Podcast appearances and mentions of john let

Hey lovelies! So good to be back making audio-deliciousness for you and what a great way to start the season John's visit was. John is a fixture in the storytelling scene in Northern California.  He's a storytelling instructor, coach, and assistant events producer for Capital Storytelling in Sacramento and the host of the Do Tell! open mic series in Rancho Cordova. He's also, in case you can't tell from the sensitivity and emotional tone of his storytelling, a really nice guy. You can check out more of John's storytelling talent on Youtube or follow him on Instagram.As promised, here's a link to the dramatic and wonderful Jerusalem by Dan Bern. (The release when he screams "I am the Messiah, I am the Messiah!" gets me every time.You can get tickets to Confabulation's Food Fights here. Hope to see you there!Oh! And also, at the time of uploading, I still don't have a ticket link for my show The List: A Traumady About Probiotic Masculinity, but you can get to the front of the line on news like that by going over to our website volumeknob.net and signing up for the newsletter.Make sure you follow The Volume Knob on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook .And if you have a story about the song that saved your life be sure to send it to me at volumeknobpod@gmail.com.

We're going to look at what Jesus prays over His disciples, and us, the night before He's crucified.

During the hypercasual reign, short-term metrics, like the seven-day LTV curve, were the golden standard for an app's scalable potential. Now, looking further down the road and building an environment that encourages players to set down roots for 30, 60, or even 365+ days is how studios can come out on top and predict profitability. So, how can studios get to the bottom of what causes churn and retain players for years instead of days? John Wright, Vice President of Mobile Publishing at Kwalee — the UK publisher with 70+ published games and 1 billion+ mobile game downloads — has the answers in this week's episode. Alongside our hosts Peggy Anne Salz and Brian Baglow, John dives deep into prioritising player loyalty, creating memorable (and profitable) user experiences, and the strategy that increased Kwalee games' LTV by 40x. “It's a mindset shift from ‘How do we get users as cheaply as possible to how do we maximise our users moving forward.'”And we end on a high note, talking about Kwalee's first-ever virtual event and how you can participate.  Gamemasters Summit, powered by Kwalee - register here Understanding Player Loyalty Is A Game-Changer For Mobile Publishers (Forbes)  - read here CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Intro 04:00 - Upcoming PG.biz and Kwalee events 06:43 - Why hybrid casual? 11:02 - Is hypercasual dead? 12:14 - Is the worst of privacy changes behind us? 14:10 - A loyalty driven approach to growth 18:08 - How to get someone more invested in your game 20:54 - Becoming a multi-app experience 24:59 - Should your metrics change? 28:36 - Where does John see growth?  33:13 - Favourite games Q&A with John * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  ** Let's Connect **

We go in-depth with Teddyson John as we talk about his start in the soca industry, his album, opening for Patti Labelle and some of the challenges he has faced in his career. One interview not to miss.

As a first hand witness of the life and teaching of Jesus, John doesn't mince words. Some of what he writes could be a little overwhelming and intimidating for his readers, especially for those who are sincerely seeking to be faithful to Jesus and to John's message. In 1 John 2:12-14 John reassures the faithful..."Before I go any further, let's make sure we get a few things straight!"

In this sermon we continue to unpack the story of the blind man healed by Jesus in John chapter 9. From the conclusion of this story, we are reminded of Christ's purpose to bring sight to those who are spiritually blind, and save those who are sincerely seeking Him. It is from these truths do we get a BIblical understanding of what it means to be a “seeker sensitive” church. Unlike modern day churches who use worldly tactics to attract the lost, we are reminded that what truly attracts the regenerated heart are the things of God, not the things of man.

We continue our series in John… Let's look at the first public miracle of Jesus, and its significance to us today… John 2:1-12, John 1:14, Matthew 13:9-15, John 7:30, John 8:20, John 12:27, John 12:23-24, Ezekiel 36:25-27

Aloha and welcome to The Mission North Shore's podcast! This week Pastor Tripp speaks on 1 John 4:7-12.  God bless and have a great week!

John: Let's be honest about what “taking race into account” means in affirmative action … Glenn: How can anyone argue that race-based affirmative action doesn't violate the 14th Amendment? … Why are we so focused on elite institutions? … John: The University of California works just fine without “racial preferences” … “You're pulling the ladder […]

John: Let's be honest about what “taking race into account” means in affirmative action ... Glenn: How can anyone argue that race-based affirmative action doesn't violate the 14th Amendment? ... Why are we so focused on elite institutions? ... John: The University of California works just fine without “racial preferences” ... “You're pulling the ladder up behind you” is an invalid critique ... John: The fact that racism exists does not justify changing standards ... Why Roland Fryer thinks we should put our money where our mouth is on race and education ... Will the post-Students for Fair Admissions future turn into a Hardship Olympics? ...

John: Let's be honest about what “taking race into account” means in affirmative action ... Glenn: How can anyone argue that race-based affirmative action doesn't violate the 14th Amendment? ... Why are we so focused on elite institutions? ... John: The University of California works just fine without “racial preferences” ... “You're pulling the ladder up behind you” is an invalid critique ... John: The fact that racism exists does not justify changing standards ... Why Roland Fryer thinks we should put our money where our mouth is on race and education ... Will the post-Students for Fair Admissions future turn into a Hardship Olympics? ...

A reading from the holy Gospel according to John “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he bent down and wrote on the ground. And in response, they went away one by one, beginning with the elders. Saying these few words, Jesus then bends down and in that moment when no words are spoken, the crowd slowly disperses. In today's Gospel, it is the elders who are the first to walk away from stoning the woman caught in adultery. In that still moment, they recognize that they also commit sin and are not free from guilt. By contrast, in the first reading from Daniel, it is the elders who are the first to accuse Susanna of adultery to hide their sin. John tells us in today's Gospel that after the crowd goes away one by one, Jesus says to the woman: “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She tells him, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus says to her, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.” Before saying this to the woman, Jesus straightens up the woman; this is a detail not to be missed. He reaches out his hand to her to raise up the helpless. God, there are times, as in the responsorial psalm, where the day's walk is through a dark valley. In the first reading and in the Gospel, the crowd—the mob—accuses and wants nothing more than to see justice carried out even to the point of death. This is the world you sent your son into. Am I sometimes the one in the midst of the mob? Even when Jesus says “Let the one among you who is without sin,” there is one who would throw a stone regardless. During the Gospel reading on Good Friday, the congregation takes the voice of the crowd, crying out “Crucify him.” Help me, Lord, be merciful and forgiving. You alone know the sins of others and are the just judge. Give me the grace to quiet the mob voice within me. In the dark valley of waywardness and sin, straighten me up so that I can find a way back to you; guide me in the way of forgiveness. Be with me today, merciful Lord, and forgive me. “Even though I walk in the dark valley, I fear no evil; for you are at my side.” Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Readings⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lectiodiv/videos Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/lectio-divina-daily-reflections/id1637258440 Web: https://lectiodiv.wordpress.com Support this podcast on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=85589341 --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lectio-divina-daily/support

INTRODUCTION: I hold a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Exposition, with an interdisciplinary in Literature, from Moody Bible Institute. I was one of two recipients of the MBI Homiletical Jury Award for outstanding preaching in 2016. I have experience as a youth pastor, pastoral intern, academic journal editor, and guest speaker. I used to be a part of the largest cult in the United States. In 2019, I published my first book, The Cult of Christianity, as a first step in addressing the subtle issues of this complex system. In 2021, I continued my work with this podcast!   INCLUDED IN THIS EPISODE (But not limited to): ·      How Christianity Is A Cult·      A Look Into TCOC Book's Cover Art·      How The Church Exploits Vulnerabilities ·      Civil Rights Movement Implications·      Explained: Control – Contain – Convert·      Refusing Cake To The Gays! – But Why Though?·      The “Karen-ness” Of Christians ·      Fake Oppression·      Getting Over Self-Condemnation For Falling For The Church·      The Honor In Self-Deprecation  CONNECT WITH JOHN: Website, Social Media & Books: https://linktr.ee/thecultofchristianity  CONNECT WITH DE'VANNON: Website: https://www.SexDrugsAndJesus.comWebsite: https://www.DownUnderApparel.comTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sexdrugsandjesusYouTube: https://bit.ly/3daTqCMFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/SexDrugsAndJesus/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sexdrugsandjesuspodcast/Twitter: https://twitter.com/TabooTopixLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devannonPinterest: https://www.pinterest.es/SexDrugsAndJesus/_saved/Email: DeVannon@SDJPodcast.com  DE'VANNON'S RECOMMENDATIONS: ·      Pray Away Documentary (NETFLIX)o  https://www.netflix.com/title/81040370o  TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk_CqGVfxEs ·      OverviewBible (Jeffrey Kranz)o  https://overviewbible.como  https://www.youtube.com/c/OverviewBible ·      Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed (Documentary)o  https://press.discoveryplus.com/lifestyle/discovery-announces-key-participants-featured-in-upcoming-expose-of-the-hillsong-church-controversy-hillsong-a-megachurch-exposed/ ·      Leaving Hillsong Podcast With Tanya Levino  https://leavinghillsong.podbean.com  ·      Upwork: https://www.upwork.com·      FreeUp: https://freeup.net VETERAN'S SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS ·      Disabled American Veterans (DAV): https://www.dav.org·      American Legion: https://www.legion.org ·      What The World Needs Now (Dionne Warwick): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHAs9cdTqg  INTERESTED IN PODCASTING OR BEING A GUEST?: ·      PodMatch is awesome! This application streamlines the process of finding guests for your show and also helps you find shows to be a guest on. The PodMatch Community is a part of this and that is where you can ask questions and get help from an entire network of people so that you save both money and time on your podcasting journey.https://podmatch.com/signup/devannon  TRANSCRIPT: John Verner [00:00:00]You're listening to the sex drugs and Jesus podcast, where we discuss whatever the fuck we want to! And yes, we can put sex and drugs and Jesus all in the same bed and still be all right at the end of the day. My name is De'Vannon and I'll be interviewing guests from every corner of this world as we dig into topics that are too risqué for the morning show, as we strive to help you understand what's really going on in your life.There is nothing off the table and we've got a lot to talk about. So let's dive right into this episode.De'Vannon: John m is back with us again to go harder into his very provocative book, the Cult of Christianity. Join us today as we discuss the ways in which the church mind fucks us, violates us, and exploits people's vulnerabilities. Also, I hope that through this episode you begin to find a sense of healing in knowing that if you or your loved one has been devastated by the.[00:01:00]You are not alone, honey. We are in this together. John and I are with you,and we will walk with you every step of the way.Hello everyone and welcome back to the Sex Drugs in Jesus podcast. I'm your hostess with the mostest, Devon Huber. And I have with me the lovely, the handsome, the talented, the smart, intelligent, brave, bold, and in touch with his emotions. John er, he is the John: host, John De'Vannon: er mm-hmm. , John er. He is the host of The Cult of Christianity podcast.And the author of the book titled the same. He was on my show before to talk about, well, the book, but then we got so deep into his history in the podcast. We didn't get a chance to talk about the [00:02:00] book, so I had to have the motherfucker back on so we can dive into this shit. How the fuck is you? John: I is fine.20, 20, 23 feels like a little bit of a reset. And so I'm, I'm kind of living in that head space of like, all right, what's next? Since we last spoke, I went, I can't, I don't think I had started back working on my master's in journalism. And so that's been taking up a lot of time. I'm, I'm, it's all online, but I'm studying at N Y U mm-hmm.And that's been awesome. I've been, been doing some religious reporting stuff, which is, is fun. I'm excited to kinda move towards that, doing religious reporting. It's pretty fun. De'Vannon: Well, congratulations. Congratulations. And all of it was a good thing. . So you're religious reporting like say for, for like, for like the university's press John: or like where Yeah.For right [00:03:00] now. Yeah. And then yeah, I'm already, I'm hopefully gonna sell my first, I'm actually right after we record this, I'm gonna have a meeting to hopefully sell my first story of a church investigation I did. Cuz that's what I wanna do. I want to, not just Christian churches, but I want to go into churches and colts and investigate them and figure out what's really going on De'Vannon: as someone should.Have you heard of the Trinity Foundation in Texas? John: Yeah. You mentioned that last time we talked. I didn't, I didn't look too far into them, but I know there's, there's several. This is a relatively new thing that's popping up that's actually really, really important work. De'Vannon: So what you're telling me is there's organizations who investigate churches more than that one.This is becoming like a trend. Well, John: religious reporting has been around for, for decades, but it's been done in a very kind of general way. And I think there's being a small push to be like, let's actually look at individual, like if someone is whistle blowing on their [00:04:00] church or is like giving us leads about a specific church, that it should be fair game and we should investigate them like we would any other business.De'Vannon: Right. Well, I wish you success with that as you get going and keep going, be sure to let me know if there's anything that I can do for you because, you know, I don't give a fuck about churches, but I give all the fucks. I give all the fucks about Christ as I always say. Mm-hmm. , but the church. Yay Jesus. And that's the way that, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.Now, before we get too much into this, I want you to tell me about that coffee mug in your hand. Can you hold it up the camera so that we can see Yeah. What it says. Apostate coffee roasters. You mind giving us a little bit of history on what the fuck apostate means and where you got that from? Yeah.John: Apostates just a derogatory term that different cults and religions have thrown at people who, typically it's someone who, like me, who used to be a part of the faith and is no longer [00:05:00] but it's, it's more broadly a pro. A similar word would be something like heretic. But the, yeah, so prostate coffee roasters, they're this coffee company that is run by ex Mormons and Mormons are not allowed to drink coffee.So it's a very like, empowering thing for them to roast their own coffee and make it so they're awesome. Love 'em to death. They're great. Make good coffee. So their De'Vannon: whole show is one big clap back. Not the whole show. Their whole fucking concept is one big clap back. Mm-hmm. . So do you have any idea why Mormons think coffee is Satan?Why do they think coffee is of the devil? John: Yeah. I don't know personally too much. You know, I didn't grow up Mormon or anything. I do know that just in my studies of Colts , what they do is one move to do is to control what people eat and drink. You know, in Southern Baptist culture that looks like alcohol [00:06:00] you know, in, in certain pockets of Christianity, historically there was only certain kinds of bread you could use for communion.Anytime you're trying to regulate what people are eat, eating, you're regulating what they're putting into their body. That's just a, that's just a very like kind of you've mentioned stuff like hypnosis. It's, it's a very like, Kind of mind numbing way to control a person is to control what they eat and drink.The other big one I talk about a lot is controlling what you wear. That's like a, that's a big thing that pops up in different cults. You'll see usually a distinction between how clergy dress and the followers and how people dress on Sunday versus the rest of the days is common in Christian circles.So basically if you can control what someone expresses and you can control what someone intakes, it's very easy to control their mind cuz you're already controlling their body. . [00:07:00] Mm. So that would be my, my, my spin on it. I don't know the theo, I don't know what theological reason they made up for coffee.Like I, I'm sure there's some, I'm sure somebody said it was you know, too addicting at some point is probably the modern version, I would assume. De'Vannon: Well, if that was the case, at least those bastards were even across the board, you know, unlike say the Pentecostals who were like, that was show not drinketh of the vine, but they're gross in a fucking gallon of coffee in the back every Sunday and like that.But that's all good, right? . John: Yeah. Well that's also, yeah, especially, especially if they go the grape juice route too, because even grape juice is from a vine. So that's kind of. , De'Vannon: it's all silly. The marijuana, the L s D mm-hmm , the shrooms, the coffee beans, the grapes, and any of their derivatives is something that is of the Lord.And it is not for humans to tell us what the fuck. We can't do really with [00:08:00] anything, but it's certainly not anything that grew up out the fucking dirt. Hmm. So, speaking of artistic expressions, cuz you're also fucking artistic. I mentioned the, the cover for your podcast the last time, but I wanted to talk about that again because I feel like it's just so enigmatic and so polarized and you have this big, huge fucker standing on like a pedestal and his little minions bowing before them for him sucking his dick or whatever the case may be, paying HOK in some way.And the interesting thing is you can't tell whether or not that's supposed to be a preacher, a rabbi, a pope, a pastor that's supposed to be God, you know, or Jesus or some like sort of deity. , and I know you said it before, but I'd like you to just tell us again why you went with this cover art, because I think it's so true.John: Well, this is a, every so humans like categories we like [00:09:00] to find a group. We like to label things as good and bad. And there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. That's just kind of how our brains work. And the problem is we've got kind of this weird concept of good guys and bad guys, and the church is pretending to be the good guys while they're being the bad guys.But you end up having to label specific things that are wrong because there's so many goodhearted people in. . And so a lot of times when I critique Christianity, people wanna spend the conversation of, well, you're not critiquing Christianity. You're critiquing this version of Christianity, which isn't necessarily wrong, I am way more focused on White American evangelicalism than the rest of it.But White American evangelicalism was not a term when there were slavery in the us. There it existed, but we hadn't [00:10:00] labeled it that yet. The Crusades, the was not only white people, was not American people and was certainly not evangelicals, but the Crusades were bad . And it stemmed from their beliefs their Christian beliefs.So I can't say everything all at once. , but what I hope the art communicates is the, the problem that I've spotted, the category that I think everything else falls from is the idea of leaders and followers of other people submitting to someone else. I don't really, I, I think it's worth bringing up white supremacy.I think it's worth bringing up patriarchy. I think all those things are very much worth talking about, but I don't think it's the only thing going on. I think we have a we're, we're sometimes scared, and I think we've been made to be scared of pointing out that what's really going on in churches is that cult structure of one man with [00:11:00] other people having the knee bow to him either literally or metaphorically.So again, the art is, is purposely vague because I think unless there's some fundamental changes 40 years from now when evangelicalism won't exist, it will be gone. We won't be calling anyone an evangelical anymore. The same problems, the same structure, the same issues will still be present unless there's foundational changes.Chow, I'm De'Vannon: getting Game of Thrones flashbacks. Okay. Like, how many season is it gonna take to get you to bend the knee? John Snow, get on down there. Boy. and motherfucking service. Yo, queen God damnit. And so . John: Yeah. Well seasons is an interesting way of thinking about it. Both television and, and you know, weather or whatever.But it's true. Like there's seasons of Christianity that that kind of come and go. But what seems to remain is that structure of one person being in charge of others or [00:12:00] multiple people being in charge of multiple others. But there's always that hierarchy. So again, I, I have tried to update the art before, but I think it, I think it's just the, it, it's, it's about what I'm talking about most specifically.You know, that my art. on that is in line with the problem I'm trying to point to. There's many other people who are doing great work to dismantle white Evangelicalism and I support all those people. But to me, that's not my niche. That's not what I'm trying to talk about. Hmm. Then De'Vannon: tell us like it, you know, and make it official here.What, what are you trying to talk about? What is your mission in this world? Hmm. John: I'm not just against Christianity, I'm against cults. I just know how much of a cult Christianity is. Hmm. And the reason I'm against cults is it's an erase. It erases people's identity. It makes their vulnerabilities their whole personhood.It [00:13:00] it, it limits them to a very narrow way of. , and I think there's cult speak outside of, you know, there's a lot of cult speak in the business world. There's a lot of cult speaking, just American culture when it comes to politics. So I'm against all of it across the board, the one I'm just super familiar with, and can get very detailed and very like you know, just kind of a prime example.And unfortunately a very big example in the US is Christianity. And one of the ways, it's the biggest example is it's absurd that the largest cult is the most protected class of people in the country. Like, that's concerning to me. We have an organiza a loosely organized group of people that are protected by constitutional rights and legal rights more than anyone.and they're not oppressed, but they're that protected and that's a very dangerous, as we've seen, very dangerous combination. So they're worth talking about the most, and it's the one I can [00:14:00] talk about the most, but I'm against cults across the board. I'm not just bitter about my church hurt, I'm not just upset because of this, that, and the other.This is a real problem that really needs to be talked about in real ways and real solutions need to happen. De'Vannon: That's interesting you say like the, these ultimate people's vulnerabilities, their whole personality. I've never heard it stated like that before. So from from the people who've reached out to you in response to your book or your show or the work that you're doing, do you have any sort of, I don't know if we would call it a testimony, any kind of bullshit somebody shared with you that a, a church or a cult put them through that was particularly scary or moving to you that you can recall?John: Yes. To me. So I, I have two thi things that I think of with that question. One is, nothing surprises [00:15:00] me anymore. Nothing . It, it can still hurt. It can still shock me. It never surprises me. It only makes me feel like, yeah, that makes sense. And frankly, I only feel like I was five clicks away from being the victim or perpetrator of whatever bad thing happened, because that's what the system breeds.It, it breeds perpetrators and victims . I mean, that's just what it does. There's, there's many horrifying stories. Sometimes I avoid telling them because, When you tell like a really I guess salacious, for lack of a better word story, like someone who, like, you know, I have an episode of my podcast where I interview a guy who was kidnapped by Christians, right?About as extreme as it can get. What people do is go, well, those Christians were crazy. Those were the crazy ones. [00:16:00] Or like, if someone talks about, you know, this is unfortunately becoming, we're all becoming aware how common this is. When someone was sexually harassed or abused by someone in the church they, they go, well, that, that guy needs to leave.Like he's, you know, he's bad. And, and the church would, that church was bad, but you should come to my church. You should do this, you should do that. It, it just gets a little exhausting for me to kind of engage and. Let me tell you this horrible story because frankly, the horrible story doesn't change anyone's mind because the cult won't let it change your mind because your empathy has been pressure washed out of you.You, you don't, you don't ha the story doesn't tug at you because the thing that tugs at you more is you've been told how ashamed you are and how shameful your existence is. And the only hope for reming that shame is believing in Jesus Christ. And so that belief that's so firmly held is actually gonna [00:17:00] trump your ability to be empathetic towards someone's story.So yeah, I could sit here and I could, off the top of my head at least tell you three stories that would make a lot of people who are unfamiliar with churches that would make their jaw drop, but it wouldn't change anything. And it's very sad because we want to believe that people's horrifying stories change stuff.And I think it does and to, and I think it can. . But I think a lot of the times it actually ends up being counterproductive because the cults, the cult leaders are anticipating that they've already done a lot of work to build a firewall against that particular human thing of storytelling to promote change.You know, I no better example than like Martin Luther King Jr. Right. You know, told amazing stories, was a great orator. Not the per, not a perfect person, but someone who told a lot of great stories and who was, showed the impact. And we like to [00:18:00] pretend that that changed the church and up more positive direction.But did it, I mean, I, I mean, what, what tangible, measurable things can we point to that were changed within church culture? I'm not talking about American culture in general. There was great things that came outta the Civil Rights Movement. What did the church really change? Not a lot. It just changed their verbiage, which they always changed their verbiage.But, but systemically what really changed. So if you want horrible stories, I can give them, but that's why I'm hesitant to a lot of the time is cuz I'm not sure it's actually that helpful. De'Vannon: What you said is, look, you said what you said . Okay. Did I accept that when I think of Martin Luther King or any of the civil rights, I never, ever think about the church, you know, except for the fact that the church stood silently by why people were murdered in the streets and stuff like that, you know?You know. [00:19:00] How's it say that? Well, John: and, and I mean, I mean, even Evangelicals hated Martin Luther King Jr. They called him a thug. They. There, there's a letter from the guy who wrote the Left Behind books. There's a letter from him to Wheaton College because they had a memorial service after King was shot.And he said, how could you celebrate the life of this man? They didn't just passively like, not like m l K, they hated him. Jerry Falwell hated Martin Luther King Jr. Because he was for segregation. So like, and again, like I, I, you know, I know this is an intense topic to go to right off the bat, , but, but I just think, I think we, I think sometimes those of us who have left the church think if we just tell enough stories of how bad we've been hurt, Christians will change.They don't give a shit. They don't, and it's, and some of it's not even their fault. A lot of the followers have been brainwashed to not give a shit. And [00:20:00] so the, the best hope is we can, with our stories, what we can do is help people who have already left know that they're not alone. Which is huge and that's really important work and people who are looking for a way out might find the way out.But if you're talking about systemically changing what cult leaders are gonna do it, it ain't gonna do shit. De'Vannon: Right. I concur. So, you know, that's why like in my ministry, man, I am preaching not to church people, but the people who have already been hurt or people who, who know people and love people who have been hurt because people don't go to church for the betterment of humanity.People go to church for entirely selfish reasons, to keep themselves outta hell, to work out their own self, soul, salvation, whatever it is. They're going there to get their blessing, their miracle. They're come up, they're not going there cuz they give a fuck about you. And then so yeah, I concur. There is no talking to them hardheaded people.Like if they're setting up there every god damn Sunday or whatever, they're not gonna be able to hear us [00:21:00] because they're constantly being re indoctrinated and re hypnotized by the big man up on stage or we god damn week. or the woman or the who of the fuck ever twirling about. So yeah, they're a lost cause shot of a miracle.John: Yeah. I, or also just explaining systemically what happens, you know, if you, if you're able to generalize it more than just a specific person, like one person's story and you can show them the patterns. You know, I used to be a cult leader, you know, I studied to be a pastor. I got out, I was hardheaded then.But the reason I got out was not because I heard a story that was finally, you know, enough, it was cuz I kept seeing the same thing over and over again. And I was like, this is just how a cult operates. And I was in denial about it. So I think cult leaders, the way you do reach them is say, don't you know what you're doing?Like, you know? Right. And if you actually focus the conversation on that and not just the extreme cases of bad things that happen, but actually point [00:22:00] to like the pattern. Like, okay, so do you have control over your congregation? . Like, that's a great question to ask a pastor because they'll, they'll struggle.They cannot give a yes or no que answer to it. But just be like, do you have control over your congregation? And you'll it then watch how they react. Cuz you'll see some interesting things. . You De'Vannon: can also ask 'em to apologize for something and get that same reaction cuz those bastards won't say they're sorry.And so, so now that you're speaking about control, I wanted to talk about, so y'all, his book, the called of Christianity is broken down into three succulent sections. The first one is called control. The section one is the sexual, the sec, second one is called Contained. Clearly I need to gimme some dick.Where the fuck did that come from? And the third one is called Convert. And you'll always, whenever you hear John's talk, he'll always say, control, contain, convert, control, contain, convert. And so, and that's how his book is broken down. And if I may, I'm gonna [00:23:00] read a little sniff it. That kind of echoes what you were just saying.And Howard, I had already taken down in my notes. Now, this is John speaking y'all, and he's saying, I don't recant anything in this letter. I said, holding back tears. I was feeling tired, dressed down, confused and hurt, yet unwilling to go again. So what I knew to be true, the truth was I had spent three hours in a boardroom that reminded me of the one I had seen in The Apprentice.I want you to tell us what the hell was going on here and why were you crying. . John: So yeah, so this is the first chapter of the book, and this is kind of, I, I, you know, my, my rose bud, my whatever, my my or villain or hero origin story, depending on how you look at it. So I was 16 years old going to a pretty stuffy church Presbyterian church, p c a for whoever that means [00:24:00]something to suit and tie church.And I was, I was angsty, you know, at the same time I was also in a punk band. I had grown out my hair. I was still very Christian, like, very conservative Christian, in fact. But I, you know, was around people who, you know, I, I, I was ex, I was becoming an adult, right? Like in as much as a teenager does.And the church was just ridiculous. And so, like, I, I had this whole rigamarole of, of beef with the, the leadership of the church. So I sent a letter. to email. I emailed the pastor and said, here are my problems with this church. And I had broken it into four sections of just like, they don't respect the youth of this church.They have a bad view of music. That was important to me cuz they were like, they had this whole, like, contemporary music is evil. They were like one of those. And [00:25:00] then they there were a couple other things. Oh, they, the way they hated Catholics actually really bothered me. The way they talked about Catholics was very not okay in my opinion.And then basically I'd told them I would never invite a friend to church here. Like I would never, like, do y'all want to actually save people? Because I would never invite. Yeah. So I wrote this whole long letter, sent it to the pastor. He forwarded it to the elders. I told my dad afterwards about it and my dad and dad was like, can I read it?And I was like, sure. I signed it to him. He is like, all right, proud of you. This is good stuff. . And so I told my parents that I wanted to face the elders alone. So we would go to their session room, which was a long wooden table, had like chairs on all around it. And then on the wall it had pictures of Martin Luther.It had Swingley and it had John Calvin. And then it had like these bookshelves that [00:26:00] were just like full of like reformation propaganda. And so it's me and the three elders I knew the most. And then for, for three hours they talked to me about how my long hair was sinful, which was the first time like, I thought, only crazy churches believe that, right?And they were like, no, you're trying to look like the world with your hair. And I was like, what? And then they talked about my best friend who dressed in all black, like how, you know, they're dressing in all black. Same friend was in the band with me and was just like, said, they look like the world.Talk to me about how I was the one who was disrespecting them. They weren't disrespectful of you, of youth. I was disrespectful to them and that yeah, that basically I, and, and I didn't confront them correctly. I shouldn't have written a letter. When you have a problem with someone, you go and confront them, and then if they don't listen, you bring another, you [00:27:00] know, the whole Matthew 18 dumb ass shit.And so I just, I, I was a wreck and so I cried. Eventually my dad came in, and that's the cool part of the story. My dad comes in and he goes, what happened? And, well, no, my dad comes in and actually the first things outta his mouth was who was yelling at my son. And it was a, it was a good moment for me and my dad.Our, our relationship only got stronger after that moment. then they started talking about the hair and stuff. Then my dad goes, look behind you. And there's like, you know, his wingy with his long beard and stuff, and he is like, and my dad goes, the person who sh what? I can't even remember the terminology anymore.The person who led me to the Lord, that's how they talk. The person who led me to the Lord had long hair. Like, what are you talking about? You know? and so it kind of got tense and then yeah, at the end I say I don't recant, which was a paraphrase of what [00:28:00] Martin Luther said when he was brought before, Catholics and, and excommunicated.cuz I thought that would be an extra sting of, since they idolize this man so much. that was the first time I switched from being a blind follower. I stayed a Christian for many years after that, but I stopped blindly following what church leaders say that day. De'Vannon: I like that whole recant thing.Like I was saying earlier that you said what? You said , I'm might, I might hit a bitch with that one day I recant, not it. John: Lost the fuck out. Yeah. It, it's a little dramatic. Well, because they, well, one of the elders said like, do you, do you have like, I want to give you the last word. Is there anything you wanna say?Because I could tell by the look on their face, they felt like they did something good. They felt like they did a good job of putting me back on the right path. [00:29:00] And I was like, guys, y'all just proved everything I said. Like, I, why would I recant anything? and they were, they were mad frankly. They were mad.De'Vannon: They always are. They, they were that way with Lakewood, you know, you know, when they, when the ki when the, when the kids choir director and the adult choir director were firing me from all aspects of volunteering for not being straight. Despite the, despite, aside from the fact they would call me in the office and question who I'm dating and stuff like that, trying to get all into who I'm fucking and whatnot.Well, I mean, we can't even fuck even doing all that. Just, you know, or hold hands or shit, I guess, whatever their rules were, you know? Mm-hmm. , when they offered me their conversion therapy package in order to stay and to be demoted, quote unquote, to an usher from being on, you know, camera and television and stuff in the more public ministries, and I got up to walk the fuck out, they were so confused, you know, that I didn't accept their conversion [00:30:00] therapy package.And they, when they were talking to me, they felt like they, they, they, they felt like I had hurt them and offended them. You know? Like, how could you, how could you hang out with gay people when you're not here, ? John: Yeah. I mean, when you, when you think, when you, you, when you think you're divinely appointed by God people aren't supposed to argue with you.And if they do, they're spo. If someone argues with you, they're arguing with the Lord. I mean, there's some who would never say, no, no, no, no, no. Like it's, it's, I don't, I don't have that kind of authority, blah, blah, blah. But I'm like, but in practice, like, I mean, this is what we keep agreeing to by showing up to church is that you're divinely appointed by God to do whatever the hell you wanna do, frankly And so, I, I don't know. I mean, it's, it's, but it's so sad, right? It's so sad that it happens to not only, you know, [00:31:00] adults or like people who've put a lot of work into the church. it happens to very vulnerable people. It happens like in my case, to a child. I mean, I was 16 years old and I had grown ass men ripping me a new one because I just challenged their bad behavior.I mean, this is what we were working with. Imagine if I was like a woman when I did that, or like, You know, or, or like, you know, not, not white, you know? yeah, like, I, I, I mean, it's just horrifying, right? It's, it's all about once you deviate from, the, the program, I mean, you're gonna, you're gonna experience some, some shaming at minimum.De'Vannon: Hmm. Some shaming in some shade. Yeah. Especially white men, they don't like to be told what to do and, and that they're wrong. They're accustomed to stepping on all the little brown people and stuff like that. But for the record, my brother, I think you got plenty of soul. You are always invited for the motherfucking cookout.any damn [00:32:00] day about to be crawfish season down here. Come stay with me. I got room in my house. I'll get you some soul food and fattening you up a little bit. , John: man, I miss soul food. You know, there's obviously a lot of great stuff here in Atlanta, but now I'm vegan, so like, so much of it is like off the table for me now.It's very sad. De'Vannon: So that means no crawfishes for you. Well, vegan is not. Yeah. There's no dairy in that, right? There's no dairy in, yeah, video1579991175: but John: it's a, it, it's an animal though. De'Vannon: You can't eat any animals either. John: Okay. I'm gonna have no animal, no dairy, some vegan De'Vannon: seafood shit for you. John: So some collards though. I can have some collards, which is good.You know, I De'Vannon: grow mustard greens. I got them in the backyard right now. Ooh. Okay. I cut you a pot. John: Let's goDe'Vannon: So the section called contain mm-hmm. march. Stuck out to me. In, in, in here. So I have long loathed Christian people for this fake oppression and things like that. Like what you mentioned earlier. We're gonna talk about [00:33:00] the myth of Chris and Daria. Mm-hmm. , after we talk about this whole people not wanting to make cake for the gaze.Bullshit. I like the way you said it. I'm gonna read a little ex sweeped as bugs bunnies, , sometimes racist ass would. Say he can't help how Disney dressed him. Sometimes he was in drag, sometimes he was talking to people in blackface. But there's a whole thing out there on YouTube about, you know, Disney and the different cartoons, racism.Go look it up cuz unfortunately Bugsy was in there too. So Romans 12 versus 20 through 21. This is from the book, says to the contrary, if your enemy is hangry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink For Baso doing, he will heap pointing cold on his head. So do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.John goes on to say, perceiving gay folks as enemies is [00:34:00] problematic in and of itself, but even if you do, I fail to see how refusing to give people some cake. Cake, cake, cake, cake scores you any brownie points for the God.John: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it, it is wild, right? Like that's, it's, it's, it's just, and it shows the contrary, like there's an evangelical message of we need to serve all people. And then there's another message that they're saying at the same time is like, but not if, I'm like, well, if there's a but not if, then the first thing doesn't make any sense.De'Vannon: And Jesus is saying, it is your most basic bitch Christian level. You gotta feed a bitch. You know, two people can be in a relationship and on the verge of divorce. I mean, if a pot of food is cooking, you, you can at least share that. I mean, yeah. Nevertheless, you've been commanded to do so. You're not supposed to leave people starving and without clothing.No matter how much you [00:35:00] disdain them, you're supposed to piss on them if they're on fire. It's stuff like that, no matter how much you don't want to mm-hmm. . So you conservative assholes out there when you don't wanna make me a cake because I walked in with eyeshadow on, just know. You're written of in the scriptures.You hateful ho. Yeah. Now then this myth of oppression, like you talked about earlier. Christians are a bunch of big fucking Karens running around something like. The God the world is against them. The moment they can't stop. I don't know, a trans athlete from participating in sports, then, oh my God, I'm being silenced.My rights are not being heard. I'm being so persecuted. Bitch, no one's coming after you. You just got told no for trying to come after somebody else. No one actually attacked you. . Mm-hmm. . I can't say anything more about this. So tell us who the hell, Chris. Chris and Aria . John: If, if memory serves me, I was telling you before we started recording, I, I wrote this [00:36:00]book a while ago, so I'm like, I don't actually remember all, everything, but the, that's the, the couple that supposedly got saved early on and, and really it was all about Chastity.Like they were like this couple that was, you know, like, oh, chastity is so great. and then because they're seeking to convert others. I think according to the story, it's Rome supposedly who throws a, i I think one gets fed to a lion, the other gets fed, burned at the stake, whatever. It's a pretty classic version of just early church persecution.There's a million different stories like this of just like different Christian heroes who were early Christians who, you know got converted and, and then they, you know like start, started bolstering the movement and Rome doesn't like it, so they killed them. 90% of those stories aren't true. They never happened.They were made up. It was just, it was just made [00:37:00] up. I mean, I really don't know what else to say about it. It's just, it's unverified. There were a few that happened and there was also some early Jewish persecution in that same time. That was absolutely happening. , but Jewish Christians, which was what they were at first did that kind of lumped their Jewish Christ Christendom beliefs with other sex of Judaism that were actually being persecuted.And so it just became this kind of whole glob of like of myth of saying that like, oh, if the people find out you're Christian, they'll wanna kill you for it. And that bread, like this whole martyrdom complex which is very similar obviously to a Messiah complex. And so yeah, it's just, it just, there's a lot of stories like that that, you know, you, you're free to fact check.Never happened. But they're told from the pulpit they're, you know, they're told the old, you'll hear a mirror million [00:38:00] different versions of basically like they were singing songs while they were being burned alive. They were reciting scripture while they were being burned alive. Didn't happen.It just wasn't very common. Occasionally there was some mob violence that was killing Christians, but it just wasn't a common thing. De'Vannon: I can't believe that the band was really playing as the Titanic ship went down either . But if that's what might not have, well, if that's what Rose wanna say, then we'll have to believe Rose or what the fuck ever.I want that diamond bitch, you know? . Okay, . So basically the Christian Church is a bunch of drama queens and stuff like that. And I, I, I don't know, you know what I want you to talk about, like, people who leave the [00:39:00] church and like blame themselves or haven't been duped by them because I went through that for like a really long time. , you know, it's like I was mad at myself, as they say, for buying this bullshit. True. I, looking back on it now, with a healthy mind, I was vulnerable.They took advantage of me, but I did not think that way for a many, many years. It's like, why was I so stupid? Why did I let them do that? You know, there's a grieving that happened in some, some self-loathing that came in there on me.John: Well, let me tell you a story. Yesterday I was driving to the grocery store and I saw someone on the side of the road that had a sign that said, Jesus saves. And I got outta my car and I went and talked to them. After about 30 minutes, I realized this was the most beautiful person I ever met. And guess what?The story I just told you is not. [00:40:00] So no . Not that I've just made that up. I didn't go to the grocery store yesterday. Oh. So the thing got me yo , I got, I got everybody. And that's why you shouldn't feel duped. We trust, that's what we do as humans. When someone's put, when something's put in a story form, we're compelled by what they're saying.That doesn't make anyone stupid. That makes us have empathy. That makes us like beautiful people. We don't need to blame ourselves. We need to blame people who take advantage of that. Now, I was able to just tell you I was lying and no harm is really done right. , we gotta now, but there might be a listener who goes, oh, I can't trust this guy.If he's able to lie that good, you know, fine. Don't. But the thing is, churches have built an entire system that took the storytelling, the beautiful storytelling of Judaism and just wrecked it for their own purposes. and added, took away, changed, edited [00:41:00] the story. You are not stupid for wanting to believe in a story that, that, that, that's just the thing you have to know.There's no, there's no stupidity. It's all on them . It's all on them to bear the responsibility of, of having power, of having and kind of a monopoly on redemption narratives. I mean, they've kind of created this universe literally where the, they, they have a redemptive narrative that is attributed to them.They should wield that power carefully, and they don't. So no. Anyone who gets caught up in believing it, don't blame yourself for that. That's, you're a human being. Don't blame yourself for very normal human things to do. And don't blame other people who are still believing it. understand where they're coming from.It does take work. It's not easy. I don't have a [00:42:00] magic bullet solution, but I just think being aware of why you fell for it is important. Cuz most people didn't fall for it for evil reasons. They usually fell for it for really, really good, important reasons. Mm-hmm. . De'Vannon: So a another quote that you say from your book, it's concerning these foolish people.You say, John says, y'all the claim that they are in a relationship with Christ, that their churches are their families and that they love sinners, but hate sin and that divine beauty is interwoven through all of it. John says, cool story bro. Doesn't mean you're on a cult. . John: Yeah. Well, and it's true. It's just like there's, there's a, there's an element of family that, that they pretend to provide.and that's fine. And sometimes it, it's not all pretend. Sometimes they do some really important things for each other. I don't see why that's intention with the idea that they're a [00:43:00] cult though. I, I, I think, I think you can do good things while being in a cult. I just think cults are bad things. De'Vannon: Just don't drink the Kool-Aid bitches.I'm just saying. Pour it upon the ground and run the fuck away. So then the final run, run, run, run for is run. So the final section called Convert. Hmm. I thought this was such a confident statement for you, for you to write, and I just, I'm just like reading it cause we wanna talk about hell and whether or not you believe it's real, because one of his chapters is I believe it's called a, a yeah, it's called a made up thing called Hell.Y'all. John is the most titillating, tantalizing, thought provoking. This makes you wanna dive into them like some good pussy or some good pussy. Chapter titles. I mean, the, the, the, the, the, I'm gonna read some of 'em. Slave Segregation, sorry. Faux wait. Merit faux [00:44:00] Meritocracy with a side of the Theocratic Tyranny.Selective History, the Myth of Oppression. Made of thing. Call held superficial and super fiscal. You know, the, the, the, just the Fuckings chapter Titles are art. You know what it's gonna be about. And, you know, shit's gonna be edgy and fresh and everything that, that, you know, that we need right now. And so, whew, chapter ta fucking chapter titles gave me life.So, so from, from, yeah. The John: chapter titles are better than the book. So , De'Vannon: that right there is exactly what I'm gonna read now. You exude so much fucking confidence because of the way you're able to slay yourself and kind of make fun of yourself, but then not really, you know, you have to have like the biggest pp or just not even care because you, you just, you're just so like authentically you and you're so like, relaxed about it.Y'all, this is what John says about himself growing up. He says, I doubt [00:45:00] I am the only one to have grown up dabbling in mature discussion topic. It is way too. Wait, what the fuck? Wait, wait. Lemme say that again. I doubt I'm the only one that have grown up dabbling, mature discussion topics way too young to remember being younger than 10 and debating with my cousins over suspicion about who goes to hell.Young is honestly, I'm sure of any philosophers, theologians, our professional commentators, communicators have been around or had been around for this adolescent think tank vomit, would escape from their mouths quicker than corrections even. So good for us for trying to figure out life's deepest questions.And I thought, how, how? Just confident, you know, just to, just to be able to look back on yourself and laugh without being negatively critical. You know, like, I can't believe I thought or did that way. Ha ha ha, ha ha. But here I [00:46:00] am today, so. Can you speak to us about that sort of self-confidence? Where did you get that from?How are you able to look back and say, my God, you know, I was a mess, but not attack yourself. You know, just appreciate where you were then while taking in where you are now. Make jokes about it and just go on swinging your big dick through life, . John: So how do you Well, I was gonna say, I was gonna say the large penis is most of itBut I, no, I think it's so here's the thing. Truth be told, most of my friends would not describe me as confident. Writing provides a, allows me to be the best version of myself. And so what comes across in my writing as confidence is probably what I want to be. It's not always what I am. [00:47:00] The other answer I'll give is therapy.I, I punish and it used to be worse. So I've come a long way, but I punish myself for some of who I was. But I had a therapist. Tell me once how many years is enough to punish you for what you did? On very different things, you know? I mean, I have a, I have a lot of shame about all sorts of things I wish I had done differently in life.But what's, but what's my sentence, right? Like, what, what, what, how long do I have to negatively talk about who I was before? It's enough, before enough time has passed, before I've given myself enough lashes, so to speak. Like, what's the number? Put a number to it. And when she said that to me, it kind of, just reshaped how I thought about things.I'm like, there really isn't anything [00:48:00] stopping me from being the person who I want to be. So that's a little deeper answer than that little anecdote about me talking to my cousins about hell . It was. But I think I, I appreciate you seeing that that that is something actively working on as we speak, and something I want to get better at is, and it's not so much self-confidence, although I, I, I, I, I know I'm witty and I, you know, I, there's just certain personality traits I know about myself.But I wanna love myself and I haven't figured it out yet, but I used to not even want to. And that's the, the biggest change that happened in my life is when I, not, not when I woke up one day and started loving myself, but when I woke up one day and said, loving myself should be a goal. because for a long time it wasn't even a goal, and I was indoctrinated to believe that it would actually steer me away from heaven or my loved ones, or [00:49:00] love in general.If I tried to love myself, I would become selfish. I would become sinful. I would become self-serving because the only way, proper way to love yourself would be to love God. I don't agree with that anymore. I, I think that I th first off, there's a trope going around that's been going around for a while, that you have to love yourself before you can love other people.Bullshit. I'm calling bullshit on it. You can love people so deeply while you hate yourself. You can, you can have all sorts of love. The, the, the, the truth behind that trope is it will not be sustained. You can't sustain love for other people if you're not actively practicing love with yourself.Because love is a practice. It's not just like a thing, you can't help. It takes work, it takes choices. It does take feelings, but it takes controlled [00:50:00] feelings. It takes managed feelings. And for most people it takes some therapy. And therapy can look different for different people. It doesn't have to be sitting on a couch.You know, I, I used to do activity therapy with my therapist going on walks. You know there's all sorts of things you can do for you, and no one's gonna know what you need more than you. But yeah, I, when I look back at my past self, I do feel a lot of shame. But the fact that my goal is to not makes all the difference in the.De'Vannon: Well, I hope you overcome all of that. And I just, there no, remember Jesus being on the cross where I think he had a murder on one hand and a thief on the other? And you know, the Lord says the only sin he won't forgive you for is if you blaspheme the Holy Ghost, which is not something really easy to do.I don't think most people even know what the fuck that means. And so that doesn't mean that as a human we don't have to work through, you know, shame and [00:51:00] guilt. But, you know, I just always like to remind people, you know, and you of that, you know, all things are forgiven no matter what, you know, you know, according to the word of, of Jesus and his work on the cross.So this means a murdering people, oh God, fuck y'all. I'm not saying go out and slice people down, just thinking, go run to the church and ask for forgiveness. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying like, if you're sitting in jail somewhere and you done done it and it's been 20 years and you killed whatever person, Okay, that's over.Now, you know, you have a path forward, but Jesus does require us to tell the truth about everything, you know, to make whatever amends we can to people realistically, you know, and safely, you know, if the person's around, he wants us to as, as, as he says, leave our gift at the altar and go get right with the person.And not to let the sun go down on our anger. But there is always redemption. There is always grace, is grace is sufficient for us. No matter what you have done, you just don't blast being the Holy Ghost. Everything else. It's fine. I regret having sold so many god damn narcotics to people who I [00:52:00]could tell were too, were so weak-willed that I could bend them, you know, to, to my, to my desire.You know, sometimes I think about that, but you know what? It's over. I don't sell drugs anymore. I hate the fact that I prayed on them in their vulnerabilities. You know, to make myself feel good. That's John: such a big one. Can, can I focus on two things real quick? Whatever the hell you want. Okay. Okay. Because pr preying on vulnerabilities is a big part of my shame too.Hmm. And it's really hard because I grew up in a cult that taught me how to pray on people's vulnerabilities. Subtly, not like explicitly, but just being in that environment and all of that. So that's a hard, hard thing. So good on ya. For, for, you're correct. I mean, it's something you can't change.It's not, you know, the damage is done. And you do have to accept that that was a u that [00:53:00]doesn't exist anymore or even more accurately. That's a u that you've done work to and make sure that you're not prey on vulnerable people anymore. And whatever small bit of you that was either naturally good at it or indoctrinated to be good at preying on other people, if you're able to change that about yourself, you are so much better off than so many people who are in the cult who cannot turn that off and have no mechanism to turn that off.The second thing is I don't think you need Jesus for that forgiveness and grace personally. I don't wanna take it away from anyone . That's not, that's not my personality. I'm like, if that, if that, but I just, I would, I would be amiss and offbrand if I didn't if I didn't say you do not need Jesus to have grace.You need yourself to give grace to yourself. Forgiveness is something you can offer yourself to. And [00:54:00] so I, I just, I, I have to get that in there of like, Jesus is a cool archetype, is a cool story, is a cool whatever for it, but you don't need it. And if it's too triggering for you, walk the fuck away.Get the fuck out of there. You don't need it. De'Vannon: I say both because even with Jesus offering all, even when Jesus offering all the forgiveness in the world, if a person cannot accept it or cannot conceptualize that as a reality, then it, it'll never, even though they have it, it won't be in their reality. So to them it won't exist.And so I, I hear you on the self-work part of it. I throw Jesus in there. John doesn't, why, why don't you, why don't you feel like, so do you think, do you, do you think Jesus is more of like a story if he was like a cool guy, do you not believe that he is the son of God? Oh, he is not John: Well, and I'll say why he is not First off, Jesus is only as much God as you and I are.In my [00:55:00] opinion is how I would spin that if I wanted to. Son of God was coined by Paul. Jesus never said he was a son of God. He does make that like illusion where in, in John where he says like I am the father or whatever. Son of God is specifically a Greek term that Paul was using because that was a more familiar Greek idea.Judaism did not have the idea of a son of God. The Jewish understanding of Messiah was not supposed to be a God. It was supposed to be an enlightened human being. So those are just things that developed later. So I just, that terminology doesn't resonate in my worldview. Again, I'm not here to necessarily dog on people's personal beliefs, at least of all yours.But, but I, I more just want to make that clear distinction that it's like what I like about Jesus. Is what's reported about him through a very biased lens, , and through like a very [00:56:00] like developed and evolved narrative, the redemption narrative that we've landed on with Jesus is incredibly powerful, and I think a beautiful story that is probably more beautiful than any other story in literature I can think of.And there might be some sort of value that you can attach to it. I just don't think you need to worship Jesus to get anything De'Vannon: interesting. Oh, I don't take any of this personal, I'm always one thing about Christianity in the, in the, in the, the pursuit of spirituality. In my humility, I guess it might not be too humble for me to call myself humble, but you know, like , that my fucking humility, my fucking god damn humility, I, I understand that not everything is known about the approach to God, the approach to the trinity.You know, I don't believe that I have all the answers and I have enough sense to know anything that I think could be wrong, except for in the case that I've had, like [00:57:00] something miraculous happen, like a dream, a vision, an angelic appearance, you know, a touch by the Holy Ghost, you know, or something like that, you know?Mm-hmm. , my personal experiences, you know, you know, are non-negotiable to me, but my understanding of word of, of what's written absolutely negoti because you know, as I've gotten more into it in trying to learn the original Bible languages and the way they were written in the cultural influence and stuff like that, I've had something like, wow moments.Like, what the fuck? Now, when I was over in the Middle East last year, you know, I was shocked to learn that, you know, where was I at? I was in the United Arab Emirates. You had an Egyptian tour guide and stuff like that, and he was all like taking us all these moss and stuff. He was like, , we don't believe that Messiah has come, you know?Mm-hmm. at all. They're, they're like, Jesus was cool, and they're all about worshiping God. They believe Allah and God are like the same to them, but they're like, N Jesus just one of the other enlightened ones, but they're very dedicated to their, to [00:58:00] God and everything like that. I feel like more dedicated than Christians are, and they're more real about it and shit like that.You know, if I, you know, I could, I could easily fit into, into, you know, the Arabic culture over there. So I'm not surprised to hear you say that you don't necessarily think Jesus is the son of God, because those people don't either. I, I choose to believe that they're massive prosperity comes from their devotion to who they believe in and the way that they treat each other.Mm-hmm. so, so So, so what you're saying is based on what you read and researched Son of God, and Jesus always called himself the son of man according to what I read. You know, but, but I've never, I've never what considered what you've said before, that someone else called him Son of God, you know, he never called himself a Christian.You know, anything like that. Or as you put it, John, you say, every man before Jesus came up with rules, Jesus got rid of him. And then every man after [00:59:00] him added more rules. Mm-hmm. . So people, yeah, people tend to like to add shit. I quote you on that from time to time on my show, I'll be like, John Vanier said this, and soJohn: Yeah. Well, and to be very clear, I, I, I admire and even dare say I'm am inspired by Jesus. But I just, I just, the only, the only thing when it comes to the practical side of things is just anytime my, like my alarm bells go off, when there's a direct tie between, you need Jesus. . That's just like a big red flag to me.Not because some people might need Jesus actually, like personally in their own personal life, it might enrich it, it might give them a spirituality. I like to think of it as a template. It gives them like a template for their spirituality. That's great. But the second it's pe all people need Jesus.Then I'm like, fuck no. I'm like, , get, get that, get that outta my face. Because that is, [01:00:00] in my opinion, going back to the artwork. That's what can create that like hierarchy is just creating that need for Jesus. De'Vannon: Yeah, and that's another thing. I have enough goddamn fucking humility to, to realize that not everybody's going to be a follower of.I know that, you know, as I, as I say, from time to time, I'll hang out with somebody who, who sucks Satan's dick, as long as they're not trying to personally hurt me, because not everybody's gonna be a Christian. Mm-hmm. or be a follower. I hate, I hate the word Christian. So do you feel the same way about like God and the Holy Spirit?Like in terms of non deifying them? John: Woo. Man, once you open up the Trinity, that's a whole freaking new, that's a universe. I'll know if you, if you read that after, after the prologue of, of my book. But I, I believe it's cut off into three sections. Jesus was awesome. God might be [01:01:00] great, and the Holy Spirit haunts me.And the, the God might be great is kind of a, a nod to Christopher Hitchens, who's one of my favorite authors who wrote God is Not Great. Because my, my answer to him is, well, he might be. , but probably not. You know, it's kind of like, yeah, the, I, I, I know what you're saying, but you know, I also understand that most people, for most of history, I think it's a very arrogant stance to to act like the idea of God is silly.I think that's a pretty arrogant stance to have. So it's not one I take when I say the Holy Spirit haunts me. There are spiritual experiences, like you said, for you, they're non-negotiable, right? Like you have these experiences that define your life. I've had those myself. Here's the thing, they are negotiable for me.And I would love to just say this was all in my head. I [01:02:00] can't, I can't know that , but I would love to be able to say that. So for me, I, it's a little different because Jesus, the character of Jesus is the one that's especially in evangelicalism, but in Christianity as a whole, is the one who's dare I say, name has been taken in vain.The most you know, as far as like using him as a character, using him in a very manipulative way. When you get to the Holy Spirit, like you can get really culty really quick when you start talking about like Pentecostals and like, you know, just some of the hooping and the hollering and God told me this, so it must be true that that stuff is yikes.But the concept of God is kind of, has no meaning because the word God means so many different things to so many, to the, to each individual we imagine him that that's like in the, in the proper sense, we imagine him. So maybe less dangerous than, [01:03:00] than. You know, saying you need God is probably less dangerous than saying you need Jesus, but I'd prefer you to say neither, you know and you need the Holy Spirit might be even more dangerous, but it's just probably rarer, you know?But yeah, I don't know if those are just initial thoughts. Again, because, because I'm not an atheist. I don't, I don't claim to be, but I think atheists get a lot of shit because people think they're crazy. And I'm like, well, they're certainly not crazy. I mean, they're the most rational of all of us.They, they're just, you know, I, I just, I just don't identify with it. But I, all of that to say I just love all people and I don't want people to feel like they have to go through a very narrow lens in order to receive love, forgiveness, whatever they want to receive in life. They don't need Jesus for that.They don't need God for that. They don't need the Holy Spirit for. De'Vannon: why.you say you feel like you're, like, what I would call a, like an indisputable encounter with God that I [01:04:00] had. I find it non-negotiable. You said you would like yours to be negotiable. Mm-hmm. , why do you say you would like to be, or you like still fighting against your, the church or your experience?So if God approached you personally, what you're, what I'm hearing you say is that, you know, it's really not negotiable, but you would like it to be. John: Why? I know it's not negotiable for you and I know it's not negotiable for most people. It is negotiable for me. How do you the, the, the thing? Yeah. Well, I don't, most of the time cuz I, I got other shit I gotta doThink about it. But no, I, I, you know, I, I had, I had a, I have a conversion story. I, I felt the presence of God or Jesus or whatever I, I assume as much as anyone. I mean, right? Like I went and studied to be a pastor, like clearly it meant something. I don't think I was just a full on narcissist who was like, oh, I'm gonna be the voice of God, like, da da da da da.Like, I don't, I really don't think, I think it was motivated. [01:05:00] Pretty hol wholesomely and like . I thought it was a, I prayed a lot. I prayed more than anybody I knew, you know? Like, I'm like, surely this was all real, right? I don't know. I was 11. What the fuck do you know, at 11? Like, I'm, I'm like, there, there's, and what do you know when you've been indoctrinated for over a decade?That when you feel certain things, it's definitely this. Oh, like, I'm like, you know, there's like, there's placebos, there's, there's all sorts of things we know about what we can do with our own brain. Then I'm like, I'm not gonna say it was definitely this, or definitely that. I don't know, and I probably never will know, but I'm not gonna live my life based on those experiences because that is that's cheating myself out of a very full life.De'Vannon: Okay, I see what you're saying. What you're saying is due to, you haven't been such a young Impressional age when you went through everything, you don't know if that's like some sort of P t s D, some sort John: of, or, [01:06:00] or even in adult life, you know, like there, I had spiritual moments, if you wanna call 'em that, like an adult life, you know, I was a worship leader.I, I remember very vividly sometimes I was leading worship and like, would be struck with something that felt otherworldly. The whole g the whole gauntlet, whatever a Christian can tell you about their experiences with Jesus, I'll see you one and I'll raise you one, you know, but but I just, I'm just like, but I'm not gonna pretend that because I felt like it was something and I was told to feel like it was something that, it definitely was that thing.I, I just, I wanna, I wanna have a little more humility than that and have a little more understanding of alternative worldviews. De'Vannon: I think churches should start paying all of us reparation checks, s for all this motherfucking mental health shit that we have. So yeah, the checks need to start. The money needs to start flowing the other fucking way away from these churches and

Main Idea: Let Christ's Living Water Overflow Into a Ripe Harvest Text: John 4:27–42 Outline: 1) A Potent Seed (vv. 27–30) 2) A Ripe Harvest (vv. 31–38) 3) A Fruitful Bounty (vv. 39–42)

Welcome to my locavore podcast - I'm Roz White and this is the podcast where we dig deep into the stories behind the hundreds of locally sourced, artisan, bespoke and innovative products available to you in one location at White's IGA on the Sunshine Coast.Our locavore program was officially launched in 2013 to showcase and highlight to our customers, where their food and goodies come from and help connect them to the families who create it.Imagine a valley, nestled in the Noosa hinterland that is lined with hops and parted by a stream of crystal-clear water. When the heavens open, the stream breaks its banks and washes through the hops imparting their beautiful flavours to create what we now know as, Hop Valley H2O.These words from Heads of Noosa, a 100% Australian owned brewery based in the beautiful shire of Noosa, represent the sheer innovative thinking behind a carefully handcrafter brewed beverage which can be always enjoyed, is incredibly versatile and is beautifully refreshing…… It is an Australian first, hop infused sparkling water that contains zero sugar and zero alcohol. I am joined by co-founder Craig Masterton and Head of Sales, John Cranley to tell us all about it, welcome gentlemen.Become A Locavore Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with Dawn Brodey and Brian Forrest, talking about the various film versions of “Frankenstein” and “Dracula.”Dawn gave me 4.5 films to revisit: The 1931 version of Frankenstein, Frankenweenie (the feature and the short), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Young Frankenstein.Meanwhile, Brian assigned me the original Nosferatu, the 1931 Dracula, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, Dracula in Istanbul and Bram Stoker's Dracula. LINKSDawn's podcast (HILF): http://dawnbrodey.com/ - showsBrian's Blog and Vlog, Toothpickings: https://toothpickings.medium.com/ A Free Film Book for You: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12Another Free Film Book: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6Frankenstein (1931) Trailer: https://youtu.be/BN8K-4osNb0Frankenweenie Trailer: https://youtu.be/29vIJQohUWEMary Shelley's Frankenstein (Trailer): https://youtu.be/GFaY7r73BIsYoung Frankenstein (Trailer): https://youtu.be/mOPTriLG5cUNosferatu (Complete Film): https://youtu.be/dCT1YUtNOA8Dracula (1931) Trailer: https://youtu.be/VoaMw91MC9kAbbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (Trailer): https://youtu.be/j6l8auIACycHorror of Dracula (Trailer): https://youtu.be/ZTbY0BgIRMkBram Stoker's Dracula (Trailer): https://youtu.be/fgFPIh5mvNcDracula In Istanbul: https://youtu.be/G7tAWcm3EX0Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/Eli Marks Website: https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/Albert's Bridge Books Website: https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcastDawn and Brian TRANSCRIPT John: [00:00:00] Before we dive into the assignment you gave me—which was to watch stuff I hadn't seen and also rewatch stuff I had seen to get a better idea of who's done a good job of adapting these books—let's just jump in and talk a little bit about your area of expertise and why you have it. So, I'm going to start with you, Brian. I was very surprised after working with you a while to find out that you had a whole vampire subset in your life. Brian: A problem, you can call it a problem. It's fine. John: Okay. What is the problem and where did it come from? Brian: I was just vaguely interested in vampires for a while. When I was in my screenwriting days, someone had encouraged me to do a feature length comedy about vampires, and that led me to do a lot of reading. And then I just kind of put it aside for a while. And then I was, I had just finished a documentary for Committee Films and they said, do you have any other pitches? And I thought, and I said, you know, there's still people who believe in vampires even today, that could be really interesting. And I put together a pitch package. Then, the guy in charge of development said, [00:01:00]this is what we need to be doing. And then it stalled out. Nothing ever happened with it. And I said, what the hell. I could do this on my own. I could fly around and interview these people. And I did, I spent a couple years interviewing academics and some writers. And along the way, I started finding all these very intriguing moments in the history of either vampire lore or fiction or even just people who consider themselves vampires today. And all these things would connect to each other. It was a lattice work of vampires going back hundreds of years. It didn't fit the documentary, unfortunately, but I found it way too interesting. And I said, I need some kind of outlet for this. And so I started writing about it on Tooth Pickings. And that eventually put me in touch with people who were more scholarly, and it opened up a lot more conversations. And now I can't get out. I'm trapped. John: Well, the first sign is recognizing there's a problem. [00:02:00] Okay. Now, Dawn, you had a different entryway into Frankenstein. Dawn: Yeah, well, I was a theater major and a history minor at the University of Minnesota. Go Gophers. And, this was in the late nineties, early two thousands, when there were still a lot of jobs for people who had degrees and things like this. Or at least there was a theory that this was a reasonable thing to get educated in. And then I graduated in 2001, which was months after 9/11, when all those jobs went away. And so, I had this education so specific and what was I gonna do? And gratefully the Twin Cities is a great place for finding that kind of stuff. And one of my very first jobs out of college was at the Bakkan museum. So, the Bakkan museum was founded by Earl Bakkan, who is the inventor of the battery-operated pacemaker. And he has always, since childhood, been obsessed with the Frankenstein movie that came out in 1931. And he attributes [00:03:00]his great scientific invention and many others to a science fiction in general. And to the spark of the idea that comes from sources like this. So, when he opened the museum, he insisted that there'd be a grand Frankenstein exhibit. And that means going back to the book, and that meant going back to the author, Mary Shelley, who wrote the novel Frankenstein, she started writing it when she was 16.And so, I was hired because—boom, look at me—my degree is suddenly colliding, right? So, I was hired by the Bakkan museum to create a one-woman show about the life of Mary Shelley, where I would play Mary Shelley and would perform it within the museum and elsewhere. And through the course of that research, I read the novel for the second time, but then I read it for my third, fourth, fifth onwards and upwards. Because the show was about 45 minutes long, I referenced, you know, the novel, the books, the popular culture, the science behind it. And the deep dive just never stopped. And so long after I was required to do the research and the show was done and up, I just kept reading. [00:04:00] And it gave me the opportunity to meet experts in this field and the peripheral field, as I would sort of travel with this show and be an ambassador for the museum and stuff like that. And, yeah, it still curls my toes. John: All right, so with that background. I'm going to just be honest right here and say, I've read Dracula once, I've read Frankenstein once. So that's where I'm coming from, and both a while ago. I remember Frankenstein was a little tougher to get through. Dracula had a bit more of an adventure feel to it, but something I don't think has really been captured particularly well in all the movies. But they both have lasted and lasted and lasted.Why do you think those books are still, those ideas are still as popular today? Dawn: I will say that I think Frankenstein, it depends on what you mean by the idea. Because on the surface, just the idea of bringing the dead to life, is, I mean, the Walking Dead franchise is right now one of the most popular franchises. I mean, I think we are really pivot on this idea. And I remember saying to a friend once that the part in [00:05:00]Revelation where the dead rise is like the only part of the Bible that I don't question. It's like, oh, the dead will get up. You know, we always just seem to be real sure that at some damned point, they're getting up. And so I think that that is part of why that it sticks in our brains. But then the story around Frankenstein—especially as it was written in 1818—has so many universal and timeless themes, like ambition and what is right and wrong. And the question that Jurassic Park posed in 1995 and continues to—1993 around there—and continues to pose, which is: just because science is capable of doing something, should it do something? And how do we define progress? Surely the very idea of being able to beat death and not die seems to be kind of the ultimate goal. And here is someone saying, okay, so let's just say, yeah. We beat death and everyone goes, oh shit, that'd be terrible. [00:06:00] You know? And then also, I always love the idea of the creature, the monster, Frankenstein's creature himself, who has a lot of characteristics with which people have identified throughout history. Some people say, for example, that Mary Shelley's whole purpose for writing Frankenstein was a question of: didn't God do this to us, make us these ugly creatures that are imperfect and bumbling around and horrifying? And then once he realized that we weren't perfect, he fled from us in fear or fled. He just keeps going and every generation has a new media that tells the story a little bit better, a little bit different, and yeah, there we are. John: I will say that for me, the most memorable part of the book was the section where the monster is the narrator and is learning. And I think with the exception of Kenneth Branagh's film, it it's something that isn't really touched on that much. There's a little bit in Bride of Frankenstein, of him going around and learning stuff. But the sort of moral questions that he [00:07:00] raises as he's learning—what it is to be human—are very interesting in the book. And I wish they were in more of the movies, but they're not. So, Brian on Dracula, again, we have dead coming to life. Why do we love that so much? Brian: Well, it's one of the questions that made me want to make a film about it myself: why has the vampire been so fascinating for hundreds of years? Why does it keep coming back? You know, it ebbs and flows in popularity, but it never leaves. And it keeps seeming to have Renaissance after Renaissance. Dracula specifically, I think one of the interesting things about that novel is how many different lenses you can look at it through and not be wrong.People have looked at it through the lens of, is this thing an imperialist story? Is it an anti-imperialist story? Is it a feminist story? Is it an anti-feminist story? And you can find support for any of those views reading Dracula. And I think that some of it might be accidental; there's times where Dracula is catching up to whatever the cultural zeitgeist [00:08:00] is right now. And we look at Dracula and we say, oh, he was thinking about this back then. Or maybe Bram Stoker was just very confused and he had a lot of different ideas. John: All right, let's explore that a little deeper. You each gave me an assignment of some movies to watch or to re-watch that you felt were worth talking about, in relation to your subject of Frankenstein or Dracula. I'm going to start with Frankenweenie, just because I had not seen it. And in going through it, I was reminded—of course, as one would be—of watching Frankenweenie, I was reminded of Love, Actually. Because I came to the realization after years of Love, Actually being around that it—Love, Actually—is not a romantic comedy. It is all romantic comedies, all put into one movie. And Frankenweenie is all horror films. Condensed, beautifully and cleverly into one very tasty souffle. [Frankenweenie Soundbite] John: I stopped at a certain point making note of the references to other horror films. Just because there are so many of them. But the idea that it references everything from Bride of Frankenstein to Gremlins. They do a rat transformation that's right out of American Werewolf in London. The fact that they have a science teacher played by Martin Landau doing the voice he did as Bela [00:10:00] Lugosi in Ed Wood. I mean, it's a really good story that they just layered and layered and layered and layered. What was it about that movie that so captivated you? Dawn: Well, so much of what you just said. And also it seems to me the epitome of the accessibility of the story of Frankenstein. The idea that if anyone can think of any moment in which if I could bring someone back to life. But what I love about it too, is that the novel Frankenstein that is not Victor Frankenstein's motivation. It generally tends to be the motivation of almost every character, including the Kenneth Branagh character--at some point, he, when Elizabeth dies, his wife dies for the second time, he says, yes, I'm going to try to bring her back. But it is so not the motivation of the scientist in the book. It is just ambition. He just wants to do something no one else has done. And lots of people die around him and he really never, ever says to himself at any point in the novel, I wish I could bring them back, I'm going to bring them back. That's never, that's never part of it. He just wants to be impressive. And so, I love [00:11:00] that it starts with that pure motivation of wanting to bring the dead to life; just wanting to bring your dog back, so that it's so accessible for everyone watching it. Who wouldn't wanna try this? But then, even in that scene with the teacher, when he shows the frog. And he's demonstrating that if you touch a dead frog with electricity, its legs shoot up, which give the kid the first idea of bringing his dog back. Which is like a deep cut in, in the sense that that's nothing -- Mary Shelley herself and her friends were watching experiments exactly like that before she wrote the book: galvanism and animal magnetism were these really popular public demonstrations happening in London and elsewhere where they would do just that. But because electricity itself was so new, I mean, it blew people's hair back you know, that these dead frogs were flopping around. It was the craziest thing. And a lot of them were thinking to themselves, surely it is only a matter of time before we can, we're gonna have our dead walking around all the time. So, it was so circulating and so forward. [00:12:00] So it's not just movie references and it's not just Frankenstein references. That movie really includes source deep source references for how Frankenstein came to be. And I just love it. John: Which brings me to Frankenstein, the 1931 version, in which Colin Clive has a similar point of view to what you were talking about from the book. He just wants, you know, he wants to be God. [Frankenstein soundbite] John: What I was most impressed with about that movie or a couple things was: it starts, it's like, boom. We're in it. First scene. There there's no preamble. There's no going to college. There's no talking about it, right? It's like, they're starting in the middle of act two. And I think a lot of what we think of when it comes to Frankenstein comes from that movie, [00:13:00] that the stuff that James Whale and his cinematographer came up with and the way they made things look, and that's sort of what people think of when they think of Frankenstein. Now, as you look back on that movie, what are your thoughts on the, what we'll call the original Frankenstein? Dawn: Yeah. Well, I love it. You'll find with me and Frankenstein that I'm not a purist. Like I love everything. Like I have no boundaries. I think this is great. One of the things that 1931 movie did was answer—because it had to, anytime you take a novel and make it a movie, you take a literary medium and make it a visual medium, there's obviously going to be things that you just have to interpret that the author left for you to make for yourself individual. And in this instance, that individual is the cinematographer. So, we're gonna get their take on this. And one of the real ambiguous things that Mary Shelley leaves for you in the novel is the spark of life. What is the spark of life? She does not in any [00:14:00]detail describe lightning or static or any of the recognizable or, or future developments of how electricity would've been. Brian: I was shocked when I first read that book and saw how little space was devoted to that, that lab scene. It's blink of an eye and it's over. Dawn: “I gathered the instruments of life around me that I may infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my.” Period. I just, what I love is what I love about film in general is that they went, oh, spark being all right, girl, it's a dark and stormy night and you know, and there's chains and there's bubblers and there's a thing. And the sky opens. I mean, God bless you, like way to just take that thought. Make it vivid, make it, build a set, make us believe it. And it's so, so pervasive that in Frankenweinie, you know, which of course is about Frankensein. [00:15:00] Like that is one that they do: he's got the white robe that ties in the back and the gloves. And in Young Frankenstein, it's the, you know, that lab scene. And so I love that. And the other thing that they had to do was describe the look of the creature, make the creature—Frankenstein's monster himself—look so like something. Because she, similarly in the novel, says that he is taller than a regular man, has dark hair and yellow watery eyes. That's all we know about what the Frankenstein looks like. And so, in 1931, Boris Karloff with the bolts. And it's black and white, remember, we don't think his skin is green. That he turned green at some point is kind of exciting, but of course he was just gray, but just dead flesh, you know, rotten, dead walking flesh is what's frightening. And, I just thought that the movie did that so well, John: I think the makeup was kind of a green/gray, and that when color photos came out of it, that's why someone went, oh, [00:16:00] it's green, but it wasn't green. Brian: I thought I saw a museum piece of, you know, an actual makeup bit that Jack Pierce did and I thought it was greenish. Dawn: Yeah. Greenish/gray. I think, yeah, the rots, just kind of trying to capture the sort of rotten flesh. Brian: It's just like the bride's hair was red. Dawn: That's right. That's right. My day job here in Los Angeles is as a street improviser at Universal Studios, Hollywood. And two of their most treasured characters of course are Frankenstein and Dracula. So, while most people might separate them, John, they are usually arm and arm where I work every day. And the bride has recently come back to the theme park as a walking character, and they gave her red hair. We don't mess around. John: That's excellent. But you mentioned Dracula, let's jump into the 1931 Dracula. There's a connection point between the two that I want to mention, which is the amazing Dwight Frye, who is Fritz, I believe in Frankenstein. And I'm not the first one to mention his naturalistic [00:17:00] acting kind of putting him above everybody else in that movie. Famously, when he's running up the stairs, stopping to pull his socks up at one point. He's just really, really good in that. And then you see him in Dracula as the, essentially the Harker character. I think he was called Harker -- Brian: Yeah. Well, he's Renfield in Dracula. They merged those two characters. I thought it was a smart move for a first attempt at the film. Yeah. And Dwight Frye, he's in a lot of other Universal horrors, too. Dwight Frye often doesn't get the credit. He somehow was not the leading man he should have been. John: I don't know why that is. He turns up again as an assistant in Bride of Frankenstein. He's a towns person in Frankenstein meets the Wolfman. And then he tragically died on a bus ride to an auto parts job that he took because he wasn't getting any acting work, which was too bad. A really, really good actor. Brian: There is another intersection besides the fact that they were both produced by Junior. Lugosi was put into the [00:18:00] short, the trial film they shot for Frankenstein. I can't call it a short film, because it was never intended for release. But they shot a cinematic test reel and they had Lugosi play the monster, but he was under a sheet the whole time. I think he may have been able to pull the sheet off. It's a lost film. We don't know for sure. We just have kind of the recollections of a few crew people. John: I've never heard of that. I would love to see that. Brian: I would too. I think a lot of people would really love to see it, but it was as much a kind of a testing ground for Lugosi— whether they wanted him to be the monster—as it was for some of the techniques, the things they wanted to try in the film. And what I understand is the producer saw the test reel and they said, yes, we love this look, this is the look we want you to give us. And then it's whatever version of Lugosi not getting that part you want to believe: whether Lugosi turned it down or the producers didn't like him or something. But he ended up not taking that part. John: But he is of course always known as Dracula. So, what are your thoughts on their adaptation? Which [00:19:00]again is not the first adaptation but is the kind of first official? Brian: Yeah. The first to bear the name Dracula, although, well, I'll back up a second. Because some releases of Nosferatu called it Dracula. He would be named as Dracula in the subtitles, you know, because that's an easy thing to do in silent film, you can just swap that out however you want to. But yes, it's the first authorized official film adaptation. John: Well, let's back up to Nosferatu, just for a second. Am I wrong in remembering that the Bram Stoker estate—Mrs. Stoker—sued Nosferatu and asked that all prints be destroyed? And they were except one print remained somewhere? Brian: Close. That is the popular story that she sued Prana Films. She won the lawsuit. All films were set to be destroyed. Now there's a guy named Locke Heiss and a few others who've been doing some research on this. And they will tell you that there's no proof that a single print was ever destroyed. It's a more fun story to say that, you know, this one was snuck away and now we have the film. But there was no real enforcement mechanism for having all the theaters [00:20:00]destroy the film. Who was going to go around and check and see if they actually destroyed this film or not? Nobody, right? So maybe some people destroyed it. Maybe Prana Films destroyed their remaining copies. But the exhibitors kept all of theirs and there's different versions and different cuts that have been found. So, we know that some of these reels went out in different formats or with different subtitles or even different edits. And some of them have made their way back to us. John: There's some really iconic striking imagery in that movie. That haunts me still. Brian: What I always tell people is see the film with a good live accompaniment, because that still makes it hold up as a scary film. If you see a good orchestra playing something really intense when Orlok comes through that door. It feels scary. You can feel yourself being teleported back to 1922 and being one of those audience people seeing that and being struck by it. John: What do you think it would be like to have [00:21:00] seen that or Dawn to have seen the original Frankenstein? I can't really imagine, given all that we've seen in our lives. If you put yourself back into 1931, and Boris Karloff walks backwards into the lab. I would just love to know what that felt like the first time. Dawn: You know, what is so great is I was fortunate enough to know Earl Bakkan who saw the movie in the theater in Columbia Heights, Minnesota when he was 10 years old.And he went, he had to sneak in. People would run outta this, out of the theater, screaming. I mean, when they would do the close up of Frankenstein's Monster's face, you know, women would faint. And of course that was publicized and much circulated, but it was also true. People were freaking out. And for Earl Bakkan—this young kid—the fear was overwhelming, as you said. And also in this theater, I was lucky enough, I did my show in that theater for Earl and his friends on his 81st birthday. So, I got to hear a [00:22:00] lot of these stories. And they played the organ in the front of the curtain. Brian: Is this the Heights theater? Dawn: Yes, the Heights. Brian: Oh, that's an amazing space. Dawn: So, they played the organ in there and it was like, oh my God. And it was so overwhelming. So, I'm glad you asked that question because I was really fortunate to have a moment to be able to sort of immerse myself in that question: What would it have been like to be in this theater? And it was moving and it was scary, man. And yeah, to your point, Brian, the music and the score. I mean, it was overwhelming. Also, I think there's something that we still benefit from today, which is when people tell you going in this might be way too much for you, this might scare you to death. So just be super, super careful. And your heart's already, you know… John: And it does have that warning right at the beginning. Dawn: Yeah. Versus now when people sit you down, they're like, I'm not gonna be scared by this black and white movie from 1931. And then you find yourself shuffling out of the bathroom at top speed in the middle of the night. And you're like, well, look at that. It got me. Brian: That reminds me, there [00:23:00] was a deleted scene from the 1931 Dracula that was a holdover from the stage play. Van Helsing comes out and he breaks the fourth wall and he speaks directly to the audience. And he says something to the effect of—I'm very much paraphrasing—about how we hope you haven't been too frightened by what you've seen tonight, but just remember these things are real. And then black out. And they cut that because they were afraid that they were really going to freak out their audience. Dawn: It's like a war of the world's thing, man. It's oh, that's so great. I love that. [Dracula Soundbite] John: So, Brian, what is your assessment of the 1931 version? As a movie itself and as an adaptation of Stoker's work? Brian: The things they had to do to try to adapt it to film, which they borrowed a lot of that from the stage play. They used the stage play as their guide point, and I think they made the best choices they could have been expected to make. You know, there's a lot of things that get lost and that's unfortunate, but I think they did a decent job. I don't find the 1931 version scary. I like Bela Lugosi. I think he's a great Dracula. I think he set the standard. With the possible [00:25:00]exception of the scene where the brides are stalking Harker slash Renfield, I don't think the imagery is particularly frightening. The Spanish version, I think does a little bit better job. And you know the story with the Spanish version and the English version? Dawn: We actually talk about it on the back lot tour of Universal Studios. Because they shot on the same sets in some cases. Brian: Yeah. My understanding is that Dracula shot during the day, Spanish Dracula would shoot at night. So, they got to benefit maybe a little bit by seeing, okay, how is this gonna be shot? How did Todd Browning do it? Okay. We're gonna do it a little bit differently. It's a little bit of a cheat to say they move the camera. They do move the camera a lot more in the Spanish version, but the performances are a little bit different. I'm going to, I can't get her name out. The actress who plays the ingenue in the Spanish Dracula, I'm not going to try it, but you can see her kind of getting more and more crazed as time goes on and her head is more infected by Dracula. You see these push-ins that you don't see in the English version. There's blocking [00:26:00] that's different. I put together a short course where I was just talking about how they blocked the staircases scene. The welcome to my house, the walking through spider web. And how it's blocked very differently in the two versions. And what does that say? What are these two directors communicating differently to us? In one, Harker slash Renfield is next to Dracula. In one, he's trailing behind him. In one, we cut away from the spider web before he goes through. And in the other one, we see him wrestle with it. That's not really what you asked, John. Sorry, I got off on a tear there. John: I agree with you on all points on the differences between the two films. Although I do think that all the Transylvania stuff in the English version is terrific: With the coach and the brides. The Spanish version, the biggest problem I have is that their Dracula looks ridiculous. Brian: He's not Bela Lugosi. You're right. John: He looks like Steve Carell doing Dracula and there is no moment, literally no moment [00:27:00] where he is scary, whereas Lugosi is able to pull that off. Brian: There's a lot of people who have observed that the Spanish Dracula would be a superior film were it not for Bela Lugosi being such an amazing Dracula in the English version. John: He really, really nailed it. Brian: And since he learned his lines phonetically, he could have done the Spanish Dracula. Just write it out for him phonetically, because he didn't speak English very well. John: If we could just go back, you know, cause a lot of things in history we could change, but if we could just be at that meeting and go, Hey, why not have Bela do it? Okay. So then let's jump ahead, still in Dracula form, to Horror of Dracula. From 1958. With Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. [Soundbite from Horror of Dracula] Brian: For some people, Lee is the ultimate Dracula, and I think that's a generational thing. I think he's great. He's got the stage presence and I love Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. I don't like the film as a whole. It feels like I'm watching a play with a camera set back. It doesn't work for me the way it works for other people. That is personal taste. Don't come after me. John: It does, however, have one of the greatest, ‘Hey, we're gonna kill Dracula' scenes ever, with Peter Cushing running down the table and jumping up and pulling down the drapes and the sun. Brian: Oh, right. Interesting. Because in Dracula, the book, the sun is not deadly, remotely really. But that's [00:29:00]the influence of Nosferatu being pasted onto the Dracula cannon, that the sunlight is deadly to Dracula. Dawn: I remember having this fight very enthusiastically in the nineties when Bram Stoker's/Winona Ryder's Dracula came out and I was already sort of a literary nerd. And they were like, hey, they have a scene with him walking around during the day. And I was like, yeah, nerds. That's right. That's cuz vampires can walk around during the day.I was very already, like, you don't know anything, go back to history. Brian: And there's a seventies version where he's out on a cloudy day, but he is not hurt either. There suggestions in the book that he's more powerful at night. Dawn: He's a creature of the night. I always understood he had to wear sunglasses. He was sort of like a wolf. Like they show him as a wolf during the day; it can happen, but it's not great. Brian: I like the way they did it in the Gary Oldman version. He's suited up. He's got the sunglasses on. There's not a whole lot of skin exposed. But he's not [00:30:00] going to turn into smoke. John: Well, okay. Let's talk about that version and Kenneth Branagh's version of Frankenstein. Dawn: Ug. John: I'm not going to spoil anything here, when I say it doesn't sound like Dawn cared it. Dawn: You open this, you opened this can of worms. John, sit down for a second. Listen. He calls it: Mary Shelly's fucking Frankenstein. I inserted the fucking. I'm sorry, I wasn't supposed to say that. He calls it. He calls it. How dare you, Kenneth, Brannagh, call this Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. So that was A-number one. But I went into it all excited: It's Kenneth Brannagh. Love him. He calls it Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and he starts with the ship captain out at sea, just like the book. And so I pull up my little, you know, security blanket and I'm like, oh, Kenneth Brannagh, do this to me, buddy. Do it to me buddy. Show me Mary Shelley Frankenstein as a movie. [00:31:00] And then he just fucks it up, John. And he doesn't actually do that at all. It's a total lie. He screws up every monologue. He makes up motivations and then heightens them. And it's dad. The acting is capital B, capital A, capital D across the board. Everybody sucks in this movie. It looks bad. The direction is bad, and it has nothing to do. He tries to bring Elizabeth back to life. This is a huge departure from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Brannagh, that's all I have to say for now. John: All right, I was fooled by the fact that he started at, at the north pole. Dawn: That's because he's tricking us, John. That's because it's the whole movie is a lie. John: Okay with that same mindset, what do we think of Bram Stoker's Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola? Dawn: I love that one. Brian: I'm afraid that I don't have, I can't match Dawn's intensity in either respect. Um, except I thought Robert DeNiro [00:32:00] was really good in Frankenstein. Dawn: But that's no, he's not. you're wrong. Your opinion is valid and wrong. Yeah, I'm kidding for listeners who don't know me. I am, I am kidding. Of course. Everybody's opinion is valid except for that one. Yeah. The movie, everything about that movie is bad. John: He is, I think, miscast. Dawn: And Helen Bonan Carter is one of the finest actresses of not just our generation, but of all time. And she sucks in this movie. John: Right. So. Bram Stoker's Dracula. Brian: Bram Stoker's Dracula. [Soundbite: Bram Stoker's Dracula] Brian: Also produced by Branagh. And I assume that is the connection, why they both start with the author's name. I always call it Coppola's Dracula because it gets too confusing to make that distinction. I thought it was a decent movie, but it didn't feel like Dracula. It felt like someone who had heard of Dracula and wrote a good script based on what they had heard. So many divergences that bothered me, although I think it's aged better than it felt the first time. I remember seeing it when it first came out in the nineties and not thinking much of it. And I think audiences agreed with me and it seems like it's been kinder, that audiences have been kinder to it as it's gotten older. John: Okay. Dawn, you love it. Dawn: I loved it. I loved it. It, you know what though? That was one of [00:34:00] those movies that unlike, unlike Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, I can't look at with like an adult critical eye because I, what year did it come out? Was it like 90, 92? I'm like middle school getting into high school and like Winona Ryder was everything. Vampires are everything. I mean, Gary Oldman is the, is a great actor and it's so sexy, very sexy. The sex is Primo. And so I remember loving it, very moving. I don't remember comparing it as certainly not as viciously to the novel because I read Dracula after I had seen the movie. And so there's always that inherent casting where Nina is always going to be Winona Ryder. But I do remember really loving the Gothic convention of the letter and that the movie did seem to utilize and to great effect how letter writing can build suspense and give us different perspectives in a, in a unique cinematic way. Brian: [00:35:00] The two or three biggest stakes that film puts in the ground are not to be found in the book. So there's no love story in the book. There's no Vlad in the book. John: Can I interject there? Isn't that basically, didn't they just rip that off of Dark Shadows, The idea of my long lost love is reincarnated in this woman. I must connect with her. Brian: That is a good question, John. I'm glad you asked that because I call it the doppelganger love interest. Right? We first see that, the first time I know of it happening, I'm sure there's an earlier precedent, is in The Mummy, but then Dark Shadows does it. But that's not where Stoker, I mean, that's not where Coppola and a screenwriter claimed to have gotten the idea. They claimed to have gotten it from Dan Curtis's Dracula in 74. John: Dan Curtis, who produced Dark Shadows, with Barnabas Collins, falling in love with his reincarnated love. Brian: But Dan Curtis's Dracula comes out two years after Blacula. That has a reincarnated love interest. John: Not only does the Blaclua [00:36:00] have a reincarnated love interest, but if I'm remembering movie correctly at the end, when she says I don't want to go with you. He goes, okay. And he's ready to go home. It's like, sorry to bother you. Brian: No, uh, in Blacula, he commits suicide John: Oh, that's it? Yeah. He walks out into the sun. Brian: He goes home in a different way. John: Yes. He's one of my favorite Draculas, the very stately William Marshall. Brian: Yeah, absolutely. That is a favorite of mine. John: Anyway, you were saying stakes in the ground from Coppola's Dracula. Brian: Well, the, the love story, the equating Dracula with Vlad the Impaler. And I felt like they did Lucy really bad in that movie. They had her turn into a wanton harlot, which is not in keeping with the book. Some things are okay, but they really said these are the building blocks of our story and that bugged me. But Anthony Hopkins I liked, so, all right. Dawn: Alright, but see, this [00:37:00] the itch that still that still makes me wanna scratch though: why say Bram Stoker's Dracula? Why say Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? I mean, because I think you heard the venom, obviously. If they took Mary Shelley's name off that thing, you can make Frankenweenie. And I will love, like, I love Frankenweenie. Do your Frankenstein homage all day, all the time. But when you call, when you say it's Bram Stoker's, I think that this is what has been frustrating historians like me and getting high school students Ds in English class ever since. Because it just creates the false perception that you've basically read the book. Right. Or that you, if you know the thing you know the book and it's just a cheap ploy. And I don't like it. Brian: I think, somebody correct me on this, that there, there had been a plan to do a reboot of the Universal monster franchise, and these two movies were supposed to be the reboot of it. [00:38:00] And then they would've then done HG Wells' Invisible Man. John: The Mummy killed it. They've tried to reboot it several times. And that was the first attempt. Brian: Yeah, I've heard that called the dark universe. They were trying to do their own MCU. Dawn: Yeah. Well, at Universal Studios, there is of course in, in LA, in general, there's the property wars, you know? What what's, who has what? And sometimes those get really blurred. Like why does Universal Studios have Harry Potter? When we can see Warner Brothers from the top of our wall/ And that's obviously, you know, those things happen. But when it comes to like the IP or intellectual property, those original monsters are so valuable and they always are at Halloween. And then it's like, sort of, how can we capitalize on this? And yeah. And it's cross generational. Brian: All they really own right now is the look right? They own Jack Pierce's makeup job from Frankenstein. Dawn: But I think that that's exactly the point; [00:39:00] the delusion of what is it that you own if you own, you know, Frankenstein, whatever. But yes, there was definitely an interest to sort of revamp all of the original Universal Monsters they call them and it's the Mummy, Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Invisible Man. John: It's everybody who shows up in Mad Monster Party. Dawn: Exactly. [Soundbite: Mad Monster Party] Dawn: But yeah, The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, was a tremendous flop. And I think that sort of took the wind out of everybody's sails. John: Let me ask you this, Dawn. If Mel Brooks had titled his movie, Mary Shelley's Young Frankenstein, instead of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, would you have a problem with that? Dawn: Yeah, no, but no, I would not have had a problem, because that would've been irony and juxtaposition. Not just a straight lie. John: So that brings us to some comedies. Young Frankenstein and Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein, which I was very surprised and a little unnerved to [00:40:00] realize a few years back, Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein was made a mere 10 years before I was born. And I had always assumed it was way back then. And it's like, no, it wasn't all that way back then. It was pretty, pretty recently. Brian: That happened to me when I realized that Woodstock was only six years before my birth. And it always seemed like ancient history. John: Is that the common thing, Madame Historian? That people kind of forget how recent things were? Dawn: Oh yeah. Remember Roe V. Wade. Sorry, too soon. Brian: We're recording this on that day. Dawn: Yeah, absolutely. I think that it happens to everybody so much faster than you think it's going to. I remember looking around in the nineties feeling, well, surely the seventies was ancient history, you know, because they had That Seventies Show, which debuted as like a period piece. I am still very young and hip and happening and [00:41:00] they are in production for That Nineties Show right now. And I said to my husband, That Nineties Show. I was like, Jesus, I guess that's 20 years because I was in the nineties they did That Seventies Show. And he goes, no baby that's 30 years. And I was like, I'm sorry. I said, I'm sorry, what? He goes, the nineties was 30 years ago. And I just had to sit down and put my bunion corrector back on because these feet are killing me. John: All right. Well, let's just talk about these two comedies and then there's a couple other things I wanna quickly hit on. What are our thoughts on, let's start with Young Frankenstein? [Soundbite: Young Frankenstein] Dawn: I told you I'm not an idealist and we're not a purist about Frankenstein, but I am an enthusiast. So that is why I told you to watch Kenneth Branagh's movie, even though I hate it so much. And that is also why I love Young Frankenstein, because I think that it is often what brings people into the story. For many, many people, it introduces them to the creature. They may know literally nothing about Frankenstein except for Young Frankenstein. And that's actually fine with me because I'm a comedian myself. And I believe that parody is high honor. And often when you parody and satirize something, especially when you do it well, it's because you went to the heart of it. Because you got right in there into the nuggets and the creases of it. And there is something about Young [00:43:00] Frankenstein as ridiculous as it is that has some of that wildness and the hilarity and The Putting on the Ritz. I did find out from my Universal Studios movie history stuff, that that scene was very nearly cut out. Mel Brooks did not like it. And he just didn't like that they were doing it. And of course it's the one, I feel like I'm not the only one who still has to make sure that my beverage is not only out of my esophagus, but like aside, when they start doing it. [Soundbite: Young Frankenstein] Brian: And I understand they were about to throw away the sets from the 1931 Frankenstein when Mel Brooks or his production designer came up and said, Stop stop. We want to use these and they were able to get the original sets or at least the set pieces. John: I believe what it [00:44:00] was, was they got Kenneth Strickfaden's original machines. Ken Strickfaden created all that stuff for the 1931 version and had been used on and off, you know, through all the Frankenstein films. And it was all sitting in his garage and the production designer, Dale Hennessy went out to look at it because they were thinking they had to recreate it. And he said, I think it still works. And they plugged them in and they all still worked. Brian: Oh, wow. Dawn: Oh man. It's alive. John: Those are the original machines. Dawn: I didn't know that. That's fantastic. John: At the time when I was a young kid, I was one of the few kids in my neighborhood who knew the name Kenneth Strickfaden, which opened doors for me. Let me tell you when people find out, oh, you know of the guy who designed and built all those? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I know all that. One of my favorite stories from Young Frankenstein is when they sold the script. I forget which studio had said yes. And as they were walking out of the meeting, Mel Brooks turned back and said, oh, by the way, it's gonna be in black and white, and kept going. And they followed him down the hall and said, no, it can't be in black and white. And he said, no, it's not gonna work unless it's in [00:45:00] black and white. And they said, well, we're not gonna do it. And they had a deal, they were ready to go. And he said, no, it's gonna stay black and white. And he called up Alan Ladd Jr. that night, who was a friend of his, and said, they won't do it. And he said, I'll do it. And so it ended up going, I think, to Fox, who was more than happy to, to spend the money on that. And even though Mel didn't like Putting on the Ritz, it's weird, because he has almost always had musical numbers in his films. Virtually every movie he's done, he's either written a song for it, or there's a song in it. So, it's weird to me. I've heard Gene Wilder on YouTube talk about no, no, he didn't want that scene at all, which is so odd because it seems so-- Brian: I never thought about that, but you're right. I'm going in my head through all the Mel Brooks films I can remember. And there is at least a short musical interlude in all of them that I can think of. John: But let's talk then about what's considered one of the best mixes of horror and comedy, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein [00:46:00] [Soundbite: Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein] Brian: As with comedies of that age, it, it starts off slow, but then it starts to get very funny as time goes on. And all the comedy is because of Abbot and Costello. They are the, [00:47:00] the chemistry they have on screen. I don't know how much of that was actually scripted and how much of it was just how they rolled with each other. But it works really well. Not much of the comedy is provided by the monsters or the supporting cast or even there's maybe a cute, a few sight gags. But wouldn't you say most of the comedy is just the dynamics between them? John: It is. The scary stuff is scary and it's balanced beautifully at the end where they're being chased through the castle. The monsters stayed pretty focused on being monsters and Abbot and Costello's reactions are what's funny. Dawn: If I may, as someone who has already admitted I haven't seen much of the movie, it's feels to me like it may be something like Shaun of the Dead, in the sense that you get genuinely scared if zombie movies scare, then you'll have that same adrenaline rush and the monsters stay scary. They don't have to get silly. Or be a part of the comedy for your two very opposing one's skinny, one's fat, you know, and the way that their friendship is both aligning and [00:48:00]coinciding is the humor. Brian: I believe there is one brief shot in there where you get to see Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and the Wolfman all in the same shot. And I think that might be the only time that ever happens in the Universal Franchise. During the lab scene, does that sound right John? John: I think you really only have Dracula and the Wolfman. I'll have to look it up because the monster is over on another table-- Brian: Isn't he underneath the blanket? John: Nope, that's Lou Costello, because it's his brain that they want. And so they're fighting over that table. And then just a little, I have nothing but stupid fun facts. There's a point in it, in that scene where the monster gets off the table and picks up someone and throws them through a window. And Glenn Strange, who was playing the monster at that point -- and who is one of my favorite portrayers of the monster, oddly enough -- had broken his ankle, I believe. And so Lon, Chaney, Jr. put the makeup on and did that one stunt for him, cuz he was there. Brian: He did that as Frankenstein's monster? John: Yes. Frankenstein. Brian: I didn't know that. Yes, I [00:49:00] did not know that. So he plays both of those roles in that movie? John: Yes. Let me just take a moment to defend Glenn Strange, who played the monster three times: House of Dracula, House of Frankenstein, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. In House of Frankenstein, he is following up the film before that, which was Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, in which, in this very convoluted universe, Lugosi is playing the monster, even though he didn't wanna do it in 31. Because his brain in Ghost of Frankenstein had been put into the Monster's body. So, in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, it is Lugosi as the Frankenstein monster. It is Lon Chaney Jr., who had played the monster in Ghost of Frankenstein, now back to playing Larry Talbot. So, it is Wolfman versus Frankenstein. And the premise of the script was he's got Ygor's brain and it's not connecting properly. He's gone blind. They shot that. They had tons of dialogue between the two characters of Larry Talbot pre-wolfman, and the monster, Bela Lugosi. And the executives thought it sounded silly. So they went in and they cut [00:50:00] out all of Lugosi's dialogue out of the movie. So now you have a blind monster stumbling around with his arms in front of him, but he doesn't talk. And if you look at the movie, you can see where he's supposed to be talking and they cut away quickly. And it's really convoluted. Glenn Strange who then has to play the monster next, looks at that and goes well, all right, I guess I'm still blind. I guess I'm still stumbling around with my arms in front of him. Which is the image most people have of the Frankenstein monster, which was never done by Boris in his three turns as the monster. So with, in that regard, I just think Glenn Strange did a great job of picking up what had come before him and making it work moving forward. Anyway, a couple other ones I wanna just hit on very quickly. Brian asked me to watch Dracula in Istanbul. Under the circumstances, a fairly straightforward retelling of the Dracula story. I would recommend it--it is on YouTube--for a couple of reasons. One, I believe it's the first time that Dracula has actual canine teeth. Brian: Yes. John: Which is important. But the other is there's the scene where he's talking to Harker about, I want [00:51:00] you to write three letters. And I want you to post date the letters. It's so convoluted, because he goes into explaining how the Turkish post office system works in such a way that the letters aren't gonna get there. It's just this long scene of explaining why he needs to write these three letters, and poor Harker's doing his best to keep up with that. That was the only reason I recommend it. Brian: That movie is based on a book called Kazıklı Voyvoda, which means The Warrior Prince and it was written in, I wanna say the 1920s or thirties, I wanna say thirties. It's the first book to equate Dracula and Vlad the Impaler, which I've come back to a couple times now, but that's significant because it was a Turkish book and the Turks got that right away. They immediately saw the name Dracula like, oh, we know who we're talking about. We're talking about that a-hole. It was not until the seventies, both the [00:52:00] fifties and the seventies, that Western critics and scholars started to equate the two. And then later when other scholars said, no, there, there's not really a connection there, but it's a fun story. And it's part of cannon now, so we can all play around with it. John: But that wasn't what Bram Stoker was thinking of? Is that what you're saying? Brian: No. No, he, he wasn't, he wasn't making Dracula into Vlad the Impaler. He got the name from Vlad the Impaler surely, but not the deeds. He wasn't supposed to be Vlad the Impaler brought back to life. John: All right. I'm going to ask you both to do one final thing and then we'll wrap it up for today. Although I could talk to you about monsters all day long, and the fact that I'd forgotten Dawn, that you were back on the Universal lot makes this even more perfect. If listeners are going to watch one Dracula movie and one Frankenstein movie, what do you recommend? Dawn, you go first. Dawn: They're only watching one, then it's gotta be the 1931 Frankenstein, with Boris. Karloff, of course. I think it has captured [00:53:00] the story of Frankenstein that keeps one toe sort of beautifully over the novel and the kind of original source material that I am so in love with, but also keeps the other foot firmly in a great film tradition. It is genuinely spooky and it holds so much of the imagery of any of the subsequent movies that you're only watching one, so that's the one you get. But if you do watch any more, you've got this fantastic foundation for what is this story and who is this creature? John: Got it. And Brian, for Dracula? Brian: I was tossing around in my head here, whether to recommend Nosferatu or the 1931 Dracula. And I think I'm going to have to agree with Dawn and say the 1931 for both of them, because it would help a viewer who was new to the monsters, understand where we got the archetypes we have. Now, why, when you type an emoji into your phone for Vampire, you get someone with a tuxedo in the slick back hair or, I think, is there a Frankenstein emoji? Dawn: There is, and he's green with bolts in his neck. [00:54:00] Brian: Yeah, it would. It will help you understand why we have that image permanently implanted in our heads, even though maybe that's not the source material. We now understand the origins of it. Dawn: And if I may too, there's, there's something about having the lore as founded in these movies is necessary, frankly, to almost understand what happens later. I mean, I get very frustrated in 2022, if there is a movie about vampires that takes any time at all to explain to me what a vampire is, unless you're breaking the rules of the vampire. For example, you know, like in Twilight the vampire sparkles, like a diamond when it's out in the sunshine and is the hottest thing ever. That's really great to know. I didn't know that about vampires. That wasn't necessarily true before, you know, but you don't need to take a lot of time. In fact, when you do read Dracula, one of the things for me that I found very frustrating was the suspense of what is it with this guy? They were like: He said we couldn't bring [00:55:00] garlic and they take all this time. And you're kind of as a modern reader being like, cuz he is a fucking vampire. Move on. Like we know this, we got this one. It's shorthand Brian: That's one snide thing I could say about the book is that there are times where Dracula's powers seem to be whatever his powers need to be to make this next scene creepy and move on to the next chapter. John: He was making it up as he went along. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There are plenty of decisions that you'll make in the retirement planning process that can't be undone, so you want to make sure that you make the right call. On this episode, we'll explain why these decisions are so important and can't be undone. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Speaker 1: Back here for another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick once again, joining me to talk about getting things right the first time. There are some irreversible financial decisions or close to it in retirement and there's plenty of things we've got to deal with. So we want to make sure we get it right as often as possible, right out of the gate, because some of these things just cannot be undone. So you guys being in Florida, mulligans, everybody plays golf. Mulligans are a thing, for sure. You didn't see that? Some mulligan, its a give me. Let me do it again, kind of thing. But there's things in retirements that you just got to get right the first time. So that's going to be the topic this week. Nick, what's going on, buddy? How you doing?   Nick: Good. Good. Staying busy.   Speaker 1: Yeah. Keeping rocking and a rolling. John, how you feeling my friend?   John : I'm feeling good. I'm feeling good. I'm looking forward to this topic. I'm actually a couple of weeks out from finish some construction in my house and I wish that the original builds and plumbers got it right and knew how to glue some pipes that wouldn't have caused a leak down the road. But anyhow,   Speaker 1: Yes.   John : Looking forward to getting that construction done, so.   Speaker 1: Yeah, I tell you what, that's a great point. Right. So we all want people to do their job right the first time. Certainly when you hire someone, that's what you expect. But these are some decisions that many people do to themselves because so many people DIY retirement. Right. One of the benefits to turning to financial professionals like yourselves is to get these things right so that you don't have to worry about having these issues that can't be undone. So let's walk through a few of these. We're going to start with a biggie. Again, there's a little caveat here, but for the most part, once you turn on social security, it is what it is. So you have to be sure that you're, especially if you're activating it early, that this is what you want to do. There technically is a do over, but most people don't really go through it. So kind of explain if you will guys.   John : Yeah. So this is a big one because social security equates to roughly 30 to 40% of kind of average households retirement income going into retirement. So it's important. And Nick and I, everything we kind of say goes back to the planning and this can't be stressed enough because once you start taking it, let's do over for the first year out of it, that is what it is. And I'll kind of use an example of a client that we had where she was a survivor and she wasn't fully aware of her options and the strategies she could use. And just luckily she was referred to us right before she started taking social security. And I don't want to go too much into details, but basically the strategy that she was just going to take initially, I mean would've cost her a lot of money down the road. So we simply had to basically call social security, stop the payment and redo the strategy. But again, by not really having a game plan, she could have cost herself a lot of money down the road. And this doesn't happen just for survivors. It's anybody, whether it's your taking your own benefit or divorced, things like that. So there's a lot of things to evaluate when you're taking social security and when's the best time to take it.   Speaker 1: Okay. So and again I mentioned the fact that you can pull it back. Right. You have what one year. Nick is that right, correct? You have one year.   Nick: Yeah. So essentially the rule is that if you begin your social security benefits, you have 12 months to essentially reverse your decision that you started receiving benefits. You have to pay the benefits that you received back and then you can defer it again as if you never took it. So years ago, you used to be able to do that over a much longer period of time. And then the Social Security Administration caught onto that and they restricted it to a 12 month period.   Speaker 1: And let's be honest. Most people, the reason doesn't get really used very often is who wants to do it. Most people don't want to, as soon as they hear, well, you got to pay the money back. They're kind of like, eh, so I don't want to do that. Right. So,   Nick: Yeah.   Speaker 1: [inaudible 00:03:57].   Nick: Yeah, it's a tricky thing.   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Nick: It's like we've had some clients inquire about this recently and their sub full retirement age, so sub 66 or 67 or somewhere in between there and in instances where, because where the confusion lies for a lot of people is they want to continue to work maybe, but shift to part-time.   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Nick: And they don't realize that the part-time income is still in excess of the amount that they can earn without any sort of penalty, which for most people is around $20,000 for the year.   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Nick: And when you start to factor in the fact that you're permanently locking in a lower benefit plus running the risk of having a penalty on top of it for the rest of your life, it's not ideal. So,   Speaker 1: Right.   Nick: That's definitely a major decision and something that we like to model out and test out for people.   Speaker 1: And again, so technically there's a caveat to undo in a very limited window, but it's just best to get this right the first time, because for all intents and purposes, it's irreversible. You just don't want to go down that path. Same with the spousal benefit situation here on a pension, should you be lucky enough to have one. Once you select this, I don't believe there is any do-overs on this. It is what it is.   Nick: Yeah, that's correct. This is definitely a topic that we go through in the classes pretty in detail. Years ago, it was a lot easier for people to mess this decision up. It still happens sometimes, but it's less common because oftentimes the spouse has to sign off on it. But the reality is that having a really good understanding of what sort of survivor benefit you're going to choose, if you are eligible for a pension through your employer is a major, major decision and something to take into consideration. And one thing to throw in here too, for those that live in the state of Florida, oftentimes the projections that they send you or that you can access easily online, I should say are options like one and two or A and B. And there are two other options that are oftentimes better options and you usually have to request those. So we've seen that be a mistake that people have made only thinking that they had two options when there's actually four.   Speaker 1: Gotcha.   Nick: So that's something and it's important to know.   Speaker 1: Okay.   John : And what Nick's referencing there is the Florida pension plan, the state pension plan.   Speaker 1: The state. Okay. Got it. Thank you. So John, what about life insurance? What is the kind of the impact here? Irreversible financial decision, somebody might say, well, can I just cancel it or whatever, right, kind of deal, but what are some important points to know when it comes to this?   John : Yeah. So when you're doing planning, one of the things we look at is we start with the need for life insurance. And that really depends on dependence and some other factors, but it's easier to get when your younger. So that's one thing we take a look at and there's different types of policies that allow you to convert. And not to get too much into the weeds, but the older you get, some health issues might come up where you can no longer get it. So that's where it becomes very important to understand, Hey, is this something I really want to have down the road and does it work in my financial plan? And if it does, the sooner you can get it the better because things come up as we all know. As you get older, health issues come up. So you want to get it right the first time.   Speaker 1: And that's where you could run into a problem, right, especially if you wait too long and then a diagnosis happens, then it could either make it impossible or certainly incredibly costly.   Nick: Yeah. Especially, we joked a little bit in the last podcast about John and I hitting 40 this year. And the reality is, is that I know, I know. Everybody I'm sure is shedding a lot of tears.   Speaker 1: A lot of our listeners are like 40. I would trade with you in a minute.   John : Let's see, 40 back surgery this year. It's a good year.   Nick: Yeah. All of a sudden I got tendonitis in my arm and my shoulders all messed up.   Speaker 1: And right now you have listeners going, I'm going to go in and slap him.   Nick: I know, I know. But the key, the point with this whole thing is that some of these things, maybe not some of the things that John and I talked about, but maybe a type two diabetes or some sort of health issue that pops up where it doesn't in reality, necessarily in most people's mind affect what your life is going to be like. It could have an impact on what life insurance is going to cost for you.   Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.   Nick: And so you pay for it out of your bank account, but you qualify with your health. And so usually the sooner you can lock in any sort of coverage, the less expensive it is and that'll pay off over time.   Speaker 1: No, you're exactly right. I mean, we're coming up, we were joking about this, but to really drive home your point, we're coming up on the 10th anniversary for me of my open heart surgery. I was 41 years old. I didn't think anything of it. And so it made it really difficult to get life insurance or get some different kinds of insurance once I had that happen. So I monkeyed around and waited too long. Right. And then I was like, well, I didn't know this was coming. Now luckily it was more lifestyle and things. So after enough of a time period, I started to eventually get some offers, but it is more expensive. So it is important to definitely have this stuff in place if you can, sooner than later, because again, it makes the financial impacts pretty great. So definitely keep that in mind as well. And then finally, choosing a retirement date. We debated on this one, about throwing this on the list because people would definitely can argue and say, well, sure you could change your decision on this. If you pencil in a date to actually retire, you can just move it around as you need to. But if you want to take it that a step further, depending on how you want to go, if you've given notice at a position, maybe not, right, it may be something you can't undo that. So just talk to me about the impacts of just either penciling in, choosing a retirement date to actually walk away just from different pros and cons.   Nick: Yeah. I can jump in on this a little bit. This is something where in reality, I think what we found is maybe a specific date is necessarily the key or the thought process, but understanding the range that you're looking at and understanding what sort of cost you might be incurring if you do retire early. So for example, if your somebody that has saved and done a good job of that and is looking to retire early, call it maybe 62, understanding the impact of how much lower your social security benefit is, understanding what sort of costs you're going to have when it comes to premiums for your health insurance. So as an example, we've got clients that are paying, some clients that are paying between eight and $10,000 a year for health insurance premiums per person, when they were used to while they were working, paying closer to three to $4,000 for the household. So that's something that can have an impact on that retirement date, where maybe you've been thinking in the back of your mind, Hey, I've got a good nest egg. I'm just going to plan to go a little bit early, but didn't quite realize the expenses associated with it. On top of that, from a planning perspective, we do have other clients that they knew that they were going to retire early. And so we put strategies together for leading up to retiring early. They were able to save some extra money into non-qualified or non-retirement accounts. And by taking their income in the first few years of retirement, out of those accounts, it allows them to qualify for certain subsidies for health insurance, which brings their costs down. So again, when we have clarity on what the goals and the objectives are in the financial world, there's usually ways that we can plan around it and try to optimize it. And so having a good idea of what that looks like and the impact of the fallout from that goal and then planning around that, it allows us to be more strategic.   Speaker 1: All right. So obviously there's lots of little things in there where again, you could make the argument that you could move some of these things around, but ideally we want to get it right the first time. And often, as I mentioned earlier, excuse me, when we're doing it ourselves, we don't know a lot of these little things, a lot of a little caveats and whatnot. So we want to get it right the first time. And that's where working with a professional really comes into play. So if you got questions, you need some help as always make sure you're checking with a qualified pro before you take any action on something here on this podcast or any other, you want to make sure that you're seeing how it reflects and affects your specific situation. So stop by the website, pfgprivatewealth.com. That's the home for the team, pfgprivatewealth.com. You can subscribe to us on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Stitcher, all that good stuff. Retirement Planning Redefined is the name of the show. You can look it up on those apps if you'd like, or just stop by the website again, pfgprivatewealth.com. We appreciate your time here on this week's podcast. We'll see you soon for another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth.

It's called the "rogue prosecutor" movement and it operates on two principles: 1) the entire criminal justice system is racist 2) the only solution is to elect pro-criminal, anti-victim zealots into office. Flush with George Soros cash, DA's across the country have imposed their agenda on you! How do we reign in rogue prosecutors like Dallas' John "Let 'em Go" Creuzot? Zack Smith of The Heritage Foundation joins Rick to discuss. The Rick Roberts Show is on NewsTalk 820 WBAP ... (Photo Courtesy of WFAA)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

07.10.2022 | Jerrod Brooks

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There are certain age milestones where you should really pay attention to your retirement planning progress. On this episode, we'll look at the most important birthdays as you approach retirement and cover the exact things you should be checking off your to-do list at each age. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Mark: Hey, everybody. Welcome into another addition of the podcast. This is Retirement Planning Redefined, with John and Nick and myself, talking investing, finance, retirement, and birthdays.   Mark: We're going to get into important birthdays in the retirement planning process. As we get older, I don't think any of us really want birthdays, but these are some things we need to know. They're pretty useful. Some of this is pretty basic. Some of this stuff's got some interesting caveats in it as well. So you might learn something along the way. It can go a long way towards that retirement planning process.   Mark: We're going to get into that and take an email question as well. If you've got some questions of your own, stop by the website, pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com.   Mark: John, what's going on, buddy? How you doing?   John: A little tired. Got woken up at 2:00 in the morning with two cranky kids.   Mark: Oh yeah.   John: So if I'm a little off today, I apologize.   Mark: There you go. No, no worries. You get the whole, they climb the bed, and then you're on the tiniest sliver?   John: I got one climb into bed, I think kicked me in the face at one point.   Mark: Oh, nice.   John: Another one climbed into bed missing out on the other one, because they share a room. Then I had the sliver. I woke up almost falling off the bed.   Mark: There you go. And usually freezing because you have no blankets.   John: Yeah, yeah.   Mark: That's usually the way it goes. Nick's sitting there going, "I don't know what you guys are talking about."   Mark: What's going on, buddy. How you doing?   Nick: Yep. No. Pretty low maintenance over here.   Mark: Well, that's good. Hey, don't you have a birthday coming up?   Nick: I got a couple months still.   Mark: Okay, a couple months.   Nick: Yeah, I just got back from a trip a few weeks ago. Some buddies that I grew up with, a group of us have been friends for a really long time, I guess, going back to middle school. We're all turning 40 this year, so we rented a house in Charleston, and all survived.   Mark: Nice. There you go.   Nick: Yeah. It was good.   John: This is how you know Nick's turning 40. He came back with neck pain.   Mark: Exactly.   Nick: Yeah.   Mark: Hey, when you start to get a certain age, you start going, "When did I hurt that?" It's like, "I didn't even do anything." Yeah. You don't have to do anything.   Mark: Well, you know what? That's a good segue. Let's jump into this.   Mark: We're going to start with age 50. I turned 50 last year. First of all, the thing that sucks is you get the AARP card. I don't know about all that. That's annoying as a reminder that you're 50.   Mark: But the government does say, "Hey, let me help you out a little bit here if you need to catch up on some of the retirement accounts, help building those up." Talk to me about catch up contributions, guys.   Nick: Yeah. Essentially what happens is when you hit 50, there's two types of accounts that allow you to start contributing a little bit more money. The most basic one is an IRA or a Roth IRA, where the typical maximum contribution for somebody under 50 is 6,000 a year. You can add an additional thousand to do a total of 7,000 a year. The bigger one is in a 401(k) or 403(b) account, where you're able to contribute, I believe it's an extra 6,500 per year.   Nick: This is also a good flag for people to think about where, hey, once that catch up contribution is available, it's probably a good time, if you haven't done any sort of planning before, to really start to dial in and understand your financial picture a little bit more. Because if you talk to anybody that's 60, they'll tell you that 50 didn't seem too far back. So that's a good reminder to dig into that a little bit.   Mark: Yeah. It adds up. It's not necessarily chicken feed. You might hear it and think, "Well, a thousand dollars on this type of account over a year, or 6,500 on the other type of account, whoopedidoo." But if you're 50 and you're going to 67, let say, for full retirement age, and we'll get to that in a little bit, that's 17 years of an extra seven grand. It's not exactly chicken feed, right?   Nick: No. It's going to be big money down the road.   Mark: Yeah, exactly. So that's 50.   Mark: John, talk to me about 55. This one's really similar to 59 and a half, which most of us are familiar with, but most people don't understand the rule at 55. So can you break that down a little bit?   John: Yeah. We don't see people utilize this too often, but an example would be let's say you're 50, 55, 56, and for whatever reason, you leave your current job. You have an opportunity, at that point...   John: Let's give a bad scenario. You get laid off. If you didn't have a nest egg saved up in savings, there's an opportunity to actually access some money from your 401(k) plan without penalty. What you'll do is, basically, you take the money directly from the plan, and you just have it go to your bank account, and the 10% penalty's waived.   John: Now, some people need to be careful with this. Once you roll it out to an IRA, this 55 rule here, where the 10%'s waived, ceases to exist. It has to go from the employer plan to you directly in that situation. It's a nice feature if someone finds themselves in a bad situation, or they need access to money, and the 10% penalty's gone, but you still have to pay your income tax on that money [crosstalk 00:05:03]   Mark: Of course. Yeah. That caveat being, it's only from the job that you've just left, right? It can't be from two jobs ago kind of thing. It's got to be that one that you've just walked away from, or been asked to leave, or whatever the case is. That's that caveat.   John: Correct.   Mark: It's basically the same rules, Nick, as the 59 and a half. It's just is attached to that prior job. But 59 and a half is the more normal one. What's the breakdown there?   Nick: Yeah. Essentially what happens is, at 59 and a half, you are able to take out money from your qualified accounts while avoiding that penalty without any sort of caveats. One thing to keep in mind is that usually you're taking it out from accounts that...   Nick: For example, if you're currently employed, the process of taking it out of the plan where you're employed can be a little bit different, but it's pretty smooth and easy if you have an IRA or something like that outside of the employer plan.   Nick: One other thing that happens in most plans, for people at 59 and a half, is, and we've seen it a bunch lately, where a lot of 401(k) plans have very restricted options in fixed income and those sorts of things, where most or many plans allow people to take inservice rollovers, where they're able to still work at their employer, but roll their money out of the plan to open up some options for investments outside of the plan.   Nick: That's not always the best thing for people. Sometimes the plans are great. Fees are really low. Options are great. So it may not make sense, but oftentimes people do like having the option to be able to shift the money out without any sort of issue.   Mark: Okay. All right. So that's the norm there. You got to love that half thing. You always wonder what the senators or whoever was thinking when [crosstalk 00:06:56]   John: Finally, they got rid of the 70 and a half [crosstalk 00:06:58]   Mark: Yeah. They get rid of that one. Yeah. We'll get to that in just a minute as well.   Mark: John, 62, nothing too groundbreaking here, but we are eligible finally for Social Security. So that becomes... I guess the biggest thing here is people just go, "Let me turn it on ASAP versus is it the right move?"   John: Yeah. So 62, you're now eligible. Like you said, a lot of people are excited to finally get access to that extra income. You can start taking on Social Security.   John: Couple of things to just be aware of is, any time you take Social Security before your full retirement age, you will get a reduction of benefit. At 62, it's anywhere, depending on your full retirement age, roughly 25 to 30% reduction of what you would've gotten had you waited till 66 or 67.   Mark: They penalize you, basically.   John: Yeah.   Nick: Yeah. Actually, if you do the math, it ends up breaking down to almost a half a percent per month reduced.   Mark: Oh wow.   Nick: Yeah. It really starts to add up when you think about it that way.   John: Yeah. We always harp on planning, so important if you are thinking about taking it early, once you make that decision, and after a year of doing that, you're locked into that decision. So it's important to really understand is that best for your situation.   John: Other things to consider at this age, if you do take early, Social Security does have what they call a earnings penalty slash recapture. If you're still working and taking at 62, a portion of your Social Security could be subject to go back to them in lieu of, for a better term, [crosstalk 00:08:27]   Mark: It's 19,000 and some change, I think, this year, if you make more than that.   John: Yeah.   Mark: Yeah.   John: Yeah. Anything above 19,000 that you're earning, 50% goes back to Social Security. [crosstalk 00:08:36]   Mark: Yeah. For every two bucks you make-   John: 5,000 goes back to Social Security. So that's really important.   John: Something that I just want to make, last point on this, is that earnings threshold is based on someone's earned income, and it's based on their own earned income, not household. That comes up quite a bit, while people say, "Well, I want to retire and take at 62, but my husband's still working. Am I going to have a penalty if I take it?" The answer is no. It's based on your own earnings record.   Mark: That's where the strategy comes into play too. Because if you are married, then looking at who's making more, do we leave one person's to grow, as we're going to get into those in just a second, to grow towards that more full number.   Mark: Again, that's all the strategy. It may make sense for one person to turn it on early, and the other person to delay it. That's, again, part of the strategy of sitting down and talking with a professional, and looking at all the other assets that you have, and figuring out a good move there.   Mark: Nick, let's go to Medicare. 65 magic age.   Nick: Yeah. Actually, my dad turns 65 this year. So we've been planning this out for him. He is a retired fireman, so he has some benefits that tie in with his pension.   Nick: One of the things that came up, and just something that people should think about or remember, even if they are continuing to work past 65, is it oftentimes makes sense to at least enroll in Medicare Part A. You can usually enroll as early as three months before your birthday. The Medicare website has gotten a lot easier to work with over the last year or two.   Nick: Part A, the tricky thing is that you want to check with your employer, because usually what happens for the areas that Part A covers, which is usually hospital care, if you were to have to be admitted or certain procedures, it's figuring out who's the primary payer, who pays first, who pays second. So making sure that you coordinate your benefits. Check in with HR, if you're going to continue to work.   Nick: If you are retired and are coming up on that Medicare age, make sure that you get your ducks in a row so that you do enroll. Most likely you're going to start saving some money on some healthcare premiums.   Mark: Technically, this starts about, what, three months early? It's a little actually before 65. I think it's three months when you got to start this process, and three months before and after.   Nick: Yep. Yeah. You can typically enroll three months before your birthday, and then through three months afterwards. There can be some issues if you don't enroll and you don't have other healthcare, at least for Part A. There can be penalties and that sort of thing.   Nick: Frankly, with Medicare and healthcare in retirement, this is a space that we typically delegate out. We've got some good resources for clients that we refer them to, because there are a lot of moving parts, and it can be overwhelming, especially when you start to move into the supplements and Advantage plans, and all these different things.   Mark: Oh yeah. And it's crucial. You want to make sure you get it right. A lot of advisors will definitely work with some specialists, if you will, in that kind of arena. So definitely checking that out when we turn 65.   Mark: Again, some of these, pretty high level stuff, some of this stuff we definitely know. But we wanted to go over some of those more interesting caveats.   Mark: Let's keep moving along here, guys. Full retirement age, 66 or 67. John, just what? It's your birthday, right?   John: It is your birthday. That's the time that you can actually take your full Social Security benefit without any reduction, which is a great thing to do. Then also that earnings penalty we discussed earlier at age 62, that no longer exists. Once you hit your full retirement age, 66 or 67, you can earn as much as you want and collect your Social Security. There's no penalty slash recapture.   John: When that happens, people have some decisions to make. If they're still working, they can decide to take their Social Security. I've had some clients that take it, and they use that as vacation money. I've had some other ones take it, and they take advantage of maxing out their 401(k) with the extra income. Or you can delay it. You don't have to take it. You get 8% simple interest on your benefit up until age 70.   John: So full retirement age, you got a lot of big decisions to make, depending on your situation. But you want to make sure you're making the best for what you want.   Mark: Definitely.   Nick: Just as a reminder to people that that 8%, and you had mentioned it, but it does cap out at age 70. So there's no point in waiting past 70, because it doesn't increase any more.   Mark: Right. Thanks for doing that. It wasn't on my list, but I was going to bring it up real fast. So yeah. People will sometimes email and they'll say, "Hey, I want to keep working past 70. How's that affect Social Security." It's like, "Well, you're maxed out, so you got to just go ahead and get it done." You can still work if you're feeling like it. Your earnings potential is unlimited, but it's just a matter of you're not going to add any more to it. So I'm glad you brought that up.   Mark: John, you mentioned earlier, they got rid of the other half. Thank God. The 70 and a half thing, just because it was confusing as all get out. They moved it to 72.   Nick: Yeah. Required minimum distributions, as a reminder for people, are for accounts that are pre-tax, where you were able to defer taxation. 401(k), traditional IRA, that sort of thing. At 72, you have to start taking out minimum distributions. It starts at around 3.6, 3.7% of the balance. It's based on the prior year's ending balance. It has to be taken out by the end of the year.   Nick: An important thing for people to understand is that, many times, people are taking those withdrawals out to live on anyways. So for a lot of people, it's not an issue at all. However, there are a good amount of people that it's going to be excess income.   Nick: Earlier mentioned, hey, at age 50, really time to check in and start making sure that you're planning. One of the benefits of planning and looking forward is to project out and see, hey, are these withdrawal going to cause you to have excess income at 72, where maybe we're entering into a time that tax rates could be higher, tax rates could be going up, which is fairly likely in the next five to 10 years. So if we know and we can project that, then we can make some adjustments to how we save, should you be putting more money into a Roth versus a traditional, and how we make adjustments on the overall planning.   Nick: So making sure that you understand how those work, and then the impact that it has on other decisions to take into account for that situation, is a huge part of planning.   Mark: Definitely. Those are some important birthdays along the way. You got to make sure you get this stuff done. 72, there's the hefty penalties involved if you don't do that. Plus you still got to pay the taxes. All this stuff has some crucial moments in that retirement planning process, so definitely make sure that you are not only celebrating your birthday, but you're also doing the right things from that financial and that retirement planning standpoint along the way.   Mark: Again, if you got questions, stop by the website, pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com. You can drop us an email question as well, if you'd like. That's what we're going to do to wrap up the show right now.   Mark: We got a question that's sent in from Jack. He says, "Hey, guys. I've thought about meeting with a financial advisor to plan my retirement, but I've never used a budget or anything like that before. So I'm wondering, should I budget myself for a couple of months before I meet with a professional?"   Nick: Based upon experience, putting expense numbers down on paper is one of the biggest hurdles for people to get into planning. But with how this question is phrased, I would be concerned, because it's kind of like the situation of starting a diet. You start a diet. You're going to eat really good for two to three weeks. You're trying to hold yourself accountable. You're functioning in a way that isn't necessarily your normal life.   Nick: One of the things, as advisors, that we want to make sure that we understand are what are you really spending. It's great to use a budget, but if you're budgeting to try to look good in the meeting, which we've seen happen, you're painting a false picture, and you're not letting us know what the finances actually look like.   Nick: So I would actually say to put down the real expense numbers in place, let's see what it really looks like, and then if we need to create a budget after we've created a plan, then that's something that we can dig into.   Mark: Yeah. John, let me ask you, as we wrap this up, sometimes people associate seeing a professional financial advisor with a budget. Also, people have a cringe to the B word. They think, "Well, I don't want to live on a fixed budget," or something like that.   Mark: That's not necessarily what we're talking about, right? That's not probably what Jack is referring to. He's just trying to figure out, I guess, more income versus expenses, right?   John: Yeah, yeah. The first step is to analyze your expenses. That could be what he's referring to as far as, "Hey, should I take a look? Should I get my expenses down before I meet with someone?"   John: I'd agree with Nick, even if that's what you're looking at, versus the budgeting, I would say no. I think the first step is sit down with an advisor, because they can assist in categorizing the expenses correctly based on today's expenses, versus what expenses are going to be at retirement.   John: I think it's important just to get going rather than trying to prep. Because we've seen a lot of people that have taken ... They've been prepping for years to meet. That's years where they haven't done anything, and they've, unfortunately, lost out on some good opportunities, otherwise, if they just said, "Hey, I'm going to sit down first, see what's going on."   Mark: Yeah. It gives you that built-in excuse.   John: [crosstalk 00:18:26]   Mark: It gives you that built in, "Well, I'm not quite ready." Well, you might never be ready if you play that game. Especially a lot of times when it's complimentary to sit down with professionals, have a conversation. Most advisors will talk to you, no cost or obligations. So why not right? Find out. Just get the ball rolling. That's the first step. It's usually the hardest part too.   Nick: Yeah. One thing that we typically tell people is that we are not the money police. We are not here to tell you that you can't use your money the way that you want to use it.   Nick: The way that we view ourselves, and what our role is as an advisor, is to help you understand the impact of decisions. Whether those decisions have to do with spending money, saving money, whatever, it's to make sure that you understand the impact of your decisions so that you make better decisions. That's it.   Mark: There you go. Yeah. It's your money, at the end of the day, your call, but certainly having some good, well, coaches in your corner, if you will, advisors to help advise, that's the whole point. But I like that. Not the money police.   Mark: All right. That's going to do it this week, guys. Thanks for hanging out. As always, we appreciate your time here on Retirement Planning Redefined. Don't forget. Stop by the website.   Mark: If you need help before you take any action, we always talk in generalities, and try to share some good nuggets of information, but you always want to see how those things are going to affect your specific situation.   Mark: If you're already working with John and Nick and the team at PFG Private Wealth, fantastic. Then you already have a lot of this stuff in place. But if you have questions, or you're not working with them, or you've come across this podcast in whatever way, or maybe a friend shared it with you, definitely reach out and have a chat. pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com. Don't forget to subscribe on whatever podcasting platform app you like to use.   Mark: We'll see you next time here on the show. For John and Nick, I'm your host, Mark. We'll catch you later here on Retirement Planning Redefined.

Scripture Reading: John 14:25-31 The concept of 'peace' is a major theme in the Bible, especially in the New Testament.  The word 'peace' occurs 95 times in the New Testament and is found in every book except 1 John. Few passages in Scripture are as sweet and comforting as this familiar promise of Jesus in John 14.  There is, in the Bible, the objective standing of peace with God.  "Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom 5:1; cf. Col 1:20).  The breech of relationship between sinful man and an infinitely holy God has been taken away by the cross of Christ for those who believe in Him. Flowing from the fountain of peace with God, in John 14:27, is the subjective experience of the feeling of peace in the mind and heart.  This is peace from God.  This is the feeling of security and contentment and well-being.  One of the wonders of this statement is that Jesus promises to give believers His peace … "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you."  Is there any better peace? This peace from God is not the elimination of problems or pain, but it is to have emotions and thoughts that are settled and stable in the middle of difficult circumstances. By truly resting in Christ, contemplating His wondrous work on our behalf, we can know the truth of the blessing "The LORD lift up His countenance on you, and give you peace" (Num 6:26).

147:0.1 (1647.1) JESUS and the apostles arrived in Capernaum on Wednesday, March 17, and spent two weeks at the Bethsaida headquarters before they departed for Jerusalem. These two weeks the apostles taught the people by the seaside while Jesus spent much time alone in the hills about his Father's business. During this period Jesus, accompanied by James and John Zebedee, made two secret trips to Tiberias, where they met with the believers and instructed them in the gospel of the kingdom. 147:0.2 (1647.2) Many of the household of Herod believed in Jesus and attended these meetings. It was the influence of these believers among Herod's official family that had helped to lessen that ruler's enmity toward Jesus. These believers at Tiberias had fully explained to Herod that the “kingdom” which Jesus proclaimed was spiritual in nature and not a political venture. Herod rather believed these members of his own household and therefore did not permit himself to become unduly alarmed by the spreading abroad of the reports concerning Jesus' teaching and healing. He had no objections to Jesus' work as a healer or religious teacher. Notwithstanding the favorable attitude of many of Herod's advisers, and even of Herod himself, there existed a group of his subordinates who were so influenced by the religious leaders at Jerusalem that they remained bitter and threatening enemies of Jesus and the apostles and, later on, did much to hamper their public activities. The greatest danger to Jesus lay in the Jerusalem religious leaders and not in Herod. And it was for this very reason that Jesus and the apostles spent so much time and did most of their public preaching in Galilee rather than at Jerusalem and in Judea. 1. The Centurion's Servant 147:1.1 (1647.3) On the day before they made ready to go to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover, Mangus, a centurion, or captain, of the Roman guard stationed at Capernaum, came to the rulers of the synagogue, saying: “My faithful orderly is sick and at the point of death. Would you, therefore, go to Jesus in my behalf and beseech him to heal my servant?” The Roman captain did this because he thought the Jewish leaders would have more influence with Jesus. So the elders went to see Jesus and their spokesman said: “Teacher, we earnestly request you to go over to Capernaum and save the favorite servant of the Roman centurion, who is worthy of your notice because he loves our nation and even built us the very synagogue wherein you have so many times spoken.” 147:1.2 (1647.4) And when Jesus had heard them, he said, “I will go with you.” And as he went with them over to the centurion's house, and before they had entered his yard, the Roman soldier sent his friends out to greet Jesus, instructing them to say: “Lord, trouble not yourself to enter my house, for I am not worthy that you should come under my roof. Neither did I think myself worthy to come to you; wherefore I sent the elders of your own people. But I know that you can speak the word where you stand and my servant will be healed. For I am myself under the orders of others, and I have soldiers under me, and I say to this one go, and he goes; to another come, and he comes, and to my servants do this or do that, and they do it.” 147:1.3 (1648.1) And when Jesus heard these words, he turned and said to his apostles and those who were with them: “I marvel at the belief of the gentile. Verily, verily, I say to you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.” Jesus, turning from the house, said, “Let us go hence.” And the friends of the centurion went into the house and told Mangus what Jesus had said. And from that hour the servant began to mend and was eventually restored to his normal health and usefulness. 147:1.4 (1648.2) But we never knew just what happened on this occasion. This is simply the record, and as to whether or not invisible beings ministered healing to the centurion's servant, was not revealed to those who accompanied Jesus. We only know of the fact of the servant's complete recovery. 2. The Journey to Jerusalem 147:2.1 (1648.3) Early on the morning of Tuesday, March 30, Jesus and the apostolic party started on their journey to Jerusalem for the Passover, going by the route of the Jordan valley. They arrived on the afternoon of Friday, April 2, and established their headquarters, as usual, at Bethany. Passing through Jericho, they paused to rest while Judas made a deposit of some of their common funds in the bank of a friend of his family. This was the first time Judas had carried a surplus of money, and this deposit was left undisturbed until they passed through Jericho again when on that last and eventful journey to Jerusalem just before the trial and death of Jesus. 147:2.2 (1648.4) The party had an uneventful trip to Jerusalem, but they had hardly got themselves settled at Bethany when from near and far those seeking healing for their bodies, comfort for troubled minds, and salvation for their souls, began to congregate, so much so that Jesus had little time for rest. Therefore they pitched tents at Gethsemane, and the Master would go back and forth from Bethany to Gethsemane to avoid the crowds which so constantly thronged him. The apostolic party spent almost three weeks at Jerusalem, but Jesus enjoined them to do no public preaching, only private teaching and personal work. 147:2.3 (1648.5) At Bethany they quietly celebrated the Passover. And this was the first time that Jesus and all of the twelve partook of the bloodless Passover feast. The apostles of John did not eat the Passover with Jesus and his apostles; they celebrated the feast with Abner and many of the early believers in John's preaching. This was the second Passover Jesus had observed with his apostles in Jerusalem. 147:2.4 (1648.6) When Jesus and the twelve departed for Capernaum, the apostles of John did not return with them. Under the direction of Abner they remained in Jerusalem and the surrounding country, quietly laboring for the extension of the kingdom, while Jesus and the twelve returned to work in Galilee. Never again were the twenty-four all together until a short time before the commissioning and sending forth of the seventy evangelists. But the two groups were co-operative, and notwithstanding their differences of opinion, the best of feelings prevailed. 3. At the Pool of Bethesda 147:3.1 (1649.1) The afternoon of the second Sabbath in Jerusalem, as the Master and the apostles were about to participate in the temple services, John said to Jesus, “Come with me, I would show you something.” John conducted Jesus out through one of the Jerusalem gates to a pool of water called Bethesda. Surrounding this pool was a structure of five porches under which a large group of sufferers lingered in quest of healing. This was a hot spring whose reddish-tinged water would bubble up at irregular intervals because of gas accumulations in the rock caverns underneath the pool. This periodic disturbance of the warm waters was believed by many to be due to supernatural influences, and it was a popular belief that the first person who entered the water after such a disturbance would be healed of whatever infirmity he had. 147:3.2 (1649.2) The apostles were somewhat restless under the restrictions imposed by Jesus, and John, the youngest of the twelve, was especially restive under this restraint. He had brought Jesus to the pool thinking that the sight of the assembled sufferers would make such an appeal to the Master's compassion that he would be moved to perform a miracle of healing, and thereby would all Jerusalem be astounded and presently be won to believe in the gospel of the kingdom. Said John to Jesus: “Master, see all of these suffering ones; is there nothing we can do for them?” And Jesus replied: “John, why would you tempt me to turn aside from the way I have chosen? Why do you go on desiring to substitute the working of wonders and the healing of the sick for the proclamation of the gospel of eternal truth? My son, I may not do that which you desire, but gather together these sick and afflicted that I may speak words of good cheer and eternal comfort to them.” 147:3.3 (1649.3) In speaking to those assembled, Jesus said: “Many of you are here, sick and afflicted, because of your many years of wrong living. Some suffer from the accidents of time, others as a result of the mistakes of their forebears, while some of you struggle under the handicaps of the imperfect conditions of your temporal existence. But my Father works, and I would work, to improve your earthly state but more especially to insure your eternal estate. None of us can do much to change the difficulties of life unless we discover the Father in heaven so wills. After all, we are all beholden to do the will of the Eternal. If you could all be healed of your physical afflictions, you would indeed marvel, but it is even greater that you should be cleansed of all spiritual disease and find yourselves healed of all moral infirmities. You are all God's children; you are the sons of the heavenly Father. The bonds of time may seem to afflict you, but the God of eternity loves you. And when the time of judgment shall come, fear not, you shall all find, not only justice, but an abundance of mercy. Verily, verily, I say to you: He who hears the gospel of the kingdom and believes in this teaching of sonship with God, has eternal life; already are such believers passing from judgment and death to light and life. And the hour is coming in which even those who are in the tombs shall hear the voice of the resurrection.” 147:3.4 (1649.4) And many of those who heard believed the gospel of the kingdom. Some of the afflicted were so inspired and spiritually revivified that they went about proclaiming that they had also been cured of their physical ailments. 147:3.5 (1649.5) One man who had been many years downcast and grievously afflicted by the infirmities of his troubled mind, rejoiced at Jesus' words and, picking up his bed, went forth to his home, even though it was the Sabbath day. This afflicted man had waited all these years for somebody to help him; he was such a victim of the feeling of his own helplessness that he had never once entertained the idea of helping himself which proved to be the one thing he had to do in order to effect recovery—take up his bed and walk. 147:3.6 (1650.1) Then said Jesus to John: “Let us depart ere the chief priests and the scribes come upon us and take offense that we spoke words of life to these afflicted ones.” And they returned to the temple to join their companions, and presently all of them departed to spend the night at Bethany. But John never told the other apostles of this visit of himself and Jesus to the pool of Bethesda on this Sabbath afternoon. 4. The Rule of Living 147:4.1 (1650.2) On the evening of this same Sabbath day, at Bethany, while Jesus, the twelve, and a group of believers were assembled about the fire in Lazarus's garden, Nathaniel asked Jesus this question: “Master, although you have taught us the positive version of the old rule of life, instructing us that we should do to others as we wish them to do to us, I do not fully discern how we can always abide by such an injunction. Let me illustrate my contention by citing the example of a lustful man who thus wickedly looks upon his intended consort in sin. How can we teach that this evil-intending man should do to others as he would they should do to him?” 147:4.2 (1650.3) When Jesus heard Nathaniel's question, he immediately stood upon his feet and, pointing his finger at the apostle, said: “Nathaniel, Nathaniel! What manner of thinking is going on in your heart? Do you not receive my teachings as one who has been born of the spirit? Do you not hear the truth as men of wisdom and spiritual understanding? When I admonished you to do to others as you would have them do to you, I spoke to men of high ideals, not to those who would be tempted to distort my teaching into a license for the encouragement of evil-doing.” 147:4.3 (1650.4) When the Master had spoken, Nathaniel stood up and said: “But, Master, you should not think that I approve of such an interpretation of your teaching. I asked the question because I conjectured that many such men might thus misjudge your admonition, and I hoped you would give us further instruction regarding these matters.” And then when Nathaniel had sat down, Jesus continued speaking: “I well know, Nathaniel, that no such idea of evil is approved in your mind, but I am disappointed in that you all so often fail to put a genuinely spiritual interpretation upon my commonplace teachings, instruction which must be given you in human language and as men must speak. Let me now teach you concerning the differing levels of meaning attached to the interpretation of this rule of living, this admonition to ‘do to others that which you desire others to do to you': 147:4.4 (1650.5) “1. The level of the flesh. Such a purely selfish and lustful interpretation would be well exemplified by the supposition of your question. 147:4.5 (1650.6) “2. The level of the feelings. This plane is one level higher than that of the flesh and implies that sympathy and pity would enhance one's interpretation of this rule of living. 147:4.6 (1650.7) “3. The level of mind. Now come into action the reason of mind and the intelligence of experience. Good judgment dictates that such a rule of living should be interpreted in consonance with the highest idealism embodied in the nobility of profound self-respect. 147:4.7 (1651.1) “4. The level of brotherly love. Still higher is discovered the level of unselfish devotion to the welfare of one's fellows. On this higher plane of wholehearted social service growing out of the consciousness of the fatherhood of God and the consequent recognition of the brotherhood of man, there is discovered a new and far more beautiful interpretation of this basic rule of life. 147:4.8 (1651.2) “5. The moral level. And then when you attain true philosophic levels of interpretation, when you have real insight into the rightness and wrongness of things, when you perceive the eternal fitness of human relationships, you will begin to view such a problem of interpretation as you would imagine a high-minded, idealistic, wise, and impartial third person would so view and interpret such an injunction as applied to your personal problems of adjustment to your life situations. 147:4.9 (1651.3) “6. The spiritual level. And then last, but greatest of all, we attain the level of spirit insight and spiritual interpretation which impels us to recognize in this rule of life the divine command to treat all men as we conceive God would treat them. That is the universe ideal of human relationships. And this is your attitude toward all such problems when your supreme desire is ever to do the Father's will. I would, therefore, that you should do to all men that which you know I would do to them in like circumstances.” 147:4.10 (1651.4) Nothing Jesus had said to the apostles up to this time had ever more astonished them. They continued to discuss the Master's words long after he had retired. While Nathaniel was slow to recover from his supposition that Jesus had misunderstood the spirit of his question, the others were more than thankful that their philosophic fellow apostle had had the courage to ask such a thought-provoking question. 5. Visiting Simon the Pharisee 147:5.1 (1651.5) Though Simon was not a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, he was an influential Pharisee of Jerusalem. He was a halfhearted believer, and notwithstanding that he might be severely criticized therefor, he dared to invite Jesus and his personal associates, Peter, James, and John, to his home for a social meal. Simon had long observed the Master and was much impressed with his teachings and even more so with his personality. 147:5.2 (1651.6) The wealthy Pharisees were devoted to almsgiving, and they did not shun publicity regarding their philanthropy. Sometimes they would even blow a trumpet as they were about to bestow charity upon some beggar. It was the custom of these Pharisees, when they provided a banquet for distinguished guests, to leave the doors of the house open so that even the street beggars might come in and, standing around the walls of the room behind the couches of the diners, be in position to receive portions of food which might be tossed to them by the banqueters. 147:5.3 (1651.7) On this particular occasion at Simon's house, among those who came in off the street was a woman of unsavory reputation who had recently become a believer in the good news of the gospel of the kingdom. This woman was well known throughout all Jerusalem as the former keeper of one of the so-called high-class brothels located hard by the temple court of the gentiles. She had, on accepting the teachings of Jesus, closed up her nefarious place of business and had induced the majority of the women associated with her to accept the gospel and change their mode of living; notwithstanding this, she was still held in great disdain by the Pharisees and was compelled to wear her hair down—the badge of harlotry. This unnamed woman had brought with her a large flask of perfumed anointing lotion and, standing behind Jesus as he reclined at meat, began to anoint his feet while she also wet his feet with her tears of gratitude, wiping them with the hair of her head. And when she had finished this anointing, she continued weeping and kissing his feet. 147:5.4 (1652.1) When Simon saw all this, he said to himself: “This man, if he were a prophet, would have perceived who and what manner of woman this is who thus touches him; that she is a notorious sinner.” And Jesus, knowing what was going on in Simon's mind, spoke up, saying: “Simon, I have something which I would like to say to you.” Simon answered, “Teacher, say on.” Then said Jesus: “A certain wealthy moneylender had two debtors. The one owed him five hundred denarii and the other fifty. Now, when neither of them had wherewith to pay, he forgave them both. Which of them do you think, Simon, would love him most?” Simon answered, “He, I suppose, whom he forgave the most.” And Jesus said, “You have rightly judged,” and pointing to the woman, he continued: “Simon, take a good look at this woman. I entered your house as an invited guest, yet you gave me no water for my feet. This grateful woman has washed my feet with tears and wiped them with the hair of her head. You gave me no kiss of friendly greeting, but this woman, ever since she came in, has not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil you neglected to anoint, but she has anointed my feet with precious lotions. And what is the meaning of all this? Simply that her many sins have been forgiven, and this has led her to love much. But those who have received but little forgiveness sometimes love but little.” And turning around toward the woman, he took her by the hand and, lifting her up, said: “You have indeed repented of your sins, and they are forgiven. Be not discouraged by the thoughtless and unkind attitude of your fellows; go on in the joy and liberty of the kingdom of heaven.” 147:5.5 (1652.2) When Simon and his friends who sat at meat with him heard these words, they were the more astonished, and they began to whisper among themselves, “Who is this man that he even dares to forgive sins?” And when Jesus heard them thus murmuring, he turned to dismiss the woman, saying, “Woman, go in peace; your faith has saved you.” 147:5.6 (1652.3) As Jesus arose with his friends to leave, he turned to Simon and said: “I know your heart, Simon, how you are torn betwixt faith and doubts, how you are distraught by fear and troubled by pride; but I pray for you that you may yield to the light and may experience in your station in life just such mighty transformations of mind and spirit as may be comparable to the tremendous changes which the gospel of the kingdom has already wrought in the heart of your unbidden and unwelcome guest. And I declare to all of you that the Father has opened the doors of the heavenly kingdom to all who have the faith to enter, and no man or association of men can close those doors even to the most humble soul or supposedly most flagrant sinner on earth if such sincerely seek an entrance.” And Jesus, with Peter, James, and John, took leave of their host and went to join the rest of the apostles at the camp in the garden of Gethsemane. 147:5.7 (1653.1) That same evening Jesus made the long-to-be-remembered address to the apostles regarding the relative value of status with God and progress in the eternal ascent to Paradise. Said Jesus: “My children, if there exists a true and living connection between the child and the Father, the child is certain to progress continuously toward the Father's ideals. True, the child may at first make slow progress, but the progress is none the less sure. The important thing is not the rapidity of your progress but rather its certainty. Your actual achievement is not so important as the fact that the direction of your progress is Godward. What you are becoming day by day is of infinitely more importance than what you are today. 147:5.8 (1653.2) “This transformed woman whom some of you saw at Simon's house today is, at this moment, living on a level which is vastly below that of Simon and his well-meaning associates; but while these Pharisees are occupied with the false progress of the illusion of traversing deceptive circles of meaningless ceremonial services, this woman has, in dead earnest, started out on the long and eventful search for God, and her path toward heaven is not blocked by spiritual pride and moral self-satisfaction. The woman is, humanly speaking, much farther away from God than Simon, but her soul is in progressive motion; she is on the way toward an eternal goal. There are present in this woman tremendous spiritual possibilities for the future. Some of you may not stand high in actual levels of soul and spirit, but you are making daily progress on the living way opened up, through faith, to God. There are tremendous possibilities in each of you for the future. Better by far to have a small but living and growing faith than to be possessed of a great intellect with its dead stores of worldly wisdom and spiritual unbelief.” 147:5.9 (1653.3) But Jesus earnestly warned his apostles against the foolishness of the child of God who presumes upon the Father's love. He declared that the heavenly Father is not a lax, loose, or foolishly indulgent parent who is ever ready to condone sin and forgive recklessness. He cautioned his hearers not mistakenly to apply his illustrations of father and son so as to make it appear that God is like some overindulgent and unwise parents who conspire with the foolish of earth to encompass the moral undoing of their thoughtless children, and who are thereby certainly and directly contributing to the delinquency and early demoralization of their own offspring. Said Jesus: “My Father does not indulgently condone those acts and practices of his children which are self-destructive and suicidal to all moral growth and spiritual progress. Such sinful practices are an abomination in the sight of God.” 147:5.10 (1653.4) Many other semiprivate meetings and banquets did Jesus attend with the high and the low, the rich and the poor, of Jerusalem before he and his apostles finally departed for Capernaum. And many, indeed, became believers in the gospel of the kingdom and were subsequently baptized by Abner and his associates, who remained behind to foster the interests of the kingdom in Jerusalem and thereabouts. 6. Returning to Capernaum 147:6.1 (1653.5) The last week of April, Jesus and the twelve departed from their Bethany headquarters near Jerusalem and began their journey back to Capernaum by way of Jericho and the Jordan. 147:6.2 (1654.1) The chief priests and the religious leaders of the Jews held many secret meetings for the purpose of deciding what to do with Jesus. They were all agreed that something should be done to put a stop to his teaching, but they could not agree on the method. They had hoped that the civil authorities would dispose of him as Herod had put an end to John, but they discovered that Jesus was so conducting his work that the Roman officials were not much alarmed by his preaching. Accordingly, at a meeting which was held the day before Jesus' departure for Capernaum, it was decided that he would have to be apprehended on a religious charge and be tried by the Sanhedrin. Therefore a commission of six secret spies was appointed to follow Jesus, to observe his words and acts, and when they had amassed sufficient evidence of lawbreaking and blasphemy, to return to Jerusalem with their report. These six Jews caught up with the apostolic party, numbering about thirty, at Jericho and, under the pretense of desiring to become disciples, attached themselves to Jesus' family of followers, remaining with the group up to the time of the beginning of the second preaching tour in Galilee; whereupon three of them returned to Jerusalem to submit their report to the chief priests and the Sanhedrin. 147:6.3 (1654.2) Peter preached to the assembled multitude at the crossing of the Jordan, and the following morning they moved up the river toward Amathus. They wanted to proceed straight on to Capernaum, but such a crowd gathered here they remained three days, preaching, teaching, and baptizing. They did not move toward home until early Sabbath morning, the first day of May. The Jerusalem spies were sure they would now secure their first charge against Jesus—that of Sabbath breaking—since he had presumed to start his journey on the Sabbath day. But they were doomed to disappointment because, just before their departure, Jesus called Andrew into his presence and before them all instructed him to proceed for a distance of only one thousand yards, the legal Jewish Sabbath day's journey. 147:6.4 (1654.3) But the spies did not have long to wait for their opportunity to accuse Jesus and his associates of Sabbath breaking. As the company passed along the narrow road, the waving wheat, which was just then ripening, was near at hand on either side, and some of the apostles, being hungry, plucked the ripe grain and ate it. It was customary for travelers to help themselves to grain as they passed along the road, and therefore no thought of wrongdoing was attached to such conduct. But the spies seized upon this as a pretext for assailing Jesus. When they saw Andrew rub the grain in his hand, they went up to him and said: “Do you not know that it is unlawful to pluck and rub the grain on the Sabbath day?” And Andrew answered: “But we are hungry and rub only sufficient for our needs; and since when did it become sinful to eat grain on the Sabbath day?” But the Pharisees answered: “You do no wrong in eating, but you do break the law in plucking and rubbing out the grain between your hands; surely your Master would not approve of such acts.” Then said Andrew: “But if it is not wrong to eat the grain, surely the rubbing out between our hands is hardly more work than the chewing of the grain, which you allow; wherefore do you quibble over such trifles?” When Andrew intimated that they were quibblers, they were indignant, and rushing back to where Jesus walked along, talking to Matthew, they protested, saying: “Behold, Teacher, your apostles do that which is unlawful on the Sabbath day; they pluck, rub, and eat the grain. We are sure you will command them to cease.” And then said Jesus to the accusers: “You are indeed zealous for the law, and you do well to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy; but did you never read in the Scripture that, one day when David was hungry, he and they who were with him entered the house of God and ate the showbread, which it was not lawful for anyone to eat save the priests? and David also gave this bread to those who were with him. And have you not read in our law that it is lawful to do many needful things on the Sabbath day? And shall I not, before the day is finished, see you eat that which you have brought along for the needs of this day? My good men, you do well to be zealous for the Sabbath, but you would do better to guard the health and well-being of your fellows. I declare that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. And if you are here present with us to watch my words, then will I openly proclaim that the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” 147:6.5 (1655.1) The Pharisees were astonished and confounded by his words of discernment and wisdom. For the remainder of the day they kept by themselves and dared not ask any more questions. 147:6.6 (1655.2) Jesus' antagonism to the Jewish traditions and slavish ceremonials was always positive. It consisted in what he did and in what he affirmed. The Master spent little time in negative denunciations. He taught that those who know God can enjoy the liberty of living without deceiving themselves by the licenses of sinning. Said Jesus to the apostles: “Men, if you are enlightened by the truth and really know what you are doing, you are blessed; but if you know not the divine way, you are unfortunate and already breakers of the law.” 7. Back in Capernaum 147:7.1 (1655.3) It was around noon on Monday, May 3, when Jesus and the twelve came to Bethsaida by boat from Tarichea. They traveled by boat in order to escape those who journeyed with them. But by the next day the others, including the official spies from Jerusalem, had again found Jesus. 147:7.2 (1655.4) On Tuesday evening Jesus was conducting one of his customary classes of questions and answers when the leader of the six spies said to him: “I was today talking with one of John's disciples who is here attending upon your teaching, and we were at a loss to understand why you never command your disciples to fast and pray as we Pharisees fast and as John bade his followers.” And Jesus, referring to a statement by John, answered this questioner: “Do the sons of the bridechamber fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as the bridegroom remains with them, they can hardly fast. But the time is coming when the bridegroom shall be taken away, and during those times the children of the bridechamber undoubtedly will fast and pray. To pray is natural for the children of light, but fasting is not a part of the gospel of the kingdom of heaven. Be reminded that a wise tailor does not sew a piece of new and unshrunk cloth upon an old garment, lest, when it is wet, it shrink and produce a worse rent. Neither do men put new wine into old wine skins, lest the new wine burst the skins so that both the wine and the skins perish. The wise man puts the new wine into fresh wine skins. Therefore do my disciples show wisdom in that they do not bring too much of the old order over into the new teaching of the gospel of the kingdom. You who have lost your teacher may be justified in fasting for a time. Fasting may be an appropriate part of the law of Moses, but in the coming kingdom the sons of God shall experience freedom from fear and joy in the divine spirit.” And when they heard these words, the disciples of John were comforted while the Pharisees themselves were the more confounded. 147:7.3 (1656.1) Then the Master proceeded to warn his hearers against entertaining the notion that all olden teaching should be replaced entirely by new doctrines. Said Jesus: “That which is old and also true must abide. Likewise, that which is new but false must be rejected. But that which is new and also true, have the faith and courage to accept. Remember it is written: ‘Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable to him. As new wine, so is a new friend; if it becomes old, you shall drink it with gladness.'” 8. The Feast of Spiritual Goodness 147:8.1 (1656.2) That night, long after the usual listeners had retired, Jesus continued to teach his apostles. He began this special instruction by quoting from the Prophet Isaiah: 147:8.2 (1656.3) “‘Why have you fasted? For what reason do you afflict your souls while you continue to find pleasure in oppression and to take delight in injustice? Behold, you fast for the sake of strife and contention and to smite with the fist of wickedness. But you shall not fast in this way to make your voices heard on high. 147:8.3 (1656.4) “‘Is it such a fast that I have chosen—a day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush, to grovel in sackcloth and

Amer, John, and Austin record the podcast every Sunday at 7:30 PM without conflicts at least 95% of the time… let's consider the odds that both Austin and john miss a podcast recording on the same night!! In this week's podcast, Austin gives us the rundown of how he ends up in the hospital after his first day at Rydel Roofing. As perfectly stated by Austin himself “the world must be a shit sandwich today, what a statistical anomaly”. ~ “When these things first happen to me, I have all of those instinctive reactions to be pissed – and then I have to think to myself, man, I'm 25 years old, I'm healthy, I absolutely adore my relationships, I love my life, I have such an amazing group of supportive people… As if I would give myself the opportunity to be all pouty and pissed! I've had to reframe this entire event in my head so many times today, but those thoughts wouldn't be happening if I wasn't a part of this weekly call for the past two years.” ~ “So you just carried a 90 pound bag of shingles up a ladder?? I don't think I could physically pull that off.” (John) Let's remind ourselves that it was a 24ft. ladder also. Strongman Austin truly never sleeps. Sounds like a pretty good reason to hire Rydel Roofing if you ask me

Pacific Street BluesAugust 1, 20211. Curtis Salgado / The Longer That I Live2. Al Green / Here I Am (Come and Take Me)3. BB King & Koko Taylor / Something You Got 4. Chris Cain / I Believe I Got Off Cheap5. Eric Bibb / Masters of War (Bob Dylan cover) 6. Keb Mo / What's Happening Brother (Marvin Gaye)7. Guy Davis / God's Unchanging Hand8. Micheal McDonald / World Out of A Dream 9. Professor Longhair / Jambalaya10. Dr. John / Let the Good Time Roll11. Johnny Cash  / The Night Hank Williams Came to Town 12. Matt Cox /  Let the Pigs Fly 13. Eric Clapton / Hello Old Friend14. Tedeschi Trucks Band / Layla15. Buddy Guy / Strange Brew16. Rod Stewart / What Make MIlwaukee Famous (Made a Fool Outta Me)17. Ray Charles / Ain't That Love18. Hadden Sayers / Little Bit of Love 19. Free / Wishing Well 20. BIlly Gibbons / My Lucky Card21. Hank Williams Jr. / Jesus Left Chicago, Waitin' for the Bus22. Grand Funk Railroad / Heartbreaker 

Last weekend we began speaking about devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus to which the month of June is dedicated. We said we were going to focus on three Gospel pages in particular. Last Sunday we focused on the passage in which the Heart of Jesus appears as the place of our rest and as the root of the interior life of Jesus Christ that we are all called to imitate: This is to say, the imitation to which Christ invited us was not an imitation of the material aspects of Jesus' life, but an imitation of the virtues and affections of his Heart. He also invited us to go to him when we are tired and in need of love and understanding. Today, I invite you to consider a second page of Scripture. In this case, from the Gospel of St. John: “Let anyone who thirsts come to me and let he who believes in me drink. As Scripture says: ‘Out of his heart there shall flow rivers of living water.'” (Jn 7:37-39) and St. John further comments: “He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive. There was, of course, no Spirit yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.” This text usually appears punctuated in the wrong way. It must be punctuated as Pope Pius XII did in the Encyclical Haurietis Aquas, the authentic Magna Carta of devotion to the Heart of Jesus. The words of Scripture that Jesus quotes -"out of his heart there shall flow rivers of living water"- do not refer to the person who believes in Jesus - they refer to his own Heart! The Lord invites the thirsty to drink from his Sacred Heart, from which flow torrents of living water. St. John tells us that the torrent of living water that Jesus promises is the Holy Spirit, which He communicates to those who draw near to Him. This torrent flows from within him. The Greek word, koilia, means interior, but it has behind it a Hebrew word that properly translated means heart. Throughout life, as the years go by, we have the impression that our heart is dry. In spite of our efforts, how few flowers and fruits of good works embellish it! It is dry. Let us appropriate the prophecy of Ezekiel, in which he speaks to us of the river that gives life to the desert. We have a fountain, Jesus' Heart, and all we have to do is drink from it. It is an inexhaustible spring, which, as it flows through the arid desert, can turn a wasteland into a paradise, an orchard, a garden. When I approach the Heart of Jesus, I go to the fountain. If in the text of St. Matthew that we contemplated last week, the Heart of Jesus appeared as a place of rest, in the Gospel passage of St. John we are considering today we see it as a source of life capable of transforming our soul, which is arid and dry, so that it becomes a paradise, a "new creation," as St. Paul tells us in the second reading. Yes, the Heart of Jesus is the source through which the Holy Spirit is communicated to us. He is strength in our weakness and a torrent of living water that can transform the heart of every person, transforming it from a desert and a wasteland into a garden that is never dry, that constantly produces the flowers of virtue and the fruits of good works. The Heart of Jesus exists today as the living heart in the Risen Christ. The Risen Christ is close to us in the Eucharist, in the tabernacle. We can have direct, close, daily contact, which allows that torrent of living water to pass from his Heart to mine. The privileged moment of contact with this fountain of life is Holy Communion, when his Heart is placed next to mine, the fountain next to the desert, and in this closeness, He can water my soul and give it life, give it the Holy Spirit. Let us ask the Lord to help us to thirst always for that personal, daily, intimate encounter with the Heart of Jesus, especially in personal prayer, the Sacrament of Penance, and Holy Communion. May He thus give us, as we will say in the Prayer over the Offerings of this Holy Mass, “a heart pleasing to Him”. May the Holy Spirit unite us to the Heart of Christ and make us new creations. May we live urged by the love of Jesus so that from now on, we no longer live for ourselves, but for him who, for our sake, died and rose again.

The fourth episode in a 9-part series on some of the most mis-interpreted verses in the Bible. Matthew 18:20: “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” Episode 3 on Philippians 4:13 is now LIVE! ------------------------ Episode Summary/For Further Exploration John's 4 Rules for Biblical Interpretation: How does what you're reading apply to the Life of Jesus or the Life of the Author? Read the passage in different translations. Is it typically only used in one specific translation? What did it mean to the original hearers? Interpret the Bible with The Bible. Go to other parts of the Bible and see if the subject text is consistent with the character of God found elsewhere.  Process to Restore of a Fallen Individual as Outlined in Matthew 18 The Party Stumbles/Sins The Community of Faith Seeks to Restore the Individual. If your “brother or sister” stumbles go to them and illuminate the issue in love.  The Community Forgives with Abundance the One Who has Stumbled. Jesus' Sermon in Matt 18 Abridged (Summarized by John) Let all people regardless of statue or status have access to Jesus. Those who humble themselves to be small like children will experience the fullness of God's kingdom Anyone who gets in the way of those coming to Jesus will face opposition Remove from your own life the things which cause you to “stumble” Seek to restore those who have stumbled or fallen away from life with Jesus If someone has “stumbled/trespassed/sinned” against you go to them to illuminate the concern so that your relationship can be made right and they can be restored.  Forgive them with abundance and completeness just as you have been forgiven and restored when you stumble.  God the Father will forgive you to the extent you extend forgiveness to others.  Jesus will be present in your midst during the Restoration and Forgiveness of One Another. This is where the presence of Jesus is found. Restoration and Forgiveness are hard, but will make you more into the likeness of Jesus Himself.  ------------------------ Resources & References Bible References (Order As Introduced): Matthew 18:20; John 15:7; Matthew 26:39; 2 Corinthians 12: 8-9; Luke 4:16; Matthew 4:23; John 10:22-23; John 3:5; 1 Corinthians 6:19; 1 Corinthians 3:16; John 14:16-17; Matthew 18:1-6, 8, 12-17, & 21-22; Matthew 19:1; Matthew 18:18; 1 Corinthians 5 Baylor Basketball National Championship in Basketball

Drag the River "Waste of Time, Valentine"Professor Longhair "Big Chief"Louis Armstrong "West End Blues"Bob Dylan "Man In The Long Black Coat (Album Version)"Professor Longhair "Mardi Gras In New Orleans"Slim Harpo "I'm a King Bee"79rs Gang "Eh Paka Way"Tuba Skinny "Papa's Got Your Bathwater On"The Kid Thomas Band "I Believe I Can Make It By Myself"Smiley Lewis "One Night"Dr. John "Let the Good Times Roll"Eilen Jewell "It's Your Voodoo Working"Various Artists "Shoo Shoo Chicken"Lightnin' Slim "My Starter Won't Work"Rolling Stones "Shake Your Hips"Memphis Minnie "New Orleans Stop Time"James Booker "On The Sunny Side Of The Street"Blu Lu Barker "I'll Give You Some Tomorrow"The Dirty Dozen Brass Band "Don't You Feel My Leg (Album Version)"Led Zeppelin "Royal Orleans"Lucero "I Woke Up in New Orleans"The Lostines "Playing the Fool"The Dixie Cups "Iko Iko"Aurora Nealand & The Royal Roses "Helen's Story - I'll Be Seeing You"The Lonesome Doves "When We Were Wild"Jelly Roll Morton "Dead Man Blues"Oscar Celestin "Marie Laveau"The Original Pinettes Brass Band "Lord Lord Lord"Smilin' Joe "ABC's Parts 1 & 2"Guitar Slim "The Things I Used to Do"Hank Williams "Pan American"Sam Doores "Wish You Well"Fats Domino "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead"Sweet Emma & Her Dixieland Boys "I Ain't Gonna Give Nobody None of My Jelly Roll"Preservation Hall Jazz Band "Tootie Ma Is A Big Fine Thing"Big Al Carson "Because I Got High"Shannon McNally "Street People"King Oliver and His Orchestra "Call Of The Freaks, Pt. 2"Billie & DeDe Pierce "Love Song of the Nile"Sundown Songs "I'm Gone"Rebirth Jazz Band "Mardi Gras Medley"Tommy Ridgley "Looped"Dave Bartholomew "The Ice Man (06-14-54)"Dr. John "Big Chief"Tom Waits "I Wish I Was In New Orleans [in The Ninth Ward]"

What did it mean when Jesus said "I AM" in the book of John? Let's discover together.Song of the week: You are I Am by MercyMehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JI4CPfuLW0Sources for this week:https://www.thomasnelsonbibles.com/jesus-seven-i-am-statements/https://indycrowe.com/2019/02/13/the-7-i-am-statements-of-jesus-ot-background-nt-meaning/

Today's Devotional comes from the book of John “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” - John 14:1-7 #Devotional #DonNotLetYourHeartsBeTroubled #PurposePrinciplesPassion #SupportMVC --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bromartin/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/bromartin/support

1 John 2:20–25[20] But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. [21] I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. [22] Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. [23] No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. [24] Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. [25] And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life. (ESV)

Billion dollar companies rely on competitive intelligence to stay ahead in their markets. What lessons can the rest of us take from how they use CI to make better decisions? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Cipher Systems VP of Marketing John Booth talks about what competitive intelligence is, and how companies can use it to inform decision making. Cipher's customers are some of the largest companies in the world, and they have highly specialized units dedicated exclusively to competitive intelligence. Not every company has the budget, or the team, to support that, so John explains what the rest of us should be looking at, and how we should use information about our competitors to develop marketing and business strategies. Highlights from my conversation with John include: Many marketers use the terms data, information and intelligence interchangeably, but they are very different things. Intelligence is the product of analyzing information and data, and it requires people to do it. There's also a lot of confusion around the difference between business intelligence, market intelligence and competitive intelligence. BI is the information you have within your own business, whereas MI is the information about what is happening in the market.  Competitive intelligence is information about your markets and also your competitors and how that influences your ability to sell within your markets or deliver the services that your business does. There are three kinds of software tools used in competitive intelligence: 1) Generic tools like Sharepoint or Google Alerts that can be used or many things: 2) Specific tools like Klue that are built to fulfill a very particular need, such as sales enablement; and 3) Purpose-built tools like Cipher's Knowledge360, which are built specifically for competitive intelligence professionals. Before any business engages in competitive intelligence, it should start by developing a deep understanding of its differentiators, strengths and weaknesses. Resources from this episode: Connect with John on LinkedIn Visit the Cipher Systems website Listen to the podcast to learn more about competitive intelligence and how businesses both large and small can use it to get an edge.   Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm Kathleen Booth and I'm your host. This week, my guest is none other than my husband John Booth. Welcome John. John Booth (Guest): Well, I mean, it only took 150 some odd episodes for me to get an invitation. Kathleen: Saving the best for last. So I don't know if my listeners know this, but John and I, so John and I used to own a marketing agency together for 11 years and somehow miraculously, we're still married. And when people ask me what he does now, I always say he does the same thing I do just at a different company. He is also a vice president of marketing. He is VP of marketing for a company called Cipher Systems, which is in the competitive intelligence space. So John, for those who may not know you, who may not know Cipher, can you just tell my audience a little bit about yourself as well as about Cipher systems and what it does? About John Booth and Cipher Systems John: Sure. So as Kathleen said, I was a part of our digital agency for about a dozen years or so. And before that I held different sales positions started out in the staffing world and then held lots of different positions there. But since Quintain, I have joined Cipher systems and Cipher is a small, there's probably about 20 of us now, competitive intelligence firm. John: And we'll give to the definition of that because it's, I think it's very important. I see a lot of similarities in the competitive intelligence to what I saw in the content inbound marketing world maybe 10 years ago. So it's it's a, it's a developing industry and I think more and more people within the organizations, particularly certainly larger organizations are finding the need for, and using competitive intelligence today. But so we have a classic kind of services side of the business. And, and then in addition to that, we have a technology or a software side of the business where we have a software platform. It's a cloud based competitive intelligence platform that acts as a knowledge management system, as well as the competitive intelligence tools for all of your competitive Intel and dashboards and reports and newsletters and, and information like that. Kathleen: And what kinds of companies does Cipher work with? John: So Cipher works with large organizations. So our ideal buyer has more than a billion dollars in revenue. Typically at least 5,000 employees, they're headquartered in the United States and they operate in industries that have one or one of two key kind of characteristics. The first is they're either highly regulated. So think financial services, insurance, healthcare, or the industries are incredibly competitive. So think about things like technology government contractors those types of industries. So those are, those are kind of the, the ingredients that make for the need for competitive intelligence. Kathleen: So side note, I just think it's really funny this doing this interview because I am interviewing you like I don't know the answers to these questions already. But everyone listening doesn't so I still need to ask them. So one of the reasons I wanted you to talk about who you work for or with the kinds of companies you work for is that, it's the thing that I have found interesting, kind of watching as you've worked there is that prior to you working at Cipher, you know, I was familiar with the field of competitive intelligence, you know, roughly but there are such different levels of it, right? I mean, the stuff that you guys do, like you were saying, it's really big companies that have, you know, the stakes are high. They have a lot to lose. It's highly competitive or regulated or this or that. It's serious business. And they have teams of people whose jobs are just to do competitive intelligence. And then you have like the kind of competitive intelligence that, that smaller companies do where you're like, I've got a Google alert on my competitor, you know, that sort of thing. And so it's, it's very interesting to me the different shades of it. So segwaying from that, you mentioned defining competitive intelligence. So like how do you guys see it? What is it, how do you define it? What is competitive intelligence? John: So so there are a couple of key definitions, just so the audience and, and the two of us are on kind of the same page here. So the first one is the difference between let's define data, information and intelligence. So an example of data might be the number three. Okay. So that is data. Alright. Information is a series of data pieces. So an example, a pretty example of information is a streetlight. So a streetlight has three different colored lights, right? Red, yellow, and green. All right. And so when red is on, I stop when yellow is, I slowed down or hit the gas. And when green is, I continue on my way. So that is, so that is information. So there's several different data points there. There's the number of lights, what the, the, the meaning of those lights. Intelligence is the product of analysis. So intelligence requires people today. So so you might hear a lot of the impact of artificial intelligence on competitive intelligence and market intelligence and things like that. So today, intelligence requires a human being to perform some type of analysis and deliver some types of insights to the business that's intelligence. And that is that's what has value. So just simply gathering information, there's no value that's delivered to the organization. It's not until a person actually applies the filters and understandings and kind of teases out what this might mean that there is any value delivered, and that is intelligence. So then I'm going to define three other terms that are often kind of used interchangeably. And they shouldn't be much like a, when we had our agency often found that people would use marketing, advertising and PR interchangeably, when, as marketers, we all know that those are completely different you know, services and they mean different things, but to the lay person, they kind of get interchanged interchangeably. So competitive intelligence market intelligence and business intelligence are often interchanged kind of the same way. So let's use business intelligence. So business intelligence, we define that as the, the information that the business intelligence is based off of information on your business. So if you think about if all of the information that we have within our four walls of our business, that is our business intelligence. Okay. So if you manufacture something that might be how many widgets that you can manufacture in an hour and how many people you need and the profitability of those widgets, et cetera. So business intelligence really means focused on your business, right? No external sources or information, it's all internal data. Market intelligence is just that it is the market. It might be trends in the market. It, it might be consumer behavior and how consumers are responding to certain trends or, or things along those lines. And then competitive intelligence is information about your markets and also your competitors and how that influences your ability to sell within your markets or deliver the services that your business does. Kathleen: So earlier you mentioned that competitive intelligence requires people, but you guys sell competitive intelligence software. So like, how does that work? John: Because software, obviously it doesn't have people in it, but so think of it as think of it as this. What's a good analogy? So if I am a marketer and I have a tool like HubSpot, which we love, because it allows me to host my website, allows me to post and schedule my social. It allows me to have my content and edit it and do keyword work. All of that helps me with my marketing strategy and deliver a strategy. So you wouldn't buy HubSpot and say, Oh, well, HubSpot is going to do my marketing strategy. It's, you know, it's going to, you know, help me be a better marketer. Yes. But it still requires people to deliver that strategy. You know, you you're using a tool. Yes. but the tools can never, they, there are at least the tools today can not replace what an analyst, a researcher, a strategist, a person, a marketer, could be a product marketer. You know, what a person does. What kinds of tools are available to support competitive intelligence? Kathleen: And I feel like there's this vast array of tools out there for competitive intelligence. Like I mentioned earlier, it's everything from a simple Google or all the way up to a platform like you guys have that is used by huge corporations. So maybe you could speak to like, kind of what that landscape looks like. John: Right. So one of the one of the things that we're trying to educate people that are looking for tools are the different types of tools. We believe there are three different kinds of tools out there. There are what we call generic tools, and those are tools that are typically they've been built for a different purpose, but they're often adopted or adapted to a competitive intelligence use. And a good example of that is SharePoint. So SharePoint wasn't built for competitive intelligence, but SharePoint is, it can be an adequate kind of knowledge management source. It can, you know, you can have teams adding information to it and downloading information. You could even, you know, use some of the collaborative features there, et cetera. And so that's like the use of a generic tool. And then you have your your second type of CI tools, a tool that is built for a specific really for a specific person purpose. And, and an example of that is, so there's a company, one of our competitors, Klue. And they do a very good job of sales enablement. So if you have a large sales team and you want to empower your sales team to close more deals, and you want to give your sales team the resources that they need to have the right information at their fingertips, when they're on calls and and kind of, and, and sell against other competitors, they're a great tool for that. And then you have the third category, which is kind of that the tool that is built specifically for competitive intelligence and, and those are tools that do primarily three things. They gather information. So they're going to allow you to aggregate information and that information could come in from newsfeeds. It might come in from subscriptions to information, the research that you have it, it might be internal documents that you have kind of those business intelligence documents that we talked about. It might be information that your sales or marketing team uncovers maybe during the course of their day. So one of the things that, that we help companies with is most companies have just, just dozens, if not hundreds of nuggets of information within the organization, but they just don't have the ability to give it visibility. So, you know, it's, you know, the salesperson that knows what he's up against for a particular deal, because the prospect shared this with them and it's sitting within his inbox and he's the only person that has access to his inbox. So the product marketing team that is getting ready to do the roadmap for their product, can't see what the customer, the prospect is looking for because they don't have access to this information. So that third tool allows all of this information to go into it. And then with our tool, we use artificial intelligence and natural language processing to automatically tag this information. And we use semantic learning for it to identify things like location company and individuals by reading through and analyzing the, the, the content that you're adding to the system. So, there are those types of tools and, and it's interesting. We did some research a couple of years ago. The pharmaceutical industry is by far kind of the most advanced commercial, competitive intelligence kind of industry. Most other industries, they're still kind of developing CI practices and, and most outside of the pharmaceutical industry. And I kind of call that life sciences. So not strictly just pharmaceuticals. Most organizations have I think it's like 1.2 people working on their CI. So not big teams, not, not at all. How can marketers use competitive intelligence? Kathleen: Yeah. It's so interesting. It's such a specialized field. I feel like you know, now coming back to kind of, the focus of this podcast obviously is inbound marketing. So a lot of marketers are listening and this can seem very unapproachable because like, for example, if you guys, you work with really large companies and they have these dedicated people let's start with what, how are those companies using competitive intelligence and how is that helping them make better business decisions or get better results from their businesses. And then we can kind of bring it back down to, for smaller companies, what are ways they could begin to approach this? So let's begin some like actual examples of how this plays out. John: Okay. So so I think that that, that the marketers marketers today, this is, this is my own belief. I believe they're, they're waking up to this need for competitive intelligence because your inbound marketing is no longer delivering the results that you were seeing before. So for just about a decade or so, we have as marketers, we've been really focused on the content I'm creating and attract, creating content, solving problems, answering questions, et cetera. And we've been rewarded with that with prospects and customers and results, and kind of the, you know, Marcus shared approach. They have questions kind of, you know, answer their questions and, and, you know, you'll be rewarded well. In the beginning that was really, really successful because there were fewer people doing it and, and the people that were doing it for the most part were really doing it. You know, it's not until much later that you're downloading the ebook and it's actually just 18 PowerPoint slides with two bullets on each slide and has nothing to do with an actual book. So we have to, as marketers look for things that are going to give us results. And so, as we were focused kind of internally on what we're talking about, what our prospects and customers are talking about, we're really ignoring what was going on in our market and our competitors. And so we were ignoring these macro issues. And so competitive intelligence is kind of the other side of the equation. So you know, you've take your prospects and your customers, and that's one piece of success. And then, but, but you can't do that in a vacuum. Those that do SEO work understand that. So you find out what your teams are, you know, what you want to rank for and what your competitors are ranking for. And then you do SEO work to help change those rankings. Well, your competitors, don't just sit still. They're also looking at what's going on in the market and looking at the actions that you're doing. And so, you know, we found this need to to address, well, how do I understand what's going on in the marketplace and how do I position myself against my competitors or the other options that that my prospects and customers have. So that's a long roundabout way of explaining how companies are using competitive intelligence to better deploy their resources. And so when, when you're doing this before, you can get to actually doing competitive intelligence work, you have to have a really clear understanding of your differentiators and, and your vulnerabilities. So that's where, you know, somebody who wants to begin doing competitive intelligence work, I would challenge them to to, to sit down and do the, the work on how are you different from your competitors, you know, and, and where do you have overlap and where is that overlap? Where does that lead to, or where could you be vulnerable because of that overlap? What impact does competitive intelligence have on businesses? Kathleen: So the larger companies that you guys work with, obviously have that part figured out. They, you know, they have their teams in place, they understand their differentiators. So when they undertake competitive intelligence, how are they using it? Like in practical terms to get better business results? Do you have some case studies or some success stories or anything like that that you can share of how, like, how does competitive intelligence produce better outcomes for these companies? John: Yes. So this was this was a very kind of rude awakening coming from the marketing agency world where you know, you have clients and you're working with clients and you're doing great work for them. And you ask your clients, Hey, you know, would you mind providing a testimonial, a quote, being a part of a, you know, a white paper case study you know, sharing your experience and, and usually it's, Oh yeah. You know, they're very supportive of that when you are in the competitive intelligence world, nobody wants to talk about the tools that they're using, what you're doing for them, because by nature of it, you are, you know, you're giving away intelligence for your competitors to use against you. Kathleen: You know what other industry is like that? Cybersecurity. I know that, of which you speak. John: So let me, I can talk in some kind of in general terms. So we estimate and Cipher has been around for 20, 25 years. We estimate that most most people doing CI work spend about 70% of their time gathering and organizing information. If we go back to the definitions that we had of data, information, and intelligence, data and information add zero value to the business. So you're spending 70% of your time on things that have no value add to the business. Only 30% of your time is on the analysis, developing the insights, you know, all of that information that your CI consumers, whether it be your sales teams, your, your C suite, your product development team, your marketers, they all need this information, but the bulk of your time is spent gathering it and, and organizing it. And, that is because your business is complicated and information comes in lots of different forms, and some of it is structured. And some of it is unstructured. You know, you have information internal reports. You have, as I mentioned before, you have emails that are received from salespeople. You have teams that are out in the field and going to trade shows and seeing you know, what your competitors, their messages at their trade show boots, you have competitor websites that are changing and messaging. And so so what our tool does is it automates a lot of that. For example we have many customers before they started using our tool Knowledge360, that would have 18 number. And some of them would have more that would manually go out to competitors' websites and look at their websites and look for changes in their websites. And that could be pricing changes if you're in an industry or, or, you know, a market that is price sensitive, you want to know about those changes. And, you know, it could be messaging changes. So by using a tool like Knowledge360, we can automate that. And so the tool goes out, it gathers the information. It says, Hey, this page has changed. It highlights the, the, the new information, you know, and, and that's, that's there in one color, it highlights the information that has been changed or removed and another color. And now an analyst can take a look at that and say, Oh, this is really meaningful. You know, so that's, that's an example of how are a tool like ours or how anyone can use competitive intelligence. So, to monitor the messaging that your competitors are using, or if they have a pricing page, you know, you can, you can monitor that for changes in their pricing. How do companies use competitive intelligence? Kathleen: So it sounds like the tool itself can be used to save time to streamline the process, but like, what are these companies doing with this information? How, like, why are they spending all this money on competitive intelligence? What is it doing things successful? John: So if you think about this so it's helping them be successful by giving insights and providing this intelligence that your decision makers are looking for. And ultimately, hopefully you're, you're enabling them to make better informed decisions. So if you think about think about someone that has you know, you're wearing glasses, but they have blinders on, and you can only see right in front of you. And you're making your decisions based on your field of vision that is just in front of you. Now, you take those away and you have a wider field of vision, and you have more information. You may, you may make a different decision. Kathleen: What's an example of something, a marketing thing that I might do differently based on the information I would find? John: So here's, here's an example. So if I have a, let's say I'm a nationwide company and I compete with someone on the East coast. Okay. And they're a good competitor. I went against them. Sometimes they went against me sometimes. But I have offices on the East coast and also on the West coast. Well, if I had a CI department, one of the things they might be monitoring or looking for is job postings with my competitors. So if all of a sudden, one of my competitors is posting a sales manager position in the Seattle market, and they're not in the Seattle market. And one of my key customers is in the Seattle market. Oh, that's something that I want to know about because it looks like my competitor is coming into, if they're going to invest in building out a sales team, putting an office in Seattle. Now, all of a sudden, my sales people that have only had to deal with maybe the competitors that were in that local market without this East coast competitor, they now need to be aware of this new competitor coming into the market. And that may change how we position ourselves. It may change how we price things. It may change, you know, the terms of her contracts. It could have all types of different information, you know, of, of business decisions that we make. How Cipher uses competitive intelligence for itself Kathleen: So I'm assuming that you guys are, as I like to say, drinking your own champagne, because I don't like the phrase eating your own dog food. So how does Cipher use competitive intelligence? John: So so we use this fantastic tool called Knowledge360. It's very comprehensive. We have several dashboards that we use. And one in particular that is called our competition crusher. And so with our competition crusher dashboard, it's a feed of news announcements on it's a feed of social. It has intelligence that our salespeople gain talking to prospects and customers. Our marketing team will add information like messaging changes that we might see and all of this battle cards. So if we know we're going up against a particular competitor, we want to, you know, we want to draw attention to these benefits of using our product. And, and if we know that there are gaps, you know, we want to ask our prospects about, you know, the gaps that we know our competitors have. So, that's one example of how we're using it to kind of gather all of that information, organize it in a way, you know, and the beauty of using something you're using a tool that provides dashboards is the dashboards are updated in real time. So unlike, you know, most people, if they have any experience or exposure to CI work it's typically a part of the, you know, quarterly sales meeting. And there's somebody that comes up that says competitor ABC is doing this. And then, you know, they share the PowerPoint deck and, you know, a quarter later another report comes out, but there's a lot of time and a lot of change that goes on between, you know, the publishing of those two different reports. And, you know, you may make different decisions having a dashboard that's always on always available, always monitoring. You're always getting the most up to date information. And so we share that with our leadership team, our sales team, marketing team, customer, all of them add to, and, and consume information from those dashboards. Prediction markets and the future of competitive intelligence Kathleen: And then real quickly, because I feel like this could be an entirely other podcast episode. I feel like with competitive intelligence, you're looking at things that have already happened, right? You guys have something I find fascinating, which is this other side to your business where you can do much more predictive stuff. It's super cool. And you have something called predictive markets. So can you, somewhat quickly because we are coming up on our time, just give people a sense of what I mean, cause that's really like competitive intelligence looking into the future, if you will, or trying to figure out what's gonna happen in the future. So how does that work? John: So that is really cool stuff and it is relatively new. So Cipher systems and another company Consensus Point, we merged towards the end of last year. Consensus Point is a a research company. So as competitive intelligence professionals, they gather information and they do research. You have two primary types of research yet. Primary research and secondary research, secondary research being research that's available to anyone and those might be market reports or things that are publicly available and anyone has access to those or they're not restricted. Primary research is research that you do, you hire someone to do on your behalf and that's information that you have. And that if, if done correctly and on the appropriate things could be a competitive advantage having this primary information or more information about a particular topic. Well, what you're talking about is predictive markets research. So if you think about primary research, most people are familiar with polls and surveys. And so that is a traditional kind of primary research method that is it's, it's very effective for certain things. It's also riddled with problems for other things, for example human beings in general, we are very poor predictors of our own performance. So you know, just ask anyone with a child and ask them how bright their child is. Nobody is going to tell you that their child is below average average, you know, they're Oh, you know, top 1%, 10%, 5%. Well, that's not true because most of us are average. Kathleen: That's why it's the definition. 90% of us are not in the top 10%.  John: That's exactly right. So what a prediction market is, is it is think of a market, probably one of the most common is the stock market. So, you know, the stock market is a platform where people have are placing wagers on whether or not, you know, the value of a company is going to increase or decrease. So if you think about this, and this is a great book that I'll have to give you. It's by a poker player. I'll give it to you so you can add to the show notes, but basically if you ask somebody, you know, do you think Apple stock is going to be higher than it is the value of it is going to be higher in one month from today's point you know, you might say, yes. Okay, well, how much are you willing to bet it's up? So if you put real money, your hard earned money, like how many shares of Apple stock are you willing to purchase at today's price? Check out "Thinking In Bets" by Annie Duke John: You know, and it is, are your beliefs, do they change? So a prediction market is, you are using the social behavioral characteristics of individuals and their collective kind of wisdom of the crowd, thinking about whether or not the probability of something becoming true or taking place. And so that is a much more accurate indicator of actual events that happen than simply asking someone in a survey or a poll. So now, what we're so excited about is the two of those together. So now you know, our platform, not only do we help aggregate information that you're gathering and do that analysis on it, we are now adding this research component to the tool as well, so that you can do your research. You can, you know, you can store it within one central repository and you can make it available to the organization as it needs to be Kathleen: Cool. And I know you guys are using it for things like trying to predict what the world post COVID is going to look like and all kinds of other really interesting forward looking applications. So thank you for sharing that. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: We are now coming towards the end of our time, so I wanna make sure I squeeze in my couple of questions that I ask everybody. The first is, of course we are all about inbound marketing on this podcast. So is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it with inbound marketing right now? John: Let's see, you know, I I just recently became aware of a tool MarketMuse. I think that they're doing a very good job with their messaging, kind of very classic, kind of inbound marketing freemium model, et cetera. So I would say that they're one company that does a really good job of inbound marketing. And I have to say then another one that comes to mind and you know, full disclosure here, I'm a customer and and a big fan of Databox. I think Databox, and Pete Caputa's doing a phenomenal job there. He cranks out more content and they use their chat panel to support customers and are really all about helping customers solve problems. And they're, they're doing a fantastic job. I think, of inbound marketing. Kathleen: Yeah, Pete's awesome. And fun fact, he was a very early guest of this podcast. So if you want to get some insight into how Pete does marketing, you can listen to that episode with him. And I will put that link in the show notes. Question number two. The biggest challenge I hear marketers share with me is that so much changes so quickly in the world of digital marketing. So how do you personally keep yourself educated and up to date on everything that's going on? John: I have a hugely unfair advantage being married to a fantastic marketer who is constantly scouring the interweb for the latest and greatest tool and slacking me at home because yes, we have our own personal Slack channel for our youngest son and Kathleen and myself. But, selfishly I rely heavily on what you share with me. Kathleen: Well, that's a valid answer and it's true. I mean, it's so funny. So we're sitting here, it's during the COVID pandemic and of course we're still working from home. So I am up in my office, which is on the second floor of our house. John is in his current office, which is smack dab in the middle of our kitchen. And we are Zooming with each other from two rooms away and yes, we Slack each other from two rooms away all week long. So we are the big old marketing nerds that do that. How to connect with John Kathleen: All right. If somebody wants to connect with you learn more about Knowledge360, ask you a question about competitive intelligence. What is the best way for them to connect with you online?  John: I would say the best way to connect with me is via LinkedIn. John Booth, like the guy that shot Lincoln, but not related. And if you want to learn more about Knowledge360, you can go out to Cipher-sys.com or TryK360.com and learn. You know what to do next... Kathleen: Awesome. I will share that in the show notes. Thank you for joining me, John. I know you have a busy day. We are recording on a Sunday and I'm pretty sure there's like some kind of house project that you want to be working on instead of recording a podcast with me. And if you're listening and you learn something new and you like what you heard, please, head to Apple podcasts, leave the podcast at five star review. That is how other people find us. And I would really appreciate it. But that is it for this week. Thank you, John. John: Thank you, Kathleen. Kathleen: And happy father's day. Because we are recording on father's day. You're the best for doing this for me. Thank you. Alright. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening everyone.

John: Hi this is Doctor John Dacey with my weekly podcast New Solutions to the Anxiety Epidemic. Today, I am being revisited be one of my best colleagues and also respondents to this podcast. Her name is Doctor Elizabeth Bracher and she and I teach a course together. We’re hoping to teach it this fall. The last time we met, she talked about separation anxiety among college students. Today, she’s going to talk about some of the other anxieties  that college students experience. I just want to say, “good morning to you.” Biz: Good morning, John. Thanks for having me. John: I was very very happy you were willing to come back again. What do you have to say about social anxiety among students? By that, I mean nervousness about going to parties, nervousness about speaking in public, raising your hand in class, that sort of thing. Especially under the circumstances that we have now. I presume you’ve been teaching by zoom, is that correct? Biz: Yes, I’ve been teaching two classes of freshmen and one class of seniors, so I have students at both ends of the spectrum. John: What’s the difference between them? That would be quite interesting. Biz: Yeah, it is interesting. Well, no one is going to parties these days unless they’re virtual zoom parties, right? I think that there was a lot of anxiety that I didn’t quite anticipate in the first weeks of social distancing and when we were sending students back to campus. It was interesting that our university made the announcement on Wednesday after classes finished that day, so about 5 o’clock, they made the announcement that students had 4 days to get themselves home. Unlike many schools, we were already through spring break so students were asked to pack up their stuff and go home for the remainder of the semester. My immediate concern was for the freshmen, my first-year students because what I was starting to see in them was a trust in the process where things start to come together in the last few weeks of their first year. At this point, they were back from spring break, they were about to start the housing selection for their sophomore year, they were committing themselves to majors - either recommitting after taking some classes and feeling confident in their first decision of major, or they were confident in having some experience in the labs saying, “I thought this was going to work and I’m not so interested in this major as I thought“ and their willingness to explore a little and try some other things out. They’ve also been through a semester so they’ve received grades and learned how to study for exams so the exam period that was approaching wasn’t as concerning or anxiety-provoking as the first semester, and friendships were starting to solidify. Clubs and organizations were starting to plan for next year, they were applying for executive board positions in organizations and clubs, they are committing their time. Everything was starting to come together. It’s coincidentally that here in the northeast, the weather was also getting nicer and the days are getting longer and winter was subsiding. For a whole lot of reasons, the spring semester is very important to the transition to college. So many people think that it’s the fall semester, but really everything starts to even out and fall into place by spring semester to the point where the majority of first-year students go home after their first year and start to feel like their university is a home. I’m not trying to submit that they’re trying to trade one home for another but it’s a place where they finally feel confident and secure. John: Let me interrupt you there for a second. Can you make a distinction between reasonable fears that they have and anxieties which are unreasonable concerns about the future? Biz: Right, well some students certainly have some reasonable concern about how this is all going to play out because they’re not in their same orbits. They might be on the other end of the country or the other end of the world in different communities. Unless you’re going to a particularly small focused conservatory or such, most of the students in this country will go to a university or college that’s bigger than any place they’ve ever taken classes before. Whether it’s a big state university of 50,000 kids or a smaller liberal arts private school that’s 2,000-3,000 kids. In most cases, it’s still the biggest school they’ve ever gone to. Some of that concern is reasonable. It’s anxiety only in that it’s new. But then there’s the anxiety that comes with worrying and the true sense of anxiety is worrying about what might happen even though it’s not likely. For example, “I’m worried I might never make friends.” You and I know that’s an extreme anxiety about belonging, but over the course of their time, they will all develop a sense of friendship with some core people in their lives, so there absolutely is a distinction. What I noticed in the first weeks of the pandemic was that the real anxieties started to come out and they showed themselves very quickly. That Thursday that I went back to my office to start to wrap things up, I had a line of students outside of my office wanting to discuss - they didn’t even know what they wanted to discuss but they needed my attention and they needed to voice their worries and concerns. So much so that some were wringing their hands and were physically agitated and others, you couldn’t even tell what their response was. They were almost paralyzed with not knowing how to put one foot in front of the other because this was so unexpected and so out of the ordinary and there was no road map for it. What people all over the country were telling them was, “Yeah, it’s bad but oh you poor seniors and oh you poor freshmen. You never had to be pulled away from your university like this.” That provoked a lot of anxiety. The students that I saw that were the most immediately troubled were students that were struggling with eating disorders, both male and female, and students that I had no idea of their eating disorder or their eating struggle. And many of them also admitted to me struggles with OCD. John: OCD being obsessive-compulsive disorder. Biz: Exactly. What I surmised by that was this lack of control. That suddenly this structure that they have always known was being pulled out from under them and they didn’t have time to think about it, many of them needed plane tickets they couldn’t organize and put their stuff away and move out. I have a son who’s in college and we ended up taking most of his roommates, he had seven roommates, we took most of their bedding home, we cleaned their kitchen out and everything because they weren’t planning on leaving. There was no order or system to it. They were just being told you need to leave in a couple of days and get home and then we’ll start online in a week and we don’t know what that will look like but just hold on. First-year students were concerned about that because they were being pulled from their university and they were just starting to get a groove and seniors were equally distraught because they didn’t see anything tethering them to the future. They were leaving campus for good. John: Can you say anything about males and females being different? Who had the most trouble? Biz: I would have thought that there was going to be a difference between the sexes and I saw equally troubling in male and female. The only difference was that I had a few females come to me because their roommates or friends brought them to me and said, “You need to talk to her. You need to process this.” And the males suffered quietly because they don’t want to admit their weakness, whereas women will talk about their emotions a little more easily. If men were brought to me it was by a female student, a female friend, but the numbers were about equal. That was at first surprising to me but then I thought to my self, “Of course. Eating disorders and OCD are about trying to have control of your life in hopes of limiting the possibility of catastrophe of some sort. John: Exactly. Biz: When I look back on it, it seemed a lot more obvious than I had expected. The other interesting thing to me was comparing the first-year students to the seniors. Over time my first-year students transitioned back home easier and into distance learning easier than the seniors did. John: I have to stop you there because time has run out but I’m hoping you can come back next week and talk some more about this fascinating view that you have of college students.

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Are your marketing goals lining up with the goals you've set to grow your business overall? Many business owners or executive teams set goals for their online marketing to drive profit to the company. Unfortunately, the current digital marketing landscape makes it difficult to reach digital marketing goals that have a focus on profit: * Generally speaking, digital marketing has increased in competition and the real estate available for paid ads has shrunk (mainly on Google which controls a vast majority of search volume). * This has forced companies to further emphasize customer lifetime value activities (such as email and loyalty programs) to drive business profit. * Instead of driving profit from the first order on paid search, companies now may only break-even on that initial order (some companies even lose money on the first order-on purpose). The solution is to focus less on marketing ROI and focus more on the overall business objectives, like increasing market share: * Revisit the goal every two months to see how email and loyalty channels are impacted by the increase of new customers. * In theory, both of those channels will be driving much higher volumes of sales at extremely profitable levels. Even if profit doesn’t match up exactly, the sales volume will be making a noticeable dent in competitors. * Customers that buy from your website through non-brand search and shopping are customers that were likely going to purchase from a competitor if you didn’t get them. * They didn’t have any brand or site loyalty when making the search. * Over time, investing in non-brand search/shopping more aggressively will also have what we call, The Halo Effect. * Don’t let any changed goal continue for more than two months into the new year without analyzing the data to make sure that it is driving the intended outcome. * Having goals that don’t drive the business in the right direction aren’t necessarily bad, but can have unintended consequences when left unreviewed. LINKS "I Have Bad Goals, You Have Bad Goals, We ALL Have Bad Goals" by Ryan Garrow (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-have-bad-goals-you-we-all-part-1-ryan-garrow/) TRANSCRIPT JON MACDONALD: Ryan, I know you've spent a lot of time communicating with business owners and marketing teams about their goals with online marketing. To put these goals in perspective, we have to discuss overall business goals, and that's to me where things get really interesting, because their current marketing goals are not driving the online business towards an overall business goal. The business or individual usually has set a bad goal and the best time to review those I would think is at the beginning of a new budget year, which is typically the start of a calendar year. Ryan, today let's talk about setting more appropriate goals to online marketing and align that with business objectives. How does that sound? RYAN GARROW: Sounds awesome. It's one of my favorite topics actually. I get into this all year actually. I'll be talking to business owners as they're thinking about becoming a client or working with us. Or even if I'm just out having a beer after a conference, I always love talking about goals. It's been a big part of my life, and how I operate so I'm constantly setting goals, revisiting them, and business strategy and goal setting go so hand in hand that it just becomes a topic I naturally get to probably in almost every conversation with business owners or marketing teams. So often, I find that there are well intentioned people throughout an organization that set what seems to be an appropriate goal for their team, and then they get down the road 6 months to 12 months, and maybe they hit their goal, but it drove the business in a completely different direction then it actually been anticipated. Without all the stops in place, you really revisit that goal and decide, "Is this actually working and are we actually accomplishing what we're trying to accomplish?" It can be very fascinating conversation in that process. I'm excited about this topic for sure. JON: I recognize and maybe our listeners don't know, but you run several online businesses yourself, right? RYAN: Yes, my wife and I have probably more than our fair share [laughs] that we run. JON: I would think one is a fair share so the fact that you have more than that is awesome. That speaks to the fact that you put a lot of what you preach into practice, right? RYAN: Yes, there's actually not a scenario in which I will advise a business owner or marketing team to do something that I'm probably not already doing or I haven't learned from and therefore advise them correctly based on my own misgivings or wasted money. JON: I imagine in your day, you've probably set a bad goal or two. RYAN: The list is ongoing and my wife likes to remind me of those [laughs]. One funny one recently, I was so mad at myself for this one. We were launching a brand and we decided to launch it on Amazon. Partially for the education, but also because I had been built up as a digital marketer to fear Amazon, and that just made me mad that I was scared of Amazon. That's why I go, "Forget it. We're going to launch a brand on Amazon and see what happens. We have to understand the landscape." Our team was deciding to start up an Amazon ads department. I said, "All right, we'll launch on Amazon, you can have my money. I'll set a wonderfully appropriate goal to make sure we hit our objectives." Initially is like, "All right, I'm going to share the upside with this team and we're going to have a profit share." They know my margins because they need to know that to run the digital marketing through Amazon and help create the pages and all that. We had this wonderful goal that every dollar of profit we got from ads, they were going to get, I think it's something around 20% of that dollar, whatever that looked like. I can't remember exactly the goal. My goal as a business owner in launching this business was to dominate the competition. I was not in the game for profit. I want to spend down to break even to get customers, I want to understand the Amazon ecosystem, but my goal really in this is it's an organic fertilizer. I want to take down Monsanto. A pretty lofty goal considering how many billions of dollars they have. JON: Yes, no kidding. RYAN: Profit was secondary to me, it was like, let's get the product in the hands of people. I want to know their feedback as well as saying, "Hey, the more people that get it, the better my opportunities for repeat business, et cetera, et cetera." We get three months down the road, and I'm just frustrated with growth, like, hey, we went up aggressively. When we started the marketing it was exciting. My partners and I were looking at numbers daily. It was actually when the Apple Watch which we all had had the Amazon ping every time you got a sale, which was great. We'd have a glass of wine at the end of the day and our watch would go off and we're like, "Yes, we just got a sale. This is awesome." We were excited, but it flat-line so quick, and three months in I was talking to the team and I was like, there is way more search volume here on Amazon than what we're capturing. I could see our search rank and where we are ranking the competitors and their sales volume based on reviews and all these other metrics we had to look at. We were not moving the needle forward according to my overall business goal of becoming one of the largest houseplant fertilizers in the marketplace. The teams like, "Oh, the numbers are great. Look at we spent $5,000, regenerated 10 $12,000 of profit. You cut us a cheque on the side for $1,000. Isn't this great?" That is not my goal. Profits, not bad. The partners weren't upset about the profit, but the flat-line growth had to do with the fact that our marketing team that was pushing the levers, and pulling levers on the Amazon ads weren't actually able to accomplish my overall goal of market share and getting sales and new users because they were being conservative to protect that margin, which was their goal. I had to go back to the team and like, "Okay, I like the fact that we're able to pay you because you generate a profit. You nailed the goal. Awesome job. High fives all around, but as a business owner, I have to now change the goal because I don't really care about profit. I care about sales." We adjusted the goal to get on to percent of overall revenue, as long as we're not losing money. I said, "If there's a dollar in profit, I'm still paying you and I'll technically lose money as a brand, but that's the goal I want is aggressive sales growth, regardless of dollar profit from marketing, because that initial orders when I'm getting on Amazon, and we had some brand campaigns set up so we can avoid brand non brand stuff. It turns out, we started growing again, once we adjusted that goal and better aligned with my overall business vision, but that was frustrating for me, but it's also an example of how easy it is to get going on the wrong goal just because good intentions are not. I set a goal that just wasn't appropriate. JON: I think that aligns with the current digital marketing landscape, which has had a major shift over the last few years. Would you agree with that? RYAN: For sure. It's constantly changing. I think one of the reasons I still have a job in the digital marketing spaces is because it's constantly changing and the landscape is constantly in flux. Google, where the largest percentage of spend many times is for a company. In the last couple of years, we've gone from 11 text ads down to 7, and there's more companies competing. You can see you compressed the amount of available ad space, and then increased number of advertisers, logic dictates what's going to happen when that does, there's just an increase in cost per click and a real shift. Maybe five, six years ago, a lot of our e commerce clients would have said, "Set a goal around profit, and I need to get profit from ads because it's available." Now profit from that first ad isn't necessarily there for every company. In fact, many industries, it's you're losing money, no matter what happens on Google ads, or Microsoft ads, but you're moving the focus from that initial sale and what are you getting from that sale to, What's the lifetime value am I getting from that? And so it's extending out that return. We started doing this actually funny enough, probably about four or five years ago, with a company called Harry and David, where they did the math and actually understood how much money they should be losing on that first order to maximize their long term lifetime customer value, and how many companies they could get and how much market share could they capture. It was a real fascinating study, but we're finding that to be more than norm now than shooting for a 10X return on ads spend when your margin is 50%. JON: Yes, so they're basically looking to break even on that initial order. RYAN: A lot of companies should whether or not they are or not. My advice to a lot of companies is that first what we would considering a non brand acquisition, so somebody searching for your product or service and not your brand. That ordered in a perfect world right now should probably not have profit, it should be right about break-even and then having some lifetime value, being able to email them and bring them back into the brand through the same product again, another service, another product, having that future business coming in with your profit actually comes from. JON: Yes, because the cost of that second sale is so much cheaper. RYAN: Yes, and the more customers you can acquire on a non brand search, the less customers your competitors have, because that person is searching for product A unattached to a brand at this point. They're going to buy from somebody, it might as well be you because now you have that customer data, and that ends up becoming one of the most important things to a brand, regardless of whether you're a retailer or a brand. It's that customer data and knowing something about them that maybe your competitor doesn't know. JON: Is it safe to say that the number of levers that have impacted digital marketing return has just magnified tremendously over the past few years and maybe that's causing confusion with the goals? RYAN: I think so. I think you also have a lot of marketing teams and business owners that have goals that they have them and they don't necessarily know why. They've had them for years and it comes across to companies big and small that either their goal is, "We just take last year's numbers and add 10, 15% whatever we think the market's going to do and that's our goal." Or, "Hey, we have this profit goal from paid search and we look at it as a profit center and we always have, therefore why would we change that?" What I'm seeing from a broad stroke high level is most of those companies looking at profit goals from their marketing are shrinking as much for what their spend could be or what they actual new customers coming through that channel could be or it's causing them to focus more on just brand search in their paid channels, which has meaning they're capturing the same customers over and over and over again and are not actually growing their database. JON: Step one is to understand and acknowledge that we've had bad goals, right? Step two is to fix those goals and make sure that we've got marketing in alignment. I think we can all agree, at least in some part, we've all had bad goals. You had a great example of a bad goal earlier on and now that we've all agreed on that, let's talk about how we can fix those. Can you walk us through maybe an example conversation you've had with clients who have had bad goals and how you start to correct those? RYAN: One actually comes to mind. It's in the auto parts space. Generally speaking the margins are not extremely high. This particular brand though manufacturers and goes direct to consumer and so their margins are higher than most. In fact their margins I think are just below 50% but they're fairly large organization online. I think they are doing north of 50 million or so per year through their website. We took it over from another agency and magnified their sales phenomenally. I think they spent 1% last year over year, one of the months we looked at, before I was talking goals with them, spent 1% less and had 50% more revenue and their overall profit because they track profit outside of that for their marketing team, was that 57% on marketing even including agency fees because I think that was about a wash agency-to-agency. High level numbers looks phenomenal. They are really printing a lot of money on their paid search and they were beside themselves excited. The marketing team was in a great spot. They were super happy and one of our better references in the space. As we got into the numbers and started talking about overall business goals and what they could or should be doing, it became apparent that their marketing team had an incentive to create profit from paid search ads, which is one of the reasons they were so excited to be working with us at Logical Position because profit from paid search ads was up 57% and obviously their incentive was looking fairly solid. Diving into the numbers. They are a $50 million auto parts company that's part of a huge market. 50 million is one of the probably top five players in their specific segment, but it could be massive. They could probably be doing 100, 150 million a year online rather quickly, but they're being held back by some of their goals internally. Analyzing analytics and Google ads together uncovered some things where they only had about 20% of the impression share in shopping on some of their non-brand queries. Not that impression shares and end all be all because it can be manipulated within shopping to show almost whatever you want. This was fairly clean data that we knew that the market was fairly big for what they were doing and so despite their numbers being great, I had to talk to the CFO and talk to them about overall business goals and their goal is really become a big player and they do want to hit that 100, 150 million revenue number online and I had to talk to them about, "Okay, well, your marketing team is getting a 14X, spend a dollar, get $14 in revenue on non-brand terms," which is phenomenal in the auto space, especially in a place as competitive as theirs. There was a lot of room to run even with profit in the space and I put some numbers in front of them. I said, "Right now you're using a 15X as a barometer of success in non-brand search. What if you were able to say lower that goal to a 4X. You spend a dollar to get $4 in revenue, still technically profitable. What would that do to your spend to your overall sales to your new customers? Let's just play this out and see what happens?" It basically said, "If you tripled your budget on non-brand terms and we're talking about a six- figure budget so it's not inconsequential on a monthly basis, you are still able to get the same amount of end profit to the organization as you had before, but you were able to acquire a vast amount of new users. If you're manufacturing your fulfillment, all these things can keep pace with that. You should be pushing for a much lower return on ad spend on your non brand goals to take that market share," because they were covering such a small-- It was almost like the tip of the iceberg and they were being successful. There's no scenario in which they weren't happy, but the magnitude that they could move below that waterline and capture a massive amount of market share from competitors was for sure there and that's not the case with every company we look at or talk to. Some of them have really maximized their acquisition ability on non-brand terms, but most companies out there listening to this podcast, there for sure is the ability to push more aggressively. John: Let's talk about the different levers then that are involved in that equation. I heard you say that they got a few of those wrong and had to go back and correct them or that it's limiting them. Can you tell us about a handful of these levers that everyone should be considering when they're setting goals? RYAN: First you have to separate out brand and non-brand. People searching for your brand and your brand plus product or brand plus service, those are your earned customers. You've already done the work either in digital marketing or branding offline or social media. Those people are actually searching for you. That group of people searching, you're not going to be able to necessarily set a goal that you can stick to around that because it's going to depend on what are your competitors doing? What does the landscape look like on Google based on your brand? If you're Kleenex, your brand searches a little nebulous space on are they looking for you or are they looking for just your product because you've been branded so well for that particular product separating that out. You have to have very clean data in your account to say, that's one piece of the account that's just going to-- we want to maximize our coverage and that's really your goal there. Acquisition goals in the page search realm or digital marketing realm are around new customers to your brand. We call them new to file customers. They're new to file a new in your CRM, new in your email database. That's really where you have a lever to push and pull for your acquisition of new customers. That's where you take into account what are your margins? What’s your lifetime value? Those are numbers the brand has to be able to at least have a good understanding of margins fairly easy to capture that but usually we'll start with just a broad stroke. What's your average margin? If it's going to range between 40 and 50 depending on the product line they're buying, but to meet in the middle right now at least to start with goal setting at 45, great let's figure out your break-even is and then what's your lifetime value? How often do they come back and rebuy or how often should they? And most companies don't know this piece. This is where they're guessing and revisiting goals comes into play because you might not have a successful email campaign currently and you're going to start it right away and you're going to make an estimate that our product has a life span of six months, so we expect to be able to get in front of these people again in six months. Great, let's figure that then. How many customers should we be acquiring to get this test going? Some companies and actually I would say most companies don't start with the goal of losing money to acquire customers. Just break-even and figure out how hard can we push? This makes people really nervous by the way [chuckles]. JON: I can only imagine, especially that CFO, you always have to talk to. RYAN: Oh yes, the CFO and in my world the CFO is my wife [laughs]. I like if I could spend a 100 grand tomorrow on digital marketing and get 100,000 profit, that'd be great. That makes some CFO, like my wife, very nervous to see, oh, the potential to spend $100,000 tomorrow is there. What if we only brought in $80,000 of revenue or profit? That would be concerning to have the family at a deficit of 20 grand in one day. The wonderful thing about digital marketing, specifically, we'll focus on Google right now, for the purposes of this conversation, money comes back into the brand almost as quick as you're putting it out and depending on how Google is billing you, whether it's net 30 or whether it's every $500 and how quickly your merchant processor is bringing your payments into your bank account. Generally speaking, it's a very quick wash on that. Money goes out, money comes back in and because you can see in Google ads and fairly close to real time what sales are coming in, there's very little risk to the cash flow of the business. That's where most CFOs start coming at me within the cash flow like "Oh, we've got a byproduct. We've got to do all these other things." Yes, you have to do that but if money's coming back in as quick, in theory, it's not causing any issues. There can be issues with having the product in stock. If you are a manufacturer, do you have the bandwidth to create that volume? Do you have the ability to fulfill that? There's a lot of other questions that come into that based on what we think the volume could be. As you're going into this, the threshold may not be how much can you spend, but it could be how much can we produce, sell, et cetera, et cetera. Data considerations within the space. JON: Ryan, one thing I've heard you talk a lot about between conversations with the clients that we jointly work with is something called the halo effect, right? Over time if these brands are investing in that non-branded search or shopping more aggressively, they'll have that halo effect. Can you talk to that a little bit? RYAN: Yes. You're going to set a goal and for most of you listening, start with a goal around breaking-even on non-brand. That needs to be on search and shopping but shopping is the fun one on Google. That's where if you control your search terms well enough and this one isn't necessarily easy to control because shopping is not set up with keywords. It does take some manipulation of the campaigns and structure and hierarchy and negative keywords, all of that. Let's assume you have that together pushing aggressively in non-brand shopping. I'm staring at my computer screens now. Let's just say you're selling computer screens down to break-even by marketing aggressively and shopping and pushing for extra units there. Most people that go to Google Shopping, actually two things. They buy something different. What you're pushing and shopping as far as the click, over 50% of the time they're going to buy something entirely different. That's where it does become important to monitor what they're buying because if your margins are different, it can be problematic, but they also convert often through other channels. I personally, when I shop on Google Shopping, when I click it, I buy it. I don't do a tremendous amount of research or I've done it beforehand by the time I'm looking on Google Shopping, I click, I buy, there's not a huge attribution funnel for my personal purchases. It's unique for me when I look in the data and actually see that Google Shopping actually opens more sales than it actually closes. If you're clicking on computer screens on Google Shopping, on average, you're going to come back and buy through a different channel. If you're looking at Google analytics, you can see a city conversions. You're going to see that the halo effect of investing in Google Shopping on non-brand terms, your organic traffic generally will increase. Your email, will generally increase, your direct traffic, your referrals, your social media. All of these channels will be impacted by Google Shopping. It's fascinating to see the impact that Google Shopping can have across channel and it generally doesn't get the credit that it's due. JON: Do you mean the organic and direct traffic and these other brand channels are all going to have noticeable revenue increases as well? RYAN: They should. Again, it's not in a vacuum where it's perfect for every brand across the world, but generally speaking do it for three months and look at the numbers and you should see an increase. Now if you're doing SEO as well, you would expect organic to continue to increase as well, but using the Google analytics assisted conversions, you should be able to see where Google Shopping is having an impact and you can actually get down into conversion paths and all that fun data to tell you what is being impacted the most by your extra investment in Google Shopping. In fact, just had a conversation with the CFO, one of our clients a few days ago and they've been investing in non-brand shopping at a lower return on ad spend than they normally would because they've been seeing this halo effect. They've measured it and said, "Hey, we actually aren't there." It's a very competitive space where there's not a lot of profit, if any to be had in the digital marketing space because of the competition but for them they realized, "Hey, we've got this extra data showing that organic traffic is having an uptick and so is email and direct traffic based on what analytics is telling us about our investment in shopping. Therefore we can go down a little bit below break-even because of that halo effect and allows them to get a little more aggressive because they do have a pretty strong lifetime value where people are coming back into the brand after their first acquisition. JON: I heard you say, Ryan, a little bit about how often you should be looking at this data. How often do you feel people should be reviewing that data and then perhaps even revisiting their goals? RYAN: I'm probably a little more odd in that I'm always looking at data constantly in there and you want to be aware of it. You can also get caught in making knee jerk reactions too quickly. I caution most marketing teams or business owners to go in there daily and look at the data and want to make changes. You have to let the experts in marketing do their thing. I like to revisit goals quarterly. For my businesses, I want to say, "All right, I was shooting for this goal quarterly. Let's look at what happened and do I need to pivot the goal, adjust the goal based on what my business is trying to accomplish?" Like I did with organic fertilizer. I did revisit the goal quarterly and thankfully a day because I was able to adjust and make it a better goal to help me drive the business where I want it to go. In marketing, we always have the best intentions and the best hypothesis is going in and saying, "If we do this, we believe this is going to happen." There's always something that's going to go wrong. Always. You may not completely miss the goal. We may go in with one hypothesis saying, "Oh, there's this much search volume on this term, let's go get it and then there's more or less than, so we have to pivot a goal", and that's really where some experts can be valuable on your marketing team and seeing that because knowing that it's going to be different than what you expect, being able to pivot and adjust on the fly is very important for the minutia of working on account in the paid search realm. The marketing teams in the account constantly look at the data and make adjustments to help the account get to the goal and then higher level, I would be looking at your goals quarterly to see those goals are appropriate and they're heading in the direction that you really wanted them to go. JON: Who do you recommend is involved in that conversation then? Because I've heard you mentioned the CFO a few times and I've heard you mention the marketing teams and of course the marketing experts that they might be working with to help them drive traffic. Who all do you think should be involved in those goal setting conversations on a quarterly basis? RYAN: To a degree I say less is more. I don't like meetings in general. More people generally cause meetings to go longer. I like to keep it small. Depending on the size of your organization, you may not have a large marketing team, you may not have a CFO. Its business owner and marketing team. If there is a CFO in the organization, I highly recommend they're involved in the goal because they're going to have a general overview of what's going on in the organization and maybe the sales volume is not sustainable based on inventory levels or manufacturing capabilities or the ability to ship and distribute. The CFO should have some insight on that. I for sure think a CFO should be involved also from just a cash perspective. You need somebody that understands the digital marketing deep enough to be able to talk strategically, but also not the person actually pushing all the buttons necessarily and then the person leading marketing overall should probably be involved. JON: Just like all goals, there's value in discussing those goals with experts though, right? Would you suggest that they have a third party reviewed these goals as well? RYAN: I would probably bring a third party in, maybe not necessarily quarterly, but at least annually to look at your goals. Maybe biannually, somebody that you trust just to have an unobstructed view of what you could or should be doing. Audit of Google's a place where you're spending a lot of your money, maybe have an audit at least once a year. If you're working with Logical Position, I don't dissuade somebody from having an audit done by somebody just to see-- to help keep them accountable. Accountability is not a bad thing. You want to make sure that you as a business owner or head of marketing are really getting what you're paying for or that your goals are appropriate and driving the business in the direction that you need it to be going. JON: You're not missing those potential pitfalls of that goal, right? RYAN: Yes, there are pitfalls of all kinds of goals that if you're expecting lifetime value, but your email program is not generating it, maybe you can't be shooting for break-even on the first order because you need some of that profit to cover a retail store that maybe isn't as profitable as it should be. There's a lot of variables to every business on the planet that one size doesn't fit all as far as a digital marketing goal, but you can use guidelines, regard rails in place to help formulate the most appropriate goal. JON: Ryan, this has been an amazing topic. I know I can't wait to start refining some of my own goals here at The Good. Anything else you wanted to add to this conversation? RYAN: I think just the most important thing is just make sure you're having fun. I see too many business owners and marketing teams getting into the minutia of goal setting or digital marketing and that just becomes not fun and that's really why a lot of people are in business in the first place. Yes, it's a job. It pays the bills, but if diving into the details is not fun, find a way to make it more enjoyable. Enjoy the process of setting goals, analyzing them and really find ways to win. It should be fun talking to your goals. It should be fun talking to business strategy of how is your brand going to win in 2020 and in this new decade? The potential right now for every brand is huge. You've got a new decade to look at, have fun with it, set some goals, be aggressive, conservative goals aren't nearly as fun to accomplish as aggressive, big pioneer sky goals. JON: I would say most people would think that looking at numbers can't be fun, but you know what? If those numbers are going up into the right and they're trending positive and you've set the right goals that are helping you achieve success and revenue and profit, then things get a lot more fun, right? RYAN: They do and I like setting goals to like, "Hey, there's a bottle of champagne in place when we hit this micro-goal on the way to our big goal." JON: I love it. Most people listening probably don't know that Ryan lives out in Sherwood, Oregon which is in the heart of Oregon Pinot, so I'm surprised you used champagne instead of a bottle of fine Pinot Noir but we'll pop it either way and enjoy. [chuckles] All right, Ryan. Well, this has been a wonderful conversation. I can't wait to set my goals as I mentioned, and hopefully everyone else is going to do the same for a successful 2020 and decade. We'll chat soon. RYAN: Yes, and if anybody really out there wants to talk goals, reach out. I mean, it's fun. Jon and I do this constantly for brands all over the planet. For me-- I'm sure for you as well, Jon, it's just it's fun. Reach out because there's conversations-- Even if you're not working with us, I just enjoy the process and talking through and helping companies align their goals. JON: Great. Well, we'll look forward to hearing from everybody. Thanks, Ryan. RYAN: Thanks, Jon.

Neville Goddard 7/16/1969 MANY MANSIONS  Tonight's subject is: Many Mansions. You may be familiar with the subject from the 14th chapter of the book of John: “Let not your hearts be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. Were it not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And when I go, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” (John 14:1-3, Moffatt's translation) Now, who is this one speaking? Scripture tells us it is Jesus Christ. The chapter affirms it.  So, you know that it's a simple, simple technique, but you cannot be sure that you have movedunless you can see motion relative to a fixed object − some other object. You always have faces in your mind's eye of those who know you. How do they know you? If you like it, that's fine, if you don't like it, how would you like them to know you? Well then, you name it and then let them know you. All you do is: “Let there be light.” (Genesis 1:3)   Let the face become luminous, reflecting that thing in you. As it is changed in you, you'll see iton their faces. Believe it! Believe in the reality of this subjective state. That is your hope, andthis is the subjective appropriation of this hope. What hope? The faces are reflecting what youreally want to see. And in a way that no one knows, you will become that man, and these faces actually will appear just as you have seen them in your mind's eye. And they will be proud of you, as you are proud of yourself.  Music by Mettaverse   Subscribe to their channel herehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyvjffON2NoUvX5q_TgvVkw ➤ Listen to them on Soundcloud: http://bit.ly/2KjGlLI➤ Follow them on Instagram: http://bit.ly/2JW8BU2➤ Join them on Facebook: http://bit.ly/2G1j7G6➤ Support their Work at Patreon: http://bit.ly/2TXQhu3   Through the haze Ambient blade runner tribute meditation 582hz777hz deep relaxationTibetan singing bowls rain and thunder 432hzSea of Samsara Karmic Clearing111hz the language of light balancing the light 444hzLove the universal constant 111hz 444hz tuning111hz The Heart of True BeingInto the Omniverse 963hz pineal gland activation 777 Deep Relaxation Angelic Frequency   For coaching – https://www.advancedsuccessinstitute.com For all episodes of the Reality Revolution – https://www.therealityrevolution.com Like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/RealityRevolutionPodcast/ Join our facebook group The Reality Revolution  https://www.facebook.com/groups/403122083826082/ Subscribe to my Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOgXHr5S3oF0qetPfqxJfSw Contact us at media@advancedsuccessinsitute.com

Let's Read the Bible! with Phillip Gonzales is a Bible teaching program that will encourage you each day and help you grow deeper in your walk with Jesus. Find more resources at phillipgonzales.com. AUDIO PODCAST: https://bit.ly/LRTBpodcast SUPPORT THE MINISTRY: https://bit.ly/SupportLRTB SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE: https://bit.ly/LRTByoutube FACEBOOK GROUP: https://bit.ly/LRTBfacebook

Let's Read the Bible! with Phillip Gonzales is a Bible teaching program that will encourage you each day and help you grow deeper in your walk with Jesus. Find more resources at phillipgonzales.com. AUDIO PODCAST: https://bit.ly/LRTBpodcast SUPPORT THE MINISTRY: https://bit.ly/SupportLRTB SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE: https://bit.ly/LRTByoutube FACEBOOK GROUP: https://bit.ly/LRTBfacebook

Let's Read the Bible! with Phillip Gonzales is a Bible teaching program that will encourage you each day and help you grow deeper in your walk with Jesus. Find more resources at phillipgonzales.com. AUDIO PODCAST: https://bit.ly/LRTBpodcast SUPPORT THE MINISTRY: https://bit.ly/SupportLRTB SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE: https://bit.ly/LRTByoutube FACEBOOK GROUP: https://bit.ly/LRTBfacebook

Let's Read the Bible! with Phillip Gonzales is a Bible teaching program that will encourage you each day and help you grow deeper in your walk with Jesus. Find more resources at phillipgonzales.com. AUDIO PODCAST: https://bit.ly/LRTBpodcast SUPPORT THE MINISTRY: https://bit.ly/SupportLRTB SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE: https://bit.ly/LRTByoutube FACEBOOK GROUP: https://bit.ly/LRTBfacebook

Ben teaches from the story of the feeding of the 5,000 about how Jesus is the bread of life. Teacher: Ben Simonson Series: The Book of John Scripture: John 6; Romans 8:17 The post The Book of John: Let Nothing Be Wasted (2/3/2019) appeared first on Rockharbor.

Pete (@mr_van_w) questions the importance of handwriting. Maybe the current generation doesn't have it all wrong and it just doesn't actually matter as much as we think it does. On a side note: We were in a meeting today and a colleague talked up how students are much better off writing with a pen and when they can't spell something they look it up in the dictionary. 1. How many kid actually know when they make a spelling mistake. 2. How many kids care enough to then look the word up in a dictionary.       John (@jfcatto) continues from last weeks episode and looks at some the personal and social goods that come out of education other than salary from a job. Spoilers: He is still not convinced university is a good idea for everyone.    Pete: Handwriting saviour or teachers' nightmare? The return of the fountain pen - Alexandra L Smith  https://www.theguardian.com/education/mortarboard/2006/nov/13/handwritingsaviourorteacher1    The Global Elements of Effective Flipped Learning - FLGI (maybe? Jon Bergmann) https://flglobal.org/elements/    John: Let's not focus on graduate income when assessing the worth of education - Peter Hurley  https://theconversation.com/lets-not-focus-on-graduate-incomes-when-assessing-the-worth-of-education-106168     

Pete (@mr_van_w) questions the importance of handwriting. Maybe the current generation doesn't have it all wrong and it just doesn't actually matter as much as we think it does. On a side note: We were in a meeting today and a colleague talked up how students are much better off writing with a pen and when they can't spell something they look it up in the dictionary. 1. How many kid actually know when they make a spelling mistake. 2. How many kids care enough to then look the word up in a dictionary.       John (@jfcatto) continues from last weeks episode and looks at some the personal and social goods that come out of education other than salary from a job. Spoilers: He is still not convinced university is a good idea for everyone.    Pete: Handwriting saviour or teachers' nightmare? The return of the fountain pen - Alexandra L Smith  https://www.theguardian.com/education/mortarboard/2006/nov/13/handwritingsaviourorteacher1    The Global Elements of Effective Flipped Learning - FLGI (maybe? Jon Bergmann) https://flglobal.org/elements/    John: Let's not focus on graduate income when assessing the worth of education - Peter Hurley  https://theconversation.com/lets-not-focus-on-graduate-incomes-when-assessing-the-worth-of-education-106168     

Panel: Charles Max Wood John Papa Special Guest: Adrian Faciu In this episode, Chuck talks with Adrian Faciu who is a developer for Visma and is a blogger. The panel talks to Adrian about his blog titled, “NgRx Tips & Tricks.” They ask Adrian in-depth questions about NgRx, among many other topics. Listen to today’s episode for more details! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: AngularBootCamp.Com 0:55 – Chuck: Hi! Our guest is Adrian Faciu. 1:10 – Guest: Hello! I am Adrian and I am a developer who works for a Norwegian company, but I live in Romania! 1:35 – Chuck. 1:36 – Guest. 1:47 – Chuck: The market is so global. I have talked with many different guests from different parts of the world – it’s really neat! It’s this global phenomenon. 2:12 – Guest: It’s a great thing! 2:23 – Chuck: They have an office where you live? 2:31 – Yes. 2:37 – Chuck: How are you guys using Angular over there? 2:47 – Guest: We have several different products. We customize using them with internalized tools. 3:04 – Chuck: Real quick let’s talk about your blog post. I will admit I am not that familiar with NgRx, so I will ask newbie questions. Now do you want to explain what this is? 3:41 – Guest: Sure! The short story of the article is I saw people doing things the hard way. And after I figured out some things, people encouraged me to write about my experience. 4:37 – Chuck: John Papa just signed-in! 4:53 – Guest: Yes NgRx is... 5:02 – Chuck: You used classes for all actions what do you mean by that? 5:05 – Guest answers the question into detail. 6:31 – Chuck: Let’s say we have a class that uses a log error... 6:42 – Guest: For example you have actions that... 7:02 – Chuck: When you use the reducer... 7:10 – Guest: There are other tricks we can use like keeping all of them in the same file... 8:00 – Guest talks about the union type. 8:24 – Chuck: You learned this by doing things wrong – what happens when you do these things wrong? 8:30 – Guest: If you don’t put all of your classes in the right file then you end up with a lot of files. If you don’t create hero types then you’d have to... 10:02 – Chuck: If you import user actions then does it import all of the other types? 10:08 – Guest: Import everything from that file. 10:17 – Chuck: If you have any questions, John, feel free to chime-in! 10:29 – John: Yeah I am scanning through this. The negative I hear a lot of through actions, it’s cause we create constants – the action class creators, it seems to cause an undue amount of stress. How much actual code do you actually have to write – how do you feel about that? 11:12 – Guest: I didn’t want to write all of this code! That’s what I wanted to avoid. 11:44 – John: I wrote them, didn’t like them, I went back to them... It wasn’t just that I created a new action I had to create the constant and other things – also the place you do the union type, I’d forget to do the union type at the end! If you don’t have all of those things then it won’t work. Even on a simple project I’d have 120 lines of code for a simple task. 12:49 – Guest: Yes. Sometimes I would forget this or that. I’d have to figure out what I did wrong. I went back and created classes for a lot of things. I like the benefits. 13:19 – John: I like your ideas and your tips in your blog. How do you feel about the NAMES of those actions? 13:55 – Guest. 14:51 – John: Important part is the naming of the string inside of it – that’s the value... So you can see the actions that are being displayed. 15:25 – Guest: If you didn’t do it right that’s where the problem would be. 15:38 – John: To me it’s a love/hate relationship b/c there is so much code to it. I usually copy and paste which means that I usually forget to change something. I agree, but I don’t’ like creating it. 16:05 – Guest: I’ve been trying to figure out a solution for it eventually I gave up. 16:23 – John: Moving onto effects – inside that happens inside of the Redux cycle – if you want to do something outside of it that’s when you do effects right? 16:40 – Guest. 16:49 – John: Using the effects is good or do it a different way? 17: 20 – Guest: It makes my components cleaner. I have seen projects that DON’T use it and it’s not the best. 17:36 – John: Like getting a list of customers... (I am using my hands and nobody can see me!) It’s weird to me to NOT use the effects! 18:52 – Guest: If you implement some type of caching then it’s everything to put everything in the state. 19:07 – Chuck: I haven’t used it as much as I would like, but I haven’t do much with it. 19:23 – John: I am curious from somebody hasn’t dove into it – does effects make sense to you, Chuck? 19:39 – Chuck: It seems like effects is a side effect? Like calling out an external API... 20:10 – John: Yeah even multiple effects. John asks a question. 20:23 – Guest answers the question. 20:29 – Chuck: I like that you can make constrained assumptions and all of the complicated... 21:10 – Guest: I am using my effects like functions. 21:26 – John’s question. 21:31 – Chuck: Doing everything! You said implement the 2-payload method – that doesn’t make sense? 21:43 – Guest: Not 100% convinced you need it. What people are doing on these actions... 22:43 – Chuck: How much magic you want? 22:50 – Guest. 22:59 – John: I am confused about ERROR HANDLING. What do you advise for people to do? 23:21 – Guest: Basically, when you deal with that effect you deal with the actions, and the actions... If you get an error on it it’s done. I was trying to explain there that...do it on another stream. Try it on another stream and handle it. What happened to me – I did it on the action state and I got an error and then everything will stop. 24:27 – John: That’s not good! 24:32 – Chuck. 24:35 – John: Good tip! 24:40 – Chuck: Angular has gotten better at that. I still find, though... 25:06 – John. 25:16 – John: Hey I appreciate these blog posts that don’t always show the happy path. To show the unhappy path is a good idea. 25:32 – Chuck. 26:00 – Going down your list, Adrian, let’s talk about effects are services. I agree, but not that we have... 26:24 – Guest: I have seen cases where people forget that. They say I want to call a service, how do I do that? They forget... 26:50 – John: You have to provide your services somewhere. The old way was you could go into the... What do you do? 27:28 – Guest: Most of the applications... 28:17 – John. 28:25 – Chuck: I love deleting code! 28:32 – John: You end up in a spaghetti pool, though, if you needed that deleted code. Nooooo!!! 29:00 – Chuck. 29:01 – Guest. 29:10 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 29:49 – John: Let’s talk about reducers – the smallest part of your tip sections. You say, “keep them simple” – how do you keep them simple? 30:07 – Guest: I have received this observation from several people. This is the biggest problem I had. How to keep them simple... 31:08 – John: When someone makes that type of code – where would you want them to put it? 31:23 – Guest: It depends on different types of actions. Maybe I have some sort of matter that I added to the data – an action from my application we can catch it into an effect and... Not all of the actions have to go to the reducer. 32:04 – John: I say, “Hmm...” when I see reducers like this...they are running a synchronized code inside of a reducer. And I see that a lot. 32:24 – Chuck. 32:28 – John: You go call a reaction, and...sometimes they are doing HTP there, but it’s hard to explain. 33:11 – John: What are some of the things that they can do to step-into, when they are using these? 33:16 – Guest: That’s why I only have these things about the reducers. 33:48 – Chuck: I am wondering what is the life cycle look like? What do you call a reducer from an effect from an action or vice versa? 34:09 – Guest answers the question. 34:37 – John: It can be confusing with all of these different terms. Where does it end? Your component you have to say: call this action. Perform this action and then the action says get customers – the NgRx library listens for that and helps connect to the reducer for you. Look into the action and then return that to a stream to whatever... 35:29 – Guest: Yes, it sends it to reducers. Guest goes into more detail. 36:09 – John: You never talk to the reducer directly? 36:17 – Chuck: ...is that something I should have done before – or does it call effects and the effects load the information into the state and the reducer pulls it out for the action? 36:46 – Guest. 36:58 – Chuck. 37:03 – Guest. 37:53 – John: It really depends on what you want to do, Chuck. John will give a hypothetical scenario. 38:58 – Chuck: In your scenario, let’s say... 39:14 – John: Everything is right up until the end there. It’s a little magical, honestly. I just know here is my selector and here is my data! 40:17 – Chuck: Selector is essentially I am interested in THIS state or THIS state change. 40:40 – Guest. 40:50 – Chuck: So when that changes... 40:56 – Guest. 40:59 – John. 41:05 – Chuck: A little piece of the overall store. 41:18 – Guest: My tip there was a bout the selectors... 42:30 – Chuck: So I can hand off my selector to multiple places? 42:36 – Guest: Yep. You don’t need to know anything else. 42:44 – Guest: Combine it as needed. Another benefit here is memorization. It says that each time you select pure functions it wont call the function again. 43:42 – I am seeing a trend in your tips, too. I am seeing easier way to code. You are always saying selector technique. There are a lot of terms in NgRx module. Dispatchers and states and stores...it’s nice to have a way to create the code easier. 44:21 – Guest: It does take a lot of time for someone to grasp. 44:30 – Chuck. 44:35 – John: Don’t use the store all over the place – that’s what Adrian says! 44:54 – Guest: I think it’s more like dumb components. I have a container of all of these dumb components. The container is the one that KNOWS. 46:22 – Chuck: It’s just a button. 46:28 – Guest: You click the button and it triggers. Whenever you want to use that component then you... 46:48 – Chuck: Any types of data that you wouldn’t want to use in your NgRx store? 47:07 – Guest: It depends – I am not holding any logging information there, though. 47:51 – John: I like to ask WHY. Property initialization. You are saying... 48:11 – Guest: It’s less code and it’s reasonable. If I can have less code then I’d love to have it. I think it’s cleaner b/c it’s not that much code. Most people might think blah, blah, blah, but I think it looks okay. 48:46 – John: I can see why it would be less code. 48:57 – Guest. 49:07 – John: I haven’t seen this: looking at your property initializer... Looking at your code here, Adrian... The store object itself is a reference to the NgRx store. That means you have to... To me I don’t want my app to know that NgRx is involved. I started to do this...I was creating an Angular service, which... Have you done this before? 50:33 – Guest:  I have seen this function but I haven’t played with it. It makes sense. This takes it a step further. Like you say it’s perfect b/c nobody knows anything about that store, but it’s a new level. I think you have some benefits with that way of doing it, too. 51:23 – John: The one thing that sticks out is company name is your observable, then your... 52:10 – Guest: Yeah that’s good b/c it might be better! They might not even know what NgRx is, and you have a service so just use them. Yeah it’s just an observable. 52:33 – Chuck: You don’t want to see my garage. 52:44 – Guest: Some services are underrated. Like you suggested we could use them for much more. 53:01 – Guest: It was nice writing these tips. 53:19 – Chuck: What are working on now? 53:23 – Guest: Writing a new blog. 53:41 – Chuck: We will keep an eye out for it. Where do you post? 53:55 – Guest: Usually Medium, and Twitter. Search for my name and you will find me, b/c I have the same handler on all the places. 54:15 – Chuck & John: Let’s go to picks! 54:30 – Chuck is talking about future episodes and potential topics. You can vote stuff up on Trello on NgRx so we can go deeper on this topic. 55:40 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 1:02:00 – Advertisement – Cache Fly! Links: Vue jQuery Angular C# Chuck’s Twitter John Papa’s Twitter Adrian’s Medium Adrian’s Twitter Adrian’s GitHub Adrian’s Blog Post Adrian’s Article: Testing NgRx Effects Sponsors: Angular Boot Camp Fresh Books Get a Coder Job Course Cache Fly Picks: John NgRx Data Conferences  - Don’t feel mofo Charles Discord App Adrain Angular In-depth Doc Wallaby

Panel: Charles Max Wood John Papa Special Guest: Adrian Faciu In this episode, Chuck talks with Adrian Faciu who is a developer for Visma and is a blogger. The panel talks to Adrian about his blog titled, “NgRx Tips & Tricks.” They ask Adrian in-depth questions about NgRx, among many other topics. Listen to today’s episode for more details! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: AngularBootCamp.Com 0:55 – Chuck: Hi! Our guest is Adrian Faciu. 1:10 – Guest: Hello! I am Adrian and I am a developer who works for a Norwegian company, but I live in Romania! 1:35 – Chuck. 1:36 – Guest. 1:47 – Chuck: The market is so global. I have talked with many different guests from different parts of the world – it’s really neat! It’s this global phenomenon. 2:12 – Guest: It’s a great thing! 2:23 – Chuck: They have an office where you live? 2:31 – Yes. 2:37 – Chuck: How are you guys using Angular over there? 2:47 – Guest: We have several different products. We customize using them with internalized tools. 3:04 – Chuck: Real quick let’s talk about your blog post. I will admit I am not that familiar with NgRx, so I will ask newbie questions. Now do you want to explain what this is? 3:41 – Guest: Sure! The short story of the article is I saw people doing things the hard way. And after I figured out some things, people encouraged me to write about my experience. 4:37 – Chuck: John Papa just signed-in! 4:53 – Guest: Yes NgRx is... 5:02 – Chuck: You used classes for all actions what do you mean by that? 5:05 – Guest answers the question into detail. 6:31 – Chuck: Let’s say we have a class that uses a log error... 6:42 – Guest: For example you have actions that... 7:02 – Chuck: When you use the reducer... 7:10 – Guest: There are other tricks we can use like keeping all of them in the same file... 8:00 – Guest talks about the union type. 8:24 – Chuck: You learned this by doing things wrong – what happens when you do these things wrong? 8:30 – Guest: If you don’t put all of your classes in the right file then you end up with a lot of files. If you don’t create hero types then you’d have to... 10:02 – Chuck: If you import user actions then does it import all of the other types? 10:08 – Guest: Import everything from that file. 10:17 – Chuck: If you have any questions, John, feel free to chime-in! 10:29 – John: Yeah I am scanning through this. The negative I hear a lot of through actions, it’s cause we create constants – the action class creators, it seems to cause an undue amount of stress. How much actual code do you actually have to write – how do you feel about that? 11:12 – Guest: I didn’t want to write all of this code! That’s what I wanted to avoid. 11:44 – John: I wrote them, didn’t like them, I went back to them... It wasn’t just that I created a new action I had to create the constant and other things – also the place you do the union type, I’d forget to do the union type at the end! If you don’t have all of those things then it won’t work. Even on a simple project I’d have 120 lines of code for a simple task. 12:49 – Guest: Yes. Sometimes I would forget this or that. I’d have to figure out what I did wrong. I went back and created classes for a lot of things. I like the benefits. 13:19 – John: I like your ideas and your tips in your blog. How do you feel about the NAMES of those actions? 13:55 – Guest. 14:51 – John: Important part is the naming of the string inside of it – that’s the value... So you can see the actions that are being displayed. 15:25 – Guest: If you didn’t do it right that’s where the problem would be. 15:38 – John: To me it’s a love/hate relationship b/c there is so much code to it. I usually copy and paste which means that I usually forget to change something. I agree, but I don’t’ like creating it. 16:05 – Guest: I’ve been trying to figure out a solution for it eventually I gave up. 16:23 – John: Moving onto effects – inside that happens inside of the Redux cycle – if you want to do something outside of it that’s when you do effects right? 16:40 – Guest. 16:49 – John: Using the effects is good or do it a different way? 17: 20 – Guest: It makes my components cleaner. I have seen projects that DON’T use it and it’s not the best. 17:36 – John: Like getting a list of customers... (I am using my hands and nobody can see me!) It’s weird to me to NOT use the effects! 18:52 – Guest: If you implement some type of caching then it’s everything to put everything in the state. 19:07 – Chuck: I haven’t used it as much as I would like, but I haven’t do much with it. 19:23 – John: I am curious from somebody hasn’t dove into it – does effects make sense to you, Chuck? 19:39 – Chuck: It seems like effects is a side effect? Like calling out an external API... 20:10 – John: Yeah even multiple effects. John asks a question. 20:23 – Guest answers the question. 20:29 – Chuck: I like that you can make constrained assumptions and all of the complicated... 21:10 – Guest: I am using my effects like functions. 21:26 – John’s question. 21:31 – Chuck: Doing everything! You said implement the 2-payload method – that doesn’t make sense? 21:43 – Guest: Not 100% convinced you need it. What people are doing on these actions... 22:43 – Chuck: How much magic you want? 22:50 – Guest. 22:59 – John: I am confused about ERROR HANDLING. What do you advise for people to do? 23:21 – Guest: Basically, when you deal with that effect you deal with the actions, and the actions... If you get an error on it it’s done. I was trying to explain there that...do it on another stream. Try it on another stream and handle it. What happened to me – I did it on the action state and I got an error and then everything will stop. 24:27 – John: That’s not good! 24:32 – Chuck. 24:35 – John: Good tip! 24:40 – Chuck: Angular has gotten better at that. I still find, though... 25:06 – John. 25:16 – John: Hey I appreciate these blog posts that don’t always show the happy path. To show the unhappy path is a good idea. 25:32 – Chuck. 26:00 – Going down your list, Adrian, let’s talk about effects are services. I agree, but not that we have... 26:24 – Guest: I have seen cases where people forget that. They say I want to call a service, how do I do that? They forget... 26:50 – John: You have to provide your services somewhere. The old way was you could go into the... What do you do? 27:28 – Guest: Most of the applications... 28:17 – John. 28:25 – Chuck: I love deleting code! 28:32 – John: You end up in a spaghetti pool, though, if you needed that deleted code. Nooooo!!! 29:00 – Chuck. 29:01 – Guest. 29:10 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 29:49 – John: Let’s talk about reducers – the smallest part of your tip sections. You say, “keep them simple” – how do you keep them simple? 30:07 – Guest: I have received this observation from several people. This is the biggest problem I had. How to keep them simple... 31:08 – John: When someone makes that type of code – where would you want them to put it? 31:23 – Guest: It depends on different types of actions. Maybe I have some sort of matter that I added to the data – an action from my application we can catch it into an effect and... Not all of the actions have to go to the reducer. 32:04 – John: I say, “Hmm...” when I see reducers like this...they are running a synchronized code inside of a reducer. And I see that a lot. 32:24 – Chuck. 32:28 – John: You go call a reaction, and...sometimes they are doing HTP there, but it’s hard to explain. 33:11 – John: What are some of the things that they can do to step-into, when they are using these? 33:16 – Guest: That’s why I only have these things about the reducers. 33:48 – Chuck: I am wondering what is the life cycle look like? What do you call a reducer from an effect from an action or vice versa? 34:09 – Guest answers the question. 34:37 – John: It can be confusing with all of these different terms. Where does it end? Your component you have to say: call this action. Perform this action and then the action says get customers – the NgRx library listens for that and helps connect to the reducer for you. Look into the action and then return that to a stream to whatever... 35:29 – Guest: Yes, it sends it to reducers. Guest goes into more detail. 36:09 – John: You never talk to the reducer directly? 36:17 – Chuck: ...is that something I should have done before – or does it call effects and the effects load the information into the state and the reducer pulls it out for the action? 36:46 – Guest. 36:58 – Chuck. 37:03 – Guest. 37:53 – John: It really depends on what you want to do, Chuck. John will give a hypothetical scenario. 38:58 – Chuck: In your scenario, let’s say... 39:14 – John: Everything is right up until the end there. It’s a little magical, honestly. I just know here is my selector and here is my data! 40:17 – Chuck: Selector is essentially I am interested in THIS state or THIS state change. 40:40 – Guest. 40:50 – Chuck: So when that changes... 40:56 – Guest. 40:59 – John. 41:05 – Chuck: A little piece of the overall store. 41:18 – Guest: My tip there was a bout the selectors... 42:30 – Chuck: So I can hand off my selector to multiple places? 42:36 – Guest: Yep. You don’t need to know anything else. 42:44 – Guest: Combine it as needed. Another benefit here is memorization. It says that each time you select pure functions it wont call the function again. 43:42 – I am seeing a trend in your tips, too. I am seeing easier way to code. You are always saying selector technique. There are a lot of terms in NgRx module. Dispatchers and states and stores...it’s nice to have a way to create the code easier. 44:21 – Guest: It does take a lot of time for someone to grasp. 44:30 – Chuck. 44:35 – John: Don’t use the store all over the place – that’s what Adrian says! 44:54 – Guest: I think it’s more like dumb components. I have a container of all of these dumb components. The container is the one that KNOWS. 46:22 – Chuck: It’s just a button. 46:28 – Guest: You click the button and it triggers. Whenever you want to use that component then you... 46:48 – Chuck: Any types of data that you wouldn’t want to use in your NgRx store? 47:07 – Guest: It depends – I am not holding any logging information there, though. 47:51 – John: I like to ask WHY. Property initialization. You are saying... 48:11 – Guest: It’s less code and it’s reasonable. If I can have less code then I’d love to have it. I think it’s cleaner b/c it’s not that much code. Most people might think blah, blah, blah, but I think it looks okay. 48:46 – John: I can see why it would be less code. 48:57 – Guest. 49:07 – John: I haven’t seen this: looking at your property initializer... Looking at your code here, Adrian... The store object itself is a reference to the NgRx store. That means you have to... To me I don’t want my app to know that NgRx is involved. I started to do this...I was creating an Angular service, which... Have you done this before? 50:33 – Guest:  I have seen this function but I haven’t played with it. It makes sense. This takes it a step further. Like you say it’s perfect b/c nobody knows anything about that store, but it’s a new level. I think you have some benefits with that way of doing it, too. 51:23 – John: The one thing that sticks out is company name is your observable, then your... 52:10 – Guest: Yeah that’s good b/c it might be better! They might not even know what NgRx is, and you have a service so just use them. Yeah it’s just an observable. 52:33 – Chuck: You don’t want to see my garage. 52:44 – Guest: Some services are underrated. Like you suggested we could use them for much more. 53:01 – Guest: It was nice writing these tips. 53:19 – Chuck: What are working on now? 53:23 – Guest: Writing a new blog. 53:41 – Chuck: We will keep an eye out for it. Where do you post? 53:55 – Guest: Usually Medium, and Twitter. Search for my name and you will find me, b/c I have the same handler on all the places. 54:15 – Chuck & John: Let’s go to picks! 54:30 – Chuck is talking about future episodes and potential topics. You can vote stuff up on Trello on NgRx so we can go deeper on this topic. 55:40 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 1:02:00 – Advertisement – Cache Fly! Links: Vue jQuery Angular C# Chuck’s Twitter John Papa’s Twitter Adrian’s Medium Adrian’s Twitter Adrian’s GitHub Adrian’s Blog Post Adrian’s Article: Testing NgRx Effects Sponsors: Angular Boot Camp Fresh Books Get a Coder Job Course Cache Fly Picks: John NgRx Data Conferences  - Don’t feel mofo Charles Discord App Adrain Angular In-depth Doc Wallaby

Panel: Charles Max Wood John Papa Special Guest: Adrian Faciu In this episode, Chuck talks with Adrian Faciu who is a developer for Visma and is a blogger. The panel talks to Adrian about his blog titled, “NgRx Tips & Tricks.” They ask Adrian in-depth questions about NgRx, among many other topics. Listen to today’s episode for more details! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: AngularBootCamp.Com 0:55 – Chuck: Hi! Our guest is Adrian Faciu. 1:10 – Guest: Hello! I am Adrian and I am a developer who works for a Norwegian company, but I live in Romania! 1:35 – Chuck. 1:36 – Guest. 1:47 – Chuck: The market is so global. I have talked with many different guests from different parts of the world – it’s really neat! It’s this global phenomenon. 2:12 – Guest: It’s a great thing! 2:23 – Chuck: They have an office where you live? 2:31 – Yes. 2:37 – Chuck: How are you guys using Angular over there? 2:47 – Guest: We have several different products. We customize using them with internalized tools. 3:04 – Chuck: Real quick let’s talk about your blog post. I will admit I am not that familiar with NgRx, so I will ask newbie questions. Now do you want to explain what this is? 3:41 – Guest: Sure! The short story of the article is I saw people doing things the hard way. And after I figured out some things, people encouraged me to write about my experience. 4:37 – Chuck: John Papa just signed-in! 4:53 – Guest: Yes NgRx is... 5:02 – Chuck: You used classes for all actions what do you mean by that? 5:05 – Guest answers the question into detail. 6:31 – Chuck: Let’s say we have a class that uses a log error... 6:42 – Guest: For example you have actions that... 7:02 – Chuck: When you use the reducer... 7:10 – Guest: There are other tricks we can use like keeping all of them in the same file... 8:00 – Guest talks about the union type. 8:24 – Chuck: You learned this by doing things wrong – what happens when you do these things wrong? 8:30 – Guest: If you don’t put all of your classes in the right file then you end up with a lot of files. If you don’t create hero types then you’d have to... 10:02 – Chuck: If you import user actions then does it import all of the other types? 10:08 – Guest: Import everything from that file. 10:17 – Chuck: If you have any questions, John, feel free to chime-in! 10:29 – John: Yeah I am scanning through this. The negative I hear a lot of through actions, it’s cause we create constants – the action class creators, it seems to cause an undue amount of stress. How much actual code do you actually have to write – how do you feel about that? 11:12 – Guest: I didn’t want to write all of this code! That’s what I wanted to avoid. 11:44 – John: I wrote them, didn’t like them, I went back to them... It wasn’t just that I created a new action I had to create the constant and other things – also the place you do the union type, I’d forget to do the union type at the end! If you don’t have all of those things then it won’t work. Even on a simple project I’d have 120 lines of code for a simple task. 12:49 – Guest: Yes. Sometimes I would forget this or that. I’d have to figure out what I did wrong. I went back and created classes for a lot of things. I like the benefits. 13:19 – John: I like your ideas and your tips in your blog. How do you feel about the NAMES of those actions? 13:55 – Guest. 14:51 – John: Important part is the naming of the string inside of it – that’s the value... So you can see the actions that are being displayed. 15:25 – Guest: If you didn’t do it right that’s where the problem would be. 15:38 – John: To me it’s a love/hate relationship b/c there is so much code to it. I usually copy and paste which means that I usually forget to change something. I agree, but I don’t’ like creating it. 16:05 – Guest: I’ve been trying to figure out a solution for it eventually I gave up. 16:23 – John: Moving onto effects – inside that happens inside of the Redux cycle – if you want to do something outside of it that’s when you do effects right? 16:40 – Guest. 16:49 – John: Using the effects is good or do it a different way? 17: 20 – Guest: It makes my components cleaner. I have seen projects that DON’T use it and it’s not the best. 17:36 – John: Like getting a list of customers... (I am using my hands and nobody can see me!) It’s weird to me to NOT use the effects! 18:52 – Guest: If you implement some type of caching then it’s everything to put everything in the state. 19:07 – Chuck: I haven’t used it as much as I would like, but I haven’t do much with it. 19:23 – John: I am curious from somebody hasn’t dove into it – does effects make sense to you, Chuck? 19:39 – Chuck: It seems like effects is a side effect? Like calling out an external API... 20:10 – John: Yeah even multiple effects. John asks a question. 20:23 – Guest answers the question. 20:29 – Chuck: I like that you can make constrained assumptions and all of the complicated... 21:10 – Guest: I am using my effects like functions. 21:26 – John’s question. 21:31 – Chuck: Doing everything! You said implement the 2-payload method – that doesn’t make sense? 21:43 – Guest: Not 100% convinced you need it. What people are doing on these actions... 22:43 – Chuck: How much magic you want? 22:50 – Guest. 22:59 – John: I am confused about ERROR HANDLING. What do you advise for people to do? 23:21 – Guest: Basically, when you deal with that effect you deal with the actions, and the actions... If you get an error on it it’s done. I was trying to explain there that...do it on another stream. Try it on another stream and handle it. What happened to me – I did it on the action state and I got an error and then everything will stop. 24:27 – John: That’s not good! 24:32 – Chuck. 24:35 – John: Good tip! 24:40 – Chuck: Angular has gotten better at that. I still find, though... 25:06 – John. 25:16 – John: Hey I appreciate these blog posts that don’t always show the happy path. To show the unhappy path is a good idea. 25:32 – Chuck. 26:00 – Going down your list, Adrian, let’s talk about effects are services. I agree, but not that we have... 26:24 – Guest: I have seen cases where people forget that. They say I want to call a service, how do I do that? They forget... 26:50 – John: You have to provide your services somewhere. The old way was you could go into the... What do you do? 27:28 – Guest: Most of the applications... 28:17 – John. 28:25 – Chuck: I love deleting code! 28:32 – John: You end up in a spaghetti pool, though, if you needed that deleted code. Nooooo!!! 29:00 – Chuck. 29:01 – Guest. 29:10 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 29:49 – John: Let’s talk about reducers – the smallest part of your tip sections. You say, “keep them simple” – how do you keep them simple? 30:07 – Guest: I have received this observation from several people. This is the biggest problem I had. How to keep them simple... 31:08 – John: When someone makes that type of code – where would you want them to put it? 31:23 – Guest: It depends on different types of actions. Maybe I have some sort of matter that I added to the data – an action from my application we can catch it into an effect and... Not all of the actions have to go to the reducer. 32:04 – John: I say, “Hmm...” when I see reducers like this...they are running a synchronized code inside of a reducer. And I see that a lot. 32:24 – Chuck. 32:28 – John: You go call a reaction, and...sometimes they are doing HTP there, but it’s hard to explain. 33:11 – John: What are some of the things that they can do to step-into, when they are using these? 33:16 – Guest: That’s why I only have these things about the reducers. 33:48 – Chuck: I am wondering what is the life cycle look like? What do you call a reducer from an effect from an action or vice versa? 34:09 – Guest answers the question. 34:37 – John: It can be confusing with all of these different terms. Where does it end? Your component you have to say: call this action. Perform this action and then the action says get customers – the NgRx library listens for that and helps connect to the reducer for you. Look into the action and then return that to a stream to whatever... 35:29 – Guest: Yes, it sends it to reducers. Guest goes into more detail. 36:09 – John: You never talk to the reducer directly? 36:17 – Chuck: ...is that something I should have done before – or does it call effects and the effects load the information into the state and the reducer pulls it out for the action? 36:46 – Guest. 36:58 – Chuck. 37:03 – Guest. 37:53 – John: It really depends on what you want to do, Chuck. John will give a hypothetical scenario. 38:58 – Chuck: In your scenario, let’s say... 39:14 – John: Everything is right up until the end there. It’s a little magical, honestly. I just know here is my selector and here is my data! 40:17 – Chuck: Selector is essentially I am interested in THIS state or THIS state change. 40:40 – Guest. 40:50 – Chuck: So when that changes... 40:56 – Guest. 40:59 – John. 41:05 – Chuck: A little piece of the overall store. 41:18 – Guest: My tip there was a bout the selectors... 42:30 – Chuck: So I can hand off my selector to multiple places? 42:36 – Guest: Yep. You don’t need to know anything else. 42:44 – Guest: Combine it as needed. Another benefit here is memorization. It says that each time you select pure functions it wont call the function again. 43:42 – I am seeing a trend in your tips, too. I am seeing easier way to code. You are always saying selector technique. There are a lot of terms in NgRx module. Dispatchers and states and stores...it’s nice to have a way to create the code easier. 44:21 – Guest: It does take a lot of time for someone to grasp. 44:30 – Chuck. 44:35 – John: Don’t use the store all over the place – that’s what Adrian says! 44:54 – Guest: I think it’s more like dumb components. I have a container of all of these dumb components. The container is the one that KNOWS. 46:22 – Chuck: It’s just a button. 46:28 – Guest: You click the button and it triggers. Whenever you want to use that component then you... 46:48 – Chuck: Any types of data that you wouldn’t want to use in your NgRx store? 47:07 – Guest: It depends – I am not holding any logging information there, though. 47:51 – John: I like to ask WHY. Property initialization. You are saying... 48:11 – Guest: It’s less code and it’s reasonable. If I can have less code then I’d love to have it. I think it’s cleaner b/c it’s not that much code. Most people might think blah, blah, blah, but I think it looks okay. 48:46 – John: I can see why it would be less code. 48:57 – Guest. 49:07 – John: I haven’t seen this: looking at your property initializer... Looking at your code here, Adrian... The store object itself is a reference to the NgRx store. That means you have to... To me I don’t want my app to know that NgRx is involved. I started to do this...I was creating an Angular service, which... Have you done this before? 50:33 – Guest:  I have seen this function but I haven’t played with it. It makes sense. This takes it a step further. Like you say it’s perfect b/c nobody knows anything about that store, but it’s a new level. I think you have some benefits with that way of doing it, too. 51:23 – John: The one thing that sticks out is company name is your observable, then your... 52:10 – Guest: Yeah that’s good b/c it might be better! They might not even know what NgRx is, and you have a service so just use them. Yeah it’s just an observable. 52:33 – Chuck: You don’t want to see my garage. 52:44 – Guest: Some services are underrated. Like you suggested we could use them for much more. 53:01 – Guest: It was nice writing these tips. 53:19 – Chuck: What are working on now? 53:23 – Guest: Writing a new blog. 53:41 – Chuck: We will keep an eye out for it. Where do you post? 53:55 – Guest: Usually Medium, and Twitter. Search for my name and you will find me, b/c I have the same handler on all the places. 54:15 – Chuck & John: Let’s go to picks! 54:30 – Chuck is talking about future episodes and potential topics. You can vote stuff up on Trello on NgRx so we can go deeper on this topic. 55:40 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 1:02:00 – Advertisement – Cache Fly! Links: Vue jQuery Angular C# Chuck’s Twitter John Papa’s Twitter Adrian’s Medium Adrian’s Twitter Adrian’s GitHub Adrian’s Blog Post Adrian’s Article: Testing NgRx Effects Sponsors: Angular Boot Camp Fresh Books Get a Coder Job Course Cache Fly Picks: John NgRx Data Conferences  - Don’t feel mofo Charles Discord App Adrain Angular In-depth Doc Wallaby

John 5: 1-18 - Part 8 in our Series on John.

In today's Q&A, we are helping Ryan understand what microphone and gear he should use for recording a high quality sounding podcast. Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast? We would love to help you! Click here to ask your question! [Tweet "Take action with the equipment you can afford right now...don't wait" #podcasting @johnleedumas"] Resources Mentioned in this Episode Today's expert is John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire John's last expert QA Logitech ClearChat - Starter microphone, 7/10 sound, great value Audiotechinica ATR 2100 - 8.5/10 sound quality, all you need Heil PR40 - 9.5 /10 sound quality, go pro Presonus Firestudio Mixer - John's Mixer Adobe Creative Cloud - Adobe tools including photoshop and illustrator Ecamm Call Recorder - Used to record Skype calls on a MAC Pamela Recorder - Record Skype calls on a PC Scarlett2i2 - Shane & Jocelyn's Mixer (to hook up 2 mics) Let's dive into this week's question! JOCELYN: Hey y'all! You're listening to an Expert Q&A with S&J. Today's expert is John Lee Dumas of the ‘Entrepreneur on Fire' podcast and entrepreneuronfire.com. Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us, each week, as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside-down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let's get started. SHANE: Hey y'all, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Expert Q&A podcast; excited to bring in another expert to answer your questions about online business. We do not have the only way to be successful online. Love to introduce you to other perspectives from different experts in different fields especially when you send us questions that we have no clue of what the answer is. So we'd like to bring people on and let them know. We would love to welcome back today, the one and only, John Lee Dumas. John was on about a month ago and he is back again today to answer another audience question from the Flipped Lifestyle community. John, welcome back man! JOHN: My friends, I am still on fire. SHANE: You are always on fire. You're like the everlasting flame; you know what I'm saying? JOHN: I love it. The Olympic torch. SHANE: That's right, you're the Olympic torch of online business. All right Jocelyn, what's our question for John today? JOCELYN: All right, today's question is from Ryan and I'm not sure how to say his last name, Belolo, maybe, and this is via Twitter. It says, “Hey guys, do you each use your own microphone for your podcast? What does your setup look like and what is the best microphone and in your opinion, the best way to hook up two microphones to one computer? I can't figure it out.” SHANE: And we wanted to bring John on to answer this specific question ‘cause Jocelyn and I have the least knowledge of – we're barely on the podcast ourselves right now, but John Lee Dumas knows a thing or two about podcasting. So John, how does that work man? What's your set up look like and how do you get two people talking in the same place? JOHN: Well, whatever you all the doing, the audio sounds amazing. I give it the thumbs up. SHANE: There we go. JOHN: Let me break it down microphone wise. I have three mic recommendations starting at the low, going to a medium and then ending at a high cost. The low cost is the Logitech ClearChat. It's a 29-dollar headset microphone, USB, plugs into any USB port and you can get it on Amazon. It'll be free shipping with Prime in two days. 29 dollars. It'll take your audio from a two, which is what most people do and talk at their computer and let the crappy microphone pick it up to, a seven. So you are actually going from a two to a seven just with 29 dollars. The medium cost is the ATR2100 which is twice the price but still a very affordable, 60 dollars. SHANE: And that's what we have; we both are talking on the 2100 right now actually....

Heyang: Hello and welcome to RoundTable’s Word of the Week.John: This week we are looking at some words and phrases related to love because this weekend you may or may not know is White Valentine’s Day. As an American, I had no idea this existed until I came to China.Heyang: White Valentine’s Day gives girls particularly a chance to reciprocate the love and gestures that the guys have expressed during Valentine’s Day a month ago, so I think it’s quite a special day, plus it’s just another day to celebrate love.John: Let’s take a look at some phrases first. “To have a crush on (someone)” basically just means to have a very, very strong and irrational feelings for someone. Heyang: 表示爱慕之情。John： So, “He (she) has a crush on her (him).” So Heyang, who do you have a crush on?Heyang: Not you.John: And the next one “to feel an instant magnetism”. “He felt an instant magnetism when their eyes first met.” Right so, “magnets” are attractive to each other so “feel an magnetism” that means you are attracted to someone. Heyang: 就是你感觉到跟另外一个人好像有一种磁铁一般的吸引力。John: Then “to catch one’s eye”. “A nice-looking girl caught his eye.” It really means to pay attention to someone, become aware of someone.Heyang: 这个说的就是当一个人被另外一个人的外表所吸引住了目光。John: Yes, for example, I mean I think it’s a good point, it’s not necessarily only about people, it can be used with things as well, like for example “Heyang was in London going window-shopping and the purse caught her eye.”Heyang: 我们可以把范围扩大到物件，比如说你对物品有一种衷心喜爱的感觉，一下子也抓住了你的目光。John: And then there is “to hit it off”. “He was introduced to a pretty woman and they seem to hit it off immediately.” So basically is to get along with very well.Heyang: So it doesn’t really have any sexual connotations.John: No, not necessarily. Heyang: 这个说的就是两个人一见钟情，一下子就很合得来。John: Your can say that someone is hitting on someone, really that means he’s very interested in talking to her and maybe hopefully taking the relationship a little bit further. And the next one “to have the hots for (someone)” “When he met her, he had the hots for her.” Basically it means to be in lust or to be sexual attracted to someone.Heyang: 下面给大家介绍的这个词，就是对这个人爱慕不已，浑身发热。John: Whatever that means. Moving on. “To be attracted to each other”- “They were attracted to each other the moment their eyes met.” So we talked about this kind of implicitly you know about magnetism. “To be attracted to someone” is to be interested, to have feelings for them, to want to know them more.Heyang: But this is a pretty mild term.John: It’s very mild, yes.Heyang: 就是一个人对另外一个人产生了兴趣，是一个比较日常的说法。John: And a good example is you know Heyang is not attracted to me.Heyang: Yeah, that’s a very good example.John: That’s a very good example. Heyang: And stop using me as examples.John: No. And then once more we would take a look at “catch”, so for example “He is the man for whom she feels no attraction, catch or no catch.” “Catch” is basically someone who is highly desired, right? If you look at very objectively the pros and cons of this person, the person has very strong pros, not very many cons.Heyang: You can also say that “someone is a catch” meaning that person is a keeper. 就是说是一个理想的对象。John: Alright, so for some of you out there, it can be a little bit difficult to express how your feeling about your special someone, the loved one, closest to you on this White Valentine’s Day, so we give you some pointers some examples about open your mouth and say you care. So here’s one- “Words will never be enough to describe how much I love you and what you mean to me.”Heyang: 语言无法表达我对你的爱。Wow, that’s really strong. 我们现在给大家列举几个表白的大绝招，你可以记下来哟。John: Then “I couldn't even imagine having anything more than you. You're my best friend. You're everything to me. Obviously I don't want anything else. I just want you.”Heyang: That’s too much, even if we’re just like trying to act this out in this studio. 这就是充分地表达这个人是你唯一爱慕的人, 而且他还是你最好的朋友，你无法生活中没有他。John: Yeah, I think a lot of these you might actually find in movies but it can give you the idea the inspirations. Another one “So many times I thought I would never find someone to love me the way I needed to be loved. Then you came into my life and showed me what love really is.”Heyang: Wow, that’s kind of moving.John: It is.Heyang: 因为另外一个人而让你认识到爱情的形状，还是很感人的。John: And then some beginnings of sentences you can fill in on your own. “I love that you ...” and you say something about you know a characteristic a quality they have you really like. Or “I admire you for ...” again you can fill it in with things that you like about that person.Heyang: And also “You are the reason that I do something”, or you know, “Your are the reason that I woke up this morning.” or something.John: Or “Your are the inspiration, which is actually a great song.”Heyang: That’s all the time we have for this week’s RoundTable’s Word of the Week, you’ll see you next week.

Xiaohua: Hello, and welcome to Roundtable’s Word of the Week. Today we’re talking about bikini, a word that everyone knows but maybe not everyone knows the origin of. John: As Xiaohua just said, almost everyone knows what a bikini is. But just to be clear, the bikini is a two-piece swimsuit with a bra top and panties cut below the navel. So it’s not just a two-piece swimsuit. Specifically, it is a fairly revealing two-piece swimsuit. Xiaohua：嗯，比基尼我们都知道是什么意思，就是一种两片式的由胸衣还有三角裤构成的泳衣。 John：Now it’s really interesting that are actually lots of different bikini variants. Basically just has the -kini or the -ini at the end. So you have the monokini, the microkini, the tankini, the trikini, the sling bikini among many others. And we’ll talk about what those are specifically a little bit later. Xiaohua: So where does the word bikini come from? John: Well, interestingly enough, it actually comes from the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, where the United States actually tested its first peace-time nuclear weapons. So the word bikini has nothing to do with the actually meaning of bikini. Bikini in the local language of that area basically means the surface of coconuts. But the original designer of the bikini named it after the Bikini Atoll because he was hoping it was going to be just as explosive as the nuclear bomb test. Xiaohua: I see. 所以比基尼这个词其实来自太平洋的一个小岛，叫比基尼岛，Bikini Atoll。在上世纪40年代的时候，美国曾在比基尼岛上试爆过原子弹。bikini在当地语言中的意思是“椰子的表面”，但这并不是比基尼设计者用这个词给泳衣命名的原因，他是希望这种泳衣发明，效果或者影响力会像原子弹爆炸一样。 John：So the French mechanical engineer who actually came up with the bikini, the reason that he did it: he was actually working at his mother’s lingerie shop, and he noticed on the beach that many women, they had two-piece swimsuits that were fairly modest you might say. But he noticed that many women were actually rolling them up to get a better tan. And that’s how he came up with the idea for bikini, so a lot less fabric. The thing is, at the time, it was hugely risqué and deemed inappropriate for many women to be wearing. The Vatican completely outlawed them. In the U.S., in many cases, you had beaches that would ban people, men and women, from wearing this kind of very revealing underwear. But it wasn’t until the 1950s that Hollywood stars such as Bridget Bardot, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor, they started to wear these bikinis, mostly because it got them a lot of attention. And then it kind of came to the main stream. Xiaohua: 比基尼的发明者是一位法国人，他的灵感实际上是这么来的。他在海滩上看到很多妇女穿着两片式的泳衣，但她们实际上把自己的泳衣向上卷起来，这样可以更好地晒到阳光。但是当他发明这款比基尼泳衣之后，在当时的西方社会引起了非常大的轰动，很多人都不能接受这种很暴露的穿着方式。一直到20世纪50年代，有很多好莱坞明星开始穿着比基尼之后，比基尼才开始流行起来。 John: And of course, this is where the notion of bikini tan comes from, basically where a woman, or a man, because there are men’s bikinis, just the bottom part really. You can see they have a tan line, a bikini tan line where the bikini actually is. Xiaohua: bikini-tanline就是穿着比基尼泳衣时晒太阳在皮肤上留下的一种痕迹。 John: Let’s take a look at the different and many variations. We’re only going to give you a small sampling. Certainly there are more, but here are some of the more interesting ones. So a bandeau-kini, sometimes also called a bandini, is any bikini bottom worn with a bandeau as the top, so basically it’s a strapless top. Xiaohua: bankini, 或者是bandeau-kini，是指泳衣的上身是由抹胸构成的泳衣。 John：And a microkini, including a minikini or a mini-mini, is basically an extremely skimpy bikini. So you take what the bikini already is, fairly revealing, and you make it even more revealing. Xiaohua: microkini就是用料非常节省的泳衣。We all know what the effects are like. John: Exactly. And a monokini or a unikini or sometimes even a numokini is basically just the bottom part, the panties of the bikini itself. And really it just refers to any type of topless swimsuit, Xiaohua: monokini, 就是没有上片，只有三角裤的一种泳衣。I don’t anyone who will wear that. John: You are not gonna see this in China. But topless swim bathing happens quite often in Europe. And then there is the skirtini, which is a bikini top and a small, skirted bottom. So basically it just gives you a bit more coverage on the bottom. Xiaohua: 下半身是裙式的这种bikini叫skirtini. This is quite commonly seen in China. John: Yeah very common. And then there is a string bikini, sometimes called a tie-side. Basically the bottom is just held together by 2 pieces of string. Xiaohua: 系绳式bikini叫string bikini。 John: Then, last but not least for today, there is a tankini, which is a swimsuit combining a tank top, and then of course, the bikini bottom. Xiaohua: Tankini上身的泳衣是背心式的。That’s a lot of knowledge for one day. John: And there is so much more. I think that for me, I know nothing about women’s fashion. But certainly, I myself and doing the research learnt more than I ever needed to know. Xiaohua: That’s right, and that wraps up roundtable’s Word of the Week.

John: Let Not Your Hearts Be Troubled (14:1-11)