you know, when we make changes, that they don't need to happen overnight and it certainly doesn't usually feel good to our nervous system or mental health wise when someone says, just cut it out. [00:13:17] ERIN: And now, don't get me wrong, I've got clients that are all or nothing and they just, when I tell them generally what I've just told you, they'll say, forget it, I'm cutting it out. I want to do this, I want to do it perfectly, that's type of person. Right. So when we, when we start, you know, I, I get to know what their relationship is like. [00:13:36] ERIN: I had a client one time and she had this, you know, whole setup in her house. The whole side of the wall was dedicated to coffee. So for the client like that, we're going to say, okay, you know, let's. Maybe switch to a decaf or switch to, you know, less of a serving and put more, you know, almond milk in it to just cut down on the, on the portion. [00:13:56] ERIN: And then we, we work our way towards, uh, maybe after [00:14:00] breakfast, but there's lots of alternative things that you can do to still have that routine. So I'll, I'll just give my example. I drink a bone broth, hot chocolate in the morning and that bone broth, hot chocolate. It doesn't, you know, contain loads of caffeine. [00:14:16] ERIN: It's still got the gut health benefits. It's still bitter because of the cacao. And so I drink that it's got 20 grams of protein and it's warm and it's, it still gives me that so people can find, you know, there's all these like, you know, medicinal mushroom type of blends and things like that. So if you can find something that you like. [00:14:36] ERIN: That isn't that, you know, bursts of caffeine and acidity to your stomach on an empty stomach, then that might help the transition be a little bit easier. Thank [00:14:46] JAMES: you so much for that example. Mark, who's one of the hosts here at the podcast studio has bone broth and cayenne pepper. Okay. There you go. In the morning. [00:14:56] JAMES: Yep. And bizarrely, I was speaking to him on Tuesday because we're [00:15:00] planning for the week and we're talking about you. Um, and I said, cause he was drinking in the same type of Yeti coffee mug as me. And I was like, Oh, nice mug. Like you're one of the good guys. Um, is that a coffee? He explained that no, it was just his bone broth and it's part of his routine to get, you know, great nutrition and in the morning and it's still warm. [00:15:18] JAMES: And as you say, it sort of feels like a coffee, but it's not really a coffee. So. Um, I'm going to go for it. I'm going to start my day with some bone broth. [00:15:27] ERIN: I expect a report back. I'd love to hear from you. [00:15:31] JAMES: I'll give you a report. I can't promise to stop the coffee. That's not the goal. I might go from two shots to one shot. [00:15:39] JAMES: I think two shots to one shot. That's success. You know, you mentioned the health benefits of coffee. It's really interesting. I've had several people come on. So one of them was Professor Debbie Shawcross, who's like a leading authority on, on liver health, basically saying drink more coffee because for some reason it's protective [00:16:00] against, um, cirrhosis and, uh, non alcoholic fatty changes. [00:16:05] JAMES: So there's, there's something in there, isn't there? [00:16:06] ERIN: This, I think there's so many, there's so many asks. Aspects of it. I think, you know, you and I are big into gut health, right? So we're probably gonna always look at it from a gut health lens. And, you know, my scientific brain goes to, well, you know, coffee helps people have a bowel movement, right? [00:16:22] ERIN: It stimulates the liver and digestion. And if we're having regular bowel movements and, and stimulating that process, that's great for the liver, right? We don't want, that's good. You know, sluggish digestion. So just one of the many, I mean, there's, there's antioxidants in there, there's. The polyphenols that feed beneficial bacteria and you know, the liver and the gut are most certainly connected. [00:16:48] JAMES: So could you maybe walk the listeners through some of the other things you try and help your clients with? So you mentioned stress, diet, maybe we can unpack diet a little bit more because that must be huge. We hear. In terms [00:17:00] of. You know, taking control of your health and your microbiome and your gut. [00:17:04] ERIN: Sure. Yeah. As a dietician, you know, people expect that we just focus on food and we, we often do. There's not usually one client that comes in that there's not something diet related that we're talking about and everyone's starting at different ends of the spectrum, right? Some people have no knowledge that. [00:17:23] ERIN: You know, they're not even getting nearly enough protein. They're not eating any vegetables, you know, that, that kind of standard American diet where a lot of processed foods, you know, a lot of refined grains that aren't providing any fiber or nutrition. So there's so many different ends of the spectrum of things that we work on. [00:17:41] ERIN: And then you have, you know, clients who have overgrowth or SIBO, like SIBO, for example, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, and they're eating super clean. You know, air quote clean, where they're not touching your processed food. They're loading up on fiber because they've been told, [00:18:00] fiber, fiber, fiber, if you want better gut health, eat more fiber. [00:18:04] ERIN: And that's making them feel worse. So there's that end of the spectrum where we have to. obviously address the underlying root cause, but we need to simplify their diet, make it easy for them to break things down a little bit, give their gut some rest. And then there's the other spectrum where, you know, I have a woman come to me and she's eating one egg for breakfast. [00:18:25] ERIN: And I'm saying, where's your protein? She said, well, I haven't had an egg for breakfast. I said, well, one egg is six grams of protein. We need 25 or 30 grams of protein to start our day. Right? So there's, there's all these missing links. [00:18:42] JAMES: We've talked about breakfast quite a lot then because as you know, within the sort of wellness health sphere, there's this debate around intermittent fasting and it sounds like you're very much in favor of, you should have a really great nutritious breakfast with macronutrients to set you up [00:19:00] for the day. [00:19:01] JAMES: Is that the case? So you're big, big on breakfast for you and your clients. [00:19:06] ERIN: So for me, yes, I, I've always tried to adopt that my philosophy on my own nutrition and what I think makes me feel best is not going to determine what I think is best for a client. And I think that's really important. I think a lot of, you know, health professionals, it's, you know, they find something that works for them or works for some of their clients and then everyone should do it. [00:19:28] ERIN: Now. Do I often, would I recommend intermittent fasting to people? No, it wouldn't be my first recommendation for the majority of people that I work with. I have worked with clients and most of those clients end up being males who do really well with intermittent fasting. Maybe it's males or oftentimes it's women who are post menopause and they have specific goals, maybe related to body composition and hormone balance. [00:19:55] ERIN: And they found that these practices of intermittent fasting in whatever [00:20:00] fashion make them feel really good. A lot of these are CEOs of companies that like, they love the focus aspect of it during the day. And, you know, so I'm just going to come in and I'm going to work with them and say, Well, if this works for you and you're not, Uh, binge eating at night and feeling like you're deprived during the day and you're getting good nutrition and you're fast, you're feeding window, then I'll work with you. [00:20:23] ERIN: We'll work with where you're at. But the majority of my clients, you know, especially those that are female and they're still cycling, this can really disrupt their hormones. It can disrupt their ability to work out during the day. And so we have to really personalize that if it's going to be part of the protocol and, and the research that I've seen, my biggest concern is the body composition. [00:20:46] ERIN: I've seen the loss of muscle mass be a potential and I think that's a huge issue for a lot of people, right? We all need nice lean muscle mass and if fasting, you know, if we continue to see research that [00:21:00] fasting negatively impacts our lean muscle tissue, I don't love [00:21:04] JAMES: that. Yeah. I mean, intuitively it makes sense, right? [00:21:08] JAMES: You stop consuming calories, you've got no protein intake, therefore there's no amino acids moving around. So it kind of makes sense that your body is going to look for energy. Yeah. And I guess muscle is, is, is a target is probably less desirable than, than fat and certainly your glycogen stores kind of make sense that it forms part of that source of energy that we need. [00:21:32] JAMES: Our bodies are incredible. I'm just on the muscle mass thing. Oh yeah, absolutely. And on the muscle mass thing then, you know, I guess maybe some women listeners might think. It doesn't really apply to me. You know, that's for men that lift and train and work out, but that's not the case, is it? It's, it's just as important, maybe even more important. [00:21:54] JAMES: I, [00:21:55] ERIN: I'm a, I'm not a buff woman. Okay. I, I [00:22:00] get, you know, up to 130 grams of protein per day. And I'm not, you know, what, what people, a lot of women would think I would turn into by eating as much protein as I do. But I will tell you. Some things about me is that I'm very strong, very strong in the gym. I have a good lean body mass My hormones are balanced. [00:22:20] ERIN: I don't have cravings for sugar throughout the day. Those are the things that protein does for us. And so I think we need to understand that from a, you know, biochemical aspect, protein is essential. It is protective. It increases our metabolism. It's the only macronutrient that has a higher thermic effect of food like that. [00:22:41] ERIN: That's incredible. So we, you know, just old school recommendations that always seem to sneak their way into further generation. [00:22:50] JAMES: So, um, how does someone know, I mean, if they're not got the benefit of working with an expert dietitian like you, how do they know if they're on the right track for protein? And in [00:23:00] addition to like the actual macronutrient gram per day recommendations, how important is the source of protein for people? [00:23:07] ERIN: Hmm, that's a great question. So we have two different types of protein. We have a complete protein, which is basically a protein that combines all of the essential amino acids, which amino acids are the little building blocks of what protein is. And essential, meaning our body needs them to survive and to produce the daily functions and live optimally. [00:23:30] ERIN: So that's, that's an essential amino acid. That's a, that's a complete protein. Those Food sources are things like meat, fish, eggs. These are animal proteins. And then you have the incomplete side where we have incomplete, and these are going to be plant based foods. There are a few plant based foods that are complete proteins, but the majority, things like beans and lentils, these are not complete proteins. [00:23:55] ERIN: So they're just missing a few of those amino acids that we need for [00:24:00] essential daily living. Now, this doesn't mean that non complete proteins are not beneficial, but the requirement of how much you would need per day slightly goes up because the digestibility, how able we are to digest these proteins, is not as efficient, you know, if you were to eat eggs or a piece of fish, for example. [00:24:24] ERIN: So my approach is try to get some really good quality complete proteins in your diet and also get some incomplete protein sources in your diet, like lentils and beans and nuts and seeds, if that's something that works with, you know, your individualized physiology. But this idea that everything has to be a complete protein, I think is also, you know, too far left because, you know, bone broth isn't a complete protein, but it's still an excellent source of protein. [00:24:53] ERIN: And I'm still going to have, you know, salmon for dinner, and I'm going to hit my Total, you know, amino acid needs for [00:25:00] the day, if you will, [00:25:01] JAMES: and the total amino acid needs for the day. How does one calculate what they may or may not need? [00:25:07] ERIN: That's a great question. So the amino acids themselves, you could use something like I think chronometer might do this on a very, you know, specific level. [00:25:17] ERIN: I don't know if it goes that into detail, but we look at the total grams of protein as a dietitian, you know, so we're looking for Usually around 1.2, up to two kilograms, sorry, grams per kilogram per day of protein for each person. So the minimum, like the USDA requirements for protein, we're talking 0.8 grams per kilogram per day for a person. [00:25:43] ERIN: Uh, however you need to convert that, but it's what 0. 8 is not a recommendation I use for any of my clients. We're always going above that, especially when my clients are more active or they're looking to optimize their body composition. We're looking closer to like, uh, up to one [00:26:00] to two grams per kilogram. [00:26:03] ERIN: So that's your, that's your goal is to really figure out like what is that number for you based on your body weight and then how can you spread that throughout the day. You know, you don't have to completely spread it evenly, but I usually just tell people to make it easier. Get 25 to 30 grams at each meal and then adjust, you know, add to that to meet your needs and then add snacks where appropriate. [00:26:27] ERIN: But that's a good baseline if they're kind of starting from ground zero. [00:26:32] JAMES: That's an amazing summary of protein. Thank you so much. How do supplements fit into that? And I'm asking you in the context of this minimally processed versus like ultra processed food debate we have all the time. So some people say, Oh yeah, whey protein supplement contains the essential amino acids. [00:26:50] JAMES: Go for it. But other people say, Whoa, it's so processed you shouldn't have it. So what are your thoughts then, um, on supplements and How do [00:27:00] they fit in? [00:27:01] ERIN: I think supplements can be great. I think they have a time and a place and you know, a lot of the time is convenience is, is a big reason, you know, for somebody that has a protein goal of 180 grams per day. [00:27:15] ERIN: You know, meeting that might be really challenging if they're not throwing in some whey protein into a smoothie or a shake. Whey protein is excellent. Yes, it's processed, but so is your oatmeal and your brown rice and your ground meat. Like everything is processed. And if you choose grass fed, you know, protein powder, a whey protein powder with minimal ingredients that maybe just has whey, maybe some, you know, sweetener and something to Add some salt or whatnot. [00:27:43] ERIN: But if you have like a three ingredient protein powder, it's high quality grass fed, and you add that to your smoothie, you're doing wonderful things for your body. So I think it, it really comes into when you see these, you know, those, you know, body building companies always start these protein [00:28:00] powders and it's , you know, strawberry cheesecake or cookie dough. [00:28:03] ERIN: Yeah. And. I used to eat these. I'm not, I'm not saying I've never tried them. They do taste good. They do. They taste just like they say they do, or at least when you're, you know, eating healthy, they do. And, you know, that's when we get into the long list of ingredients. We see, you know, binders and gums and artificial sweeteners. [00:28:24] ERIN: And we see, you know, things that can really not make us feel good, especially from a gut health perspective. So a good quality You know, one that's been maybe tested for heavy metals, things like lead that can be common in plant based protein powders, arsenic. If we get a good quality protein powder, minimal ingredients, uh, high quality testing, ask for the certificate of analysis from the company. [00:28:51] ERIN: Then, you know, you're, you're, you're gonna help yourself out if you're struggling to get your protein intake. Thank you for [00:28:57] JAMES: that. I've, I've got so many things written down to ask, you know, I'm [00:29:00] actually not even sure where to start. Fibers, gum, sweeteners, heavy, heavy metals, other macronutrients. Before I jump into sort of more supplements and sweeteners and the heavy metals, I'd kind of like to. [00:29:16] JAMES: Round off the diet piece with you more generally. So maybe talk a little bit about fiber, um, fruit and veg, talk about carbs and fats. Yes. You know, when you're working with all your clients and for yourself as well, how do you build like an optimal diet? Big question. [00:29:35] ERIN: Yes. No, it's, it's a great one. How do you create like an optimal regime? [00:29:38] ERIN: Absolutely. So we start with again, base, like we kind of find this base for people to start. And that's where the three meals per day comes in. You know, if someone's not used to eating breakfast, we're going to try to get them to start eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner, or we can call it meal one, meal two, meal three, whatever your schedule is like. [00:29:56] ERIN: And at that meal, we're aiming to get again, that 25 to 30 grams of [00:30:00] protein. We want to hit. half a plate of vegetables that are colorful, usually like darker leafy greens tend to be an area that a lot of people struggle. So we try to look for those dark pigments. And then the other portion of that, usually I say like a fist of carbohydrates minimum at your meal. [00:30:18] ERIN: And we try to choose carbohydrates every meal and we try to choose carbohydrates that are more complex. So things like. higher fiber carbs. So if you're looking at a label, you're going to see fiber there. But if you're just in the produce section and you're looking at carbohydrate sources, potatoes have fiber, both sweet and white potatoes. [00:30:37] ERIN: Uh, things like quinoa, plantains, bananas. These are all sources of carbohydrates that are very nutrient dense. If a client's more active, those carbohydrates Intakes might go up. We might be consuming more carbohydrates per day. Um, and then fat is, is incorporated into those meals. We, we try to focus on healthy fats, particularly omega [00:31:00] 3 fats. [00:31:00] ERIN: So things like wild caught salmon, we're looking at things like mackerel, sardines, herring. These are omega 3 rich fats that we have to get two to three servings per week. So we've got three meals per day, protein, vegetable, carbohydrate, healthy fats included. And then, then we kind of go from there. We say, okay, are you working out? [00:31:22] ERIN: Okay, well, we need a pre workout, post workout routine. And how can we adjust there? Um, you know, you're training for a marathon. Okay, your carbohydrate needs go up significantly. We're going to have to adjust that. But once we have that base, you know, and, and You don't have to focus so much on the grams of fiber, although we are aiming for about 25 to 35 grams per day, if you're choosing complex carbs, if you're choosing half your plate of vegetables, then you're likely going to hit your fiber needs for the most part. [00:31:53] JAMES: It's going to happen, right? It's going to happen just by default, you know, because it's quite difficult to [00:32:00] find the fiber on the foods and to figure out. [00:32:04] ERIN: Yeah. And if you're focusing on it, we're [00:32:08] JAMES: sorry, there's a bit of a, a bit of a, a like you. Please continue, please. [00:32:13] ERIN: No, no. I was just going to say, so if you're focusing on getting the majority of your foods from less processed foods, then you're again, likely to hit those fiber goals because you're going to be choosing those types of fruits and vegetables and things like that that just naturally come with, you know, the, the benefit of the fiber. [00:32:33] JAMES: Absolutely. I'm going to just push you a little bit, um, on. Ketogenic diets and people even go more extreme and they have these um, carnivore diets. They're great. And you've been quite clear in your recommendation around you should have some carbohydrate with each meal. So, could we just unpack that a little bit and what some of the, you know, why is that part of your recommendation versus, you know, just eat meat and [00:33:00] veg, for example? [00:33:01] ERIN: Mm hmm. So, the, the main focus there is blood sugar balance and this is something that people think this is a discussion just reserved for people who have, say, diabetes. You know, oh, well, you know, they gotta watch their blood sugar and, you know, gotta make sure they don't eat too many carbohydrates. But the reality is, is we all should care about blood sugar. [00:33:22] ERIN: Blood sugar impacts our cardiovascular system. It impacts our mental health, it impacts our hormones, it impacts our muscle growth and maintenance. So having stable blood sugar throughout the day is absolutely key to optimal performance, energy, all those things that we're talking about. And so being able to get a steady adequate amount consistent throughout the day is going to allow that blood sugar to just kind of have this nice little up and down throughout the day. [00:33:52] ERIN: And we're going to stay within this nice range that the body likes to stay in for optimal health. When you go get your blood work done and you get your [00:34:00] hemoglobin A1C tested, that's your report card of how well you've been managing That blood sugar over the past three months, how well you've been staying within that range. [00:34:10] ERIN: And when you don't eat carbs for breakfast, and you don't eat carbs for lunch, and then you have a carb dinner, you're more likely to see a larger spike in those blood glucose levels. Again, this isn't the case for everybody. If somebody has been on a low carb diet, and they've maintained that, and their blood sugar is great, and they're feeling awesome, I'm so happy for them, and I would support them in that way. [00:34:34] ERIN: But for the majority of us, We have these habits where our carbs are not distributed properly. We're not eating the right amount. We're either eating too much in one sitting, not enough at one sitting, and we're wondering why we're craving sugar all the time, and why we're tired all the time. And if we just got high quality carbohydrates at every meal in adequate amounts, not overdoing it, not underdoing it, [00:35:00] we might find a really healthy balance. [00:35:02] ERIN: And not to mention, the trouble with those low carb diets is the number one symptom is constipation. Because These carbohydrates feed our beneficial bacteria. I probably see 10 to 15 stool tests per week, and any time I see someone come in with a carnivore, keto, low carb diet, they have very low beneficial bacteria. [00:35:30] ERIN: And it is pretty much causation, right? We can pretty much assume that the correlation there is because they're not So, my theory, you know, the, the keto diet, it's originally designed for, for medical purposes, and it's incredible for, you know, patients who are diagnosed with a, a type of epilepsy, and it has, been proven to And, uh, yeah, I mean, I don't [00:36:00] think that the majority of the United States needs to be on a carnivore or ketogenic diet, especially long term. [00:36:08] ERIN: We don't really know the long term effects of eating, you know, a ketogenic carnivore diet. it's, You know, I suspect that a lot of people that have found that they feel so good on those diets could be because they have an underlying gut imbalance, and now they're not feeding it with any fiber, any carbs, and that's kind of maintained their symptoms, so they feel really good. [00:36:36] ERIN: And that's, that's just a theory, it's just my thought, you know, that a lot of people find those diets because they're looking for relief and to feel good, and Ultimately, we all want to feel good, right? But if we're not addressing a root cause, then that, that's a, that's a problem, especially if it, it forces you to be on that restrictive of the diet. [00:36:57] ERIN: I [00:36:57] JAMES: mean, the way I like to describe the carnivore diets [00:37:00] to some people is you're essentially starving your microbiome. Yeah. It's not getting anything that it needs, really. I mean, there's, there's some microbes that can metabolize amino acids, um, and, and maybe some more complex chains and proteins, but it's, as you mentioned, it's really the fibers. [00:37:23] JAMES: It's the complex carbohydrates that they really, truly need. [00:37:27] ERIN: Yeah, there's, there's a few specific bacteria that the few specific bacteria, the Fecalobacterium Presnitzii. Uh, the aphromancia, these are two keystone, I'm sure you're familiar with them, they're two keystone bacteria in our gut. And one of the things that they thrive on is polyphenol rich foods. [00:37:47] ERIN: Polyphenol rich foods are going to be things like our berries, our, you know, pomegranates and grapes and those, those dark pigmented. fruits and, uh, leafy green vegetables, which wouldn't essentially be [00:38:00] allowed on some of those diets. And those are keys on species for protecting our gut lining for protecting us against things like inflammatory bowel disease. [00:38:10] ERIN: So I just, I don't know how you could convince me that a diet void of all these amazing foods and mentally for myself, I could never, you know, that's just. No, it's not for me. [00:38:26] JAMES: I've got a note to ask you about your diet and your routine in this totality, but just like to explore this, this fiber concept a little bit more. [00:38:34] JAMES: So one of the things that you said at the start, which I think was absolutely fascinating and you just touched on that again with people getting relief. I think maybe you're talking about the SIBO and how things are just going a bit crazy and counterintuitively, whilst perhaps in someone who doesn't have SIBO and who's functioning correctly otherwise, fibre is brilliant. [00:38:57] JAMES: For them, who've got too many bugs in the [00:39:00] upper GI tract, maybe fibre's not so good. So maybe you can walk the listener through that and Also, how you help these people get them to a state where maybe they can tolerate [00:39:08] ERIN: fiber again. Yes. And, and this would go for, you know, certain condition as patients who have inflammatory bowel diseases. [00:39:16] ERIN: Well, you know, if they're dealing with a lot of chronic inflammation, again, fiber is hard to break down. And that's part of what makes it good for healthy individuals, is that it's hard to break down. We don't digest a good majority of it, therefore it feeds our beneficial bacteria. But for those who are struggling, those who really find that, you know, they start to eat. [00:39:37] ERIN: a salad and it completely destroys them or, you know, the thought of any sort of vegetable on their plate is a nightmare. Then we're basically going to go forward and do some sort of testing. So the gold standard for the the SIBO is going to be a breath test. We're going to be testing for three types of gases, methane, hydrogen, and hydrogen sulfide. [00:39:58] ERIN: And then we're [00:40:00] also probably going to do a GI map to look at overgrowths in the colon, the lower part of the digestive tract as well. And If that person has a lot of overgrowth, then typically the course of action is going to be some sort of antimicrobial. And that could be either you could go to your conventional medicine doctor and you could choose to go that route, or you could choose to take the more natural route and use things like berberine, allicin, grapefruit seed extract, neem. [00:40:32] ERIN: These are all natural antimicrobials that have been shown to be very effective at, killing off harmful bacteria, both in the small intestine and the large intestine. And it's not just as simple as killing them off, right? We want to figure out what else is going on. You know, are they super stressed all the time? [00:40:50] ERIN: Do they have low stomach acid? Are they on a proton pump inhibitor, which is again, further reducing their stomach acid. We also want to look at the whole picture so [00:41:00] that this doesn't happen again. Cause the number one thing with SIBO is that people have reoccurrence because they just go in. They say, let's kill this off, but they don't address the fact that they have motility issues, thyroid issues, you know, stress that is just like, unbearable, and then they wonder why it comes back. [00:41:21] ERIN: So that's the, that's the big thing with addressing the gut is that we don't, we don't hone in on one specific thing. It's not as simple as like, oh, vitamin D is low, we, we increase it or. You know, it's, it's okay. So how did we get here? This is your gut is like a forest, right? You go into a forest and you just pull one thing out. [00:41:39] ERIN: You still have the whole forest there. [00:41:42] JAMES: So how do you then in your practice help your patients with SIBO? Do you recommend the berberine, the grapefruit extract, that kind of thing? And have you had good success with people? [00:41:52] ERIN: Yes. Yes. So I, those are the herbs that I like to use. Those are a few of the evidence based herbs that have been very [00:42:00] effective with my patients. [00:42:01] ERIN: And I've seen a lot of my clients get better with just a few rounds of these. Some, they do one round and we've addressed everything else and they're totally better. Some of my clients have had to go through two or three rounds of it to really fully get rid of it. But we'll retest it. We'll continually see those levels go down and down and down. [00:42:21] ERIN: And it's just, it's amazing to, to see people feel better. You start to see. Their iron labs start to go up because they start absorbing their nutrients, their vitamin D levels start to go up, you know, it's, it's a fascinating, you know, uh, progression of how people can be impacted by, by SIBO and for so long, you know, the, the, the statistics show that about 70 people who are, who are diagnosed with IBS actually have SIBO and they'll go their whole lives not knowing that because they're just going to say, well, I've got IBS. [00:42:56] ERIN: It's gotta, you know, be careful, follow a little FODMAP diet, and they don't ever [00:43:00] think to look further. And most doctors, some of them don't even, you know, we were talking about belief systems. Some of them don't believe that SIBO is a thing when it's clinically documented. So [00:43:12] JAMES: still to this day, to this day, for sure, it's still not widely accepted amongst the medical community. [00:43:20] JAMES: And some of the things you're talking about in terms of. Using these, you know, natural means rather than the classical antimicrobials. Also, we're just not there yet, I don't think. What's your [00:43:32] ERIN: experience? Yeah. And there's a lot of great doctors out there, especially gastroenterologists. And uh, I can't give you a long list of them, of great doctors that I know, but I can give you, um, you know, some experiences from clients who their doctors are, are really open to, they have a good understanding. [00:43:52] ERIN: You know, they, they see this in their practice every day. Uh, a lot of the doctors that say they don't believe in it, you know, they're, they're a [00:44:00] little outdated, right? They haven't been keeping up on the research. They have not been seeing patients and, and truly hearing them for what their symptoms are. [00:44:08] ERIN: And I think that, that there actually is, uh, a large amount of. Uh, physicians out there who are, are truly taking it seriously and treating and they're very, you know, there's a lot of doctors who are very quick to treat for, for SIGO with antibiotics and they do recognize how important it is. But, you know, it's just unfortunate that there are some out there that are leaving patients, you know, feeling very defeated. [00:44:35] JAMES: And with regards to the herbs that you recommend, is there like, this is the entrepreneur in me now, just my mind's going, is there like, you know, one supplement that has all the key elements in terms of all the herbs that have been beneficial or do you ask your patients while just. Maybe try a bit of the, the grape for effect, maybe try a bit of the berberine and see what happens. [00:44:56] ERIN: Yes, that's a great question. There, there are [00:45:00] formulations of herbs out there that are designed or supplements out there that are designed specifically for SIBO. So they'll usually have a combination of. You know, some of those more broad spectrum antimicrobials, I typically use them in a more isolated fashion because I love using tinctures. [00:45:18] ERIN: I like to try to reduce the amount of pills that a client will take. So oftentimes, you know, it will be like. Three times a day, you're doing your drops of oregano, your drops of neem, and then we'll do a berberine in a pill form. And, you know, we do that for a course of four to six weeks, and then we reassess symptoms. [00:45:35] ERIN: But there are, there are formulations out there. There's ones that are even more broad spectrum that, you know, are gonna have additional things like wormwood in them, and Uh, you know, things that can address yeast and candida, you know, knowing that those things can sometimes coexist, but the benefit of my practice is that I'm able to test with coins and I'm able to see, like, okay, how can we really hone in on this and instead of doing [00:46:00] this broad, you know, formulation, we do something much more specific to what you need. [00:46:05] JAMES: Yeah, my brain was just ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And also, I was wondering That's just how it works in my brain. The, the tests that you do, I'm also fascinated. So I'm, I'm very familiar with the hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen methane, because Um, and terabiotics is actually going to be doing a clinical trial, uh, in the IBS area. [00:46:24] JAMES: So I've been reading all about IBSC IBSD, post infectious SIBO and so on. Um, but I wondered because what you're talking about, it's fascinating, it's, it's a combination of the breath test. It's a combination of the stool test. So do you have providers that you go to and that you trust to give you the right kind of data, or do patients come to you having done a microbiome test? [00:46:46] JAMES: Like at home. Mm hmm. [00:46:48] ERIN: Yes. So the majority of, of what I will have clients do with their providers is have their standard colonoscopy, endoscopy, get their blood work done. If they [00:47:00] can get, you know, the things that I like to see, like the ferritin, iron, B12, vitamin D. Uh, so I'll usually have them do that just because it's covered by insurance, right? [00:47:09] ERIN: We try to save clients as much money as possible knowing that these types of cases can be, you know, more intensive and, and costly. And so the stuff that we will do together, luckily as a dietician, we have, uh, different resources where I have an ordering physician on my team who can order the labs for me. [00:47:30] ERIN: And I've been trained to evaluate and interpret these labs over the past 10 years. And so I get these results, we sit down, we go over them together, and you know, we either work with their physician or just on our own, depending on how willing their, their other providers are. We try to work as a team to help this client get better in whatever way that looks like for them. [00:47:54] JAMES: Got it. Thank you. I just wondered if there was like a. Best in class microbiome testing service [00:48:00] that you just thought was unbelievably good. That gave you so many insights. Yeah, [00:48:04] ERIN: I, yes, much more simple. I will answer that more simply here. So the, I love the GI map. I've been using the GI map by diagnostic solutions for several years. [00:48:16] ERIN: I also love, uh, Jenova. That's another really great one. Um, sometimes that might be a better fit for a client based on kind of their symptomatology. But those are really the two main ones. And then, you know, the breath test, I use the TrioSmart because they do all three of the, the, the breath gases versus, you know, if you go get it done in your conventional doctor, they're likely just going to test for the hydrogen and the methane and they might miss the hydrogen sulfide. [00:48:46] ERIN: No affiliations with the brands. Thank you. [00:48:51] JAMES: Thank you for that. Um, you got quite excited when you talked about vitamin D, iron, and ferritin. Can you just like maybe unpack that a little bit? Why is that so important? [00:49:00] [00:49:00] ERIN: These are basic, you know, labs that should be run for all of us. And I laugh about it because it's so frustrating how it's like pulling teeth with providers that you want to know what your vitamin D levels are. [00:49:14] ERIN: Especially when we're in New England over here. So we're not getting UVB rays from the sun to produce vitamin D on our skin for a very large portion of the year. And also just scientifically knowing that 90 percent of Americans are deficient in vitamin D. Vitamin D impacts our hormones, our mental health, our risk for inflammatory bowel disease, everything. [00:49:35] ERIN: It quite literally impacts everything. Uh, so vitamin D, I always have clients advocate for that. And if it's not done over here in the U. S. as a standard blood panel. Iron is another one. Iron typically is tested, but ferritin, the storage form of iron, is not always tested. And this can tell us a lot about inflammation in the body. [00:49:56] ERIN: This can tell us a lot about our body's ability to absorb [00:50:00] iron. So that one is another one. Especially, I work with a lot of athletes, especially endurance athletes, and they tend to be very low in ferritin. And so, you know, if a provider saw, oh, in 2017, your iron looked good, they're not going to test it again. [00:50:15] ERIN: And, you know, hello, it's 2024. Things can change pretty quickly. So, I like ferritin. I also like B12. Both B12, ferritin, vitamin D can tell us that there maybe is malabsorption going on related to SIBO. So, these are things that are common deficiencies that I see in my practice. You know, we should just be knowing regularly what our values are. [00:50:39] JAMES: Got it. Are there any other blood tests that you recommend for the sort of general person? Um, and I'm assuming you recommend vitamin D supplementation. [00:50:49] ERIN: Yep. If you are deficient in vitamin D to a point where, you know, you're getting into the twenties and lower. You're not going to be able to eat food and get your values back [00:51:00] up. [00:51:00] ERIN: You're going to need to supplement unless you're living in a place where it's very sunny And it's very clear that you've been hibernating and lathering the sunscreen and then you can change that habit But the majority of people in order to get their vitamin D levels back up will need to supplement So that's really important for people to know and you always want to take vitamin D 3 plus K 2 K 2 It prevents us from absorbing too much calcium into our, um, the vascular system, which can increase your risk for cardiovascular disease. [00:51:32] ERIN: So vitamin D3 plus K2, always have that combination together and just make sure that you're advocating for it. If you have a deficiency in vitamin D, you're going to need to supplement. There's very few food sources of vitamin D. And those really aren't likely to move the needle if you have a deficiency. [00:51:51] JAMES: And on the subject of supplements, do you recommend anything else? Like, for example, a greens powder, which are all the rage at the moment. [00:51:59] ERIN: Yeah, [00:52:00] I, I don't recommend those supplements. You know, there, there's, um. There's some out there, you know, there's ones that I've taken that I feel really good on, you know, the, the athletic greens was a big, it, it blew up and I, you know, they sent me a sample and I thought, oh, you know, this is like another greens powder and I'll be honest, I felt really good. [00:52:20] ERIN: You know, I'm not going to lie to people. I felt really good when I took it. And that could be due to the fact that it's basically like a multivitamin. And it's got adaptogens like ashwagandha, which I love ashwagandha. And, you know, it was great. I was taking it for a little while. And then, you know, consumer labs came out. [00:52:38] ERIN: They, they independently tested all of these greens powders. And they found higher levels of lead in a lot of them, which something that just naturally occurs in the soil. You know, plants are growing, they absorb these heavy metals from the soil. And lead is not good for us. As someone might imagine, that getting lead in, in [00:53:00] higher doses regularly, ideally we want no lead. [00:53:03] ERIN: But we're always going to be exposed to some level of heavy metals. But when you take something and you concentrate it down, that means you're going to get a larger dose in a small serving. And so, you know, certain brands that I mentioned, like You know were above the limit that I would consider safe to consume on a regular basis for optimal health And so I wow, you know stopped using that and I you know, I I really caution My clients to be using these powders You know, even if they are passing heavy metal testing, you know, they're, they're not a replacement for food. [00:53:36] ERIN: You know, if someone's really struggling, they might offer some assistance. There are certain fruit and vegetable capsules out there that have passed heavy metal testing, you know, don't have any fillers in them. Um, the brand like Juice Plus, for example, over here in the U S you know, they, they seem to kind of pass with flying colors. [00:53:55] ERIN: So I would say. You know, I think of someone like my grandmother who, you know, [00:54:00] she maybe eats, like, two meals a day, if even that, and she doesn't touch fruits or vegetables. She might be a good candidate for someone to take these fruit and veggie capsules, just to get something in her body, but For the majority of us, you know, we don't need 17 different, you know, powders and vitamins in one sitting. [00:54:20] ERIN: First of all, it's really tough for our body to absorb that all in one. So you've got that aspect of it, where are you really getting all the nutrients out of it? Number two is the heavy metals. And number three is there's typically lots of additives to them, artificial sweeteners and flavors and, and things like that. [00:54:37] ERIN: So I, I don't, you know, I don't recommend them, but I'm sure there are times and places for, for those and in people's lives, but the majority of us should be just focusing on high quality foods from our diet. Aaron, this [00:54:50] JAMES: has been such a, an educational journey for me, uh, in addition to the listener, cause I also. [00:54:55] JAMES: take AG1 once or twice a day and have done for quite a long time. [00:55:00] Also a powder called Vibey Greens. And I had no idea about the heavy metal piece. Just no idea. And to be honest with you, I actually don't know that much about heavy metals and how they can impact on health. So could we talk about that for a little bit? [00:55:19] JAMES: Like How do we know if we're have, you know, if we've got too many heavy metals, what's the health and impacts of heavy metals? And then if there's too many and it's having an health impact, what do we do? [00:55:35] ERIN: So heavy metals. Each different type of heavy metal, from lead to arsenic to cadmium, those are two very those are three very common heavy metals that we typically see in supplements, powders, even chocolate. [00:55:49] ERIN: We see high levels of lead, unfortunately. Big chocolate fan over here, so, trust me, I'm not Nooooo! You're like, you're taking away my coffee and now my [00:56:00] chocolate. No, but what's going [00:56:01] JAMES: on here? But again, my AG1 and coffee, now my [00:56:04] ERIN: chocolate. So again, like I will use AG1 if I know I'm going out and I'm going to have a really long run. [00:56:10] ERIN: You know that that's that's the kind of thing I'm trying to really educate clients on is like I'm not taking it every day But I'm not never using it because I like the way it makes me feel I'm also consuming chocolate regularly But I'm choosing brands that are at least not the highest in lead and I'm moderating my intake But I probably eat chocolate at least three to four times a week. [00:56:31] ERIN: Like I'm not gonna lie. It's just You know, you can't avoid all of these things, but you know, there are some that are avoidable that are just, you know, we're getting too much and that could be impacting certain people. So you know, heavy metals can impact all of our organs. A lot of them can accumulate in our body and it's really hard to get rid of. [00:56:49] ERIN: Some are actually impossible to get rid of. So the kidneys can be affected. The gut can be affected. The liver, right? We can have this buildup of these heavy metals. And then on top of [00:57:00] that, if you have an unhealthy gut, then you're more likely to have these accumulate because if you have that intestinal permeability where things can move from your gut into your blood because you have leaky gut, you're in a, you're in a worse shape to be consuming these heavy metal, you know, containing products. [00:57:17] ERIN: But generally speaking, they have, they have widespread impact on our health from our brain health to our, our organ function. And over time, this can be very serious for people and it's, it's hard to say, you know, okay, look for these symptoms, it's, it's, you know, the, the, this happens slowly. So this could be you show up with dementia or Alzheimer's when you're, you know, 50 years old and you don't realize how much of something you've been consuming. [00:57:43] ERIN: But there's testing that you can do. There's hair mineral analysis testing that can look at heavy metals, which can be really helpful. Um, you know, mercury is another one that will accumulate in the body. And even just reducing your high mercury fish can really help your body, um, [00:58:00] work more efficiently. [00:58:01] ERIN: And then, you know, you can kind of go back to working in moderation versus. Eating high mercury tuna for lunch every day, for example, so this is a very big stressor for me is like we need to think about moderation. We don't need to fear monger people into being afraid of consuming chocolate or, you know, things like that. [00:58:18] ERIN: It's education, making better choices. And then if you are someone who has really poor detox, methylation issues, like MTHFR mutation, poor gut health. We might need some extra support with heavy metals, so we might use certain, like, green algaes to help just pull heavy metals out of your system. Um, we might use things like NACL cysteine, which, you know, helps upregulate glutathione levels in the body. [00:58:43] ERIN: You know, these are things that, essentially what we're doing is we're working on chelating, um, things like charcoal and, and algae, green algae vegetables. And then we're working to support the liver and, and, and all those other Um, up regulation processes that naturally happen in the body and then we [00:59:00] support the gut and we support sweating and we make sure our bowels are moving and, you know, we make sure nutrient deficiencies are addressed and that helps us just ensure that we're, you know, well oiled machines that can handle, you know, the daily toxins that we're always going to get no matter what, right? [00:59:16] ERIN: We're always going to get these things, but how can we educate ourselves, make better choices and reduce our total heavy metal load? [00:59:27] JAMES: What are some of the signs and symptoms that someone might have if they're sort of high and heavy [00:59:31] ERIN: metals? So kidney, you know, kidney issues can be a big one. Um, having, you know, kidney. [00:59:37] ERIN: So if you're doing blood testing or things like that, if you're, you know, consuming a lot of brown rice, very high in arsenic, um, that's something that over time, especially with smaller kids, you know, they're even more sensitive to these levels of arsenic, for example. Um, but, but kidney issues, liver issues, brain, um, if you're noticing, like I said, you know, early signs of Alzheimer's, dementia, [01:00:00] Parkinson's disease, uh, there's even, this is not my expertise, but, um, you know, a lot of dieticians who focus on the autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, um, a lot of discussion around how they have a harder time with detoxification and, and Some heavy metal accumulation. [01:00:17] ERIN: And so, you know, refer to them for more information on that. But I've learned from other dieticians about how that can be, um, you know, a way that these types of things can show up, um, gut issues, you know, you know, heavy metals can really disrupt the gut, the gut microbiome. So. Again, there's not really like obvious symptoms for a lot of people that you would say, Oh, that's, that's gotta be heavy models. [01:00:40] ERIN: Sometimes it's, you know, your body just kind of slowly not functioning optimally and not realizing that your total toxic burden is just too high. [01:00:50] JAMES: Gosh, it just made me wonder, I mean, imagine how many people with autoimmune disease, for example, may actually just be too high in, in these heavy metals. [01:01:00] It's again, I think it's one of these things where the traditional classical medical community probably aren't that interested. [01:01:08] ERIN: Yeah, unfortunately not. And you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a very broken system overall. And, you know, I wish I had, I wish I had the solution. I wish that I could say that I could see things getting better in the future. But I think when you involve finances, when you put money into the, the picture, you know, it, the, yeah. [01:01:30] ERIN: The priority of healthcare, uh, preventative care really just. Yeah, [01:01:38] JAMES: I'm with you. So I'm going to bring us back now to some of the things I've wanted to discuss with you. Um, artificial sweeteners is top of the list. So as a dietitian and expert in gut health, what are your thoughts and recommendations relating to artificial sweeteners? [01:01:55] JAMES: Because I think this is one of the ones that comes up the most when you speak to people. Yeah. You [01:02:00] know? [01:02:00] ERIN: So what are your thoughts? Yeah. So I've, you know, I'

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1:1 Integration Support & Psychedelic Guidance  » Join Unlock God Mode, a 30-day audio course for upgrading your relationship with reality. «  The Mushroom Trip Checklist (ebook)  Check out The James Xander Trip podcast ❤️  Subscribe to my personal YouTube channel Omar Harb (@theomarharb) joins me to talk about what shrooms taught him about unconditional love, how he navigates loneliness and heartbreak, the difference between attachment vs love, the truth behind rejection, his thoughts on grief, self-love, gratitude, forgiveness, and much more. This is a bonus episode from my full-length, psychedelic podcast The James Xander Trip. For more conversations like this, search for The James Xander Trip

Get my free mushroom trip checklist here: jamesxander.com/checklist ❤️ » 1:1 Integration Support & Psychedelic Guidance «» Unlock God Mode – A Course for Upgrading Your Hologram « YOUTUBE:• YouTube channel @emperorjames• YouTube channel @jamesxandertrip Omar Harb (@theomarharb) joins me to talk about what shrooms taught him about unconditional love, how he navigates loneliness and heartbreak, the difference between attachment vs love, the truth behind rejection, his thoughts on grief, self-love, gratitude, forgiveness, and much more. Join the Psychedelic Tribe - jamesxander.com ❤️  For more conversations like this, listen to my in-depth psychedelic podcast: The James Xander Trip

Sharing Energy with Raja Rani Episode 003 Track List 1. Shay DT - Wild Beats (Original Mix) 2. AMEME - Drum Beat (Original Mix) 3. Pablo Fierro - Yababa (Tunisian Mix) 4. San Pacho x Balkan Beat Box – Bulgarian Chicks 5. Frankie LLuc- Burlan (Pissi Afro Mix) 6. Leroy Styles, Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano - Karusell (Original Mix) 7. Wet Velvet - Plata O Plomo 8. Jerome Robins, Sinner & James - You're Not Alone (Sinner & James Remix) 9. ESSEL - Lennon (Extended Mix) 10. Vale, San Pacho - Voy (Original Mix) 11. A.R.Rahman, Parav Stlar, Stelartonic - Urvasi Urvasi (MURUGAN Rework) 12. David Amo, Julio Navas, Gustavo Bravetti - Raw (Tony Romera Extended Mix) 13. Bleu Clair – Samsara 14. Raja Rani - Superstar Rajinikanth 15. AMY Winehouse - Back to Black (Mak Remix)

1. James Hype - Helicopter (Extended Mix)   [STEREOHYPE]2. Eden Prince - Take It To The Rhythm (Extended Mix)   [Toolroom Trax]3. Muzzaik, Stadiumx - Echoes (Extended Mix)   [Toolroom]4. Mau P - Gimme That Bounce (Original Mix)   [Insomniac Records]5. Wasabi - Just Be Good (Extended mix) Original Mix   [Erase Records]6. Marco Lys - No Gravity (Original Mix)   [Circus Recordings]7. LOVRA - Rhymorator (Original Mix)   [Repopulate Mars]8. Deeper Purpose - Shake It (Original Mix)   [Insomniac Records]9. Dimitri Vegas, Steve Aoki - The White Lotus Theme (Aloha!) (Extended Mix)   [Smash The House Official]10. Biscits - House All The Time (Extended Mix)   [THRIVE MUSIC]11. Ferreck Dawn, Catz 'n Dogz - Cloud 9 (Extended Mix)   [Tomorrowland Music]12. Gorgon City - Rumblah (Extended Mix)   [REALM Records]13. TECH IT DEEP - Maria Maria (Extended Mix)   [Ministry of Sound Records]14. ESSEL - Lennon (Extended Mix)   [Toolroom]15. Bruno Furlan - Bongoloco (Original Mix)   [Hot Creations]16. Lil Wayne, SIDEPIECE - A Milli SIDEPIECE (Extended Mix)   [Young Money Records, Inc./Republic Records]17. Jerome Robins, Sinner & James - You're Not Alone (Sinner & James Remix)   [Hot Fuss]18. Max Styler, FRANCO BA - Rock The House (Extended Mix)   [Off The Grid]www.djroyski.comwww.patreon.com/royskiwww.mixcloud.com/djroyskiwww.facebook.com/djroyskiwww.twitter.com/djroyski

1. James Hype - Helicopter (Extended Mix)   [STEREOHYPE]2. Eden Prince - Take It To The Rhythm (Extended Mix)   [Toolroom Trax]3. Muzzaik, Stadiumx - Echoes (Extended Mix)   [Toolroom]4. Mau P - Gimme That Bounce (Original Mix)   [Insomniac Records]5. Wasabi - Just Be Good (Extended mix) Original Mix   [Erase Records]6. Marco Lys - No Gravity (Original Mix)   [Circus Recordings]7. LOVRA - Rhymorator (Original Mix)   [Repopulate Mars]8. Deeper Purpose - Shake It (Original Mix)   [Insomniac Records]9. Dimitri Vegas, Steve Aoki - The White Lotus Theme (Aloha!) (Extended Mix)   [Smash The House Official]10. Biscits - House All The Time (Extended Mix)   [THRIVE MUSIC]11. Ferreck Dawn, Catz 'n Dogz - Cloud 9 (Extended Mix)   [Tomorrowland Music]12. Gorgon City - Rumblah (Extended Mix)   [REALM Records]13. TECH IT DEEP - Maria Maria (Extended Mix)   [Ministry of Sound Records]14. ESSEL - Lennon (Extended Mix)   [Toolroom]15. Bruno Furlan - Bongoloco (Original Mix)   [Hot Creations]16. Lil Wayne, SIDEPIECE - A Milli SIDEPIECE (Extended Mix)   [Young Money Records, Inc./Republic Records]17. Jerome Robins, Sinner & James - You're Not Alone (Sinner & James Remix)   [Hot Fuss]18. Max Styler, FRANCO BA - Rock The House (Extended Mix)   [Off The Grid]www.djroyski.comwww.patreon.com/royskiwww.mixcloud.com/djroyskiwww.facebook.com/djroyskiwww.twitter.com/djroyski

1. James Hype - Helicopter (Extended Mix)   [STEREOHYPE]2. Eden Prince - Take It To The Rhythm (Extended Mix)   [Toolroom Trax]3. Muzzaik, Stadiumx - Echoes (Extended Mix)   [Toolroom]4. Mau P - Gimme That Bounce (Original Mix)   [Insomniac Records]5. Wasabi - Just Be Good (Extended mix) Original Mix   [Erase Records]6. Marco Lys - No Gravity (Original Mix)   [Circus Recordings]7. LOVRA - Rhymorator (Original Mix)   [Repopulate Mars]8. Deeper Purpose - Shake It (Original Mix)   [Insomniac Records]9. Dimitri Vegas, Steve Aoki - The White Lotus Theme (Aloha!) (Extended Mix)   [Smash The House Official]10. Biscits - House All The Time (Extended Mix)   [THRIVE MUSIC]11. Ferreck Dawn, Catz 'n Dogz - Cloud 9 (Extended Mix)   [Tomorrowland Music]12. Gorgon City - Rumblah (Extended Mix)   [REALM Records]13. TECH IT DEEP - Maria Maria (Extended Mix)   [Ministry of Sound Records]14. ESSEL - Lennon (Extended Mix)   [Toolroom]15. Bruno Furlan - Bongoloco (Original Mix)   [Hot Creations]16. Lil Wayne, SIDEPIECE - A Milli SIDEPIECE (Extended Mix)   [Young Money Records, Inc./Republic Records]17. Jerome Robins, Sinner & James - You're Not Alone (Sinner & James Remix)   [Hot Fuss]18. Max Styler, FRANCO BA - Rock The House (Extended Mix)   [Off The Grid]www.djroyski.comwww.patreon.com/royskiwww.mixcloud.com/djroyskiwww.facebook.com/djroyskiwww.twitter.com/djroyski

In this episode, Lee chats with James Edmondson, an experienced and results-oriented Agile leader and systemic team coach, with a reputation for working collaboratively with senior teams in both operational and head office environments. He is a people focussed leader with highly attuned emotional intelligence that enables strong relationships at all levels and also a veteran with over 20 years of experience working collaboratively under pressure and with a character that inspires the very best out of high-performing teams. Lee and James discuss his ‘water-based' career, his adaptation of military ‘cell' structures as a form of team management, the meaning of ‘agile' in a team context, moving from military to civilian life, and the lessons he has learned in teams and leadership.  KEY TAKEAWAYS From 20 years in the Navy to his current career with Anglian Water, James has always specialised in team focus.  One of James' first tasks was dealing with the COVID response which gave him invaluable experience in change management. James uses a ‘cell' system model which he learned from the Navy in his team-leading strategy.  James is now a certified team coach after training in the field. The idea of an all-powerful, super-efficient, singular leader is a myth. Get rid of the ego, be humble, ask questions and know that you do not know all the answers. BEST MOMENTS‘I remember looking into the Navy as a teenager and thinking, goodness me, it's just like a really good rugby team or really good football team or really good cricket team. They're always playing together and got focus on an outcome.'-James ‘That cell structure gave us a really cohesive unit. It decentralised leadership to a certain extent. With the way we connected it all together it allowed people to have shared awareness and real clarity on what we were trying to achieve.'-James‘I started to dig into what ‘agile' meant and I did a couple of courses.'-James ‘You've used the word ‘teams' a lot and you've also used ‘team of teams'. What is it about teams that make you feel the way you do and what is it that makes a great team?'-Lee‘The notion of a heroic leader or a superman or supergirl just getting things done on their own is nonsense.'-James‘What makes a great leader? There's so much to go into here but straight away it's humility and trust.'-James VALUABLE RESOURCESBusiness Problems Solved Podcast          ABOUT THE HOSTFor the last 15 years, I have been a multi-sector internal or external business improvement consultant, building the improved capability of individuals, teams and businesses.In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my two young children Jack & India. I also enjoy listening to and reading business & personal development material.Lee Houghton is “THE Business Problem Solver”, a Management Consultant, CX Specialist and Keynote Speaker. CONTACT METHODYou can contact Lee Houghton on 07813342194Lee@leehoughton.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhoughton/This show was brought to you by Progressive Media

01. Gorje Hewek, Amonita, Makebo - Never Been (Original Mix) 02. Bruno Furlan - Bongoloco (Original Mix) 03. Damien N-Drix & Banchs - Dadadum (Original Mix) 04. Jack Orley - E o Doblim (Extended Mix) 05. Damien N-Drix & Maesic - Afterparty (Original Mix) 06. Jerome Robins, Sinner & James – You´re Not Alone (Sinner & James Remix) 07. Low Steppa - The Feeling (Original Mix) 08. John Summit, Hayla - Where You Are (Extended Mix) 09. Chris Avantgarde, Anyma (ofc) - Eternity (Extended Mix) 10. Alle Farben - Intersexion (Extended Mix) 11. Creeds - PUSH UP (LA FUENTE EDIT) 12. Alle Farben, Maurice Lessing - Apollo (Extended Mix) 13. Notre Dame - Yumi (Original Mix) 14. Ede, Max Joni - Weine nicht Kind (Original Mix) 15. ARIZONA - Moving On (Alle Farben Remix) (Extended Version)

House Trek 342      12/02/2023 Leo Wood, Jen Payne - Toca's Miracle (Kevin McKay Extended Remix) Cedric Gervais, Felix - Don't You Want Me (Extended Mix) Muzzaik, Stadiumx - Echoes (Extended Mix) Mau P - Gimme That Bounce (Original Mix) Jerome Robins, Sinner & James - You're Not Alone (Sinner & James Remix) Eden Prince - Take It To The Rhythm (Extended Mix) Sonny Fodera - Looking 4 U (Extended Mix) Dee Straction - Chances (Prod By Anton Wick) Moreno Pezzolato - Smells Like Teen Spirit (Original Mix) Drey Kinian - Loose My Breath (Original Mix) David Treble - Backs to the Bridge (Extended Mix) Hollaphonic - Keep Up (Extended Mix) Adrien Toma - Shine (Extended Mix) Sllash & Doppe - Please Don't Stop (Original Mix)

“You have to become a community marketer and a community-style engager, and that's the way that people become known and loved and trusted in their community,” explains James Chester, co-host and co-creator of Chiro Hustle, the #1 podcast in the chiropractic space as well as a very successful Facebook ad agency for chiropractors and weight loss specialists. In this episode, we discuss the five power moves for cash-based health practitioners.  To be a successful cash-based health practitioner, you need to be the best in town at what you do and get involved in your local community. Get to know other aligned physicians in the wellness space because this will lead to a cross-referral system. Additionally, make sure your Google and Facebook reviews backup your great reputation.  With the prevalence of social media and heavy reliance on cell phones, even if you are running a brick and mortar business, it is pivotal that you invest in digital marketing. Having the right SEO in place, a good looking website with backlinks, and a strong social media presence can help you get double the amount of new patients every week.  Engaging with your local community is a great way to get your business out there and attract new patients. Whether you are in the chiropractic space or functional medicine space, these tips can help you to grow your practice and be seen as an authority in your community.  Quotes “If you're out there and you really want to dial in on how to become a great practitioner, do the one thing that you're certified to do and do that well. And then, utilize the same services for yourself.” (5:57-6:10 | James) “You have to get involved with the people in your community if you're a brick and mortar operation.” (11:36-11:41 | James) “You have to become a community marketer and a community style engager. That's the way that people that provide services like yours become known and loved and trusted in the community.” (11:57-12:09 | James) “If somebody is going to invest, they should invest in digital marketing.” (21:35-21:38 | James)    Links   Connect with James Chester Website: https://www.chirohustle.com/ Podcast: https://www.chirohustle.com/podcast-timeline/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jim.chester.313 Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/chirohustlepodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chirohustle   ====    Thank You For Listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review! Your positive review helps others find this podcast and increase its visibility.   Getting to YES boils down to two things: Saying the right things and saying those things consistently… so if you want to go deeper, check out Uli's one-page “Getting to YES” blueprint and training with the essential 9 persuasion prompts you need to leverage: https://uliiserloh.com/blueprint   Connect With Uli Website: https://uliiserloh.com Facebook: https://facebook.com/uliiserloh   Instagram: https://instagram.com/uliiserloh Youtube: https://youtube.com/uliiserloh  Tiktok: https://tiktok.com/@uliiserloh  Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/uliiserloh/ If you'd like to learn more about Uli's marketing agency and available services, visit https://bigboost.marketing

#Lakers Got ROBBED by REFS Tonight In Loss VS #Celtics, #LeBron Got FOULED

JOIN US HERE www.instagram.com/djekg www.instagram.com/milanlieskovsky www.europa2.sk/moderatori Spotify Playlist / UPDATE EVERY WEEK open.spotify.com/playlist/5wDoLqn…0c46d89dbb9348b5 TRACK OF THE WEEK Young Marco - What You Say? DJ EKG PLAYED Ultra Nate, Pete Tong, Jules Buckley, LP Giobbi - Free (Do What U Want) (LP Giobbi Club Edit) DubVision, Lucas & Steve, Joe Taylor - Feel My Love (feat. Joe Taylor) [Redondo Extended Remix]3 Florence & The Machine -You've Got The Love (Joshwa Edit) 
Hitty - Diddy Bop (Extended version) Diplo, Sleepy Tom - Be Right There (HUGEL Remix (Extended) Cedric Gervais, Felix - Don't You Want Me (Extended Mix) Grooveyard - Mary Go Wild (Hel:sløwed Remix) (Extended Mix) 
CamelPhat, Elderbrook - Dance with My Ghost (Extended Mix) Steve Angello, Sebastian Ingrosso, Buy Now!, Salvatore Ganacci - Let You Do This (Extended Mix) Jerome Robins, Sinner & James - You're Not Alone (Sinner & James Remix) Zack Martino, Bertie Scott - Horizon feat. Bertie Scott (Extended Mix) MILAN LIESKOVSKY PLAYED dEVOLVE - I Know You Wanna Nicola Fasano, Steve Forest, Topazz, Mr. Belt & Wezol - New Millenium Dobrel - I Got Love On My Side Kubi & Vylow - Mamita Faithless - Not Going Home (Michal Szatmary Remix) Tom Santa - We Don't Ever Stop Supermode x Oliver Heldens & DJs From Mars - Tell Me Why Turn Me On (Jean Luc Mashup) Hugo Cantarra, Taim - What Did You Say KVSH & Tim Hox feat. Cumbiafrica - Corocito The Pussycat Dolls & Busta Rhymes - Don't Cha (Sir Gio & Aenna Caelum The Parade Edit) Timbaland x Merk & Kremont x Valentino Khan - BAM BAM x Lick It x Give it to me (Paciello Mashup) Joel Corry & RAYE & David Guetta - BED (KREAM Remix) The KID LAROI, Justin Bieber, Dirty Palm vs. Don Diablo - Stay (Kastra "Mr. Brightside" Edit) WEEKEND ANTHEMS BY DJ EKG Purple Disco Machine - In My Arms (Extended Mix) GUZ (NL), Hannah Jane Lewis - Without You (feat. Hannah Jane Lewis) (Extended Mix) Robosonic, Ferreck Dawn, Nikki Ambers - In My Arms (Qubiko Extended Remix) Duke Dumont, Zak Abel - The Power (Extended Mix) MK & Becky Hill - Piece of Me (Extended Mix)
 Calvin Harris - Thinking About You (feat. Ayah Marar) Haska, Salif Keita - Madan (Extended Mix) Disco Gurls - Party People (Nu Disco Mix) Mark Knight - Alright (Original Club Mix) Avicii, Lenny Kravitz - Superlove (Original Mix) Chris Lake - Sundown (Original Mix) Fragma - Toca's Miracle (Bastian Van Shield 2012 Remix) GUESTMIX BY DJ BOSY

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E39 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark, Yucca: and I'm the other one. Yucca. Mark: and today we have a very special episode. We're interviewing James Morgenstern, who is on the Atheopagan Society Council. And so, along with Yucca and myself and a bunch of other people. And so it's just an opportunity to get to know him and ask his ideas about where he sees the community going and how he came to be a part of this community and all that good kind of stuff. So, welcome James. James: Thanks for having me. Yucca: We're really happy to have you, so Well, why don't we get started with. you know how, how you found or came to agonism. James: So, it's kind of a, a, a long journey that started back in like the late eighties like 87, 88, somewhere around in there. And I, I was, I, I was an, an avid reader back then. And I remember coming across like a group of, at a garage sale, this collection of encyclopedias called Man Myth and Magic. And it was like everything supernatural in the cult from A to Z And I got made fun of a bit in grade school and called Encyclopedia Brown and stuff like that because I like, I, because I read encyclopedias. And so I came across these, bought 'em for like a quarter a book with my allowance and read them all. And that really sort of piqued my interest in, in the cult and whatnot. And there were there were articles in there about like, Paganism and, and Witchcraft and Wicca and, and what have you. And so I started seeking out books all of this under, you know, the cover of secrecy because I, you know, grew up in the Midwest, in central Illinois. And all of that stuff was a big no-no. So I. With, I had gone to you know, I grew up in a tiny little town, so we had gone some friends of mine and I had gone with one of their parents into this town, and there was this store in the mall that I went into, I think it was like, it might have been a b Dalton book Sellers, you know, one of those book sellers that's not around anymore. And I found a copy of Raymond Buckland's, Complete book of witchcraft. And I went through that whole thing. It was like a series of lessons. Anybody familiar with, you know, witchcraft from back in that area is familiar with the big blue book. But it went through the whole self initiation ritual thing that they had at the end of that. And that was sort of my start on that path. I started reading a lot of Scott Cunningham. He had, you know, a lot of good material for like solitary practitioners and and whatnot. And later on in my, you know, in my adult life I got involved with a this was shortly after I was married, I got involved with a group in Springfield, Illinois called the Edge Perception Collective. And we put on seasonal public rituals, you know, for the, for the community there in central Illinois. And from there I got involved with the Diana's Grove Mystery School and which was, those folks were fantastic. There's just some really good, you know, kind nice people. And the. It was interesting. They had like a 200 acre property in the Ozarks and, you know, it was beautiful. Had this, it had been a cattle ranch at one point, and so like the edges of it were forested and there was this big meadow in the center with like a seven circuit labyrinth mode into it. That was huge. And they had all these cabins that had built, had been built on the property by the Amish. And you know, they did week long intensives and, and weekend you know, seminars and things like that on all sorts of different topics. I took several like drumming classes there with lane Redmond and, and whatnot. And the you know, the whole time though, like, looking back, I, I realized that. With, in terms of like the belief in like DA and things like that. I was really sort of going through the motions on it. Like, I don't know that I ever actually really believed that, that there were these beings out there. I think a lot of it was me looking for an alternative to what I was in the middle of and sort of, you know, inundated by, and that was, you know, conservative Christianity you know, Midwestern Bible country, you know, kind of kind of folks. And so I, I, I sort of, I moved to St. Louis in like 2000 and really sort of drifted away from all of that and had this big. Spot in my life, you know? A lot of the stuff that I had done previously, even, you know, even being part of the, of this group and that that community all on my own, you know, was all solo stuff. Mark: Mm. James: And a lot of that, you know, took place primarily in, in, in my head. You know, it's the whole like, you know, you develop like a mind palace or whatever they call it these days where you've got this sort of sacred space in your own skull. And that some of that was coping mechanisms and things like that for, you know, mental health issues and, and whatnot. But but I had this big hole and, and, and that lasted a long time. And I moved to California in like 2013 or 2014. At the beginning of 2014. And I remember like, I don't remember the exact year it was, but I was online and on Facebook, and I don't remember if it was like a suggested group or if I was searching for, you know, some sort of online group to join. I've got a lot of, I've got friends out here, you know, on the west coast that are all part of this sort of like spooky dark, you know, like, you know, witchy, woodsy, you know, forest people type community musicians and artists and whatnot. And so, lots of pagan stuff being posted by them and, and you know, that whole aesthetic. So it may have been a recommended group but I found the Athe O Paganism one and I clicked on it and looked at the about page. Read the description and everything, and that seemed like that's, like, that was really kind of where I was at. Like, I wanted, I wanted all the pagan stuff, but I didn't want all of the praying to God's goddesses or offerings to forest, you know, fairies and, and, and things along those lines. so I joined the group and was just sort of a, a lurker for a while. And then I don't remember exactly how I met you, Mark. I think I, it was, you had posted something about where you lived or something along those lines, and I was like, Holy crap. Like, that's, that's, that's, you know, 20 minutes away, 30 minutes away or whatever. and I don't remember if I sent you a message or if it was in a comment or something. Like I don't, the details of all that are Mark: I think he sent me a message as I recall, and we decided to meet for coffee. James: Yeah. But that was fantastic. And then I read your book and like your whole story of how you came to all this. A lot of that resonated with me cuz I'd been involved with similar groups, you know, in the past, the whole church of all worlds. And you know, I wasn't involved with them at all, but I, I was well aware of them and, and things going on with them. And then, you know, I wanted to I wanted to take a more active role in the community because. I don't know. I feel like, I feel like everybody should want to take a more active role. You know, you gotta participate in community, you know, on some level. At least that's how I feel, you know, for myself. And so I, when a call went out for moderators on the group, you know, I, I stepped up to that and and then was a moderator on and off for a couple of years, I think.  Yucca: A few. Yeah. James: yeah, recently, recently, you know, stepped down from that again. And then when the Atheopagan Society started coming together, you know, and, you know, we decided to put together an actual, like, council of people, you know, I, I. Felt the need to be a part of that, you know, on the, on the ground floor. Mark: Mm-hmm. James: don't know cuz I, it's, it's really given me a lot in terms of like, helping sort of fill that hole that I had in my life for so long with not having any sort of like, ritual, you know, or spiritual life, you know, it was, I dunno, it was like, I struggle with I struggle with a fair amount of mental health issues, you know, depression, things like that. And when having that, having a spiritual life and even in my own head now using words like that is, there's a little bit of dissonance because I don't believe in like a spirit world, but I, when I tend to use the word spirit or spiritual, I'm, it's more in the sense of essential. Mark: Mm-hmm. James: spirit being the essence of a thing. You know, and so a spiritual life for me is an essential life. It's a thing that, you know, it's something that's Yucca: mm. James: Um, and the, the, a paganism group online and just the, you know, approaching spirituality from that standpoint has, has helped me out a lot. And so I, I wanted to, to, to try to give back on some level as much as I'm able anyway. Mark: Well, that's great. Thank you for that. Yeah, it's, it's been great for me because you, you are local to get to know you and, you know, become friends. And now of course we have the Northern California Affinity group the Live Oak Circle, and we've been having in-person meetings with a little group of folks. And to me that's just been wonderful. I've, I've really enjoyed sharing rituals with, with a group like that.  James: In person is definitely, at least for me personally, is far more rewarding than, you know, online. So if there's a certain, there's a certain distance that I feel, you know, with online interactions and they, they just doesn't feel as personal and meaningful to me. Other people get a lot out of it, you know, I know that we have like the the mixers and things like that, you know, on Saturdays and like on Thursdays or whatever online. And I know that there are a lot of people who get a lot out of those, and that's fantastic. You know, I think you should get, you should get that community interaction however you can get it. But yeah. Yucca: well, I really love that we've been able to start building both of those kinds of, of interactions right now as, as we're, we're growing and able to do in person gatherings. Both like we did earlier this spring with the retreat and then with local groups and then the mixers and the text communication, which is what mostly the Facebook discord is. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: So it's, it's lovely to see that diversity and people being able to kind of plug in, in the way that fits in in their life and, and their particular needs. James: Yeah. Yucca: and it seems like James, you've, you've been a big part of a lot of that kind of looking out for and caring for and participating in that online component. James: Yeah. Like, I feel, I feel very, and one of the reasons I wanted to be like help be a moderator and stuff for the, for the Facebook group was that I feel like I tend to get protective of, you know, the groups that I'm, that I'm part of. It's all, it's like chosen family kind of, kind of situation. And I felt like being a moderator helped, like, put me in a role where I could be more effective at doing that. Yucca: Mm-hmm. James: because there's a lot of folks that aren't able to sort of stand up for themselves and you only have so much, aside from just blocking people online you've only got so much that you can do in a group if you aren't a moderator. You know, you don't have the ability to, you know, to shield other people from, you know, abuses and things along those lines. And not that we've had a huge problem with. Folks like that in the, our fa I feel like out of all of the Facebook groups that I've, that I've been a part of and all of just the social media groups in general that I've been a part of, the Atheopagan group is definitely by far the most friendly and problem free group that I've, that I, especially with, you know, now we've got well over 4,000 members. Like, it, it, it shocks me on some level that there wasn't, that there wasn't a lot more moderation issues than there, than there was. We just don't get the trolls. I think a lot of that is, is due in part to like our screening process for people, you know, and and just the, you know, vigilance and the community themselves, like, you know, that even aren't moderators stepping up to, you know, Sort of take charge cuz it's, it's, I feel like it's all of our responsibilities to make sure that we've got a nice, you know, safe, accommodating, friendly community, you know, to be a part of. You know, and every, every group is gonna have issues, but I feel like our group is, is always working on those, you know, when something comes up, when someone brings something to our attention, something was problematic or something that we, that needs to be addressed that we're, that we, we work on it. I feel like that effort is an honest one and that, you know, and that's important. But but yeah, it's by far the, the best group I've been a part of. And I, and I think that speaks a lot for the people that are involved. Mark: I agree. Yeah, I mean, I've, I continue to be amazed by the quality of the community that's come together online, around aop, Paganism, and As you say, with more than 4,000 members, you would imagine that there would be more conflict. And it's not like there's group think because we have really interesting conversations about lots of different things and people have varying perspectives on a variety of different things. But there's a civility and a a fundamental assumption of good intention on the part of one another that I think is really rare for Facebook. I mean, I don't even go to my main Facebook feed anymore. I just hang out in the atheopagan. James: yeah, yeah. And it was, it was really great for me at the retreat to get to meet some of those folks in person. you know, cuz you see a name, you see a name and like an icon on online and I don't know, for me that's Yucca: A real animal person  James: Yeah,  Yucca: really right there in front of you. James: cuz like online there's a, like, I feel like there is sort of a certain degree of anonymity that's necessary because it can just be a dangerous place. So I don't fault people for not putting pictures of themselves up as like their Facebook photo or whatever. You know, I didn't do it for the longest time. Uh uh, now I don't really care. So it's whatever. But but it's nice being able to put a face to, you know, conversations that I've had with folks and, and things along those. Mark: So, I have kind of a two part question, I guess, for you, James. The first one is so what do you see your role as being on the Ethiopia Pagan Society Council? What, what do you see as, you know, what are your responsibilities there? What is, what do you see yourself as doing for the community there? And then the second part of the question is what about the future? What, what sorts of things do you see the society being able to do to foster this community or support it or train it or, you know, whatever. What, what's your vision there? James: I think in terms of my, my role, like, I feel like I, I try to represent the, the greater community as a whole. Mark: Mm. James: Take into consideration, like when we're making decisions and things like that, the needs of, of, of the community as it's been sort of represented to me by my interactions with people on Facebook, you know, in the Facebook group. And, and to a far, far lesser degree, the, the discord sort of, cuz I, I, I started the, that Discord server I don't, a couple years ago or whatever. And Discord is not my, it's not my thing. It's, you know, it's some people that's totally their jam and that's, and they prefer that over everything else and that's totally fine. It's just, it was never really my thing, but there was a call for it online and so I just, I had used it previously for like some gaming. And so I was like, well, you know, I'll start a server and we'll see how that happens and how that works. And now it, you know, it's got a, I think a couple hundred people on it. Mark: I think about 500 Yucca: Yeah, James: is it really? Mark: Yeah. Yucca: It's got some great stuff. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. James: I, yeah, like I said, it's, it is wasn't really my thing. I am not a tech savvy person, so, you know, there were got all these people that jumped on it, that were doing Discord stuff all the time and asking me as a, you know, as like the admin there, you know, Oh, can we do this? Can we do that? And it's like, I have no idea how to do those things. So and I don't have a whole lot of time to learn how to do those things. So like, I, that's a, yeah, that's a whole nother change. But in terms of like my role and what I, you know, what I seem like my responsibilities being like, I, I don't know. I. I think everybody, I think every group and, and it hasn't been a thing that I, that has been something that I feel like I've needed to worry about because our, our group and our organization has, it's worked a lot differently than a lot of other groups that I, that I'm aware of in the Pagan community and not so many that I've been a direct part of in, in terms of like decision making groups and whatnot. But I don't know. There was sort of this idea in my head at one point of like, being kind of a watchdog and making sure that things didn't start going down like a hierarchical you know, sort of problematic path. Often happens with those sort of council type groups in various PE communities. Like I said, I'd been a member of a group in the past. The, the edge of perception, which, you know, all we did was really put on public rituals. That's all we did. We weren't like a, we weren't sort of guiding a community necessarily. So all of our meetings dealt with what are we gonna do for the next, you know, for the solstice or whatever, and you know, who's gonna do what roles. And you know, how is, you know, how much did we spend on supplies for the last one? How much money do we have in the account for supplies for the next one? And you know, and that sort of thing, we were, we were a not for profit five. I think we had, you know, our 5 0 1 3 c, you know, thing or whatever. So we had to, you know, keep track of receipts and all that good stuff for taxes and but There weren't, so, there weren't really any issues in terms of like power struggles or anything along those lines, you know, people wanting to take control of things necessarily. At least none that I was aware of, but I definitely know that there are groups that are like that. You get like an individual who is, and that's one of the things like I, I feel I really sort of commend you for Mark, because you, that's, you have not being sort of the founder of, of this whole thing. You have made, I feel like you've made great strides to not put yourself in a position of. Power and or a position of authority or anything along those lines. You know, you've been pretty good about when people try to appeal to you as an authority on something and say, Well, Mark says this, or whatever. You're very much, I feel like you've done a pretty good job of, of the whole, like, you know, I'm just like, I'm just another member of the community like you, you know, just because my name's on a book or whatnot, that doesn't mean that, like what I say is, is law sort of thing. And I know that's been an issue. So there was an, at one point in my head there was this idea of like, kind of being a watchdog for the community if that sort of thing started to happen, to try to be a bull work against that. But that's, but it's never come up. So, that quickly faded into the background as something unnecessary. So I, so mainly I think I, I feel like I'm just there as support. Like I, like I said before, I, you know, I struggle with a lot of mental health issues and what have you. So my, my ability to do things is, is relatively limited. But I do, I, I, you know, I want to do whatever I'm capable of, you know, and take a more active role other than just seeing posts online and hearing about things and, you know, listening to the podcast and whatnot. And as far as going forward, I'd like to see a lot more opportunities like that provided for the entirety of the community. You know, it's a big community and I think a lot of those opportunities should be like on a, on local levels. You know, like you mentioned before, we've got our local live Oak Circle. Here in Northern California, which, you know, we've had like, what, like almost a dozen people Mark: Yeah. James: I think involved, you know, that have that at least, you know, I've seen, you know, active, we've got our own little discord server Mark: Mm. James: and whatnot to help coordinate stuff. And then you know, we've had Facebook members who have posted things about their local meetups, you know, one in Chicago that looked like had a fantastic turnout. And I like seeing it. It makes me happy to see things like that happening because I, community is something that's really important to me. And I think it's, I think a lot of the reason it's really important to me is, is because of how little direct access I have to it. You know, I'm, I'm sort of isolated out in the redwoods, you know, and So, and community interactions are, are, have become far more important to me. They're more meaningful to me because I have them, you know, so rarely. So that's an important step going forward, I think, is helping to foster those local communities Mark: Mmh. James: to build a greater, you know, broader, you know, general community. The, I thought that the Sun Tree retreat was a, was a fantastic success in terms of like turnout and whatnot. So I'd really love to see more events like that going forward. Like maybe regional regional ones and then, you know, a like a main sort of national one or whatever here in the States. And it would be fantastic to see. Because we've got members of the Facebook group from all over the world, you know? And we've got affinity groups for larger affinity groups, for like regional affinity groups for some of those areas. But it'd be great to see them putting together, you know, events and it, and I think a lot of people think if the, if like, Oh, we, if we're gonna do that, we're gonna need all of these things and we're gonna need this awesome space, and we're gonna need, you know, speakers or we're gonna need, It's like, you don't really, you just get together, get together and have a meal, you know, and make it a ritual, you know, be, be mindful of the various parts of the meal that you're, you know, as, as they're, as they're served or consumed or whatever. Or get together and, you know, if you're into drumming and stuff, you have a drum circle or sing some songs together or, you know, just do some, do something. As a community and it'll grow from that. You don't have to have like a fancy convention space or, you know, retreat center to go to or something along those lines. But I think building those communities is important because we, we do better together. You know, we, we move forward better, faster, more stronger together than we do, you know, as individuals. And some people, you know, social interaction is not a thing for them and they don't do well in groups and that's fine. You can totally do it by yourself. But, you know, I feel like as a, as a community though, moving forward, like these smaller local localized groups are really. I think that the next best step forward. Mark: Hmm. I think that's really well said about community and humanity as a social animal. You know, we, we get e even those of us that are very introverted will usually get something out of social interaction. They may not be able to take very much of it. But there's a, there's a sort of a, an energizing or a charge that comes with interacting with other people who see you and are authentic and open and kind and, you know, fostering that kind of a climate is, it's super important to me and it seems. That's what people are gravitating to in, in the online communities is like, wow, these people are nice and they're thoughtful and they're interesting and they, and they're rational and and they are open to the idea of secularizing the world in, you know, in ways that are moving and impactful. So, yeah. Yeah. That's very cool. I didn't realize that you had joined the council with the idea of being sort of a watchdog on, you know, on the power dynamics, but I'm, I'm glad to hear that you haven't felt that was necessary. James: Yeah. I mean that was sort of, it wasn't like a main reason, you know, the main reason was like, I, I wanted to be a part of it. I, you know, I wanted to be a part of, I wanted to give back, you know, cuz I had gotten quite a bit out of, you know, the online community and, and whatnot. And wanted to give back beyond just being a moderator on the Facebook group. And the, the whole like watchdog thing was sort of a secondary, a secondary thing, you know, one of those creeping things in the back of my head. And it was like, Oh, I've, like, I've seen groups like this come together before with really good intentions and then a cult of personality forms around one person. And and then it all falls apart. And I didn't wanna see that happen. You know, like I said, I, I feel, I feel kind of protective of our community. , which can have its own drawbacks because I, I, there are times when I'm feeling probably too protective and might see threats where there aren't any. And that's, you know, that's, that's my own shoot to deal with. The yeah, I think other things that we could do, like I, I, I think I probably mentioned previously about you know, we've got members of the community who probably are a little isolated and not as able and like some sort of like, outreach program or something along those lines, you know, to bring resources to those people. You know, I think this, this podcast has obviously been a great. Because you know, like you had mentioned to me previously about like the number of new members coming to the Facebook group because they heard the podcast which is fantastic, you know, but that's one of those things that like is of, it's available to everybody all over the world, you know, You know, you don't have to be on a specific social media platform or whatnot. This podcast is available on, you know, numerous different podcast platforms and everybody's got, and I think network, maybe possibly networking more with other similar like-minded groups. Yucca: Mm-hmm. James: You know, I think that might be a good step in the right direction. Cuz you know, In the end to get sort of philosophical, we're all in this together. Yucca: Yeah. James: that's not just like the a o paganism group online. And that's not just, you know, our, our local circles. It's, you know, everybody we're, and you know, we might not all completely agree on things all the time, but we, none of us get out of this alive. So we should all work together to make, to make the experiences as, as as pleasant as possible. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: Yeah. James: and that, you know, and that in that involves a lot of work. And not, not necessarily like physical footwork type stuff, but like personal work, you know, for each of us. Things like Like dealing with issues of racism and ableism and things along those lines. You know, that's, that's stuff that has to be worked on, on a personal level. And you know, we all have a lot of, I think a lot of us the vast majority of us have a lot of internalized, you know, issues with those things. Things that have become normalized for us because it's just, they're, they just are things that have never been an issue. You know, it's a thing we've talked about in the Facebook group. Paganism in general for the, for a long time was a primarily white thing, Yucca: Mm-hmm. James: And and so I think a lot of people of color and whatnot really felt it was inaccessible to them, Mark: Yeah. Or that they were unwelcome. James: or that they were unwelcome. Exactly. Because there's still this huge trend, and that's why I'm I really. One of the things that I really like about Atheopagan and that that drew me to it, is that it's not based in a culture, a preexisting culture. It's not based around a preexisting set of traditions. You know, it encourages, you know, a DIY approach. You know, create your own rituals, create your own traditions, you know, start new ones. Don't, you know, like we, it's not the goal to recreate some lost civilization or culture, or to live in, you know, a a, a pretend past that never really existed. Cuz that's what most of these groups, you know, I feel like to some degree do. And it's not about escapism either, Yucca: Mm-hmm. James: Which is a thing that I found. I've gotten a lot of flack in the past for, for bringing the issue up in groups that I've been a part of that I feel like a lot of people were, you know, they'll be a part of a group that espouses like, you know, justice or something along those lines. I'm not gonna name any groups in particular. But they'll espouse values like justice. But then when issues of justice are brought up, people, you know, start going on the whole, like, why do you gotta make this political? It's like, uh, how is it not, How is that not like everything is political. If it involves people, it's political. So, You know, every aspect of our lives is affected by politics. You know, nobody lives in a. Yucca: Mm-hmm. James: from the rest of the world. So literally every aspect of our life is, has been affected or is constantly affected by politics. Whether it be the laws that we're living under or the regulations we have to abide by when doing things to our homes or you know, our yards, you know, down to like HOA organizations with how tall your grass can be and crap like that. Um, it's all politics, you know, And so, and I understand like people who get tired of hearing about hearing all the arguing Yucca: Mm-hmm. James: what have you, and I think that's primarily, it seems to be primarily an American issue, you know, a US issue. But you know, everybody knows what's going on in this country, you know, right now and has been for a while. So, you know, the whole world knows the sort of situation we're living in. So I think it's understandable that people are burnt out. . And, but most of those people who are like, Why do you gotta make it political, are the ones who aren't really all that negatively affected by politics. Mark: Right. They're  James: tired of hearing people argue about it because it interrupts their peace and quiet and they come into these groups because they're trying to escape rather than, you know. But for me, like I said, a spiritual life is an essential life and as an essential part of life, it's politics is unavoidable Mark: Mm. James: cuz that's an essential part of life. You can't exist in the world without, with other people, without politics. So, you know, that's I think working on those issues on an individual level is important. And working on those issues as a community, you know, supporting each other. You know, I, I feel like our community has been really good in like the comment sections and stuff on Facebook of offering up resources when issues come up and someone says, Well, I don't know how to do that, or I don't, you know, or where do I go to find that information? There's usually always someone who's got a list of links or books to read or, you know, or, or YouTubers to follow, or, you know, something along those lines that are, you know, resources. And then it's incumbent upon us to take personal responsibility then at that point, and read those things, you know, or, you know, or, or, or look up those papers or, or what have you. And you know, it so yeah, I the whole escapism thing, that's Mark: Yeah, we've, we've talked about that here before. I mean, it's, it's tricky because you can use sort of fantastic language and, and framing to. Make your life a lot as a tool to make your life a lot more enchanted. Right. James: Oh yeah. Mark: But you need to keep in mind, you know, it's that ability to recognize the difference between metaphor and reality. You know  James: And I, I'm a, I'm a big fan of like, the myth poetic, you know, as, as a tool, you know, for, like you said, re enchanting, you know, your life. But there's a, it be, it starts to become escapism when that becomes the, your preferred realm to exist in. Cuz it's not a real place. And you live in the real world and there's no getting around that. Mark: sure. When you start blaming fairies for things, James: Or Mark: It's a problem. James: right, or you know, like a thing you had mentioned, and I think you had mentioned it in, in your book, you know, with people like excusing behaviors, because you know, it's the will of the gods or, or whatnot. And the spiritual bypassing that takes place, you know, where people are like, Oh, well the reason this bad thing is happening in your life is because, you know, maybe you've angered some spirits or something along those lines. And, which is really just a fancy way of victim blaming at that point.  Yucca: It's a way of not taking responsibility, James: yeah, exactly. And so that's, that was going back to like the first question. You know, that's, that's another thing that sort of drew me to Athe o Paganism, was that, that that wasn't a part of all this. There was no, there was no road. For that sort of approach to things, you know, personal responsibility and and, you know, taking steps in our own sort of growth and development, you know, are are built in. And that's that's very appealing to me and I think needed, you know, in. Mark: Yeah. One thing that I've really appreciated about many people in the Pagan community, I certainly wouldn't say all of them, but many people in the Pagan community, is that there is this kind of dedication to personal growth, you know, to, to doing the work to become the best people they can and. I just see that as essential. You know, it's like if, if the goal is excellence in how we interact with one another in the world that we create in our engagement with the rest of the natural world in all of that, then it, you know, it starts with the wrestling that's happening in your head and, you know, figuring that stuff out and getting as clear and as kind and as balanced as we can. And so it, so that was one of the things that drew me back towards Paganism. And after I got sick of it, you know, there were those people that were living in a fantasy world and were, you know, causing harm out of that. But then there were these other people who were just amazing. Humble, fantastic, incredible people. And I wanted those people . I, you know, I, I wanted to go back and get them. So that's, that's been part of what this has been about. James: yeah. I've had, and like, you know, I, I skipped over in my story about how I got to aio Paganism. I skipped over a lot of the stuff that I got involved in, looking for ways of like making meaning in the world. That were more solo like, I got into Chaos Magic, and I got into the, you know, I was involved in the Lima for, for a while, Mark: Mm-hmm. James: you know, joined some initiatory orders and, and what have you. And know, it was all, you know, brain hacking, trying to figure out how to make myself that better person, you know, that you just mentioned. And doing it on your own by yourself is often very difficult. And so I, I think having a community that's all also working towards that. And like you said, not everybody involved in those groups was good. But there were definitely some jewels, you know, that stood out. But for some of them, like the, the, the, the Leic community there was a lot of just. I, I pretty much left all of, I left the Lima because of a lot of the just really horrible, toxic stuff. And I've always been a proponent of the idea that whatever it is that you're championing, whatever cause that you're standing behind, whatever beliefs that you are espousing, look around at the other people who are going, Yes, that's what that I'm on, pa on. I'm right there with you. I'm on the same page as you are. You believe what I believe and I absolutely support you. And if those people are neo-Nazis, and if those people are, you know, just you know, white nationalists and racists and terrible people, then you need to, you need to rethink these ideas that you're championing. Cause if they're saying, Oh, no, no, I totally agree with you, I don't think that's a good thing. and, So, you know, I, I, I've had these conversations to get political. I've had these conversations with folks who, you know, espouse like conservative values and whatnot, and they're like, Yeah, but you know, I don't agree with those guys, but yeah, but they agree with you. Like you don't agree with those guys cuz you don't, because they're on, you're just sort of cherry picking, you know, the things of their ideology that they, that you don't agree with. And I don't know that you're actually looking at, at what they believe and what you believe with an unbiased, you know, viewpoint. And I think that your ideas and their ideas line up far more than you're willing to admit to. And because on some level you do agree with them because if they're agreeing with you, how is that not the same thing? You know, if you say XYZ and they're like, Yes, xyz, and then you say, Oh yeah, but I don't agree with their xyz, but it's it's the same xyz. Then, you know, I think that needs some reflection and some rethinking. And so, yeah, I don't know where I was going with that. I've got my mid-afternoon coffee, caffeine hitting my, hitting my head and it's sending me on spirals. Yeah. What were we saying? Yucca: We had been talking about the gyms in the community, and you'd said that you'd kind of skipped over some of the, the, James: yeah, Yucca: the various groups that you'd been involved in and stopped being involved in. James: yeah. Cuz I think when, when, for me it was like a matter of percentages, you know, if there's like three or four people in the community that are absolutely wonder. People and the, the overwhelming majority of the community is not, then that's, then you, you can't, you can't it, I personally can't stay in a community like that. I can't stay involved with a group like that. Like I, it, it's always terrible to have to sort of leave a group because you know you're gonna miss those people probably, especially if you developed any sort of personal relationship with them. And you can always stay, you know, connected with those people outside of that group. But being part of the group itself is just not an option any longer. Again, I think, I feel like you gotta look around at the people who are, who are standing behind you and chanting along with you and see what sort of flags they're waving and, you know, if those are flags that strike you as you know, bad things, then maybe you should think about. You know why it is that they're chanting along with you. And I, and it's mostly been like, you know, events that have taken place here in the US over the last, like six years or so that have really sort of brought that sort of idea to a head for me. You know, or also if you don't, the people who are on your side are championing ideas that actively seek to harm or impede the lives of people you care about, then maybe you should rethink those ideas also, because if you really care about those people, why would you want to promote the things that are going to hurt them, you know? And I feel like in our, to bring it back to, you know, our community, I feel like we are, I feel like we're, we can always do better, but I feel like we're doing a pretty good job. And that is, and that's not to sort of say, you know, to let us off the hook in any way, shape or form. The work is, the work is constant and ongoing and not quick. You know, there is no fast like flip a switch and suddenly you're not racist, you know, or you flip a switch and suddenly you're not ableist anymore. You know, those are, they're patterns of behavior that come about from living in a system that promotes all of those things and oftentimes rewards those things. So, you know, working out of those situations, those methods of thought and whatnot is a. It's a lot of deep work, but I feel like as a community we can support each other in that work. And that's what part of what I was saying about when conversations like that have come up on the Facebook group, you know, people offering up resources, you know, books, you know, books to read and things along those lines. I know we've got, there's like a book club like an atheopagan book club and I think that they've read some, some pretty good books, you know, in, in that regard on some of those issues. I definitely, I'm not a part of it cuz reading books for me is a, it's a whole thing that's gets too complicated to get into right now. But but I definitely encourage them to read more of those books that help work on those issues. You know, everybody likes to read, you know, the fun books. Things like gathering loss is a popular one. Or what's the other, the Mark: reading Sweet Grass. James: Yeah. Braiding, sweetgrass. Those books, those books come up a lot in conversations. and those are great. Yeah. Yeah, they're great. I, I'd like to, you know, I'd like to see more opportunities for for unlearning the sort of problematic tendencies that, that, you know, the overwhelming majority of us tend to have. Mark: Mm. James: cuz that makes the community more accessible to the folks, you know, like I mentioned before, that felt it, you know, this sort of spirituality inaccessible before, Mark: Mm-hmm. James: Yeah. And, and build your own tradit. You know, around that sort of thing cuz that can help reinforce all of that and Mark: You know, I, I need to put in a word about that. I, I wrote a blog post probably four or five months ago now. In which I agree for myself, I, I want to create new culture. But I can see how for people of color, they might want to draw culture from their ancestors forward. Um, and so, you know, when I talk about, when I talk about Ethiopia, Paganism being a modern thing that just got started in the early two thousands, and it's not rooted in any culture that really comes out of the fact that I just designed it for me and I'm this white guy you know, this sort of Mongol American white guy. And I think. I've, I've since done more thinking about that, and I think that it's really important for us to acknowledge that there's a place for drawing indigenous traditions, drawing traditions of African ancestry, you know, drawing those, those pieces forward into the ritual practices of people that come out of those, those ethnicities. James: I, I absolutely agree. I think on, on a personal level, I think, you know, for your own like personal ritual and spiritual life, I think drawing on, on, on your heritage is, is absolutely, although I don't like using that word, heritage I think drawing on that is Backgrounds. is, is, is important and can be really sort of empowering and enriching and whatnot. I think it, where the issue comes in is when the overwhelming majority of a group comes from a particular background Mark: Yeah. James: and they try to make those aspects of their background, the primary focus of the community's background. So like, you know, taking a recent holiday for example. So that's an Irish thing, you know, that's a Gaelic culture cultural thing. Yucca: Mm. Mark: Mm-hmm. James: so everybody's like, everybody talks about sow and it's like, I mean, it's not, it's not like a solar festival, you know, it's not one of the cross quarter you know, holidays that is tied to an astronomical. Or anything along those lines, like the solstice and equinoxes. So it is a very sort of culturally specific thing, and not everybody celebrates that. And so when everybody's almost sort of insisted be called that because Halloween is too much of a, I mean, it's, it's even got its own cultural sort of baggage, you know, in terms of like all Hall's Day being, you know, kind of a, a, a more Christian centric holiday and the whole, the whole co-opting of, of, you know, pagan holidays by Christianity idea and those sorts of things. But I think a lot of people, when, when the community, when the greater community refers to it as a specific cultural thing like sa, those people who did not come, did not grow up in that background. Feel isol, you know, separated and they feel like they're not able to take, they feel excluded. So I feel like as a greater, you know, sort of global community or whatever, coming up with new non culturally specific things is great. And then incorporate in your own personal rituals and whatnot, and even your own local group rituals, incorporate aspects of the, of, of your own background into that. And then your group can each, each person can bring their own cultural background into the mix. And you have this, you know, lovely bouquet of, of mixed flowers, you know, that everybody can enjoy. The but yeah, I think that when people lean into those sort of traditional ideas of the holidays, You know, of our, like, you know, that can be one of the things that isolates people who have traditionally been sort of excluded from these sort of circles, and it makes us less inclusive. You know, I personally celebrate sound because That's my background. You know, I'm 93% Scottish and Irish and with a smidge of, you know, other, you know, I'm a, I'm a American mut, you know, with a blend of, of European backgrounds. And but I wasn't raised in any of those cultures, you know, that's a, so that's a thing. One of my. I don't wanna say pet peeves cuz that's not what it is. One of my issues that I struggle with a lot of times is I don't believe that for the most part Americans have in general, white America doesn't have a recognizable, consistent culture or cultural background to draw from. Which I think is one of the reasons why so many folks look to, like Ancient Ireland and Ancient Scotland or ancient Germany and you know, or Scandinavia, they look to Asat true, you know, because of their roots and their heritage and they, or they look to, you know, like the Celtic sort of stuff because of their, you know, their ancestry. It's like, that's great, but you likely weren't raised with any of those traditions, assuming those traditions are real at all. And so, In a way that's sort of a, it's a hot button topic and I'll probably get flack for it and people will talk about me. But I feel like in a way that's sort of still a matter of cultural appropriation cuz you weren't raised in that culture and there are people who legitimately went through terrible things because of their connection to that culture. They were prohibited from practicing just like here in the United States with the, with, you know, indigenous peoples being legally prohibited from pr, from practicing, you know, you know, uh, their, their ancestral traditions and what whatnot to step up. Having not gone through any of that and just adopt those things and say, Well that's, you know, that's my, that's, you know, my heritage. It's like you're, I. I guess blood wise down the road, always, you've got that connection to people who participated in that. But you, you never did. You're, you know, that's not part of your, your culture for the overwhelming, not for everybody. Obviously there are exceptions. People who are like first generation Americans and whatnot. They may have relatives who who carried some of some older traditions and stuff forward. But this idea of participating in these like ancient traditions, like, I mean, it's, Yucca: I think it doesn't necessarily just have to be first generation either. I mean, there, you know, there's a, James: but those traditions have to have been carried forward. Like, I feel like you need to have been raised in the culture to, to really, because otherwise you're, you are participating in a thing without, without any sort of, you know, you're participating in a thing that other people were punished for without. The threat of punishment, you know, and without having gone through those  Yucca: I, think it's really very specific to different ones. I mean that some, some times when those ancestors were forced to stop, Doing tho having those traditions. You know, my, my father's first language, he was not allowed to speak that outside of the home. And his, you know, his, his mother wasn't allowed to speak it. So I wasn't, I didn't get that language from him. Right. But, but there's still a connection that I have to that culture, right? Or, you know, and, and so for instance, my, my child is relearning the language even though there's a generational gap between, you know, what she was, how she's been raised, the culture that she was raised in, and, and wanting to like to rebrace, right, to reclaim and rekindle some of that. James: And I think as long as, as, as those things are being passed down with the knowledge of, of the struggle that people went through regarding those things, like how the, how the, you know, and that's, you know, the reason that you're doing it. But I think a lot of that is disregarded when people just sort of pick up a book on Celtic paganism or something along those lines, and they think that they're participating in these like ancient Celtic rituals and whatnot, which is Yucca: My personal pet peeve around that is when it gets all lumped into one culture, it's like, wait, but, but we're a lot of different cultures, you know? James: I've been involved in Drewry and things like that, and there's this idea of like this Dr. Reconstructionism and whatnot, which I think is. The fact of the matter is, is we don't know what any of the, there was nothing written down and we don't know what was practiced. So these like ancient rights or ancient rituals, they're not ancient. They're all new modern inventions. And there's that zero evidence that, you know, and there's a lot of hearsay and people are like, Well, no, this was passed down. Word of mouth. It's like, yeah. And we've all played telephone, we've all played that game. And there's a good chance that the way that you're doing things is absolutely nothing like what people did then. You know, and you've got the influence of Christianity and things like that. And to think that, to think that, like, I don't know. I think the assumption that, like the monks that wrote down a lot of this stuff, when they were encountering these new cultures, you know, as they were, were coming into the areas that they weren. Repainting and reinterpreting and just straight up lying about things. I think I, I don't think that's an honest approach to, to what that is. So,  Mark: Well, and, and James, this also goes to the lionization of the ancient, right? I mean, there's that whole idea that because something is old, that it's got a deep validity to it. And that's, that's one that I just. Honestly, I don't go with, I mean, to me, cultures are valid just because they're valid and it doesn't matter whether they started recently or, and then, then there are cultures that aren't so valid, like Joseph Smith's arrangement that has now taken off and has many followers all over the world that you know, the values of, which I find really problematic. But just because something is new doesn't make it invalid. And just because something is old doesn't make it valid. But particularly for people where there's been genocidal effort to extinguish the culture, I think it is really important to be able to say to someone who's, you know, grandfather and father were, you know, grandparents and, and parents were not allowed to speak their native language, that they are still entitled to relearn that language and restart those cultural traditions again. James: Sure, I think. But I think that a lot, and I think a lot of it is for me personally, that's it. It's all continued upon intent. Mark: Mm-hmm. James: if you're, if I think if you're going to do that, then you need to be learning about the struggles that they went through. You need to be informing yourself about the reasons why this is an issue, you know? It's like, you know, the, it's, for me, it's like the, the whole like, you know, When it comes to, like in, in indigenous folks, you get the person who does their 23andme DNA test and they get the thing that says, Oh, you're 0.05% Native American. And they're like, Oh, cool. Well, I'm just gonna start practicing Cherokee, you know, traditions or, or whatnot cuz you know, well I'm part, you know, I'm part Native American and what, and, and not learning why that's a, why that's a problem. Mark: Yeah. James: It's like if you're, I, you know, because in all likelihood, you, you, you really, the only connection you have is a genetic, is a genetic connection to those, you know, to those folks because you've not, you know, I don't know. It's a, it's a, it's a complicated. It's definitely not cut and dry. There are definitely, you know, exceptions to the rule and, and, and all of that good stuff. There's, I come from a, you know, a line of people who are very, very far removed from any of that. I, the, the research that I've done on my own family, you know, I got as far back as like the 15 hundreds to some, you know, Sept of SCOs who, you know, the, the, the McCulloughs or, or whatnot. And they were like a, they didn't have their own tartan, which was a, which was a pretty modern invention. They didn't have their own, you know, sort of clan, steel and motto or insignia or anything. There were like a vassal clan of some other larger clan, but. I wasn't raised with any of that. My grandparents weren't raised with any of that. My great grandparents weren't raised with any of that. You know, if anything, there's more Appalachian you know, traditions and culture, which is a mishmash of, of, you know, a number of things. Because the farther you get from the source, the more diluted those things sort of become, the more integrated with other, you know, cultures and, and, and traditions and whatnot. Those things become and they become their own thing, you know? So like, I feel like for me, like I've, I've, I've tried to educate myself on the struggles of those people from my background who were barred from like my Irish ancestors who were barred from speaking Irish, you know, by the English in my. I try to educate myself about that. And I try not to just take it for granted that I'm just allowed because my, you know, my grandmother's last name was Bailey, you know, and I think that there's the overwhelming majority of people that I have encountered in the Pagan community. That's really the sort of approach. There's this romanticized like idea of like ancient Celtic Ireland, you know, that people pursue. And and it goes, it goes back to the whole escapism thing for me. And you know, I think a lot of people are what draws a lot of people to modern paganism. And the new age movement is a dissatisfaction with the way the world is right now and a lack of sort of, Lack of meaningful internal life you know, to to help give them a sense of comfort and whatnot in, you know, the, the sort of times that we're having. And I think that there's that appeal to, it's the reason we read, you know, that's the reason we read fantasy books and things like that, you know, So for a brief time we can live in a world that is not this one. Mark: Yeah, but this one is so amazing. Yucca: Yeah. James: it really is. You open your eyes and you look at the world around you and you see like really look and see the various processes taking place on the. Smaller levels, you can just keep going. You know, like, Oh, well why does that happen? And there's a whole process involved and it's like, and then you can take a piece of that process and say, Well, why does that happen? And there's this whole other process involved, and it's this like fractal rabbit hole that, you know, winds up down in some quantum, you know, wormhole thing Mark: Some probabilistic. Weird. James: Yeah. Mark: Yeah, James: until we're just speculating, because we really don't know, because we are physically incapable of seeing any more detail from that for now. And you can do the same to the greater scale, you know, because the immensity of this universe and reality in general, as you know, is astounding and incredibly humbling. For me to contemplate. I've spent many a night lying on my back as a kid. I had, I built a skateboard ramp for myself, and there would be times when I would lay down on the deck of that skateboard ramp and living in rural America, there wasn't a lot of street lights and things like that to obscure my view of the sky. And spent a lot of time laying, just looking up at the stars in the moon and whatnot, and always feeling that sensation of sort of being held to the earth. Mark: Hmm. James: Like at any moment I could fall off of it Yucca: Hmm mm. James: into the, you know, the sky, you know, up into the, that vastness, because what is up Mark: Mm-hmm. James: that's arbitrary you know, it's in relation to where, you know, to where the ground is. That's up. Mark: Yeah. James: But in the, in the schema things, there is no up. There's no down. It just, we have to put these sort of descriptions on things to help us make sense because of how limited we are in, in our, in our perception. But I think going back to yet another thing that drew me to a, the o paganism is that whole idea of like, that's, I'm, I'm part of all of that. That's, that, that craziness, that just overwhelming levels of complexity. And like we talked you know, yesterday, mark, about the human brain and how, how little we really know about how it operates. This chunk of fat and water and whatnot that sits inside, you know, this bone on the top of our head or our bodies. Excuse me. Throat thing happening. The, the overwhelming, like, I don't know the awe that sets in Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Mm-hmm. James: the, you just, there are times when it just takes my breath away. And it's the appreciation of that and knowing that every other person who's part of the, you know, not just part of our community, but every other person in the entire world is also part of that. Mark: Mm-hmm. James: And if there's anything that connects us, that's, it's that, you know, we're all part of this sort of greater mechanism. I don't know that like, I guess you could call it an organism if you wanted. Yucca: Mm-hmm. James: You know, I guess it all depends on per. , but we're all tiny, tiny, tiny little pieces of this huge thing that operates in a relatively specific manner. Mark: Mm. James: even though it seems like, you know, at times all of the stuff is so random and whatnot. That's sort of the point, is that that's how it works, is that there's no sort of predetermined path. No one has laid it all out, you know, and mapped everything out. Like what's the point of that? You know? Excuse me, my throat. So Yucca: Yeah. Well, I'll, Yeah. James: having me on.  Yucca: Yeah. So thank you James. This has been, This has been amazing. Mark: It has, it's the, I mean, we've wandered into all these really essential subject matters about, about our path and about our community, and it's just been a really great conversation. Thank you. James: Yeah, thank you for, for tolerating my, my ramblings.  Yucca: Well, thank you for sharing them with us. We really appreciate it. Oh, James: my pleasure. Mark: And we'll see you all next week. Everybody. Have a great week.    .

In this week's show, Phil talks to James Malley, the CEO and Co-Founder of Paccurate. He has been working in the logistics tech space since 2009 and has helped create a variety of enterprise shipping technology. He spearheaded the design of an award-winning multi-carrier TMS (Transportation Management Software) and since 2015, he's been evangelizing the use of AI to achieve cost-efficient and environmentally sustainable packing. James talks about the importance of investing in communication to make the innovation process easier. He also discusses the value of optimism and trying to see the best side of every situation.   KEY TAKEAWAYS:   TOP CAREER TIP When building something new that has no precedent, it's always best to focus more upon communication in the early stages, to make the process easier.   WORST CAREER MOMENT During a joint venture with a large company, James's work was not matched by his partner. Through this he learned to be wary of partners and what they can provide in terms of value.   CAREER HIGHLIGHT Conversely, a partnership entered into after gaining experience, proved entirely fruitful, especially when it came to sustainability.   THE FUTURE OF CAREERS IN I.T There are always problems to be solved – innovations to be found – even when we think we've come as far as we can. This makes the world of IT perennially exciting and challenging.   THE REVEAL What first attracted you to a career in I.T.? – James found his love for IT through design and problem solving. What's the best career advice you received? – Say yes to everything What's the worst career advice you received? – To again, say yes to everything! What would you do if you started your career now? – James would work on problems that other people are dealing with, and not things that nobody is asking for. What are your current career objectives? – Becoming a better CEO, helping others to achieve more and finding better ways to work remotely. What's your number one non-technical skill? – Networking. How do you keep your own career energized? – Making the supply chain more sustainable and less wasteful. What do you do away from technology? – Spending time with his three-year-old son and trying to prevent household accidents!   FINAL CAREER TIP Be a micro-pessimist, but a macro-optimist. It's easy to be pessimistic and difficult to see the best in a situation. But the best of the best can see the light in everything.   BEST MOMENTS (8:08) – James – “Invest in messaging and communication” (12:05) – James - “You may look around and think every problem has been solved. The truth is that's not the case” (12:37) – James – “Get comfortable with whatever industry you're in. That's where you'll find the most valuable ideas” (18:11)– James – “Focus on solving problems, and you'll find your niche sooner rather than later”   ABOUT THE HOST – PHIL BURGESS Phil Burgess is an independent IT consultant who has spent the last 20 years helping organizations to design, develop, and implement software solutions.  Phil has always had an interest in helping others to develop and advance their careers.  And in 2017 Phil started the I.T. Career Energizer podcast to try to help as many people as possible to learn from the career advice and experiences of those that have been, and still are, on that same career journey.   CONTACT THE HOST – PHIL BURGESS Phil can be contacted through the following Social Media platforms: Twitter: https://twitter.com/_PhilBurgess LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/philburgess Instagram: https://instagram.com/_philburgess Website: https://itcareerenergizer.com/contact Phil is also reachable by email at phil@itcareerenergizer.com and via the podcast's website, https://itcareerenergizer.com Join the I.T. Career Energizer Community on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/ITCareerEnergizer   ABOUT THE GUEST – JAMES MALLEY James Malley is the CEO and Co-Founder of Paccurate. He has been working in the logistics tech space since 2009 and has helped create a variety of enterprise shipping technology. He spearheaded the design of an award-winning multi-carrier TMS (Transportation Management Software) and since 2015, he's been evangelizing the use of AI to achieve cost-efficient and environmentally sustainable packing.   CONTACT THE GUEST – JAMES MALLEY Twitter: https://twitter.com/mistermalley LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmalley Website: https://paccurate.io

By popular request, Entrepreneur editor-in-chief Jason Feifer returns for a follow-up episode devoted to the fundamentals of starting and building franchises, a pillar of the Entrepreneur ecosystem.Starting from the very basics, James peppers Jason with the critical few questions necessary to understanding how franchises operate, which types of business are suited to part-time operators, and what kind of financial returns a franchisee might expect based on their business.Additional Topics Include:Jason: "What is the minimum amount of me a job requires so that I can figure out how to expand myself in other directions?" (03:28)James: "You only learn something by doing that something" (04:55)James: "80% of the learning is doing what you have to do"Jason: "It is only to your benefit that people do things outside of what you're asking them to do." (07:36)Entrepreneur's evolution from within the franchise space to brand independence (09:49)How do you build wealth from a franchise? (27:38)Franchise Disclosure Documents (34:32)Franchise fees and revenue shares (39:14)What type of profit can a franchisee expect (42:57)What franchising success stories has Jason seen (47:25)Has Jason ever considered franchising? (52:41)Editor's note: Topic times don't account for sponsor ads and may appear a few minutes later in the episode on your podcast player)------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book Skip the Line is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltucher.com/podcast.------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe  to “The James Altucher Show” wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsStitcheriHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on Social Media:YouTubeTwitterFacebook

By popular request, Entrepreneur editor-in-chief Jason Feifer returns for a follow-up episode devoted to the fundamentals of starting and building franchises, a pillar of the Entrepreneur ecosystem.Starting from the very basics, James peppers Jason with the critical few questions necessary to understanding how franchises operate, which types of business are suited to part-time operators, and what kind of financial returns a franchisee might expect based on their business.Additional Topics Include:Jason: "What is the minimum amount of me a job requires so that I can figure out how to expand myself in other directions?" (03:28)James: "You only learn something by doing that something" (04:55)James: "80% of the learning is doing what you have to do"Jason: "It is only to your benefit that people do things outside of what you're asking them to do." (07:36)Entrepreneur's evolution from within the franchise space to brand independence (09:49)How do you build wealth from a franchise? (27:38)Franchise Disclosure Documents (34:32)Franchise fees and revenue shares (39:14)What type of profit can a franchisee expect (42:57)What franchising success stories has Jason seen (47:25)Has Jason ever considered franchising? (52:41)Editor's note: Topic times don't account for sponsor ads and may appear a few minutes later in the episode on your podcast player)------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book Skip the Line is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltucher.com/podcast.------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe  to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsStitcheriHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on Social Media:YouTubeTwitterFacebook ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn

Amie Lou Shaw is a singer-songwriter who simply compels you to listen. With her evocative, distinct voice, as described by one reviewer, her accomplished vocals will ‘mesmerise' you. Throughout her childhood and teens, Amie performed in many shows and musicals. Having written songs since the age of 13, her vocal and song-writing style has been shaped by her earliest to present-day musical influences; some of her main influences include Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Lucie Silvas, Delta Goodrem, Celine Dion, Trisha Yearwood, Faith Hill, Mariah Carey, and all styles of music from across a broad range of genres. Her song 'Travelling' was included in a Hollyoaks episode. Amie has also won a competition (and was personally chosen by Tat) to have her song "Simple Things" recorded by Tat Tong of T2 Productions, who has gone 60 times platinum and charted at number one in 66 countries. After first appearing on DE 28, she's back again with another hit single, “On My Mind”.  So strap up your seatbelts, and let's take a ride to the  UK on this episode of the dHarmic Evolution podcast. As a Preview   In this episode, we have Amie Lou Shaw discuss songwriting. She talks about her multiple songwriting processes, and James chips in some pro-advice too. She talks about teaching the flute and song analysis with her student and how that has become a positive feedback loop. We celebrate some of her latest achievements by inking a record deal with leopard music and also discuss her summer plans. Simply put, this episode was a mixture of learning and fun, all here on the dHarmic evolution. podcast   Quotes   Beginners can teach you to be very clear and concise with your music- Amie I really like the therapeutic side of music; I love helping my students write songs that can help them get through whatever they are facing-Amie If you want to understand something better, teach it-James You can't rush the process of music… As an upcoming musician, the most important thing is a connection with your audience.-Amie Songwriting gets easier when you have a strong subject; it doesn't matter whether it is a person or place.-James Am I using the best words, the best lyrics? Am I passing this in the clearest way possible?-Amie When your antenna is up, you can pick up the most incredible things-James When I was thirteen, I used to think I'll just throw a song together, but now I've realized this takes real craftsmanship-Amie Songs are timeless; it doesn't matter when they were written, they will always have some value.-James If there is a song in your heart, you've got to write it-Amie   Time Stamps   04:01 Amie's longtime dream fulfilled 07:01 What does Amie teach? 08:36 Amie's teaching experiences 13:00 Breaking down a song with a vocalist 14:00 Why Amie believes music can't be rushed 15:10 Broken Man from Amie plays 20:36 Behind Broken Man 21:56 James thought about ‘why you can't rush the process of music.' 23:56 Amie's approach to songwriting 28:17 Amie's secret about eavesdropping 34:19 Another writing pro-tip from master singer-songwriter James 36:46 On my mind from Amie plays 40:10 What has been on Amie Lou's mind? 45:00 Amie shares her summer plans 46:40 The title of Amie's new album 47:13 Amie's vinyl plan. 50:20 Amie inked a deal with Leopard Music 54:02 Amie's last word 55:10  Ride On by James Kevin O'Connor plays Amie's Bio: Amie Lou Shaw  Biography 2022 Amie's music is a blend of Acoustic, Singer-Songwriter, Country & Folk. Amie has been coached by Kelly Bryan (Eternal) and Eliot May (Basement Jaxx)  Amie worked on a song written by Simon Bailey called ‘You Gave Me My Wings' who has been opening act for Many big names including Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston on her final gig. Amie's song ‘Travellin' was played on an episode of Hollyoaks.  Amie won a competition (as was selected personally by Tat himself), to have her track ‘Simple Things' recorded by Tat Tong of T2 Productions. Tat has gone 60 X Platinum and charted at number 1 in 66 countries. The track was mastered by Earle Holder who has mastered for Public Enemy, Candice and Tamaeko Star among many others he is considered to be one of the top mastering engineers worldwide.  One of Amie co-writers is working with a producer that works closely with Big Machine Records. He works with a team of writers that have pitched songs to Amanda and have had a top 10 hit in the Billboard charts with a song called ‘Burn.'  Amie has written with Maggie K De Monde who was in a band called ‘Scarlet Fantastic' and ‘Swan's Way' and had a hit in the 80's with a song called ‘No Memory.'  Amie had recent play on BBC Introducing and plans to record at Abbey Road studios this year  Amie co-wrote a few songs with Andy Ross of A Star Studios in Manchester, Andy was a Mercury Prize nominated winner and has had his music published by Clipper's Music. Neil Fairclough who has played for Queen played bass. Simon Moore played drums, he has played for for Jocelyn Brown, Shaznay Lewis, former stone roses front man Ian Brown and Steve Power as part of the production team with Robbie Williams ‘Millenium' amongst other artists.  Amie has written a song with Kelly Fitzgerald, who has toured all over the world as a solo and ensemble performer. She and her band have shared stages with artists such as John Hyatt, Shelby Lynn, Nancy Griffith, Cheap Trick, Eddie Money, Vonda Shepherd and Ben Taylor amongst others. Her writing partner Brian Pothier (who has also shown an interest in working with Amie on a few tracks) co-wrote and recorded the song ‘Thank you' with Christina Fulton, which premiered on MTV's ‘The Jersey Shore'. She recorded one of her albums with Jack Douglas (John Lennon, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick)    Amie has just been featured on radio show IWW Radio and has taken advice on her music from the host, Fred May, who's records have now gone 1.5 million platinum. He is keen to feature Amie again on the show in a few months.    “I came across She Knows Me on the BBC Introducing uploader and I've picked it as BBC Sussex & BBC Surrey's BBC Introducing Track of the Day. It'll be played at around 3.40pm on Friday.' Melita Dennett” - Melita Dennett, BBC Introducing “Amie's music is warm, moving, spiritual and exciting… potent tonic for the senses.” Earle Holder – Chief Mastering Engineer Hdqtrz Mastering Studios   Spotify Playlist:   Make sure you're not missing out on all our “Rising dHarmic Stars Spotify Playlists”. We already have four (4) playlists where you can find over a hundred songs from our very own dHarmic Evolution alumni. Don't forget to share them with your family and friends, and let the world support these fantastic indie artists! Check out the links here:   dHarmic Rising Stars: Aquila   https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4loDaYF0OuWRjZeMXvEjK4   dHarmic Rising Stars: Orion   https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5CnL9tl0xbU4oDh6jtJBZx   dHarmic Rising Stars: Lyra   https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ov0OqNMJmPhHrxZjsXthS   dHarmic Rising Stars: Scorpius   https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5oQ4Sc4LAJSexsDgDcixt8   dHarmic Evolution links:   Stay up-to-date with our new releases! You just need to go to dharmicevolution.com and subscribe to your favourite podcast platform – there is much to choose from! Let me know what you think as well by leaving comments or reviews! And if you're digging this show, please share it with somebody on social media or just forward it to a friend and let them join the growing community of dHarmic Evolution!   Hey, do you know someone who is suffering from anxiety and depression? Please help them out by suggesting the book “7 Steps to Mental Freedom.” It will be an excellent read for them. You can easily find it as well on the main page of the website, or you can just send them to 7stepstomentalfreedom.com.   Keep yourself updated with what's going on with dHarmic evolution; check out our Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dharmicevolution. If you are an artist, an author, or a keynote speaker, who is trying to find a safe place to post your content, you can check out our own Facebook community page and let the world support you! Check out the link here: dHarmic Evolution Community.    Connect with Amie   Website Tiktok Youtube Twitter Special Links and Mentions DE 28 Abbey Road Studio Mark Shephard Broken Man by Amie Lou Shaw On my Mind by Amie Lou Shaw Ride On by James Kevin O'Connor Object Writing Bob Dylan Leopard music Progressive Music Management  

“Not only do you solve loneliness in the groups, but you actually create a structure whereby new behaviors can be implemented as a norm within the group,” shares James Maskell, Creator of The Functional Forum and Author of The Community Cure. James created a community system for functional medicine practitioners and patients with chronic diseases that is virtual, accessible, and provides group-based care. James realized that groups were necessary for treating chronic disease because people are more successful when they have a support system backing them and because the real healing happens in between doctor's appointments during day to day life.    Many people who suffer with chronic illnesses such as autoimmune diseases, do not believe they can be cured. Having a group around them that is supportive and truly believes they can reverse their disease is pivotal for patients' mindsets. Loneliness is linked to worse health outcomes, so a group setting can help by reducing loneliness in chronically ill patients. It is also useful for creating structure and reinforcing healthy behaviors that may not be as easy to stick with individually.    Tune into this week's episode of The Catalyst to learn more about the community care model of functional medicine and the incredible success rate these programs have for treating and reversing chronic diseases.    Quotes • “The first question that I asked is, ‘Is chronic disease reversible?' And I think that has to be the foundation question. Because if chronic disease is going up like this, and the cost of chronic disease is going up like this, then ultimately, we have to really understand what is chronic disease? Where does it come from? How is it different from acute disease? And how do we get people out of it?” (3:59-4:19 | James)  • “Not only do you solve loneliness in the groups, but you actually create a structure where new behaviors can be implemented as a norm within the group.” (13:20-13:29 | James) • “If you create a whole episode of care that uses Zooms and allows people to connect in between the Zooms, that whole episode can be more effective than coming to a location every week. And the reason for that is that in between the Zooms, is where health happens.” (14:52-15:09 | James) • “You can create new profit centers on insurance and reduce burnout by taking the time element that's needed for behavior change, put it on the group, so you can focus on your precision work.” (44:39-44:52 | James)   Links HealCommunity Website: www.healcommunity.com   Connect with Lara:  Website: https://drlarasalyer.com Instagram: @drlarasalyer Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drlarasalyer Linked-In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drlarasalyer/ YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/DrLaraSalyer TikTok: @Creativity.Doctor   Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

This week James and Haley talk about the 50th Birthday Surprise Party Haley coordinated for James… You'll laugh, you may even cry, but you will always get the real deal from Team Jones…More from James & Haley:Chef James K Jones WebsiteCooking with Chef James K Jones (YouTube Channel)Team Jones Camps (The Cooking Camp and The Confidence Camp)Chef James K Jones InstagramTeam Jones Media Team Jones CoachingStraight Outta Prison InstagramThe Straight Outta Prison PodcastThe 4Real Reel PodcastNarrowing The Gap PodcastCooking Guides & Team Jones StoreCookbook by James K JonesPlease Support our Sponsors. They help us provide this content for free. Alec Priola -NMLS# 1301247apriola@assurancemortgage.com205-215-2888www.assurancemortgage.com/apriolaAssurance Financial- Equal Housing Lender NMLS# 70876Hurst Towing and Recovery -Lynn & Debbie Hurst205-631-8697 (205-631-TOWS)https://hursttowing.com/Home & Commercial ServicesCall or text 205-798-0635email office@hollandhcs.comInstagram Home & Commercial ServicesCrossfit Mephobia - Hayden SetserCrossFitmephobiainfo@gmail.com256-303-1873https://www.instagram.com/crossfitmephobia/Dana Belcher - RE/MAX Advantage NorthWebsite: theiconagents.comemail: danabelcheragent@gmail.comCall or text 205-910-3358 Support the show

About JamesJames has been part of AWS for over 15 years. During that time he's led software engineering for Amazon EC2 and more recently leads the AWS Commerce Platform group that runs some of the largest systems in the world, handling volumes of data and request rates that would make your eyes water. And AWS customers trust us to be right all the time so there's no room for error.Links Referenced:Email: jamesg@amazon.comTranscriptAnnouncer: 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 Vultr. Optimized cloud compute plans have landed at Vultr to deliver lightning-fast processing power, courtesy of third-gen AMD EPYC processors without the IO or hardware limitations of a traditional multi-tenant cloud server. Starting at just 28 bucks a month, users can deploy general-purpose, CPU, memory, or storage optimized cloud instances in more than 20 locations across five continents. Without looking, I know that once again, Antarctica has gotten the short end of the stick. Launch your Vultr optimized compute instance in 60 seconds or less on your choice of included operating systems, or bring your own. It's time to ditch convoluted and unpredictable giant tech company billing practices and say goodbye to noisy neighbors and egregious egress forever. Vultr delivers the power of the cloud with none of the bloat. “Screaming in the Cloud” listeners can try Vultr for free today with a $150 in credit when they visit getvultr.com/screaming. That's G-E-T-V-U-L-T-R dot com slash screaming. My thanks to them for sponsoring this ridiculous podcast.Corey: Finding skilled DevOps engineers is a pain in the neck! And if you need to deploy a secure and compliant application to AWS, forgettaboutit! But that's where DuploCloud can help. Their comprehensive no-code/low-code software platform guarantees a secure and compliant infrastructure in as little as two weeks, while automating the full DevSecOps lifestyle. Get started with DevOps-as-a-Service from DuploCloud so that your cloud configurations are done right the first time. Tell them I sent you and your first two months are free. To learn more visit: snark.cloud/duplo. Thats's snark.cloud/D-U-P-L-O-C-L-O-U-D. Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. And I've been angling to get someone from a particular department at AWS on this show for nearly its entire run. If you were to find yourself in an Amazon building and wander through the various dungeons and boiler rooms and subterranean basements—I presume; I haven't seen nearly as many of you inside of those buildings as people might think—you pass interesting departments labeled things like ‘Spline Reticulation,' or whatnot. And then you come to a very particular group called Commerce Platform.Now, I'm not generally one to tell other people's stories for them. My guest today is James Greenfield, the VP of Commerce Platform at AWS. James, thank you for joining me and suffering the slings and arrows I will no doubt be hurling at you.James: Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it.Corey: So, let's start at the very beginning—because I guarantee you, you're going to do a better job of giving the chapter and verse answer than I would from a background mired deeply in snark—what is Commerce Platform? It sounds almost like it's the retail website that sells socks, books, and underpants.James: So, Commerce Platform actually spans a bunch of different things. And so, I'm going to try not to bore you with a laundry list of all of the things that we do—it's a much longer list than most people assume even internal to AWS—at its core, Commerce Platform owns all of the infrastructure and processes and software that takes the fact that you've been running an EC2 instance, or you're storing an object in S3 for some period of time, and turns it into a number at the end of the month. That is what you asked for that service and then proceeds to try to give you as many ways to pay us as easily as possible. There are a few other bits in there that are maybe less obvious. One is we're also responsible for protecting the platform and our customers from fraudulent activity. And then we're also responsible for helping collect all of the data that we need for internal reporting to support some of the back-ends services that a business needs to do things like revenue recognition and general financial reporting.Corey: One of the interesting aspects about the billing system is just how deeply it permeates everything that happens within AWS. I frequently say that when it comes to cloud, cost and architecture are foundationally and fundamentally the same exact thing. If your entire service goes down, a few interesting things happen. One, I don't believe a single customer is going to complain other than maybe a few accountants here and there because the books aren't reconciling, but also you've removed a whole bunch of constraints around why things are the way that they are. Like, what is the most efficient way to run this workload?Well, if all the computers suddenly become free, I don't really care about efficiency, so much is, “Oh, hey. There's a fly, what do I have as a flyswatter? That's right, I'm going to drop a building on it.” And those constraints breed almost everything. I've said, for example, that S3 has infinite storage because it does.They can add drives faster than we're able to fill them—at least historically; they added some more replication services—but they're going to be able to buy hard drives faster than the rest of us are going to be able to stretch our budgets. If that constraint of the budget falls away, all bets are really off, and more or less, we're talking about the destruction of the cloud as a viable business entity. No pressure or anything.James: [laugh].Corey: You're also a recent transplant into AWS billing as a whole, Commerce Platform in general. You spent 15 years at the company, the vast majority of that over an EC2. So, either it was you've been exiled to a basically digital Siberia or it was one of those, “Okay, keeping all the EC2 servers up, this is easy. I don't see what people stress about.” And they say, “Oh, ho ho, try this instead.” How did you find yourself migrating over to the Commerce Platform?James: That's actually one I've had a lot from folks that I've worked with. You're right, I spent the first 15 or so years of my career at AWS in EC2, responsible for various things over there. And when the leadership role in Commerce Platform opened up, the timing was fortuitous, and part of it, I was in the process of relocating my family. We moved to Vancouver in the middle of last year. And we had an opening in the role and started talking about, potentially, me stepping into that role.The reason that I took it—there's a few reasons, but the primary reason is that if I look back over my career, I've kind of naturally gravitated towards owning things where people only really remember that they exist when they're not working. And for some reason, you know, I enjoy the opportunity to try to keep those kinds of services ticking over to the point where people don't notice them. And so, Commerce Platform lands squarely in that space. I've always been attracted to opportunities to have an impact, and it's hard to imagine having much more of an impact than in the Commerce Platform space. It underpins everything, as you said earlier.Every single one of our customers depends on the service, whether they think about it or realize it. Every single service that we offer to customers depends on us. And so, that really is the sort of nexus within AWS. And I'm a platform guy, I've always been a platform guy. I like the force multiplier nature of platforms, and so Commerce Platform, you know, as I kind of thought through all of those elements, really was a great opportunity to step in.And I think there's something to be said for, I've been a customer of Commerce Platform internally for a long time. And so, a chance to cross over and be on the other side of that was something that I didn't want to pass up. And so, you know, I'm digging in, and learning quickly, ramping up. By no means an expert, very dependent on a very smart, talented, committed group of people within the team. That's kind of the long and short of how and why.Corey: Let's say that I am taking on the role of an AWS product team, for the sake of argument. I know, keep the cringe down for a second, as far as oh, God, the wince is just inevitable when the idea of me working there ever comes up to anyone. But I have an idea for a service—obviously, it runs containers, and maybe it does some other things as well—going from idea to six-pager to MVP to barely better than MVP day-one launch, and at some point, various things happen to that service. It gets staff with a team, objectives and a roadmap get built, a P&L and budget, and a pricing model and the rest. One the last thing that happens, apparently, is someone picks the worst name off of a list of candidates, slaps it on the product, and ships it off there.At what point does the billing system and figuring out the pricing dimensions for a given service tend to factor in? Is that a last-minute story? Is that almost from the beginning? Where along that journey does, “Oh, by the way, we're building this thing. Maybe we should figure out, I don't know, how to make money from it.” Factor into the conversation?James: There are two parts to that answer. Pretty early on as we're trying to define what that service is going to look like, we're already typically thinking about what are the dimensions that we might charge along. The actual pricing discussions typically happen fairly late, but identifying those dimensions and, sort of, the right way to present it to customers happens pretty early on. The thing that doesn't happen early enough is actually pulling the Commerce Platform team in. but it is something that we're going to work this year to try to get a little bit more in front of.Corey: Have you found historically that you have a pretty good idea of how a service is going to be priced, everything is mostly thought through, a service goes to either private preview or you're discussing about a launch, and then more or less, I don't know, someone like me crops up with a, “Hey, yeah, let's disregard 90% of what the service does because I see a way to misuse the remaining 10% of it as a database.” And you run some mental math and realize, “Huh. We're suddenly giving, like, eight petabytes of storage per customer away for free. Maybe we should guard against that because otherwise, it's rife with misuse.” It used to be that I could find interesting ways to sneak through the cracks of various services—usually in pursuit of a laugh—those are getting relatively hard to come by and invariably a lot more trouble than they're worth. Is that just better comprehensive diligence internally, is that learning from customers, or am I just bad at this?James: No, I mean, what you're describing is almost a variant of the Defender's Dilemma. They are way more ways to abuse something than you can imagine, and so defending against that is pretty challenging. And it's important because, you know, if you turn the economics of something upside down, then it just becomes harder for us to offer it to customers who want to use it legitimately. I would say 90% of that improvement is us learning. We make plenty of mistakes, but I think, you know, one of the things that I've always been impressed by over my time here is how intentional we are trying to learn from those mistakes.And so, I think that's what you're seeing there. And then we try very hard to listen to customers, talk to folks like you, because one of the best ways to tackle anything it smells of the Defender's Dilemma is to harness that collective creativity of a large number of smart people because you really are trying to cover as much ground as possible.Corey: There was a fun joke going around a while back of what is the most expensive environment you can get running on a free tier account before someone from AWS steps in, and I think I got it to something like half a billion dollars in the first month. Now, I haven't actually tested this for reasons that mostly have to do with being relatively poor compared to, you know, being able to buy Guam. And understanding as well the fraud protections built into something like AWS are largely built around defending against getting service usage for free that in some way, shape or form, benefits the attacker. The easy example of that would be mining cryptocurrency, which is just super-economic as long as you use someone else's AWS account to do it. Whereas a lot of my vectors are, “Yeah, ignore all of that. How do I just make the bill artificially high? What can I do to misuse data transfer? And passing a single gigabyte through, how much can I make that per gigabyte cost be?” And, “Oh, circular replication and the Lambda invokes itself pattern,” and basically every bad architectural decision you can possibly make only this time, it's intentional.And that shines some really interesting light on it. And I have to give credit where due, a lot of that didn't come from just me sitting here being sick and twisted nearly so much as it did having seen examples of that type of misconfiguration—by mistake—in a variety of customer accounts, most confidently my own because it turns out that the way I learn things is by screwing them up first.James: Yeah, you've touched on a couple of different things in there. So, you know, maybe the first one is, I typically try to draw a line between fraud and abuse. And fraud is essentially trying to spend somebody else's money to get something for free. And we spent a lot of time trying to shut that down, and we're getting really good at catching it. And then abuse is either intentional or unintentional. There's intentional abuse: You find a chink in our armor and you try to take advantage of it.But much more commonly is unintentional abuse. It's not really abuse, you know. Abuse has very negative connotations, but it's unintentionally setting something up so that you run up a much larger bill than you intended. And we have a number of different internal efforts, and we're working on a bunch more this year, to try to catch those early on because one of my personal goals is to minimize the frequency with which we surprise customers. And the least favorite kind of surprise for customers is a [laugh] large bill. And so, what you're talking about there is, in a sufficiently complex system, there's always going to be weaknesses and ways to get yourself tied up in knots.We're trying both at the service team level, but also within my teams to try to find ways to make it as hard as possible to accidentally do that to yourself and then catch when you do so that we can stop it. And even more on the intentional abuse side of things, if somebody's found a way to do something that's problematic for our services, then you know, that's pretty much on us. But we will often reach out and engage with whoever's doing and try to understand what they're trying to do and why. Because often, somebody's trying to do something legitimate, they've got a problem to solve, they found a creative way to solve it, and it may put strain on the service because it's just not something we designed for, and so we'll try to work with them to use that to feed into either new services, or find a better place for that workload, or just bolster what they're using. And maybe that's something that eventually becomes a fully-fledged feature that we offer the customers. We're always open to learning from our customers. They have found far more creative ways to get really cool things done with our services than we've ever imagined. And that's true today.Corey: I mean, most of my service criticisms come down to the fact that you have more-or-less built a very late model, high performing iPad, and I'm out there complaining about, “What a shitty hammer this thing is, it barely works at all, and then it breaks in my hand. What gives?” I would also challenge something you said a minute ago that the worst day for some customers is to get a giant surprise bill, but [unintelligible 00:13:53] to that is, yeah, but, on some level, that kind of only money; you do have levers on your side to fix those issues. A worse scenario is you have a customer that exhibits fraud-like behavior, they're suddenly using far more resources than they ever did before, so let's go ahead and turn them off or throttle them significantly, and you call them up to tell them you saved them some money, and, “Our Superbowl ad ran. What exactly do you think you're doing?” Because they don't get a second bite at that kind of Apple.So, there's a parallel on both sides of this. And those are just two examples. The world is full of nuances, and at the scale that you folks operate at. The one-in-a-million events happen multiple times a second, the corner cases become common cases, and I'm surprised—to be direct—how little I see you folks dropping the ball.James: Credit to all of the teams. I think our secret sauce, if anything, really does come down to our people. Like, a huge amount of what you see as hopefully relatively consistent, good execution comes down to people behind the scenes making sure. You know, like, some of it is software that we built and made sure it's robust and tested to scale, but there's always an element of people behind the scenes, when you hit those edge cases or something doesn't quite go the way that you planned, making sure that things run smoothly. And that, if anything, is something that I'm immensely proud of and is kind of amazing to watch from the inside.Corey: And, on some level, it's the small errors that are the bigger concern than the big ones. Back a couple years ago, when they announced GP3 volumes at re:Invent, well, great, well spin up a test volume and kick the tires on it for an hour. And I think it was 80 or 100 gigs or whatnot, and the next day in the bill, it showed up as about $5,000. And it was, “Okay, that's not great. Not great at all.” And it turned out that it was a mispricing error by I think a factor of a million.And okay, at least it stood out. But there are scenarios where we were prepared to pay it because, oops, you got one over on us. Good job. That's never been the mindset I've gotten about AWS's philosophy for pricing. The better example that I love because no one took it seriously, was a few years before that when there was a LightSail bug in the billing system, and it made the papers because people suddenly found that for their LightSail instance, they were getting predicted bills of $4 billion.And the way I see it, you really only had to make that work once and then you've made your numbers for the year, so why not? Someone's going to pay for it, probably. But that was such out-of-the-world numbers that no one saw that and ever thought it was anything other than a bug. It's the small pernicious things that creep in. Because the billing system is vast; I had no idea when I started working with AWS bills just how complicated it really was.James: Yeah, I remember both of those, and there's something in there that you touched on that I think is really important. That's something that I realized pretty early on at Amazon, and it's why customer obsession is our flagship leadership principle. It's not because it's love and butterflies and unicorns; customer obsession is key to us because that's how you build a long-term sustainable business is your customers depend on you. And it drives how we think about everything that we do. And in the billing space, small errors, even if there are small errors in the customer's favor, slowly erode that trust.So, we take any kind of error really seriously and we try to figure out how we can make sure that it doesn't happen again. We don't always get that right. As you said, we've built an enormous, super-complex business to growing really quickly, and really quick growth like that always acts as kind of a multiplier on top of complexity. And on the pricing points, we're managing millions of pricing points at the moment.And our tools that we use internally, there's always room for improvement. It's a huge area of focus for us. We're in the beginning of looking at applying things like formal methods to make sure that we can make very hard guarantees about the correctness of some of those. But at the end of the day, people are plugging numbers in and you need as many belts and braces as possible to make sure that you don't make mistakes there.Corey: One of the things that struck me by surprise when I first started getting deep into this space was the fact that the finalized bill was—what does it mean to have this be ‘finalized?' It can hit the Cost and Usage Report in an S3 bucket and it can change retroactively after the month closed periodically. And that's when I started to have an inkling of a few things: Not just the sheer scale and complexity inherent to something like the billing system that touches everything, but the sheer data retention stories where you clearly have to be able to go back and reconstruct a bill from the raw data years ago. And I know what the output of all of those things are in the form of Cost and Usage Reports and the billing data from our client accounts—which is the single largest expense in all of our AWS accounts; we spent thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars a year just on storing all of that data, let alone the processing piece of it—the sheer scale is staggering. I used to wonder why does it take you a day to record me using something to it's showing up in the bill? And the more I learned the more it became a how can you do that in only a day?James: Yes, the scale is actually mind-boggling. I'm pretty sure that the core of our billing system is—I'm reasonably confident it's the largest or one of the largest data processing systems on the planet. I remember pretty early on when I joined Commerce Platform and was still starting to wrap my head around some of these things, Googling the definition of quadrillion because we measured the number of metering events, which is how we record usage in services, on a daily basis in the quadrillions, which is a billion billions. So, it's just an absolutely staggering number. And so, the scale here is just out of this world.That's saying something because it's not like other services across AWS are small in their own right. But I'm still reasonably sure that being one of a handful of services that is kind of at the nexus of AWS and kind of deals with the aggregate of AWS's scale, this is probably one of the biggest systems on the planet. And that shows up in all sorts of places. You start with that input, just the sheer volume of metering events, but that has to produce as an output pretty fine-grained line item detailed information, which ultimately rolls up into the total that a customer will see in their bill. But we have a number of different systems further down the pipeline that try to do things like analyze your usage, make sensible recommendations, look for opportunities to improve your efficiency, give you the ability to slice and dice your data and allocate it out to different parts of your business in whatever way it makes sense for your business. And so, those systems have to deal with anywhere from millions to billions to recently, we were talking about trillions of data points themselves. And so, I was tangentially aware of some of the scale of this, but being in the thick of it having joined the team really just does underscore just how vast the systems are.Corey: I think it's, on some level, more than a little unfortunate that that story isn't being more widely told, more frequently. Because when Commerce Platform has job postings that are available on the website, you read it and it's very vague. It doesn't tend to give hard numbers about a lot of these things, and people who don't play in these waters can easily be forgiven for thinking the way that you folks do your job is you fire up one of those 24 terabyte of RAM instances that—you know, those monstrous things that you folks offer—and what do you do next? Well, Microsoft Excel. We have a special high memory version that we've done some horse-trading with our friends over at Microsoft for.It's, yeah, you're several steps beyond that, at this point. It's a challenging problem that every one of your customers has to deal with, on some level, as well. But we're only dealing with the output of a lot of the processing that you folks are doing first.James: You're exactly right. And a big focus for some of my teams is figuring out how to help customers deal with that output. Because even if you're talking about couple of orders of magnitude reduction, you're still talking about very large numbers there. So, to help customers make sense of that, we have a range of tools that exist, we're investing in.There's another dimension of complexity in the space that I think is one that's also very easy to miss. And I think of it as arbitrary complexity. And it's arbitrary because some of the rules that we have to box within here are driven by legislative changes. As you operate more and more countries around the world, you want to make sure that we're tax compliant, that we help our customers be tax compliant. Those rules evolve pretty rapidly, and Country A may sit next to Country B, but that doesn't mean that they're talking to one another. They've all got their own ideas. They're trying to accomplish r—00:22:47Corey: A company is picking up and relocating from India to Germany. How do we—James: Exactly.Corey: —change that on the AWS side and the rest? And it's, “Hoo boy, have you considered burning it all down and filing an insurance claim to start over?” And, like, there's a lot of complexity buried underneath that that just doesn't rise to the notice of 99% of your customers.James: And the fact that it doesn't rise to the notice is something that we strive for. Like, these shouldn't be things that customers have to worry about. Because it really is about clearing away the things that, as far as possible, you don't want to have to spend time thinking about so that you can focus on the thing that your business does that differentiates you. It's getting rid of that undifferentiated heavy lifting. And there's a ton of that in this space, and if you're blissfully unaware of it, then hopefully that means that we're doing our job.Corey: What I'm, I think, the most surprised about, and I have been for a long time. And please don't take this as an insult to various other folks—engineers, the rest, not just in other parts of AWS but throughout the other industry—but talking to the people who work within Commerce Platform has always been just a fantastic experience. The caliber of people that you have managed to attract and largely retain—we don't own people, they do matriculate out eventually—but the caliber of people that you've retained on your teams has just been out of this world. And at first, I wondered, why are these awesome people working on something as boring and prosaic as billing? And then I started learning a little bit more as I went, and, “Oh, wow. How did they learn all the stuff that they have to hold in their head in tension at once to be able to build things like this?” It's incredibly inspiring just watching the caliber of the people that you've been able to bring in.James: I've been really, really excited joining this team, as I've gotten other folks on the team because there's some super-smart people here. But what's really jumped out to me is how committed the team is. This is, for the most part, a team that has been in the space for many years. Many of them have—we talk about boomerangs, folks who live AWS, go spend some time somewhere else and come back and there's a surprisingly high proportion of folks in Commerce Platform who have spent time somewhere else and then come back because they enjoy the space, they find that challenging, folks are attracted to the ability to have an impact because it is so foundational. But yeah, there's a super-committed core to this team. And I really enjoy working with teams where you've got that because then you really can take the long view and build something great. And I think we have tons of opportunities to do that here.Corey: It sounds ridiculous, but I've reached out to team members before to explain two-cent variances in my bill, and never once have I been confronted with a, “It's two cents. What do you care?” They understand the requirement that these things be accurate, not just, “Eh, take our word for it.” And also, frankly, they understand that two cents on a $20 bill looks a little different on a $20 million bill. So yeah, let us figure out if this is systemic or something I have managed to break.It turns out the Cost and Usage Report processing systems don't love it when there's a cost allocation tag whose name contains an emoji. Who knew? It's the little things in life that just have this fun way of breaking when you least expect it.James: They're also a surprisingly interesting problem. So like, it turns out something as simple as rounding numbers consistently across a distributed system at this scale, is a non-trivial problem. And if you don't, then you do get small seventh or eighth decimal place differences that add up to something that then shows up as a two-cent difference somewhere. And so, there's some really, really interesting problems in the space. And I think the team often takes these kinds of things as a personal challenge. It should be correct, and it's not, so we should go make sure it is correct. The interesting problems abound here, but at the end of the day, it's the kind of thing that any engineering team wants to go and make sure it's correct because they know that it can be.Corey: This episode is sponsored in parts by our friend EnterpriseDB. EnterpriseDB has been powering enterprise applications with PostgreSQL for 15 years. And now EnterpriseDB has you covered wherever you deploy PostgreSQL on premises, private cloud, and they just announced a fully managed service on AWS and Azure called BigAnimal, all one word. Don't leave managing your database to your cloud vendor because they're too busy launching another half dozen manage databases to focus on any one of them that they didn't build themselves. Instead, work with the experts over at EnterpriseDB. They can save you time and money, they can even help you migrate legacy applications, including Oracle, to the cloud.To learn more, try BigAnimal for free. Go to biganimal.com/snark, and tell them Corey sent you.Corey: On the one hand, I love people who just round and estimate—we all do that, let's be clear; I sit there and I back-of-the-envelope everything first. But then I look at some of your pricing pages and I count the digits after the zeros. Like, you're talking about trillionths of a dollar on some of your pricing points. And you add it up in the course of a given hour and it's like, oh, it's $250 a month, most months. And it's you work backwards to way more decimal places of precision than is required, sometimes.I'm also a personal fan of the bill that counts, for example, number of Route 53 zones. Great. And it counts them to four decimal places of precision. Like, I don't even know what half of it Route 53 zone is at this point, let alone something to, like, ah the 1,000th of the zone is going to cause this. It's all an artifact of what the underlying systems are.Can you by any chance shed a little light on what the evolution of those systems has been over a period of time? I have to imagine that anything you built in the early days, 16 years ago or so from the time of this recording when S3 launched to general availability, you probably didn't have to worry about this scope and scale of what you do, now. In fact, I suspect if you tried to funnel this volume through S3 back then, the whole thing would have collapsed under its own weight. What's evolved over the time that you had the billing system there? Because changes come slowly to your environment. And frankly, I appreciate that as a customer. I don't like surprising people in finance.James: Yeah, you're totally right. So, I joined the EC2 team as an engineer myself, some 16 years ago, and the very first thing that I did was our billing integration. And so, my relationship with the Commerce Platform organization—what was the billing team way back when—it goes back over my entire career at AWS. And at the time, the billing team was similar, you know, [unintelligible 00:28:34] eight people. And that was everything. There was none of the scale and complexity; it was all one system.And much like many of our biggest, oldest services—EC2 is very similar, S3 is as well—there's been significant growth over the last decade-and-a-half. A lot of that growth has been rapid, and rapid growth presents its own challenges. And you live with decisions that you make early on that you didn't realize were significant decisions that have pretty deep implications 15 years later. We're still working through some of those; they present their own challenges. Evolving an existing system to keep up with the growth of business and a customer base that's as varied and complex as ours is always challenging.And also harder but I also think more fun than a clean sheet redo at this point. Like, that's a great thought exercise for, well, if we got to do this again today, what would we do now that we've learned so much over the last 15 years? But there's this—I find it personally fascinating challenge with evolving a live system where it's like, “No, no, like, things exist, so how do we go from there to where we want to be next?”Corey: Turn the billing system off for 18 months, rebuild—James: Yeah. [laugh].Corey: The whole thing from first principles. Light it up. I'm sure you'd have a much better billing system, and also not a company left anymore.James: [laugh]. Exactly, exactly. I've always enjoyed that challenge. You know, even prior to AWS, my previous careers have involved similar kinds of constraints where you've got a live system, or you've got an existing—in the one case, it was an existing SDK that was deployed to tens of thousands of customers around the world, and so backwards compatibility was something that I spent the first five years of my career thinking about it way more detail than I think most people do. And it's a very similar mindset. And I enjoy that challenge. I enjoy that: How do I evolve from here to there without breaking customers along the way?And that's something that we take pretty seriously across AWS. I think SimpleDB is the poster child for we never turn things off. But that applies equally to the services that are maybe less visible to customers, and billing is definitely one of them. Like, we don't get to switch stuff off. We don't get to throw things away and start again. It's this constant state of evolution.Corey: So, let's say that I were to find a way to route data through a series of two Managed NAT Gateways and then egress to internet, and the sheer density of the expense of that traffic tears a hole in the fabric of space-time, it goes back 15 years ago, and you can make a single change to how the billing system was built. What would it be? What pisses you off the most about the current constraints that you have to work within or around?James: I think one of the biggest challenges we've got, actually, is the concept of an account. Because an account means half-a-dozen different things. And way back, when it seemed like a great idea, you just needed an account; an account was your customer, and it was the same thing as the boundary that you put all your resources inside. And of course, it's the same thing that you're going to roll all of your usage up and issue a bill against. And that has been one of the areas that's seen the most evolution and probably still has a pretty long way to go.And what's interesting about that is, that's probably something we could have seen coming because we watched the retail business go through, kind of, the same evolution because they started with, well, a customer is a customer is a customer and had to evolve to support the concept of sellers and partners. And then users are different than customers, and you want to log in and that's a different thing. So, we saw that kind of bifurcation of a single entity into a wide range of different related but separate entities, and I think if we'd looked at that, you know, thought out 15 years, then yeah, we could probably have learned something from that. But at the same time, when AWS first kicked off, we had wild ambitions for it, but there was no guarantee that it was going to be the monster that it is today. So, I'm always a little bit reluctant to—like, it's a great thought exercise, but it's easy to end up second-guessing a pretty successful 15 years, so I'm always a little bit careful to walk that line. But I think account is one of the things that we would probably go back and think about a little bit more.Corey: I want to be very clear with this next question that it is intentionally setting up a question I suspect you get a lot. It does not mirror my own thinking on the matter even slightly, but I get a version of it myself all the time. “AWS bills, that sounds boring as hell. Why would you choose to work on such a thing?” Now, I have a laundry list of answers to that aren't nearly as interesting as I suspect yours are going to be. What makes working on this problem space interesting to you?James: There's a bunch of different things. So, first and foremost, the scale that we're talking about here is absolutely mind-blowing. And for any engineer who wants to get stuck into problems that deal with mind-blowingly large volumes of data, incredibly rich dimensions, problems where, honestly, applying techniques like statistical reasoning or machine learning is really the only way to chip away at it, that exists in spades in the space. It's not always immediately obvious, and I think from the outside, it's easy to assume this is actually pretty simple. So, the scale is a huge part of that.Corey: “Oh, petabytes. How quaint.”James: [laugh]. Exactly. Exactly I mean, it's mind-blowing every time I see some of the numbers in various parts of the Commerce Platform space. I talked about quadrillions earlier. Trillions is a pretty common unit of measure.The complexity that I talked about earlier, that's a result of external environments is another one. So, imposed by external entities, whether it's a government or a tax authority somewhere, or a business requirement from customers, or ourselves. I enjoy those as well. Those are different kinds of challenge. They really keep you on your toes.I enjoy thinking of them as an engineering problem, like, how do I get in front of them? And that's something we spend a lot of time doing in Commerce Platform. And when we get it right, customers are just unaware of it. And then the third one is, I personally am always attracted to the opportunity to have an impact. And this is a space where we get to hopefully positively impact every single customer every day. And that, to me is pretty fulfilling.Those are kind of the three standout reasons why I think this is actually a super-exciting space. And I think it's often an underestimated space. I think once folks join the team and sort of start to dig in, I've never heard anybody after they've joined, telling me that what they're doing is boring. Challenging, yes. Is frustrating, sometimes. Hard, absolutely, but boring never comes up.Corey: There's almost no service, other than IAM, that I can think of that impacts every customer simultaneously. And it's easy for me to sit in the cheap seats and say, “Oh, you should change this,” or, “You should change that.” But every change you have is so massive in scale that it's going to break a whole bunch of companies' automations around the bill processing in different ways. You have an entire category of user persona who is used to clicking a certain button in this certain place in the console to generate the report every month, and if that button moves or changes color, or has a different font, suddenly that renders their documentation invalid, and they're scrambling because it's not their core competency—nor should it be—and every change you make is so constricted, just based upon all the different concerns that you've got to be juggling with. How do you get anything done at all? I find that to be one of the most impressive aspects about your organization, bar none.James: Yeah, I'm not going to lie and say that it isn't a challenge, but a lot of it comes down to the talent that we have on the team. We have a super-motivated, super-smart, super-engaged team, and we spend a lot of time figuring out how to make sure that we can keep moving, keep up with the business, keep up with a world that's getting more complicated [laugh] with every passing day. So, you've kind of hit on one of the core challenges there, which is, how do we keep up with all of those different dimensions that are demanding an increasing amount of engineering and new support and new investment from us, while we keep those customers happy?And I think you touched on something else a little bit indirectly there, which is, a lot of our customers are actually pretty technical across AWS. The customers that Commerce Platform supports, are often the least technical of our customers, and so often need the most help understanding why things are the way they are, where the constraints are.Corey: “A big bill from Amazon. How many books did you people buy last month?”—James: [laugh]. Exactly.Corey: —is still very much level of understanding in some cases. And it's not because they're dumb; far from it. It's just, imagine that some people view there as being more to life than understanding the nuances and intricacies of cloud computing. How dare they?James: Exactly. Who would have thought?Corey: So, as you look now over all of your domain, such as it is, what sucks the most? What are you looking to fix as far as impactful changes that the rest of the world might experience? Because I'm not going to accept one of those questions like, “Oh, yeah, on the back-end, we have this storage subsystem for a tertiary thing that just annoys me because it wakes us up once in a whi”—no, no, I want something customer-facing. What's the painful thing you're looking at fixing next?James: I don't like surprising customers. And free tier is, sort of, one of those buckets of surprises, but there are others. Another one that's pretty squarely in my sights is, whether we like it or not, customer accounts get compromised. Usually, it's a password got reused somewhere or was accidentally committed into a GitHub repository somewhere.And we have pretty established, pretty effective mechanisms for finding all of those, we'll scan for passwords and credentials, and alert customers to those, and help them correct that pretty quickly. We're also actually pretty good at detecting when an account does start to do something that suggests that it's been compromised. Usually, the first thing that a compromised account starts to do is cryptocurrency mining. We're pretty quick to catch those; we catch those within a matter of hours, much faster most days.What we haven't really cracked and where I'm focused at the moment is getting back to the customer in a way that's effective. And by that I mean specifically, we detect an account compromised super-quickly, we reach out automatically. And so, you know, a customer has got some kind of contact from us usually within a couple of hours. It's not having the effect that we need it to. Customers are still being surprised a month later by a large bill. And so, we're digging into how much of that is because they never saw the contact, they didn't know what to do with the contact.Corey: It got buried with all the other, “Hey, we saw you spun up an S3 bucket. Have you heard of what S3 is?” Again, that's all valuable, but you have 300-some-odd services. If you start doing that for every service, you're going to hit mail sending limits for Gmail.James: Exactly. It's not just enough that we detect those and notify customers; we have to reduce the size of the surprise. It's one thing to spend 100 bucks a month on average, and then suddenly find that your spend has jumped $250 because you reused the password somewhere and somebody got ahold of it and it's cryptocurrency-mining your account. It's a whole different ballgame to spend 100 bucks a month and then at the end of the month discover that your bill is suddenly $2,000 or $20,000. And so, that's something that I really wanted to make some progress on this year. Corey: I've really enjoyed our conversation. If people want to learn more about how you view these things, how you're approaching some of these problems, or potentially are just the right kind of warped to consider joining up, where's the best place for them to go?James: They should drop me an email at jamesg@amazon.com. That is the most direct way to get hold of me, and I promise I will get back to you. I try to stay on top of my email as much as possible. But that will come straight to me, and I'm always happy to talk to folks about the space, talk to folks about opportunities in this team, opportunities across AWS, or just hear what's not working, make sure that it's something that we're aware of and looking at.Corey: Throughout Amazon, but particularly within Commerce Platform, I've always appreciated the response of, whenever I report something, no matter how ridiculous it is—and I assure you there's an awful lot of ridiculousness in my bug reports—the response has always been the same: “Tell me more. Help me understand what it is you're trying to achieve—even if it is ridiculous—so we can look at this and see what is actually going on.” Every Amazonian team has been great about that or you're not at Amazon very long, but you folks have taken that to an otherworldly level. I just want to thank you for doing that.James: I appreciate you for calling that out. We try, you know, we really do. We take listening to our customers very seriously because, at the end of the day, that's what makes us better, and that's how we make sure we're in it for the long haul.Corey: Thanks once again for being so generous with your time. I really appreciate it.James: Yeah, thanks for having me on. I've enjoyed it.Corey: James Greenfield, VP of Commerce Platform at AWS. 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—possibly on YouTube as well—about how you aren't actually giving this five-stars at all; you have taken three trillions of a star off of the rating.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.

In this episode I give a quick recap of my interview with James Mejias including: - How to raise the bar & find the life you were born to claim- The 5 Power Habits and why you must implement them now- The 5 Focus Paths and why you must master themAnd so much more...  James Mejias is a follower of Jesus, a family man, public speaker, life focus coach and a licensed counselor with 10+ years of clinical experience. He is passionate about helping men to learn and master biblical and clinical success principles that equip and empower men to accelerate their growth and development within their personal, spiritual and professional life arenas.James is also the founder of the Real Men Follow Him Coaching Program. The program is an interactive coaching system that combines the power of discipleship, counseling, coaching, entrepreneurship and philosophy to inspire men to become all that God is calling them to be and do.Click Here to connect with James*************************************************************You will never maximize your potential on your own so I'm personally inviting you to come and join me in the private Extraordinary Man Facebook group so you can level up your business and your life. Just Click Here to join the Extraordinary Man private Facebook group. Iron sharpens iron and this is the #1 place for you to connect with me and other like minded men who are on a mission to maximize their potential. My goal is to help you become the man God created you to be in all areas of your life. So come and join us in the Facebook group and upgrade your business and your life.

James Mejias is a follower of Jesus, a family man, public speaker, life focus coach and a licensed counselor with 10+ years of clinical experience. He is passionate about helping men to learn and master biblical and clinical success principles that equip and empower men to accelerate their growth and development within their personal, spiritual and professional life arenas.James is also the founder of the Real Men Follow Him Coaching Program. The program is an interactive coaching system that combines the power of discipleship, counseling, coaching, entrepreneurship and philosophy to inspire men to become all that God is calling them to be and do.In this episode, we discuss:- How to raise the bar & find the life you were born to claim- The 5 Power Habits and why you must implement them now- The 5 Focus Paths and why you must master themAnd so much more...  Click Here to connect with James**************************************************You will never maximize your potential on your own so I'm personally inviting you to come and join me in the private Extraordinary Man Facebook group so you can level up your business and your life. Just Click Here to join the Extraordinary Man private Facebook group. Iron sharpens iron and this is the #1 place for you to connect with me and other like minded men who are on a mission to maximize their potential. My goal is to help you become the man God created you to be in all areas of your life. So come and join us in the Facebook group and upgrade your business and your life.

Three visitors came to Abraham. One of them was Yahweh Himself. After a dinner where a miraculous birth was promised, God brought His friend, Abraham, into His confidence. The outcry against the repulsive depravity of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah had reached the point where God chose to step in. The time for judgment had come. These cities would be wiped out.Abraham's response was not what you or I might have done. I might have said, “Good! They deserve it!” But Abraham intercedes. He pleads with God for mercy for those who don't deserve it.  There are a few lessons we can learn from Abraham's intercession: 1.     God really wants His people to take a role in His Kingdom dream. For some reason beyond understanding, the Lord is very pleased to partner with His redeemed children in the working out of His purposes. 2.     One of the primary roles we can play is intercessory prayer.While God wants to use our hands and feet, what He values most is our prayers.  The Apostle Peter wrote… “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their prayer.” (I Peter 3:12) James adds… “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. (James 5:16)The flip side is also true.  Again from James… “You have not because you ask not.” (James 4:2)Apparently, there is that which God could do and would do but can't do and won't do if we fail to pray.We also see from Abraham that… 3.     Effective intercessory prayer is persistent.One of Jesus' most compelling parables was about a woman who came to a judge and kept on asking him to intervene in her case.  She kept asking and kept asking, refusing to give up.  And Jesus said that such action demonstrated that we should keep on praying and never give up. I'm struck by Jesus' injunction to “Love your enemies.”  Most of us are familiar with those words.  But the whole verse is, “Love your enemies and pray for them.” (Mt. 5:44)    Who would you call an enemy?  Who has so hurt you or those you love?  Who has taken from you far more than those thieves took from me?  Who would you, in your totally honest moments, like God to pour judgment upon?Now…consider the grace you've been shown.  Think about the patience God had in not pouring judgment down on you.  What should your attitude be toward that person?  How might you follow Abraham's lead?  Text: Genesis 18Originally recorded October 26, 2014, at Fellowship Missionary Church, Fort Wayne, IN.

In this episode I give a quick recap of my interview with James Malinchak including: - How he went from broke and eating ramen noodles to appearing on ABC TV's "Secret Millionaire" - How to get highly paid as a speaker without credentials, experience, connections, or… even being a good speaker! - The #1 trap most business owners fall into and how you can avoid it And so much more...  James Malinchak is recognized as one of the most requested, in-demand business and motivational keynote speakers and marketing consultants in the world. He was featured on the Hit ABC TV Show, Secret Millionaire and was twice named National “College Speaker of the Year.” James has delivered over 3,000+ presentations for corporations, associations, business groups, colleges, universities and youth organizations worldwide. James can speak for groups ranging from 20-30,000+. Giving back is a big part of James' life as he has raised over $1,000,000 for various charities and organizations and has donated thousands of dollars of his own money to help others.As a speaker marketing coach and consultant, James is the behind- the-scenes, go-to marketing advisor for many top speakers, authors, thought leaders, business professionals, celebrities, sports coaches, athletes and entrepreneurs and is recognized as “The World's #1 Big Money Speaker® Trainer and Coach!”Click Here to connect with James*************************************************************You will never maximize your potential on your own so I'm personally inviting you to come and join me in the private Extraordinary Man Facebook group so you can level up your business and your life. Just Click Here to join the Extraordinary Man private Facebook group. Iron sharpens iron and this is the #1 place for you to connect with me and other like minded men who are on a mission to maximize their potential. My goal is to help you become the man God created you to be in all areas of your life. So come and join us in the Facebook group and upgrade your business and your life.

James Malinchak is recognized as one of the most requested, in-demand business and motivational keynote speakers and marketing consultants in the world. He was featured on the Hit ABC TV Show, Secret Millionaire and was twice named National “College Speaker of the Year.” James has delivered over 3,000+ presentations for corporations, associations, business groups, colleges, universities and youth organizations worldwide. James can speak for groups ranging from 20-30,000+. Giving back is a big part of James' life as he has raised over $1,000,000 for various charities and organizations and has donated thousands of dollars of his own money to help others.As a speaker marketing coach and consultant, James is the behind- the-scenes, go-to marketing advisor for many top speakers, authors, thought leaders, business professionals, celebrities, sports coaches, athletes and entrepreneurs and is recognized as “The World's #1 Big Money Speaker® Trainer and Coach!”In this episode, we discuss:- How he went from broke and eating ramen noodles to appearing on ABC TV's "Secret Millionaire" - How to get highly paid as a speaker without credentials, experience, connections, or… even being a good speaker! - The #1 trap most business owners fall into and how you can avoid it And so much more...  Click Here to connect with James**************************************************You will never maximize your potential on your own so I'm personally inviting you to come and join me in the private Extraordinary Man Facebook group so you can level up your business and your life. Just Click Here to join the Extraordinary Man private Facebook group. Iron sharpens iron and this is the #1 place for you to connect with me and other like minded men who are on a mission to maximize their potential. My goal is to help you become the man God created you to be in all areas of your life. So come and join us in the Facebook group and upgrade your business and your life.

Planning What You'll Say [Video description begins] Topic title: Planning What You'll Say. Ali is in the presentation room. She is holding a number of index cards. [Video description ends] ALI: These figures alone are pretty impressive. But further results from numerous independent studies have verified, have verified... um, something somewhere... [Video description begins] Ali looks unassertive.[Video description ends] I'm pretty sure... [Video description begins] The host is in the host space. [Video description ends] HOST: Effective communication – regardless of your audience – depends upon proper preparation. And that preparation starts with knowing what you want to communicate so that you can achieve an intended outcome. [Video description begins] Ali and Cory are talking in the cafeteria. [Video description ends] ALI: So how was the meeting? CORY: It was, um, awful. I started rambling on and on, and then James had to rush off to a meeting. I didn't even get around to asking. ALI: No raise again today, then. [Video description begins] Cory looks skeptical. [Video description ends] CORY: Heh. I'll get to it one of these days. [Video description begins] Cory smiles. The host is in the host space. [Video description ends] Probably. [Video description begins] Cory smiles. The host is in the host space. [Video description ends] HOST: But knowing what you want to achieve is only the first step. To get farther, you need to plan and structure what you want to say in order to achieve it. Planning puts you in control, ensuring you communicate exactly what you really mean to, and in the most effective way. Start by identifying no more than two to four key points and then flesh out the details from there. If you need to, organize your thoughts by writing down the key points to cover rather than creating a full draft. This makes it easier to speak naturally and adapt based on your listeners' responses. Once you've organized your points, plan an introduction to hook the listeners' attention and give them a quick "roadmap," to let them know what you'll be talking about. [Video description begins] Cory and James are talking at James' workstation. [Video description ends] CORY: Last year alone, I took on three new national accounts, and brought in 17% more revenue than the year before. And this year, I'm on track to exceed that. [Video description begins] James smiles and nodes in acknowledgement. [Video description ends] JAMES: You've been doing an amazing job. CORY: And so with both taking on a larger workload and bringing in more revenue, I think it's only fair that my base salary reflect my strong performance. JAMES: You make a solid case for yourself. And the job you're doing hasn't gone unnoticed. Frankly, I expected to have this conversation a couple of months ago. Let me speak with HR about your comp plan, to see what we can do. I'm pretty sure that we can work something out. CORY: That's what I was hoping to hear. [Video description begins] The host is in the host space. [Video description ends] HOST: Finally, keep your message clear, simple, and focused. Use straightforward, declarative sentences, and stay on topic. Digression ultimately leads to confusion and straying from your point. You know where you want to go, and have planned how to get there. Stay the course and end with a conclusion that summarizes and reinforces your points.

Using Body Language [Video description begins] Topic title: Using Body Language. Ali and James are in the presentation room. Ali is speaking to James. She is holding index cards. She looks confident. James listens to her silently. [Video description ends] ALI: These figures alone are pretty impressive. But further results from numerous independent studies have verified our findings, and even surpassed our expectations— JAMES: OK. Not bad, but you're still a little stiff. ALI: What do you mean? JAMES: You're a little robotic. I know this is just a practice run, but practice looking around at your audience, and consider losing the index cards so your hands are free. ALI: My hands? [Video description begins] The host is in the host space. [Video description ends] HOST: When you speak, your body language is talking, too. Maybe it says that you're confident and sincere. Or maybe it says that you're unsure and nervous. Controlling and using your body language is as important to confident communication as your voice. It's another tool to get your message across effectively. Stand or sit up straight to start. And don't fidget. Look and act like you're in control and belong in the room. And when you're facing a group, you need to make appropriate eye contact. Your audience wants you to acknowledge and speak to them. They want to connect. Staring at your notes, or at a blank spot on the wall at the back of the room doesn't do that. Look at them. They're who you're talking to. [Video description begins] Back in the presentation room, Ali and James continue their conversation. James is speaking to Ali. [Video description ends] JAMES: Yes, your hands. They're not just for holding things. They're also for expressing things. ALI: What if I just kind of wave them around now and then? [Video description begins] James laughs. [Video description ends] OK. I get it. [Video description begins] The host is in the host space. [Video description ends] HOST: Freeing up your hands allows you to use bold, purposeful hand gestures. According to body language expert, Patti Wood, "charismatic leaders use gestures four times as often as others do when they talk." Not only that, making hand gestures helps you think, dispels anxiety, and lets you emphasize key points. It's important to remember, though, to not overdo it, or you might find yourself waving your arms around without purpose. Use gestures for emphasis, not melodrama. And don't make fists, which seems overly aggressive and stressful. Keep your hands loose and relaxed. [Video description begins] Back in the presentation room, Ali and James continue their conversation. Ali is speaking to James. [Video description ends] ALI: These figures alone are pretty impressive. But further results from numerous independent studies have verified, and even surpassed them— JAMES: OK – just one more thing. ALI: Just one? JAMES: Just one. You've got your message down. Your voice is into it. Your hands are into it. But your face is still back at your desk. Use your face to help sell your point. You look flat and kind of bored. ALI: I think maybe I'm trying too hard to look serious. I want them to take me seriously. [Video description begins] The host is in the host space. [Video description ends] HOST: Serious doesn't equal expressionless. Let your facial expressions reflect what you're saying as you're saying it. When you smile, make sure it's at an appropriate time. If you're expressing concern, show it on your face. If your message gets serious, then let your face express it. When you're being upbeat, look upbeat. Your facial expression is part of your body language. Practice using it to your advantage. [Video description begins] Ali is standing in the presentation room. She is using her voice and hands appropriately throughout. [Video description ends] ALI: These figures alone are pretty impressive. But further results from numerous independent studies have verified, and even surpassed them. Now t

Overcoming Nervousness [Video description begins] Topic title: Overcoming Nervousness. The host is in the host space. [Video description ends] HOST: It may start in school. You stand up to talk in front of a class. Your mouth goes dry, your heart races, your hands shake – and then maybe you talk too fast. Or maybe you hem and haw. Or maybe your mind goes blank and you say nothing at all. Nervousness about speaking in front of others doesn't automatically go away as you get older. It might even get worse because you feel the stakes are greater. But by applying some specific techniques, you can learn to overcome it. [Video description begins] Ali is sitting at her workstation. She is soliloquizing . [Video description ends] ALI: What if I look stupid? What if I forget what I want to say? What do I want to say? I don't want to blow this. Oh, man. I'm going to blow this. I'm going to look like an idiot. Maybe I'll call in sick... [Video description begins] The host is in the host space. [Video description ends] HOST: Negative self-talk is the first thing that must go. It's easy to obsess over what could go wrong. The trick is learning to obsess over what will go right. And the first way to ensure that is to prepare and really know your content cold — exactly what you want to communicate. What's your message? What's the audience's takeaway? Once you answer those questions, you can then plan how to convey them, making sure that what you present supports your essential message. Then, make a conscious decision about how you want to come across. How should you present yourself while delivering your message? [Video description begins] Back at the Ali's workstation, James is talking to Ali. Ali looks nervous. [Video description ends] JAMES: How's it going? Working on your presentation? ALI: Yeah, I'm kind of nervous. JAMES: You'll be fine. You know your stuff inside out – just let the client see that. ALI: But how exactly do I do that? I mean, I know what I want to say, but I'm not sure how I want to say it. Do I want to be serious and project authority? Do I want to be charming and witty? JAMES: Try being you, just a more confident and self-assured version of you. ALI: Heh. I don't feel like that confident or self-assured version of me right now. [Video description begins] The host is in the host space. [Video description ends] HOST: Genuine, honest communication requires a genuine, honest communicator. Different situations may call for different approaches, but any successful approach begins with being authentic and engaging. You don't need to be perfect, you just need to be you, confidently. Use your personality to your advantage, and don't try to be someone you aren't. If humor comes naturally to you, then apply it. If not, don't force it. If you're a straight shooter, then be a straight shooter. Presenting yourself to others shouldn't be an act. It should be a revelation. [Video description begins] Back at the Ali's workstation, Ali and James continue their conversation. Ali is talking to James. She speaks aloud. [Video description ends] ALI: Our market research shows that nearly 75% of the target market samples expressed a preference for... I sound like one of those disclaimers at the end of a commercial. Slow down. Sloooooooow doooooooooown. [Video description begins] The host is in the host space. [Video description ends] HOST: Another important technique is to practice proper breathing. Nervousness makes your vocal cords constrict, increases your heart rate, and interferes with your breathing. Typically, it also dries your throat and makes you talk too fast. Proper, diaphragmatic breathing counters all these effects. It sends a message to your brain, disrupting the "fight or flight" response. It forces you to relax, encourages pauses, and helps you slow down. [Video description begins] Back at the Ali's workstation, Ali and James continue their conversation. James is talking to Ali. Ali looks nervous. [Video descri

THINK TANK SERIES EPISODE 4: Joining host Peter Haddock for the fourth in our new 'Think Tank Series', sponsored by our friends at Leica Geosystems, the 3D machine control and surveying specialist, is James Cadman, plant sector expert for the Sustainability Supply Chain School. In this special COP26 (Climate Change Summit) episode, James returns to the podcast to talk to host Peter about all of the challenges the industry faces to play its part in tackling climate change. They discuss what has changed in the industry since the Sustainability Supply Chain School Plant Charter was launched last year. They also talk about what the industry needs to do to reduce emissions by being better custodians of the environment and delivering social value to the communities in which we all work. James: "You only have to look at the recent announcement from the Construction Leadership Council in its 'Construct Zero Performance Framework' to see that we have some major milestones to reach. They stated that the framework wanted to reduce diesel plant onsite by over 70% by 2035. "That is a big task and not one we are going to solve overnight. But we can already see innovations coming to market and the rapid adoption of technology like 3D machine control. And there will be more technological advancements coming down the road. To meet these stringent targets, the answer is never going to be a one size fits all solution. We already have HVO biofuels, electric and now hydrogen advancements." It's a huge subject to tackle in a podcast, but we hope it will help listeners think about how they can play a role in delivering better environmental outcomes, both locally and globally. The Sustainability Supply Chain School also offers the industry a huge amount of resources free of charge to support learning, and you can access its library by visiting its website. You can also find out more about the plant charter in the link below: www.supplychainschool.co.uk/partners/groups/plant-group/plant-charter/ We would like to thank our sponsor, Leica Geosystems, for supporting this 'Think Tank Series' episode. You can find out all about how its surveying and 3D machine control equipment and software solutions can help you reduce emissions and more at leica-geosystems.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/contentwithmedia/message

In this episode I give a quick recap of my interview with James Leath including: -  What Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz can teach you about leadership  - What entrepreneurs can learn from elite athletes - The many benefits of Wim Hof breathingAnd so much more...  James Leath is a mental performance coach and the founder of Unleash the Athlete. With a bachelors in communication, a masters in Performance Psychology, and almost 20 years of coaching experience, Coach Leath teaches leadership, character, and mental resilience to elite performers in sport, theater, and business through keynotes, workshops, and online courses.Using stories, improvisation, audience participation, and lots of energy, James provides an experience for the audience with clear takeaways for continued growth. All-day workshops like his “Do, Say, Be” formula for developing leaders and empowering them to take ownership in their personal development through goal setting, self-talk, commitment, and teamwork.Click Here to connect with James*************************************************************You will never maximize your potential on your own so I'm personally inviting you to come and join me in the private Extraordinary Man Facebook group so you can level up your business and your life. Just Click Here to join the Extraordinary Man private Facebook group. Iron sharpens iron and this is the #1 place for you to connect with me and other like minded men who are on a mission to maximize their potential. My goal is to help you become the man God created you to be in all areas of your life. So come and join us in the Facebook group and upgrade your business and your life.

James Leath is a mental performance coach and the founder of Unleash the Athlete. With a bachelors in communication, a masters in Performance Psychology, and almost 20 years of coaching experience, Coach Leath teaches leadership, character, and mental resilience to elite performers in sport, theater, and business through keynotes, workshops, and online courses.Using stories, improvisation, audience participation, and lots of energy, James provides an experience for the audience with clear takeaways for continued growth. All-day workshops like his “Do, Say, Be” formula for developing leaders and empowering them to take ownership in their personal development through goal setting, self-talk, commitment, and teamwork.In this episode, we discuss:-  What Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz can teach you about leadership  - What entrepreneurs can learn from elite athletes - The many benefits of Wim Hof breathingAnd so much more...  Click Here to connect with James*************************************************************You will never maximize your potential on your own so I'm personally inviting you to come and join me in the private Extraordinary Man Facebook group so you can level up your business and your life. Just Click Here to join the Extraordinary Man private Facebook group. Iron sharpens iron and this is the #1 place for you to connect with me and other like minded men who are on a mission to maximize their potential. My goal is to help you become the man God created you to be in all areas of your life. So come and join us in the Facebook group and upgrade your business and your life.

Episode 8 - I speak with James who is a current law enforcement officer. He began his career three years ago. From his perspective we tackle such questions as:How does law enforcement help our communities?How does a region affect the nature of the calls for help? The pattern of crime. How does it escalate?James: You're gonna have your crimes of opportunity, which are, somebody leaves their purse, or wallet or phone or something in their car. I'll just use theft as an example. They might be walking by, see it, look around, nobody's there, they snag it take off. After a while, the fear that keeps them from committing the crime, isn't there. And they move up, and they'll do it while somebody is watching. And even if they are caught, it doesn't necessarily stop that cycle. They'll break into a house while somebody's there. And then from there, it can escalate up into violent crimes. It's just basically they're becoming callous to the fear.Support the message: https://www.patreon.com/INEEDBLUE

About JamesJames is the Redmonk co-founder, sunshine in a bag, industry analyst loves developers, "motivating in a surreal kind of way". Came up with "progressive delivery". He/HimLinks: RedMonk: https://redmonk.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MonkChips Monktoberfest: https://monktoberfest.com/ Monki Gras: https://monkigras.com/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Cloud Economist 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: Your company might be stuck in the middle of a DevOps revolution without even realizing it. Lucky you! Does your company culture discourage risk? Are you willing to admit it? Does your team have clear responsibilities? Depends on who you ask. Are you struggling to get buy in on DevOps practices? Well, download the 2021 State of DevOps report brought to you annually by Puppet since 2011 to explore the trends and blockers keeping evolution firms stuck in the middle of their DevOps evolution. Because they fail to evolve or die like dinosaurs. The significance of organizational buy in, and oh it is significant indeed, and why team identities and interaction models matter. Not to mention weither the use of automation and the cloud translate to DevOps success. All that and more awaits you. Visit: www.puppet.com to download your copy of the report now!Corey: And now for something completely different!Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. I'm joined this week by James Governor, analyst and co-founder of a boutique analysis shop called RedMonk. James, thank you for coming on the show.James: Oh, it's my pleasure. Corey.Corey: I've more or less had to continue pestering you with invites onto this for years because it's a high bar, but you are absolutely one of my favorite people in tech for a variety of reasons that I'm sure we're going to get into. But first, let's let you tell the story. What is it you'd say it is that you do here?James: We—industry analysts; we're a research firm, as you said. I think we do things slightly differently. RedMonk has a very strong opinion about how the industry works. And so whilst there are plenty of research firms that look at the industry, and technology adoption, and process adoption through the lens of the purchaser, RedMonk focuses on it through the lens of the practitioner: the developer, the SRE, the people that are really doing the engineering. And so, historically IT was a top-down function: it required a lot of permission; it was something that was slow, you would make a request, you might get some resources six to nine months later, and they were probably the resources that you didn't actually want, but something that was purchased from somebody that was particularly good at selling things.Corey: Yes. And the thing that you were purchasing was aimed at people who are particularly good at buying things, but not using the things.James: Exactly right. And so I think that RedMonk we look at the world—the new world, which is based on the fact there's open-source software, there's cloud-based software, there are platforms like GitHub. So, there's all of this knowledge out there, and increasingly—it's not a permission-free world. But technology adoption is more strongly influenced than ever by developers. That's what RedMonk understands; that's what makes us tick; that's what excites us. What are the decisions that developers are making? When and why? And how can we tap into that knowledge to help everyone become more effective?Corey: RedMonk is one of those companies that is so rare, it may as well not count when you do a survey of a landscape. We've touched on that before on the show. In 2019, we had your colleague, Rachel Stevens on the show; in 2020, we had your business partner Stephen O'Grady on, and in 2021 we have you. Apparently, you're doling out staff at the rate of one a year. That's okay; I will outlast your expansion plans.James: Yeah, I think you probably will. One thing that RedMonk is not good at doing is growing, which may go to some of the uniqueness that you're talking about. We do what we do very well, but we definitely still haven't worked out what we're going to be when we grow up.Corey: I will admit that every time I see a RedMonk blog post that comes across my desk, I don't even need to click on it anymore; I don't need to read the thing because I already get that sinking feeling, because I know without even glancing at it, I'm going to read this and it's going to be depressing because I'm going to wish I had written it instead because the points are always so pitch-perfect. And it feels like the thing that I struggle to articulate on the best of days, you folks—across the board—just wind up putting out almost effortlessly. Or at least that's how it seems from the outside.James: I think Stephen does that.Corey: It's funny; it's what he said about you.James: I like to sell his ideas, sell his work. He's the brains and the talent of the operation in terms of co-founders. Kelly and Rachel are both incredibly smart people, and yeah, they definitely do a fantastic job of writing with clarity, and getting ideas across by stuff just tends to be sort of jumbled up. I do my best, but certainly, those fully formed, ‘I wish I had written that' pieces, they come from my colleagues. So, thank you very much for that praise of them.Corey: One of the central tenets that RedMonk has always believed and espoused is that developers are kingmakers, to use the term—and I steal that term, of course, from your co-founder's book, The New Kingmakers, which, from my read, was talking about developers. That makes a lot of sense for a lot of tools that see bottom-up adoption, but in a world of cloud, where you're seeing massive deals get signed, I don't know too many developers out there who can sign a 50 million dollar cloud services contract more than once because they get fired the first time they outstrip their authority. Do you think that that model is changing?James: So, ‘new kingmakers' is quite a gendered term, and I have been asked to reconsider its use because, I mean, I don't know whether it should be ‘new monarchmakers?' That aside, developers are a fundamentally influential constituency. It's important, I think, to say that they themselves are not necessarily the monarchs; they are not the ones sitting in Buckingham Palace [laugh] or whatever, but they are influences. And it's important to understand the difference between influence and purchase. You're absolutely right, Corey, the cloud is becoming more, like traditional IT. Something I noticed with your good friends at GCP, this was shortly after the article came out that they were going to cut bait if they didn't get to number two after whatever period of time it was, they then went intentionally inside a bunch of 10-year deals with massive enterprises, I guess, to make it clear that they are in it for the long haul. But yeah, were developers making that decision? No. On the other hand, we don't talk to any organizations that are good at creating digital products and services—and increasingly, that's something that pretty much everybody needs to do—that do not pay a lot more attention to the needs and desires of their developers. They are reshoring, they are not outsourcing everything, they want developers that are close to the business, that understand the business, and they're investing heavily in those people. And rather than seeing them as, sort of, oh, we're going to get the cheapest possible people we can that have some Java skills and hope that these applications aren't crap. It may not be Netflix, “Hey, we're going to pay above market rate,” but it's certainly what do they want? What tools do they want to use? How can we help them become more effective? And so yeah, you might sign a really big deal, but you still want to be thinking, “Hang on a minute, what are the skills that people have? What is going to make them happy? What do they know? Because if they aren't productive, if they aren't happy, we may lose them, and they are very, very important talent.” So, they may not be the people with 50 million dollars in budget, but their opinion is indeed important. And I think that RedMonk is not saying there is no such thing as top-down purchasing anymore. What we are saying is that you need to be serving the needs of this very important constituency, and they will make you more productive. The happier they are, the more flow they can have, the more creative they can be with the tools at hand, the better the business outcomes are going to be. So, it's really about having a mindset and an organizational structure that enables you to become more effective by better serving the needs of developers, frankly. It used to just be the only tech companies had to care about that, but now everybody does. I mean, if we look at, whoever it is: Lego, or Capital One, or Branch, the new insurance company—I love Branch, by the way. I mean—Corey: Yeah. They're fantastic people, I love working with them. I wish I got to spend more time talking with them. So far, all I can do is drag them on to the podcast and argue on Twitter, but one of these days, one of these days, they're going to have an AWS bill bigger than 50 cents a month, and then, oh, then I've got them.James: There you go. But I think that the thing of him intentionally saying we're not going to set up—I mean, are they in Columbus, I think?Corey: They are. The greater Ohio region, yes.James: Yes. And Joe is all about, we need tools that juniors can be effective with, and we need to satisfy the needs of those juniors so they can be productive in driving our business forward. Juniors is already—and perhaps as a bad term, but new entrants into the industry, and how can we support them where they are, but also help them gain new skills to become more effective? And I just think it's about a different posture, and I think they're a great example because not everybody is south of Market, able to pay 350 grand a year plus stock options. That's just not realistic for most businesses. So, it is important to think about developers and their needs, the skills they learned, if they're from a non-traditional background, what are those skills? How can we support them and become more effective?Corey: That's really what it comes down to. We're all trying to do more with less, but rather than trying to work twice as hard, how to become more effective with the time we have and still go home in time for dinner every day?James: Definitely. I have to say, I mean, 2020 sucked in lots of ways, but not missing a single meal with my family definitely was not one of them.Corey: Yeah. There are certain things I'm willing to trade and certain things I'm not. And honestly, family time is one of them. So, I met you—I don't even recall what year—because what is even time anymore in this pandemic era?—where we sat down and grabbed a drink, I want to say it was at Google Cloud Next—the conference that Google does every year about their cloud—not that Google loses interest in things, but even their conference is called ‘Next'—but I didn't know what to expect when I sat down and spoke with you, and I got the sense you had no idea what to make of me back then because I was basically what I am now, only less fully formed. I was obnoxious on Twitter, I had barely coherent thoughts that I could periodically hurl into the abyss and see if they resonated, but stands out is one of the seminal grabbing a drink with someone moments in the course of my career.James: Well, I mean, fledgling Corey was pretty close to where he is now. But yeah, you bring something unique to the table. And I didn't totally know what to expect; I knew there would be snark. But yeah, it was certainly a pleasure to meet you, and I think that whenever I meet someone, I'm always interested in if there is any way I can help them. And it was nice because you're clearly a talented fellow and everything else, but it was like, are there some areas where I might be able to help? I mean, I think that's a good position as a human meeting another human. And yeah, it was a pleasure. I think it was in the Intercontinental, I guess, in [unintelligible 00:11:00].Corey: Yes, that's exactly where it was. Good memory. In fact, I can tell you the date: it was April 11 of 2019. And I know that because right after we finished having a drink, you tweeted out a GIF of Snow White carving a pie, saying, “QuinnyPig is an industry analyst.” And the first time I saw that, it was, “I thought he liked me. Why on earth would he insult me that way?”But it turned into something where when you have loud angry opinions, if you call yourself an analyst, suddenly people know what to do with you. I'm not kidding, I had that tweet laser engraved on a piece of wood through Laser Tweets. It is sitting on my shelf right now, which is how I know the date because it's the closest thing I have to a credential in almost anything that I do. So, congratulations, you're the accrediting university. Good job.James: [laugh]. I credentialed you. How about that?Corey: It's true, though. It didn't occur to me that analysts were a real thing. I didn't know what it was, and that's part of what we talked about at lunch, where it seemed that every time I tried to articulate what I do, people got confused. Analyst is not that far removed from an awful lot of what I do. And as I started going to analyst events, and catching up with other analysts—you know, the real kind of analyst, I would say, “I feel like a fake analyst. I have no idea what I'm actually doing.” And they said, “You are an analyst. Welcome to the club. We meet at the bar.” It turns out, no one really knows what is going on, fully, in this zany industry, and I feel like that the thing that we all bond over on some level is the sense of, we each only see a piece of it, and we try and piece it together with our understanding of the world and ideally try and make some sense out of it. At least, that's my off-the-cuff definition of an industry analyst. As someone who's an actual industry analyst, and not just a pretend one on Twitter, what's your take on the subject?James: Well, it's a remarkable privilege, and it's interesting because it is an uncredentialed job. Anybody can be, theoretically at least, an industry analyst. If people say you are and think you are, then then you are; you walk and quack like a duck. It's basically about research and trying to understand a problem space and trying to articulate and help people to basically become more effective by understanding that problem space themselves, more. So, it might be about products, as I say, it might be about processes, but for me, I've just always enjoyed research. And I've always enjoyed advice. You need a particular mindset to give people advice. That's one of the key things that, as an industry analyst, you're sort of expected to do. But yeah, it's the getting out there and learning from people that is the best part of the job. And I guess that's why I've been doing it for such an ungodly long time; because I love learning, and I love talking to people, and I love trying to help people understand stuff. So, it suits me very well. It's basically a job, which is about research, analysis, communication.Corey: The research part is the part that I want to push back on because you say that, and I cringe. On paper, I have an eighth-grade education. And academia was never really something that I was drawn to, excelled at, or frankly, was even halfway competent at for a variety of reasons. So, when you say ‘research,' I think of something awful and horrible. But then I look at the things I do when I talk to companies that are building something, and then I talked to the customers who are using the thing the company's building, and, okay, those two things don't always align as far as conversations go, so let's take this thing that they built, and I'll build something myself with it in an afternoon and see what the real story is. And it never occurred to me until we started having conversations to view that through the lens of well, that is actual research. I just consider it messing around with computers until something explodes.James: Well, I think. I mean, that is research, isn't it?Corey: I think so. I'm trying to understand what your vision of research is. Because from where I sit, it's either something negative and boring or almost subverting the premises you're starting with to a point where you can twist it back on itself in some sort of ridiculous pretzel and come out with something that if it's not functional, at least it's hopefully funny.James: The funny part I certainly wish that I could get anywhere close to the level of humor that you bring to the table on some of the analysis. But look, I mean, yes, it's easy to see things as a sort of dry. Look, I mean, a great job I had randomly in my 20s, I sort of lied, fluked, lucked my way into researching Eastern European art and architecture. And a big part of the job was going to all of these amazing museums and libraries in and around London, trying to find catalogs from art exhibitions. And you're learning about [Anastasi Kremnica 00:15:36], one of the greatest exponents of the illuminated manuscript and just, sort of, finding out about this interesting work, you're finding out that some of the articles in this dictionary that you're researching for had been completely made up, and that there wasn't a bibliography, these were people that were writing for free and they just made shit up, so… but I just found that fascinating, and if you point me at a body of knowledge, I will enjoy learning stuff. So, I totally know what you mean; one can look at it from a, is this an academic pursuit? But I think, yeah, I've just always enjoyed learning stuff. And in terms of what is research, a lot of what RedMonk does is on the qualitative side; we're trying to understand what people think of things, why they make the choices that they do, you have thousands of conversations, synthesize that into a worldview, you may try and play with those tools, you can't always do that. I mean, to your point, play with things and break things, but how deep can you go? I'm talking to developers that are writing in Rust; they're writing in Go, they're writing in Node, they're writing in, you know, all of these programming languages under the sun. I don't know every programming language, so you have to synthesize. I know a little bit and enough to probably cut off my own thumb, but it's about trying to understand people's experience. And then, of course, you have a chance to bring some quantitative things to the table. That was one of the things that RedMonk for a long time, we'd always—we were always very wary of, sort of, quantitative models in research because you see this stuff, it's all hockey sticks, it's all up into the right—Corey: Yeah. You have that ridiculous graph thing, which I'm sorry, I'm sure has an official name. And every analyst firm has its own magic name, whether it's a ‘Magic Quadrant,' or the ‘Forrester Wave,' or, I don't know, ‘The Crushing Pit Of Despair.' I don't know what company is which. But you have the programming language up-and-to-the-right line graph that I'm not sure the exact methodology, but you wind up placing slash ranking all of the programming languages that are whatever body of work you're consuming—I believe it might be Stack Overflow—James: Yeah.Corey: —and people look for that whenever it comes out. And for some reason, no one ever yells at you the way that they would if you were—oh, I don't know, a woman—or someone who didn't look like us, with our over-represented faces.James: Well, yeah. There is some of that. I mean, look, there are two defining forces to the culture. One is outrage, and if you can tap into people's outrage, then you're golden—Corey: Oh, rage-driven development is very much a thing. I guess I shouldn't be quite as flippant. It's kind of magic that you can wind up publishing these things as an organization, and people mostly accept it. People pay attention to it; it gets a lot of publicity, but no one argues with you about nonsense, for the most, part that I've seen.James: I mean, so there's a couple of things. One is outrage; universal human thing, and too much of that in the culture, but it seems to work in terms of driving attention. And the other is confirmation bias. So, I think the beauty of the programming language rankings—which is basically a scatterplot based on looking at conversations in StackOverflow and some behaviors in GitHub, and trying to understand whether they correlate—we're very open about the methodology. It's not something where—there are some other companies where you don't actually know how they've reached the conclusions they do. And we've been doing it for a long time; it is somewhat dry. I mean, when you read the post the way Stephen writes it, he really does come across quite academic; 20 paragraphs of explication of the methodology followed by a few paragraphs explaining what we found with the research. Every time we publish it, someone will say, “CSS is not a programming language,” or, “Why is COBOL not on there?” And it's largely a function of methodology. So, there's always raged to be had.Corey: Oh, absolutely. Channeling rage is basically one of my primary core competencies.James: There you go. So, I think that it's both. One of the beauties of the thing is that on any given day when we publish it, people either want to pat themselves on the back and say, “Hey, look, I've made a really good choice. My programming language is becoming more popular,” or they are furious and like, “Well, come on, we're not seeing any slow down. I don't know why those RedMonk folks are saying that.” So, in amongst those two things, the programming language rankings was where we began to realize that we could have a footprint that was a bit more quantitative, and trying to understand the breadcrumbs that developers were dropping because the simple fact is, is—look, when we look at the platforms where developers do their work today, they are in effect instrumented. And you can understand things, not with a survey where a lot of good developers—a lot of people in general—are not going to fill in surveys, but you can begin to understand people's behaviors without talking to them, and so for RedMonk, that's really thrilling. So, if we've got a model where we can understand things by talking to people, and understand things by not talking to people, then we're cooking with gas.Corey: I really love installing, upgrading, and fixing security agents in my cloud estate! Why do I say that? Because I sell things, because I sell things for a company that deploys an agent, there's no other reason. Because let's face it. Agents can be a real headache. Well, now Orca Security gives you a single tool that detects basically every risk in your cloud environment -- and that's as easy to install and maintain as a smartphone app. It is agentless, or my intro would've gotten me into trouble here, but  it can still see deep into your AWS workloads, while guaranteeing 100% coverage. With Orca Security, there are no overlooked assets, no DevOps headaches, and believe me you will hear from those people if you cause them headaches. and no performance hits on live environments. Connect your first cloud account in minutes and see for yourself at orca.security. Thats “Orca” as in whale, “dot” security as in that things you company claims to care about but doesn't until right after it really should have.Corey: One of the I think most defining characteristics about you is that, first, you tend to undersell the weight your words carry. And I can't figure out, honestly, whether that is because you're unaware of them, or you're naturally a modest person, but I will say you're absolutely one of my favorite Twitter follows; @monkchips. If you're not following James, you absolutely should be. Mostly because of what you do whenever someone gives you a modicum of attention, or of credibility, or of power, and that is you immediately—it is reflexive and clearly so, you reach out to find someone you can use that credibility to lift up. It's really an inspirational thing to see. It's one of the things that if I could change anything about myself, it would be to make that less friction-full process, and I think it only comes from practice. You're the kind of person I think—I guess I'm trying to say that I aspire to be in ways that are beyond where I already am.James: [laugh]. Well, that's very charming. Look, we are creatures of extreme privilege. I mean, I say you and I specifically, but people in this industry generally. And maybe not enough people recognize that privilege, but I do, and it's just become more and more clear to me the longer I've been in this industry, that privilege does need to be more evenly distributed. So, if I can help someone, I naturally will. I think it is a muscle that I've exercised, don't get me wrong—Corey: Oh, it is a muscle and it is a skill that can absolutely be improved. I was nowhere near where I am now, back when I started. I gave talks early on in my speaking career, about how to handle a job interview. What I accidentally built was, “How to handle a job interview if you're a white guy in tech,” which it turns out is not the inclusive message I wanted to be delivering, so I retired the talk until I could rebuild it with someone who didn't look like me and give it jointly.James: And that's admirable. And that's—Corey: I wouldn't say it's admirable. I'd say it's the bare minimum, to be perfectly honest.James: You're too kind. I do what I can, it's a very small amount. I do have a lot of privilege, and I'm aware that not everybody has that privilege. And I'm just a work in progress. I'm doing my best, but I guess what I would say is the people listening is that you do have an opportunity, as Corey said about me just now, maybe I don't realize the weight of my words, what I would say is that perhaps you have privileges you can share, that you're not fully aware that you have. In sharing those privileges, in finding folks that you can help it does make you feel good. And if you would like to feel better, trying to help people in some small way is one of the ways that you can feel better. And I mentioned outrage, and I was sort of joking in terms of the programming language rankings, but clearly, we live in a culture where there is too much outrage. And so to take a step back and help someone, that is a very pure thing and makes you feel good. So, if you want to feel a bit less outraged, feel that you've made an impact, you can never finish a day feeling bad about the contribution you've made if you've helped someone else. So, we do have a rare privilege, and I get a lot out of it. And so I would just say it works for me, and in an era when there's a lot of anger around, helping people is usually the time when you're not angry. And there's a lot to be said for that.Corey: I'll take it beyond that. It's easy to cast this in a purely feel-good, oh, you'll give something up in order to lift people up. It never works that way. It always comes back in some weird esoteric way. For example, I go to an awful lot of conferences during, you know, normal years, and I see an awful lot of events and they're all—hmm—how to put this?—they're all directionally the same. The RedMonk events are hands down the exception to all of that. I've been to Monktoberfest once, and I keep hoping to go to—I'm sorry, was it Monki Gras is the one in the UK?James: Monki Gras, yeah.Corey: Yeah. It's just a different experience across the board where I didn't even speak and I have a standing policy just due to time commitments not to really attend conferences I'm not speaking at. I made an exception, both due to the fact that it's RedMonk, so I wanted to see what this event was all about, and also it was in Portland, Maine; my mom lived 15 minutes away, it's an excuse to go back, but not spend too much time. So, great. It was more or less a lark, and it is hands down the number one event I will make it a point to attend. And I put that above re:Invent, which is the center of my cloud-y universe every year, just because of the stories that get told, the people that get invited, just the sheer number of good people in one place is incredible. And I don't want to sound callous, or crass pointing this out, but more business for my company came out of that conference from casual conversations than any other three conferences you can name. It was phenomenal. And it wasn't because I was there setting up an expo booth—there isn't an expo hall—and it isn't because I went around harassing people into signing contracts, which some people seem to think is how it works. It's because there were good people, and I got to have great conversations. And I kept in touch with a lot of folks, and those relationships over time turned into business because that's the way it works.James: Yeah. I mean, we don't go big, we go small. We focus on creating an intimate environment that's safe and inclusive and makes people feel good. We strongly curate the events we run. As Stephen explicitly says in terms of the talks that he accepts, these are talks that you won't hear elsewhere. And we try and provide a platform for some different kind of thinking, some different voices, and we just had some magical, magical speakers, I think, at both events over the years. So, we keep it down to sort of the size of a village; we don't want to be too much over the Dunbar number. And that's where rich interactions between humans emerge. The idea, I think, at our conference is, is that over a couple of days, you will actually get to know some people, and know them well. And we have been lucky enough to attract many kind, and good, and nice people, and that's what makes the event so great. It's not because of Steve, or me, or the others on the team putting it together. It's about the people that come. And they're wonderful, and that's why it's a good event. The key there is we focus on amazing food and drink experiences, really nice people, and keep it small, and try and be as inclusive as you can. One of the things that we've done within the event is we've had a diversity and inclusion sponsorship. And so folks like GitHub, and MongoDB, and Red Hat have been kind enough—I mean, Red Hat—interestingly enough the event as a whole, Red Hat has sponsored Monktoberfest every year it's been on. But the DNI sponsorship is interesting because what we do with that is we look at that as an opportunity. So, there's a few things. When you're running an event, you can solve the speaker problem because there is an amazing pipeline of just fantastic speakers from all different kinds of backgrounds. And I think we do quite well on that, but the DNI sponsorship is really about having a program with resources to make sure that your delegates begin to look a little bit more diverse as well. And that may involve travel stipends, as well as free tickets, accommodation, and so on, which is not an easy one to pull off.Corey: But it's necessary. I mean, I will say one of the great things about this past year of remote—there have been a lot of trials and tribulations, don't get me wrong—but the fact that suddenly all these conferences are available to anyone with an internet connection is a huge accessibility story. When we go back to in-person events, I don't want to lose that.James: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that's been one of the really interesting stories of the—and it is in so many dimensions. I bang on about this a lot, but so much talent in tech from Nigeria. Nigeria is just an amazing, amazing geography, huge population, tons of people doing really interesting work, educating themselves, and pushing and driving forward in tech, and then we make it hard for them to get visas to travel to the US or Europe. And I find that to be… disappointing. So, opening it up to other geographies—which is one of the things that free online events does—is fantastic. You know, perhaps somebody has some accessibility needs, and they just—it's harder for them to travel. Or perhaps you're a single parent and you're unable to travel. Being able to dip into all of these events, I think is potentially a transformative model vis-à-vis inclusion. So, yeah, I hope, A) that you're right, and, B) that we as an industry are intentional because without being intentional, we're not going to realize those benefits, without understanding there were benefits, and we can indeed lower some of the barriers to entry participation, and perhaps most importantly, provide the feedback loop. Because it's not enough to let people in; you need to welcome them. I talked about the DNI program: we have—we're never quite sure what to call them. We call them mentors or things like that, but people to welcome people into the community, make introductions, this industry, sometimes it's, “Oh, great. We've got new people, but then we don't support them when they arrive.” And that's one of the things as an industry we are, frankly, bad at, and we need to get better at it.Corey: I could not agree with you more strongly. Every time I wind up looking at building an event or whatnot or seeing other people's events, it's easy to criticize, but I try to extend grace as much as possible. But whenever I see an event that is very clearly built by people with privilege, for people with privilege, it rubs me the wrong way. And I'm getting worse and worse with time at keeping my mouth shut about that thing. I know, believe it or not, I am capable of keeping my mouth shut from time to time or so I'm told. But it's irritating, it rankles because it's people not taking advantage of their privileged position to help others and that, at some point, bugs me.James: Me too. That's the bottom line, we can and must do better. And so things that, sort of, make you proud of every year, I change my theme for Monki Gras, and, you know, it's been about scaling your craft, it's been about homebrews—so that was sort of about your side gig. It wasn't about the hustle so much as just things people were interested in. Sometimes a side project turns into something amazing in its own right. I've done Scandinavian craft—the influence of the Nordics on our industry. We talk about privilege: every conference that you go to is basically a conference about what San Francisco thinks. So, it was nice to do something where I looked at the influence of Scandinavian craft and culture. Anyway, to get to my point, I did the conference one year about accessibility. I called it ‘accessible craft.' And we had some folks from a group called Code Your Future, which is a nonprofit which is basically training refugees to code. And when you've got a wheelchair-bound refugee at your conference, then you may be doing something right. I mean, the whole wheelchair thing is really interesting because it's so easy to just not realize. And I had been doing these conferences in edgy venues. And I remember walking with my sister, Saffron, to check out one of the potential venues. It was pretty cool, but when we were walking there, there were all these broken cobblestones, and there were quite a lot of heavy vehicles on the road next to it. And it was just very clear that for somebody that had either issues with walking or frankly, with their sight, it just wasn't going to fly anymore. And I think doing the accessibility conference was a watershed for me because we had to think through so many things that we had not given enough attention vis-à-vis accessibility and inclusion.Corey: I think it's also important to remember that if you're organizing a conference and someone in a wheelchair shows up, you don't want to ask that person to do extra work to help accommodate that person. You want to reach out to experts on this; take the burden on yourself. Don't put additional labor on people who are already in a relatively challenging situation. I feel like it's one of those basic things that people miss.James: Well, that's exactly right. I mean, we offered basically, we were like, look, we will pay for your transport. Get a cab that is accessible. But when he was going to come along, we said, “Oh, don't worry, we've made sure that everything is accessible.” We actually had to go further out of London. We went to the Olympic Park to run it that year because we're so modern, and the investments they made for the Olympics, the accessibility was good from the tube, to the bus, and everything else. And the first day, he came along and he was like, “Oh, I got the cab because I didn't really believe that the accessibility would work.” And I think on the second day, he just used the shuttle bus because he saw that the experience was good. So, I think that's the thing; don't make people do the work. It's our job to do the work to make a better environment for as many people as possible.Corey: James, before we call it a show, I have to ask. Your Twitter name is @monkchips and it is one of the most frustrating things in the world trying to keep up with you because your Twitter username doesn't change, but the name that goes above it changes on what appears to be a daily basis. I always felt weird asking you this in person, when I was in slapping distance, but now we're on a podcast where you can't possibly refuse to answer. What the hell is up with that?James: Well, I think if something can be changeable, if something can be mutable, then why not? It's a weird thing with Twitter is that it enables that, and it's just something fun. I know it can be sort of annoying to people. I used to mess around with my profile picture a lot; that was the thing that I really focused on. But recently, at least, I just—there are things that I find funny, or dumb, or interesting, and I'll just make that my username. It's not hugely intentional, but it is, I guess, a bit of a calling card. I like puns; it's partly, you know, why you do something. Because you can, so I've been more consistent with my profile picture. If you keep changing both of them all the time, that's probably suboptimal. Sounds good.Corey: Sounds good. It just makes it hard to track who exactly—“Who is this lunatic, and how did they get into my—oh, it's James, again.” Ugh, branding is hard. At least you're not changing your picture at the same time. That would just be unmanageable.James: Yeah, no, that's what I'm saying. I think you've got to do—you can't do both at the same time and maintain—Corey: At that point, you're basically fleeing creditors.James: Well, that may have happened. Maybe that's an issue for me.Corey: James, I want to thank you for taking as much time as you have to tolerate my slings, and arrows, and other various vocal devices. If people want to learn more about who you are, what you believe, what you're up to, and how to find you. Where are you hiding?James: Yeah, I mean, I think you've said already, that was very kind: I am at @monkchips. I'm not on topic. I think as this conversation has shown, I [laugh] don't think we've spoken as much about technology as perhaps we should, given the show is normally about the cloud.Corey: The show is normally about the business of cloud, and people stories are always better than technology stories because technology is always people.James: And so, yep, I'm all over the map; I can be annoying; I wear my heart on my sleeve. But I try and be kind as much as I can, and yeah, I tweet a lot. That's the best place to find me. And definitely look at redmonk.com. But I have smart colleagues doing great work, and if you're interested in developers and technology infrastructure, we're a great place to come and learn about those things. And we're very accessible. We love to talk to people, and if you want to get better at dealing with software developers, yeah, you should talk to us. We're nice people and we're ready to chat.Corey: Excellent. We will, of course, throw links to that in the [show notes 00:37:03]. James, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really do appreciate it.James: My pleasure. But you've made me feel like a nice person, which is a bit weird.Corey: I know, right? That's okay. You can go for a walk. Shake it off.James: [laugh].Corey: It'll be okay. James Governor, analyst and co-founder at RedMonk. 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 hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an insulting comment in which you attempt to gatekeep being an industry analyst.Announcer: This has been this week's episode of Screaming in the Cloud. You can also find more Corey at screaminginthecloud.com, or wherever fine snark is sold.This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

The presenter is James Thurston, G3ict, who is joined by Chris Misra, University of Massachusetts, Amherts.  SPEAKER: Please welcome James Thurston and Chris Misra.  James is the Vice President for G3ict, where he leads the design and implementation of new worldwide advocacy strategies and programs to scale up G3ict's global impact. G3ict is the global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies promoting the rights of Persons with Disabilities in the Digital Age.   Chris is the Vice Chancellor and CIO at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst.  At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, information technology plays a crucial role in many key areas, including but not limited to student success and engagement, research competitiveness, and multi-modal education.   Today they will be looking at how leveraging accessibility and inclusion can provide an adaptive and accessible multi-modal IT ecosystem to support campuses. Chris will review findings, digital inclusion gaps, next steps for improvements at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst and more!   JAMES: Our goal with this session is to share with all of you some detail about how the U Mass approach to being more accessible, more inclusive through technology. Through its technology assets and deployments and Chris and I over the next hour want to surface and share with you, I think, what are some valuable and actionable experiences from U-mass, that will hopefully apply to your own accessibility journey in your higher education institution. This particular session is the third in the IAAP higher ed series. It's also the first of the next three sessions, which relate to, and are sort of sourced from, G3ict's work with universities and higher education institutions, using our smart university digital inclusion maturity model tool. And I'm just going to briefly give you a little bit of information on that, just so it will make a little bit more sense as Chris and I start to have a conversation about our work with Chris and what Chris has been leading and driving there at the University of Massachusetts model. The smart university digital inclusion maturity model tool, it's an assessment tool and a benchmarking tool. And it's really to help universities better understand how their digital transformation, how they're using technology, how their use of data is either supporting accessibility inclusion of people with disabilities or potentially presenting barriers to the inclusion of people with disabilities, including faculty, staff and students. And even, really, the broader community where the university might sit. So, the tool itself, the assessment tool, it's made up of 28 variables, we call them enablers, and they define what it really means to be an inclusive smart university. They enable accessibility and enable inclusion. These variables, or enablers, contribute to the university's building up the capabilities that we know support greater inclusion in accessibility at a university. And these capabilities, and with the tool we're able to look at the role of things like leadership, the existence of a digital inclusion strategy or not, we look at the accessibility of the university's engagement channels, how it's pushing information out, getting information back, are those accessible, we look at things like the culture of diversity, is the university employing people with disabilities, is it training on disability and accessibility. We look at things like procurement, what systems does the university have in place to make sure that its investments in technology and its deployments of technology are accessible. So, a whole range of issues that we know are pretty critical to a university becoming increasingly accessible, increasingly inclusive. And, of course, we do dig into technology and data, which are the backbone and the life blood of a smart university. And the way that we use these variables, these 28 enablers, these 18 capabilities, is in a three-step process. That is pretty straightforward. We do some analysis of documents, I.T. strategies, digital inclusion strategies, budgets, accessibility statements. We do some analysis of those. We make available to the university an online self-assessment where they sort of write themselves across these variables. And then we actually do an expert site visit where we curate a team of global experts on inclusion and accessibility and bring them in to engage with the university, dig into some of these variables, and hopefully, at the same time, provide some help and assistance on pain points, issues that the university might be experiencing. And then the final step is we deliver a road map, which includes a set of scores for each of these variables and a set of priorities and recommendations for moving forward. So, if you're at a level 2 on a scale of 1 to 5 for procurement, these are the kinds of things you might think about doing to get to levels 3, 4 and 5. So pretty straightforward. The process with U Mass, we'll be talking -- jumping in with Chris in just a minute. We, I think, started that process last spring and sort of did the site visit, I think, in early summer this past year. And in that process, we reviewed probably more than 20 documents, these budgets, these strategies, these org charts, policy statements. We talked with more than 40 U Mass faculty and staff over ten different listening sessions. And then we delivered the road map. And in the road map, U Mass, I think, had real relative strengths in the area of leadership and other areas identified where there's an opportunity to really make some steps to have some improvements in the capabilities and ultimately in the accessibility and inclusion there. So that's a little bit of a background on how G3ict came to be working with U Mass. I thought it might be useful to sort of frame our conversation. And with that, I'm really excited now, and I've been I've been looking forward to this discussion, Chris, for quiet a while, of jumping in with you and hearing a little bit about the U Mass Amherst journey, where you are, where you're headed but maybe we can start, if you can tell us a little bit about the University of Massachusetts Amherst, give us a general sense of the university and how you're deploying technology there. CHRIS: Sure, thanks, James. So, U-Mass Amherst, for those of you who aren't familiar with Massachusetts geography, I grew up in Massachusetts, so I know, we're about 90 minutes west of Boston, 175 miles north northeast of New York City. It's a relatively rural area, but it's a significant institution. We have about 24,000 undergraduate students, about 7,500 graduate students. About 1,500, instructional faculty. Largest state institution in New England, research one, $233 million, $1.3 billion budget, big. 1500-acre campus, which is the biggest thing is trying to find your way around the campus. Our journey of accessibility came about really through just conversations and advocacy within the campus in terms of this has to be a key responsibility for us. Our technology platform is really very traditional, higher education. We migrated many of our services to the Cloud, excessive use of Zoom recently, Google, exchanging out platforms, and the challenge with the campus of this size is really just managing the breadth and depth of both a campus and a highly decentralized institution. JAMES: Great, thanks, Chris. We probably started having conversations about a year ago, actually, just as we were coming into the pandemic and universities, in particular, I think, we're scrambling to try to figure out, okay, how do we fulfill our mission in this environment. Can you talk a little bit about sort of what that looked like as we were coming into the pandemic from a CIO perspective, the kinds of things that you were thinking about and needing to take steps on? CHRIS: Sure. There were sort of two interesting aspects. I mean, aside from it's amongst the longest days of my career in the past and probably ever going forward just in terms of how do you migrate an institution that size to an online education. We made a very early determines, we were one of the early schools who decided to go remote, we thought it would be two weeks, we took a double spring break. We quickly ramped up the technology portfolio. We were fortunate that we already had tools like Zoom, we had pretty good practice of online education, fairly robust online education school, but not a lot of digitally native capacity to teach instructionally remote. So, there's really two principal areas of impact. There's a principal area of impact in academics, and the impact in administration. Since we extended out the spring break for an extra week, we actually had two weeks to figure out how we were going to do these academics. But that meant we had to move the administration into an online world in a very short order of time. From the basic things, how are we going to pick up the mail to how are we going to communicate, how do staff meetings work, and recognizing that institutionally we were a face-to-face campus, our staff meetings were face to face, our one-on-one meetings were face to face and we had to comport all of that. So, the social change was actually significant, and that led quickly to substantial change in the academic side as well. We saw increases of -- astounding increases in Zoom utilization. One of my favorite statistics on Zoom utilization is in the first week of -- I'm sorry -- in the first day of the first week when we brought our academics online, we used more Zoom time the entire month previously. So, each day in April, we used the same number of Zoom hours in the entire month of February. And that pace continued through the balance of the spring semester. JAMES: Chris, I remember that data point as well. And I often use it myself because I think it is a really easy, compelling example of this accelerated digital transformation. Can you talk a little bit about where -- how accessibility fits into I.T. and into the university in general? I know, you've got a really great I.T. strategy, accessibility is embedded in there. I don't think that there's a specific digital inclusion or necessarily accessibility strategy, but maybe a little bit about strategy and organizational structure, just so we understand how accessibility fits in. CHRIS: Absolutely. So, we've actually been fortunate from an I.T. perspective, we've had staff supporting accessibility but a very modest staff. I think when James did the assessment, we had a single staff member, at a high point we had two staff, and we're in the process of transitioning that as well. So, our overall accessibility strategy comes multi fold. My team is responsible for the information technology, and that's across the board. That means we support students' technology use in the classroom, we support faculty's technology use, we provide general technology use for administration. We do not have responsibility for accessibility accommodations per se, we have a disability services team on campus, it's organized in our student affairs area. So, really, it's a key partnership working between student affairs, working with my central I.T. organization. I will say from a maturity perspective, though, we had staff, it was very much more about boutique service, solving discrete individual accommodations, and it hadn't crossed the line of being generalizable to most of our day-to-day normal use of population technology. It was very much targeted at a subset population that had self-disclosed a need for an accommodation. JAMES: And I know as part of this conversation, we'll get into a bit later, a discussion of these issues of silos and coordination and collaboration, which we had a lot of conversation about when we were working with you. So, maybe we can jump in now a little bit into this sort of notion of accelerated accessibility that happened for U Mass for sure but probably for most universities around the world because of the pandemic and what that looks like. And how -- maybe start with a little bit about how does the university deploy technology assets that are accessible and really are working for everyone, and what did it look like to have this sort of intensified effort to include a focus on accessibility as you were becoming more and more -- using technology more and more to do all of your services, both administrative and academic and teaching? CHRIS: Sure. So I'll say the structural change that really occurred was, I think, originally we treated accessibility as meeting the needs of identified individuals who had to have accommodations and making sure our web content was accessible, doing basic accessibility reviews, it was basic, W3CG, not a lot of detailed work and it was not invested across the board in terms of we had a lot of natively accessible tool set but it was really natively delivered accessible tool set, there wasn't a lot of work and push for us to drive an institutional priority around making sure our content was natively accessible, except where there was either liability or like I say, a dedicated accommodation. As we went into the pandemic, that really had to pivot because we realized, we no longer had the mechanism, we couldn't deploy a notetaker for a student in a classroom because there wasn't a classroom. We couldn't make point by point accommodations on either technology or use case basis. So, we had to start generalizing. We were fortunate that we were in the midst of a transition of our strategic plan, so we were actually at a point of making that type of pivoting. Of identify digital inclusion as a core property going forward. And, so, we had a lot of the substrate work, but I'd say the pandemic really drove us to recognize it wasn't solely about a compliance obligation but much more about reaching our community where they're at. JAMES And as you were making that shift, were you -- some of what we had talked about in the past, when you were in the middle of all this, is there some -- much like what you would probably do on the security side of your work, any sort of risk rating system, and trying to make these decisions about where are we going to prioritize and focus first and those types of decisions when it comes to accessibility? CHRIS: Absolutely, yeah. So, one of the things, for me, I consider fortunate is prior to my role as a CIO I've been in a number of roles at U Mass. I came from a very technical background. But I spent many years in a security role. So, I was responsible for information security at the organization. Within the information security field, it's very much a derivative of risk management field that works very heavily on risk and concepts like maturity models play very heavily there. So, when you're assessing implementation of controls to mediate security risk, you have to assess what is the cost of control, what is the value, what is the return. The easiest way to assess that is against a maturity model so I had a lot of familiarity with the concept of maturity models. One of the things that made me very excited about the engagement of G3ict was the application of this discipline-type technology of applying a maturity model to a domain like accessibility because I had not seen that done before, but I had a lot of experience.   What's nice about that, it gives you an abstract way of measuring your progress, although there can be a metric and a rating, it also talks about where you are legitimately relative to your peers but what steps you can take, and gives you a better mechanism to start prioritizing resource allocations. So, as I moved out of information security, into a CIO role, I changed from being responsible for compliance to be responsible for budget, priority and allocation. So being able to have a document like a maturity model that can help guide investment and show return relative to cost was a better framework for us to make ongoing decision making and I felt more at home in that security field, like oh, we know this is a high risk, let's apply a resource here, even if the resource is fairly modest, it's going to get us significant return against that issue. JAMES: Can you -- if you're able, can you talk a little bit about some of those areas where you were making decisions at the time in this accelerated period of focus on accessibility in addition to a lot of other things? Where you are identifying risk and taking some steps specifically around improving the accessibility of your technology assets? CHRIS: Sure. And in some cases, what's interesting with the technology assets is our first task, because we are technologists, is let's just fix the technology.  What it really came down to in many cases it's about the business process as well. So, when we started going through the assessment process, we realized the first and foremost, we have a 24,000 student population moving remote. We had to get in front of the faculty and instructors to explain why this was relevant. So, it wasn't so much about, hey, don't put a poorly scanned PDF up on your website, we'd already been providing those types of instructions, but it really had to pivot to, is your course content accessible natively. And in that case, it is still digital accessibility, but it may be, have you applied alt tags to your PowerPoints, have you made sure you're not doing poorly rendered PDFs, is your content screen reader able. It was these sorts of things that are actually technology related but it was about the business process behind it. What we did, we formed a working group between my team, our university library, our center for teaching and learning, and our instructional designers, we call our ideas group, it's a big long acronym I can never remember, but we put those together as ideas is the support resource, faculty primary interact with. Library is a resource that provides a lot of the supplementary external materials, I.T. is a lot of times the bridging infrastructure. So, it was really about forming a coalition within campus, identifying priorities, it was helped inform by the maturity model where those risk areas are, and providing guidance, which wasn't just apply technology, but help individuals creating content to make the content accessible natively, because the incremental cost to them was much smaller than us throwing lots of money at making the technology do it for them. JAMES: You touched on a really important point that I think would resonate with any university around the world, which is the sort of decentralized structure of universities, we'll dig into that more deeply in a minute. But I'm just wondering, as you were partnering, and leading this accelerated digital transformation during the pandemic and focus on accessibility as part of that, how was that received? I recall in part of our conversations, for example, there was, with the faculty, there may have been some incentives around going digital, maybe even going digital and accessible at the same time. But, in general, how would you say this accelerated accessibility was received? CHRIS: So I would say it was received well. I was actually somewhat surprised at how well it was received. Those of you who have been at universities, especially in large universities, they're very decentralized power structures, recognize that change comes slowly. The ship turns slowly, as we like to say, right? It will get there eventually but it turns slowly. I was tremendously impressed with the empathy and the caring shown by the faculty and the instructors involved in supporting students at a distance, but they recognized an individual obligation. And, really, our role as technologists was to reduce that barrier to them to make their content accessible. So, there was some financial structure incentives, as we went into our subsequent semester that helped faculty teaching online to build hybrid instruction. What we did, we developed a series of standards to make sure as our content went out, it met these standards, that was sort of the condition of the incentivising. So rather than make it a big deal, like hey, you all have to do accessibly, it was really embedded into an existing incentivization structure, but we added the accessibility obligations as additional compliance checks to go to an accessible by default role. I was concerned about the uptake we'd see from faculty, you but I was very surprised. The other thing with decentralized higher education, as much as the ship turns slowly, once everybody gets where you're going, they generally get on board. So, we took this more adapt to the culture of the campus, adapt to the change culture of the campus, and tie into those change mechanisms that are effective, that's what really helped us be more successful, I believe, that and the empathy of the faculty and the instructors. SPEAKER: The International Association of Accessibility Professionals membership consists of individuals and organizations representing various industries including the private sector, government, non-profits, and educational institutions. Membership benefits include products and services that support global systemic change around digital and the built environment. United in Accessibility, join I.A.A.P. and become a part of the global accessibility movement. JAMES: So, maybe take a little bit of a step back, but still thinking about the deployment of accessible, inclusive technology assets. Can you talk a little bit about your thinking, U-Mass' thinking and approach to incident management? How do you remediate issues, how does that happen? And then the other piece that I'd love to hear a little bit more is about testing, when it comes to accessibility, automated user testing? CHRIS: Sure.  So, two-fold. On the testing piece, we've employed students both in our help desk and our accessibility office to do some of the testing. We actually are just launching another program to do more broad usability testing, which includes accessibility testing, working in concert with some faculty in our writing program. They tend to have a good degree of expertise in there. So, the other advantage of a higher education institution is students are fresh, motivated, focused and quite inexpensive labor and they like the work. It's great experience, it's great value to them, it's great value to us institutionally. So, we've really tied into that, this is something we've done for many, many years, tie into a workforce that's motivated, it's interesting. We've definitely seen the awareness of our student body around accessibility issues is much greater in the last five and ten years than it has been previously. I've been asked about making sure content is accessible from a course perspective, I've been -- there's been a shift and the challenge is, that shift isn't necessarily as strongly perceived at the faculty that are instructing them because they tend to be a little bit older. So, using the students to help motivate that work has really helped improve the accessibility piece of it because we've embedded the testing more into the core processes when we role out new applications, whether it's a PeopleSoft application or a new web application, we're commissioning that testing as part of launches of applications, as well as new web properties. JAMES: Chris, Mark Nichols is asking a question. If the standards that you're talking about, before content goes out, or even other standards that you're looking at and testing on really to -- related to accessibility, are they in-house standards or are you using global standards like WCAG? CHRIS: They are in-house standards developed off WCAG. But I will get James and Yulia a link afterwards. We posted up our academic standards and it referred to those suggestions, it was built off of WCAG. One thing, just amongst everybody here, accessibility is not my first language. I'm an info set guy, I was a technologist, I was a Linux assist Admin. I know the acronyms, I know the space, but it's not quite my domain of expertise, I'm fortunate to have well-trained staff who understand this both on my team and the disability services team so we can absolutely share those standards. They're academic standards we posted for the fall semester for 2020. JAMES: So, Chris, I know, as I recall from our previous conversations and work, there were sort of nine legacy platforms that you guys had deployed. And I'm wondering if over the course of the many months since we've worked together, how you're thinking about incident management has changed or evolved or how you're approaching that and dealing with that, how much of an issue -- accessibility issues have become in this accelerated period? CHRIS: I mean, the challenge has been, before -- I believe we started talking about the accessibility review before the pandemic. I had high hopes that we would be able to make significant progress in some of our core administrative systems in the shorter term. And then the pandemic hit and next thing I knew, we were running COVID testing sites for the western part of the state. We were running vaccination programs. We were one of the earliest vaccination programs for first responders. So, unfortunately, a lot of the resources I'd have to help make accessibility improvements to our core applications really got put aside for new application deployment. What I will say, we've been strong about implementing accessibility standards for the new applications as we roll them out. So, at this point my hope is to get us back, likely as we refactor some of our applications to do a more detailed review. It's definitely a goal, it's an asserted goal, it's part of the road map and strategy going forward. It's just with the pandemic, the resource allocation tipped everything so sideways. I'm a little further behind than I hoped to be there. Legacy platforms, we haven't made as much progress as I was hoping to. We've certainly made progress. What we've made significant progress in is in the awareness and the accountability that accessibility is an issue that has to be accommodated at deployment or at refresh for an application. That was a huge improvement that we hadn't been able to make as successfully in the past. JAMES: You've shared, at least with me, what I think are some really interesting facts about how you as a CIO had to evolve into using technology to support a dramatically increased public health role of the university for the state during the pandemic, which is pretty amazing. There's another question from Peter, who decides the threshold for compliance? It's never 100%. CHRIS: And, so, again, this is where I'm going to go a little bit on my information security soap box, right? The definition of compliance is just bending the wheel to another. So, yeah, it's never 100%. It's not going to be 100%. Really what we do is use a risk-based model, understanding where the risk is. Usually that started historically, with either liability of the institution or legal accommodation requirements. That's a barrier to cross, that's a legal obligation to cross, but it's really not meeting this notion of digital inclusion as a core value of the campus. So, the threshold is really handled generally on a case-by-case basis. There isn't an arbitrary threshold. What we focus on, these are the recommendations to make your course content accessible, to make your web property accessible. These are the standards. From a web property perspective, we do actually have a compliance check less, we actually have a team inside our university relations group that will run through both automated testing and some hand-based testing to look at, does the content render in a screen reader, does it provide appropriate alt image tags and things like that. My goal with compliance is always making sure that we're investing the right amount of resource to ensure that we meet the largest degree of population as effectively as we can. Information security is a risk management game. Accessibility and compliance become a risk management game. And it's hard sometimes to think of it in those terms, but one of the challenges, I think, that I've seen working with some of my staff is, staff come with a tremendous degree of accessibility concern are passionate, profound and focused. The challenge is also balancing those resources against the other resource needs of campus, right? How much time can I spend on ensuring my web properties are accessible if, at the same time, I have to take those same resources to allocate them to make sure we're setting up a COVID vaccination clinic. It's really a continuum of resource allocations. For me, thinking about how can I make sure there's always a guarantee of resource allocation towards accessibility, recognizing that that might not be core to our mission. What can be core to our mission is deploying accessible applications on an going forward basis. But our core mission is instructing students, performing research, being a land grant institution. We always have to balance that resource allocation to make sure we're moving the ball forward in these different fronts, but serving, first and foremost, what is it we're core here to do, instruct students. Accessibility is a component of that, but it can't be the dominating component. It has to be an absolutely key component, but the dominating is us delivering students with a path to their future. JAMES: Thanks, Chris. Before we go on to the next topic, briefly, if you can talk about thinking about your staff, the technology staff at the university even more broadly, perhaps, the skill and training on accessibility and how you think about that and approach that. CHRIS: Yeah, I think there's three aspects of that. So, the first aspect was, we've had some staff transition, in our accessibility staff. Making sure we have the appropriate professional training for folks who are doing the accommodation work or engagement and consultation work. That's always been a fairly straightforward, that's an institutional investment. That makes good sense. Where the real value we've seen, both from a leadership perspective, raising accessibility as a topic of concern at senior levels at the institution. So, raising this concept, our provost is fluid with the concept of accessibility, right? He's not going to go out and do a WCAG review, but he gets the concept that he can instruct his Deans that this is going to have to be a key component of the content their faculty deliver on a go forward basis. From a training perspective, there's a lot of low-cost effort that we can put in place to raise accessibility on the radar from a leadership perspective, discuss it with a broad team of not just executive but operational, manager and cross-functional teams, we've also been very successful in engaging our students about accessibility conversations, what does that mean to you. Because my concept of accessibility is how big is the font is, a student's concept of accessibility may be how does it render on a cell phone. That's a very different problem set, depending on what technology you apply to that. It doesn't have to be, but we need to collect those voices in terms of understanding what that means and a lot of that does not involve a lot of out-of-pocket cost. JAMES: And just one more question, then we'll move on to one of my favorite topics, which is sort of collaboration across departments. From Kathy, how do you decide what to test? Do you do spot checks of certain course websites and more checking of applications used by larger populations? CHRIS: Sure. So let me break up the administrative from the academic side of things. So, from the administrative side of things, we actually have a review process for our web properties in conjunction between our I.T. team and our university relations team that's responsible for our web properties. So, there's actually a checkoff evaluative process for our core web properties. I'm fully confident there's probably some research lab websites or some individual P.I. websites that were created by word press that probably don't meet the testing. We focus on the high-visibility targets to make sure the information that's most relevant to a large population gets out there. From a course perspective, we do have a couple of very large enrollment courses. We tend to focus most of our resources on ensuring the platform is accessible natively. There is always compliance issues, right? There's always some faculty member that wants to take their PDF from 1982, turned it 10 degrees and scan it and hope it will work. We do spot checks, especially on the large enrollment course, but generally we focus on ensuring the platforms are natively compliant, and then providing strong guidance to the faculty to ensure they have the guidance and parameters of what are those steps that they can take that's relatively die minimums, relatively incremental burden for them but provides a more inclusive experience natively. JAMES: Thanks so much. Now let's shift gears a little bit, Chris, and get into the issues of collaboration, coordination, working across departments at a big university on a big campus. One of the things -- one of the other things that stuck in my mind that you said early on when we started working together was how at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, there are some really amazing, I give you full credit for this term, these pockets of heroic effort. Which I think will resonate with anyone who's doing work in the accessibility field, any kind of organization, that there are really good practices happening in parts of the university. And I think some of the ones that had come up, U Mass were around UDL, instructional design, and some other areas that the Assistive Technology Center, some really good resources and practices. But siloed and not scaled because they are siloed in departments. And even some departments, I think, that may have been a little ahead of others in terms of academic departments in terms of their approach to inclusion and accessibility. I know that since we last worked together, and during this -- these last several months, the accelerated accessibility period, that you've done some work on greater collaboration and coordination. Can you talk a little bit about that, including maybe some description of what it felt like before taking some improving steps? CHRIS: Sure. I mean, for those of you who have spent time, and this is true of both large and small higher education, but higher education tends to be a very siloing structure, at least in my experience. There's a couple of exceptions but there tends to be a lot of belief that faculty are experts in their domain, by virtue of experts in their domain, that there's a lot of notions of self-rule, self governance and that sometimes extends out to administration. I will avoid pining too deeply on that. But there are some challenges that come from that. There's communication, there's logistical challenges. What you end up seeing is subcultural development about, this is important. And what I've observed, and I've seen this both in technology fields as well as accessibility is and let me take it out of the accessibility domain, my email team for many years thought they delivered the best email application out there. They understood how it worked, nobody else understood how it worked but it made a lot of sense to them, and they thought they were doing great. And, so, within their minds, they were providing heroic effort but the impact from a user perspective was not the heroic effort they thought it was going to be. I've observed similar challenges within accessibility at the campus as well. There are these pockets of brilliance, pockets of heroes that are out there working with good empathy this. The challenge is, they don't always have, or they have not been provided the degree of leadership to have these conversations more broadly. So, why is it that one of the very small questions that came up had to do with a resource allocation around providing captioning for course materials for students that had defined accessibilities -- defined accommodations and it became this substantial issue that the costs were decentralized out to each of the departments? And many of our departments, by virtue of being academic, tend to run on very thin budgets. So, when we stopped this conversation, we went into the pandemic, said, what is the net budget impact can here? I can't remember what the number was. Let's say it was $40,000 across the campus. You know, when I brought it up to the right degrees of leadership, they're, like, we're arguing over this? $1.3 billion budget. Don't get me wrong, $40,000 is real money but that's not the thing we should be arguing. By virtue of us decentralizing decision making to that being 40 decisions of $1,000 each, it became much more difficult to get the resource allocation. So the key observation I'd say is, clearly articulating why this is important, clearly articulating that when we marshal our resources collectively, we can make changes that don't seem so big when you're working in a larger context and it really involves that collaboration between and amongst groups and I've actually been very pleased, I think, going through the review with G3ict, certainly delivered us a road map, it certainly delivered us a maturity model, it gave us a sense of where we sat, but it actually opened up conversations amongst teams that have worked and sat together for many, many years but those conversations weren't as effective. You know, we always joke, my background, like I said, is information security with auditors. If the audit doesn't tell you what you want to know, you did something wrong, right? I will say, I have been very pleased with James, had a very objective, and the team he brought in was excellent, but it told us what we wanted to hear, you've got some pockets of brilliance but there's some coordination, there's some logistics, alignment you need to do. Having a third party assert that brought more credibility to this notion of accessibility than any empathetic call from staff on campus could have. JAMES: Thank you for that, Chris. And I think to your credits, and we've done a good number of these reviews of universities and of smart cities as well, I think one of the things that you did was pretty courageous, I think, you involved an enormous number of people from both the academic side of the university and the administrative side in a large number of conversations. I think over these ten conversations that our expert team had with your university community, there were 200 participants, 40 unique individuals, I think, but they were heavily attended, some of the discussions were quite passionate, I will say, because the passion was there. Can you talk a little bit about where -- recognizing and wanting to make even more progress on collaboration and breaking down some of these silos and amplifying some of these heroic efforts. Either where some of these -- what are some of these pockets that you would love to see replicated and I'd also be curious to hear a little bit about what are some of the groups that can help promote this kind of collaboration? We had talked, in particular, in our conversations with U Mass, the faculty Senate actually had been pretty engaged on these issues of accessibility. There is an academic advisory committee, I think, on accessibility. Are there any sort of areas that or groups that can help you as the CIO promote this collaboration? CHRIS: Yeah, you know, that's a great question, James. One of the key things, and one of the things that I found sort of helpful to me in my career, both in the CIO role I'm in, and previously in the information security role, is identifying those governance structures and where they have efficacy. That's one of the things that I've observed at least in some of the accessibility staff I've worked with. They have passion, they have technical focus, they have deep empathy and deep caring, but they don't have the experience with how universities govern themselves or what the governance structures are, where decision authority really rests. It's great to think, you know, I've had staff that think I have all sorts of decision authority, I have responsibility for my $30 odd million of budget, but sort of the extent of the responsibility I have, I have responsibility for standards, as we get into decision making, I have to tie into bodies like our faculty Senate, I have the information technology advisory council, some of these academic advisory councils. We have other both faculty and administration, leadership groups, task forces that are focused on the shared governance structure of universities, we have administrative focus units. So working with accessibility teams to identify where those power structures exist, how change occurs in an institution, and how you can be effective at making this case amongst all the other many cases, that was one of the key things, which again, I was fortunate to have a lot of this experience in information security, I observed many of my peers in information security, other institutions, come in and try to win the day of information security solely on technical merit. Like, well, we're going to go to this, we're going to spend another $100,000 on this new antivirus thing, because it's incrementally better than this other thing. And quite honestly, when you're making that case to a CFO or to a Chancellor or Provost, that's $100,000 for a technical thing I don't understand. Whereas, if you can turn it into a conversation about, either mediating institutional risk, delivering institutional benefit, understanding how change actually occurs on a campus, when you make that case in business terms, it becomes more rational and plausible amongst the thousand other things the Provost or the Chancellor or the CFO has been asked in the last day. So that's the key transition for me, how do you find those power structures, how do you identify those governance structures, how do you make it a business value proposition, not solely a technical or empathetic proposition. JAMES: That's actually a perfect segue, Chris, into a topic that I know you feel passionately about and that we recognize as well in our assessment tool, the maturity model is really pretty critical to an increasing commitment and capability on accessibility, inclusion. And that is what we call, you know, the business case for accessibility. Moving beyond, particularly here in the United States, every university has a legal requirement to be accessible and inclusive, in other countries as well, but you and I are sitting or standing here in the U.S. today. But we'd like to sort of move the conversation beyond risk avoidance and legal compliance to what is the business case? As you say, the why or the value proposition, of accessibility. Based on your experience, either over the past year as a result of or as part of this assessment, or just in general, can you talk a little bit more about that, that key issue of how you are trying to tap into the why and the value proposition at U Mass? CHRIS: Absolutely. So, one of the key value conversations we have on a regular basis, and this is not a conversation unique to U Mass, it's not a conversation even unique to the northeastern United States, but within the United States, there is a significant decline coming in college-age students in the coming years based off of just changes in birth rates, patterns like that. What you're seeing is increasing competition within the field for high-qualified students, you've seen this manifest through, U Mass was deeply involved in the closure of mount IDO, we actually took over parts of the campus, we inherited some of the students from there, you know, recently, I know Becker college in Worcester announced that it is intending to close as well. One of the key things that drives university budgets is attracting, retaining strong students to maintain competitiveness. And if the population is shrinking, one way from a business value perspective is to make sure that you're delivering a natively accessible education to appeal to as broad a population of students as possible. If we are, by virtue of not providing accessible content, unintentionally excluding some arbitrary percentage, say, even 5% or 10% of our students. That's 10% of a student population that will not become paying students, high-quality students. We're excluding a portion of our population that could engage. And that's based on a conjecture of 10%. If the conjecture is much higher, we could be unintentionally avoiding potential population when we know there's going to be restrictions in that. So from a very raw perspective, if budgets are driven at institutions through a combination of both undergraduate, graduate tuition, and research education, if we're not strongly positioned, meeting the market demand, and that can either be meeting market demand because there's a growth or being more competitive and approachable to a larger population, if there's a reduction in that student -- potential student population. We are not tied into the strategic mission of the institution to provide our role as a land grant, to provide instruction to residents of the commonwealth and to create a workforce for the commonwealth. We have over 250,000 living alumni from U Mass, vast majority of them stay in Massachusetts. At U Mass, we graduate more students than the top eight private institutions from the state of Massachusetts combined. That means we're tied deeply to the workforce. So, if we cannot find a way to make our content accessible and approach that, we're not only risking our own potential economic future, but we're actually risking issues of workforce development and long-term competitiveness of the state potentially. JAMES: Yeah. A couple thing in there that I would love to follow up on. One is, you've talked about the role of students, the diversity of students as a driver for the competitiveness of U Mass in fulfilling your many roles as a land grant state university. As you're thinking about the why and the value proposition, are you having discussions or thinking about, we certainly discussed this as part of our engagement, the technology assets you're deploying, the accessibility of them, it also impacts faculty and staff, is that part of the calculus as well? CHRIS: It absolutely is. Because, again, that same, you know, rubric holds, as we remain a competitive institution, we have to be competitive in our hiring practices. And that means approaching as broad a population of the available talent pool out there. If we are not delivering natively accessible experiences, whether that is directly instructional or it's, you know, pedantic as H.R. forms, right, everybody's got to do an H.R. form somewhere, but if we're delivering, and we've had our challenges in the institution of three copy, carbon forms that, you know, our vice Chancellor of human resources loves to say, he shut off the last -- he got rid of the last typewriter not that many years ago, right? There's clearly some substantial issues that we've had. If we're not competitive with the potential workforce, both at the highly skilled faculty level, at the highly skilled technical level, but at all levels of the organization, we're going to potentially compromise the available resource pool as well. So, again, if it comes back to business case, I see a compelling business case to make sure accessibility is core to our digital transformation because it allows our long-term access to a larger candidate pool. With the move to remote work, we're having very serious conversations, what does that mean, long term, right? We've had staff working remotely, we're going to struggle, like every other public and private institution is now, what does it mean for workforces returning, if the pandemic slows as we're hoping? Would we accept this notion of more broad remote work? Does that increase our potential labor pool? Those are all interesting questions that are going to have to be worked out. But if we cannot position our institution to be natively digitally inclusive, we're excluding a portion of our population that may have accessibility accommodations that we're just turning our back to from the get-go. And that's a challenge. That's a loss both to us and it's a loss of potentially high talented, high-skill individuals that could make this university stronger. JAMES: So, Chris, I would imagine that with your expertise and experience in the information security space, you've sort of tackled this issue of the value proposition, the why of security. How is the starting conversations, advancing conversations about the business case, the why and the value proposition, of accessibility, how is that being received? Where is it being received well, where is it a bit more of a struggle? CHRIS: I'd say it's being received well at the high level when I talk about this notion of making sure we're finding the most accessible pool, we're making -- ensuring we're going to remain competitive, tying to workforce. I think the value proposition, executive level, is very strong there. We've always been very successful at the value proposition at a very operational level, for our students and our staff that are providing accessibility accommodations, who are working with students on a one-to-one basis, for our help desk who are taking calls. Where the challenge is, and I think we've had a path to move forward, is for people who do not have either the high-level strategy, do not have the day-to-day blocking and tackling is trying to make the value proposition of why is this one more thing they should do, why should you take ten more minutes to ensure accessibility, alt image tags, why should you take two more minutes to turn on the captioning features in Zoom or PowerPoint? So, I ended up teaching again this fall, I taught for many years at U Mass, I took a number of years off. When I taught this fall, I taught entirely remotely, I taught entirely by Zoom. Zoom's native captioning feature wasn't there. So, I elected to use PowerPoint, use Office 365, turn on the captioning when I lectured. I use Zoom to record the lecture. And it put the captions into it. It's not perfect. It wasn't great.  But the cost to me was thinking to do it, clicking a check box on Office 365 on PowerPoint and making sure I hit play and record. So, the incremental burden to me of applying captioning to course content, and I've taught this course material for 20 years, this is the first year I did that. So, there is two minutes of clicking, it took me about ten minutes going through each of my slide decks to apply alt image tags. That investment of my time as an instructor is absolutely worth it to make sure that content is more accessible. And that's the value proposition I think we have to hit that middle portion of the population, if we can move that population, the impact is going to be tremendous. SPEAKER: With the adoption of WCAG 2.1 in many countries, there is an increased demand for web developers, designers and other professionals with knowledge of web accessibility standards and guidelines. With this growth comes the need for an objectively verified level of expertise. The Web Accessibility Specialist exam will provide individuals and employers with the ability to assess web accessibility competence. Complete the WAS and CPACC exam to earn the special designation of Certified Professional in Web Accessibility! 

James: Hi, audience. This is James Kandasamy. You're listening to Achieve Wealth Podcast through Value at Real Estate Investing. Today, we have an awesome guest. His name is Nikolaï Ray. He's who's the founder and CEO of MREX, which is an acronym for Multifamily Real Estate Exchange; is considered by many of his peers in North America as the leading expert in apartment investing with over $1 billion analysis, underwriting and transactions. He's also a pioneer in mid-cap, multifamily financial engineering, which is, you know, he's regarded as the teacher, advisor and also the keynote speaker. He's also a real estate tech innovator to his current work on the multifamily real estate big data, artificial intelligence and property tokenization using blockchain technology. Hey, Nikolaï, welcome to the show.   Nikolaï: Hi, James. Thanks for having me.   James: Okay, so do you want to mention anything that I missed out about your credibility?   Nikolaï: No, that sounded like a mouthful.   James: It's going to be ready technology-centric discussion today, right?   Nikolaï: Yeah, the full story is that it should probably a lot longer, but I mean, that could be for, that could be for a whole other episode of the origin story of how, how'd you get to, you know, how you get to where we get in life, and professionally and personally, but yeah, that's, that's the gist of it, you know, everything that's underwriting and, you know, acquisitions, dispositions, refinancing, obviously, portfolio management, whether it be the small market, small cap market, you know, between 500 units, all the way up to the mid-market, you know, market cycles, and obviously, have a very strong penchant for data and for technology.   So, so that's, that's pretty much what I've done over the last, I guess, over the last seven or eight years, is focused on, you know, for the most part, I focused mostly on acquisitions. So I was in charge of an investment banking firm, we worked, you know, on both sides of the transaction advisory side of things, for investors and we also work with a lot of ultra high net worth investors, that's kind of where I built my speciality. Eventually, ultra high net worth investors and private equity firms and family offices, you know, by doing all that I kept on, kept on getting annoyed with the fact that the multifamily market is so fragmented, and the data is so packed, I just kept on thinking to myself, you know, this, this market this, which is an important market, I mean, the apartment building investment market is a almost a $10 trillion market worldwide.   It's a, quite, house is a primary need of human beings, which is to have somewhere to live. And yet, you know, we're kind of in the dark ages as multifamily investors, because number one, we don't have access to any centralized marketplace. If you compare us to a stock investor who can go on the NASDAQ and trade every type of tech stock or stock market investing world, the New York Stock Exchange, and we don't have access to any data, the data is very raw, it's very, it's kind of, you know, what I call legacy data, as you look at like Costar and, and all these various data providers who provide this very raw and inert data, without any actual, you know, context around the data, and without any helps with regards to making decisions business intelligence wise, as a multifamily real estate investor. So that's kind of how that's how my career has gone so far. That's why I went from transactions and more towards data technologies because I felt like there was so much work to be done to help investors just you know, be better investors for once.   James: Okay, so let me understand MREX because I think it's important since you have a lot of passion we need right now. Right? So --   Nikolaï: Yeah.   James: Multifamily Real Estate Exchange, if I understand it correctly, so what you're saying is right now, the data is so fragmented, and a lot of times when, you know, people like me underwrite deals, we have to do so much work, I did too. I mean, I really learn to write [inaudible 04:05] for four hours because I did all the property management financial, that there are so much of mistakes in the property management financials, you have to do T-3, T-12, you had to do expense ratio, you have to do market comps, and all that. So what you're saying is, you are going to summarize all that, and make it so easy to look at so that it can be treated as a commodity, commodity, is that right?   Nikolaï: Not necessarily. So, so the idea is taking you as an example or any of your listeners, right now, who are multifamily real estate investors actually acquiring properties, let's say you have the capital ready, or your investors have the capital ready to allocate to an acquisition, you know, just actually finding that first property to buy or the next property to buy is a very time intensive and energy intensive job, right. You have to go on, you have to go on all the different MLS, you have to go on the loop that's of this world, the [inaudible 00:05:00] and the [inaudible :00:05:01] and, you know, just --   James: [inaudible00:05:02]   Nikolaï: Right, and then you have all the brokers, and then you have all the broker websites, then you have all the pocket listings and you have not even really touched the majority of the market, you're actually still missing probably, you know, anywhere between 25% and 50%, of actual transactional inventory, depending which metro area you're in. So it's a lot of work, even just looking at the stuff that's on websites. That's a lot of work because you have to go on between five and fifteen websites, each website has a different user interface, this different user experience, and actually shows different information. On one site, maybe on [inaudible 00:05:42] you might have a cap rate, maybe on the MLS, you won't have cap rate, you'll just have gross revenue.   So then you have to figure out your own cap rate off of that. It's a lot of work, you know, and for me, I just never thought it made sense, to not be able to say, hey, I want to buy a multifamily property, whether it be a five unit, whether it be a 50 unit or 500 units, I want to go on to one marketplace, we're all properties are centralized in a unified, and normalized manner. Because that's the second point of it, is you have to be able to normalize expenses, if you want to start comparing apples with apples, and oranges with oranges. So that's the second phase. So what we're doing with MREX is we're building a unified, standardized marketplace for multifamily investors, where they will be able to see every single property that exists, that is for sale, despite on the way it's being sold or listed or marketed. We're going to be working with brokers obviously, the goal is not to get rid of brokers or anything like that, that's not, that's not what our goal is. Our goal is to help brokers, help investors just make the whole transaction process much quicker and more time efficient. And that way, you know, we're making the market more, you know, just a more efficient market.   James: Okay, okay. Got it. Got it. So you are basically streaming lining the whole selling and buying process, I guess, just to make --?   Nikolaï: Absolutely. Absolutely.   James: Okay, got it.   Nikolaï: And the analysis process as you said too, right, because it's one, it's one thing finding the properties and having them all in one marketplace. Okay, let's say, let's say you have the NASDAQ, let's say I wanted Lesson TechStars rather than multifamily properties. I go the NASDAQ and I can see every single company, I could have access to inventory, now that's the first step. Now the second step is, once you have access to inventory, and the information provided on all that inventory is normalized and standardize, well, I still have to be able to start comparing and start, you know, building my own models to say, well, if I'm a cash flow investor, which stocks are generating the most cash flow relative to the other, to the rest of the inventory. So that's where you know, context and alternative data comes into play with our platform, is that we want to be able to, to offer data and tools to you as a multifamily investor, to help you streamline your underwriting of the inventory that you've seen. So that's really the two things we're focused on at the moment.   James: Okay, got it. Got it. So interesting. So that'll be, that'll make a lot of, I mean, for investors or for buyers, they would be able to see what kind of deals that they want to buy,--   Nikolaï: Right.   James: Not just what they want to get the yield out of --   Nikolaï: Exactly and instead of going on fifteen websites, well, they've only one website, instead of having to, you know, start normalizing expense ratios and sifting through, through T-12 and T-3, and doing all that, it already kind of be all chewed up and kind of built up already. So you can actually focus, focus on analyzing, focus on comparing and establish, okay, I want to buy this property using this strategy. And why would I do that versus the other property that I see over there? That's ultimately what's the most important thing.   James: Okay, okay. So could it then be a good idea to match this with a crowdfunding platform, because during the crowdfunding, they can choose what deal they want, right?   Nikolaï: Right. So crowdfunding is an interesting thing. The problem is crowdfunding, obviously, crowdfunding, crowdfunding has tried to kind of attack two things. Number one is liquidity, right? Because, as a multifamily investor, the more properties that you acquire, you increase your net value, right, you're a richer person. But the problem with that, is that you have to leave equity in every single deal, right. The banks won't finance you 100%. So you always have to leave equity. So as you get richer and richer, value wise, you are actually cash poor, because you're leaving so much equity in each property that you acquire. And there's always a part of the equity that has to stay in those properties. But the problem, the second problem is that as you get, as you become a bigger investor, and you acquire more properties, and you're more well known in the market, well, you get access to better deals, but now you have less access to more money, even though you're richer. That's kind of the liquidity conundrum of multifamily investors. So that's why crowdfunding is interesting, because it gives kind of, you know, after the JOBS Act, it helps multifamily investors, particularly syndicators, to go and raise capital from, you know, from investors either through the regulation CF, you know, and obviously, regulation D506C was quite an upgrade also to be able to start to, to market capital raises. But what we're doing is we're actually building a second platform that is shadowing the Emirates platform. And what that platform will be doing is, we're actually going to create a sort of stock market and take the crowdfunding thing a bit further, because crowdfunding, as I said, tries to attack the liquidity conundrum. But the problem is, is that when you invest in a crowdfunding deal, you as an LP, are stuck in that deal for the lifetime of the deal. So if it's a five, it's a three to five year exit, well, your money stuck in that, so you, you as a passive investor, or as an LP, do not have liquidity. That's, that's one problem. And obviously, crowdfunding also helps with accessibility, right. So obviously, regulation D506C is only for accredited investors, which doesn't really help accessibility that much. Regulation CF has helped that because now then, that kind of lowers the barrier to entry for everyday retail investors who don't have that much money, but it's still a fairly limited regulation. At the moment, I know, they're trying to pass a couple of bills to increase the opportunity for regulation CF investors. So what we're doing is we're building a second platform, that's going to be basically a stock market, in its own sense, where, you know, through a broker-dealer partner that we hope to get. And then also through eventually a, an ATS license with the SEC, we would like to be able to take it a step further, and allow a multifamily investor to pretty much offer his property through one the various regulations on that marketplace. That way people could invest as passive investors, as LPs, either through Reg D, Reg CF, or eventually maybe even Reg A plus, but then they would also be able to acquire or access a secondary trading market so that they're not stuck in an illiquid period of three to five years. They would actually eventually be able to re trade part of their shares or all of their shares, kind of like you would at the stock market.   James: Wow. So it looks like you are trying to really disrupt the industry.   Nikolaï: Yeah, definitely. [inaudible 00:12:36]. You know, multifamily real estate looks like the stock market before the arrival of NASDAQ. Right? It's like before the internet, even though we have internet and multifamily real estate, it's as if people are still trading kind of like stock market investors were trading on floors, you know, with papers and screaming and doing all that stuff. It, you know, it doesn't make sense.   James: Yeah, yeah. It's so private nowadays, right? I mean, everybody has priority, we do not know how, even multi families performing under a different private LLC.   Nikolaï: Exactly.   James: There's a lot of good news out there. But there's also bad news, but nobody talks about it. right. So I think,--   Nikolaï: Oh, right. And the data, the data out there, like look at any of the data from, you know, even from the really big organization like NCREIF so the National Council of Real Estate Investment Trusts, NCREIT sorry. Even their data, when they know these indexes based on multifamily markets is based on a very low volume of the actual number of transactions. So when say a, a company, various data company says, well, the cap rate right now of say Atlanta is 5%, for example, well, that's actually based on a very small portion of overall transactions. So it's hard for us as multifamily investors, to really be sure are about the numbers that we're inputting into our underwriting models, because we're basing it off so little data.   James: Got it. Got it. Yeah, it's, it is just so limited, right? Because everything is done on a private basis on syndication, which is not much of the data being published out there, right. So --   Nikolaï: It's like investing in the stock market, but not knowing how the stocks have performed historically.   James: Yeah. Correct. Correct. So but why do you think this would work? And because if you look at the demographics of the, I mean, because I'm looking at syndication, when we whenever we buy for multifamily.   Nikolaï: Right.   James: But for me, it's just a small part of the whole market.   Nikolaï: Right.   James: Even though we are I mean, maybe my group or my network thinks that that's the whole thing how people buy multifamily. I don't know, that's true, because I network with a lot of different type of people, right. So looking at the classes of investors who are buying multifamily, I think I know for me, my thing is maybe we are one of the, I am one the lowest level part of it, right, because we are buying Class B and C using high net worth individuals and all that, but there are a lot of higher network, higher calibre people who are playing at a different level, which we don't have, which I don't have visibility, maybe you have it right so. So are you trying to look at different classes of investors and cut through all of them? Are you looking at only some classes of people?   Nikolaï: So we're trying to help what we call the small cap to mid middle market investors.   James: Okay.   Nikolaï: So anyone who owns between five units and about, you know, I'd say around 2500 to 5000 units.   James: Okay.   Nikolaï: That's kind of where we stopped, you know, that's where we're focusing on because that, you know, the majority of transactions are actually done by, by small cap to mid-market investors.   James: Okay.   Nikolaï: You know, the multifamily market is historically a mom and pop market. Now, it's, you know, it has transition a bit, investors are getting bigger and bigger. But the reality is the majority of the market is not an institutional market, you know, at the root level, or the private equity firm level or family office level, depending obviously, which metro area you're in, right. New York City is obviously more of an institutional market. Canada, Toronto is a very institutional market, but the majority of cities and metro areas are still, you know, very small cap market. And the problem is that, you know, take you for an example as a syndicator, or even take someone who's not a syndicator, right, because a lot of investors, multifamily aren't syndicators, they just buy their own properties, you know, they end up with maybe, you know, anywhere between 50 and 500 units as time goes by. Now, the problem with with those types of investors and syndicators as yourself is that you do not have access to a team of underwriters, you don't have access to, you know, expensive data that say a real estate investment trust has more than a very big private equity firm has, you don't have access to all those analysts. So, you know, we want to try and make sure that the market stays very level and stays is a level playing field. Because, you know, ultimately, I think the multifamily real estate market is very important for a couple of reasons. Number one, you know, everyone talks about the disparity of wealth, right of the 1%, and how the disparity is getting bigger and bigger. And we could do a whole podcast on that and why it's happened and where it's kind of going. But ultimately, I think, you know, the multifamily market is probably, the market, it's probably the asset class that offers the best returns based on risk, with the best risk-adjusted returns. If you look at Sharpe ratios, and Sortino ratios and all these things. Now, it's also been proven, there's a lot of studies about this, a lot of university studies done on this, that, you know, social mobility comes from education, and access to property, right. The reason why people have been so poor for so long, and like the Brazilian favelas, or the Indian shanty towns, is because people don't have education, and they do not have access to property, they are not able to become landowners, or owners of their own homes, even less become investment property owners, right. So I think multifamily stays as a very important asset class, because, on top of filling a basic need of human beings, that means providing somewhere to live, it also is a very important mover, for the everyday investor, the mom and pop, just the normal person need you to be able to access a very good, very safe, wealth building asset class that does not have the same volatility, or the same pitfalls as say, the stock market and other types of asset classes. So I think it's very important that we provide, you know, tools and data and allow for the smaller investor, the investor that has less than 1000, or even less than 5000 units to be able to continue on performing, continue on from this, this asset class.   James: Got it. Got it. So let's go to a bit more details on some of the big data and artificial intelligence, right.   Nikolaï: Yeah.   James: So yeah, I studied artificial intelligence almost 24 years ago, every now it has become really popular, a lot of startups with artificial intelligence, right.   Nikolaï: Absolutely.   James: So the question is, how do you, I mean, first of all, let's define what, can you define artificial intelligence in your terms in terms of real estate? Because I studied engineering standpoint.   Nikolaï: Yeah, well, I'm not an engineer, by trade, so at least I'll give more of a generalist definition to the people listening which I think is probably gonna be very good. The important thing is to understand, kind of the difference between machine learning and artificial intelligence. So you know, machine learning is more of a, it's a less automated process, right. So a lot of what people are calling artificial intelligence is ultimately just machine learning. And what it is, is that let's say, let's say, you know, I'm a data scientist or an economist, and I build a predictive model using, say, Monte Carlo simulations. Well, I set a, I build a set of hypotheses, I plugged them into my Monte Carlo simulation, and then that runs. Now, with machine learning and artificial intelligence, what becomes very fun as you know, statistics are a funny thing, right? And economic modeling is a very funny thing because even though, you know, people in the economics world swear by predictive analytics, the reality is in data science, it's garbage in garbage out, right. So the outputs always depend on the inputs. So let's say you're doing an underwriting model, and you're looking at an apartment building, and and you say, well if I buy this apartment build in this way, my internal rate of return is going to be 25%. Okay. Now, internal rate of return, net present value is a, is an output or their outputs based ultimately on the strength of those outputs are only as good as the strength of the inputs.   James: Correct.   Nikolaï: And the very important inputs that affect an IRR and NPV, which ultimately led to two of the most important metrics to help you decide whether it's a buy a property or not are rent growth, expense inflation, refinancing interest rate; if your IRR and NPV is based on on refinance, because obviously IRR and NPV has to be based on an exit model. And the exit model can either be a refi or it can be a sale; disposition. And then if it's a disposition, while your IRR and NPV is based, ultimately off the reverse, the reversion cap rates, so the exit cap rate upon sale. Now what everyone's doing right now, in the multifamily market, especially small investors, and mid-market investors is they're just entering these inputs. You know, they're just playing it by ear, and they're not even playing it by ear. They're coming up with these random inputs that are based off absolutely nothing. I just had a huge discussion on LinkedIn about this, with a couple of investors where one guy was saying, well, you know, if I buy it at 5% cap rate, my underwriting model, what I do is, to establish the reversion cap rate. So the cap rate upon eventual sale, let's say five years, is I add 20 basis points to the purchase cap rate per year. So if I bought it at five today at a 5% cap rate, well, then five years from now, I predict that I'll sell it as 6% cap rate, okay. And, you know, people kind of hide behind this type of rule of thumb model, say, well, I'm being conservative, therefore, my underwriting models very good. The reality of it is your underwriting model is bullshit. Okay. It's not worth the the Excel spreadsheet that it's been written upon. The reality is, where are you pulling this, this expansion of 10% or 20%,10 or 20 basis points per year? What are you basing that off? Right? That's what anyone should be asking, What are you basing this off? While being conservative. How do you know you're being conservative?   James: Yeah.   Nikolaï: How do you know you're not being optimistic? Right? You could be being you could actually be very optimistic with that. And conservative might be and then an increase of 0.25 a year, right? The reality of it is that everyone underwriting deals, right now, they're not basing their inputs off any data, right. And they're definitely not basing it off any predictive analytics, because it's one thing to have the data, the historical data. But you know, just because you have historical data doesn't mean necessarily, that's going to repeat itself in the future. That's why we have predictive analytics. So let's say that based on historical data, your 5% acquisition cap rates will actually be a 5.5 in five years. Now, the problem with that is that the future, that history is never guaranteed of the future, right. So that's why you then have to plug in various scenarios where you're considering this. And that's where predictive analytics come very difficult because you're pretty much just kind of taking a shot in the dark and basing things off the past, but you're putting in like a margin of error. With machine learning and artificial intelligence, you're able to make your predictive models better ex post based on ex ante results. So let's say you create a model to predict the future cap rates, well, you want to predict the future cap rate of in five years, it's your goals to sell within five years. Well, if you predict that today, the probability that your five-year cap rate from now is going to be precise, is a lot lower than let's say, in four years, you predict the cap that same cap rate, right, because you'll be closer to your exit. So there'll be less room for margin of error. So what machine learning and artificial intelligence will allow you to do is to consistently kind of reset your model as time advances. So maybe your initial model based upon acquisition was off. But as you advance in time, the artificial intelligence and machine learning continues on training that same model, the same algorithm that you had, and adapts the various inputs and algorithms to make it more and more precise as you get, as you get closer. And on top of that, as you get closer, the range of distribution of property probabilities get smaller. So it's a double effect, your predictive models get even tighter and tighter as time goes by. And that's where [inaudible00:26:03] machine learning and artificial intelligence can really help out. Is that instead of just plugging in these ridiculous exit cap rates, and ridiculous growth rates and ridiculous inflation of expenses, and absolutely ridiculous refinancing interest rates, when we get closer and closer to being able to actually put in inputs that are based on something very, very solid and then, therefore, our underwriting models will become more and more precise. And what we want in underwriting when you're buying a property, whether you're a syndicator, and you're responsible for money of your LPs, or whether it's your own money, the goal of underwriting is not to be conservative. That's not what the goal of underwriting is. And anyone who says that they underwrite, and they're concerned, their underwriting is conservative, what they're really telling you is they don't know how to underwrite, okay.   James: Yeah.   Nikolaï: You don't want to be conservative, you want to be right on the dot, that's what you want to do with underwriting, you want to be as precise as possible because the reason that you buy the property today is you buy it for future cash flows. And cash flows can come in various ways, they come in an annualized cash flow so, so free cash flow, they come in the appreciation of the asset, so the value of that asset gains because of various market dynamics and because of the way you're, you're managing that property. And they also come through the capitalization of your mortgage. So there's a part of your mortgage that you're paying down, which is principal, right. So those are the three cash flows that you can receive. Now, when you're underwriting a deal, and you're looking at how much you should pay for, say, this hundred unit building you're looking at, well, if your inputs are off, you might buy that property. But it's a bad acquisition because you were too optimistic in your inputs. But it also happens that you were too conservative in your books, therefore, you didn't buy the property. Because if you input that at the exit capital, that property is 7%, but, in reality, five years from now, the exit cap rate is five and three quarters, well guess what? You missed one hell of an opportunity.   James: Correct.   Nikolaï: And in real estate investing, the most important thing is time value of money, we only have a very limited time during our lifetimes in which we can invest and create wealth. And we only have so many hours during the day. Therefore the cost of opportunity, the time value of money are the things that we should consider the most in our underwrite. And that's really where machine learning and artificial intelligence will help investors become much, much better. Obviously, you also need education, right? You have to understand these, I mean, this is advanced stuff. And I'm trying to kind of explain it in a simple way, where people who don't have master's degrees and PhDs in finance and engineering can understand it. But the reality of the matter is that multifamily investing is very, it's a very complex, it's a very sophisticated asset class, and you need a certain level of education.The problem being right now, despite the very high level of education that some investors have, we just don't have solid, predictive analytics tools and data to be able to make sure that we're actually able to transfer education into decent acquisitions.   James: Yeah. Well, that's very interesting, because exit cap rate is always being misused or mis-conservative right? So --   Nikolaï: Well, even entering cap rates, even acquisition cap rates, I see people saying, well, you know, I'm not gonna buy that property because it's a five cap rate and the markets trading at 5.5. Okay, is that a stabilized property? No, it's a value add property. Well, the cap rate doesn't, the cap rate is meaningless then. A cap rate is a metric of a stabilized asset. If the asset is not stabilized, there is no cap rate, because a cap rate is a perpetual annuity. It's a return metric, based on an unlevel perpetual annuity, which means the same cash flow every year forever.   James: Correct.   Nikolaï: Now, if you want to be able to calculate that your property has to be stabilized. So if you're not buying a property, because it's a five cap rate, and the market sharing at 5.5, but it's a value add deal, well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry to tell you, you should change, you should change fields, you should go play, you should go to Las Vegas and put it on red.   James: Not only that, I mean, not only new investors don't understand the entry cap rate doesn't matter [inaudible 00:30:46] and I don't know, I never see a reason not to do a stabilized deal. Not on commercial, right? So for me, I'm always [inaudible00:30:53] guy, that's why I --   Nikolaï: Well, unless you're a private equity firm or your family office or you're a RET or you're an ultra high net worth individual who now has, you know, net value of anywhere between ten and hundred and fifty million dollars, there's no real reason to do stabilize deals, right. The reason you wanted to stabilize deals is, because you have a very high net worth, or because you're trying to de-risk your portfolio. Right?   James: Correct.   Nikolaï: That's why you would just stabilize deals for small cap or mid cap investor.   James: Yeah, yeah. Most of the time. I mean, commercials always value at play. I mean,   Nikolaï: Of course.   James: I mean, there's a lot of people doing stabilized deal nowadays, just by getting a higher mortgage and getting slightly lower price, play on the mortgage side with the interest to get a cash flow, but --   Nikolaï: And that can work if you're a neurosurgeon, right? If you're a surgeon making a million and a half a year, and you're 35 and you say, well, you know, I want to start buying multifamily property because I like, I like real estate and I like the tangible part of the asset class. But I don't need any money right now, because I'm making a million, I'm making a million and a half a year. I don't need any cash flow. And I'm very long term and I just want to build myself a nice retirement, you know, because you know, that's what I want as objective. Well, then yes, buy stabilize property or be an LP and syndication, or purchase that stock in the [inaudible00:32:23], that's fine. But if your goal is to increase your wealth exponentially, in a short period of time, and what I mean by a short period of time is fifteen to, five to fifteen years. Well, then, yeah, you're gonna have to do some kind of value add, you can't just do financial arbitrage all the time.   James: Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of deals out there in different asset class, which can give you that cash flow, right. I mean, you can buy a stabilized mobile home park, you know, it'll give you higher cash in cash than any multifamily deals.   Nikolaï: Right.   James: So even self-storage, or even multifamily, which has been stabilized, you get, you'll get good cash flow. But how long will that cash be guaranteed? Because you have a very tight DSER at that point of time. And let's say the market turn, you may not be, your DSER might be compromised right now, because you don't have any buffer. Right?   Nikolaï: Especially if you did not properly manage the terms of your mortgages. Right. So that's very dangerous. Like if you feel that you're, if you feel that the markets going to shift, say interest rate wise, the easiest way to kind of pull yourself out of that situation you just talk about is, you know, just take longer-term mortgages, you know, make sure that the mortgage does not end in five years, make sure it's a 10 year term, or even maybe a 30 year term. Right? That's, that's the easiest way to manage that risk.   James: Yeah, just do a hard loan.   Nikolaï: Right.   James: Which gives you like, 45 years. I mean, there's the other trick that a lot of people play is, you know, showing you need cash in cash based during IO period. And nowadays, people are getting five years, seven years, IO period and sometimes people think, oh, I will not hold, you know, that deal for long term. I mean, you are hoping on not holding, holding, right. But you do not know what's going to be happening to the economy, right?   Nikolaï: It's a dangerous game to play. And I'm not saying don't play it, but make sure you have the, make sure you have the education and the know-how to be able to manage that risk. It's all risk management. Ultimately, that's what it is.   James: Yeah, yeah.   Nikolaï: The problem, the problem is a lot of people are doing this, and they don't know what the hell they're doing.   James: Yeah, I mean, I think so there's so much of capital out there right now, looking for money to be placed in some way.   Nikolaï: Oh definitely.   James: And people don't think that are they going to putting 1% in the CD, I might as well put here and get like six, seven per cent, right? Cash Flow, right? And,--   Nikolaï: And that's, that's the retail market. Like that's, that's small investors like me and you the reality of is the real cap, the real capital flow right now is at the institutional level, there is so much higher level money and smart money searching for returns right now. I mean, we can't even fathom small investors, how much money, I mean, family offices, typically, if you take the family office market, typically always allocated maybe like, I don't know, depending on the family office in the region, but usually anywhere between, you know, maybe eight to twelve per cent of their overall asset allocation, capital allocation to what they call alternative assets, right. And real estate as part of alternative assets. Now, over the last 10, I'd say over the last 10 years, the last decade, family offices have become more and more in tune to the real estate markets. High net worth families also, especially towards like multifamily real estate, and more and more real estate is no longer considered just as, as something under the alternative asset umbrella. But now it's kind of becoming its own umbrella. And what that's doing is that instead of family offices, and we're talking about family offices that have trillions of dollars, right. These are not these are not small things, these are big moving bodies with a lot of capital, we're talking about multi-billions of dollars, not trillions, multi-billion dollar family offices, that are now instead of allocating, you know, 8% to real estate, well, now they're allocating 20% to real estate. So and that's, that's a scale like, there's a lot of them out there. And we haven't even talked about the private equity firms. We haven't even talked about the pension funds, the International pension funds, you know, people talking about globalization and international money, thinking that it's just, you know, rich Russians is going to Sunny Isles, Florida, buy $10 million condominiums. That's not what it is. The global movement of money to American and Canadian Real Estate are things like the Amsterdam teachers pension fund, or government workers pension fund, you know, allocating, allocating, you know, 100 billion dollars to the American real estate market. Now that's, that has a big, that puts a big dent on the supply and demand of real estate. And that's what ultimately drives property value is much more than interest rates. Interest rates only, only influence property values, like people were talking about, especially the last couple of years, all we know, if interest rates go up, cap rates will follow up, they'll go up. That's not true. Capital flow drives cap rates and values and properties and multifamily; interest rates only influence cap rates and values.   James: Very interesting perspective, that's you are right. There's so many, too much money, even out of United States is looking for money to place, right. Like the other dad had a call from the UK. It's a family office who want to invest in the UK and they're looking for like operators like me, and I was asking them, what's the return expectation? They say this 22% IRR credits and I said, well, I [inaudible 00:37:58] you guys, I can get better money in the United States right, so --   Nikolaï: Exactly. And all the, all the money from the quantitative easing the follow the 2008 crash, I mean, all that quantitative easing money, a lot of it still, after even 10 years, has not even found a place for it yet. Right? So there, there's a lot of money chasing deals, there's a lot of money chasing deals.   James: Correct. Correct. Right. That's true. That's true. So coming back to the exit cap rate. So I know that's one of the hardest parameters to measure. Right? So.   Nikolaï: Absolutely.   James: But can you clarify again, how did you, how would you use artificial intelligence to find that a more accurate exit cap rate? You know, T minus five, my T minus 5, five years earlier, before you hit that five years mark of selling, assuming five years of selling.   Nikolaï: So it's the computing power, right. So it's a computer, what we do is, we'll build, so we'll do we'll say, I'm sorry for anyone who hasn't studied, you know, high level university finance, but or statistics, you know, we'll build a, say, a regression model. So we'll look at past data. We'll plug all that in, in order to build a predictive model, a future model being able to come out with future cap rates, and, you know, the more data that we're able to plug into our regression model. So historically, what real estate institutions and economists have use is what they call the linear regression model, use the Monte Carlo simulations. Now, the problem with the linear regression model is that you know, past transactions or data are, are, are also affected a lot by various things like, you know, political environment, and capital markets. And there's a whole bunch of factors. So there's a new model that's being used more and more, especially with a lot of postdoctoral students in statistics, it's called a Quantile regression model. So that's where we're able to create that same kind of, I'm saying this in layman's terms as much as possible, we're able to take past historical data, build that kind of linear model, kind of, like build that line chart for people to understand, and we kind of repeat that line chart in the future. But we're also able to start to weigh that those data points with various things like a new government, with quantitative easing, with the war, with various factors that may be affected that models to make it less linear. And then we're able to start to better predict future stats and future cap rates. So that's the first step of it. The second step is, let's say, right now, we built our Quantile regression model. And now we compute it and what it says to us is well, T minus five cap rates, or five-year cap rate is going to be between, let's say, we have a couple of tracks, it's hard to explain to people who have not done statistics. But we have a couple of tracks. And ultimately, what it says is that the highest probabilities are that cap rate is going to be between 5.75 and 6.10% in five years for that specific market. Now, like I said, as we get closer to the five year period from now, the less the margin of error is, because we're closer and multifamily market moves very slowly. So predicting, the easiest way to understand is predicting 25 years out from now, it's very hard? Your 25 year prediction is going to be way more, there's more room for it to be completely off than your two-year prediction. So we build a model for the five-year prediction, and then starting tomorrow, every day, our artificial intelligence recalculates that model. So as it recalculates, the model gets more and more precise, because let's say we took statistics from today to 20 years ago, let's say we took the cap rate of that market, starting from today, and 20 years back. Well, obviously, the next 20 years are not going to be exactly the last 20 years. But that's ultimately what statistics do, we try and kind of say, well, let's take the last 20 years, there's a margin of error, that's what's going to be the next 20 years.   So what's cool with the artificial intelligence is without actually having to do anything, every day, the artificial intelligence kind of brings the model a day closer and adapts the model with more and more weight on what's going on right now, rather than what happened 20 years ago. And the artificial intelligence is also able to measure what today it predicted for yesterday, versus what actually happened. And what's the spreading difference and what caused that spread? And therefore, once it's able to determine what caused that spread, it'll add that into the equation for the future cap rate model so it becomes much more precise.   James: Yes, but don't try to run it in iteration on a daily or monthly basis to watch the whole investment process. But how do you make it on day zero? Well, today we're buying today how does it iterate then when on a day zero?   Nikolai: Well, what it is I don't understand the question.   James: So my question is, you said the data is being fed into the system to get more accurate exit cap rate. But you're making a decision to buy today? Is the iteration happening from today to all the investment cycle? Or do you do it earlier before you decide to buy a deal?   Nikolai: Okay, I understand what you mean. So like, for determining your actual purchase cap rate,   James: Yes, correct whatever price that I'm going to pay today because that's what I'm getting into the deal. That's the point of me making a decision, whether this is a good deal, and I'm going to be raising money and telling everybody it's a good deal.   Nikolai: The purchase cap rate is a whole other set of statistics and data models. That's more I'd say, determining today's cap rate is much more endeavor of collecting more historical data. Because like I said, let's say JLL Jones Lang LaSalle which is one of the biggest brokerages, they come out with reports and say, Okay, well, the cap rate, let's say in Austin is, 5.2%. Let's say the mean cap rate is 5.2%. Well, that's based on maybe what like 30 or 40%, of actual transactions that happen because they don't have data on like the off-market transactions, or the pocket listings or this and that, right. And on top of that, they haven't normalized the cap rates on whether, let's say, a building traded at a 4.6 cap rate. Well, as we said, if that property wasn't stabilized, well, then that cap rate is off. That's not a good cap rate. So that's a second thing. So for establishing what you should pay to the intrinsic, what's intrinsic value today. that's ultimately what I think the question is, and correct me if I'm wrong, but let's say you're looking at a 100 unit property, what is the actual intrinsic value of that property? What's the real capital I should be buying at? Well, that's a question of having the proper volume of data, Okay, number one. So that's what we're working on right now is making sure we keep on building our database. So instead of our market cap rates being based on the off 30 or 40%, of inventory, or transactions. Well, it'll be based off maybe 60, 70, 75%, therefore, that cap rate becomes more precise. Secondly, we actually look at every transaction and say, qualitatively because that's the first thing is a quantitative aspect, in statistics, we have quantitative, qualitative. So the quality of the data, once we have the quantity, we look at the cap rates and say, okay, that property traded for a 4.2 cap rate. Was that a stabilized property? No, it was not. Once we add the cap x, we have the new revenues. And we adjust the sales price for cap x, but we also adjust NOI. Now we can look at the stabilized cap rate. So that's the qualitative aspects of it. And now we're able to say, here are the market cap rates, here's the low end of cap rates, here's the high end of cap rates, here's the mean, or the media. And here's that range of cap rates. Because cap rates are based on the Capri calculation ultimately, even though people think it's NOI divided by sale price, I'm sure that's not what a cap rate is, that's how you find the cap rate of a soul stabilized property. The actual cap rate calculation or formula is a mathematical equation of R minus G, it's algebra, so are being returned minus g, which is growth. And R is defined as RF plus RP. So the risk-free rate plus the risk premium that you as an investor are looking for or that the market is looking for, a perceived risk premium, obviously. So what we want to do then, that would be like a third step, and we're not at that level right now. But I hope within the next couple of years, we will be, and I'm sure you as an engineer, probably understanding how valuable our ability to do that would become for the market. Is that then you're starting to be able to say, well, right now, that property is being listed at a say, let's say the range for cap rates in Austin is really five to six, obviously, six is going to be in the worst neighborhoods. Five is going to be the best neighborhoods because it's a matter of risk. Well, then you're looking at the property, let's say it's at a 5.7 cap rate. But it's kind of on the limit of a bad neighborhood, good neighborhood. And then you're able to intrinsically say, but the intrinsic cap rate of that property, the real intrinsic value of that cap rate is actually 5.3. Now, if you didn't know that, and you just said, well, the average cap rate is 5.7 well, it's not so much of a deal, I'm not gonna buy that property. But now with this new data, what you're able to see is, wait a minute, it looks more expensive than what it should be but in reality it's not, it's actually cheaper because the real intrinsic value is a 5.3 cap rate. And that would really unlock the potential of what we call value investing, what like a Warren Buffett has built his entire career off of the stock market? Well, he was able to build that value investing exists so much, in the stock market, because of the quantity and the quality of the data. The quantity of data is accessible to everyone, the quality of the data is a bit harder to get the qualitative aspects. That's why Warren Buffett was has been such a great investor, because he invested so heavily into being able to pull out the qualitative aspects of the data, well, now we would be able to do the same thing, you would be able to do the same thing as a multifamily investor. You would have access to the quantity of data needed for you, then to increase your knowledge based on the qualitative aspects of it, and then be able to properly price that acquisition. And then once you're able to do that, well, then you can go say to your investors, look, this is why I'm buying this deal. This is why it's a good deal. And if on top of that, you're able to be more precise with your exit cap rate, and the growth rates of your revenues and expenses and your refinancing rates. Well, you're going to be a much more confident investor.   James: You are making it really what you call a --   Nikolai: It's a more efficient market.   James: It's a more efficient way of actually determining your purchase because you can really just say generally, Austin is what five cap, it's not true, [inaudible00:50:46].   Nikolai: It's kind of scary to say, but we're all kind of invested in multifamily kind of half blindfold. The guys like me and you, and there's a whole bunch of other guys out there really intelligent wrestlers. We're all invested, based on intuition experience, a very strong knowledge base. But we're ultimately kind of invested with one eye closed. Now it's even worse for people who don't have our knowledge base and experience because they're all invested in completely blindfolded.   James: Interesting. So, if you can get that kind of data where you can look at the stock market, and what's the potential, especially if it's in the path of growth. And what's the risk that you're buying? There are some deals, even though you buy it at the lowest cap rate for that market, it could be still the best growth because it could be just like another big explosion, in terms of jobs, is going to be happening in that area just because of the path of growth.   Nikolai: That's so important because if you're a pro forma and you're underwriting you predicted a 2% growth rate in revenue. But in those five years, the analyze growth radio was six. Well, you probably didn't buy that property, when you should have. And the other thing is the same if you predicted a 6% growth rate, and it was two, then you bought that property you shouldn't have, But what most people will say is well, the guy who predicted 6%, he should have put in 2%, like he should have been conservative, but that's not necessarily true. That's a half-truth. That's actually a mistake in logical reasoning because the other guy who says, I'm going to plug in a 2% growth rate because that's what historically happens. What happens if you invest in a market where the growth rate is actually 6%? And that the other intelligent investors knew or predicted that it would be 6%, while they're willing to overpay, according to you for a property, and then you're not buying anything, you're not generating any returns, you're not building your wealth, and you're just kind of sitting on the sidelines there, Bah, humbugging saying, well, the markets paying way too much for the properties and these guys are stupid, stupid money, blah, blah, blah, I'm going to wait for the market to crash and blah, blah, blah, I know guys who've been saying this since 2012. And they have not bought anything since 2012. They haven't generated any returns. All under the pretext of being conservative investors. You know what, they're not conservative investors, you know why because they're not investors. They haven't bought anything, because they take themselves out of the market, and they're sitting on the sidelines, and they're just making up for lack of precision in their underwriting through, this kind of pseudo-conservatism.   James: I think it just depends on the sophistication of the investors. If you look at nowadays, multifamily has become so popular, so many people who did not have the financial education background or the way to analyze a deal. There's a lot of parameters that go into any deals. That's what you mentioned, you mentioned so many parameters, nobody will look at that. Everybody said multifamily is good. I bought it and it went 300%. And they say, Oh, I'm a really good operator. Well, actually, you should have made 500% because the market gave you at least 400%. 100%, you just did 300%, why did you do 300%?   Nikolai: That comes down to what we call the search for alpha. We want to outperform the market. And all these people and there's a whole bunch of them now there's gurus and mentors and coaches, and they're giving all these online classes or seminars or whatnot, or they're boasting about being such great real estate investors. And the reality of it is they don't even know what they did. They're like, well, I generated X percent returns, and I've created X amount of millions of dollars in profit over the last five and 10 years. But that's actually quite average. That's what the market does, as long as you are in the market. Of course, that's what you generated. Now, did you generate more than what the market did? That's the real question. And unfortunately, there are not enough people in the market asking that question. And if you're a passive investor, that's the question you should be asking your syndicator or your GP is not this is what you generated, great. That sounds awesome. You generated 22% IRR annually over the last five years. What did the market generate? The market generated 23.   James: I remember the other day I saw someone, he said, I made 60%. In one year, I bought it in the first year and I sold it in twelve months, I made 60%, I said well, you should have made that 100% because the market went up by that much.   Nikolai: And that's why I'm so bullish on education, and why I think it's so important that multifamily investors get educated and push their knowledge base, because, this is not Nintendo, this is not Xbox, we're not just playing, baseball on our PlayStation three, or Playstation four, this is serious business, and even more, so if you're syndicator. Just in the knowledge base, you know needs to continuously be expanded. And that's why data also needs to be there because knowledge without data is also quite useless.   James: Correct. So coming back to being the alpha in the market. I know you can look at different market appreciation versus how much you are making money. So coming to, let's say, for a decision where you have a deal in your hand, and you're deciding whether you want to sell or you want to refile, or you 10:31 exchange. So can you give us a good methodology to do to make that decision?   Nikolai: To make the decision on whether you beat the market or...   James: Whether you want to sell a deal, or whether you want to refinance, whether you want to hold it for long term or you want to do a 10:31 exchange? How would you approach it?   Nikolai: Well, I'd approach it on a very individual basis. Number one, I think everyone has a very different investor profile. What I mean by investor profile is, what type of returns do you want? And when? What are the strengths and weaknesses that you possess as either an owner-operator or syndicator or whatnot? What access to capital do you have? How patient is that capital? What's the cost of the capital? Now, if it's your own money, obviously, it's probably the most patient money with the cheapest cost of capital. If you're raising money from other people, well, then obviously, there's a less patient aspect to it, and the cost of capital is going to be higher. If you're taking money from bridge loans, well, that's even worse. So if you're taking money from hard money lenders, well, then obviously, your cost of capital is going to be very, very high. So these are all things that you have to consider, you also have to consider where you are in your career with regards to what it is that you want to achieve, either as annual cash flow or just overall that value and what type of risk you're willing to accept.   So ultimately, you have to be able to answer those questions initially, to be able to decide on the strategies. Because ultimately, people in multifamily investing, what they do not understand is the difference between philosophy and strategies. Now, everyone should have their own investment philosophy, based on their investor profile. Now, once you have that philosophy, what you want to do is adapt your strategies according to where you are in the market, and where you are in your career. That's something that is very misunderstood. People say, I'm a buy and hold investor. We hear that a lot in multifamily. So ultimately, what you're saying that you do not have an investment philosophy, that you think you do. You think your philosophy is to buy and hold. But buy and hold is not a philosophy, it's a strategy. So what you're saying is, ultimately, you're investing all the time throughout the whole of your career, using just one strategy. That's very dangerous because let's say the exit point of that strategy eventually, say the day that you do have to sell upon retirement because even though you're buying a whole, you might not be a legacy buy and hold investor. What I mean by that is a legacy buy and hold investor is someone who's just going to pass down the properties to their children, upon death, or upon retirement, whereas most buy and hold investors, what they really need is, I'm going to buy and hold until my retirement, then I'll start selling off. Well, what happens if, during your retirement, you're in a trough of the market cycle. What if you're in that part of the market cycle, or you're at the bottom of it, that's a really bad time to sell? Well, that's the mistake of always investing using only one strategy. So what I would say is that you have to establish your philosophy, understand that your investor profile is going to change over time. And the market cycle moves through phases, there are different phases of the market cycle and your strategies, you have to be able to use different strategies at different phases of the cycle, and at different phases of your career as your profile changes, or adapts or morphs. And that's how you then establish well, with this property, should I buy it and hold it or should I sell it? Or should I just refinance it? What should I do? And I'll give you a very concrete answer. Once I've explained all this.   I have a student here because I do teach real estate investing courses. We actually built a college we call it The College of the Emmerich's. Now you don't have to, it's not college level education. But what we're saying is that from everyday multifamily investors, if you really want to learn college level stuff without having to go to college, well, we have a couple of courses that we teach you very high-level stuff, very concrete work. You still need coaching from coaches and mentors and all that stuff. We actually teach courses. So one of my students in these courses, he's a very successful real estate investor in Montreal, Canada, Montreal is the most important multifamily market in Canada. It's a very strong multifamily market, very competitive. Now he's up to about I guess, 150 units, all on his own, no outside money, no passive money. And he started having trouble refinancing out of his properties because what he was doing, it seems a very big value add investor. So he was using two strategies value added buy and hold. But he was erroneously thinking that value-added and buy and hold was his investment philosophy, which is not, those are two strategies that are part of the philosophy. So he came to me and he said, well, look, banks have now started to tighten their DSCR ratings, and their LTV, therefore, I'm buying a property at a billion dollars, and putting in $300,000 into it. And now the market value of that property is $2 million. But I'm not able to refine it $2 million, because of the banking standards, they're only allowing me to refine out of 1.6. So now, if they're letting you refine out at 1.6, on a 75%, LTV, what they're saying is when you have to leave in 25% of 1.6 plus $400,000, that's a lot of equity, that it is unable to pull out because he was doing too much of a good job at value add. And the capital markets, the banks are not able to follow market value, banks, especially in Canada, are much more conservative than in the US, but even in the US, there is a lot of people buying properties. And they're not able to refine the whole value, because their total loan dollars are blocked by either LTV or DSCR. What I call economic value, the economic value is not as high as market transaction value. Therefore, instead of leaving 25% of equity, you're leaving 25 plus, in this case, $400,000.00. Now that's where I said to him perfect, I looked at his portfolio, I said, well, you have to adapt your strategies, you have to change the strategies, you can no longer at this moment, use the buy and hold strategy, you have to use the fix and flip strategy.   Because you're too good at fixing value add. And you're not able to pull out as much equity as you used to be through refinancing. Therefore, now you have to seriously consider selling that property. Because you can go and get $2 million for other markets right now. So that's an extra $400,000. Because he was able only to refinance 1.6 out of it. So now he's able to get the full market value, pull that cash out, and he has access to a lot of opportunities. He has a really strong bird document work. So his cost of opportunity is very high. If he's leaving all that equity, in these properties that are all stabilized, he's making way more money by doing more value-add stuff. So he made the decision and now he holds zero properties. He sold all of his 140 units because that has allowed him to get more and more cash rich, with less and less money and equity and properties and gain access to more and more opportunities. And ultimately, his annual portfolio, the total return on investment is in the 40 to 70% IRR. Whereas while he was doing buy and hold his overall portfolio was only returned to him maybe 20% if you consider the weighted average return on investment. So that's how I would attack that. I know, that's a very long-winded answer.   James: I think that's the right answer. So I mean, the return on equity, which is date right now, I mean, on this deal. There's so much of dead equity not producing cash. And if your cost of capital, which is also equal to an opportunity outside is much higher, you might as well just cash that out by selling it off.   Nikolai: Because the refinancing is living you to a liquid.   James: Recently, I mean the banks have been more stringent on refine. So the last refine they did ask me to leave 5% my cash basis, which they never did in the past, things have changed. I think that's okay. That's how the banks work now.   Nikolai: It's okay. But the problem is that on a $15 million property, you know, that's two and a half million dollars less cash you have for the next acquisition.   James: Correct. I mean, it depends on what is the cost of capital outside plus how much you can pull out and how much your equity stuck on it. So, coming back to market cycles, because I think this is one thing that I want to ask you because I think you have studied with Dr. Glenn Mueller. So right now, if I look at the latest Q1 forecast for apartments in the hyper supply market. I don't know if that's something that you are aware or not, but...   Nikolai: Nationally?   James: Nationally yes it's not a local, but lots of markets are in it for supply. It's very, very few markets are in the expansion cycle. And even though they are in the expansion cycle, they are at the last stage of the expansion cycle. And all the markets that are on expansion cycle, or the market that recovered late like Las Vegas, Phoenix and a lot of Econo markets. So can you give an overview of what do you think the market is? And what would the strategy be for investors now?   Nikolai: Well, I think number one, I would say that I try not to look at national or macro market cycles. I think that's the first thing to consider. Because multifamily real estate is so hyperlocal. So I look much more at those markets, cycles of hyper supply and expansion and contraction, I look at more of like a metro area. So like you're in Austin, Texas, I look at Austin, I wouldn't really consider the multifamily market at large, because it's kind of like looking at cap rates on an unstabilize property, it's kind of a waste of time. Now, I'd say that I haven't looked at recent data of where all the cycle, where all the markets are, the phases of the cycle. But I mean, I think it is safe to say that, most of the markets right now are in the later phases of the game, or later innings, as Howard Marks likes to say, in the stock market and capital markets. But also, as he says, we don't really know, see the thing with market cycles, and whether it be with Dr. Mueller, whether it be with Karen Trice, out of Australia, and also all the other various professors and researchers of market cycles, is

If you were a wrestling fan in the UK in the 1990s then there is a good chance you will have clutched a SilverVision WWF VHS at some point.From High Flyers, to SummerSlam 1992 to those classic WrestleMania covers, SilverVision releases were the window into wrestling for many of us back in the day.Ash and Paul talk this week to James Gallagher who worked for SilverVision back in the day who talks through the process of getting those titles released and some of the behind the scenes stories about what it took to get them stocked from WH Smith to Azad Video!Thank you for your continued support and we would love to hear your thoughts on our podcast. Reach out to us on Twitter with the following links:@HOWManiaPod@HO_Wrestling@HOWPaulB@AshRoseUK@themainevent00 (James)You can also check out the latest news and info every day at www.hookedonwrestling.co.uk

"Outsider" Architecture Greek homes "grow over time" Christopher wants to build a straw-bale home with mud covered walls Navajo fever Joe Rogen Dr. Hotez Feeding America's Hungry Children Feed My Hungry Children Caring Coalition Can't give money? Give your time. It's bad for James to interact with humans (for him and them) Apple TV + Christopher occupied Wall Street James goes all ways (Apple, Android, and Windows) Sony doesn't mix well with others Apple has the dumbest names Christopher hates big TVs Rose Gold and Space Grey are not colors! Benny Hill was cheap and sad, but funny Apple TV + is the new HBO (not an original observation) Charles Schulz - Li'l Folks YouTube is music Foundation Series Coming to Apple TV + Christopher doesn't respect one-liners Christopher, The Sopranos was not a documentary Netflix is slowing becoming the new cable Microsoft Christmas ad "In their own prison cells." - saddest thing I've seen NFL owners are like a diversity rainbow. Of white. And old. And male. "The pre-cryogenically frozen Biden." "Vaccined" Trump vaccine plan vs Biden vaccine plan And we discuss the EU CANZUK Can-Nada Mexico - the 51st state "I swear to God I don't put anything in the coffee." A flag is not a rainbow Glucose? Couscous? Christopher: "Do you remember when we used to talk about flags?" James: "Yes." Christopher: "What happened to that?" James: "You."

From the fourth hour of The Jesse Lee Peterson Show, Tuesday, August 6, 2019, 9 AM PT: James tells more why "red flag" laws are no good, and why he doesn't trust the "mental illness" excuse for taking away Second Amendment rights. GREAT CALLS (see below). Blog Post: https://www.thehakereport.com/blog/2019/8/6/tue-aug-6-2019 Caller Log: Samuel from Sweden gave good advice to a "Christian" friend. Louis from FL confronts James: You called me a snake? Scott from CO suggests shootings are orchestrated. Sal from CO says ego blinds people like Louis to the truth. Nick from St. Louis, MO, asks what it's like to be white. Dennis from MA doesn't buy the narrative about the shootings. Brendan from NY says the real problem is the nuclear family. James's video: https://youtu.be/xAboaqE4MN0 Jesse's original video stream: https://youtu.be/OgEzq-bV1bU Also live on Hake's channels Sunday 9am PT (11CT/12ET) Call-in: 888-775-3773 http://thehakereport.com/live-show