Podcasts about laughs it

Our Chief Fixed Income Strategist Vishy Tirupattur thinks that efficiency gains from Chinese AI startup DeepSeek may drive incremental demand for AI.----- Listener Survey -----Complete a short listener survey at http://www.morganstanley.com/podcast-survey and help us make the podcast even more valuable for you. For every survey completed, Morgan Stanley will donate $25 to the Feeding America® organization to support their important work.© 2025 Morgan Stanley. All Rights Reserved. CRC#4174856 02/2025----- Transcript -----Hi, I'm Michael Zezas, Global Head of Fixed Income research & Public Policy Strategy at Morgan Stanley. Before we get into today's episode … the team behind Thoughts on the Market wants your thoughts and your input. Fill out our listener survey and help us make this podcast even more valuable for you. The link is in the show notes, and you'll hear it at the end of the episode. Plus, help us help the Feeding America organization. For every survey completed, Morgan Stanley will donate $25 toward their important work.Thanks for your time and support. On to the show…Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Vishy Tirupattur, Morgan Stanley's Chief Fixed Income Strategist. Today I'll be talking about the macro implications of the DeepSeek development.It's Friday February 7th at 9 am, and I'm on the road in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.Recently we learned that DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, has developed two open-source large language models – LLMs – that can perform at levels comparable to models from American counterparts at a substantially lower cost. This news set off shockwaves in the equity markets that wiped out nearly a trillion dollars in the market cap of listed US technology companies on January 27. While the market has recouped some of these losses, their magnitude raises questions for investors about AI. My equity research colleagues have addressed a range of stock-specific issues in their work. Today we step back and consider the broader implications for the economy in terms of productivity growth and investment spending on AI infrastructure.First thing. While this is an important milestone and a significant development in the evolution of LLMs, it doesn't come entirely as a shock. The history of computing is replete with examples of dramatic efficiency gains. The DeepSeek development is precisely that – a dramatic efficiency improvement which, in our view, drives incremental demand for AI. Rapid declines in the cost of computing during the 1990s provide a useful parallel to what we are seeing now. As Michael Gapen, our US chief economist, has noted, the investment boom during the 1990s was really driven by the pace at which firms replaced depreciated capital and a sharp and persistent decline in the price of computing capital relative to the price of output. If efficiency gains from DeepSeek reflect a similar phenomenon, we may be seeing early signs [that] the cost of AI capital is coming down – and coming down rapidly. In turn, that should support the outlook for business spending pertaining to AI.In the last few weeks, we have heard a lot of reference to the Jevons paradox – which really dates from 1865 – and it states that as technological advancements reduce the cost of using a resource, the overall demand for the resource increases, causing the total resource consumption to rise. In other words, cheaper and more ubiquitous technology will increase its consumption. This enables AI to transition from innovators to more generalized adoption and opens the door for faster LLM-enabled product innovation. That means wider and faster consumer and enterprise adoption. Over time, this should result in greater increases in productivity and faster realization of AI's transformational promise.From a micro perspective, our equity research colleagues, who are experts in covering stocks in these sectors, come to a very similar conclusion. They think it's unlikely that the DeepSeek development will meaningfully reduce CapEx related to AI infrastructure. From a macroeconomic perspective, there is a good case to be made for higher business spending related to AI, as well as productivity growth from AI.Obviously, it is still early days, and we will see leaders and laggards at the stock level. But the economy as a whole we think will emerge as a winner. DeepSeek illustrates the potential for efficiency gains, which in turn foster greater competition and drive wider adoption of AI. With that premise, we remain constructive on AI's transformational promise.Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the podcast, help us make it even more valuable to you. Share your feedback on the show at morganstanley.com/podcast-survey or head to the episode notes for the survey link.In the last few weeks… (Laughs) It's almost like the birds are waiting for me to start speaking.The proceeding content is informational only and based on information available when created. It is not an offer or a solicitation nor is it tax or legal advice. It does not consider your financial circumstances and objectives and may not be suitable for you.

Welcome to another episode of the Wise Not Withered podcast! We are in Season 4, Episode 6. This month's guest was Eden Fieldstone, whom I met at a retreat where I met quite a few people who have been and will be featured on this podcast! Eden is multi-faceted, as she will go into, with two very different careers that she holds simultaneously. She talked a lot about her relationship with her own children, and I really appreciated her warmth, humor, and rawness in some of the topics she talked about. — All right! So is it Eden Fieldstone? Mhm. Okay. Thank you for joining us on the Wise Not Withered Podcast! What is your age? 49. 49, excellent. That's my dad's favorite number! Where did you grow up? And where do you live now? I grew up in Toronto, and I still live in Toronto. Okay. Have you lived there your whole life? Lived? Yeah… Pretty much. Nice. Have you visited other places too? Oh yeah. Of course, of course. I went to Brazil three times. I've been to Egypt. Yeah. Obviously, the United States. Brazil—why three times? Oh, cause I have friends down there. And it's my favorite country. I love the culture. I feel very at home there. I feel more at home there than here. Oh, why's that? People are so… Emotional! (Laughs) They're very free with their emotions, they're very free with their emotions, they're very friendly, they're very warm. They're just… I feel like they're very natural. Like there isn't… How to explain it. Like they're just very affectionate, warm people. We're not here. Yeah. Okay, interesting. When was the first time you went to Brazil? 2011? And every time just to visit friends? Yeah. But I was sheltered there. I wouldn't go there by myself. I generally don't… Generally, when I travel, I'm visiting someone I know. I like being on the inside. I don't like being a tourist. Makes sense. You know what I mean? So I'm also taken care of—I don't worry about getting robbed. Brazilian people are generally not coming around you with those intentions. So yeah, that's basically how I like to travel. My friend lives in Bermuda, and I might go visit her. But if I didn't have a friend in Bermuda, I wouldn't go, necessarily. I like to travel where I know somebody, and I'm visiting. Have you been a tourist somewhere? Yeah! For sure, Cuba… I don't like all-inclusive resorts. And I went when I was really young—I was 20. I went to Italy by myself. And I felt so isolated! Cause I couldn't speak the language. It was different, culturally. I had a very hard time communicating. And I think that maybe changed how I travel. Oh, okay. So that was a turning point in the way you approach traveling. Yeah. It was very isolating. I felt isolated. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so switching gears a little bit, what is or was your relationship with your mother like? Oh my god… Very complicated. My mother well, is—she's still alive… But, younger… She wasn't, in my opinion, equipped to be a mother. I don't think she wanted to be a mother. There's a lack of nurturing… So… It took me maybe until I was a mother, for me to let go of needing her to be a mother to me. Hm. Yeah. I perceive her more like my biological mother. I interact with her, but it's always… I don't go to her for emotional support, or like typical things you go to your mother for. I don't do that with her. I'm glad I have a daughter. I feel that heals me a lot, that I can have the relationship I craved with my mother. I have it with my daughter. Yeah, that was gonna be the next question, how did it affect your relationship with your children? So… That I don't do what she does. I don't… I'm there for them, emotionally. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. What do you do for a living? Two things! Right now, I'm a professor of Critical Thinking, under the umbrella of English. And I've been a belly dancer for twenty-five years. Yeah! How did you get into the teaching first, and then the dancing? The teaching came from the belly dancing. Oh, really! Cause… Yeah. I never set out to teach. Belly dance, that was my career. And then I danced so much that I injured myself. A few times. And it debilitated me. Cause it was my only source of income, so I would over-dance. And I had to do something else, something that wasn't with my body. So I took this course, teaching English as a second language. And I kind of fell into all of this… I don't teach that anymore. I teach like, critical thinking, literature, stuff like that. Yeah! Yeah, very different things! How do you, I guess balance your identities? And like… I remember at the retreat, you said some of you students found your belly dancing page? Yeah, yeah, yeah! I just deal with it! They're both parts of me. I'm really academic. And I'm really artistic. Like I'm both. I would feel unbalanced if I weren't involved in one of them. Interesting. And I'm curious how that affects like, your mothering as well. Like, do your children… You have a daughter. Do you have other kids as well? I have a daughter and a son. Okay. How old are they? My daughter is 7, my son is 10. And do you talk to them about your belly dancing, or your teaching? Yeah! All the time. What is that like? It's normal to them. They come watch me dance. They've come to my work, teaching. They haven't watched me teach. But they… It's just normal. They hate that I'm on the computer a lot—that's where I have to mark and everything… But yeah. It's just normal for them. Yeah, okay. Interesting. And what brings you the most joy on a daily basis? I think it's feeling connected to other people. Good conversation… Yeah. Very simple! Hugging my kids… Watching their free spirits. Being outside in nature. How are your kids similar to you? And how are they different from you? Well it's funny… With my son, on an aesthetic level, I can pick apart every feature of who he looks like, of which family member. My kids have my hair color, both of them, and they have my jaw line. And my smile. And he has my sensitivity, and he's definitely an empath. And he's got that about me… My daughter has a rebellious side to her, which… She doesn't like rules. Very much like me—when I was fifteen. She's very feisty! (Laughs) So yeah, that's how they're like me! They're both very affectionate. Yeah. Is that also like you? Yeah, I'm very affectionate with them, so I guess they kind of picked it up from me. (Laughs) Nice! What do you do to unwind or recharge after a long day, or long week? That's very hard for me to do. I have to physically leave my house. I mean, I love my children, but I cannot recharge or unwind around them. I have to physically remove myself from my house. Sometimes it's going for a drive, sometimes… I don't get many opportunities to do that. But whatever I'm doing, it has to be away from the home. Too many responsibilities, too many energies pulling on me in there… Yeah, definitely… Seeing a friend or something like that. Just has to be, unfortunately… I can't unwind around my children. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah… Aside from work and family obligations, what other hobbies and interests do you have? I like reading novels. Again, I just like being in nature. I don't know, belly dancing isn't a hobby, but it's something I do enjoy. I like exercising. Those kinds of things. So you said you started your career in belly dancing. Did you start it just as a hobby and then it became a career? Yeah. What was that transition like? At what point did you think, “Oh, I can do this as a career!”? Well I took classes for like three years. Then I started doing amateur shows in groups. Then I was in a dance company. And then I just… Went out to places that hire belly dancers. And I just got hired! That was it! It was very simple. It was like, the easiest job ever. It's the best job. I get paid to dance. I really couldn't ask for anything better. Yeah. So. Yeah, and what kind of gigs do you do? Do you dance at clubs? Or solo shows? Group stuff? Everything. But I don't do—sorry for my yawning—I don't do stags. I don't do anything that's all men. Because then they get other ideas. But no, weddings, anniversaries, baby showers—you name it. Birthday parties. Anything that's celebratory. Yeah. That's what I do. As long as it's not a stag kind of thing. Stag? Like S-T-A-G? And that means all men? And it's usually men who… Like for a guy who's getting married, and he's gonna have his one last hurrah. Oh! Like a bachelor party! They often hire strippers and stuff like that. I don't go to things like that. They have a… Generally, they have a different expectation. I don't do that kind of dancing! Yeah, makes sense! Okay. What has been one of the biggest challenges that you've faced and overcome? Giving birth. Yeah. I had both of my children naturally, with no drugs. My son was 44 hours. And after 30 hours, I only dilated one centimeter. I had a doula, I had my husband. It was hard! It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life! I could not have done it without all that support around me. But I feel like… I'm not disparaging women who haven't had natural childbirth at all. But for me, it was a rite of passage. It made me stronger. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I wanted to crawl out of my body. It was excruciating. I could feel my hip bones separating. Oof. I was shaking… I was in shock for a week after I gave birth to my son. Yeah, it was physically, mentally… It was exhausting. It hurt, so much. And I couldn't escape it. It was the hardest thing I've ever done! (Laughs) There was like… I didn't feel like there was a light at the end of the tunnel. It felt like I was being tortured for 44 hours. And then finally, he came. Yeah, that was the hardest thing… To not go to the hospital and not get an epidural. That was the hardest thing I've ever done. Yeah. Why did you choose to not do that? Because… When you're paralyzed. You're completely disconnected. Your body… They tell you when to push in the hospital. That's not the way… Your body pushes when… There's no control. Your body just will push. There's no mental… There's nothing that you can control when you're in a natural state of giving birth. Your body completely takes over. So… It's just healthier. It's everything. You're disconnected. You're completely disconnected. It's like nothing is going on. But it's the biggest thing going on. And then you have nurses telling you to push. How does the nurse know when my body wants to push? She's not in my body. Yeah… I was afraid I was going to blow my back. Honestly, I just didn't want anything to do with it. At the time, I was like, “Give me the epidural…” It was brutal. But my doula and my husband were not letting that happen. And I appreciate it now, for sure. Yeah. And then three years later you gave birth to your daughter? Yeah. And was that a similar experience? No. I gave birth to her by myself, in my house. Cause the midwife didn't show up… So that was different. Wow…! Yeah, she slept through the pager. So I called 9-1-1, and she was like half out of me when 9-1-1 answered, and then the fire department was in my room. The paramedics were in my room… It was crazy. The midwife wasn't there. Wow. My daughter was fine. It was quite something. Yeah. But she came twice as fast as my son, and it was half the pain. And I knew what I was doing. So I just was like, “I'm done with this. I hate being pregnant.” And I just gave birth to her. And that was it! I was done with it. I was like, “I've had it!” Finished! Yeah. Wow… You mentioned like, a mental challenge. So it wasn't as much of that with your daughter. No. Not at all. Okay. Interesting. I think the first… Well for me, I only have two, so I can't… But it's understood that the first is the hardest, and then it gets easier, and easier… Yeah. Yeah. Interesting… I'm just thinking about what it must have been like for my mom… It's hard. But… You know, it really strengthens you as a person. Just having to go through that, and coming out the other side. It's definitely a rite of passage, for sure. Yeah. And then how about just, raising your kids? What has been challenging about… Now that they are their own, little person? (Laughs) Sleep deprivation. As you can see, I'm yawing all the time… Trying to manage work and children. You know, their needs. It's always their needs. Always about them. Which is fine, cause that's the way it's supposed to be. Just… Kind of like… For me, cause I put so much into them… It's hard to give to myself. I don't have the time. I don't have the time. But it's important. My challenge as a mother has been, how do I nurture them, and give them the opportunities to fulfill whatever dreams that they have? And then, carve out the same space for myself. Which, I still… It hasn't happened. I'm trying to write a novel. I can't write the thing. Because between work and my kids, I have no time. Yeah. So it's definitely a challenge. And I think the less economic means you have, the harder it is. Right. I don't have someone coming to my house. No one's coming to my house, cleaning my house, cooking my meals for me… So there's a lot of domestic work that I have to do. So there isn't free time for myself. And it's not good. I don't know how to navigate around it. Yeah… How did you find BWA? Just some Facebook ad! What drew you to it? Just what Leslie was talking about, how your outer world is a reflection of your inner world… And how talk therapy doesn't change your inner drive, I guess? That's not the right word, but I can't remember her phrasing, to be honest. But it was that kind of idea that drew me to it. Yeah. Has it changed your life, do you think? Changed my life? No. I wouldn't say it's changed my life. I think that I am more grounded. I don't spin out, to the extent that I used to. So I mean, there's a change. But it hasn't changed my whole life. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. It's not like a… Super huge kind of ground-breaking… Yeah, I just feel more grounded. I feel like if things don't go the way I want it or expect it, or it hurts, or whatever… I kind of just… Well, maybe this is for the best, and I lean into it. Embrace things more. I have a little more faith… That the universe is here to help. I don't know. Do you know what I mean? There's more of a groundedness. Mhm. Yeah, I check my mind stories a lot. Yeah. I don't let myself go… I try to not let myself get sucked… I recognize when I'm getting sucked into someone's energy. And I can pull away… Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned the spinning out. Is that what you meant? Getting sucked into things… Yeah, or just like… You know, just spinning out, like, “Oh the future… And this… And that…” That kind of stuff. Mhm. Like, being trapped in that uncertainty versus the trust that you were talking about, that things will… Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Makes sense… So how do you define success? Self-fulfillment. I don't define it by money. No, I never have. Success is something you achieve, I guess… So to achieve, or… It could be anything. I was actually thinking of the success of my uncle—one of my uncles. I was thinking that he's so different with his kids than the way he was raised. And I see how my cousins are really grounded people. And I was like, you know, that's success. Like, he changed the direction of some intergenerational… I don't know if I would say trauma necessarily, but ways of relating to people. Yeah, he changed the direction with his kids. And… He's got a great job, and he's got lots of money and whatever, but that's—to me—not the success part. It's how he parents. Yeah. Do you consider him a mentor? Like do you look up to him? A little bit, yeah. A little bit… We're not that close. I think that… I think spiritually, if one fulfills whatever purpose they're here to do, that's success. Overcoming something that's difficult—that's success. It's not monetary. I know in our culture, it's very materialistic. But to me, success is not about that. Yeah, that makes sense. Who are some of your mentors, or people that you've looked up to? I look up to Madonna! I really like her! I do! I think she's such a trailblazer, and that she's still going at 64. I like that about her. I look up to… Oh god, I'm just so tired right now. So many people. Basically, any… Okay. There's this astronaut or mathematician in NASA, this black woman in the 50's, and she was very instrumental. Katherine Johnson. You know, people who go against the status quo… Or surprise you. Or they do the unexpected, I guess, in a positive way. Yeah. So… I'm not articulating myself very well. (Laughs) It's okay. Yeah. What's something you've learned about yourself, in the last few months to a year? Hoh… I'm very, very sensitive. And I come across as… Confident. Which is true. But I'm still very sensitive. Yeah. And you just realized that about yourself recently? No, it's not that I just realized. I don't know what I JUST realized about myself… What I JUST realized… That I am perimenopausal. There you go! I just realized that! (Laughs) Nice! (Laughs) All right. I skipped my period for fifty days. And I was freaking out. I was like, totally going crazy. Then it came. And then it came regularly again. Yeah. What else… That I… I don't know. There's nothing I JUST realized about myself, to be honest. Okay, no problem. Nothing new. There's nothing new. Maybe a continuation, but nothing new. How do you feel about menopause? Does it freak you out? Yeah. I'm gonna be honest, it does. If you don't mind sharing, what about it scares you? Um… That… The loss of being fertile… Bothers me. The coming in to the end of my life. I know menopause is not—I'm only 49. But it's a whole different… Yeah. I guess aging. All those hormonal, major changes. I… When I was especially a bit younger, when I would ovulate, I would feel this like, surge of energy. And I felt like, this power, like I could do whatever I want. I don't know, it was like I was on a high or something. So I don't know what menopause is gonna feel like, cause I'm not on menopause, right… Yeah. I guess I will just embrace it when it comes, but… I don't know. Yeah. I think what I discovered about myself is that I don't like change, actually. I don't like change. It's something I need to work on. But menopause is… It's a little scary for me. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely not something we talk about as a culture. Did your mom ever talk to you about her experience? Yeah! I talk to her about it all the time! Oh! Oh, you do? Okay! Mhm! It's not pleasant, what she tells me. I don't know if I want to repeat it, but… The analogies are stark! So… Yeah! Yeah… I'm not the best one to talk to about menopause, because I'm not in it, but… I have a fear of it. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, I don't know what else to say about it. Yeah, no problem. What's something you're looking forward to? I guess, doing more stuff with my kids. Maybe traveling a bit. Yeah, traveling… Where's a destination? I want to see the Northern Lights, in Canada. I would really like to see them. Yeah! I haven't planned it, but it's something that I would like to see. And where is that visible? Where can you do that? I think the Northwest Territories. It's far. It is pretty far from where you are? Absolutely. I'm in a city. A massive city. Toronto is a massive, metropolitan, crazy city. The Northern Lights, I think they're in the Northwest Territories. Okay. Do you travel with your kids? Are they of traveling age yet? Oh yeah, I travel with them. I went without them to Brazil. And that was very hard for me. But I'll tell you, after three days, though, I was fine! I didn't have to… I had a break. It was amazing, to just… Live in my day without having to take care of somebody. I'm not disparaging being a mother or anything, but it's very hard to always be taking… You're always having to take care of someone else. Always. Always. Every decision you make is like… Based on, how is this going to affect my kid? Can I do this? Can I not do this? Blah, blah, blah. I mean I do, in my daily life… It's rare, but I do go out, and I come back and 4 o'clock in the morning. I swear to God I do. I go out and I have a good time. I don't care. Cause I feel like that's really important. I'm not about staying home all the time. No, I probably go out once a week. Late. (Laughs) I go to live music, I hang out with my friends. I see my friends a lot. I make a point of it. Yeah. I'm not gonna just wither away in my house. It's not happening. Yeah, that's great!! I feel like that's probably good for your kids too! They don't like when I'm gone! They get upset. “Where are you going?” I'm like, “You're going to bed. What does it matter? I'll be here when you wake up. Like, it doesn't matter.” “No, Mommy, where are you going?” They think my personal life, like everything about me, is their business. Yeah. Like my son will look over my shoulder and read my text messages. Ohh…! Oh yeah! All the time… They think that the way they are my business, that I am their business. And it's not that way. They can't understand it. There are different roles. I don't want to say it's power differential, but it really is! But, for their benefit! You know? They don't understand that I'm a full grown adult, where they can't! (Laughs) Yeah. I love that. (Laughs) So interesting. Yeah. Well, is there anything else you wanted to talk about that I didn't ask? No, not really! I just… For me, as I'm getting older, as the decades go on, I feel that I'm more open-minded, and I'm not as judgmental. I can see different perspectives. I'm calmer. So those are nice things! I'm not as fired up about everything that I used to be. Yeah. So that's nice! (Laughs) Yeah, just mellowed out a little bit. Yeah, I've mellowed out a lot. Totally. Yeah. Yeah! Well thank you so much for joining us! Thank you!

Welcome to the Wise Not Withered podcast! This is Season 4, Episode 4. This month's guest is Dr. Rosie Kuhn. She is the founder of The Paradigm Shifts Coaching Group, a boutique coaching company which focuses on personal and spiritual development in oneself, in relationships, and in the workplace. She is considered a preeminent thought leader in the field of transformation. She is the author of many books, including Aging Like a Guru - Who Me, and I've Arrived! Well, Sort Of… Her books can be found on Amazon. She has been training individuals to become Transformational Coaches since 2001. If you are interested in speaking to Dr. Rosie about coaching or training with her, you can email her at rosie@theparadigmshifts.com. She has a few of her own Podcasts, including Spiritual Immersion - Taking the Plunge, and Aging Like a Guru - Who Me? She can also be found on YouTube - Dr. Rosie Kuhn, and her website is theparadigmshifts.com.   All right! So let's just get right into it. So how old are you? I am 71, just turned 71 years old. Amazing, great! Yeah, how would you describe the work that you do? Well, I would start off by saying I'm a transformational coach, and then I would add that my coaching includes what I would call the transpersonal, the spiritual, the whole person. And I would include that I was a marriage and family therapist, worked in recovery for a while, so I have forty years of experience in supporting and empowering… Myself, and other people, to really get to know who they are as a whole person. Not just physical, 3-D, “this is what I'm supposed to think”, consensus view of reality-person. So that's where I would start! Yeah! And I have noticed that you mention on both of your Podcasts—or I don't know if you have more than two—the consensus reality. Can you talk a little bit more about that? So it's what we see around us, what we think is true, when we're not questioning reality in a sense. We're going, “Oh yeah, that's what I'm supposed to be doing.” “Oh that's what I should be doing.” You know… “As a female gender, here's how I'm supposed to dress. Here's I'm supposed to think. Here's how I'm supposed to be around men, or other women.” So, all of that is just automatic… It's based on the data that has been filtered to us, through us, throughout history, and then we're left with what this is. And so we're here in this reality. And then we can go, “Wait a second, this doesn't fit me. This doesn't feel right to me.” I don't know about you, but I know a lot of people, including myself, who was like “I don't belong here. I don't know why… I should try harder. I should fix myself. Something is wrong.” As opposed to going… There's what we think we should be, and do. And then there's who we are, as an essential, divine, natural expression of who we are, just as a being. And I love more and more, I see this on Netflix, I love watching Queer Eye. Jonathan Van Ness is somebody that I have learned so much, in terms of, “Who are you in there?” He is just the expression of him. He doesn't have… All the learning and growing and challenges he's been through. If you don't know, Jonathan Van Ness, he's with Queer Eye. As a non-binary person and as a spokesperson for that, it's really helped me grow my capacity to accept people for who they are. And there is no normal, basically. There's no normal. There's what we think is normal, and then there's who we are in our natural, essential expression of self. Mhm. Yeah. So what started you on that questioning path? The path of questioning the consensus reality. I feel like we each have very specific things that trigger that, like, “Oh! Wait, whoa! I've been living on autopilot and not really questioning anything.” So what was that for you? What flipped that mindset? I would say it started when I was… I'll say eleven or twelve. I was raised in Catholic Church. And I started going, “Wait a second, that doesn't fit…”  Whatever it is, a particular dogma or whatever, it was a sin… It was a sin to eat meat on Fridays. So I'm 70, I grew up in the 50's and 60's. In the 50's, it was a sin to eat meat on Fridays, okay. And then, it becomes, well, it's not a sin. It's like, wait a minute. How can something be a sin, and now it's not? Because somebody says? Or questioning heaven and hell, questioning that I have to talk to a priest about my sins? Why can't I just talk to God directly? That started me on that perspective of, wait a second, I don't understand this. And younger than that, I just had to suppress my questioning. You're not allowed to question. And I wasn't allowed to question my parents. That's part of that consensus reality. The culture I was in. There's no questioning authority. And then it was like, wait a second, I have these thinkings, I have these thoughts… And most people grow up, to whatever degree, losing the ability to know what they think, feel, need, and want. Because we're not supposed to. You know… Juliana, tell me what you want me to tell you, tell me what you want to talk about today, tell me how I'm supposed to show up… Those kinds of things. As opposed to going hey, just be you. Just be you… So that was the beginning, I would say, was that questioning of that reality. And it was very scary, because it's like, well I might go to hell! Certainly, when I came out to my parents that I was not gonna be following Catholic Church anymore, they were furious, right. They were just furious with me. When was that? How old were you? I was seventeen at that point. Okay, so it was about like five or six years of you just kinda like, “Whoa, what's going on?” Right. Just trying to fit in, trying to be a good Catholic. Trying to go well, how can I change my orientation so I fit into this picture? And the point is, it's not the Catholic Church. The point is that programming, and the patterning and the training that is so automatic. It's not like there's anything wrong. It's just programming and patterning, and part of the data. It's like our computers, all this data is coming into our system constantly. And fortunately we have some virus protectors that can take out those bugs. But in terms of our human experience… I'm gonna use the word infiltrate. That's the energy. The energy of all-ness. The energy of all-ness is the universal energy that is, which includes all the past, and all the future, and all those kinds of things. So it really is a training, in a sense, to say wait a second, I have to put a pin in this moment, and go stop. Stop! So I can be me in this moment, as opposed to be trying to be, trying to fix, trying to heal, trying to get over… All the trying. And to stop, and go wait a second, who am I? Who am I? What's really true here? And I'm grateful to be on the planet for seventy years. And it still, Juliana, I go, oh my god. I don't feel seventy on the inside. I feel like I'm thirty-nine, really. So when I say I'm seventy, people go “Oh, she's old.” But it's like, when you look at “old people”, they're not old inside. They're not old inside. It's part of another thing to get over, that training. So I hope that answers your question. That was the beginning of questioning reality, questioning everything. Mhm! Yeah, and so you do transformational coaching now. You said you were an MFT. What other careers have you held throughout your life? Well, I got my Masters in marriage and family when I was twenty-nine. I was married, had two children. And at twenty-nine, thirty, I was getting my degree. I lived in Nova Scotia, I lived in Ontario, I grew up in Michigan. Lots of stuff. Lots of adventures. I moved out to Nova Scotia, and got a job, found a job with what used to be called the Nova Scotia Commission on Drug Dependency. And so I got a job in a very small, little community in Liverpool, in Nova Scotia, being the clinical therapist, working with people who were in recovery. I was working with people who had at least gone through some detoxing and were in a process of getting their life together. They were on the path. And in that I realized that therapy does not prepare you to talk to people about their spiritual issues. It does not. In a sense, most therapeutic… Especially with MFTs, we were not under the psychology boards, so we weren't having to know and work under the DSM, which is Diagnostic Statistical Manual and mental health perspective. We saw people as people and part of the system and wholeness and, “How did you learn to be you?” But even in that, I wasn't prepared, and I don't think most psychologists are prepared to talk about we are beyond that 3D consensus reality, “Here's who you are. Here's who you're supposed to be.” And I would say generally speaking, there's a norm that most therapeutic processes are trying to get people to come into, that they could be “normal”. We want to be normal! And I would say that's true for me too. And it may not be the same but I still see that focus on trying to get people “normal”. And there isn't a normal. So that's one of the things I find wonderful about transpersonal psychology, or the transpersonal, more integrative approach of the whole person. We're looking at, “Who are you?” In fact, I don't know how old you are, Juliana, but you have this podcast called… Wisdom… Tell me what your podcast is called? It's called Wise Not Withered! Wise Not Withered! So I'm expecting to talk to somebody who's sixty years old, right! You're not sixty! So my expectation is, “You can't be doing this! You're too young!” Right. So those interpretations are inaccurate. It's inaccurate. So when we're trying to be or do, based on somebody else's perspective, that's where we start to get dis-ease. We'll call it that. Dis-ease. I got to a point where it was like wait a second. I want to grow my capacity to work with people in their spiritual issues. Because, this is the point, twelve-step programs bring in the relationship with something greater than. Higher power. Something where you can let go of your own sense of will, and let go and let God, basically. And because I wasn't trained to do that, I got it as I was working in recovery issues with people. It was like, I want more training in that. I want to know more! So lots of things… I went sailing for two years, on a ninety-three foot skinner, across the Atlantic Ocean. I have a book called The Unholy Path of a Reluctant Adventurer. I talk about all this stuff, like how did I come to make the choices I made? How did I end up here? How did I end up in California in this program? How did I end up on this island I live on? Orcas Island, in Washington. The point is that I found a school in California, which was the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, now called Sofia University. And there I studied, and specialized in Spiritual Guidance. And this was before I knew about coaching. And Spiritual Guidance was a great opportunity to see a different perspective than therapy. And even though the school was transpersonal, and “woo-woo” from so many perspectives… Within the therapeutic dynamics, they were diagnostic, and… Basically “you're doing it wrong” or “you need help.” Yeah, very… Categories… Exactly. As opposed to spiritual guidance, which is, “Hey, you're good. You're whole.” And… What's going on for you? Where are your challenges? Where are you struggling? So that was really wonderful for me. And then I met a person, his name is Hans Phillips, and he is in Santa Cruz. And he trains people to be coaches. And his perspective and orientation was so in alignment. It just lights me up! Here, I studied as a therapist, systems family therapy. Then studied spirituality, and spiritual guidance. And then finding this vehicle—coaching as a vehicle, for supporting and empowering people to go from “Here's where I'm at, and here's where I want to go.” That's my progress. Twenty years ago, I was a coach, and with all of the practice and the training and the work that I've done… I started a training program and transformational coaching in 2001, and I still do that. But my focus is on… When I talk to people, I bring out my little magic wand. And I say to people, “Here you are now, talking to me. And I'm your fairy godmother. Imagine me as your fairy godmother.” And in this moment—people can't see us, right—you had a response as soon as I brought out my fairy godmother wand. You went “Oh!!” And you lit up, and you got very excited. It's like “Okay, my fairy godmother is here! Something great is gonna happen!” Right? (Laughs) Yeah! And you had a paradigm shift. And my company's name is The Paradigm Shifts Coaching Group. Because what's required in this work, in transformational coaching, is that people know about this other paradigm, like, “Oh goody! My wish is going to come true!” Yeah! I love that! So when I talk to people—they call me, they've been referred to me, so-and-so said you're really good, or I saw you at your website and thought I'd call—and I go “Great, what do you want?” And they go, “Well, I'd kinda like to have more money, and I'd kinda like to have a better relationship…” This “kinda like to have”, okay. And then I pull out my magic wand, and they go “oh!” And I go, “What is it you really want??” And they light up, and they say, “What I want is I want to live on a beach in Hawaii. I want to work with kids with disabilities. I want to write. I love…” They just get so animated with their own knowing. Their own knowing. This is not something I'm making up. Just like you, you did it! You lit up! That's my coaching. That's the transformation. That's where we're going. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. That's so interesting, just that visual. When did you start using that little wand? (Laughs) A very long time ago! (Laughs) Fifteen years… Whatever. That's great. I love that so much. But you know, a lot of times, talking to people, I don't have this. This is just… You can go on Amazon and search for “magic wands” and this acrylic thing with sparkles will come up. But sometimes I'll just pull out my pen, and I go, “I've got my magic wand in my hand!” And they go, “Okay! I'm ready!” And the point of it is not that… In transformational coaching, a lot of people are calling themselves transformational coaches. And what we think that we means is, “Okay, she's gonna make my wish come true. And I'm not gonna have to work at it.” But the point of this is, when I say, “I'm your fairy godmother. And my job is to empower you to empower yourself to make your dream come true. It's not about me, it's about you.” Now we see the exuberance, we see the passion. And people go, “Yeah but that's impossible.” And it's like, “Stop! Don't go there yet! Just tell me what you want!” And this is one of the biggest challenges humans beings have, or most people. They're not allowed to know what they want. Like what I said earlier. People say, “I don't know what I want. I don't know what I need. I don't know what I think. I don't know what I feel.” So as a transformational coach, my job is to bring the space, be a presence. Bring about this space where you could go, “What is you want?” And the client says, “I saw a doll in the window fourteen years ago. I love that doll.” “Do you want that doll?” “Yeah!” “Okay, great. How do you want to get it?” We describe and explore the possibilities, versus, “No, I can't have it.” “I'm not allowed.” Or “That's really stupid because I'm 38 years old.” Or I'm 70! Whatever that is, right. “No, I can't.” But you can. You can! So that's the fun part of my job. Even though on the one hand, I call myself a fairy godmother, on the other hand, I call myself a “thinking partner”. Mhm! Yeah! I'm listening for how you think. “Yes, I really want that doll in the window.” I'm just making up things that are really absurd. People want things, and they judge it. But if we're just playing here on this phone call, and you go, “Yeah I really want that doll.” And I go, “Great!” And you go, “No…” It's like, what just happened? I'm pointing my finger. What just happened? Something just happened. You had this exuberance and excitement, and then you just deflated yourself—just like that. What happened!? So as a thinking partner, I catch those moments. I was talking to somebody the other day. And she was like, “In this moment, this is what I really want.” And I go, “Great!” And without a breath, she went to “Yes, but”. Yes, but I can't. And it's like, wow, what just happened? And I go, “What do you mean? Let's go back to, ‘Here's what I want.' And put a period at the end of that.” And it's work to get people to do that. The “yes, but” and “if only” comes so quickly. They can't even see it. And that's why having a thinking partner is so important for people. To go, “Wait, stop. You loved what you were talking about, and now you're deflated. What happened!?” Yeah. And they go, “Oh man!” And they start to see their patterns of “I can't have what I want.” Or “I'm not worthy.” Or “I'm wrong.” Or “I'm bad.” Or those kinds of patterns of dismissing, disrespecting, disregarding our own knowing. Truly. So, I'm giving you very long answers. (Laughs) (Laughs) This is great! I love this! I'm on a roll! Yeah, I love that “thinking partner”. It seems more like a guide to help people through their own limitations. That's what I'm hearing. That's right. And I wrote an article, I think if you look it up on google or something. Five Reasons I Don't Tell People What To Do. I don't tell people what to do, because 99% of the time, they don't do what I tell them to do. And so you might say, why's that? Do I have bad advice? No, people don't want to do what they're told to do. That's just a matter of fact. They go, “Please tell me!” And I tell them, or other people… But if everybody did what they were told to do, we'd have, supposedly, a very peaceful, loving, great world. But we don't. Because we have resistance. And it's really interesting and it's really important to say, “Okay, so what's the resistance?” Without judgement. We go, “Oh, I'm not doing my homework. You told me to do this and I'm not doing it. And that makes me a bad person, and I shouldn't be coaching…” And it's like, no that's not it. That's not it. It's that we have this perspective, this data. We have this consensus reality, that we started this conversation with. We have this influence that we've been swimming in, and breathing, and doing, and watching… FaceTime, Facebook, Instagram—that's all consensus view of reality. If you want to stop—I mean, I'm saying that, but you're on podcasts, and I'm on podcasts, YouTube and stuff. But I'm very clear about, hey, if you want to shift your orientation, and have a better life, if you will, or the life that you want, you gotta stop doing stuff that's part of that normal, consensus reality. Watching news, stop doing that. The things that feel negative, or the people you feel negative around. Like gosh, I just feel yucky when I'm around that person. Stop being around that person! That kind of thing. But they go, “No, that's my mother. I can't.” Or whatever stuff shows up. “That's my best friend.” Like, okay. So this point is, why I don't tell people what to do. So as a coach, I ask questions. If I do, I say, “Juliana, here's what I would do. I would go to the store and I would buy that doll. Tell me what shows up for you when I say that.” And that gives you the opportunity to express your truth. And if you go, “That's a good idea, Rosie, I think I'll do that.” I'll go, “Stop. Tell me what's going on inside of you.” Cause you might go yeah, that's a good idea, but it doesn't tell me what's going on for you. Does that make sense? Yeah. So this thinking partner thing is really important. So many coaches, we all want to be smart, we all want to be great so that you'll come back. And so many of us are like, all about the money. So I want to make sure you come back, so I keep you dependent on me. But if I say hey, this is about you. I'm in service to you. If I do my job, you'll tell other people about me. I'm not gonna worry. And my job is empower you to know the difference of who you are inside, versus what isn't, the fear-based stuff. And go, “Yeah, I want this! I love this!” So that you know that. That's my job. I want people to fire me, in a sense. I want people to outgrow me, that's the whole point. Right, yeah. And you're gonna say, “Hey, John. You gotta talk to Rosie. Cause she's great!” Not because you're dependent on me, but because you became independent. And individuated. You came to know your own truth. And you love it, and you're excited, and want to explore and experiment. And is it scary? Yes. Is it hard work? Yes. And, it's really about you, and individuating yourself. People say, I want to be sovereign. Okay, great, and be the fullest version of yourself. Yeah. I love that. Amazing. So obviously you have so much experience. How has your coaching changed over time? Since it's been so many years at this point. I… It almost brings me to tears to think about that. I had no idea that we as human beings could grow and expand ourselves to such a degree. So for me personally, that's true. I thought about this before, when I got my B.A. in Psychology, got my Masters. It's like, how much can you know? Here's the books, here's the theory. Okay great, that's the practice. Go do your math, go do your multiplication tables. And that's it. And then you go, wait a second. Now there's fractions, and now there's C minus this plus that multiplied by… But we don't even know that exists when we're doing just multiplication tables. And it's the same with becoming a therapist or coach. And it's really a matter of, what's your spectrum? What is it you're wanting? And because I continue to be curious about who is in here, inside me, I'm curious about what the fullest potential is of this being—me—then I keep growing that capacity of knowing. As I do that with myself, I have greater capacity to bring that to you, with less judgement. Less judgement of “You're doing it wrong, Juliana! You gotta do it my way!” It's like, all that stuff just goes away. Yeah, no. If you're not ready, you're not ready. And I say that a lot to people. Cause you're supposed to be “ready” and if you're not ready, I'd better help you get ready. Or I gotta do something different so you'll be ready, cause if you're not ready, then you're gonna quit and I won't get paid. That kind of thing. All that stuff… As opposed to, “Where are you?” And you go, “Hey, I'm not ready.” It's like, “Okay, great.” One of the things I talk about a lot is that we have these conflicting commitments. So you as a potential client come in and go, “Hey, I want… This.” Shiny, wonderful life. And I go, “Excellent. I'm so excited for you!” All of that. And then six weeks down the road, you're not that much closer. You go, “What's going on here??” Well, there's a dilemma, because there's part of you that—none of know how to be in our fullest potential. You don't know how to do that, I don't know how to do that. I've never been there. We don't know how to do that. People want transformation, they don't know how to be that. You take a caterpillar and plink! You make it into a butterfly. It has no idea what it's doing, right. So we have this dilemma, like “I want what I want. But I'm afraid to let go of what I know.” So every single human being—and I say this to every single person I'm coaching, and every person I'm training to be a coach. There's a conflicting commitment. I say I want this, and I'm also committed to not getting vulnerable. And so the work of a coach is to support people to be in that dilemma, and that choice point, and explore, what's that like for you? I want this so much, and yet I'm so afraid, right? Yeah. That's every human being's dilemma. That's what I'm doing with people, supporting them in being able to slowly, slowly, slowly, make incremental… This is not about leaps of faith, quantum leaps. This is about incremental shifts and changes. People go “I don't know who I am without—” I had a client the other day say “I don't know to be with the unknown.” That was her thing. This is what 90% of human beings are up to. Cause they're afraid of the unknown. I want this but I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to be me in this greatness. It's like, “Well, when you got up this morning and you looked in the mirror and you smiled, how was that?” It's like, “Oh! Yeah! I had that moment.” And it's like, “When you looked out the window, did you know what you were gonna look at?” “No.” “What was that like?” “It was good!” “Did you know which tree your dog was gonna pee on outside?” “Nope, didn't know that.” “How was that for you?” “Well, I was fine with it.” Being able to go, “Wow. Every moment is a moment that I'm in the unknown.” It's a revelation. It's a revelation! “Oh my god, I'm doing it all the time! …But—” Then we squeeze up again. We go yes, but. It's those little incremental places that a thinking partner, or a coach, a fairy godmother, whatever you want to call a person who says, “Look, you're doing it now!” Like, “Yeah but I can't do it over here.” It's like, “Okay, good to know. But you're doing it.” And you allow yourself to be available to, “Wow, I'm already doing this. If I can do this here, then I can learn to do it over there.” If I can learn to be okay with the unfolding… We have a lot of wind today, I could be all in a panic. Oh my god, 40-mile an hour wind…! It's like no, I'm okay with that. I've learned to be okay with that. We can learn to grow our capacity to be okay with the unknown anywhere and everywhere if our desire is great enough. I want it enough. I have fourteen… Fifteen or sixteen books, somewhere in that vicinity, what I've written. First book was Self-Empowerment 101. And I talk about that commitment, or being committed enough. Just enough, so that you can consider the possibility of, IT. As opposed to the resistance, the “yes but” that comes in so quickly. But if we want something enough, then we're willing to allow one incremental step closer… And a good example of this is, one of the most important practices for change, for transformation, is noticing. So this client is, I want her to become aware of her judgements, righteousness. I go, “Okay, I want you to notice every time you're judgmental about something.” And it took her six days. So the sixth day, the day before our session, boom! She started seeing her judgements. So there was something she wanted enough, that all of a sudden, it allowed her to notice. And then she'd notice something else. And then she'd notice something else. And she was like, “Wow, it's all over the place!” We can't change what we don't notice. We can't change what we can't see. And so a lot of effective coaching is getting you to see. Not just, “Do you see it, Juliana?” You go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see it.” It's not that. It's like, “Oh my gosh, I can't believe how prevalent this is, and how it's making me exhausted. I don't want to be exhausted anymore, judging and being righteous, telling other people how they should be better. I'm tired of it.” “Okay, great. What can you practice?” “I could practice saying ‘stop' to that. I have to notice it first. If I don't notice it, I can't change it. So I gotta notice it. And then make choices based on that.” So that's based on that conflicting commitment, that I want what I want, but I don't want to lose my security and safety. I don't want it to be hard. I don't want it to hurt. I don't want to be sad. I don't want to feel my feelings. Like okay, great. Okay. Great! (Laughs) Juliana, what's showing up for you as you're listening to me? I love the look on your face. (Laughs) I'm just taking it all in. I feel like I've heard a lot of these concepts over the years… I started my own, I guess spiritual path, about five or six years ago. And yeah, it really is noticing that is the starting point. Noticing the patterns, and all the resistance that shows up, too. It's all resonating a lot with me. I love all of the things you're saying! (Laughs) Sounds great. I'm curious for you, did you or do you still, receive coaching yourself? Yep! So if you're willing to share, what are some of your own limitations that you have confronted and changed over time? It's an ongoing… There's a book that I love, and I've been using as one of my bibles, it's called Oneness. A person named Rasha transcribed… She downloaded this book, so it's a channeled text… And… So I read that all the time. And why am I telling you this? (Laughs) I was curious about your own limitations that you've confronted. Right. So the reason I mention this book is because one of the things it says, among many thousands of things that just keep reiterating, is that this is a life. This is a process of life-themed resolution. So our time on Earth… So our time on Earth. It's like going to college. Here's the curriculum I'm taking. I'm taking bio-chemical engineering. That's a very specific path. Now, if you're taking an art class, that's not in the same genre as a bio-medical engineer. So we're here to have a very specific life theme resolution process, that we're here to grow ourselves through. So we cycle back over and over and over again to these themes, that people go, “Oh, I've already done that. I've already dealt with that. I've done that work with a therapist over here. I don't need to do that now.” Right. But it's showing up. So I say that because what shows up for me continually is… And you've heard this a thousand times, I'm holding my face like oh my god, we're so tired of this conversation. But this place of self-acknowledgement, self-appreciation, self-trust, self-safety—that I'm safe with myself. And then that comes into a place of self-reverence, and inevitably self-love. And I think that's true for me, and I really see that most of what I'm going through is universal. This is what shows up for everyone. What's the degree that you feel safe with yourself? What's the degree that you go, “I'm wrong/bad/unworthy. I'm a mistake.” What's the degree that you do that? And it's like, the more that we can go “Oh, I'm still doing that unworthy/mistake thing. I gotta work at that.” That's all I'm doing, at greater and greater degrees of awareness. It's the same things, just different… Money issues are always big for people. But money isn't about money—it's about worth and value, and trust and believing. So a lot of people will say “Hey, I really believe that the universe is abundant and it's here for everybody.” And I go, “Okay, great. So how are you living into that?” “Oh, I don't. I'm afraid.” Right? “I'm staying in a job I don't like because I'm afraid.” “But you told me you believe the universe is abundant and is there for you.” “Yeah, I know I say that but—” And 99% of us have these very wonderful, true knowing in the abundance of the universe, but we're afraid to actually take the leap and have faith in that practice, living in the truth of that. We take our faith and we put it in the consensus reality of work, and bosses, and having to work at a job you're not happy at. That's where we put our faith. If I do this long enough, I'm gonna be okay. So for me, I just keep reiterating what are my issues are basically everybody's issues, and whatever circumstance comes up in the moment, that is my moment—I call it a pop quiz—of “Oh! That's challenging! Eek!” Or, you know, a friend of mine who's UGH, she drives me crazy. It's not about her! It's my stuff, and how am I righteous or judging her? And so even though I work with a coach, so much of it I could do myself, cause I can. And I trust that I know the difference between a feeling of my essential nature, where I'm fulfilling, and happy and joyful, or at least contented, versus when I'm in angst, and fearful. And I go, “Wait, you're not in the serenity place. What's going on?” It's like, “Yeah no, I don't want to talk about that. Let's go watch some Netflix.” There's something here going on for you… And sometimes I have to be in the discomfort of it until it comes up. So all of these things that I do for myself, I work with my clients to do for themselves, so they're not dependent on me inevitably. They're dependent on themselves because they've integrated my questioning. They've integrated that voice of, “What would Rosie say?” Right. It's always challenging to move myself into the more expanded self. Well, if I believe in abundance, where is it? Where the hell is it!? I live in a little travel trailer. It's 350 square feet. I have ten acres of land on this beautiful island, and my fortune doesn't allow me to build a house. It allows me to live here peacefully, and enjoy what I have. And it would be nice to have a greater abundance of… Financial… Whatever. And, “Why don't you have it, Rosie??” It's like… My curriculum, my life theme resolution issue is still working itself out. And maybe financial abundance—in my estimation of what that should be—isn't here. It's not here yet, the way I want it. But that doesn't mean I'm doing something wrong, or that I'm bad… This is part of that thing, “Stop doing that!” Stop doing that. “There must be something wrong with me if I don't have what I want.” It's one of the things I love in Oneness, it says, “Your highest vibrational results are always forthcoming.” So this is the nature of us as vibrational beings. If we're in density—most fear-based perspectives are very dense. Consensus reality is very dense—fear, fear, fear. Our highest vibrational results are always forthcoming. And I go, “Okay, if they're not coming, then I've got some work to do.” It makes sense for me. Rather than going, “Oh no, there's something wrong.” No, I've got some growing to do. And people go, “Oh my god, it just takes so much… You're 70 years old and you're still doing this!?” We're doing this for eternity. We are eternal beings, growing ourselves every moment of this eternal, brilliant life. We never stop. It's always, Juliana, always a matter of reminding myself of that. Reminding myself that my life is really beautiful. And I get to talk to you, and I get to be part of something really great. And that's pretty awesome. Yeah, I love that. I'm hearing this really delicate balance of accepting where you are, and also… Loving yourself into improvement. Yeah, and this book I mentioned earlier… She, like most of us, think we need to keep working on ourselves. And the message to her is, stop working on yourself. Stop believing that you need to do something about who you are. And the challenge with that—the addiction is to the movement and to the activity, but also to the cortisol and adrenaline. The hormones… Busy, busy, busy. But when we stop, we start to feel uncomfortable, because we're now gonna go through a withdrawal process. Hm! Oh, wow, yeah… This is where the addiction and recovery process comes in, in this work. That alcoholic, or work-a-holic, or drug addict. That's obvious. But we're talking about these elements, these systems within ourselves, these patterns of being that have been with us for so long we don't even know they exist. That going-going-going, trying-trying-trying, bettering myself all the time, is one of those life theme resolutions. Where does that come from? “I'm not okay if I'm just sitting here, doing nothing.” Hm… Wow. But I am okay. We're all divine beings, here. As opposed to, what is it. Jesus is coming, look busy. It's like yeah, no. No! And so she's struggling with even the consideration… We're not talking about, she's doing nothing, as in recovery or withdrawal. She's considering… Again, this is that dilemma. I want fulfillment in my human spirit. But it's too scary. Like… Okay! So my work as a transformational coach, as a thinking partner, a fairy godmother, is to support people, go “Yeah, I totally get it. Been there, done that. Many, many, many times.” Good sponsor in any 12-step program is gonna say, “I know what that's like.” To be in resistance. I know what it's like to be terrified and choose something different. I know what that's like. And it's because I've done my own personal work and gotten to the point where I have, that I can say that, and truly mean it. And not from a place of arrogance, and “Let me tell you how to do it.” It's like, I totally get it. It's what we call a big, fat, BE WITH. Right. (Laughs) It sucks!! Yup. It sucks. I don't know what to do. Yup. Totally get it. Well, tell me what to do! Yeah no, what's that gonna do? Yeah well— You know, those kinds of yeah, yeah… Those things that we're all IN. I think I'll turn on Netflix, and have some ice cream. Yeah. (Laughs) Lemme just take a break here. Which is a good thing too! But we're always in that place of… Incremental, slow… There's no hurry. You'll get it this time. You'll get it next time. There's no mistakes. Like if I didn't fix it this time, I'll fix it next time. It just doesn't matter. It gets to a point where it doesn't matter. Not to be flippant, but just in terms of, be who you are now, and what's that like for you, and really see this as a precious… Come to experience yourself as precious. That really, truly, slowly evolving into… Exploring, experiencing the preciousness of your being. That's the point. Yeah. And our curriculum, life theme resolution process. Right. Yeah. Wow. Where to go from here… Let's see, I do have a list of questions. We've already hit a lot of them just from what you've already been talking about. I am curious, when did you start to become a coach for other coaches? At what point did you feel qualified to train other people to do the work that you do? It came really naturally, and because I've been twenty years in the therapeutic, spiritual guidance kind of area, then it wasn't hard or difficult to slide that into teaching and training. And Hans, who was my trainer, he actually asked me to do a training program. So that was our gateway into doing that. We were able to train at this really great school. I did that for ten years. I did it with him for a year, then took it on. But I had such a capacity. This is one of those things… “How did you do that??” I had this capacity to teach, and integrate all of this information from the therapeutic process, spiritual stuff, coaching… Put it all together from my own orientation, my own way of seeing the world. And I loved it. It made me really happy! And obviously it made other people happy, cause it was a really successful program. That was a transition that was very easy, cause I already love teaching. And I was able to integrate all of what I'd learned—I almost want to say magically. It was just cause I'd worked so hard. This was that magic tipping point, coalition of everything in one place. Bada-bing-bada-boom, it happened! Yeah, okay. I'm curious, in one of your Podcasts, you said that you're pretty reclusive and don't let a lot of people into your life. I resonate with that—I feel like I also am the same way, yet simultaneously I feel like we both share a lot in the Podcasts that we do. How do you explain that? (Laughs) So I'm pretty much an introvert. So I get a lot of my refueling by being alone. And I love conversations like this. These fuel me. But then, I don't have anything else specific to do today. So I'll go take a nap, or have lunch, or do other things that need to get done. But if I'm in a social environment, or where there's a lot of people, my energy gets depleted really quickly. Okay, that makes sense. So that's one thing. But also, I think it's important, the idea of highly sensitive people. As a highly sensitive person, we could get fatigued very quickly by being around people, or being around environments like shopping malls for instance, or particular restaurants. And when we realize that, we become more conscious of how we take care of ourselves. And go, “No, not gonna go.” I live on an island, so there's no malls. But even in particular shops or whatever, it's like, “No, not going in there.” It diffuses and diminishes my energy, in a way that's not fun. So partly it's that too. So when I'm with people, I'm with people more consciously, and of choice. As opposed to going, “Yeah, I'm supposed to.” Or “I should.” A friend asked me to a concert last weekend, and I went… Oh god… Do I really want to go? And I felt into it. And it's like, I'm gonna go! But a lot of times, I can feel… It's always the balancing. My point is that I am a highly sensitive person. I'm not saying that as a diagnosis. Before I even took the online quiz, it's like, yeah I'm pretty sensitive to things. And so my work is really important to me, so my friends, I keep quiet friends, because I want my energy to be full for my clients. And for my life. And I have to be aware of that. I have be conscious of that. And make conscious choices based on that. Yeah. So I hope that answers your question. Yeah, it definitely does. I resonate a lot with that too. I also… I didn't know there was a quiz, but when I first read about HSP, I was like, “Wow, that's totally me!” That all resonates with me too, like being very sensitive to how other people are feeling without them really needing to express it, and taking on other people's energy before I learned about energetic boundaries… All of that stuff! Yeah, you can google highly sensitive people, and the quizzes pop up. The questionnaire, whatever it is. Most people already know, that's why they go, “Oh, I'm gonna take this just for fun. What's the degree of highly sensitive person that I am?” Yeah, cool! I think I'll go do that after this. It's another identity thing. “Oh, I am one of those!” I say that kind of facetiously. Cause what we're talking about is disintegrating that identity that I'm anything other than who I am, in this moment. Yeah, just for fun! So you mentioned you've written many books. When did you decide to write a book? And what was that process like? I'm just so curious, it's very fascinating that you have… Had an idea, and wrote about it, and seen it to publication so many times. That's really amazing. Well I grew up with a C- average in high school. I was told that I was… I think my IQ was 95 or something like that. My history teacher told my mom not to have me go to university, cause I'm just not cut out for that. I was so in angst about dysfunctional stuff in my reality. And I had no capacity to even know who I am or what I wanted, other than, “You're supposed to go to college. You're supposed to get married. You're supposed to have kids. You're supposed to, you're supposed to, you're supposed to…” So, bottom line is, I didn't start writing until I was 55. I finished my PhD when I was 50. And I had to write for my PhD. Part of that, I came to awareness, people said, “Wow, that's really good writing in there!” It was like wow… Okay… It's just what I'm doing. I'm not a writer. I'm just doing what I'm supposed to do to finish my PhD. But I got some notice. And people go, “Hey can you join this group?” Cause they were talking about embodied writing, what it feels like in your body when you're having these experiences. I was writing about being on the sailboat and having a transformational experience, and what it was like in the moment of that experience. And they went, “Wow, that's really great! How did you do that? Do more of that!” So that was the first that I started getting some recognition for my writing. When I was 55 and doing this training program, and hadn't written a manual or anything… A friend of mine had written a book in three months. And I said, “Okay you did it in three months. I'm committing to doing it in four months.” This manual for this training program. So that was my commitment. I wrote it in four months. Now that was, in a sense, the first draft—that got written in four months. I loved it! It went through many facets of editing. And I'm self-published. All my books are self-published. And Amazon has this great ability to connect people through Babelcube. Connects people to translators. A lot of my books are translated into French, Italian, Spanish, and some other languages, which is really fun. But it took me four months to write it. It took me another I'll say, almost a year to have the cover done, and all the edits, and everything put together. Probably over a year, okay. But… I did it! I did it. It was great. I'd been writing little blog kind of things, which seemed weird at the time because that was all new. And this fellow contacted me and said, “Hey I've got this website about business. And I'm wondering if you would write blogs for that?” And I go, “What do you want me to write about?” And he said, “Yeah, if you write 25 or 26, you could put them together and make a book!” Like well, geez. That's a really great idea! So the first book I wrote, after Self-Empowerment 101—that was my first book for the training program, it's a really great book for everybody. After he approached me, I wrote a book called The ABC's of Spirituality and Business. I mean, there's 26 letters, so that was easy. And so writing A's about acknowledgement and allowing. B is about… Whatever. K is for kindness. Put it together, and that became a book. So it was six months of writing. Twenty-six weeks. And that became a book, over a year, with editing and cover designs. Then I wrote another set of blogs for him called Dilemmas of Being in Business. Another twenty-five, twenty-six blogs, put it together… Bada-bing-bada-boom. So those were the starts of how I wrote. And then I wrote The Unholy Path of a Reluctant Adventurer. And then I wrote a series of books called… One was called “You Know You're Transforming When…” And that book wrote itself in about three hours. That's just little, one-page quotes. That whole set… Sorry, it's just interesting how they unfolded. The next one was, “If Only My Mother Had Told Me… Or Maybe I Wasn't Listening”. That's the title. It was 101 pearls of wisdom I had to get on my own. But that pretty well wrote itself very quickly. Then the third in that series was called “M.E.” Standing for “miraculous existence”. And these were all, like one-page kind of little thing… That one was based on the fact that I had been a therapist, trained to be a therapist. M.E. is 101 insights I didn't get in therapy. So here's all these things that I didn't get in therapy. And I was a therapist for twenty years, all of that stuff. What didn't I learn, that was really valuable? And the fourth in that series is “I've Arrived… Well Sort Of”. 101 things… Ways that you think you're there. You've got the enlightenment. You've got the aha! You've made it to the top… And it's like, yeah, no, not really. That's about those spiritual awakenings, spiritual insights. Places where we think, oh I've got it now! And it's like oh no, I guess I don't… I've arrived, but not really. So those are just some of the books that I've written. They pretty well write themselves. It's really important as a creative, and this is part of the expression element of who I am. These books are like, tapping me on the shoulder, “Whatever you're doing, stop. You gotta write.” And they just come! They just come. And there's a book I want to write on spiritual immersion, which is the podcast you've perhaps been listening. I want to write a book on that, because people need to read about la la la! It's not coming! It's not coming! I'm trying fourteen different ways, and it's not coming… So, that's… You know, if they don't want to, they don't want to! I will tell you, I'm working on a new course. In essence it's called Mastering The Art of Transformational Coaching. A year-long program that includes the fundamentals of transformational coaching, more advanced, and then spiritual coaching. It's probably about six months out, I think, until that starts. That is really a heart's desire, passion as well. So I think that will include the spiritual immersion elements. But it's something that's actually happening. I'm actually sitting down, and it's happening. I'm saying it that way, as opposed to “I'm doing it.” It's doing me! Interesting! Yeah! And people say, “How do you write a book?” It's like, “Well, how do you make a baby?” The baby will make itself. You just do the first part. Get your computer, get your pencil, or whatever, and it will make itself, if it wants. And if you get out of the way. But if you say, “Well I gotta make a boy baby, and it's gonna have, you know, purple eyes.” That's not gonna happen! Not now, anyway. If you want to write, and there's a creative thing that wants to come through, the way to make room for that is to make room for it. If I had said, “Yeah no, I'm not gonna write, cause I got a C- in high school, you know, AND I had to take remedial English in college. Who am I to write a book?” It's like, the book wanted to get written, and I had to get out of the way, truly. Yeah, I love that. I love to write also, and it's very inspiring hearing you talk about how you wrote your books. Cause I have been thinking like, “Wow, how do I write a book?” It's like, you just do it! (Laughs) People are like, oh here's the BOOK. But when this fellow… I almost remember his name. When he said, “You don't have to write a book. You just write a blog. Twenty-six blogs.” And that's what happened. Aside from the 101 series, that's pretty much what it is. One blog at a time. Aging Like A Guru. That's one blog at a time. Diet Like A Guru. That's one blog at a time. And I wrote Parent Like A Guru. That's one blog at a time. But you put it together, it's a little book! They're not big. They're concise, and available. You do it because, just like anything else, you love it. I love to paint. I'm not selling my paintings. The books are there if people want to buy them. It's awesome. And like I said, they're in different languages. That's awesome. It's fun, right, because you created it. Does it mean I'm gonna be a millionaire, and be on the Best Seller list? No, that's not the point. The point is that it wanted to get written. I wrote it. I honored my agreement. And you send it on its way. Yeah, I love that! You show up! You say, “Hey, I saw you on Daily Om!” I went, “Wow!” Cause that book, that course was written from Self-Empowerment 101. Right, How To Stop Giving Your Power Away. That's right. That's the title that they came up with. I started out with Self-Empowerment 101. They go, “Yeah, that's not gonna sell.” So Daily Om took it, did what they did. And you go, “Oh, who's this person? That sounds interesting!” You call me, and now we're having a conversation, cause I wrote a book I wrote sixteen years ago. You never know! Amazing, I love that. How do you define success? Well. The vision statement that I have, which is what I'll start with, is the fulfillment of the human spirit. So when I have a sense and quality of fulfillment, that for me is success. I would like to have more money coming in—that would be great, that would be fun. And so how do I describe myself without making money an element of success? It can't be, it never was. Or… Let me put it this way. We have a hierarchy of values. And my fear-based value says, “Money! Cause money is gonna give me stability and security!” But when I really look at how I live my life, my choices do not come from money. It comes from my heart, and connecting, and empowering, and supporting, and learning, and expanding myself. Though this may sound crazy, cause it does, cause it sounds woo-woo, but the greater my capacity to be with in alignment with my essential nature, I start to have more ethereal qualities of experience. More enlightened experiences. I go, “Wow! WOW!” Like that kind of experiences are occurring in my life. And that is so much more valuable than money. And then two days later, it's like, “Where's the money?” (Laughs) It's like, “Stop! You had that experience, remember? And you said this is more important…” So we have those dilemmas, I do! Like, money! Eh!! But that's… The greater the degree I know myself, and what is the fullest potential of me? A lot of different people say we are 100% potentiality. If I am 100% potentiality, what does that look like? What's possible? And if I brought myself here, from this dysfunctional kid, Catholic school, radical dysfunction, alcoholic parents, six of nine kids, C-, below-average IQ, and I'm talking here talking to you, with this level of quality of delight in my own being… That's success for me. That's like, oh my god! And my relationship with my daughter continues to grow—that's success. I've become a kinder, more generous human being. That's success. And for me to say those things… I'd say I want that to be, but I was still in the angst of, where's the money? Where's the security, and stability? I don't have a 401K, I don't have a savings account. I don't have those things that you're supposed to have, right. I'm here right now, talking to you, and who knows? Who knows. I don't have those elements of what fame and fortune, or success, looks like. Right. In the consensus reality. Yeah, the consensus reality. Yes, nicely put. Five stars for that one. (Laughs) Thank you. (Laughs) Wow… I guess… What is something you've learned about yourself, just in the past year, if you can articulate one thing? That's a big question. I think that last year I was faced with a lot of… This is where we're doing the life theme resolution piece. I was facing a lot of circumstances that showed me that I was alone, and insignificant, incompetent, basically… That would be my interpretation of the circumstances that were showing up. The trauma… I believe we come in with trauma. That we're not just traumatized in this life, but past-life traumas, or the traumas of our ancestors. We come in with that. That's part of our life theme resolution, is overcoming the trauma, letting go of the fear, so that we can be here now. So I had to face these ongoing… What felt like traumas, what was really my own making up of how horrible, terrible I was… And how incompetent I was… And so little by little, I was able to diminish that energy, and heal that place, so that I could be with stuff that happens without going into a trauma response. Getting triggered into a trauma response… So that's like, that's huge! And I can do it, anybody can do it. Truly. I really believe that. Because I grew up in such a dysfunctional, constrained, constricted orientation in life, I had to do things the way that I was brought up to do them. And here I am, being as best I can, an individual that is individuated, and attempting to know myself to greater degrees… What's my choice? Versus somebody else's choice. I'll give you one more little example. I was sitting on the couch, this was months ago. And it's gray… And I'm 70… And I'm going, “This is as good as it's gonna get. You're living in a trailer, lady. And you probably aren't gonna get married again. So you'd better get used to this. This is it.” It's a decline. As you put it, withering, right… Decline into decrepitude. You'd better just get used to it. And it's like, okay… And I'm starting to go, “Wait, that's that consensus reality!” It just consumes us. You know, 90% of people 70 and older are on medications. It doesn't have to be that way. I'm not on any medication. But it was like, okay this is beginning to consume me. And I had to go, “Stop! We gotta stop! We gotta stop looking at life this way. Because this is not who you are. You know this is not who you are. We have to make that paradigm shift.” And it was a struggle! And uncomfortable. Deep grief that came up. Stuff! Just stuff comes up. That's what happens when you're on a path of life theme resolution, or exploring and wanting, the desires. It takes a lot of work. But if you don't do it, I could have sat on the couch and declined into decrepitude, and gotten sick, more depressed. And uncomfortable, and lonely, and isolated. That's not comfortable either. We're just always in choice. So that was really a wonderful moment, of going, “Wait a second, which reality am I going to choose?” Pull out the magic, fairy godmother wand for myself and say, “Which one are you going to choose here, lady? Cause you're the mouth of empowerment, and enlightenment, and delight, and wonder. You gonna walk your talk, or are you gonna go down the rabbit hole of depression and get sick and die? That's up to you.” And that's up to every one of us to make those kinds of choices.  Wow. Yeah. (Laughs) I'm laughing cause like… That's the kind of work I do! Yeah, that's great! Hell no! Not calling that woman, no way. (Laughs) I love that you did the magic wand thing for yourself. That's amazing. That really shows, the stuff you do for your clients, you do it for yourself, cause it works! That's right. Yeah, and it's tough. With therapy, you can only take your client as far as you're willing to go. If I have fears around… Whatever, doesn't matter, then I'm not gonna be good at supporting people through that fear. If I don't want to go there… If I do go there, and go there for myself, feel the fear, feel the stuff, and the junk. Help the client explore that, “What's that junk? I can see it right there? What is that?” And they go, “What are you talking about?” “That!” And they go, “Oh, that?” And I try to have fun with it. You and I are laughing! It's serious, and it's difficult. But it's also playful and humorous. I go, “What is that?” And I'm smiling and laughing, and they're going, “Oh my god… Why are you… You crazy lady.” And I go, “No really, what is that?” Yeah. Because I know that place. I know it. And I have great, deep compassion, for myself, being in this curriculum, and supporting other people in choosing this curriculum of choosing human spirit stuff. And the fulfillment of the human spirit—huge, HUGE commitment. So I have nothing but respect for a person who calls me and says, “I want to work with you.” I go, “Oh my god, I am honored.” Cause they want to step into their knowing, their full knowing of who they are as a human spirit, a contribution, contributor to the well-being of all of us. Truly. Yeah… Yeah. Wow. That's pretty much all of my questions. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about that we didn't get to, or that I didn't ask? No, I think you did a really great job. Thank you! I was so pleased back to hear back from you so quickly! I was like, “Oh wow! Yay!” I actually had a tab with your website, and I was looking through it and thinking, “Wow, she's done so much!” And there was a part of me that was thinking, “Hmm… I don't know. Maybe she's too important for me to reach out.” And I didn't, for many days! But I thought you know what, I'm just gonna send an email. Worst that could happen: never hear back. I've been rejected before, I can handle it again! (Laughs) And thank you for saying that, because I have a lot of people who call me, or email me for coaching, or training or something, and their thoughts are “Oh, she's too busy” Or “She's too important.” And I go, “Hell no! I want to play!!” I am not too important, I am not too busy to engage with people. Because I love it, and I want to. I do want to offer, there's an organization I'm connected with, it's called suivera.org. And their mission is heart leadership, growing the world and growing communities in the world from the heart. So I'm one of the people that are part of that organization. And on that website, there is something called the Inward Bound Bootcamp for Self-Transformation. And I wrote this, you can find parts of it on YouTube, if you go to my channel, Rosie Kuhn. You can see part of that course. It's $7, I think, for 21 or 22 videos, downloaded PDF book. And it's really about the basics of the self-transformation process. If you want to know about self-transformation from my perspective, this one might be a great beginner course for people. It's called, again, Inward Bound Bootcamp for Self-Transformation. It's $7, I believe. It includes the book, the manual, which if you bought it on Amazon it's $10. So even for $7 you're saving some money, if you're interested! So that's a place to go if you're interested, if your audience is interested! Great! And your website, is it TheParadigmShifts.com? Yep! TheParadigmShifts.com (emphasis on plural). You can google Rosie Kuhn, rosiekuhn@theparadigmshifts.com is my email. Or check out the website. There's lot of free blogs and information, and if you're interested in training with me, give me a call. Right now I'm doing primarily one-on-one coach training. Because it helps people who are already at a level of knowledge, and wisdom, and experience, and they just want to take it into the more pragmatic elements of what I do. So that's what I do. And then there's coaching! Great! You have a YouTube channel as well, you have a couple Podcasts, is there anywhere else? Do you have an Instagram? I'm on Instagram, I'm not that busy… Just we keep up with what's going on. I started a new Podcast with a friend of mine. She has a Podcast called Food Integrity Now. And we joined forces, and our Podcast is called Beyond Food Integrity: Thriving Like A Guru. Her name is Carol Grieve. So Beyond Food Integrity: Thriving Like A Guru that's our new conversation, the two of us together. It's kinda fun! Great! Well thank you so much! This has been wonderful. I'm so glad we got to connect! Me too! And any time you wanna reach out again, or talk again or whatever, just let me know! It would be fun. — The Inward Bound Bootcamp for Self-Transformation can be found at www.suivera.org/b7-inward-bound-bootcamp.

WDAV and the Fair Play Music Equity Initiative continue the second season of NoteWorthy virtual concerts with R&B artist Nia J joined by flutist Jill O’Neill and violist Ben Geller. We speak to the trio about how well they bonded as a group, and how the addition of the classical instruments helped “breathe some life back” into the singer-songwriter’s music. Nia J Ben Geller Jill O'Neill Transcript Frank Dominguez : This is Frank Dominguez for WDAV’s Piedmont Arts. On Wednesday, August 24 at 7:30 PM, WDAV continues its second season of NoteWorthy virtual concerts presented in partnership with the FAIR PLAY Music Equity Initiative. The series brings together gifted Black and brown artists from the Charlotte music scene with classical musicians for some genre blending and community building. This time, we’re teaming R&B singer-songwriter Nia J with flutist Jill O’Neill and violist Ben Geller. The trio joins me now via Zoom. Thanks, everyone! Jill O’Neill : Thanks for having us. Nia J : Yeah, excited to be here. Frank : Nia, R&B is a category of music that's really as broad and varied as classical music in terms of its range of sounds and artists. So who are some of the musicians, from R&B or otherwise, who have had an influence on your music? Nia : I would say Jhené Aiko comes to mind. I really like her harmonies and the really melodic tunes that she is able to achieve. And just that it’s really peaceful. I like for my music to be tranquil and have that really peaceful state. I really like Daniel Caesar as well. Same thing as far as harmonies - I really like the way that he writes. Both completely different artists, but those are two that come to mind when I think of R&B artists that inspire me. Frank : And if I were asking you to describe what R&B means to you, how would you talk about that? Nia : I don’t know, it's kind of limitless right now! There's no sound that is unique to it at the moment, everyone's taking their own direction with it. I think it gets back to the lyrics. The lyrics are really soulful, I think the message is usually pretty powerful. And I like the contemporary stance that a lot of artists are taking, where we're fusing different genres into it. Frank : Jill, you are a flute professor at Winthrop University and you teach Music Appreciation, but in addition, your resume also includes the Charlotte School of Rock and courses in the History of Rock and Roll. How did you come by this eclectic streak? Jill : It actually doesn't seem eclectic to me, I don't know why it does to everybody else. (Laughs) You know, I grew up listening to heavy metal and punk and being a kid in the 80’s. Yes, I play a very… solit(ary), shall I say, girly instrument. Most of my teachers were men when I was a kid. (The flute) is seen as that frilly, fluffy, pretty, very vocal instrument, but that actually is very unlike me as a human and as a musician. When I have to play flute, I really have to bring myself into Nia’s way of thinking. I really have to calm myself down and try to contain it. Because that’s not the kind of music I really listen to and the two bands that I played with, it’s not pretty flute music. It’s kind of heavy, loud, grinding… and that’s just the kind of person I am. So, when I’m playing drums, I actually sometimes feel more like myself. But the flute is my life. I started playing piccolo when I was six, so of course, everybody insisted that I gravitate towards the flute as well, so I played both. And alto flute and bass flute. But that’s just one very small part of me. I think as a teacher, that’s what I bring to the table, because I make sure that all my students can do everything. I always say, “the more you do, the more marketable you are, so don’t pigeonhole yourself!” Frank : Great point. Ben, most of WDAV’s listeners are used to seeing you in evening wear at concerts by the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra. What is the appeal for you personally about stepping outside your usual circle and collaborating with Nia J on this project? Ben Geller : Well, it's… that pigeonholing that Jill was talking about, that’s more of my life. I think when I was younger, I had broader interests, and as I got older, I wanted to focus more and more, and eventually orchestral viola kind of took over my life. Not to say I don't love it, but I miss doing more out of the box stuff. And playing in the orchestra does get you a decent amount of variety. We play all kinds of classical music and modern stuff. But being a directly contributing partner to a project like this was… I mean, I love that. Nia’s got such a unique voice, a beautiful voice, and great songwriting. And working with another colleague in Jill, who brings this whole varied background… this was so much fun. I wish we could do this all of the time, always. Jill : Hear that, Nia? (Laughs) Hint! Ben : Stand by. Nia : Taking the hint. Frank : That's really great to see the obvious bond that has formed between the three of you. Nia, I'm interested in your creative process for writing songs. Are you thinking about the audience and their expectations of you, or are you perhaps more driven by your own experiences and emotions? How does it work for you? Nia : I think anytime I try to start with the audience, it just doesn't work. So usually, it's best if I think about how I'm feeling and experiences that I'd like to share, and usually I get lucky and those experiences can be related to by others and people who are listening. So I just try to be authentic in why I'm writing and taking from my experiences and then just hoping that people will connect. Frank : Jill, I have another question for you. And given that you demonstrated you're not the stereotypical flutist that some people might have in mind, how did you go about working with Nia? What form did the collaboration take? Jill : You know what, it was really easy. She had sent Ben and I her music quite some time before we got together, and Ben and I just kind of had - immediately, I mean, we’ve known each other and played with each other for a long time - we just had a sense of what each song needed from us. So that's why I ended up just grabbing a whole bunch of different instruments before I left because we had no idea what was going to come of rehearsals. It was a neat kind of hodgepodge of listen to a tune, grab a different instrument, try something… substitute one instrument for another, until we just found it. I don't think that's a secret. I think that's the way most people write music. So it was fun for us to have that beautiful base of stuff that she had already written. It made our jobs really easy, don’t you think, Ben? (Laughs) It really wasn’t taxing for us. We did have to decide a few times, and Nia was really prominent in the conversations, about how much of the music do we keep and add us on to, versus trying to have us recreate that. It wasn’t an easy task when Ben and I felt like, “Oh my God, we have to play flute and viola. How are we going to make her music sound (right)?” That was really scary. Until she had this look on her face, like “No, you don’t have to do that. You can do anything you want.” And as soon as we realized that, it was on. I mean, we just kind of went crazy. And when Ben got out his mandolin, Nia just looked at me like, “Yeah. This is going. This is what we want.” Frank : Ben, how about you? What was the transition to playing music in this sort of milieu? Easy, or difficult, or how did you manage it? Ben : You know, viola is a backup instrument. We don’t… it's not always “spotlight” for us, for sure. So thinking about it in this vein was a little bit (of) where I live, in how to best support a good clear melody. And viola didn’t always make sense, so I happen to have this wonderful mandolin that I love and don't play enough of, and it seemed to fit on a few of Nia’s songs, so we kept using it. Frank : One definite message I'm getting from this is that there's a lot more to the contemporary classical musician than first meets the eye and than I think the average audience member might realize, not only in terms of your training and background but your interests and the ways you express yourself. Nia, when you were getting ready for this NoteWorthy concert, did you have any role in playing… in terms of choosing the instruments or the musicians who would be performing with you? Nia : I wasn't really picky. They asked what types of instruments (I’d like), and I’m like, “I don’t know!” It’s been a while since I’ve worked with classical musicians. I did choir, and we always performed alongside classical musicians, but that was in high school, so I’m like, “Whatever you think sounds like it will fit with my music.” I was randomly paired with Jill and Ben, and it was great because Jill… the first day that we rehearsed, she brought like fifty different instruments. So it was nice that we could experiment, as they were saying, and just play around to see what worked and what didn’t. I had no idea what route I would take with it. Frank : I’m going to give you the last word, Nia, and ask you what stands out for you as the most memorable part of working with Jill and Ben specifically as classically trained musicians? What did that combination bring to the songs you had written and have been performing? Nia : I think they definitely helped breathe some life back into the music. After performing the same songs over and over again, sometimes you lose touch with them. So working with Jill and Ben helped me reconnect with them in a way that I hope the audience will see when they watch the performance. And just who they are as people, too. I’ve grown really fond of you guys, and getting to work together was awesome. I’m just really grateful to have gotten to meet both of them. Frank : My guests have been R&B singer-songwriter Nia J and flutist Jill O’Neill, as well as violist Ben Geller. On Wednesday, August 24th at 7:30 PM, you can hear them perform when WDAV continues the second season of NoteWorthy virtual concerts, presented in partnership with the FAIR PLAY Music Equity Initiative. The series brings together gifted Black and brown artists from the Charlotte music scene with classical musicians for some genre blending and community building music. And you can watch WDAV’s YouTube channel to catch the video or WDAV’s Facebook page. You can also get more information about the artists and the series from noteworthyclassical.org. Thank you, everyone, for speaking with me. Jill : Thanks, Frank. Ben : Thanks for having us, Frank. Nia : Thanks! Frank : For WDAV’s Piedmont Arts, I’m Frank Dominguez.

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in.Today, I'm talking to Angela Garbes, the author of Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy, and the new Essential Labor: Mothering As Social Change. We discussed how her past as a food writer continues to inform her work, what mothers who are creative workers need to thrive—spoiler, it's basically what all workers need to thrive—informal knowledge building, and the significance of having an unapologetic appetite as a woman. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or adjust your settings to receive an email when podcasts are published.Alicia: Hi, Angela. Thank you so much for being here.Angela: Thank you so much for having me, Alicia.Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?Angela: Sure. I grew up in rural Central Pennsylvania. So—people can't see this—but this is roughly the shape of Pennsylvania, my hand. And I grew up here in what I call the ass crack of Pennsylvania. And it was a very small town, about 4,000 people. And I was one of very few people of color. And my parents are immigrants from the Philippines. You know, I would say that from a very young age, I was, like, born different. But, you know, we have a fairly typical…like, my parents are both medical professionals. So we had a pretty typical, I would say, fairly typical as you could get, middle class upbringing. And as far as what we ate, I look back on it now and I think of it as like a perfect combination of like 50 percent American, quote unquote, American convenience food, like a lot of Hamburger Helper, a lot of Old El Paso soft shell tacos, a lot of Little Caesars Pizza, a lot of Philly cheesesteaks. And then the other half we ate Filipino food: sinigang, adobo, arroz caldo, tinola... and, you know, I remember my dad, like, hacking up pig's feet, you know, I would come downstairs and he'd be cooking up things like that. And so when I look back on it now, I think it was—I mean, I love Filipino food so much. But I also, I mean, I love all kinds of food. And I kind of eat anything. And it's partly, I think, because I was just exposed to a lot of things. But my parents, you know, we lived in this really small town, and they couldn't get all of the ingredients that they wanted to make traditional dishes. But they kind of improvised with what they had. And because they were so committed to cooking Filipino food, sort of against the odds, I would say, you know, we did a lot of…there were not vegetables that [were] available, like you couldn't get okra or green papaya. So we would use zucchini, and, you know, frozen okra to make sinigang. But it was such a way for them to stay connected to their cultures and I feel so grateful to them because what they did was really pass that down to me, from an early age. I was like, Oh, yeah, this is—this is my food, like, this is who I am. And I've never lost that. And I've always loved [it] and, yeah, so it was sort of this wonderful, healthy mix, I think. Alicia: For sure, and, you know, it was so interesting to realize, because I don't think I'd realized it before, that you were a food writer. [Laughs] Until I got into your books, I was like, Wait…And Like a Mother, your first book, starts out like, so…like, such a rich piece of food writing. And I'm like, Wow, now I understand. And then I realized, I'm like, Oh, she is a food writer. So you know, you've come to write your two books about motherhood, but you know, you're also a food writer, and you're writing about food in these books as well. How did you become a food writer?Angela: First of all, thank you for saying this now because I miss food writing. And I think at heart, I am a food writer. And I think it informs, you know, the way I portray sensory detail and physical experiences. But yeah, so the way I became a food writer was sort of, it was really my entry into writing. But it happened…the year was 2005, I think. And you know, I had gone to college and studied creative writing, but like a lot of things, I just thought just because I liked doing something doesn't mean I get to do [it], right?And I think that's a lesson that a lot of writers could learn... [laughs] So I didn't work in these like writing-adjacent dying industries, you know; I worked as an independent bookseller. I worked for a nonprofit poetry press—which is still going, actually I should say, and then I worked as an ad sales rep at an alt-weekly. And, you know, I obviously wish that I was a writer there, but I had no designs on writing. I was, you know, I partying a lot with the ad salespeople, and we were just— I mean, alt-weeklies are— I'm so proud to have started all my writing in my career and adult life there. It was a good time. So I was working in ad sales. And at the time, David Spader and Dan Savage, who are the editorial people, they said, “Hey, do you want to write?” I was leaving to take another job. And they were like, “Hey do you want to submit a sample food writing piece?” And I was like, Me? And they were like, “Yeah,” and I was like, why? And yes, and why. And they both said, “Well, we know you write, we know that you have a writing background” because I was friends with a lot of writers. And they were like, “But you're just always walking around the office, talking about where you went to dinner, talking about what you cooked, talking about what you ate, and like, everyone in the office wants to go out to lunch with you. Everyone wants you to invite them over for dinner.” And I was like, Oh, okay! And so then I just did it as a one-off. And something clicked, where you know, I had been writing fiction, I had been writing bad poetry, but when I started writing about food, I was like, Here's everything that I was thinking about, like food to me—and this is what I think it has in common really with motherhood, and mothering really—is a lens to see the world. And it's a lens into—I mean, the sky's the limit about what you can talk about, right, or what you want to talk about. And so, I mean, when I started, it was like, here write a review of this place, that’s doing mini burgers at happy hour, right? And I started doing restaurant reviews, which was very service-y, which, in some ways I hated, but in some ways I'm grateful for, right—meeting a weekly deadline, and like thinking about your audience and being of use, that's something that I think about all the time still. But um, yeah, I mean, when I started doing it, too, I felt really—I came into it, absolutely, with a chip on my shoulder. I was like, Okay, so I'm Filipina. I never hear about Filipino food. Why do we call places holes in the wall? Right, like, that's racist. Why are we willing to pay $24 for a plate of pasta but people get up in arms when someone wants to charge $14 for pho? You know, I feel like this is where I was coming from. And there wasn't really a lot of space for that, I will say. So there was—I felt a little limited. You know, I think about sometimes, what it would be like to start my career now. I feel like people have created a lot of space. It's not like just the space has opened up. But the scene has changed. I took a forced hiatus from food writing, because of the Great Recession, where they were like, We don't need freelancers anymore. I came back to it, though—what year was this? It would have been 2012; 2013 and 2014, I was pregnant. And I had actually decided, you know, just because I'm good at writing doesn't mean I get to do it. I need to figure out something more practical to do with my life. So I had applied to go to graduate school, actually to get a master's in public health and nutrition. And I wanted to work with immigrant communities to help them have culturally appropriate diets. You know, like, not everyone was just gonna eat kale, which is what people—or shop at the farmers’ market. So yeah, I mean, I took classes at the local community college. I took biology, chemistry, all the s**t that I didn't take as an English major in the mid ’90s. And, yeah, I got accepted, but then when I was pregnant, The Stranger, the alt-weekly, called me and they were like, Hey, we're hiring a food writer, and are you interested in applying? And I was like—this chance is never going to come around. And so I was like, Yeah, I'll take it. And so this was, this is a really long answer, sorry, [this was in] 2014, and I started back, and it was restaurant reviews. But it was also when $15 an hour was going really strong here in Seattle. And I really wanted to explore the labor aspect of that, and what was that like for workers…and then my secret goal, I had a great editor who was Korean-American. And she and I were like, yes, like, every two weeks, there will be a picture of a Brown or Black person to go with the restaurant review. And so it was all this stuff. Like, I felt like I finally got a chance to do what I really wanted to be doing. It was like, moving towards that. And then I wrote this piece about breastfeeding, which, at the time, they asked me to pitch a feature. They're like, You've been here on staff long enough, like what do you want to write about? And I was like, I definitely need to write about breast milk. No one in the editorial room was like, it was just like, it landed like a dead bird and I was like, Well, I kind of want to do this for myself. I felt it was very much an extension of my beat. Because I was like, here I am. I'm thinking about food. I'm producing food. I am food. I'm eating food. And so I wrote this piece and ended up going viral, which is how I got the opportunity to write my first book and I wanted to take a leave of absence because I really wanted to come back to my job. And they said, No, we're not going to hold a job for you. We're just going to piece it out on contract. And so then I kind of had to figure out what I was going to do afterwards. And so then I was like, maybe I'll just try writing books. And that's my very long answer into how I got into food writing, it was like, the right place at the right time talking about it. Because yeah, that was just like, it felt very— It was just my life.Alicia: No, I think that that's such a common—obviously, I talk to a lot of people. Like, why food, how food, how did that happen. And then, a lot of the time, especially with women who wanted to be writers, myself included, we didn't see it as an option necessarily, but when we came to it, everything kind of fell into place, which is what happened for me too. Like, once I started to focus my life on food, everything made sense, because I was doing like, copyediting and working for like, tiny literary magazines, and just thought I was gonna have like, a weird literary career, hopefully. And then I just started cooking one day and just never stopped. And like that, it just changed everything. I'm writing about this right now, actually, like how gender plays into this and whether, you know, the idea of being allowed to love to cook when you're a woman and that sort of thing, which actually, I wanted to ask you about, because there is a fabulous chapter in your new book, Essential Labor, called “Mothering as Encouraging Appetites” and it's so much about our gendered relationship to having an appetite, you know, like whether whether a woman, whether a girl is allowed to have an appetite and how you are actively encouraging your daughters to be okay with their appetites. And it reminded me of when I was a kid and like, I had this friend, who I took dance classes with, and our moms would be like, Oh, you're gonna have to like, date a rich man or something because you eat so much. And then this was like a joke about how like… when I recalled this memory, it's not a joke my mother would make. So I'm assuming it was the other mother, but um, it was just this whole thing.Angela: But it's definitely like an ambient joke, right?Alicia: It’s an ambient joke, yeah. And this chapter certainly reminded me of that. And I, you know, I was really lucky to grow up without anyone ever questioning my appetite in a real way. It was always something to be proud of a little bit, to be a girl who ate a lot. Like it was okay, in my world, at least. And so, yeah, I just wanted to ask, what was what was your inspiration for putting this piece in this book, specifically, and how that worked, because it is about the labor of feeding, but it's also about the labor of, like, self-acceptance and and excavating ourselves from these societal expectations. Angela: I mean, I want to back up a little bit to what you're saying about how when I started writing about food, and when you started writing about food, a lot of things started to make sense, right? And I felt that way, very strongly, like, inside of myself, but it felt like there wasn't quite an audience that was keyed into what I was trying to say. And I will say, at the time that I started writing about food it was very, like, you can have an appetite, and you can write about loving food. And you can be—there was a lot of, you know, like, I think people use the phrase like the, quote, golden era of food blogging. And to me, it was never really that; I didn't feel like those things. I didn't feel represented in that. It was a lot of, you can have a tremendous appetite for baguette. Right? But, um, no diss to baguette, right? But it was very Francophilic. And it was very, like, be fit and be white. So I don't, I just don't really understand. I didn't, I couldn't square having the sort of appetite and having the body that I had with, you know, quote, unquote, mainstream food writing by women.  I want to say that because I think that that's true for a lot of women of color. And I think that that space is thankfully growing. But I think it's because it's an insistence on taking up space, and an insistence on not being pushed to the margins, which is really what the motivation of that chapter was. I felt like there's so many things I have been thinking about in terms of food and that like, I mean, that chapter to me is very much food writing. I was real jazzed when I was writing; I loved being able to describe the flavors, and the Filipino food that I grew up with. And yeah, like, I wish that I could explain, and I write about this, and I was like, I don't know why I never—diet culture never got to me, you know, and I think for a lot of girls, who are lucky enough to come from a family where it is a beautiful thing to have an appetite, the thing that often happens, though, is around like when you're 12 or 13 or 14, then suddenly it's not great to have an appetite, right? Like or it's a thing to be managed, because everything's changing, everything's expanding, right? Everything's growing. Before, when you're eating a lot, you're chubby and you're healthy, and suddenly you become fat. And so I was sort of wrestling with that. And also this feeling that my body just never really fit into the culture, into that small town where I grew up in. And then my body is just larger than my mother's who's a very, very small, Filipina woman. And, you know, Filipina elders are the first people to be like, Eat, eat food, eat so much food, come in here, eat food. And then they'll also be the first people to be like, Wow, you got really fat. [Laughs] It's an interesting thing. So, you know, this chapter was me sort of working out a lot of those feelings and how I did it at a young age, I had just decided, well, I guess—I've never been interested in taming my appetites. And that's not just for food, it's like, for pleasure, for like, you know, I've always wanted another round of drinks, you know, I think I always just decided, like, being a little bit too much, being a little bit fat, that was okay with me, because I don't know how to control my appetite. And I didn't want to; I don't want to say no to that. And then I think there's something really powerful about, you know, again, like my love of Filipino food helped me take up space. And it helped me clarify who I was and how I wanted to take up space in this world. Like, I did not want to quiet that part of my identity to write about food, which also meant that for a while, I didn't write about food, or figured something else out that I would do. And so when I think about that, I just think about—it is about encouraging appetite in my daughter, but it's really, to me this book is—I hope it's relevant to everyone, you know, for me, a lot of this is like how I mothered myself, into the place where I am now and seeing the way I was mothered and the things that I kind of wish I could have had, and I don't fault my mother for this, but she just wasn't, she just wasn't able to do that. But the things that I had to mother myself into were acceptance. And that's like, work that I'm still doing every day. But I think you know, we don't write as—I don't hear as much about people who are trying to manage that, and who are trying to take up space, but who still struggle with feeling like, I wish I looked a certain way, even though I'm so proud of being who I am. It's really complicated. So yeah, I mean, appetite and identity and food. And all of that has, it's a very tangled web, in my mind. So this was kind of my attempt to, you know, just sort of unpack and understand.Alicia: Right, no, and I loved it, because I do think…as women, especially when we're writing about appetite, we're writing about diet culture, and you very rarely hear from someone who makes the decision to just not ever decide to tame the appetite, you know, and what that means and what that looks like, and that's why I thought this chapter was really important, because of that, because for me, you know, yeah, I was like, Oh, I see myself, I recognize myself in this because, yeah, I love to eat, I've always loved to eat, and I'm never not going to eat a lot…[Laughs]Angela: No, and that's one of the things that I love about your work is that I feel like you are unapologetic in your appetite and in your consumption. But you also are deeply thoughtful about it, like these things are like–they are nuanced. Do you know what I mean? And you'd never, I just feel like we're not allowed—we're supposed to not have an appetite. We're supposed to have an appetite, but somehow pretend that we don't have an appetite, or, I don't know, like, really, I mean, I think also like, when I am indulging my appetite, I feel like an animal. I feel I'm no different than an animal. I'm a human animal. And I just think like, we're not encouraged to do that as women, we're not encouraged to just fully inhabit ourselves. I mean, I think all people but especially women. And so I mean, I love seeing people out there doing [it], we are out here, you know. [Laughs] And this is my like, you know, a little bit of my stake in the ground, I'm planting a flag, you know, there would be no mistake—Alicia: Well, to talk about the animal aspect of food and appetite and also being a mother, which is that you wrote, obviously, the piece that went viral is about breastfeeding. My only experience in thinking about this, of course, because I'm not a mother, is the way vegans or vegetarians write about the ways in which breastfeeding changes their relationship to dairy, like that's a really common thing. But I wanted to ask how that topic and writing about that topic and that topic changing the trajectory of your work, how did that change your relationship to food or food production, if it did?Angela: Yeah, totally. First of all, I wish that you had been asking me these questions when my first book came out because like, I love how you're like, “It's really common for vegans to talk about, you know, dairy and how breastfeeding changed their relationship to it.” And I was like, I'm not aware of that, like, literature…[Laughter] And so I think it's kind of, just that question is really exciting to me. And I wish that there was more conversation around that. Part of writing, you know, this article about breastfeeding was me being like, why do we drink the milk of a cow? Right? Why is that? Like, that's strange, right? Like, it's strange. And why have we created an entire industry around this? And like, Why do, when we look at a food plate, dairy has a very large section? And that's because of the dairy lobby, right? That's not because of our innate biological needs as human beings, right? So, yeah, I mean, how I thought about food production, 100%. This, you know, sort of lays the path for so many things that I'm thinking about. It’s work, you know, this is what your body—this is what female bodies are built to do, right? That's just true. This is what sets us apart as mammalians, you know, like, we produce milk to feed our young, but I just went into it so naive, like, it was a job. You know, I was spending the eight plus hours feeding—eight plus hours that I was like, am I supposed to be being productive? Like I'm being productive, like I'm keeping, I'm doing nothing less than keeping a human alive. I'm not being paid to do this. I'm not being given time. I'm like, in a weird office with a noisy radiator, you know, with another woman—our breasts out, just like pumping. Right? So it made me think about time and how we value time. And it also like, again, like this was all happening when I was writing about food. And there was the fight for a minimum wage of $15 an hour. And my God, how that was so polarizing, and how people just showed their whole asses about how they don't think the workers are valuable or deserving of this thing. And so I think, you know, there was the labor aspect of it that really came into play for me, that made me think about—I grew up saying grace, because I grew up Catholic, right? And when we remember to say grace, my girls do it with my parents. So when we remember to say grace at our house, we say, you know, thank you to the people who grew this food, who picked the food, who you know transported the food, who prepared the food. So I think now this sort of supply chain of food and how it is produced is something that's always top of mind and like, how do you negotiate having like an ethical relationship to that? I know this is stuff that you have thought about. This is stuff that really came to the forefront, right? And then also balancing that economically because, you know, breastfeeding is, in a country that does not give paid leave, it’s an economic privilege to be able to do that. And then people who cannot breastfeed, there's very little money put into understanding that and seeing is that, oftentimes people feel like that's a failure on their part, not as opposed to like, is it a signal about something about the health of the mother, right? Could we be—this is sort of going off a little tangent, but I think that there's a lot of that kind of stuff, like in the labor of it, and how we value women's bodies. And also just like the general chain of food production, for sure. It 100% made me think of all of those things. And so now I'm always thinking about, someone made this food, right? Someone produced this food in some way, a being—a living thing, whether it is a plant or an animal, or a person. Yeah, it’s just, I mean mothering and becoming a mother really reframed everything for me. You know, it is that care that my body couldn't help but do, you know, like my body did. And then suddenly, I felt like, it's a very beautiful thing to be able to do this. It's a very important thing. It was very meaningful to me. It was also that I was chained to a chair and chained to a person. And so yeah, I mean, that's what—that's where I'll leave it. That’s another long answer. [Laughter]Alicia: No, no…have you read the book To Write As If Already Dead by Kate Zambreno? It came out last year, I think you'll like it. She writes a lot about the body and like, I think it has a lot of parallels to your work. But it's also, you know, just more personal I guess, but she writes about having her first kid and then getting pregnant and then and like, amidst the pandemic, not being treated like a human being but a vessel and seeing the labor of the people bringing…anyway, I think you'll like the book. [Laughs] But you know, and there are so many parallels in both Like a Mother and Essential Labor to what I've been thinking about in food: formal versus informal knowledge, institutions versus communities, individual versus systemic, the political role of care…And so I wanted to ask how the understanding of the significance of something like informal knowledge building when it comes to motherhood affected your perspective on, you know, other subjects as you've said. Motherhood changed your whole lens on the world, but specifically figuring out where, how to learn from community and informal knowledge rather than constantly just taking the word of the institutions.Angela: Yeah, you know I mean, motherhood was a big part of that. But I would say that it was all, I don't know, I just feel like my whole life is learning. And I love that. And that's one of the things that I love about my life. I definitely feel like when I arrived at college—so again, I came from a very, very small town in Pennsylvania. And I didn't know about a lot of things in the world, you know, and I was like, I'm gonna go to New York City. I went to Barnard College, right? Like, I arrived there. And everyone there was like, I went to Milton Academy. I went to, you know, I went to Stuyvesant High, and I was like, like, Googling like, “what are the regents exams,” right? Like, I was like that. And I felt so out of place. Y’know what I mean, like, I felt unprepared. And I felt very self-conscious in a way about that. And I also feel like I came into, like a formal racial consciousness, right, and class consciousness. Like, I mean, when I was at Barnard was when I was like, Oh, this is how we re-create a ruling class, right? Like, what I'm saying is that I had a lot of informal knowledge. And a lot of wisdom growing up, you know, that I kind of trusted and knew. I was always like, why are we Catholic? So, is colonialism…like, what would we have been if we weren't Catholic? And my parents were like, God will provide…like, what are you talking about? Why are we asking these questions, right? And so I've always had it in me to like, question the institution, right, unfortunately, for my parents, and then our family institution for many years. So I came to college, and then I was like, Oh, it's also reckoning with for many, many years, my definition of success was, you know, grammar, spelling, right? Like, all of that s**t, which is like, those are just rules that some guy made up, right? Like coming into this and wanting to succeed on terms, you know, set by white people, being legible to white people, and being legible to institutions, which I will not deny, like, that has served me well. And this sort of like, ability to kind of code-switch in a way that I sometimes can't even tell the difference. Like, that's just been a part of my life, right? And one of the things, though, that happened is coming into consciousness as an adult, and just realizing like, Oh, no, like, I was privileged enough to, like, be educated in these institutions to figure out how to slip into these places. And then to realize, like, no, this doesn't, this doesn't speak to me. It's actually not my vibe, right? Like, but what is your vibe, then? So you have to kind of go and like, figure it out. And I felt sort of free in that, you know, when I always felt really drawn to creative people, but I was never encouraged to, you know, pursue the arts or to pursue creativite work, or my parents were supportive, but they don't really understand what I do. I think to this day, still, it's a little bit confusing to them. All of this to say that one of the other, before motherhood, one of the big things, and I really need to shout out is my spouse Will, who [when] I met, he was a community organizer. He's now a labor organizer. And there was just something about, we are so different, but when we met, there was a shared values. There was a belief in, everyone's story is important. You know, he was all about, his thing was, people come up, and they speak their truth to power. And that's when I realized, like, Oh, yes, like our lived experiences, our informal knowledge, when collected, just because it's not in a book, just because it's not what's reported, like, it is so real, and it is so powerful. And he really, like his work helped me see that. And I feel like that was kind of the start for me of being like, I want to take what I'm doing, and I want to put it in service of something else. And I want it to be a harnessing of collective energy and community knowledge. And then mothering with the whole sort of like, ask your doctor even though no one has, no one's done any studies on this and everything that's going on was something someone said in 1890, right, no one’s challenged this wisdom. Meanwhile, the greatest wisdom that came from birthing and mothering came from midwives and female elders. And that's informal knowledge that was never put in a book, y'know, doctors, when we created medicine, when people invented—when white men invented medicine, they discredited the experience of midwives. And at the turn of the 20th century in America, 50% of babies were born with midwives, who are mostly immigrants and Black women, right? This was very much a working class woman's job. So I mean, this is just my way of saying I feel like my whole life has been leading to this moment, and motherhood, sort of refined that lens, a place to put all of these things, but it's been multiple steps along the way, and it's been sort of painful. You know what I mean? Like feeling like, Oh, I wish I had known this earlier. But then realizing like, Oh, like, but I know this now. And I think there are many people who share these values and who want to put their faith in more informal knowledge, and who don't trust institutions, but don't really know how, you know what I mean? And I feel like that's a journey, like we're all learning. And I feel like, I don't know…I'm old enough to remember when we weren't supposed to know everything. I feel like now there's this pressure to have some sort of expertise in everything. And I'm like, I still don't know what the f**k I'm doing. Like, everything I'm doing is learning, and that's what's fun. That's part of why I like being a writer is just doing homework or whatever.Alicia: That's so interesting. Yeah, I feel like this is something I've been thinking about a lot, is there is this kind of—you're not supposed to ask questions. You're not supposed to say “I don't know,” you're supposed to, we're all supposed to have sort of absorbed some sort of bastion of knowledge that we might not even know exists about things that we've never thought about before. But like, you're just not allowed to not know things anymore, you're not allowed to be learning. I don't know. It's very weird. I mean, that's more social media than anything else. But, because I'm always interested in this. So you went to college in New York? How did you come to live in Seattle?Angela: So when I was in college, my parents—long story short, they had a midlife crisis. And my dad became very disillusioned by managed healthcare. This was 1997, by the way. And so they just decided to make a huge change. Like, my dad was miserable, and my mom was miserable; they're miserable together. And so they decided to start over, and they moved to Washington State. And I was in college, and I was just like, I need to get out of New York. So I was like, okay, and now they seem to be doing better, so I'm gonna go spend a summer with them. And the Pacific Northwest in the summer is heaven, it's so beautiful. And I was like, oh, I’ll like, come out here after I graduate, and I'll stay for a couple months, and then I'll go back and get a job in publishing as an editorial assistant. And that was 1999. And then I just never left. You know, I spent many years comparing it to the East Coast. And then I just was like, it's easier here. And I used to feel some sort of shame around that. But um, I don't know, it's just more laid back. I feel really—I've written about this—I just don't, I don't want to say that I'm not ambitious. But it's just like, there's ladders that you climb, there's like places you could try to put yourself into institutions, I guess. And I'm just really not about the hustle. I feel like I work really hard and I'm really not trying to work harder. Like, I like my little life. Before I had a chance to, you know, publish books, having a job as a staff writer at an alt-weekly, it was like—that was great. Like, you know, I feel like it's easier to do, I don't know, community building can be—I don't want to generalize too much. I just like being in a city. It's a young city. It's a weird city, in some ways. It's changing. But um, yeah, but I like the West Coast. I think I'm—Alicia: I'm always interested in how people leave New York, because obviously, I'm from Long Island, but I spent a lot of time in New York City. And so then, because I left in 2019, but like, didn't really think about it, about what I was doing. So I'm always like, What was the choice? What were the choices that led you away from New York? [Laughter]Angela: I think it was the thought that I would come back. And I think there's always a little bit of like—I couldn't go back. You know, like, it's all the same, like things are there. They're not going away. But New York also still has the same ugly, modern, new high rise weird, like townhome architecture that we get here in Seattle. It's not, you know, not to be I mean. I went to college in New York from ‘95 to ‘99. And, you know, I go back now and I'm like, This is so different. I was like, you know, it wasn't even like dirty New York, y'know. But yeah, I think I just like being a little bit outside things. How was it for you? Like, do you feel like returning or do you feel like you're home? Or do you kind of feel like it's all open?Alicia: I would prefer to stay here in San Juan ’cause it's an easier life, like you're saying, and I talked to Jami Attenberg about moving from New York to New Orleans. And same thing. It's like, it's just easier, and for me, especially as a food writer, I feel like it gives me a lot more to talk about and I don't feel like I have to go to the same restaurants as everybody. And like, obviously, I don't even think I could move back until everything goes differently with the housing situation. Like it's just such—I mean, it's happening everywhere. But I'm just like watching on Twitter, and everyone is like, my landlord just raised my rent $700, $1,200. And I'm like, I'm never going back. I can never go back. But I mean, we have that problem here, too, because it's become like a tax haven. So there's like, all the real estate is absolutely mind-boggling. And like the daughter-in-law of the governor is sort of instrumental in it, which seems like a problem, so— [Laughter]But, yeah, so everywhere has its challenges. But yeah, I feel really good. You know, having gotten sort of away from New York. You know, when I left New York, I was bartending and writing. And here, now I just have a newsletter. So, I'm working a lot less hard. [Laughs]Angela: I mean, I think there's something to be said to of space—physical space. I have a house, you know what I mean, to have physical space, which is also, it's not necessary, but it does lead to mental space. You know what I mean, things feel more expansive here in a way that like, I can go on a long walk, the mountains are 45 minutes that way—wait, sorry, going West. Sorry, the East actually—But I think there's just something there where I feel. I don't know. I just—there's something here where I just feel like I can be myself in a way that—I'm less like, thinking about myself in the context of other people and other things, like I could just sort of be in an easy—Alicia: Exactly, no, no. And that's really key. Obviously, like I'm homesick a lot. But I, then I just go back, you know. And then I'm like, I'm sick of this. Goodbye. [Laughter]But also, to get back to your book, in Essential Labor, you talk about the flattening of creative identity that came through being a mother in the pandemic, do you think that it is possible to change how work and caregiving are structured and perceived in the U.S.? And specifically, what do you think mothers who are creative workers, thus doing work that's kind of already devalued in our society, what is really needed to thrive?Angela: That's a great question. I do think it's possible. I have to think it's possible, because—I'm glad that your question wasn't, do you, like, do you hope that this is, you know, like, I find it hard to be, I find it hard to be hopeful about it in this moment. But I mean, I wouldn't have written this book if I didn't think it was possible. And, you know, maybe it will take a very long time. But I think we are due for, I mean, the United States has never reckoned with all of its original sins, right. But one of them, you know, one of the biggest ones at this point, that's like a foundation to it is that care work doesn't matter and has no financial value. So I think, you know, we had these moments, there was the advanced check, tax child credit. And then also, when we were doing direct stimulus payments, that was not specifically like, here's pay for mothering and care work. But, here's pay for keeping yourself alive and keeping people alive, which is what care work is. So I think that people are—that conversation is happening, I think, you know, part of writing this book was, there were all these, there were so many people who were suddenly awake to, like the child care crisis is a pre-pandemic problem, right? Like that childcare workers are three times more likely to live in poverty. The fact that until your child is age 6, in the United States, like you're on your own, to figure all of that out, and suddenly a lot of white affluent women, to generalize, were realizing that, you know, when care structures fall apart, when your nanny and childcare and babysitters go away — they are left to do all of this work. And that to be a woman in America is to be defined by a condition of servitude. And that was a hard f*****g lesson. And people reacted in a way that they were rightfully so, really angry. And part of writing this book was, I was like, this is going to go away, right? Like when schools reopen, people are gonna think we solved the childcare crisis, right? When things are not inconvenient, when people can start outsourcing that care, and we're gonna lose that momentum. And so to a certain extent, like, why I also believe it's possible is because I know that for myself, and for other people, like, I will never shut up about this. This is something that is foundational and essential to our country and how it functions and until we properly value that, we're going to have an inhumane and dysfunctional society. So yes, I think it's possible. In this particular moment, I feel that it's a much longer fight, and then it's going to be a much harder fight. I don't want it to be a fight, but that's that's where I am on that. You know, and in terms of mothers who are doing creative work, I mean, I just think of all people doing creative work again, like, care is an issue that, obviously, yes, I'm writing about mothering but like, care is the work of being a human being, you know, needfulness is the state of being a human being. And so, you know, if I'm just like, allowed to say what I would like to do is like, we should just give people money. We live in a very rich country, there is enough money to do this. If we gave people a universal basic income, a guaranteed adequate income, which is not a new idea—you know, people were working on this, the National Welfare Rights Organization was doing this; they came close to getting it under Nixon. If we paid people money, if we gave people money and guaranteed a floor of what a decent life is in America, people could be creative. You know, people could do their creative work, people could mother, people could still be really f*****g ambitious and try to get a six-figure job, like six-figure salary job, like, they could still do that. You know, and I think that that's, you know, we made up money. [Laughter] We can, like, if we can make up a new system, you know, that, that gives people—you know, I did this interview for this the future of things, it was like the future of work. And I was talking about this, and the producer was like, So in your world, when you like, meet for drinks with your friends on Friday, and someone asks you how work is doing and you're like, well, Tommy's like, struggling with potty training. And I was like, No, dude, like, in my world, you meet your friends for drinks on Friday, and they're like, how are you? Like we don’t talk about work—we just talk about like, what are you doin’? Right? And so I think that, yeah, like, I think so what we need to do is like, guarantee—I mean maybe it's not just an adequate income or guaranteed income, maybe it's just like, health care, where you like, leave, like, they need people need to, like be able to live a dignified life, that doesn't involve work, you know, that is like, not defined by work that just that allows them to exist. That's what people need. And that's not just mothers, and not just mothers who do creative work that we need that. We need that. I mean, I think it's really like for me; it's for everyone.Alicia: Yeah, yeah, no, no, I mean, these are all the same answers I give when people are like, How do we fix the food system? And it's like, you have to make sure people have a good life. And then, that they don't have to work two or three jobs just to eat crap, and that they get to cook with, I mean, if they want to [they can] eat whatever they want, but like, you know, you get the option to cook, you know. Right now, it's like, so much of that moment, I guess when you started writing about food, that moment of like, go to the farmers’ market and eat kale and everything will be fine. It really stopped short of talking about poverty, it stopped short of talking about the systemic, obviously, disadvantages. It's like, some people won't be able to do this—sad for them. And then like, moving on—Angela: Yeah, look, we don't talk about how poverty is a condition we have created —it's an unnatural condition. We made this, right? And there's so much, I mean, also like the farmers’ market thing. Like, what is it, maybe now it's higher, but it's something like 6 or 12 percent of people get their produce from a farmers’ market here. I mean, so not even like, forget, like how much money you can spend. It's just such a small—you're not tackling the system. And that's not to say they're not great and you should keep money in local economies. Like I think it's all of those things. But yeah, we're not even getting to that. And we're not talking about the profound way that we assign morality to food, like people who are poor make bad choices about food. Those are choices created by poverty and scarcity. Like, anyway, this is not like a…I think you and I are on the same page about this. I think it's like the conversations that we have about food are so not the conversations we need to read. Right, like we spend a lot of time on that. And I think the same is true for care and mothering, right? It is an issue that affects everyone. And it is an issue, it is systemic, like we're talking about, I think we're both talking about giving people a decent life, which doesn't—we've come so far from that, that it seems really radical to be like, let's just, you know, take it back a step. You know, like, it'd be like—money is made up, are you with me? Like, that seems really destabilizing to people, but it's just a truth. And I think like we just drifted so far from it, that it's really, it's discouraging.Alicia: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm hopeful, I think that now people are more, even if it's just jokes or memes on social media, people are more willing to say— people are more willing to say that the all of this is bizarre. Like, even if it's just—today, we're talking on Tax Day, which is—I feel like vomiting because I still haven't done mine. But the idea that people are now talking about, why does the government let it be so difficult and complicated when they know how much we owe because they have the documentation and, you know, what are we actually even paying for? Like, I think it's important that we have a forum now for those like people to have that conversation, even if it's a joke, most of the time.Angela: One of my favorite things that I've seen recently is like, I mean, I saw it on Instagram, but it was a tweet, you know, that whole thing. But it was like, you know, humans really could have had stargazing and like pottery making and drumming, and now we have credit scores, and like, you know, but this idea that, like, we could just be f*****g living. Now it's like, we need money we need like, I just, ugh—Alicia: Yeah, we do need a general strike, and to not pay anything, not pay our taxes, not pay our student loans, not pay rent, just like let's stop and get this s**t sorted out before we keep moving.Angela: Yeah, I mean it’s really…we shouldn't be privatizing human rights. We could have this conversation, like in a circle for like, a few days, and it would be great but we should probably move on… [Laughter]Alicia: No, no, no, of course. No, well I just wanted to ask you what are the other things you're thinking about that you want to write about? I do love that you characterize being a writer is ongoing learning, you know? So what are you learning about these days?Angela: I'm learning about—so again, since I started as a food writer, the fact that I've now written two books on motherhood and mothering seems like a great surprise in my life. I mean, I think it's very—it's been great for me. But I mean, this is really just one aspect of my identity. But right now, the things that I'm really drawn to are not privileging one kind of care. I mean, I think care is a conversation we need to continue to have. And so I want to explore care. Like, so I've been thinking about it in terms of, you know, raising young children, but what is it like to have everything from like, you know, how do we encourage people who are not parents to have meaningful relationships with the youth and the elders? Right, like elder care, disability care. And then also, how do we build, one of the things that we lack, our institutions don't care about people; care is not a value that's at the center of institutions. And so I'm interested in exploring, how might we make that happen? And so care in general, an expansive and inclusive and surprising view of care, is one of the things that I'm thinking a lot about.I'm thinking a lot about the concept of service. Service, to me, is very clarifying. I think my work as a writer is about learning. But what gives me meaning is that it is definitely of service to people. And that's one of the things that I cherish about the feedback that I've gotten from people. And so this idea of service, and how we can encourage that, and people are exploring that.And then the other thing that I'm really into is middle age. You know, I'm about to be 45. I never—and I don't mean this in a fatalistic way, but I just never really imagined myself at this age, and realizing that my imagination really was pretty short. And I feel like I have to believe and I do believe that, you know, some of my most interesting transformations are still ahead of me. And so there's really not a literature of middle age for women, there's like some menopause-y stuff. But the choices that we make, and I don't know, there's like in the pandemic, too, I've done a lot of self work and therapy. But I've also, like—I haven't been able to escape myself, even though I've tried very hard through various attempts and substances. But I feel like, I don't know, if I'm about to be 45, like I said, I just feel like I don't feel confused about who I am. And I really like that. And I'm kind of curious, like, where that goes. Yeah, so those are the things I'm thinking.Alicia: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today. Angela: Yeah, of course. Thank you.Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news. Or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

Ven. Pomnyun's Answer to " Can I Be Happy While Being Aware? ” Selection from a Dharma Q&A session at Bethesda Chevy Chase Regional Service Center in Washington D.C. (September 18, 2019) Questioner (Q): Hello Sunim. Nice to see you again. I’ve always been a curious person ever since I was a little boy. For example, when there was an ant’s nest, I would watch to see where the ants are going, where they’re getting their food and the trails they make. Now in English speaking cultures, there’s a saying ignorance is bliss. Actually I’ve found curiosity to be one of the more positive factors in my life. It doesn’t seem like ignorance is bliss, is one of the approaches of the Jungto Society. For example, I’ve seen you give talks with a podium like this where it says Happiness school in Korean, and then later on we see a video about some three minute clip or so about some starving children in North Korea or a bird dying full of plastic. So is it possible for me to become happy without losing the awareness of those things that are happening in the world?OK. (Laughs) It’s something that I hope is true, but I don’t know if I can have blind faith that it is true. 제목 : 알아차리면서도 행복할 수 있을까요?  

Welcome to episode 10 of the Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram podcast! This week we talk with Michael Cart, the Finance Manager at CDJR. Michael is from the Middle Tennessee area. In this episode we get the opportunity to learn more about: Michael’s backstory and how he ended up at Miracle CDJRHis role at MiracleGetting financing through Miracle vs getting credit from outside sourcesHow easy it is to get approvalWhat makes Miracle differentThe Miracle VIP Advantage Program This is another great episode, so enjoy! Transcript John Haggard: 00:02 Welcome to the Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram Podcast, where each week you’ll learn the best ways to purchase, lease, service and maintain, accessorize, and sell your vehicle for the highest resale value possible when you’re ready to do it. I’m your host John Haggard and throughout each month right here, as you know, we’ll have different team members join us from Miracle to bring you tips that you can use. And you’ll also see a transcript of each podcast for quick reference. On this podcast, today we’re speaking with Michael Cart. He’s the Finance Manager at Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Gallatin. Hey Michael, welcome to the podcast. Michael Cart: 00:38 Hey John. Thanks for having me. How are you doing? John Haggard: 00:40 I’m doing great man. I appreciate your taking the time to, to talk with us. You know, finances is a big, big deal in everybody’s life, whether it’s a car, whether it’s a house, you know, buying furniture, it’s just a big thing and looking forward to talking about that. But before we do, just to get to know you a little bit better, are you from this area? Did you grow up in Gallatin? Michael Cart: 00:59 I actually grew up in a Sumner county. I grew up in White House, Tennessee. So I’m local. I’m from White House and now me and my wife, we live in Gallatin. Just five, 10 minutes down from work. So it’s real nice, I like it here. John Haggard: 01:13 So you’ve been here all your life, you didn’t move away. You’ve always been here? Michael Cart: 01:17 Yeah. Correct. John. Yep, born and raised. Yes sir. John Haggard: 01:20 Okay. And so where did you go to high school? Michael Cart: 01:23 I went to school in White House, Tennessee. So White House High School. John Haggard: 01:27 White House High School. Okay. And was that school, did it have any special area of learning? You know, like some cities have a space program, like if they’re in Florida or whatever. Michael Cart: 01:37 Ha ha ha! John Haggard: 01:37 No? You’re laughing! Michael Cart: 01:40 No, unfortunately. White House is a small town. So you know, I think that they’re special learning was, what do you call it? They have like FFA, like Future Farmers of America. But nothing for like a space program though. John Haggard: 01:53 Gotcha. Well if you’re from here, you must have family here as well. Michael Cart: 01:58 Yeah, I do. My mom’s side of the family is from Springfield, Tennessee and my dad’s side of the family is from Nashville, Tennessee. And my mom and dad, they still live in White House and we got family all over the place in Nashville and in White House in Springfield, just surrounding counties. John Haggard: 02:14 Yeah. So any of them in the car business? Michael Cart: 02:17 No, not at all. First one in the family in the car business. Yeah. John Haggard: 02:21 First one in the family. All right. So once you got out of high school, did you do college as well or did you just elect to go ahead and work early? Michael Cart: 02:29 Yeah, so I went to, after high school I went to college right away. And, you know, as a young adult you’re deciding, you either I want to go to college, I want to go to work. And while I was in college, I was really trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And at the time I was working for, you know, like a local drug store. And I was in between jobs cause I quit the drugstore. I was getting ready to go back to school. And right before school started I said, “You know what, let me let me get into car sales.” I don’t know why I was, you know, thinking that. But I was just thinking, “Hey I’ll try sales, car sales is good.” I was, you know, googling “good jobs without having to finish college” and it said try sales. So I said, “You know, I’ll, do car sales.” And I got a job in doing, selling cars. And I’ve been doing it since, what does 2011, 12? So, I’ve been doing it for a while, I guess. John Haggard: 03:13 So when you’re not working at Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram, what do you like to do on your time off? Michael Cart: 03:20 Me and my the wife, we just have a little newborn and around Monday be turning a month old. And so.. John Haggard: 03:26 Wow! Congratulations! Michael Cart: 03:28 Oh thanks John. Really just work and then go home. And take care of the family, you know? John Haggard: 03:32 Yeah. So are you, let’s see, one month, are you getting any sleep? Are you up every two hours? What’s going on there? Michael Cart: 03:39 No. I actually, I get plenty of sleep. My wife doesn’t really get a whole lot of sleep. She’s, she she really helps out a lot. During the work week, she gets up every night, but on Sundays I’m off on Saturday, so I’m on Sundays. So on Saturday night I’ll, you know, stay up late with the baby, usually gets up on her at like around 3am and then we’ll feed him and he goes back to sleep. But he’s pretty good. John Haggard: 04:00 Oh, that’s pretty good. You know, some are up every hour and a half to two. Some will sleep maybe three or four hours. So it sounds like you are getting a little bit of sleep anyway. Michael Cart: 04:08 Yeah, I am. She’s not. Ha ha! John Haggard: 04:09 Yeah, I got ya. What a great wife, I got to tell you that. Michael Cart: 04:13 Yeah, I’m lucky. Yeah. John Haggard: 04:15 So what about favorite hobbies? Maybe from childhood that you are still doing today? Or maybe some new hobbies that are going on. Michael Cart: 04:23 My main thing that I do is try to figure out how I can better my family and my life. So here recently, I’ve been doing lot of like you know, reading and I’ve been trying to read about how to invest. And so that’s kind of my hobby right now, just reading and learning. John Haggard: 04:40 Gotcha. So what was your very first job? Michael Cart: 04:45 First job? Let’s see. I want to say maybe Pizza Hut, I might’ve been a cook at Pizza Hut, I think? No, actually my first job I worked at a grocery store. So there’s to be this grocery store right down the street from the house where I grew up in White House. I think It’s called the Al’s Food Value or something. And I was like, I bagged the groceries and I put the groceries in the, on the shelves and I hated it. (laughs) John Haggard: 05:10 (Laughs) It’s tough work, I have to tell you, it is. So what brought you to Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram. There are a lot of car dealers out there. How did you wind up there? Michael Cart: 05:19 Actually, I was working for another dealership and I was in the market for Jeep. So I said, well let me go to Jeep or Miracle jeep and buy cars as close to the house. And whenever I got here, I was talking to Mark Ledford, the general sales manager, and he offered me a job and him and Tim kind of rolled the dice and I didn’t have any finance experience and they kind of rolled the dice and took a chance on me. And the [inaudible] Finance School and they hired me and trained me and I’ve been here for I guess, you know, two, three years now. So I really appreciate that. John Haggard: 05:51 Yeah. What do you think it was? I mean, cause that’s kind of rare. Did you do personality testing and all that type of thing? What was that like? How do you just sort of come to buy a Jeep and end up with a job? Michael Cart: 06:01 Well I was in sales before I was. I’ve been doing sales for a while. But I was working for another brand and you know, Mark said he needs someone, you should come work for us. I said, “Well, I’ll come work for you if you could give me a management position.” You know, maybe Financer. That they also what they called Desk Managers. And he said they had a spot opened up and they interviewed me and, you know, sent me a call and rolled the dice, I guess. John Haggard: 06:22 As a Finance Manager, what does your typical day look like? Michael Cart: 06:25 So mainly my job is to make sure whenever there are customers buying a car. John Haggard: 06:31 So as the Finance Manager at Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram, Michael, what is your typical day look like? Michael Cart: 06:39 Yes. So typically what I’ll do, I’m, the first thing I’ll do John in the morning, I’ll come in, I check my computer, check my email, see if anybody’s calling me or if they have any questions about a vehicle that they just purchased. Usually I have too, I’d say it’s called funding. Sometimes the bank needs like a copy of the customer’s like driver’s license or something. I have to make sure that they receive the documents and make sure everything was signed and dotted correctly. You know, my job is really just to make sure all the paperwork is filled out correct when the customer is here. So whenever the, we send the contract to the bank, we can get the money right away. So there’s no problem with our accounting office and, you know, we can keep doing business in a smooth way. John Haggard: 07:14 When you talk about finance, people have this choice and it’s just been around for years. You see it advertised on television or hear about it on radio or see it on the Internet, wherever it might be. Is it a better deal to finance with a dealer or go get outside financing from a bank or a credit union? Tell us about that. Michael Cart: 07:35 That’s a good question. So I hear a lot of the time, “I have been pre-approved through my bank, through my credit union.” Well a lot of times the manufacturer they put on incentives. So Chrysler is owned by Chrysler Capital – that’s the name of our bank. So they’ll say, hey, if you buy a Ram or a Chrysler or a Dodge or Jeep, we’ll give you free money basically for finance. It’s called a rebate. So you get a rebate for financing through Chrysler. But I’ve seen customers also too that had been doing business with a like a credit union. And we do so many business with banks and we also have credit unions. We have that were 50 banks that we work with. But let’s say you know, I’ve had a customer says, “Hey, I’ve been preapproved to my credit union.” Okay, perfect. What was the rate they gave you? You know, sometimes it’ll be like 6% or 7%. And a lot of times, I can beat the rate that they get from their bank or their credit union because we just do so much business, more volume through banks and credit unions. You know, you might do a loan once they, you know, once every five years you might buy a car. We do loans every single day, so I have more volume so I get a better interest rate than the customer can get a lot of times through their bank or their credit union. Does that make sense? I explained that… John Haggard: 08:42 It does, yeah! Absolutely. Michael Cart: 08:42 So a lot of times I can beat the rate, but you know, sometimes I can’t. And you know, we want what’s best for the customers. So if they can get a better rate, perfect. But if I can get a better rate, you know, save the customer some money, that’s obviously going to be the better way to go. You know? John Haggard: 08:57 Well, you know what you see also TV commercials, especially these days that talk about getting approved online in minutes, you know? Does that, does it really work that way? I mean, in minutes, you go to a website, boom bam! You’re approved here, walk in, take this piece of paper, buy what you want up to x amount of money. Michael Cart: 09:14 Yeah, pretty much! It’s really easy. Also, if you go on our website on this, there’s a tab that says get financing. You m go on there. You put in your information, your name, address, social, birthday, everything. And then you pick out which car and then you click on the car. Then you can say, Hey, I want my payment to be 500, 600 bucks a month and it’ll just calculate how much money you need to put now and based on the credit to get there. And then you just come in and fill out the paperwork and it’s really easy. John Haggard: 09:37 So it really, it doesn’t take long at all to get financed. You hear these stories from some people. Well, you know, I went to this dealer and, you know, hung around half a day, all day and went to another dealer and took three or four days to get a deal put together. But it’s not really typically that way. Michael Cart: 09:53 Not really. Where you get people that sit around at dealerships a lot of time is really with, don’t know if you’ve heard the term subprime lending. People that are subprime need subprime lending. And we actually have a special finance department that specializes in that. Really with people that are prime borrowers. It doesn’t take that long. It’s instantly approved. But if you’re subprime, you need steps, like proof of residence, a proof of income like paycheck stubs and the bank wants a lot more information. So we actually specialize in that too. There’s another guy that works here. His name’s Rich Craycroft. He’s been doing it a long time and he specializes in helping people obtain subprime loans especially the bankruptcy. Tennessee’s like the number one bankruptcy state in the southeast. So we, we do actually do get a lot of, a lot of customers need help in that area. We do, we do all types. You know, we do all types of prime, subprime, you know, anything. We help out everybody. John Haggard: 10:43 And Tennessee is the number one state in the southeast for bankruptcy. Michael Cart: 10:48 Yeah. John Haggard: 10:49 Is there one question that customers ask a lot or, or maybe one or two questions that you’re always asked that would really kind of clear up confusion about financing or the process? Michael Cart: 11:01 I wouldn’t really say there’s a question. I have to say there’s more of a, a concern. I would say that people feel like, you know, maybe I should go to my credit union. They don’t feel like the dealership’s being more transparent. But Miracle, you know, the Miracle Automotive Group, they’ve been in business for a long time and they’ve built that off of being transparent and customer service. And Mr Galvin, Sr. has instilled that in the community. So, you know, we have to be really transparent and upfront to, you know, keep people coming back here and trusting us in doing business with them. Cause it’s, you know, the second business, second biggest purchase, they’ll ever make. So we want them to feel safe and, you know, no concern, no worry. We want them to know what they’re getting into. John Haggard: 11:40 So Miracle Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram and also Miracle Ford, two dealerships just almost right next to each other, they are family owned. And so what is it like the atmosphere, you know, a lot of are big, you know, I guess you would say big corporate conglomerates and so forth. What’s different or what’s neat? What makes you get up and want to go to work at Miracle? Michael Cart: 11:55 The really cool thing about Miracle is that it is family owned, like you said. Well, what that means is, we’re really heavily involved in the community. I’m like, I don’t know if you know, but Jeep has pretty much like a big like cult following. So does Mopar. Like these guys that buy the Jeep, they’re in these clubs and people that buy the Mopars, like the Dodge’s, they have like the Mopar Club in Nashville and things. And so what we do, we actually have like Jeep meets and have car shows at our dealership. And so we try to stay involved with the local community that way. Michael Cart: 12:36 Also just being known around the for good, excellent customer service around here and community involvement, which we just want to know people, you know, hey, they can trust us and you know, why they should do business with us is because you know, we’re involved in the community. We’re not just here to sell them a car. We’re here for them and in the long run. John Haggard: 12:55 Is there any question I did not ask you that, you know, you would just want people to know? Michael Cart: 13:02 Yeah, absolutely. We just started this program in August. It’s really big and we’re really excited about it. So basically what it is, the customer gets that at no cost to them, no charge to them. The dealership pays for it. It’s a lifetime power training warranty for as long as they own the vehicle. They’re also gonna get 72-hour investment protection program. They’re going to get a free loaner car whenever they come and a vacation checkup for two years and a 5% off parts and service. Also started in August whenever we started this program, you can upgrade to what’s called the VIP Platinum Advantage. Instead of getting emergency roadside assistance, like you’ll get an emergency processes for five years, you’ll get key five replacement for five years time. We’ll protect you for five years, 10% off service instead of 5% off service, which is actually can be huge when you start thinking about a big service building, you know 10% off compared to 5% off. And also a, you’ll get like a free concierge service. So if you live with like 15 miles, we’ll come pick up your car for oil changes and tire rotations and things like that. But something that we also offer in the business office, instead of doing like a power training warranty, you can upgrade to like a comprehensive extended service contracts so you can do just unlimited. Was it unlimited time up to a hundred thousand miles? Or, you can cover the comprehensive, not just engine and transmission, but we do offer the instant transmission at no cost to the customer, which is really good. John Haggard: 14:24 Thanks Michael. That’s Michael Cart, the Finance Manager and Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram. Join us again right here for other topics on the podcast throughout each month. Our goal is to show you the best ways to purchase, lease, service and maintain, accessorize, and sell your vehicle for the highest resale value possible when you’re ready to do it. And don’t forget the transcript of each podcast right here on the website so that you can easily refer to it for information at your fingertips. I’m your host John Haggard, and we will see you next time!

Lease or Buy - Chevrolet? Should you lease or buy when it comes to Chevrolet vehicles?  Or any vehicle for that matter. In recent years, leasing vs. buying has been on the rise.  And for lots of good reasons.  For instance, who doesn't like getting a new car every few years? Also, always having a newer car that's covered under a factory warranty offers a great feeling of protection.  And then there's the element of being able to afford a little nicer car for a little lower payment... the list of 'pros' to leasing versus buying goes on. However, there are cons to leasing versus buying.  Personally, I don't think the cons outweigh the pros... but I used to.  That's why I love sitting down with experts to discuss this very topic. In this iDriveSoCal Podcast, we get the lowdown on leasing versus buying from Lewis Cook, General Manager of Martin Chevrolet.  Click play below to hear the details.  (BTW - I think this report is a listen rather than a read... but consume it as you wish.  I also lease instead of buy! :0)) ***Transcription*** Recorded at Martin Chevrolet, Torrance, CA Lease Or Buy Chevrolet? Lewis: You ultimately are paying less interest, that's cool, for a lot of people - for everybody. On a lease, you don't pay the tax upfront. It's another huge part of the savings that you get from leasing. "...paying less interest... you don't pay tax up front... an option at the end of a lease to purchase the vehicle if you want." You have an option at the end of that lease to purchase the vehicle if you want. When you come and you're going to lease again, you find, if you are over mileage...  there's a good chance that the dealer can absorb some of that. Tom: Welcome back to iDriveSoCal, the podcast, all about mobility from the automotive capital of the United States, Southern California. Behind the Scenes on Leasing with Lewis Cook. Tom here and I am very excited to be sitting down and recording a podcast with my friend, Lewis Cook, General Manager here at Martin Chevrolet in the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance, California, right off of Hawthorne Boulevard. "When you come and you're going to lease again, you find, if you are over mileage...  there's a good chance that the dealer can absorb some of that." So I'm really, really excited to be working with Lewis and Martin Chevrolet for the proximity reason, but also because these guys are just awesome, and Lewis is a fantastic human being! Lewis: Your intros are getting better and better! Can we do that again? [Laughs] It just feels good. Don't worry, we got it recorded. .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .et_bloom_form_content { background-color: #2c94f2 !important; } .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .et_bloom_form_container .et_bloom_form_header { background-color: #ffffff !important; } .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .curve_edge .curve { fill: #ffffff} .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .et_bloom_form_content button { background-color: #81d742 !important; } .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .et_bloom_form_content .et_bloom_fields i { color: #81d742 !important; } .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .et_bloom_form_content .et_bloom_custom_field_radio i:before { background: #81d742 !important; } .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .et_bloom_border_solid { border-color: #1062ad !important } .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .et_bloom_form_content button { background-color: #81d742 !important; } .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .et_bloom_form_container h2, .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .et_bloom_form_container h2 span, .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .et_bloom_form_container h2 strong { font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, Lucida, sans-serif; }.et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .et_bloom_form_container p, .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .et_bloom_form_container p span, .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .et_bloom_form_container p strong, .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .et_bloom_form_container form input, .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_10 .et_bloom_form_container form button span { font-family: "O...

The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Welcome to ASCO's podcast series of cancer stories. I'm Dr. Daniel Hayes, a medical oncologist and a translational researcher at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center, and I'm also the past president of ASCO. Over the next several podcasts, I'm privileged to be your host for a series of interviews with the founders of our field. Over the last 40 years, I've been fortunate to have been trained, mentored, and inspired by many of these pioneers. It's my hope that through these conversations, we can all be equally inspired by gaining an appreciation of the courage, the vision, and the scientific understanding that led these men and women to establish the field of cancer care over the last 70 years. By understanding how we got to the present and what we now consider normal in oncology, we can also imagine and we can work together towards a better future where we offer patients better treatments, and we're also able to support them and their families during and after cancer treatment. Today, I'm fortunate to have my guest on this podcast as Dr. Saul Rosenberg, who is generally considered one of the pioneers of cancer chemotherapy, especially for lymphomas. Dr. Rosenberg is currently a professor emeritus at Stanford University, where he served as the director of the lymphoma program for several decades dating to the early 1960s. Dr. Rosenberg was raised in Cleveland, where he went to medical school at Case Western Reserve and followed that with an internship at University Hospitals in Cleveland. He then did his residency at Harvard's Peter Bent Brigham, now the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and completed a fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering in 1958. He then moved to the west coast, where he joined the radiation oncologist, Dr. Henry Kaplan, to transform the approach towards lymphoma from one that was principally radiation-based to using radiation and combination chemotherapy. Dr. Rosenberg has authored over 150 peer reviewed papers. He has edited several textbooks, in particular one of the classic textbooks on lymphoma. And his teaching and his mentoring skills are legendary among Stanford trainees and frankly as well as the rest of us. Dr. Rosenberg has won more awards than I can count, but most importantly to me is that he also served as president of ASCO in 1982 and 1983. Dr. Rosenberg, welcome to our program. Thank you. I'm glad to be there. One thing you did not mention [INAUDIBLE] was I spent six years in the radiation oncology laboratory while I was in medical school. That helped start me on my career very much. Actually, you beat me to the punch. I didn't mention it, but I was going to ask you if you had trained there. In fact, that segues. I know you grew up in Cleveland. Can you tell us just a bit more about your background? I know that you entered college at a pretty young age during World War II and then had to step out for a while. Can you give us the background and your circumstances and what led to all that? All that's true. I tried to get into medical school when I was 17 in order to not get into World War II. That wasn't successful at the medical school for various reasons. They thought I was too young and they'd [? hit ?] Jewish quota, so I dropped out for a while, went back to night school, and then reapplied when I was 22. They didn't accept me at that time because of my unusual activities, and so they assigned me to a research lab that I did not pick, which was the atomic energy research lab in Cleveland. It had the initial goal to teach radiation oncologists and to use radioisotopes, but that set my whole career toward radiation. And during the two years in the lab and then four years in medical school, I studied radiation oncology, radioisotopes, tumors, and I developed a great interest in the lymphomas at that time. So did you ever actually then do clinical radiation oncology, or this was all when you were in med school before you became faculty? It was all before my faculty, but I've always been a member of the radiotherapy department. I've taken courses in radiation research and physics, and I'm an honorary member of the radiation societies. That's terrific. And so that must have served you well when you worked with Dr. Kaplan. It was necessary because I presented papers at the radiation meetings, and he recognized me, and when I was searching for a job and the one worked out perfectly at Stanford. And that's how we connected. So can we go back for a moment? I'm very interested in these interviews in why, for example, you chose to go into medicine in the first place. What led to that? And more importantly, especially in the 1950s, when there was no real medical oncology, what got you into doing medical oncology? Well, medical oncology was all an accident because I went into this laboratory and studied radiation in tumors. Before I went to medical school, I didn't have any particular interest in that. When I was a youngster-- five, six, 10 years old-- no one in my family had ever gone to college. Nobody was a professional. But the most respected man in our community was our primary care physician. And since I was a good student, my family and my teachers all encouraged me to try to continue to go to college and be a doctor. And that's what I did. You sure did. [LAUGHTER] Actually, the other thing that was fascinating to me when I looked over your background was your days at Memorial. And so that must have overlapped for sure with Dr. Karnofsky. Can you give us some war stories of that time and what he was like? Well, again, there was a great mistake that turned out so well. There was no oncology program when I left the Brigham, and I wanted to study chemotherapy and medical oncology. The only fellowship was called medical neoplasia, which I applied to at Memorial where David Karnofsky was. I received that fellowship, and in July of 1957, I went to Dr. Karnofsky's office. And he said, "You didn't have a fellowship with me. You have one with Lloyd Craver." So in fact I spent that time not with Dr. Karnofsky but with Dr. Lloyd Craver, who turned out to be the leading lymphoma specialist in the world. And I learned more about lymphoma during that year than anyone could possibly teach me. I did, of course, know Dr. Karnofsky and during that fellowship period, I was acquainted with chemotherapy, nitrogen mustard, [INAUDIBLE] antagonists and [INAUDIBLE] antagonists. So it was a combination of some chemotherapy but mostly lymphoma research. And that set my whole career-- that mistake. I didn't have a fellowship with Karnofsky. [LAUGHTER] I actually always worry about someone I interview who knows exactly what they want to do. I usually say, you know, most of what I did was by luck. [LAUGHS] So sounds like you were too. Oh, absolutely. You know, with both of them, how are they putting things together for the treatment of one problem, though? Is it just let's pull stuff off the shelf, or was there actually some direction in terms of the science they understood at the time? What was the atmosphere at the time? Well, it was very minimal. We had only three lymphomas that we knew we diagnosed-- giant follicular lymphoma, small cell lymphoma, and reticulum cell sarcoma, and of course Hodgkin's disease. But the pathology was so crude that there were very little specific therapies or much difference among the approaches to them. We, of course, used radiation therapy for local treatment. And of interest was that with Dr. Craver, I would make rounds, and we would decide where to give the radiotherapy. We'd outline it on the patient with a red crayon, and we'd write a prescription for the radiotherapy and send them down to radiotherapy. Now that's a remarkable story, because nobody nowadays could even believe that internists could do that. It's unbelievable. Actually, I interviewed Dr. [? Hellman ?] for a previous one, and he gave a similar story that there were very few technicians, and you just kind of drew crayons on the patient and sent them down. [LAUGHS] It's a lot different than it is today. Yes, it is. That's amazing. But the interesting thing was there were no computers at that time, and Dr. Craver's experience with lymphoma-- there were 1,269 cases that I reviewed for him and wrote a wonderful paper, I thought. It was published in Medicine in 1961 on 1,269 cases of a lymphosarcoma. And that set my whole career and my experience that was far above most other people of my age and my training. And that's what really made my career was that study. Now, we had no computer, but we had a IBM cell sorter-- card sorter. And I completed 240 questions on each of 1,269 patients according to their charts, and the data I had was terrific. So you did that with shoe boxes full of punch cards? Oh, at least eight box-fuls because we had 1,269 cases-- three cards for each patient. But the card sorter could just spin out anything that I wanted to know and had so much data that there was no computer. And we had that-- was the first of the data systems that made it possible. And-- That's amazing. It is. And you did all the chart reviews yourself? I did all of it myself because I was disappointed I wasn't with Dr. Karnofsky. But I made the best I could. And it was actually a wonderful experience with Lloyd Craver. Now, were most of those patients treated with radiation or was chemotherapy part of the game yet? Well, we didn't have much chemotherapy at that time. We had steroids. We had radiation. We began to have some Leukeran and Cytoxin by the time I left there, but most of it was radiation and medical treatments with steroids. And very few patients had prolonged survivals, except for the follicular lymphomas which have such a good natural history. Yeah. You mentioned that the very few classifications of the lymphomas-- can you give us some insight into when-- I live in Ann Arbor, for example, so the Ann Arbor classification, of course, is near and dear to the hearts here. But how did that all begin? I know you were involved in that early on too. Well, I did very much. And the important work was done by three people-- Henry Rapoport, who at the time was in Chicago, Robert Lukes, who was in USC, and the German group. And they began to separate out the different forms of lymphoma. Henry Rapoport described the difference between follicular and small cell. And Lukes was careful about the Hodgkin's disease. So their classifications began to be used in the 1950s and in the early 1960s. And they make dramatic differences. Ron Dorfman was a student of Rapoport at the time, though he came from South Africa. And fortunately, he came to Stanford, and that gave us a really-- step ahead on good classification. Eventually, there was great debate about which the right classification it was. And we did a study for three years comparing six classifications around the world and which one gave the most data. And I was the principal investigator of that, and that led to a unusual classification called the National-- I can't even remember the name of it now. But it was a very unusual name, and nobody adopted it. Eventually this classification was dropped, and the new classification came out with immune markers and made a great difference. But that classification in pathology was the stimulus that led to the more modern treatments of that time. And that was one of the great advances that led to two important research studies-- one in Paris and one in Rye, New York, which were virtually entitled "The obstacles to the control of Hodgkin's disease." But the pathology classification systems facilitated that along with tremendous advances in radiotherapy. And I would assume almost-- what's called precision medicine now and targeted therapies-- those allowed you to begin to separate out patients who really didn't need systemic therapy and those who were more likely to benefit from the chemotherapy part of it. That must have really been an eye opener for you as you began to realize that. Well, chemotherapy began to become more successful, of course, for leukemias and lymphomas during that period of the 1960s-- the early '60s. But radiotherapy was the only successful treatment that could control disease for long periods of time until good chemotherapy and combination chemotherapy became available. But the radiotherapy advances really advanced the treatment of Hodgkin's disease and some of the lymphomas dramatically. So that actually, in some ways, segues to my next set of questions. How do you get from New York to Stanford? You said Dr. Kaplan had seen you present. Did he see you as joining him as another radiation oncologist, or did he see you as bringing in the therapy to complement what he did? Well, the truth is I was offered a job at Harvard by Farber, and he told me I could treat patients with cancer at the Brigham, but not lymphoma and leukemia. So then I went back to Cleveland, where they did offer me a job in radiotherapy. But the new chairman of medicine did not think that oncology was an appropriate field for medicine. So I had to call Henry Kaplan as a third choice. And he rapidly accepted me and insisted that I had a role in the department of medicine, which they gave me. So I had faculty appointments in both, which I still have today. Why did Farber not allow you to treat lymphoma? Because he thought it was his property. He didn't want it over in the other hospital. Ah ha. That's-- he had passed away before I got to what was then the Sidney Farber Cancer Institute, but I've heard stories like that. So when you got to Stanford then, how did you all start working at chemotherapy? I know that was before the time that the folks at the NCI had really reported the high response rates with combinations. You must have taken that along with you. Well, I knew that, but the treatments with more than one drug wasn't really popular at least until the early '60s. When I got to Stanford, they put me in the hematology department where I was supposed to do hematology, which I only had minimal training in. But I had a lab in radiation oncology, and I was in the clinic with Henry Kaplan, and we decided that we would treat Hodgkin's disease because of the development in radiotherapy. But I insisted that I would treat cancer in the department of medicine, and that was not popular anywhere in the country. And after they found out I couldn't do much red cell medicine, I started a program for cancer patients, and we needed a name for it. And I got together with four people, BJ Kennedy, Paul Carbone, and the fellow at Hopkins-- what's his name? I'll remember it. But with four of us decided that we would have cancer treatments in the departments of medicine, and we would call it oncology. And that's where the name began. And several of them at Hopkins and at Minnesota had separate departments of oncology-- eventually departments of cancer. So it was very unpopular in departments of medicine, and hematologists to try to prevent us from treating cancer in departments of medicine for at least 10 or 15 years. Gradually, we established what we were, and now it's one of the largest divisions of most departments of medicine. Yeah, I think most of our younger colleagues would be surprised by that. I came in in the early '80s and was struck by the fact that most of the major departments of medicine had given oncology away because they felt that the smart folks were working on in red cell stuff, as you pointed out, and the dumb folks could go get 5-FU. What they didn't realize was that there was a tsunami of academic interest and advances just down the pike. And it's interesting that you had to go make your own department just to be able to do that. What were the facilities you had at Stanford to give chemotherapy? Did you just have a nurse that followed you around and gave it, or did you actually have a fusion space or-- Nothing like that. I separated from the hematology clinic, and I would see patients in my own room. There was only one room. I found one fellow who had trained as an [? NCI ?] named Richard Shaw. And we began treating patients with breast cancer and ovarian cancer and children with various childhood malignancies and leukemia. And curiously, when we gave nitrogen mustard, we did it in the hallway of our clinic, and start an IV and mix up the nitrogen mustard and inject it rapidly. There were no infusions facilities whatsoever. It took many months and years to develop what you now think of as a cancer clinic. So you mixed up your own chemotherapy? We did, and I treated any kind of cancer, including children. And we began to see some responses. But the drugs began to come in in which we had a little bit of benefit, but before we could get combination chemotherapy, especially for the lymphomas and leukemias, we didn't have a lot of success. And how did you get Referrals As the department of medicine didn't like what you were doing, did they all come from the surgeons and the radiation oncologist or-- Yes. Where'd they come from? Mostly referrals, but also Stanford began to let it be known that we would see patients with cancer and make a diagnosis and refer them to the proper departments for treatment, and that we had medical treatment. So we attracted patients from the community. Stanford didn't have a big clinical program until it was transferred from San Francisco, but our cancer program became known. I must give great credit to Henry Kaplan, who was a tremendous power and leader of the field. And that attracted a lot of cancer patients to Stanford. And of course, you know that Henry Kaplan and his colleagues invented the linear accelerator, and that made a huge difference in the way we treat patients even today. So he and Ed Gintzon, who is a linear accelerator man, invented the linear accelerator which provided us with super voltage therapy of one million electron volts or more. And that completely revolutionized the treatment of cancer. Yeah, even when I broke in in the early '80s, that was not universally around, but you would see patients who basically were put in front of the machine. They turned it on for a couple seconds-- not at Harvard but outside the Harvard. I know nothing about radiation oncology, except I knew that wasn't right. [LAUGHS] And so we owe Dr. Kaplan for lots of reasons, really-- in great debt, but that probably is one the greatest step forwards. Can I ask another question. I've always been struck that you were one of the early proponents of randomized trials of lymphoma. That must have taken a lot of courage. Well, it was necessary for me because Henry Kaplan wanted to use very broad fields in high doses, and he thought that he was improving the cure and survival of patients. And I admired that and accepted it, but I thought that he was giving too much-- too wide a field and too high a dose for various reasons. So I insisted that if I were to see patients in radiotherapy that we would do trials that would compare two strengths of treatment primarily with radiotherapy-- one with very extended fields and high dose and to just the involved sites. And that's what my program was. And he wanted to extend the fields beyond where the disease was. And we did randomized studies beginning in 1962. They were one of the very first clinical trials that were done in cancer and certainly the first ones in lymphoma. And those clinical trials modified and went on for years. We gradually proved that both of us were correct. Neither of us had an advantage over one or the other, but we learned a great deal about the diseases and their natural history and how to modify the treatments. And of course, eventually chemotherapy came in, and we combined it. But it's a very long story the trials continue to today. We've treated over 3,000 patients with Hodgkin's disease on these trials. And we couldn't have been more successful. Yeah, I think and again that was just about the time that Dr. Fry and others were starting the cooperative groups that could do randomized trials in those days. And you couldn't have had many role models. And again, "courage" is the word I coming up with to get patients to agree to be in a trial where the treatment wasn't assigned until after they signed up. These days we take it for granted, but it was not then true. Well, it's true, but also Dr. Kaplan and I were very good clinicians, and patients trusted us. And they all accepted going on trial as long as both of us agreed that we didn't know the best thing to do. So that was the basis for a randomized trial. And our numbers of our patients were very small-- would never be accepted today as a trial. In fact, we could-- our statistics would not really show the advantage of one treatment over the other. But what our statistics showed was we had patients surviving with a relapse free period-- a plateau-- that went beyond 10 years. And that was unknown in Hodgkin's disease at the time. It became unknown in large cell lymphoma as well as at the time. The late Jim Holland who I loved and helped mentor me in some ways, but when I first joined [? TLGB ?] was sitting in the back of the room when I was presenting the proposal for randomized trials and yelled from the back of the room, "Hayes, if you need a statistician, it's not worth doing." I said, "With all due respect, Dr. Holland, I think it is-- we're doing. But we need a statistician for that." [LAUGHS] All right, so Dan, I had this same argument with J. Fry, right? He said that it was a scandal to have a control group. And I remember in public meetings, I would tell him only you and God know the difference between these two groups. [LAUGHTER] We argued for 50 years until he finally came to Stanford as a visiting professor, and we connected and admired each other's work tremendously. Well, justifiably. I want to ask another question. You've been involved with ASCO almost from the start, I think, and I noted you were present in the early 1980s. What made you run for president of ASCO? In those days, there wasn't much of an organization. It was 3,000 or 4,000 people. What did you see in ASCO that maybe others didn't at the time? Well, I was forced to join by Vince DeVita. He was a member a few years before I was, and he talked about what he thought was right. And I thought that I was right. But the society made a big difference about bringing us together. And then Al Owens, who was at Hopkins, became president, and he invited me to be on the board and then to be his program director. So that's how I got in. Both DeVita and Owens forced me to join them. Then I became a member of the group and committed to it because there was so much value in sharing our information and data. Well, I don't want to put you on the spot. This year we had 43,000 attendees at the meeting, I believe, in Chicago. Do you recall what year and where your first meeting was, and how many people were there? I can't recall. [LAUGHTER] I think when I was president, there were about 8,000 attendees at the meeting. And we all went from one city to the other-- San Diego, New Orleans, St. Louis, San Francisco. But it got out of hand when we got up to $25,000, and the only place we can meet was in Chicago, which was a great loss because Chicago is a great city, but it was great fun to go all over the country. Yeah, I think we'd agree with both of those, but Chicago handles this pretty well. So it's worked pretty well. We're starting to run out of time a little bit, and I want to ask you a big picture question. And you've hit some of these. So what really is your legacy? How would you like the world to remember what Saul Rosenberg has contributed to the field? Is it your science or the administration issues you set up so that people actually accepted our field or the teaching and mentoring? I mean, you've mentored, in my opinion, some of the great oncologists in the world. How do you think this will come out for you? There's only three things that I'm going to leave after me-- my children, my students, and my patients. And my advances for treatment were tremendous but are all now overturned and built upon. But my students, whether it be medical students or postdocs or my colleagues, were my greatest advance. I am so proud that they have succeeded so much. I felt that I have been a trunk of a tree, and every branch that comes off carries twigs and flowers and plants and exaggerate or emphasize-- multiply what I have done just because I started them off. So nothing has been more important to me than to be a good teacher. And my students all know that I'm a wonderful doctor. That's what they tell me. And to be a careful, caring physician, how to talk to patients, how to examine them, how to tell them good news and bad news-- the skill of being a medical oncologist, and actually to be a physician in general is such a joy. I mean, to have these people depend on us and believe in us the moment you walk in the room, if you're gentle and you know how to touch them and to talk to them-- this is such a joy. I can't think of any other word in being a physician but especially being a medical oncologist. It has been a joy. And are you still seeing patients? I saw several this week. I've cut way back. Yeah. I see patients every other Monday. I see mostly my old patients or recent Hodgkin's patients, but gradually fewer and fewer. But there's-- I have 20 patients, perhaps, I won't give up. None of them have lymphoma anymore, but they all have complications of treatment, and they will not let me retire. And 60 years ago, did you think you'd say that you have a bunch of patients who look like they're cured of lymphoma? Never. Yeah, it's something else. Well, Dr. Rosenberg, you've been a great role model for all of us in the field, and we very much appreciate what you've contributed. I have to say your final statement is very similar to what other people have said to me as well-- George Canellos and others-- about their greatest accomplishments are the people they trained, and those of us who you have trained take that very seriously. So thank you. It's a great honor to talk to you. I hope the new therapies-- immunotherapies-- are going to make a big difference. I think they have promised to do so. And sometimes I get to be cynical. I mean, I've been through about six waves of great enthusiasm in treating cancer, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, the old-time advances in radiotherapy, genetics. And gradually there's been improvements but not the great breakthroughs that I want to see. Maybe this new approach will make a difference. I hope so. Yeah, it looks like it. I said to a first year fellow last week that never in my lifetime could I think I'd say it looks like 20% of people with metastatic melanoma may be cured, and that looks like what's happening. That's pretty exciting, I think. How about 90%-- Yeah. --of Hodgkin's patients? Well, actually a lot of that you had already knocked off before I got in the field. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, and I thought this is going to happen again. And it didn't for quite some time. But I agree with you. I think things right now are really, really starting to happen. And we actually have just scratched the surface of the immunotherapy world. I think there are a bunch more checkpoints that are going to be discovered and therapies for them. So the toxicities are considerable, but as Dr. Fry always taught us, "Cure the cancer first, and we'll figure out how to take care of the toxicities later." And I think that's a pretty good strategy, actually. Thank you. I actually-- [INAUDIBLE] Yeah. OK, that's all. Thank you very much. I really enjoyed this. You know, I've told other people it's like if I hop in a cab with Saul Rosenberg, what would I ask him for the next 35 or 40 minutes on the way to the airport? So this is fun for me. All right. Thank you for asking me. For more original research, editorials, and review articles please visit us online at jco.org. This production is copyrighted to the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Thank you for listening.

We’ve all heard companies talk big about how they value diversity. But many still aren’t willing to quantify how they’re doing: who works there? Who’s getting hired and promoted? Are people being paid equitably? On today’s show, we talk about diversity, data, and how one engineer’s call for hard numbers shook things up. That engineer was Tracy Chou—a leading voice in tech industry diversity and inclusion conversations. She’s a wildly talented software engineer who believes in the importance of increasing transparency among tech companies, the need for tech to value a humanities education, and the pleasures of spending way too much time on Twitter. > As an engineer, I’m so used to having to have data for everything. But the lack of data on the workforce side just felt so hypocritical to me. It seemed like it wasn’t really a problem that we wanted to solve if we weren’t even looking at the data. > —**Tracy Chou,  Project Include founding advisor ** We talked with Tracy about: What the real picture of diversity in tech companies looks like and where the numbers are. Why it’s important for tech companies to get comfortable releasing data about their workforce, and why it’s critical to consider the intersectionality of diversity efforts. A nonprofit Tracy helped to found called Project Include, which shares best practices around implementing diversity and inclusion solutions. Plus, we talk about ch-ch-ch-changes and asking for help: Specifically, change at work—how we deal with it and how it can affect us emotionally and physically. And yup, we constantly have to remind ourselves that it’s ok to ask for help. The good news is, we’re helping each other do it more. Jenn even got to take a vacation complete with funnel cake, because she asked for help with childcare. Sponsors This episode of NYG is brought to you by: Shopify, a leading global commerce platform that’s building a world-class team to define the future of entrepreneurship. Visit shopify.com/careers for more. Harvest, makers of awesome software to help you track your time, manage your projects, and get paid. Try it free, then use code NOYOUGO to get 50% off your first paid month. Transcript [Ad spot] SWB Harvest makes awesome software for tracking time, planning projects, sending invoices, and generally helping me keep it all together at work. Or at least look like I have it all together—even if I’m actually still wearing sweatpants. I love how easy it is to use, whether I’m working solo or scaling up a larger team for a big project. You’ll love Harvest, too. Go to getharvest.com to try it free, and if you’re ready for a paid account, use code noyougo to get 50% off your first month. That’s getharvest.com, code noyougo. [intro music plays for 12 seconds] Jenn Lukas Hey friends, welcome to No, You Go, the show about being ambitious and sticking together. I’m Jenn Lukas. Katel LeDû I’m Katel LeDû. SWB And I’m Sara Wachter-Boettcher. And today we are talking to Tracy Chou, who is an entrepreneur and an engineer whose push for tech companies to start revealing employee diversity data back in 2013 kickstarted a lot of huge changes in Silicon Valley, and put her on the cover of The Atlantic and Wired and a whole bunch of other stuff. It also led her to become a founding member of Project Include, which is a non-profit that is on a mission to accelerate diversity and inclusion in the tech industry. So we chat with Tracy about how she became a diversity advocate, how that’s changed her career and what she’s learned along the way. But before we do that, I just want to kind of check in with everyone. So, how’s life? JL Life’s been a little wild this week. We kicked off some really big team changes at work. You know, some small changes, some big changes, but some people’s day to days got pretty changed up. And of course, seating changes. KL Oh gosh, that can be a big doozy. How’s it going? JL [sighs] Well, I can say this. People really just don’t care for change. [All three laugh] SWB [still laughing] No! Not at all. JL You know, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about like why do people hate change so much? SWB Because we all have habits and comforts and then you take them away and it’s very hard because inside we’re all just delicate little flowers. [Katel laughs] SWB Seriously! We are! KL Yeah! SWB We are! It’s hard! KL You get used to something and you’re like ‘wait, now everything’s changing and how am I going to adapt and how am I going to deal with this.’ And I think yeah, it just, it feels like it— it can feel overwhelming and especially when it has to do with sort of changing folks that you’re working with or places you’re sitting. Like I think physical changes can impact you a lot. SWB And maybe also the thing with physical change like where you’re sitting is that nobody really realizes that it’s impacting them so much, right? People will underestimate how much of an impact that can have and so it’s the kind of change that can really affect your day to day, but that nobody’s kind of taking stock of and and it’s sort of assumed that that will just be fine. And I think that those changes are hard, right? The ones that we don’t invest enough time in planning for and understanding that there is an emotional component to it. The other thing I think about when it comes to change is that oftentimes people will know that the company needs to change and they’ll complain about the way it’s organized and it’s so hard to get anything done and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And yet when you try to enact changes, it’s really difficult to get people on board. And I think part of that is also like change that people are choosing for themselves versus change that is being done to them. And the reality is, nobody likes to feel like there is something being done to them and so that’s one of the biggest things I always think about is how do you make this something that people feel a little bit included in or consulted on? Or at least how can you put it into terms that will help them see it as something that is going to help them in their day to day or take away some of the pain that they were experiencing in terms of workflow or whatever. And of course, that’s not always invested in and it’s also not always true! Like for some people it’s it’s not actually solving the personal problems they had even if it’s solving company problems. And then it’s like okay, how do you get people on board and sort of get them through that hard part of of shifting gears? JL One of the things we do with team changes that I think is really good is re-establish team norms. So sit down with everyone and everyone sort of discusses just like, what are the routines and what are the beliefs and the things that are important to people as a team. And I think that can really be helpful with new teammates to be like ‘here are things that are important to me, what are things that are important to you, and what’s it going to be like to live together at work?’ KL Yeah. SWB Do you have any sort of particular structure for doing something like that? JL We have the scrum masters run that and sort of they have a questionnaire list that brings stuff up. So, people eating lunch at their desks or how you use the shared space or the tables. So we—like I said, we switched the teams so we had to discuss ‘hey, can we still use this table to watch Jeopardy at lunch?’ [All three laugh] KL Very important! JL [laughing] Yeah! SWB Yeah, bullet point number one: Jeopardy! JL Right? But I mean also things like how you point stories. So pointing stories is basically a level of effort of how much an effort will take to get some sort of feature work done or something at work. We do daily stand ups at work where people tell you what your status are at meetings. You know, what time is that? Or are you doing them over Slack or like virtual stand ups? I think it can also be things like ‘here’s how I receive feedback best’ or ‘here’s how I think we should handle reviews of other people’s work.’ [5:18] SWB Yeah, I mean there’re so many questions that come up when there’s any kind of change like that. Since I don’t work in a company—but the kind of consulting I do with companies is always about change because invariably they are coming to me because they realize that their content or their user experience isn’t working as they want it to and the reason that it’s not working is always rooted in their not being able to make it work as a company. The way that they’re organized, the way they do things, who’s in charge of what. So, I have to talk to people about how their jobs are going to change and how things are going to be different. And I’m a big fan of having people practice some of those skills. So if it’s like okay, we are going to do a different kind of writing process where instead of—you know—you produce this content over here in this department and then you ship it out the door to this other department, there’s going to be a collaborative process. Well then, okay, we should practice that. And so we’ll do that in a workshop setting where we’ll pair people up and we’ll actually practice—how do we work on these things together, how do we share drafts and get feedback from each other? And I think that those kinds of low stakes practice sessions—because you’re not doing your real job, you’re just kind of practicing the new thing in a short period of time—I think that that can help people feel more comfortable with talking to people they aren’t used to talking with. JL Yeah and I mean I also think that it lets you feel more in control, and sometimes if you embrace that, if you know change is coming, you can do more exercises like that. And sort of prepare and be ready for this. So if you are expecting change or just knowing it can happen or knowing specifics, you can just be better ready I think to deal with it. KL I love thinking about kind of how a different perspective or sort of embracing a different kind of approach to the change can kind of help you through it. It makes me think of when I was at National Geographic, we would go through organization changes from time to time, but at a certain point, we actually went through a really big physical change where we went from everyone was in cubicles and not just cubes that were like low sort of where you can see everyone. It was like six feet tall and offices and everyone went to cubes that were like four feet high. So, everybody could see everybody—including managers, it was all sorts of like all different levels, and people were really freaked out. And one thing that we realized immediately was going from sort of a perceived sense of privacy to not having any, meant that we kind of had to think about the workplace etiquette a little differently and just no one had thought about that. Like no one. It wasn’t—you know—a matter of management doing something wrong or folks not thinking about it, it just was like ‘oh, wait we have to work together a little bit differently.’ And something I’ve actually seen work really well is at a co-working space I go to here in Philly. [Laughs] Someone made these little coasters that were like red light, green light. So basically you put your little green circle up if you were ready to chat to people or didn’t mind having people coming up to your desk, or you put the red one up if you were like ‘I’m going to be heads down and working on something.’ So—I just think this idea of kind of looking at things a little differently too can help. JL It’s like Fogo de Chão, [Katel laughs] the Brazilian steakhouse where green means bring me more meat and red means no I’ve had enough. KL [Laughing] Exactly. JL Yeah I mean I really like that because we used to say the universal sign was headphones, but I think we all know that doesn’t work. I was reading a bit on Harvard Business Review about this. They had some interesting things about finding humor in the situation, talk about problems more than feelings, don’t stress out about stressing out, focus on your values more than your fears—this idea that remembering that you’re you no matter what the change is can really help you. The change doesn’t have to define who you are. But something else I really liked was this like ‘don’t expect stability,’ where they talk about this 70’s research that was done where they studied two groups of managers and one group thrived and the other didn’t. And they said—you know—the adaptive leaders chose to view all changes as an expected part of the human experience, rather than as a tragic anomaly that victimizes unlucky people. KL Yeah! JL And then the struggling leaders were ones who were consumed by thoughts of quote on quote the good, old days. And they spent their energy trying to figure out why their luck had suddenly turned sour—because they kept looking back to something that wasn’t there anymore. SWB That’s so interesting too because that just reminds me so much of politics, right? You have so many people who are talking about the good, old days. And you’re like ‘wait, when were the good, old days and for whom exactly?’ And I think it’s true at work too where it’s like when people get obsessed with the good, old days, those are probably also mythical. Right? KL Yeah.. SWB They may have been good for some people in the organization but it’s undoubtedly that they weren’t working for other people. JL And the other thing that you might like if you dig in, you might be like ‘okay, well this part was good, but this part wasn’t’ and you can think about how to get that good part back. So if what you missed was that you sat with someone or you worked with someone really closely that you didn’t—you know—make sure you’re setting up time for lunch with them or maybe you set up pairing sessions where you still work together. But you know, trying to figure out what it is that you did like and then what are things you can apply moving on? What are the things that you’re excited about now? And what are the things maybe that you didn’t really like then? And maybe you didn’t get a chance to work on these exciting things or work with this person and now you do get to work with this new person or you do get to work on this new project. Or maybe this new seat allowed you to clear off the desk that you’ve been meaning to do. [Laughs] It’s funny, I was actually like—in the seating change I ended up not moving seats and I’m like ‘ugh, but I’ve got all these boxes I’ve got to bring down.’ [All laugh] KL [Laughing] You’re like ‘no, I need a move to help me reorganize.’ JL *[laughs] *Yeah, so just—like you’re saying. Trying to figure out really what are the positives moving forward? If there are things you will miss from those days, how do you keep them up and try to make the best going forward, as much as you can. I mean, It’s always hard and I don’t want to make it ever sound like that’s easy, but I think we can all do it. [11:26] [Music fades in, plays alone for five seconds, fades out] Time Trivia SWB So we’ve been talking a lot about change and our interviewee today definitely talks a lot about change in the tech industry as well so I’d like to get to that interview, but before we do, we have one last little segment. It is brand new, it is called Time Trivia. Because we talk about time on this show all the time! We need more time, we try to balance the time we have, we rant about how we are sometimes feeling a little bit unbalanced. And so our friends at Harvest wanted to see if we could stump each other when it comes to time. So let’s see. Katel, you’re up today and our theme is women authors. Are you ready? KL Oh gosh, let’s do it. JL Okay, Katel. Here is your first question. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter manuscript was rejected twelve times before it sold for an advance of only £1,500. Now she’s sold more than four hundred million copies. How long did it take her to write that manuscript? A) 5,000 hours, B) 15,000 hours, or C) 50,000 hours. KL Oh my gosh, this is already a lot of numbers. I’m going to say C) 50,000 hours. JL Katel— that is correct! KL [Gasps] Yayy! JL It took her six years to write Harry Potter. KL That’s a lot of hours! SWB We even tried to stump you with the twelve times £1,500, 400 million copies—you were unstumpable. Question two. More math, sorry. [Katel laughs] Emily Brontë published Wuthering Heights under the pseudonym Ellis Bell in 1847. If she’d been paid a freelance rate of $50 an hour – pretty good in 1847—how much would she have earned for her wild, passionate tale of Katherine and Heathcliff’s love? KL Ugh, I love this book. SWB Is it A) $740,000, B) $60,000, or C) $330,000? KL Ohhh my gosh, I’m going to go with B) $60,000 even though I feel like it should be more. SWB It is way more. It is actually $330,000 because it took her nine months to write that book, which is still a real short time considering how great that book is, ugh. KL Yeah, it is! I’m glad it was more than $60k. JL Okay, Katel, last question. Stephanie Myer’s classic tale of vampire love and lust—yes, Twilight—[laughs] has become a five-film series. If Stephanie had been billing her time to clients instead, how many 15 minute increments would she have billed? A) 870, B) 8,700, or C) 87,000? KL Ooh. 8,700? JL Katel, you know your 15 minute increments. That is correct! B) 8,700. SWB Two out of three, not bad. I think that’s a winning score! So, thank you so much to Harvest for sponsoring our time trivia today and for supporting women authors, which they do, and women podcasters. So check them out at getharvest.com. [Music fades in, plays alone for five seconds, fades out] [14:34] Interview: Tracy Chou SWB Tracy Chou is a wildly talented software engineer, who has also become a leading voice in tech industry diversity and inclusion conversations. She has been an engineer at Quora and Pinterest, an advisor to the US Digital Service and is one of the cofounders of an organization I am personally super fond of and that’s Project Include. She was named on Forbes’ 30 under 30 tech list in 2014 and she has been profiled in everything from Vogue to Mother Jones. So I am extremely excited to welcome Tracy to the show today. Tracy, thank you so much for being here. So, you went to Stanford, you interned at Facebook, you were one of the first engineers at Quora and one of the first engineers at Pinterest. That is kind of like a perfect Silicon Valley pedigree to a lot of people. Except, you’ve also written about feeling out of place during a lot of that time and not necessarily feeling like the industry was designed for you. And I’m wondering if we can start there—what was it like in the beginning of your career? And what was exciting about it and maybe what was not so great about it? Tracy Chou Yeah, so I grew up in the Bay Area surrounded by tech and I think that made it very easy for me to naturally fall into the tech industry. When I started working in tech I think I just accepted things for the way they were, including the lack of gender diversity, racial diversity. I honestly didn’t notice or think that things should be different. But there definitely were experiences I had when I started working that felt off, but I didn’t know how to articulate or pinpoint them. I tended to blame myself or think that there was something wrong with me when I had a lot of coworkers hitting on me all the time, for example when I was interning. And—you know—when I started working and felt like I might be treated differently, I assumed that it was because I wasn’t as qualified or there was something about the the way that I was approaching my work that was inferior and therefore caused people to treat me differently. So it took a while for me to put all the pieces together, and so I was just talking to a lot of other people in industry, other female engineers. One of my early conversations that really started to make me aware of these sorts of issues systemically, was with Tristan Walker who is an African American founder. And he had reached out to say that he had seen some of my writing about being female in engineering and wanted to share that he had similar experiences even though he wasn’t technical and he wasn’t a woman. Being the only black person in the room oftentimes felt as alienating and he could really identify with a lot of the things that I was saying. And that helped me to see how pervasive the sort of experience of marginalization is. Even though the tech industry is one that tries to pride itself on being so innovative and designing the future, being this engine of progress, there are so many ways in which it is still very backwards. SWB What year was that? That was like 2010,11,12 in there that you were really kind of getting going in your career and having those experiences? TC Yeah, the first sort of Silicon Valley tech internship I had was in 2007, but I started working full time in 2010. SWB So in 2013, you wrote this post on Medium that got kind of a lot of attention, where you were calling out the lack of data about women who are working in tech—and maybe specifically working in engineering, and the lack of success metrics attached to company’s diversity efforts. So if companies maybe had diversity efforts, they didn’t necessarily have any sense of whether they were working or not. And so that post kind of blew up and a lot of companies started sharing their numbers in a GitHub repo. And for listeners who aren’t familiar with GitHub repos, it’s just a site where you can work collaboratively usually on software projects, but you can also do things like collaboratively share data. And I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about how that happened. First up, what made you sit down and write that blog post and did it feel risky when you did it? TC I had been working in the industry for a few years at that point and had gotten to know a number of the female engineers at other companies. And it started to be this thing that I would keep track of in the back of my head like which startups, which companies had which female engineers. Whenever I went into rooms I would automatically start counting, so it was just something that I was keeping tabs on personally. At the same time, I was looking at diversity at Pinterest and I wanted to make recommendations to the team about what we should do to be more diverse and inclusive. Facebook and Google were getting a lot of really good press around their parental leave policies, for example, and lots of companies were talking about how they were sending lots of people to the Grace Hopper conference, which is this big annual conference of women in computing. But I found it very hard to justify recommending any of those things to Pinterest because there were no success metrics. So these kind of thoughts were swirling around in my head when I went to Grace Hopper that year—this was October 2013—and I was at a breakfast where Sheryl Sandberg was speaking in front of the room and she made a comment about how the numbers of women in tech were dropping precipitously. Which, I didn’t disagree with the sentiment of, but it made me wonder what numbers she was talking about, because to my knowledge there were no numbers really out there. And so when I got home with all these thoughts rolling around my head, I ended up writing this post around diversity data. I was also reflecting on how the way we treated workforce issues was so different from the way we treated product development. As an engineer, I’m so used to having to have data for everything. We’re pretty religious about tracking all this data on our users [laughs] and understanding their behavior and that’s the way that we approach problem solving in product development. But the lack of data on the workforce side just felt so hypocritical to me. It seemed like it wasn’t really a problem that we wanted to solve if we weren’t even looking at the data. And of course I understood all the reasons why companies were skittish about even tracking the data because it would also mean that they would start to acknowledge the problem and have to solve it. But when I wrote the post, I wasn’t expecting much of a response. I didn’t think that it would be something that many people would even read, much less act on. I would also add though that in hindsight it seems like this post became big immediately and started this whole movement, but it did take some time as well. It was more of a slow, snowball effect. And so there were smaller companies that contributed their data first and the bigger companies took a little bit more time to process and work through what they wanted to do before they all started releasing their reports as well. [21:05] SWB When I look back on it, it kind of reminds me of in some ways like the moment that happened last year when Susan Fowler published her Uber blog post where there was this moment—the table had already been set for this conversation and it was just it pushed it over the edge or something. And I’m not sure if it’s exactly the same by any means, but it did really feel like a moment was happening and I’m curious, why do you think it ended up really snowballing? What was it about that moment that you think caught on? TC I think there was general appetite to do something about diversity and inclusion. More people were acknowledging that it was a problem. And I think the way that I framed it, which was, “let’s just start sharing some data,” made the problem seem a little bit more tractable. At least there was a first step that people could take. There was one thing that an individual contributor, for example, could do. So if you’re working at a small startup, you can look around the room and see how many engineers and how many female engineers and count that up and submit that data into the repository. And it felt easy, actionable, and also clear that this would contribute to a broader cause. I think I had a little bit more credibility as an engineer working at a company that a lot of people knew. And I think that piece is still important, I could speak from the perspective of being on the inside. And I think also I just got lucky. In a lot of ways I think of this project as a startup where startups have the markets that they’re going after, the products they’re trying to build. Sometimes they’re too early and the market isn’t ready for them, sometimes the product isn’t just quite right yet for people to want to engage with it. A lot of things have to come together all at once and luck, timing, all of that plays in. And somehow this Medium post in a row and the GitHub repository that I set up just happened to be just right at that time to capitalize on this increasing intent from people in the community to do something. And I think I was the right person at the right time to be pushing on that message. SWB If you’re an engineer or anybody who uses GitHub already, it’s also like, it feels sort of a natural place or a more comfortable place. TC Yeah, I think the GitHub angle was also interesting because it spoke more to engineers and people who write code, as opposed to HR. So it was getting engineers submitting their data through pull requests, and those people were less encumbered by thinking through, what are the legal ramifications and what are the HR risks here. They’re just thinking, like, this is the team that I work on, I want to report the data on the team. KL This is so fascinating to me too because in that post in 2013 you also focused really narrowly on defining the technical roles. You wanted companies to talk about actual engineers—not every other role, not business development or whatever. Sort of as a way of saying companies shouldn’t pad their numbers about the women they hire if women aren’t in those roles. And I see that point. I’m also curious if that perspective has shifted over the past few years or changed at all? TC  One of the reasons why I wanted to be really specific about just tracking women in engineering is that for something that was crowdsourced, it had to be as simple as possible to contribute that data. The more you ask from people, the more drop off you get in that flow. So I wanted to make it super simple. But the other point about just looking at engineering versus the rest of it was that I did want to get away from that sort of padding of the numbers. And in the tech industry engineers are very much valued because they are the ones—we are the ones—building the products that are being sold, very close to the core value of the companies. So there’s this idea of looking at where the prestige is and how much inclusion you have there. Now that there’s more data coming out, we can see that even if you have a reasonable amount of representation across the companies, usually they’re lower ranked, few of those people are in decision-making roles. One interesting data point that I would love to see that is very hard to get is diversity on the cap table, and so that’s looking at ownership of the company—like who owns the shares. And I would suspect that ownership in these different tech companies skews very heavily white and male, because founders will have a lot of stock, early employees will have much more because the stock grants are risk-adjusted so people who are joining early will get much more stock, investors get stock, executives get a lot of stock. So even if your company has a lot of women, but they’re all in the lower-ranked, non-technical roles, the value that they get out of the company doing well is much less. So I really wanted to dig in on engineering within tech because that is so close to the core of Silicon Valley. [26:05] SWB One thing I’d love to ask about—we talked with Nicole Sanchez of Vaya Consulting back in June and her company focuses on diversity and inclusion in tech and consults with a lot of tech companies. And one of the things she said to us was that she flat out does not love the way that the numbers are being reported by tech companies right now, that there’s still a lot of gaming of the system because so much of the numbers is just about percentage of people in full and percentage of new hires, right? And that there’s not a lot of information about things like retention of those employees and seniority of those employees and, as you mentioned, who is actually getting a cut of these companies, right? Like who’s really taking home money? And so it sounds like—and I’m curious about your thoughts on this—but it sounds like the way that you were initially looking at some of these metrics was sort of really, really important at the time, but maybe isn’t quite enough to answer the questions that we have about how that industry is doing and to answer the questions that we have about whether things are getting better. TC Absolutely. I think we need much more comprehensive metrics and there is certainly gamification of the current metrics that get released. I think getting people even into the flow of releasing any data was a pretty big step. And I think it’s good to keep pushing on companies to release better data. So one obvious thing is intersectionality—instead of just putting gender on one side, race on one side, looking at those intersectional cuts and just see is it just white men and white women getting promoted? How does it look for women of color? Those sorts of questions can’t be answered if all the data is being split out. I’ve been relatively heartened by how much companies have been willing to release—enough that we can look at their data and see that in the last few years even if we’ve made some progress on gender diversity, we’ve had backsliding on racial diversity, which is not a good statement on the industry, but at least we have that data that we can even point that out and see that some of these diversity efforts aren’t uniformly benefitting different people and, in fact, are causing some harm to different groups. SWB  So another thing I was really hoping to dig into that I think you kind of touched on a little bit when you were kind of talking about technical versus non-technical roles, is I’m also curious how you feel about who’s considered technical in Silicon Valley and sort of the valuing of engineers when you are also kind of thinking about sort of the appreciation for what it takes to build tech products? I was reading an article you wrote—I think last year—about realizing that it’s not really just about engineering, and realizing the value of learning things like understanding people and human behavior and communication skills and—you know—liberal arts and humanities. And the stuff that you hadn’t necessarily taken that seriously when you were in college as something that was important for ensuring that the things we’re making aren’t laced with bias or harmful to people, and being able to think through sort of the impact of our work. And so I’m curious how you think about those things together. Like okay—we value technical roles a lot and so it’s important to look at who are in the roles that we value the most. But are there also issues around the kinds of roles that are valued or the kinds of roles that even exist? And how do we sort of make sense of that? [30:25] TC Yeah, absolutely. I think our whole way of approaching technology building right now is pretty flawed. I think for a long time we’ve unquestioningly assumed that technology is always progress. So whatever we do in the software realm will be positive. And we’re seeing very clearly now that that’s not the case. It’s very easy for the software products that we’re building to be used for harm or used in ways that we didn’t anticipate. And for the people who are building these products, whether it’s the engineers running the code or everyone else involved, we do need to think more holistically and broadly and contextualize our work in society and understand what the impacts of technology are before we can assume that we’re doing good. Some people have drawn analogies after the election cycles in the last couple of years to the sorts of ethics considerations that other domains have had—so, chemical engineering or in physics. When the people in those fields realized that their work could be used to create weapons, they had to think pretty hard about doing science or doing this kind of research and I think the people in the tech industry and in software right now really need to have that same sort of introspection and deep questioning. For a long time in the tech industry, we’ve really downplayed the value of a humanities education and and I think that is problematic. You see that reflected in compensation. For example, who gets these big payouts, who gets really big salaries. It’s tricky because also the sorts of value of someone who can bring in terms of the ethical reasoning and product guidance, that work is not as easy to value, put a dollar amount on. It’s a little bit easier to look at what an engineer is producing or what a designer is producing and say this is the value of their work and it ties very directly to the final output and I think if the whole system is fundamentally shifted around, we can start to see the value that non-technical folks are bringing, then hopefully that is reflected in the compensation and payouts as well. At the same time, you have this very classic supply and demand type issues around sorts of talent that you need, so the engineering salaries will be high for a while because engineering is very obviously needed and there aren’t enough engineers to fill all the roles. Even if we were to recognize the value of the non technical work that needs to be done, if there is such a mismatch in supply and demand on the technical side, the salaries will still be higher there. So there’s a lot of things to address systemically, but I think one starting point even just within the companies that we’re looking at is trying to shift the culture to acknowledge the different viewpoints that different people from different educational backgrounds and different training can bring. SWB I think one of the things that’s also interesting and maybe compounds all of this, is the way that a lot of the kinds of roles that are more based in humanities or social sciences or that would benefit from that kind of background, they are tending to have a lot more representation of women in them, and so then you kind of have this interesting cross section of the skills are in less demand. Also we’re used to paying women less, or we’re used to putting women into sort of more caring roles versus rational roles, and so it’s hard to tease out all of those different issues that intertwine and result in gendering of who’s in what kinds of roles, and devaluing of some roles, and then also to have the conversation about well, “why is it that so many women are in these kinds of roles and not in these other kinds of roles?” And to be able to talk about all those things at the same time I think is really hard for a lot of people. It takes a lot of investment in the discussion to be able to pick apart things with that level of nuance, and I think a lot of the time organizations aren’t there yet. TC Yeah, I completely agree. [Laughs] There has been some research into when professions become more lucrative and prestigious how they—how the men tend to crowd the women out. So, there used to be more women in software engineering and they were kind of pushed out. So the 37% of CS degrees in 1984 went to women and it’s been declining, the percentage has been declining since then. But in other industries as well, one that I found kind of interesting was beer making used to be mostly women and then men found out that beer making was cool and it became all male brewmasters. 
Even in things like cooking, when men reach the top and become these top chefs, it’s very prestigious. Even though women still do most of the cooking around the world, it’s just not viewed as as prestigious or lucrative for them. So as you were saying, there’s all these interesting dynamics at play and it’s really hard to tease out specific effects. SWB Yeah totally—I think about some of the conversations I’ve had with folks when startups starting hiring people to do quote growth hacking and you’re like ‘wait a second—isn’t that—wait, aren’t they—isn’t that marketing? I think they’re doing marketing!’ [Laughter] But marketing was always more women in the field and growth hacking was this very hardcore bro kind of role. If anybody out there is a quote growth hacker as their title, I’m sorry if I’m making fun of your profession. But it is, it’s one of these made up titles that’s almost—I think—masculinized a lot of skill sets that were traditionally perceived as being more feminine. And then low and behold, those people are being paid a lot more money. TC I think you also see this reflected in the maker movement—where it’s been rebranded as this very male type of thing where you’re making things. But if you actually look at what is being done—creating things from the raw materials—that’s stuff that a lot of women have been doing in different domains, but it had to get rebranded for men to be super into it and for it to become prestigious. SWB Totally, like what’s not being a maker about being a knitter? TC Yeah! SWB You’re literally making things out of thread, right? [Laughs] TC Yep. SWB I’m amazed that we have not gotten to this yet because it’s so important, I want to talk about it. Okay, we have not talked about Project Include. So, you started doing all of this work to share this data that you were gathering and to talk about this issue. Can you tell us a little bit about how that grew into founding Project Include? TC Project Include was eight of us women in tech getting together a couple of years ago. So, there was a lot of discussion in the broader sphere about the problems and everything that was going wrong, but not nearly enough about solutions. And for the people that wanted to do the right thing, they still didn’t know what to do. So, we thought that the highest leverage thing we could do was write down our recommendations and resource—what we knew to be best practice around implementing diversity and inclusion. Our initial launch was just a website with a lot of recommendations—everything from defining culture, to implementing culture, to doing training, hiring, resolving conflicts, measuring progress, and also a framework to think about all those things, so it’s not just like pick and choose some of these tactics and apply them to your org and then you’ll be fine, but thinking through more holistically how to approach diversity and inclusion truly inclusively so it’s not just gender or just race or just one facet of diversity and then being very intentional about measuring progress. So, there was a bunch of these recommendations we wrote down. The feedback we got from the community was really positive and people wanted us to do more with it, which is how we ended up incorporating as a non profit and adding Startup Include as a program where we actually work with cohorts of companies on implementing these recommendations. But our hope is really to drive these solutions forward and we’re focused on startups for now. We think that the highest leverage opportunity is with startups before they become too big and are hard to steer—try to get those good practices and processes in early and hopefully some of the startups that are thinking about D&I early will end up becoming the big companies of tomorrow and they’ll already have baked in these best practices. We also acknowledge that what we think to be best practice now may change and so we really do want to build more of a community around these issues and solutions and kind of in the same way that open source software works where you put stuff out there, everyone can benefit from it. As they’re using it, they may think of ways to extend it or improve on it and they’re contributing that back to the community—we want that sort of a community around diversity and inclusion. SWB Yeah, that’s really interesting and I think it’s one thing to identify problems, it’s one thing to try to address them, but we clearly don’t really know how to fix this yet. So, I’m curious is there anything that you’ve found as you’ve been advising Project Include and sort of seeing it grow and adapt—is there anything that you’ve seen out there that you’ve really feel like you’ve been able to learn from and that’s helped to shape where you’re making recommendations now? [39:54] TC The biggest takeaways still are that you need metrics to understand where the opportunities are and also where things are going well. So we recommend that all companies do look at their data. It’s cool to see so many people trying out different things. I think it will take some amount of time before we learn which things really work in a long term sustainable way, but definitely excited to see lots of people experimenting with D&I now. SWB So Project Include, that was founded in 2016, right? You’ve got a couple of years of kind of starting to shape the organization and provide more than just your manifesto, but also the actual community and practices and working with these companies. So I’m excited to see what else comes out of that. TC Yeah, one thing we’ve been thinking a lot more about is how to achieve leverage impact across the industry and some of that is going to be working with other organizations. Earlier this year, a couple of us launched this project called Moving Forward to get venture capital firms to first of all, have anti-harassment policies and then publish them, make them available to founders and then also have points of contact as accountability. And so this came out of some of the #metoo harassment stuff that came out last year, where what we saw was that in that relationship between founders who were trying to raise money and venture capitalists that control this money, there is this gray zone of interaction where they’re not necessarily in a professional relationship yet. As in cases where there is a power imbalance, sometimes there are abuses of that power. So our idea was to push venture capital firms to be very explicit about what’s acceptable behavior between people that work at the firm and potential founders that they might want to be investing in or other people in the community. And so we launched Moving Forward, now have over one hundred firms that have their anti-harassment policies out there and the points of contact. This is something where I worked on that separate to Project Include, but we ended up realizing that there was a good opportunity for collaboration between Project Include and Moving Forward so I could serve as a little bit of that bridge. SWB That’s so cool, it’s sounds like you just have your hands into so many different parts of this problem and like trying to sort of untie the knot from lots of different angles, which I really love. TC Yeah, I mean there’s a lot to be done here—so lots of opportunity. KL That is so true. I feel like we’ve been talking a lot about your work as a diversity advocate and I just want to go back to you for a minute, because I saw you write a while ago that you don’t want to just work on diversity issues because you love to code and you like your life a lot more with that in it. How do you balance those things and stay excited about both? TC I still identify as a software engineer and someone that likes to build products and build things. Sometimes that means building teams and companies, but the diversity and inclusion piece will, I think, always be a part of my life and that conversation is still just so prominent in the industry, it’s hard to not take part of it. So that always be a part of what I do, but in my more full time capacity, I do like to be thinking just about technology, how powerful it is and how it can be used to hopefully impact the world for better. KL I’m also curious—you know—if the move from San Francisco to New York has had any impact? TC When so many things change all at once, it’s hard to say. I do think being in New York has helped to broaden my perspectives quite a bit. I’m not surrounded by tech people all the time and I like being around people who don’t think about the same things I do all the time and just to be surrounded by this greater diversity of people. SWB We talk a lot about place on the show because I feel like so many conversations in design or tech or publishing or whatever can be so limited to such narrow places, so I’m always interested in—you know—kinds of perspectives that people can bring in. So we are just about out of time and before we go, I wanted to say: Tracy, I have been personally inspired by your work for a long time and I know I’m not the only one. So I want to thank you for being on the show and ask you, is there anywhere that our listeners can better keep up with everything that you’re up to? TC The best place to keep up with me is Twitter, so I’m @triketora on Twitter. It’s t-r-i-k-e-t-o-r-a. I tweet a lot, so I also will not be offended if you follow and then unfollow because there’s too much going on, but that’s the best place to keep up with me. SWB  Well I know that a lot of our listeners will definitely want to hear everything you have to say, even if you tweet all day. Thank you so much for being on the show. TC Ahh, thank you for having me! [music fades in, plays alone for five seconds, fades out] Career CHAT KL Hey y’all, time to talk careers with our friends at Shopify. This week we’ve got a tip on what to look for in a company from Shannon Gallagher, a product manager on the merchant analytics team. SG: Being a lifelong learner is super important to me. I need to constantly grow and push my boundaries. The nice thing is, that’s one of Shopify’s core values, too. When you make a positive impact here, you can move into new roles, new disciplines, and new spaces. That’s had a huge impact on my career. Two years ago, I was on the recruiting team. Now, I’m in product management… And I’m still expanding my knowledge and reaching for new goals every day. This kind of environment means I’ll never get bored—or feel like I’m stuck in one place. The point is, you’ll love work so much more if you’re with a company where the goal is growth! KL  Thanks, Shannon! If you want to join a team where you can keep learning and make unexpected and wonderful moves—if you want—then you should check out Shopify. They’re growing globally, and they might just have the perfect role for you. See what’s new this week at shopify.com/careers. FYOTW JL Okay, so I’ve got a fuck yeah this week, ladies. KL Let’s hear it. JL Sutter and I are taking a vacation this week. SWB Fuck yeah! [Laughs] JL [Laughs] I know, I mean we could just stop there, mic drop. [All three laugh] JL But this vacation is to Wildwood, New Jersey—and for those unaware of the magic that is Wildwood—it’s a wonderful place at the Jersey Shore with boardwalk, food and funnel cake, and soft serve ice cream. And perhaps most importantly—it’s only a bit over an hour from Philadelphia. And here’s what we knew. We wanted some time to get away to ourselves, but we’re not really in the place where we wanted to plan something big or get on a flight. We just wanted some time with each other. That’s not because we don’t love our son, but two years ago we took a babymoon, which we gave ourselves a long weekend before a major change in our family. And we’re going to have that again soon, so we wanted to do something like that. But how do you get that time to yourselves when you have a toddler? So we were really thrown off and honestly I just—was like ‘that’s fine, we don’t really have to do it,’ like—not a big deal. But then this wild idea came to us. Why don’t we ask his parents if they’re available to watch Cooper for two nights? [45:48] KL What did they say? JL [Laughing] They said yes! KL Yaaay! JL And so it’s amazing what happens when you ask for help! KL That’s awesome. And also grandparents love to help in that way. JL It’s like—I don’t know why, but asking for what you need can be such a hard hurdle to overcome, but it can totally pay off awesomely, so I am saying fuck yeah to asking for help! KL That’s awesome. This actually resonates with me, too, because when I take time off at A Book Apart, I have to make a point of putting it on the calendar and asking folks to cover some stuff while I’m out so that I don’t have to worry about it or think about it. Because otherwise I would never actually really get time off. Like I have to actually set up that—you know—those boundaries and ask for help and I didn’t realize that until late in the game and I was like ‘oh, I actually need to raise my hand and do this so I can properly take some time off.’ So I love this. SWB I love this too because it’s actually a really good reminder for me. Because I think as both of you know—because you’ve called me on it before—I do not like to ask for help and I sort of take it almost as a point of pride to do it all myself. And that’s been good for me in some ways, but everybody needs help, myself included. And it’s one thing to ask for help, but it’s also another thing to actually accept the help and let go, right? Because part of what you’re saying, Katel, is that when you set that boundary where you’re like ‘okay, I’m taking a real vacation, can you please handle this for me’—you’re also saying ‘and I’m not going to check in so I need to be confident that it’s handled.’ KL [Laughing] Yeah. SWB Right? And I think that’s something that’s hard for me—just to fully let go and to just say ‘nope, this is handled and I’m not going to get all anxious about this, I’m just going to accept that it’s handled.’ And I realize it’s not a lack of trust—it’s like I trust them—but it’s almost like my brain doesn’t trust me enough to fully let go, you know? [Laughter] KL Yeah. SWB I have to remind myself like no no no no no, you asked for help, now your job is to take the help and then walk away. JL Yeah and it’s—it is hard to do things like that, but I think it gets better with practice. I mean, I read a bunch last year—some manager books and they talk a lot about just delegating things, delegating tasks and how important that is. But what’s really important is when you delegate the tasks, to trust that they’re going to get done and then be okay with the fact that whoever does them will probably veer from the way you were going to do it. So, we left an agenda or notes of what Coop’s normal day is for the grandparents and not to be like ‘you have to do it this way,’ but just so they have a guide-ish like ‘here’s what we would do.’ But I understand if you’re not going to do it exactly the same way and you know what, that’s okay. I’m okay with that, thank you for the help. I’m going to be able to now focus on other things that are more important than making sure that you did this exactly the way I would have done it. KL Yeah, I think that is so true. I’m thinking about this and I feel like we need to come up with an acronym for all the parts so… accept help, let go, enjoy—ALE! [Laughter] SWB That’s also what I would like to have on my next vacation. KL Yeah, exactly. [laughs] Well, fuck yeah to asking for help and to getting it, and we hope you enjoy. SWB Eat some funnel cake for me. JL Okay. [Laughing] You got it! SWB Well, that is it for this week’s episode of No, You Go—the show about being ambitious and sticking together. NYG is recorded in our home city of Philadelphia and is produced by Steph Colbourn. Our theme music is by The Diaphone. Thank you so much to Tracy Chou for being on the show today. If you like what you’ve been hearing, thank you so much, you’re the best. And you could be even more the best if you would take a moment to leave us a rating or review on your podcast listening app of choice and let your friends know about No, You Go because we’d love to have them here too. We’ll be back again next week! [music fades in, plays alone for 32 seconds, fades out to end]

We made it to Episode 2—and hey, so did you! High five! This week, we’re all about TIME: how we make it, how we use it, and how we think about it. We’re also joined by our very first guest, Eileen Webb, who straight-up blew our minds with her take on making time on your own terms. Seriously, it’s . Just listen already. > Why should my work get all of my best brain? > —Eileen Webb, founder of Webmeadow Here’s what we cover. (Yep, there’s a full transcript below, too!) Show notes First things first: is it time for for lunch yet? We think so (we’ve been thinking about snacks since 10:15). We start out with a segment on reclaiming lunchtime for, well, whatever you want: Jenn tells us how she convinced her coworkers that watching Jeopardy at work is healthy. (We’re totally sold.) Katel sits down for a fancy meal for one. Sara heads out for a midday run, meetings be damned. Next, NYG sits down with web strategist-slash-farmer Eileen Webb for an interview that’s sure to stick with all of us for quite some time. We talk about: How Eileen and her partner went from burnouts in the first dot-com boom to running a bakery to finding their niche doing digital strategy from their home in northern New Hampshire. Why morning meetings don’t work for Eileen’s brain, and how she avoids them. Why Eileen trades the 9-to-5 for a sunrise hike every Tuesday—and never once feels guilty about it. How to stop letting your calendar (and other people’s bullshit requests) run your life. Also, pocket bunnies (no, not those kind). Follow Eileen on Twitter, or hire her at webmeadow.com. Also in this episode: America’s Favorite Quiz Show® (and don’t you dare tell Jenn otherwise) The big-ass boats (no seriously there are so many) at the Philly Navy Yard New Year’s Liberations from Cate Huston, Ellen Pao, Karolina Szczur, and Erica Joy And of course, we profess our undying love for those ’90s Noxzema girl ads Thanks to our friends The Diaphone for the use of our theme song, Maths, off the album of the same name.  _This episode is brought to you by CodePen—a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases, and find inspiration. _ Transcript JENN LUKAS: Today’s show is brought to you by CodePen. CodePen is a place to write and share front-end code. You can try out new technologies, learn new things by forking other projects, and show off your own awesome work. Your profile on CodePen is like your front-end development portfolio. Learn more and create your own Pens at codepen.io. That’s c-o-d-e-p-e-n dot i-o. JL: Welcome to No, You Go, the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. I’m Jenn Lukas. KATEL LEDÛ: I’m Katel LeDû. SARA WACHTER-BOETTCHER: And I’m Sara Wachter-Boettcher. Today on No, You Go we’re talking about time. How do you make time for things you want to do while keeping all the things you have to do in check? We’ll explore making—and breaking—routines and habits, and pull apart the politics behind how we spend our time. And we’re really excited because today we’ll be joined by Eileen Webb, who’s here to talk to us about things like sunrise hikes, why she doesn’t book meetings in the mornings—and, oh yeah, running a consulting company from a farm in rural New Hampshire that runs on solar energy. But first on the agenda: I’d like to take Lunchtime with Jenn Lukas for $500, Alex. [Intro music] JL: There was one night that we were staying late working on something and my whole joke was, “I gotta get home in time to watch Jeopardy. And someone was like, “oh, you know we could stream it.” We streamed Jeopardy while eating dinner together as a group while we were working hard to finish a project. And it sounds a little silly but it was, like, really awesome to take a moment while we were trying to meet a deadline. But then we stopped to all eat dinner together while watching Jeopardy, which is probably the greatest game show of all time. And I don’t say that lightly, because I’m like really into The Price is Right. So it just became a little bit known about how much I like Jeopardy at work. And we would talk a lot about it. And that got other people—other big Jeopardy fans would come out of the woodwork and start telling me about how much they loved Jeopardy. The Jeopardy thing just sort of continued. Some of us would come in the next day and be like, oh, did you see Jeopardy last night? And we would talk about Jeopardy. Someone made me an Alex Trebek Slack icon, you know, the usual. SWB: What do you call a Jeopardy—are you, like, a Jeop-head? Like what do you call that? JL: I do not care for that! KL: Did you all end up playing that first night? Were you, like, playing along? JL: Yeah we are all for the yell out the answers. There’s no, like, “don’t say the answers.” And no one says “what is.” Actually, someone says “what is” now, but to be fair, we have a new coworker at work, and he was on College Jeopardy. KL: Whoa. JL: Yeah, legit. Anyway so this kept going. And then like once the weather turned cold, we would—when it comes down to lunchtime, we would eat lunch outside a lot. We have a really great outdoor setup down at our campus—and, oh, I hate the word campus—laughs—down at our workspace. Anyway, once the weather got cold, we still wanted to do things together, but it got a little weird because you don’t always want to eat in the cafeteria, so sometimes people bring lunch back to their desk. And we actually just renovated our office space, and we have this great pod setup. So we started doing Jeopardy lunch where we would just pull it up on the TV. And then people would start hearing the theme song, and they’d be like, “You guys are watching Jeopardy?” And we’d be like, “Yeah, we’re watching Jeopardy.” KL: Get on in here! JL: Right? Exactly. So it just started being a thing. Like, “Hey, are we going to watch Jeopardy today?” And it was like, “Yeah, we’re all going to grab lunch now. So we’d go grab lunch together, bring it back, and now we watch Jeopardy. And we have a little Slack channel, so we can let people know when it’s starting. Though, we have a very open building, so it’s pretty obvious when Jeopardy is starting. [Laughter] SWB: How many people come and gather and watch Jeopardy at lunch now? JL: I’d say it’s anywhere between like 5 and 10, but a variety. KL: That’s a good group. JL: So like, there’s a rotating group of I’d say 15 or 20 people. SWB: When you started doing this, was it ever difficult to feel like this was a good use of your time, or feel like you should be back at your desk instead of taking the time away to watch the show? JL: Yeah, totally. And not to mention, our desks are right there. You can see it. In fact, someone made a quote-unquote joke one time that was like… I was like, “Hey, wanna watch Jeopardy?” and they were like, “No, I have work to do.” And I was like, “Yeah, but this is lunch!” KL: Yeah, like, remember that? JL: You know, they have these amazing studies where, like, you can only focus on things for such a length of time. There’s this interesting thing, it’s every 10 minutes that you have to stop what you’re doing for a minute to digest what you’ve done and get back at what you’re doing. So we’re talking about four hours at this point. And I think at that point it’s really important to stop for a minute, take a break, eat lunch, watch a Jeopardy or whatever your thing is, and then get back to what you’re doing. And I think you start fresh. I think that’s how you avoid daily burnout. SWB: Yeah, you know when you were talking about Jeopardy lunch, I think a lot about some of the pressures that I’ve seen in offices around constantly looking like you’re busy, or looking like you’re working. I’ve realized that much of that is a show, that people who—you know, you feel pressure to constantly look like you’re working, so you eat lunch at your desk. People who do that, they’re not actually more productive, and they’re probably more miserable, than if you just took a real break and sat your ass down somewhere and did something that was not work and was not intended to look like work and was not pretending to be work. [5:00] JL: Yes. Ugh, yes. [Laughs] It’s funny, they have all these browser extensions to stop you from looking at certain sites while you work. And it’s so much easier to do that if you are focused, and then you take that official break. SWB: I think a lot about the conversations we have about time, and how we get really focused on making sure you carve out time to do big things. People will write about how, you know, “Oh, I wrote my book by sitting down every morning between 6 and 8am and writing 1500 words for two months, and that’s how I wrote this book.” That seems like a miserable way to write a book to me, personally, but I think that moreover, so many of those conversations are just about how do we do big things. But what we’re talking about here is much more around how do we make time for things that seem small, but have a much greater impact on our wellness and on our psyche and on our ability to have boundaries. JL: Down where I work, we work at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia, which is in South-South Philly, you can’t go any further, it’s surrounded by the river. There are some really neat areas to walk in. I know people who will just walk down by the river and look at the old ships during lunch break, too. And so, there’s all sorts of like—you really take a lunch. Eat your lunch, get some air, and do something that clears your mind to give you a good second half of the day. SWB: Katel, what do you do for lunch? KL: Oh, gosh, well, sometimes, I do have to admit, sometimes I will eat something very hurriedly over the sink so I don’t get any dishes dirty. It’s very efficient, and it’s very sad. I was actually just thinking, one of my absolute favorite things is when I am traveling whether it’s for work, or I am out somewhere and I just happen to be on my own, sometimes i will go and just have a really fancy lunch by myself somewhere, and I’ll just get something extravagant, just because I can. Or something that’s like, oh I should save that for dinner, or whatever. And sometimes for me, just having that, even if it’s not a two-hour thing, it’s really nice to kind of like, sit with yourself. SWB: I don’t love going out to lunch most of the time. Like Katel said, I love going out to a fancy lunch every now and again, but for the most part, I prefer to eat home foods for lunch. I like to make a sandwich or assemble leftovers or put together a salad, and that’s fine. But what I’ve found is really important for me is to get out during the middle of the day, and I find that that’s my favorite time to go to the gym or go for a run. Something I have been prioritizing more and more is making sure that that happens, and that happens before it’s super late in the day. Because I work from home, and because I tend to have a fair amount of autonomy over my schedule—I mean, I have meetings and things, but they’re meetings that I agreed to set—I can kind of, you know, always fit it in where I want, in theory. But time slips away so easily. So it’s like, you have a couple meetings, you do a little work. All of a sudden you’re really hungry, so you eat something. Well, can’t go running right after you eat something. So now I get back involved in some work and some meetings, and suddenly it’s 5pm. And while I can still go for a run then, what I have found for myself is that making sure I get the time to go out sometime more in the middle of the day, I am doing something that is totally distinct from work, and that forces my brain out of the work zone, and I end up having an overall better day, a more pleasant day. And so I really have been trying to prioritize that, and prioritize it on top of things that seem more important in the short term, but I’ve realized in the long run aren’t. KL: That’s one of the things I’ve struggled with the most not working in like an office or a structured environment. Because my time is my own—and that’s really great, and I am very grateful for that—I also don’t have any accountability to anyone to be like, okay, I gotta go take a break, and this is going to help me be more productive in the long run. I don’t know, I am just thinking back to when I was starting out in my career, and maybe I didn’t have as much time or flexibility, or didn’t feel quite as much like I could take a break, I think, like, conversely, removing myself from the office and actually like—even if I wasn’t going out and like buying a nice meal—I would just go eat lunch somewhere else so I would feel like, okay, I wasn’t sitting at my desk and I wasn’t being judged, but I am taking time for myself. JL: Yeah, that’s so important. I can only imagine. I mean I luckily sometimes have someone who sits next to me and says, “hey, you gonna go get lunch?” KL: Yeah, it’s like, hey, are you just going to sit there all day? JL: You need a lunch app that rings, that’s like “hey!” SWB: Well you know, this whole conversation about reclaiming lunchtime and taking time for yourself, it makes me extremely excited to introduce our guest for today. Katel and I had the chance to sit down with Eileen Webb. [10:00] Eileen is somebody I’ve known for years, and she’s always the person I turn to when I want someone to give me some good advice and some thoughtful ideas about how to look at my time differently, and how to make sure that I’m creating space in my life and habits in my life that are going to give me some sustenance and some perspective and not burn me out. [Musical interlude] JL: CodePen’s a powerful tool that allows designers and developers to write code—like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—directly in a browser, and see the results right as you build. Whether you’re new to front-end code or have been writing it for years, it’s the perfect place to learn front-end programming languages. You can show off what you create, build test cases, and get help on tricky problems. Not to mention, you can find inspiration browsing all the awesome pens that other people are out there making. It’s a great community that I love being a part of. Whenever I have a new idea and want to get right to making it happen, I open up a CodePen and just start coding. I can skip all the things that are roadblocks for me—like setting up environments and getting hosting—and just get right to the projects I want to create. CodePen has so many cool things to explore, like CodePen Pro and Projects. Sign up today and get started by visiting codepen.io/hello. [Musical interlude] Interview **: ** Eileen Webb SWB: I’m excited to introduce all of you to Eileen Webb. Eileen is a friend of mine, and she’s also the director of strategy and livestock—no, seriously, livestock—at Webmeadow, a solar-powered web consulting company in New Hampshire. When she’s not tending her chickens or Instagramming her bunnies, she’s helping progressive organizations with their digital and content strategy, giving talks at lots of different tech conferences, and she’s teaching workshops (sometimes even with me!). Eileen, welcome to No, You Go. EW: Hello Sara, hello Katel. KL: Hi! SWB: I am so happy we could interview you nice and early, because I feel like you have so much insight into making a working life work for you, and getting comfortable with the idea of that not looking like everybody else’s, that I think people are going to really love. EW: My life is definitely not looking like other people’s. [Laughter] SWB: Yeah, so I would love to start out talking about that. I know that you live in northern New Hampshire, you don’t live where a lot of us would imagine an ambitious tech professional would live. Can you tell us a bit about what your day to day looks like? EW: Sure I live on a small farm. And so a lot of my day to day actually revolves around animals and livestock and like, in the right season, vegetables and growing things. But right now, the depths of winter, so it mostly involves bringing thawed water to animals in the cold temperatures. A lot of my day honestly is animal focused. And then I come inside where it is warm and I sit at my computer talk to clients all day. Because of the kind of work that I do, I do a lot of work that is people-focused. I work with a lot of teams and I work with teams to figure out how they are going to do things with their teams moving forward, and sort of how to change their internal processes. And so I spend some time making documents and working in spreadsheets and looking at websites, a lot of time talking with teams and talking with people about how to make their workdays better. SWB: So how did you end up building that kind of working life? What led you to have a web consulting company that is also on a small farm in northern New Hampshire? EW: My partner and I both worked in Silicon Valley in the ___ era, so in the first dot-com boom. And it was very, I don’t know, dot-commy? It was very busy, and long hours, and, you know, working for sort of Wall Street bros. SWB: Mmmmmmhmmmm EW: Yeah, I know. Wall Street bros. Yay. When we left that, we—so, my mom grew up in northern New Hampshire, so we actually moved to my great-grandparents’ farmhouse, which was still in my family. And for a while we ran a bakery, because we didn’t want to do computer stuff anymore. But there comes a point when you can only make so much money off of baking bread, and if you want to make more money, you have to just like literally scale up and bake twice as much bread. Or you can build someone a website and get paid so much more money than baking some bread. So we went back to doing website stuff. And I have a background in backend development, so I did a lot of server-side stuff and sysadmin kinds of things, and like programming of content management systems. And my partner is a front-end developer, so he would do the CSS and the HTML and the sort of performance-dev stuff. So we built lots and lots of websites for people. And then because I don’t like working that much— SWB: Oh, we’re going to dig into that a bit further in a minute. EW: I don’t like doing work that people won’t use, and so it got to a point where, when people would ask me, “Oh, will you build me a blog section on this site?” I’d be like, “Why? Prove to me that you need it. Prove to me that you have the internal capacity to fill a blog on a regular basis.” And sort of that type of attitude ended up spilling over into full-time strategic work. [15:00] I started out doing strategic work because I didn’t want to build things that people weren’t going to use, and then even when I graduated to the point of having other people build the thing, I still really like asking all the questions: what do you need? Why do you think you need it? How can we demonstrate that this is true or not true? And so I ended up being a strategist all the time. And because I’m self-scheduled, I was also able to weave in all this animal stuff and all this lifestyle stuff, like living out in the woods and going hiking and all that kind of stuff. SWB: Yeah, tell us about that. Tell us about your going hiking. EW: I want to be careful because when I say hiking, a lot of people really picture, like, backpacking. And I am, if nothing, just the worst pack mule in the entire world. I hate wearing backpacks. I hate carrying things because it’s a lot of work. And so when I say hiking, it’s more like walking, it just happens to be that I live in the woods in the mountains. So it’s walking, but in trees [laughter]. So I do a lot of walking and hiking. My partner and I, we take off every Tuesday morning, and we have for more than a decade at this point. We take every Tuesday morning and we go out into the world. This time of year we go snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. Other times of the year we go kayaking or we mostly do walking, because it’s obviously the easiest thing in all seasons. And it’s a really important piece of our physical self-care, and also our mental self-care, in giving ourselves space to work with our clients, and to give ourselves to someone else for so much of our work we. It’s a little bit of time we take back for ourselves. KL: That’s so cool. I just gotta say that. SWB: Yeah, I love this. And it’s one of the reasons that I really wanted to talk with you. Not just because of the hiking, but the concept behind it of taking that time consistently and prioritizing it. I think I’ve talked with you about this before, where I’m like, okay, I would like to do more of that, and figure out, how do I systematize that into my schedule, because I don’t think I give myself enough of that. And so I am really curious, how did you and your partner make that a priority, and what are the habits or routines that you have that enable you to keep that time protected? EW: I am a huge huge fan of…I don’t remember if it’s called time-blocking or time-boxing. That’s how you can tell what a big fan I am of it. [Laughter] If I block stuff off on my calendar…like, my calendar, if I click over to my calendar right now, On Tuesday morning, it just has a big block of time, that is a recurring block of time every week, that says “Tuesday Adventure.” And so when I am going to schedule things, when I am looking at when people want to have calls and things like that, it is already blocked off. And like, even though it is just blocked by me, right, it’s not like there’s an invitation with lots of other people on it, literally having that visual block in my calendar graphics really helps me remember that that is what I am supposed to be doing on Tuesday mornings. I do that with all my calendar stuff. My Thursday mornings are blocked off for what I call “work selfies,” which right now is usually a writing project, but sometimes is like taking a class in git, or whatever random thing I want to do. And I like to block things off. I usually try to keep my mornings free for intense brain work, and then my afternoons are calls and meetings, just because that’s how my brain works best. So like, building the structure in is really important for me. I have this friend, Krista Scott Dixon, she’s like a personal trainer and nutrition coach and stuff. And she talks about how willpower is what we use to not punch our boss and to not pull our pants down in the middle of the supermarket, and that willpower is an overtaxed resource. You cannot depend on willpower to do things like make good food choices and decide to go to the gym, because your willpower is just, like, out most times of your day. And so instead of relying on willpower to remember to do those things, it’s all about relying on structure, and setting up structures that make it so that you’d have to have willpower to overcome the structure. So you set up the structure in a time when you’re calm and making good prioritized decisions, and you sort of build the shape of a day and the shape of a week that supports whatever your goals are. SWB: So I need to sit down, have a protein-laden snack, take a deep breath, light a candle, and then structure my day or my week. EW: Yeah. KL: I love that. EW: This works for me because of the way my brain works. I am really good at following structures I set up for myself. I don’t get tempted away. Just sort of awareness of the stuff is the most important thing for me—awareness of, like, of this is what this timeblock is for is enough for me to be like, well, I guess past me said this is what Tuesdays are for. [20:00] Obviously that wouldn’t work for everyone. But for me, just setting up the structure makes it pretty easy to stick with it. SWB: It kinda seems like there’s a certain faith in yourself you have to have to make that work, right? You’re trusting that past you made a good choice and not a bad choice, and not second-guessing that. EW: Yes. KL: I think it’s also, like, just feeling accountable to something, and if that’s a framework, I feel like that makes so much sense. I’m a really visual person, too, and I feel like looking at a calendar that has blocks reserved for things that I’m doing, seems like a no-brainer. When I went from regular office job to being solo and working remotely, that went away. And I feel like I need to re-institute some of that. SWB: You know there are people who talk about their calendars as being basically slots to be filled. Their calendar will literally have meeting after meeting stacked up on it, and it’ll have one 30-minute block at 12:30 and somebody will come book that. And that mode that people get into, or that their corporate culture almost forces them into, or at a minimum sort of encourages, is one that’s very much, you’re in a reactive mode all of the time. It’s like your calendar is a thing being done to you. And then there’s those people who treat their calendar as more like something that they have ownership of, and they create slots for meetings and they say, okay, this is when I’m available to meet. It’s a more proactive way of looking at it— of saying, I need to reserve parts of my day for things that are not just requests of me, but are the priorities that I set up for myself. I’m the best judge of my own priorities; I can’t have 7,000 people making requests of me. EW: I think there’s also something around the idea that—I think that we all are pretty aware that we work differently at different times of day. Like, I know that for myself, morning time is when I can do deep brain work. It’s when I can do synthesis, and analysis, and sort of like, deep focus. Where, anything after lunch is like, I can still do work, but I can’t write essays—I’m good for meetings. I’m real good at scheduling calls in the afternoon. But I can’t do deep, intense, sort of, focussed work, because it’s just not how my brain chemistry works. And so if you know that about yourself and if you have been working, you know, long enough that you recognize those patterns in yourself and you pay attention to them—making sure you use the right parts of the day, doing the right kinds of things. Sometimes people will ask me to do meeting in the morning and every once in a while, I’ll say yes, but I’m really reluctant to. Because I know that I could do meetings in the afternoons and that would be great, but if I do a meeting in the morning, I’ve basically lost my morning for doing focused work. SWB: That’s something I really wanted to ask a little more about. You said that blocking off time is often enough for you and that’s enough of a reminder to yourself. But I’m curious: when you get those requests and when they’re from someone who’s insistent that they don’t have any other time or it seems important—how do you push back against that or how do you evaluate those things and make a decision about whether you’re going to, you know, sacrifice the schedule that you were going to have for something—or that you’re not going to? How do you process that and make sure that you don’t end up consistently setting the time aside and then not giving yourself that time? EW: So I think a lot of that comes back to the idea of sort of having faith in yourself. And I am so fortunate as a consultant to be able to control my own time and other people can’t see my calendar. So if I say I’m not available before Tuesday at 1:00 PM, no one has any reason—I mean now, if they listen to this podcast, great, now they know! [Laughter] EW: But, no one has any reason to question my calendar, right? Like, they want to meet with me and I will give them some number of times. You know, I’ll say I’m available this chunk of time and this chunk of time. And so that’s one thing—is literally being in control of my own calendar and believing that I have the right to manage my own time. And the other piece of this for me, is that mornings are when I do my best work. And I was telling a friend about this a couple months back, and she said, “Well but you go out hiking on Tuesday mornings. Have tried doing your hiking in the afternoon instead?” And I just had like, an off-the-cuff response of, “Why should my work get all of my best brain?” KL: Yeah! EW: It was what my dad would call like, a throwaway comment, but I started thinking about it after I had said it, and realized that’s actually core to the way I manage my time. If you wait until you’re running on fumes before you do any sort of self care, the kinds of self care you can do are super limited. If you wait until a Friday night for the first time for you to like, take time to let your brain rest, pretty much all you’re going to be able to do is sit on the couch and watch Netflix. [25:00] SWB: You don’t know my life! [Laughter] EW: Sitting on the couch and watching Netflix is a glorious joy that we should all partake in as much as we can. But if that’s the only thing you can do, it’s sort of not giving yourself a full range of nutrition of what it is your body needs, and your brain needs, to sort of heal and take care of itself—and keep you in your best prime. So I think a lot about—I mean I used to think about this a lot and now it’s super second-nature, I’ve just ingrained it. That, I’ve set up this schedule to make it so that I am able to do my job. To make it so that I am able to work with clients well, and I am able to take on contracts and sort of manage these hairy people problems. And just sort of deal with everything that running a business entails. If I shortchange the structure that I set up to keep myself safe and healthy, I’m limiting my sustainability as a person with a career. SWB: And you know, I know everybody has different capacities, and everybody has different blends of types of work—and amount of work versus other stuff going on in their lives—that’s sort of an optimal blend for them. But I love this idea that, I think is true for everybody—there is a way of doing work that is sustainable and that is giving you energy. And there is a way of working that is just chew right through you. And, for me, I know it’s been hard to give myself the gift of setting some of those limits because I feel both kind of a constant drive professionally—but also I guess I just really love doing stuff. I’ve realized something about myself. I used to think that to have work down time, what I should be doing is “relaxing.” And what I realized is that I don’t actually enjoy relaxing. Like, I like a spa day every now and again, for sure. But I do not like to hang out all day on a weekend day and like, binge watch a show. I don’t enjoy that at all—I hate it. And for me, I need to do non-work things—like you mentioned going hiking. I need to be doing something active, whether that’s intellectually active or physically active, I need to be doing something active in order to feel like I’m having an enjoyable and sort of, satisfying time. But that I need to give myself over to those activities and not let work bleed into them. I have a big habit of doing the like, work-cation, where I go somewhere for a conference or something and then I tack on a little bit of vacation time. And that’s fine, because I get to see new places that way, and it’s amazing. It’s an incredible thing I’ve been able to do. But I cannot confuse that with an actual vacation, where I went to a place with the intention of not working. KL: Right, and exploring it and seeing new things and actually taking it in, instead of being like, I have this break, where I can go and take a twenty minute walk and maybe see something while I’m trying to… SWB: Or even taking a day or two at the end of a business trip is still hard, you know. I think something you said, Eileen, that i’m going to be thinking about for a long time, is why should work get the benefit of all of my best brain time. KL I love that. SWB: So like, being able to go on a trip and saying, okay, I’m only going on this trip for personal enrichment, so I’m going to give my best brain time to enjoying being in this place. I’m not going to use it all up at the conference before I get to see anything. I really love that concept and I think I’m going to be thinking about that for a while. You have this schedule that’s really closely intertwined with your partner’s schedule. Where you take these hikes together, and you used to work on a lot of projects together. But he’s recently been working in more of a full time capacity versus working directly with you on projects, right? EW: Yes. SWB: How has that shift gone? EW: It has been a really interesting shift. One thing is like, some of the things we just literally time-shifted. Like, we used to do Tuesday morning hikes that ended around lunch time. And now we do Tuesday mornings that end at like, 10:00am. So he’s not starting significantly later than he would otherwise. It means we have to get up earlier and leave the house earlier. And this time of year, the sun doesn’t even rise until like 7:30 or something. But I’ve always wanted to do sunrise hikes, and I don’t—I am not good at getting up early in the morning, it is not one of my strong points. And so I’ve never done sunrise hikes because I’m just too sleepy for that. And so now, we actually sort of have a need to do them because this is where they fit in the day. And so that is sort of a fun thing. Some of the stuff is the same but in shifting it, we found new places to explore. It’s a little bit like—it makes me think of design constraints are what make artists sort of have their most interesting insights and creative bursts. Because there are like little constraints to work within. So now some of the scheduling constraints have made us find—like we found some more trails that are closer to home. [30:00] Because we live in the mountains, which is great, and there are trails everywhere. But it usually takes us a good solid thirty or forty minutes of driving to get to a trailhead. And if you only have two and a half hours total, like, that’s a lot of time eaten up driving. So we’ve finding a lot of more local trails. And these are not really marked trails. They’re not in guide books, right? They’re much more like a trail across someone’s land that is posted that people can walk here and that’s safe and fine and legal and everything. But you have to sort of search them out. So it’s been fun; it’s been a new set of explorations. One of the reasons that both he and I pay attention to this stuff a lot, is that we both he have chronic health conditions that preclude us from overworking. You were saying earlier, like, “How do you make sure that you respect the time that you set aside for yourself?” And a great way to do that is if your body just shuts down if you stop respecting that time. That will learn you up really quickly. So both of us are in a position if we do do too much work, and if we do over-stress ourselves, our bodies will just react very strongly and in ways that are not pleasant. And so even with him doing more regular work and more sort of full time work, we are finding ways to make sure that we’re preserving what keeps us healthy. SWB: You know, I think about the number of people I know who are managing a chronic condition and it’s a lot. But I also think that all of us are managing health in general and that’s probably something that we all need to be better keeping in mind. Regardless of whether we have a specific diagnosis or not. We are fragile little human people, and, right? KL: Yeah I think we’re all dealing with just, the state of things, especially in the last year, eighteen months. SWB: Oh boy, are we! KL: And I feel like you don’t think of that as a condition or a thing you’d need to pay attention to or factor into how you plan your days or how you work or how you spend time with people, but it absolutely is. And I think just your point about being aware is just such a good one. EW: There’s a phrase I really love in the disability rights community that people who are not currently disabled are are just temporarily able-bodied. For some people it’s very temporary. And for some people it’s like, maybe you’re getting a month of able-bodiedness, and some people are going to have years of able-bodiedness. But for the most part, like, it’s a pretty universal thing that at some point you will not be able-bodies anymore. So making the most of preserving that while you can and doing what you can to make sure that you’re not contributing to your own pain or your own exhaustion, is really important. KL: Yeah, wow. SWB: Yeah. This stuff is just gonna be so valuable for people to hear and get their—to get a little tiny Eileen in their head, whenever they’re looking at their calendar and making decisions. KL: [Laughs] Are you doing career, life coaching? EW: Yeah, I train the rabbits. One rabbit per person—it’s a pocket rabbit for like, a good two months until it becomes not a pocket rabbit anymore. KL: Yes! Let’s do that! SWB: Katel would really like a pocket rabbit. KL: I kind of want to go back to the beginning. Something that you were saying about not wanting to build things for people that they didn’t use. To me, when you started also talking about how you got to be living on this farm and how that was a family thing—I think just the idea of farm life, you know, whatever you might imagine that to be. You kind of do what really needs to be done and you don’t do anything extraneous. I can see all of that really syncing up and I imagine that that impacted the way you approach work and the way you do things. I don’t know if you felt that way. EW: Yeah, no, that’s definitely true. I think it’s less pointed and and more underlying deep understandings. Even just things like when the season changes. When it’s fall turning into winter, there’s a whole bunch of things you need to do before the ground freezes—like you can’t move fence posts once the ground has frozen. And you can’t sort of like, rearrange things. When the first frost comes, you need to pick all the tomatoes, today, because tomorrow they will be ruined. And so you abandon whatever other project you were kind of thinking about doing because this project now has the highest priority. And I don’t feel like I have any super direct lessons from that, but just as a sort of philosophy, like, what’s the most important thing to do right now? Let’s make sure we get that done first before we fritter off doing other things that might be more fun—but five days from now we’re going to be really said we did it in the wrong order. KL: Yeah. SWB: Well, it just seems like it totally connects you to a timescale and a rhythm that is outside of what most people would associate with their work—people who aren’t working on farms. I think it’s maybe a good reminder that there are many other ways of looking at the day, than like, through the lens of an iCalendar. KL: Yeah. EW: Yes. There’s also a whole bunch of like, farm interaction stuff. If you try to have one kind of animal in by itself—like if you just have chickens. It doesn’t work as well as if you have chickens and pigs. [35:00] And if you’re like, raising vegetables, you want something that’s gonna eat all the scraps from your vegetables. Rabbits will eat all of the kale scraps that we don’t eat. And there’s something really sort of neat and foundational in the way that all the waste from one thing feeds another thing. Like, I don’t really feel bad if I end up throwing out food—not like, huge amounts of food—but when there’s food that’s done, it just goes in the compost. And then the compost turns into garden dirt, and then I grow more food with it next year. There’s something very soothing in that, and there’s something sort of nice in finding the place where what feels like waste, can actually be turned into fodder for something else. SWB: Well, that’s yet another amazing metaphor that I think will stick with me. Ok, we have time for one last question. What is the most rewarding thing that you spent time doing this week? EW: Ok, so it was -26º F at my house last Tuesday; it was very cold. And we were like, what are we gonna do? Like, it’s freezing and we can’t go outside and we were feeling sort of stir-crazy. And so I took some really thick, warm fleece, and I made like a sweatshirt that has a cowl neck so you can put your entire head inside this sort of scuba neck. It’s like living inside a fluff. SWB: GO ON… EW: And it has a kangaroo pocket, so you put your hands in the warm belly space—it was just very, like, cozy. And I was very grateful to have the skills but also the machines in my house to let me make that clothing and have it be really warm and fuzzy. And I put it on and I’m like, I’m not taking this off for, like, three days. It’s perfect. KL: That’s awesome. I really picturing this thing, too. SWB: Yeah, I love it so much. Well, Eileen, it has been amazing to chat with you. I’m so happy that we could get the time to share with other people how you make time in your life. Where can people find you online? EW: People can find me primarily on Twitter @webmeadow. I’m also at webmeadow.com, but that’s just like a static website. Twitter is a good place for me because it’s full of pictures of animals and also snarky comments. SWB: Well, that is one of my favorite combos. KL: Yes. SWB: Alright, thank you Eileen! EW: Thanks for having me. Fuck Yeah of the Week KL: You know when your friend gets promoted, or they launch their new portfolio, or they finally meet someone who just gets them—and you’re totally pumped for them? That’s our next segment. The Fuck Yeah of the Week: where we get super excited about someone or something that’s just been killing it lately. So, who’s our Fuck Yeah of the Week? SWB: Well, our Fuck Yeah of the Week this week, is 2018 liberations. Let me tell you about what that is. So Cate Huston, who’s the mobile engineering lead at Automattic—the people who make WordPress by the way—she wrote this blog post a the beginning of the year where she said, “I hate new year’s resolutions. Not because I don’t believe in goals or working on myself, or the new year as a time to reflect and adjust. But because I’m tired of focusing on the ways I’m inadequate and need to do better. I hate seeing my friend worry about what they need to do better. Especially right now, when the world is selling so many of us short.” I love this sentiment. That new year’s resolutions can be great but they can also be problematic if they’re just reinforcing ideas that you’re just not good enough. So, a few of Cate’s 2018 liberations were things like, “Doing things because I’m flattered to be asked at all.” For example, being a token woman on a panel, and saying yes just because she felt flattered invited. Nope! She’s not doing it anymore. Apologizing for her achievements was another one. That’s definitely something I’ve heard myself doing before. Where, you know, I’ll play down the fact that I’ve, I don’t know, written three books, or run my own business for half a dozen years. Like, those things are pretty cool, and I want to be excited about them. So I’m really happy to have found 2018 liberations and especially excited because all these other cool women started chiming in. Here are a couple more examples that I think you all are really going like, that have come out in the past couple weeks. One is from Ellen Pao. She said that she was going to stop spotlighting people who don’t pay it forward. “I try to use my voice to highlight the great work of others with the hope that they will shine their light on even more others. But some people hold all the light for themselves,” she wrote. She said that in 2018, she wants to “shine more light on people who deserve more attention but are systematically neglected.” And then there’s Karolina Szczur. She said that she was going to liberate herself from white feminism. “If feminism, allyship, or what-have-you isn’t intersectional and going beyond binary gender, there’s work to be done,” she wrote. “Feminism and allyship aren’t fashionable lifestyle choices.” Or this one from Erica Joy—she said, “assuming best intentions and similar pieces of advice that require I minimize experiences that are painful.” She says she’s done with that. So, ladies, what are your liberations for 2018? [40:00] KL: I love this too, and it’s such a good question. I feel like at liberations versus resolutions, it’s like, just so much more positive. In fact, I went to therapy earlier today, and I told my therapist all about it and she was super excited. So I felt like reaffirming in itself. And you know, that really just made me think about putting a focus on self care and self-betterment, and just not being worried—that it’s ok to put that first. SWB: First off, like, shoutout for therapy. KL: YES. SWB: Therapy’s cool. KL: Hands up! SWB: People who go to therapy are great. Finding a good therapist is amazing. One of the things that I also love about what you’re saying, is that you’re talking about self care in the way that I really think it’s meant to be, right? Like, sometimes you see hashtag selfcare, and that’s nothing but buying yourself something expensive. And we’ve all bought ourselves something—ok, I bought some fancy face cream, hashtag self care. Bu that’s not actually really nurturing or nourishing yourself. That’s a pretty shallow moment in time that feels nice, but what you’re really talking about is like, making sure you’re getting what you really need in life, and getting the support from others and having somebody to talk to. Those kinds of things are such a deeper level, that we need to be able to talk about distinct from like, I bought some cool earrings ’cause I was sad. KL: Yeah, I want to let go of feeling shy about talking about that stuff. And, ultimately, let go of feeling shy in general, because I feel like I’m shy about things I should not be. And I don’t know, I think that’s a good place to start. SWB: Fuck yeah! JL: I love face cream! [Laughter] JL: One of the things I actually love about face cream, almost, is the same way I love my Fuck Yeah wine glasses—is that, like, I feel so rushed all the time. And my daily beauty routine, when I stop and have that moment—and of course it doesn’t matter if it’s a $5 face cream or $100 face cream—I just like that moment that stops and says, this moment’s about me. Yeah, I really like that. SWB: Totally! KL: You feel like you’re in the commercial… [Laughter] KL: And you’re like, you have the towel on your head, and you’re like, “yes, Noxzema clean!” [Laughter] JL: Yes! This moment—Rebecca Gayheart! She was the best, the Noxzema girl! KL: Right! Oh gosh. SWB: But it’s not just the like, face cream, right? It’s not really about the product, it’s about the time. KL: It’s the moment. SWB: And like that little bit of something for you. I like to pause and remember that because its’ ok to, like I said, buy myself a pair of earrings when I feel sad. Ok, I’ve been there, I’ve done that. Like, I’m not saying that that’s necessarily a bad thing to do. But you’re not really liberating yourself from shit that way. Like, that’s not really the answer here. I think my 2018 liberation is that I want to liberate myself from worrying about how I’m going to be perceived all the time, and just trying to exist a little bit more. One of the things that I’ve noticed about myself, is that as I’ve put myself out there professionally more, it means things like speaking, right? You have to get up on stage in front of people. Writing books—you have your name on this thing and it’s out there in the world, and like, people read it and they have opinions and feelings about it, and they talk about it. And all of that feels so personal. And I think it’s important to look at feedback from people—that has useful things in it and it’s going to help me become a better speaker, or writer, or whatever. But, it is not useful for me to internalize that as some kind of reflection of myself. Or that like, if somebody didn’t like my book, I am a bad person and should feel bad. And that’s really easy for me to do. I found myself doing it a lot. And so I’m really trying to allow some emotional distance and be like, you know, I wrote a book. That book is gonna be liked by some people and not by others. I cannot actually change anything in it at this point. It is on paper, in stores, like I can’t do shit about it if somebody doesn’t like it. So, I can let it go. And to also be like, yeah, it was a book or it was a talk, it was a podcast episode—it was what it was. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Like, there are a lot of books out there. None of them are perfect. Some of them are better than others, and mine will be valuable to some people. It is not the end of the world and it is certainly not the end of me if there’s negativity that somebody has about it. So, that is definitely something that I want to liberate myself from. I suspect it’ll be a year long process, and probably longer than a year. But, you know, hold me accountable to that this year. JL: I love that. I will definitely—I think both of us can hold you accountable. Because you’re a badass. Your book is great. KL: It’s fucking great. JL: And I can totally imagine—and we’ve talked about this—and I totally get that. Because no one–there can be a hundred people that will be like, “I loved your book,” and then one person says something shitty. KL: Right. JL: And then you’re like, I can’t stop thinking about that one shitty thing that person said. Which is so unfair, because your book’s amazing. KL: Yeah. SWB: And it’s also imperfect, right? Like, of course it is—all books are, right? Like, all things are—all things are imperfect, so being able to just be like, yeah. I wrote the best thing I could, during the time I had, with the knowledge I had at that time, and the constraints I had at that time. That is what I was able to produce and put into the world, and here we are. [45:00] JL: Fuck yeah. SWB: Fuck yeah. KL: Fuck yeah. JL: So, my 2018 liberation, I’ve decided, is to stop caring about what other people think about how I feed my child. On one hand, you have people who have very strong opinions about breastfeeding and how long you should breastfeed your child. And if you breastfeed your child for a shorter duration than what they deem “okay,” then you get a lot of judgment. And then on the other hand, I have a lot of judgement for the amount of time that I need to take to breastfeed or to pump and to work that into my schedule for people that want me to do other things besides provide that for my child. So this year, I want to not care about what other people think about how long I do or do not continue to provide breast milk for my child. KL: I love that. SWB: So, 2018 liberations—I’ve been so excited about these ever since Cate posted about hers at the beginning of the month. Even though we’re a few weeks into the year now, if you have not come up with a liberation for the year yet, I recommend it, because let me tell you, it feels great. JL: Also, liberate yourself from having to do it right at January 1st. You can liberate yourself anytime. KL: That’s right! Oh my god, do it tomorrow. Do it on February 1st! SWB: Come up with a new one every week! KL: Yeah! [Laughter] [Musical interlude] KL: That’s it for this week’s episode of No, You Go, the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. NYG is recorded in our home city of Philadelphia, and our theme music is by The Diaphone. Thanks to Eileen Webb for being our guest today. We’ll be back next week with another episode. [Outro music]

Summary: Donna Hill has had a lifelong love affair with dogs and is fascinated with dog behavior. She has broad practical experience in the dog world, volunteering in working in kennels and shelters, dog sitting and walking, fostering rescue dogs, teaching behavior modification privately, and teaching reactive dog classes. She also has a background in zoology and teaching. She stays current in dog behavior in learning by regularly attending seminars by top trainers and researchers, however she is probably best known for her YouTube videos. She's active locally as co-founder and professional member of Vancouver Island Animal Training Association and the founder and instructor for the Service Dog Training Institute. With her own dogs and other pets Donna loves to apply learning theory to teach a wide variety of sports, games, tricks and other activities such as cycling and service dog tasks. She loves using shaping to get new behaviors. Her teaching skill is keeping the big picture in mind while using creativity to define the small steps to help the learner succeed. That is to say she is a splitter. Donna has competed in agility, flyball, and Rally-O and teaches people to train their own service dogs. Links Donna's Youtube channel - Supernatural BC 2008 Donna's Youtube channel - Supernatural BC 2009 20 Crate Rest Activities (Video) Service Dog Training Institute Website Next Episode:  To be released 10/5/2017, featuring Barbara Currier to talk about agility training and handling and I'll ask her about her work with Georgia Tech which is creating wearable computing devices for military search and rescue and service dogs. TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we'll be talking to Donna Hill. Donna has had a lifelong love affair with dogs and is fascinated with dog behavior. She has broad practical experience in the dog world, volunteering in working in kennels and shelters, dog sitting and walking, fostering rescue dogs, teaching behavior modification privately, and teaching reactive dog classes. She also has a background in zoology and teaching. She stays current in dog behavior in learning by regularly attending seminars by top trainers and researchers, however she is probably best known for her YouTube videos. I'll include a link to her YouTube channels in the shadows so listeners can check her out. She's active locally as co-founder and professional member of Vancouver Island Animal Training Association and the founder and instructor for the Service Dog Training Institute. With her own dogs and other pets Donna loves to apply learning theory to teach a wide variety of sports, games, tricks and other activities such as cycling and service dog tasks. She loves using shaping to get new behaviors. Her teaching skill is keeping the big picture in mind while using creativity to define the small steps to help the learner succeed. That is to say she is a splitter. Donna has competed in agility, flyball, and rally O and teaches people to train their own service dogs. Hi Donna welcome to the podcast. Donna Hill: Thanks for having me! Melissa Breau: I am looking forward to it. So to get us started out, do you want to just tell us a little bit about your dogs and what you're working on with them now? Donna Hill: Okay. Let's start with Jessie. She's my little German shepherd mix possibly min pin believe it or not. She's 10 1/2 right now and we got her at seven months old from the local city pound. She is doing a public presentation with me next week, so I'm actually currently acclimating her to the new location and we're practicing the known behaviors in the new environment. It's really important that I do this in particular with her, more so than just doing with any dog, because she has a really fearful nature and she needs a lot more support than say your typical dog, whatever that might be. So we tend to spend a lot more time in acclimating with her. My border collie/vizsla mix, Lucy, is actually nine years old today! “Happy Birthday Lucy!” Melissa Breau: Happy birthday! Donna Hill: Yeah! We're working on discriminating cues for sound alerts. Yesterday we were up at a campsite at a lake (that's not very far from our house) and we were working on discriminating a sound alert, which is a nudge behavior. She nudges her nose to my knee. Then the cue for it is actually a knock. I can knock on anything and that becomes the cue for her to run over to me and push her nose against my knee. So one of the discriminations that we have to do is to find my car! The car has a similar behavior in that I tell her “Go find car.” and she takes me to find the car and nose nudges or nose tap targets near the handle of the door.  Because they're so similar behaviors and especially if I'm standing close, she needs to learn what's the difference. Which one is she having to target depending on the cue? That was what we were doing in the distraction level of the campsite environment.  Actually, the other thing we're working on with her too, was working on a “Forward” cue which is using a mobility harness.  You teach the dog to actually put some pressure forward to help people with say knee issues or just balance issues. That forward momentum really helps people as they're moving forward, so we were also working on generalizing that as well. We like doing stuff from all over the map! (laughing) Melissa Breau: So I know you mentioned in your bio that you've kind of been involved, you've lived with dogs all your life, but how did you specifically get into training and dog sports a little bit, like how did that part start? Donna Hill: Okay. Well training started way back. I remember when I had a basset hound as a kid. I taught her to pull me on the toboggan and also run beside me on the bicycle. Now for a basset hound, that's not…neither one are very typical behaviors, (laughing) and they're not known to be particularly trainable, but I don't remember how I did it but I managed to do it. Especially sitting behind the dog and getting the dog to pull forward. I actually don't even remember how I did it. But she was doing it and it was great fun for me! (laughing) I was about ten I think when that happened.  I remember ticking my brother off when I was teaching his little lab cross to retrieve, and he was hoping to have her as a hunting dog (and I mean she was all of about 30 pounds, this little lab mix,) and instead of teaching her to come back and retrieve and sit on my side, I would actually sit cross-legged on the ground and she would come and sit in my lap. (laughing). So my brother was not very happy with me. And so for the more formal sport stuff, it sort of came later. I had a number of generations of dogs that we went through. My dachshund which I'll tell you about a little bit later, and then along came this amazing dog. He was a Dalmatian/springer mix and honest to goodness I think he was half-human! He was just an amazing dog and we had an instant bond! He was definitely MY dog and he was just so smart! You know, I would try things two and three times and by the third time he'd kind of look at me like “Really? I'm not stupid Mom! I got it.”  He was really, really quick. He'd pick behaviors up so fast! He was, you know, one of those dogs that makes you look really good as a trainer, so of course I thought I was a great trainer. (Laugh) Of course, looking back I go “Yeah! No! It was all Ollie. It wasn't me!” Well I guess some of it was me, but you know mostly it was him. He loved doing all kinds of stuff so we started with fly ball because that was one of the first dog sports that mixed breeds could actually participate in. The interesting thing was he didn't like retrieving! In my interpretation, he thought retrieving was for dumb dogs! So he was “No. We're not doing that!” but because we took it and he had to do it in order to be competitive (he was incredibly competitive), and he HAD to win against other dogs! So we used the competitive nature of the sport to teach him to retrieve and he was awesome! He was in the top levels, I forget the numbers whether it was one or five, but they had five different class levels according to speed and he was in the fastest category and he was really good. And if he sensed that another dog might potentially be beating him, he would just turn on the speed as much as he possibly could to make sure that he won! He was just that kind of dog. I've never had seen a dog like him. He was a lot of fun! He also had a really stylized high jump too, where he would like do this exaggerated jump about three feet high over an eighteen-inch jump. It's totally hilarious to watch him! So I started from there. That's kind of where we went. We put our golden at the time as well into flyball. She did really well, although she was slow. She was at the other end of the category she was the slowest category, but she was very consistent. Then from there, I just started dabbling in rally obedience because that popped up at the time. As more and more sports kind of came, that's where I started getting more involved. Not at a really high level… I like the training aspect more than I like the competing part and so for me the competition was more of a goal. You know, “Can we enter this?” or “Maybe I might think about doing that one day. Let's train towards that?” If we never actually compete, I don't care. It's all fun because I just like the training part of it. So that's kind of where that all came from. (laughing) Melissa Breau: At what point did you really start looking at positive training specifically? What got you started focusing on positive training? Donna Hill: Well I wasn't really aware that there were different kinds of training or different approaches to training. At home, we just sort of did our own thing. I actually never took any formal training classes until I was about fifteen and I had my little daxie mix. She was six months old. At the time you had to wait until the dog was six months old to take it to classes. And of course once we did, then we realized why. Because the classes were so punitive, the dog had to be six months of age or you'd actually break the spirit. So we dutifully took her. There'd been a change in our life. I had moved from the Midwest area of Canada to the West coast with my mom and dad, leaving three siblings behind in the city. So we also left the dog I told you about, my brother's dog, with him because he was old enough that he could stay there as well. Anyway, so Dad decided we were getting a new dog and he marched me off to this litter of dachshund puppies (unbeknownst to my mom). That was my classic dad who was constantly bringing dogs home without letting Mum know. (laughing) So with five kids, we always usually had at least two dogs around. Anyway, we got this little dog and marched her off to training class. We'd never ever taken any of our dogs to training class before, but we thought “Well, you know this is a new dog and the classes are new!” and okay. So we took her to this this class and let's just say that force- based behaviors and training didn't work with her independent nature. (laughing) She's got a really good oppositional reflex. (laughing) So after the end of class she graduated ninth out of twelve dogs for her, shall we say, lack of obedience! (laughing) She never did learn how to do a recall because I never figured out how to do it positively. So the ironic thing that I kind of looked at later though was at home I was able to teach her more than 35 tricks! and she did them enthusiastically and eagerly! and I was like “Okay this is really interesting! Hmmm. ” So that was her. You know, I just kind of dabbled and played and as I said I was a teen and I went off to university and we'd never had any problems with any of our other dogs, so I was like “Okay, what gives here?” So that started the ball rolling to kind of down the positive way. Then of course once I got my Ollie dog I told you about, my dog of a lifetime. He was a very sensitive boy and I realized that I could not use some harsh methods. We enrolled him in classes too. Some of the methods they were using were again, not so positive. (Sighing) One of the things I remember distinctly with him was a recall.  The teacher had us put him on a long line and if we called him and he didn't come, we were to back up and pop really hard twice on the long line and then just keep backing up until he came towards you and got to the point where you could grab his collar. And I did this all of twice. The second time, I looked at him and he was so much in a hurry to get to me the second time, that he crammed himself at me as soon as he knew that pop was coming, he ran as fast as he could and he crammed himself right against my legs (almost knocking me over in his effort to get to me). But I could see it was in fear. It wasn't that he wanted to come to me. It was that he was scared he was getting popped.  I thought “You know what? I can't do this to you!”His nature was that I just couldn't do that! and then I went, “You know what? We're not using that.” So we continued going to classes. I just chose not to use the methods that the instructor told us. I found other ways to go and then down the road we found a second level class which actually started using food. “Oh my God! They actually used food in training classes!” and from there I had him…He was a dyed-in-the-wool puller on leash, and to him, the leash was a cue to pull. That's exactly the way he saw it. So when we trained him using the food, heeling beside me without a leash, he was awesome because the leash was no longer the cue.  He was like, “Oh you want me to stay right beside you. No problem! This is cool!” And it used his brain, which is what he liked doing. So, it was just the whole shift at that point. I started going “Okay, let's use some more positive methods. I don't need to use punitive methods to communicate with my dogs and I never liked using it anyway.”  It just felt bad to me. But of course, you know you're young, you're impressionable and you're following the instructors because they supposedly know what they're talking about. I discovered on my own that you don't need to use that stuff. You can you can use lots of positive stuff and communicate with your dog. Tell them what you want to do before they're going to do it and they are happy to comply. They just want to do and be with you and do stuff with you! Melissa Breau: What about now? How would you describe your training philosophy today? Donna Hill: It's always evolving. I'm really eclectic and I take things from different disciplines. I'm really interested in the more cognitive aspects of training. I see dogs as being very thinking animals. I really like that part of them. To me that's how I develop the relationship so I look at how they problem solve and how they try and communicate. I really like the to “Do as I Do” philosophy or approach. Mimicry is something that I've always kind of played with, even with my current dogs that I have now. I notice that Lucy is really good about mimicking Jessie and I've actually used that to train her some behaviors. I really like the idea that dogs are able to use modifiers. So things like left and right, they can recognize colors by name, shapes. They can count. They can do so many more things than we ever dreamt of when I was a kid, that we never even thought of thinking! Do they do this? Can they do that? So that really is what intrigued me, so the more of the cognitive kind of stuff comes out and the neurological kind of stuff comes out, I just yum that right up and that's what I'm incorporating more and more into what I do. But basically, I see that they learn in the same way that humans do. In humans we learn in many, many different ways, so depending on the dog their predominant way of learning might be one way, and another dog might have a different way of learning. So I try and learn what those are and then cater to that the dog's needs using those. Melissa Breau: So I wanted to ask you a little more about the service dog work, that piece of what you do. How did you get started down that road? Donna Hill: Okay that's a great question! That actually started with Jessie my current dog when she was young and I still had my senior golden. Ollie had just passed away, but I was doing rally obedience with my golden and I decided that I was going to be using positive methods if I could at all with Jessie, and so I started with the clicker with her and she took to it really well. My golden took to it really well and I just started playing with it.  I had thought that my golden was actually ready to trial in rally obedience until I found Sue Ailsby's original “Training Levels Program”, and I worked right from scratch through that. It was actually exactly what I was looking for! I was looking for a structured program to help me learn how to clicker train and how to work with my dogs and learn all of the concepts behind it and it was perfect!So I just worked my senior dog through until she passed away and Jessie, of course I worked her right almost to the end of the level seven. We were about halfway through level seven.  Because of Jesse's level of fears we weren't able to actually get some of the generalized stuff out there, but we were able to get a lot of them done and so I started to doing that. Then once I started playing around with teaching her just tasks, just for fun, I mean that's how it started, it was like “Oh! Let's train her to shut the door and open the door and you know do this kind of stuff.” Once I realized how easy it was and how ANYBODY could do it because the click is really the communication. You didn't need to have a force. You didn't need to have strength. You didn't have to use your lowered voice that we were always taught in class. Anybody could use it, right? I thought “Well! Wow this is really cool! This could be applied towards training service dogs.” and that's actually when I started my YouTube channel.  I thought “I got to get this out there so that other people can see how easy it is and they can train their own service dog.” Service dog training to me was always a mystery and it was really fascinating! I'd grown up around people that had guide dogs and a lot of people with disabilities and I really didn't know how to train them or how that I could help other people with disabilities, so when everything… all the dots fell in line, I went, “Oh cool! I can do this and I can get out there and I can help other people. This is so awesome!” (laughing) So that's my mantra. I really like helping people and that's my “AHA” moment when someone gets something because I was able to explain it to them, that's my reinforcer. That's what keeps me going every day. I see someone going “Yes, I got it!” and I'm thinking “Yes. That's me. Woohoo! I helped someone do that.” I also love my feedback. Yeah. (laughing) Melissa Breau: That's awesome. So you do a lot of different types of training right, so I imagine the stuff like behavior modification of the service dog stuff is very different from the reactive dog classes you offer, and I wanted to see how having experience at those different ends of the spectrum has really influenced your training overall. Donna Hill: -I am a big picture kind of person. I like seeing the big picture at the end -what is the final goal that I'm going to do? I like to see where the animal is starting and then the puzzle for me is figuring out how to get there. You know, what is the little roadmap, the little steps and whether it's ten steps or a hundred steps is going to get me from the beginning to the end. Sometimes, of course, along the way you're thrown in a fear period in the service dog, or you know just a regular pet dog as well. Sometimes there's aggression issues come up because some trauma happened to the dog. So those kinds of things definitely throw a wrench in it, but again it's all part of that big picture. So if I have those little pieces that I can pull together and realize this is where the dog is at this particular point, instead of going along my nice little line of a map or my plan. Of course, as you know dog training is never a linear progression. It always goes all over the place. It's like the piece of string that somebody drops on the floor. When we hit one of those parts or one of those events then I know, “Ah, okay! Time for lateral training!” or “Time for stepping right out of the training altogether, going back and doing some really basic stuff where there's desensitization or counter conditioning or operant training to help the dog overcome whatever that thing is” before we can continue on with my linear training that I have planned out on paper or in my head depending on what it is that we're working on. I think in that way, it really gives me flexibility to be able to jump wherever I need to jump because it's the dog that's sitting right in front of me and that's where they're at and that's what we need to deal with. Melissa Breau: I want to talk a little bit about the YouTube videos. I know one of the ones that I see come up all the time and get shared all the time in different Facebook groups, I've even posted, I saw a couple of times is the video you have on tricks you can teach a dog that's on crate rest. Do you mind just talking a little bit about that, and for those listening I will share a link directly to that video in the show notes if you don't want to go searching for it. But yeah, if you could talk about that Donna. Donna Hill: Okay when making my YouTube videos, I tend to look for trends so I look at what is already out there and I look at what's missing and that was one of the pieces that I found missing. I was noticing that there seemed to be a lot of people out there whose dogs were having cruciate ligament issues or just issues that really confine them to a crate for long periods of time, and that can be really hard to deal with for a lot of people. So I thought oh, well there's a hole. You know there's no one has ever shown what kinds of things you can do with a dog that's on crate rest because most of the stuff that's out there is very active- oriented right? So that's just kind of where that came from was, you know there's a need and I try and fill it. Again it's me trying to help people learn what they can do with their dogs. Melissa Breau: So I know one of the big things that you know your classes seem to have in common, is an emphasis on observation skills and I know even in your bio on the actual FDSA site you kind of mentioned that, so I wanted to ask why being able to watch your dog and accurately read their body language is so important, and to ask you to talk a little bit about the role that doing that plays in training. Donna Hill: Okay. Well I think observation skills has been a hugely underplayed skill in training dogs until fairly recently. It's absolutely key to be able to SEE the behaviors, because if you can't see them then you have no idea how to interpret what the dog is doing. So if you're not seeing some subtle stuff and you just see your dog going along, you may think “Oh well, the dog's doing fine!” when in fact actually there are some really subtle behaviors that are telling the dog is not so fine. There's some you know, there's subtle stuff going on and of course subtle stuff usually escalates if it's not dealt with. So by learning the really subtle stuff you can get in there early on and the dog doesn't have to get to the level of stress where it's really obvious so that you can deal with it and then that helps them in actually learning. One of the other reasons that I do have such a heavy emphasis on that is because my previous career, I was a nature interpreter, or a “naturalist” most people call it, and what a naturalist does is teaches people how to observe nature. So I had a long history of teaching people about how to observe, mostly it was nature so animals, plants, things like that, you know watching the birds, that kind of stuff. But it's just a natural translation to watching dogs because dogs are part of nature in my view. You know they're animals.  They have behaviors and I've always been fascinated with their behaviors so it just seemed a natural extension to me to say “Okay. Let's start teaching people about observation skills!” “Let's look at the dog, what behaviors are we seeing, you know and how does that relate to training and how does that impact training? What information can they give us? So are they relaxed and able to learn? Are they excited about what we're doing with them? Are they frustrated? Are they making mistakes or are they stressed about something in the environment?”  By observing them and in context, and that's a big piece of it is what's happening in the context around the dog, that combination allows us to interpret what's happening for the dog. So knowing that helps us to adjust the pace of training, how far we need to break down what we're doing to help them to succeed. Or maybe the dog's just zooming right through and we can make the steps bigger to add more of a challenge for that particular dog. So yeah, so it really affects training in a big way and I am so thrilled that we're seeing now more and more, particularly on Facebook, people incorporating videotapes of dogs and saying, “Oh you know, have a look! What behaviors do you see?” That's such a critical skill which is separate from the interpretation part of it, where then we kind of try and make our best guess about what is going on for the dog. But without those observation skills we wouldn't even be able to see or make good interpretations anyway. So it's a really important part of it. Melissa Breau: So I want to dive a little bit further into your classes at FDSA. So I know that for those listening this will air I think during registration for October. I think it opens the 22nd, so I think this will be after that I hope I'm not lying. Anyway, so I know that you have two classes coming up in October. One is The Body Awareness For Competition Precision Behaviors, and the other is The Elusive Hand-Delivered Retrieve. I want to start with the body awareness class. Why is body awareness an important skill for a competition dogs? Donna Hill: Well knowing where their body is in space and how to move it is what makes the difference between a performance that's amazing to watch and one that's sloppy. Most dogs don't have much clue that they even have a back end. Their front end walks along and they might have some sort of awareness, you know their nose, their muzzle certainly, their front paws, they're really useful for digging at things and touching things. But the vast majority of dogs have no clue that they have a back end and it just sort of follows along, you know the front left foot comes forward and then the back right foot comes forward and they just kind of do this opposition as they walk. But they're not really that aware. But once we start teaching them that yes, not only do they have a front end, they also have a back end and they also have hips and they also have shoulders and they have chest, and they can move each piece of that body separately, that really starts putting it together for them. So you get, you get a gawky kid right? They know they're a gawky kid. They're not that coordinated. Once they start to isolate each one of their body parts, so they work on their hands, and they work on their head, and they work on their feet, and they work on their body core and how to move that, once they have individual knowledge of all of those, then the whole package comes together and they move much better as a whole package, and they become much more graceful. And so just like dogs, they become more graceful athletes who perform with speed, precision and confidence. So that's kind of the fundamental idea behind the body awareness classes. Melissa Breau: And for people listening I did double check while Donna was answering that. Registration is currently open when you hear this. So, it opened last week so you can go to the site and register if you are so inclined. So Donna how do you approach teaching body awareness in the class itself? Donna Hill: Okay, well I just break it down into the separate parts of the body. So we're looking at some specific behaviors. One is a chin rest which also translates to a whole bunch of other behaviors like a chin rest can be turned into teaching a hold for a retrieve. It can be taught for a placement of the retrieve where the dog comes back and delivers it to you, and most of the behaviors do translate into other into specific behaviors for competition, but which is why I've chosen them. Muzzle pokes are another thing so the dog is very aware of where they're putting their muzzle so they can poke it through your fingers, they can poke it through a hoop, they can poke it into a yogurt container- those kinds of things and are comfortable doing so, which also gives them more confidence. Like Jessie for example did not like putting her head into anything, so one of the easiest ways I found was actually to use the yogurt containers, and just put some yogurt in the bottom and she would stick her head happily in at the bottom to lick it up. That really built up confidence of facial awareness and you know that kind of stuff. So that's the kind of stuff we're going to be doing in class. Shoulder, hip, and chest targets, and the other thing we're also going to look at is how to fine tune balance. So if we can get them on like a balance beam and actually teach them how to how to place their feet so that they're not falling off or they're not having to use one foot on the ground and three feet on the balance beam, so that they gain confidence in actually balancing. And that was the one thing with both of my dogs that I really found helped was to build that confidence on narrow surfaces. That in turn of course, once they can do it on a narrow surface while walking on a regular surface and actually moving with precision is much, much easier. In the class, we use the success of approximation and shaping to get the behaviors. Melissa Breau: Very nice. Well I want to also talk about the retrieve class a little bit. I know that's something a lot of people struggle with. Why do you think so many people have a hard time teaching retrieves? Donna Hill: I think most people have an expectation that the dog would just do it, because there's a lot of breeds like the retriever breeds, goldens, labs, flat coats, that have a natural retrieve and look so easy. They make it look so easy because it's bred into them. But what they don't realize is that most dogs that does not come naturally. There's a series, a chain of events, that they do called motor patterns, and the retrieve doesn't really fit in there because most dogs end the motor pattern with either a bite or a consume. Well most dogs don't consume, but some will certainly do a grab bite at the very end. That does not involve picking it up and carrying it anywhere or bringing it back to a person. So what the mistake they make is they toss the ball out, and the dog of course will happily chase it because chasing is part of the prey drive, and then the dog often will lose interest because once the ball stops moving, it's like “Oh yeah. Okay. Whatever.” and they can't do anything with it. So they either drop it and walk away from it or maybe they'll carry it away and play with it, but they certainly won't bring it back. The most common error I found is that people don't break it down into the smaller skills the retrieve chain is made up of. It's actually at least six individual skills that are involved in teaching a behavior chain of the retrieve. If people go back and teach the dog each one of those little pieces, then they put the pieces together in a behavior chain, then they can get it right. The other element as I also will back chain it. That means that we start at the very end of the chain so that the dog is always working towards something that they know, i.e. putting the object in your hand or delivering the object to your lap or wherever it is that you want it at your feet. We start at that point, and then we back up so that eventually the dog is always understanding, “Uh! I have to deliver it at that location, and that's where it has to be. That finishes the chain. That gets me the reinforce.” and it becomes much easier for them to succeed. So the key thing is breaking them down into the small pieces and then back chaining it. For example, if you need teach a dog to pick up a dime off a smooth floor, you have to train it right? A dog can't just automatically do it. There's a lot of even finer things that go into that. They need to learn how to use their heads and their mouth, to tilt their head and use their mouth and their tongues to pick up the object, and also to place it precisely. Both of my dogs can take a quarter and place it into a narrow slot, like a piggy bank. That takes a lot of skill to learn. They have to really refine the skills down step by step by step in order to get to that level of accuracy. It's really interesting to watch the process and to teach them and some of them do it better than others. Jesse is really, really into the fine-tuning behaviors. That's her specialty. She loves really fine behaviors, whereas for Lucy it's “Let's just get it done mom and throw that behavior together!” so for her it was much more of a challenge for me to get her down to that point of taking the quarter and putting in that slot because she really had to get patient and be very careful and be very calm while she does it. She also is very food motivated, so she gets excited about food really easily. So my big challenge with her was learning to keep her calm, which is always another piece of the element for retrieve as well. But each dog does it in their own way. Melissa Breau: So it sounds like the class would be good for people who are both interested in like a play retrieve with a toy, and more formal retrieve, right? Donna Hill: Yeah absolutely. A retrieve is a retrieve no matter what kind of sport or environment that you're doing it in. It could be for a sport dog. It could be for a competition dog. It could be for a service dog or it could be for a play dog. So the class really covers the gamut and it was originally designed for…Denise suggested that I design it as a problem solving class. So whatever your problems are, I'm hoping that it covers the main problems. So you know if your dog rolls a dumbbell, or whether it drops it, or whether it's over excited, I try and cover all of the super common problem areas and then if the goals in particular have additional problems, that's what they're at gold for so that we can actually fine tune it and say, okay you know the dog does well until this point. Let's deal with that point and how do we fix that piece, or maybe we need to go back and retrain something prior to that piece so that when we get to that piece, it just becomes part of the chain and it just flows through and it's no longer an issue. Melissa Breau: You talked a little bit in there kind of about your approach to teaching it, but is there more you want to say about that, about kind of how you approach the class? Donna Hill: Basically it's a combination of shaping each part of the chain and then back chaining the parts together. That in a nutshell, that's kind of a summary. The dog always works towards something that's more familiar because we've already practiced that end piece lots and lots of times, and the more repetitions we do, the more practice so the stronger they get in coming towards it. So I don't know how many people have been asked to memorize poems, but when I was a kid we had to memorize poems for school, and one of the techniques we were taught was actually back chaining even though they didn't call it that. What we would do is say we had ten verses in the poem or even songs. What we would do is actually start with the last verse or the last piece of it, and we would memorize that. And then we would go to the second last one, and the last one, and then the third last one, the second last one, and then the last one. And what that allowed us to do, was as we would progress through the recitation, we actually got more confident because we've had more practice with the end one. What often happens is when we forward chain, we start at the beginning. We got a really solid start and then we sort of peter out near the end because we don't have as much practice near the end. Freestyle is another place that we can actually apply that as well but it works really well for a retrieve. Melissa Breau: Now I know you've got one more class on the schedule, this time for December, and I wanted to talk about that too. So it's called Creativity With Cue Concepts. So talk me through that. What do you cover in that class? Donna Hill: We break the various parts of cues into smaller components. That allows us to look at how we use the cues and what our dogs need from us to succeed in using them to do the behaviors that we want them to do. So the kinds of things we're looking at are the cues themselves. What are they? The kinds of cues. There's verbal. There's physical. There's environmental. Then we look at the delivery or the response to cues for something called latency which is the time between when the cue is given and when the dog starts responding to it. The speed of the response, so how fast is the dog walking towards you? Is it running towards you once you give the cue? Things like what is a concept and how do we generalize cues as a concept so that the dog understands that this specific sound means to do this behavior in any environment no matter where you are. That is a concept. Discrimination between cues, so I was telling you what I was doing with Lucy was we were discriminating between competing cues because she had the car that she nose targeted and she had my knee and we had two different cues that were used.  One was a sound and one was a verbal cue. So she had to discriminate between those. How do you start teaching that because that's really confusing for a lot of dogs, especially dogs that like to just throw behaviors at you, the ones that like being shaped. I really like this class because the students get to choose the behaviors that they want to apply the concept to. So there isn't any prescribed behaviors that they have to work on. They can pick whatever sport that they're working on. “I'm in agility and I want the dog to understand the cue for this and this obstacle. It just makes it easier when I'm sending them out.” So let's work on that and we apply the concept for the cues in the class to that particular sport, and you can do that with any sport. You can do it with service dogs. It doesn't matter what it is you're training. I really like it because I get to see a wide variety of behaviors from different sports and from different activities with the dogs. It's a really fun class to watch as well as a bronze, but it's even more fun as a gold student because you just get to go wherever you want to go with it. If you want to spend the entire class on one concept, you can do that too. It's entirely up to you. I'm flexible. Melissa Breau: That's really interesting it's kind of a very different class than a lot of the other classes on the schedule and… Donna Hill: It is! and you know it for me, it just came together so quickly when I originally developed it! I was just astounded! I thought “This is what we're doing. We're da da da da.” I explained it and then thought “Oh my goodness! This is so much easier than the rest of the classes where I've had to go through step by step by step.”  Whereas this class, it's more conceptual. Once you get the concept, then you can go to the detail. But you want to get that concept first and then get into the detail that's, hence the class name. Melissa Breau: So I want to get into those last three questions that I ask everyone at the end of the interview and the first one is what is the dog related accomplishment that you're proudest of? Donna Hill: I would have to say, it's probably two if I'm allowed two. One is developing a great training relationship with each of my dogs. Because I'm a process-oriented person rather than results, I feel that the results come if the process is good. They and I could train all day and I mean I love it! I really love it! When I had Jessie by herself for a couple of years, I consulted a certified Karen Pryor trainer that was the only one on the island at the time where I live, and she said to me, she goes, “Donna you have to get a second dog.” (laughing)  She said “You are loving training too much.” Seriously, I was overtraining Jessie. I was really careful to try not to, and she's a really sensitive dog, but I just love training so much I just couldn't help myself. I wanted to do so many things! We always had plans for a second dog anyway, so we went out and we got our second dog. It was a bit of a process. We finally found Lucy and I she is so amazing. She is a driven dog and she would work with me all day, honest to goodness. She loves working. She's a really fun dog to train. She throws behaviors at me. She loves shaping. She's a fantastic dog! So as a second dog she's a fantastic dog, because it really took the pressure off Jessie who is a really sensitive dog, and they are a really good combination because you know if I need more training I just take Lucy out and away we go. So that's the first is developing a great relationship with them. The second part that I'm really proud of is the You Tube channels. So many people can learn so much on the You Tube channels. It's a really great way or venue to put the information out there and reach a lot of people. It was a bonus for me because one of the main reasons I actually started it as well, or I guess the second main reason, was because I was terrified of being videotaped and I wanted to get over that fear and I thought well if I put these videos together, I have control over the process, so if I videotape myself and I hate what I see, I don't have to include it. And it's really has given me a lot of confidence now. Seriously, when I was at my wedding, I actually banned videotapes and video cameras because I did not want the added stress of being videotaped. (laughing) So yeah, so now I've mostly overcome it. I'm still nervous, but nowhere near the level of nervousness. It's funny because Denise just recently suggested that videotaping yourself really adds that sort of a fake environment of adding extra pressure to yourself, like practicing for a competition, right? Videotaping yourself is a good start to it, because it adds that little bit of pressure. You know someone's watching and she's absolutely right! That's what I would totally feel and I still feel that that to this day. When I go out and about in public, I still feel like people are watching me. I still feel that pressure of people around watching which in public actually is interesting. I am more nervous in general public just working my dog one on one doing my own thing, than I am in front of a group simply because I think I have more control in the group. Because usually when I'm working with the group, I'm the one leading the group. I'm the speaker. So then I control the rest of it and I'm a real control freak when it comes to that. So if I'm in control, that changes everything. But when I'm not in control, then that makes me really nervous. So a teaching role is a really good role for me because I feel like I'm in control and yet I can still let the students do their thing, but it takes the pressure off me. So those are the those are two things I am proud of, developing a great training relationship and my two YouTube channels. Melissa Breau: So this is normally my favorite question of the entire interview and that is what is the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Donna Hill: Not specifically training related although it totally is relevant. Many years ago, I think I was about twelve or thirteen, my older brother who's quite a bit older than I am. I'm the youngest of five kids and there's a bit of a gap between me and the previous four and I'm also the youngest of three girls and back then it was the old hope chest. I don't if you'd remember what those, were but they were kind of the hope for the future when you get married. There's things you started collecting in preparation for that. Kind of an old-fashioned concept I know, but whatever, that's my family. Anyway, so many years ago when I was about twelve or thirteen, he gave me this little trivet, which is like basically a hot plate that you can put a pot on the stove and stuff on the counter. It's just this little metal thing and it had a picture of a little yellow tacky caterpillar on it. But it had a little quote on it, and the quote said, “Yard by yard, life is hard. Inch by inch, it's a cinch!” For some reason it really struck me and I have really taken that to heart and I've applied that to almost everything I do in life. When I'm faced with something hard, I know it's not this big thing. I can break it down into smaller pieces and we can get through it step by step by step, and ultimately get the final goal that I want. And of course dog training is EXACTLY that. It's all about these teeny tiny little pieces that get you to that final goal. That final behavior, the competition, whatever it is that's at the end. So I take that and apply it in many different ways in my life, and training certainly. Melissa Breau: And that's great I like that so much. It's such a great kind of line to kind of remember, you know. Donna Hill: It's an easy one. Yeah, it's everywhere and I've told so many people, that my husband actually this morning when I was talking about that, I thought, oh I bet she's going to ask this question. And he said you know, I remember when you told me that. He said we were back in university and I was helping him with his writing projects, and he said “I remember you telling me that. Break everything down. It was the yard by yard, life is hard, inch by inch it's a cinch.” So and that was probably about thirty years ago he remembers that from. Melissa Breau: (Laughs) It's clearly a memorable line. Donna Hill: Yeah. (Laughs) Melissa Breau: So my last question for you today. Who is someone else in the dog world that you look up to? Donna Hill: I can't say one person! I have to say there's lots of them. I'm a real eclectic learner, and so again back to that real variety of learning styles, so everybody from Karen Pryor, Bob Bailey, Suzanne Clothier, Turid Rugaas, Denise Fenzi of course, Leslie McDevitt, Susan Friedman, Raymond Coppinger, and Jean Donaldson, Sue Ailsby. I take a little piece of something from a lot of the better trainers that are out there. Just things that really appeal to me and I incorporate them, and I try them. It's all over the map and I think that comes back from my zoology background and just the general interest in animal behavior, because I do see it. It's not just one way or the other way of doing it. There's a whole variety. Some of the new researchers that are coming out are really affecting me too. A lot of the cognitive instructors, half of them I can't pronounce their names. I take the information that they've got and they're just fantastic. So there's tons and tons of not only trainers, but also researchers out there that I really appreciate their contributions so that I can take what I need and put it all together to create something that works for me and for the students that I work with. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. Well thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Donna. Donna Hill: Well thank you for having me! This has been a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it! Melissa Breau: That's excellent and thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Barbara Currier to talk about agility training and handling and I'll ask her about her work with Georgia Tech which is creating wearable computing devices for military search and rescue and service dogs. Don't miss it. If you haven't already subscribed to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services.

Today my guest is Susan Piver. Susan is a Buddhist teacher and the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including The Hard Questions and the award-winning How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life. Her latest book is entitled The Wisdom of a Broken Heart. She teaches workshops and speaks all over the world on meditation, spirituality, communication, relationships, and creativity. In 2011, Susan launched the Open Heart Project, an online meditation community with nearly 12,000 members who practice together and explore ways to bring spiritual values such as kindness, genuineness, and fearlessness into everyday life. In today’s episode, Susan and I speak about: How fear has unfolded in her life and how you can be confident and fearful at the same time How synchronizing the mind and the body is the key to confidence Tapping into the power and the beauty of fear The careful balance of avoiding the “conceptual game plan” while still having action A story of Susan's own emergence and how to see yourself through the relationships you keep Here’s my conversation, “Leaning Into Fear and Falling Into Beauty,” with the wise and open-hearted Susan Piver. Subscribe to the Emerging Women podcast on iTunes. Transcript Chantal Pierrat: Hello, and welcome, Susan. Susan Piver: Thank you, I’m glad to be here. CP: Yes, I am too. I have lots of juicy questions for you that are relevant to my life, so I’m glad we’ve carved out the time. Let’s start with—well, we had such a great conversation the first time we met last month, and I just wanted to go in a million different directions. But today I want to talk about fear. You have a couple of books on fear, [including] Freedom from Fear, which I think is your most recent book, and then a book with a very interesting title, How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life: Opening Your Heart to Confidence, Intimacy, and Joy. And I know that one is more practical; Freedom from Fear is a seven-day meditation program. But I’m curious to see, just in your own life, how this topic unfolded for you, and how it came into this—and you also have some audio that you’ve done with Jen Louden. So how did this come through you, and what do you have to say about fear? SP: OK, well, I always feel like my biggest qualification is my own fear, because I just experience a lot of fear. I always have throughout my life and I still do. It’s something that each of us has to figure out a way to meet. And I was thinking of writing a book about meditation practice, and I wrote a proposal for that book. And in the proposal, there was a line that said something like, “Meditation is so awesome because it teaches you how to not be afraid of your own life.” And when the publisher saw that line, they said, “That’s the title.” So I said, “OK.” [Laughs] It was very easy to gear the content around the topic of fear because meditation—in particular, I suppose, in the style that I practice, the Shambhala Buddhist tradition—is seen as a gesture of warriorship. And one of the fruits of meditation practice is courage and wakefulness and curiosity and joy. So those were the things that I wanted to focus on, and in doing so, also had to focus on why these wonderful, wonderful qualities are so difficult for us to find and hold. CP: So right now, in The Atlantic—and I just picked this up so I haven’t read it—there’s an article, it’s on the cover, and they’re calling it “Closing the Confidence Gap,” just talking about even highly successful women are lacking in confidence in their jobs and in the work that they do, even though they’re seen and rewarded for their work and they’re outwardly recognized as being successful. I know for myself, building a business and feeling confident that I can create this platform that is Emerging Women, and yet the fear and the lack of confidence—it’s like you can be confident and fearful or confident and not confident at the same time. How is that? SP: Isn’t that interesting?

Episode 65: Theatrefolk Q & A: You ask, We answer Lindsay and Craig sit down to answer questions and address comments that came up from our recent customer survey. Topics include: Can students directly contact us? What social issues do we cover? And do we sell plays?   Show Notes Free Resources from Theatrefolk NCTAE North Carolina Theatre Arts Educators Magic Fairy in the Microwave Camel Dung and Cloves Hamlet, Zombie Killer of Denmark Tuna Fish Eulogy Royalty Exemptions for Competitions The Drama Notebook Practical Technical Theater DVD Series Theatrefolk on Facebook Subscribe to The Theatrefolk Podcast On iTunes. On Stitcher. Episode Transcript Lindsay: Welcome to TFP, the Theatrefolk podcast. I am Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello, I hope you're well. Thanks for listening. So today is an extra-special edition of TFP, but as I say that, I mean I shouldn't say that since I think every episode is special, but what I really mean is that today I'm not alone, I have my partner in crime sitting beside me, Craig Mason. Craig: Hello, Lindsay. Lindsay: Hello. And I guess what I mean is that Craig and I were going to do something a little special today, aren't we? Craig: Yeah. We did this little survey where we asked two guys just four questions. What were the four questions, Lindsay? Lindsay: They are… Craig: How did you hear about Theatrefolk? Why do you buy our plays, and if you don't, why not? What do you like about us? And what else would you like us to offer? Now, that was just intended to be like an internal thing for us to get like a measurement of who's out there and what they want from us, because we've just been soaring with people on Facebook. Lindsay: Yeah, and we've never done that before, first of all, because it's kind of hard for us. We're sensitive folk, a little bit… Craig: Yeah. Lindsay: …and it's hard for us to ask that question, “If you don't buy from us, why not?” except that it's really, really helpful and useful. Like how can we get better if we don't get feedback? Craig: And the good news is we've got a couple of hundred responses and they were just fantastic. I'm not saying it was all positive, but I thought that the stuff that was negative was stuff that we really could embrace and do things with. Lindsay: And learn from. Craig: Yeah. I was so concerned… Lindsay: [Laughs] Craig: …and those concerns were completely unfounded. Lindsay: You know what? We're always concerned. Craig and I have I would say…well, I can only speak for myself, but I have an imagination which helps me write a lot of plays. People ask me all the time how is it that I write so much and my inner answer is because my brain is whacked out. [Laughs] It goes places. But then the other side of that is that I always think something hugely negative is going to happen every time we put ourselves out there… Craig: Mm-hmm. Lindsay: …but that doesn't happen, and let's get down to it. Let's go, let's go, let's really go! Craig: Okay, so what I did—now, you have not read any of these responses yet, right? Lindsay: No… Craig: Okay. Lindsay: …so that I can give a very honest and… Craig: Okay, cool. And I only really just look at them… Lindsay: …fresh answer. Craig: I look at them quickly at the beginning just to make sure that the form was working, and then I haven't really touched it since then. But what I did just before we started recording is I went through, I just grabbed—and oh, I should say this too: The survey was just completely anonymous. The only data we have are the four answers that people gave. We don't have any other… Lindsay: Where they're from or who they're from, so… Craig: A couple of people left their names, but they're people that we know. [Laughs] Lindsay: Oh, that's nice. Craig: It was very sweet. One person said, “There's no need for anonymity here, I love you guys,

An interview with one of the participants from the very first Herpes Opportunity weekend seminar in Raleigh, NC, October 26-28, 2012. Transcript: I: So yeah, just like a general sense of the weekend. What was it like for you? P: I wasn’t really sure going in what to expect, but I came out a different person for sure. It’s more about your self. It’s more about really . . . it’s like self-awareness. It’s really finding out what makes you tick, what’s bothering you. Kind of I guess, just looking at where you are now and where you want to be, and what your gaps are and why you’re not there. I took a lot away from it. And it wasn’t just about the “H”, but more about your self. Pain’s the way I thought about myself actually. And I think about other people, too. I think a lot of it was some of the exercises we went through. I guess opened my eyes. I was feeling kind of alone and disconnected, a lot of different things. I didn’t know whether I could do it, but I guess I just have a whole different prospective on where I was at, and why I was doing certain things to myself when there really was no reason to be that way. I was in a different kind of place, I guess. I just wasn’t thinking in the right frame of mind for a long time, I think. I knew it was a problem, but I never—I don’t know, I guess I just didn’t want to go there. I think a lot of it is, you’re vulnerable, the fear, there’s so many different things, you know, that can go into it. Once you can recognize what it is, you can really start to build some kind of foundation on how you want to change it. (02:38) I: Good. It sounds like the beginning of a new path for you was actually to start looking at maybe the stuff that you didn’t originally want to look at. P: Exactly. Yep. That’s what it is. Sometimes you just need a push, you know. You just need someone to say the right things, the right words, and of course you need to let it all out. I mean, I hadn’t had a meltdown like that probably for, well, I don’t know, for a long time. (03:07) I: How you’re explaining it, it almost sounds like it was purging something from you that had been trapped inside for a while. P: Yes. Yes, that’s another good word. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, you do it with yourself, but when you have other people there that are just kind of listening, and helping you along, and giving their perspective. It makes a difference. I think it really opens your eyes up to a lot of different possibilities, different opportunities, things you didn’t look at before. I mean, a lot of it, I look at myself saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Or my mind was so closed on a certain path or a certain way that I wasn’t even looking at other avenues. And then to hear the other people, “Gosh, I said that problem, too, and this is how I handled it, or it wasn’t exactly similar, but . . .” I mean, that kind of put a little bit in perspective too that I was really thinking, “Of course, I’m alone and no one else is feeling this. What is wrong with me?” You know, that kind of thing. [Laughs] (04:12) I: You’re the only one. [Laughs] P: Yeah, your mind just plays so many different scenarios. And my problem was, I wasn’t letting anybody in, wasn’t telling anybody anything, but it was more than that for me, it wasn’t just about the “H”. And I realized that. It’s not really about that. It’s more about coming in tune with yourself, and really valuing what you have to bring, and then just like listening to other people, too. It was really—I’m really glad I went. I wasn’t going to, I didn’t want to, and you know the whole “H” thing, that’s just another part of my issue, but I’m really glad I did because it really opened up my eyes to a lot of different things, and how much I was shutting a lot of stuff down that I shouldn’t have been. It helped me really, you know say, “God, I have all these people out here, why am I not reaching out? What is wrong with me?” It really kind of put that back into perspective that I don’t have to go through all this alone. It just helped me say—you know I kept saying, ”Yeah, I accept it. I accept it.” But I really don’t think I did to be honest. (05:26) I: Umm hmm. It sounds like you felt really supported. P: Yeah, I did. Yeah, probably for the first time in a long time. I: Wow. How does that feel to say that? P: It feels good, really. I’ve been trying to take it all in the last couple days, and each day I get better, I get more confident. I’m more—I’m not thinking of the negative things, I’m thinking of “Okay, what can I do to push it through. There’s got to be some other avenue or another thing I can do.” Instead of just saying, “Okay, it’s not going to work. I’m done.” Then you shut yourself down, and you miss out on some many different opportunities or maybe different possibilities you didn’t think of before, you didn’t look at before. (06:12) I: Yeah. What else is different about you now? P: I don’t know. I guess I feel a little bit more of a relief. I don’t feel the weight on my shoulders any more. I feel that I can just look at certain things and take it one step at a time. Whereas before I just felt so closed in. I felt like, “God, it’s too much. I just can’t do it.” I’m feeling more like this is an obstacle, but how can I get around it? Or what can I do to help me face it? For the most part, I got out the value that I wanted for me. It was a really good experience for me. I’m so glad that I [Laughs], I finished it because I think I would have been very disappointed in myself if I didn’t. (07:03) I: If you were to tell someone who might be considering coming to the seminar, but they’re afraid or they don’t really know what it’s about . . .what would you tell that person? P: I would tell them that I felt the same way. Without giving it away, it’s about “H”, but it’s something more. It’s more of like a movement. And it’s really about your self. It’s really about taking a weekend and really—it’s like a retreat. Take a weekend and just really think about yourself. Sometimes you need that, you need . . . and don’t be afraid to have someone push you because sometimes we need that push. You’ll really be glad you did because you’ll really find out things about yourself and other people that you would never found out if you didn’t go to the seminar. It’s really valuable even though you might think, ”God, I don’t need this.” because I didn’t think I needed either. Because everyone thinks they’re coping with things when they’re really not, so I think I would just encourage them. Yeah, you have “H”, but there’s [sic] other things you’re going to get out of the seminar that I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised at the end, and how you feel about yourself and other people. (08:21) I: I think you said that for you, it felt pretty heavy at the beginning like when you first came in you felt pretty heavy, but by the end, it was like the weight was off, I feel really light, I feel free. P: Yeah. Yeah, it was like a—it was freedom, it was a relief; I’ve been carrying a lot on my shoulders. Just as I was driving today, I was coming back from somewhere and I’m like, “My God, why was I doing that all of these years? I was taking on this burden.” (08:51) I: Before you came to the seminar, when you had disclosed, you had gotten rejected. How do you feel about disclosing to someone now? P: Much better. Much better. I think it was my whole attitude . . . I’m like, “They’re never going to accept this and you can’t go in like that. It’s so much different how I feel now about it. I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to explain. I have a whole different perspective on that now. And even talking to other people, the other participants, and even the staff regarding that . . . I mean, it’s—I don’t know, I just feel like I’m more confident for some reason. I think that has a lot to do with feeling you’re worthy, you deserve it . . . I never really felt that way before. I always thought, “Alright, I don’t deserve it. I did something wrong.” [Laughs] (09:49) I: And now you feel like now you deserve it. P: Yeah, I feel like, “Goddamn it, you know, I do. There’s nothing wrong with me.” [Both laugh] It’s just one little obstacle that you can overcome. I’ve seen people with relationships where one has it, or they both do [sic] or whatever. You know, and people are still together. I mean, sh*t, a lot of it doesn’t have anything to do with it, more of it’s financial reasons, and other reasons why people split up. But I wasn’t thinking like that, I had another way of thinking before walking in there. It’s just kind of opened my eyes a little more I guess. It’s giving me a chance. I wasn’t even giving myself a chance, I think. I was shooting myself down before I even went in to disclose. A lot of it you don’t think about body language and you know, looking in someone’s eyes, really think a lot about that stuff when you’re talking to somebody. And some of it was, “Oh my God, they’re going to think this . . .” When really actually they’re not. Even before you would speak, it’s putting a lot of preconceived—like what I was doing, “Oh, he’s never going to . . .” this guy when I tell him, he’s going to walk out the door. And that shows on your face. (11:08) Break in interview: Interviewer states, “And then I said, ‘Wow. After hearing all of that, it sounds like it was a really good weekend for you.’” P: Yes. Absolutely. It just really lifted me up. It really—I just needed it. I needed a big push and I got it. I’m just so glad that I attended and that I came back—that I didn’t get into that place again where, “Oh, I can’t do this, and I can just do everything by myself. And I’m so independent, and I don’t need anybody.” You know, that kind of thing. And really I did. It’s like, “No, you’re getting your ass up, and you’re going there and you’re going to finish it.” That’s what I did. So I think just a lot of what people said to me, it just made me feel good. For one thing because I haven’t heard it in a while, but I kind of already knew that it was there. But to have people see it actually, and to tell you, it just really meant a lot to me. It really gives you a little bit of a boost. And just reiterates what really was inside of me, that is was there all along. It’s just that I let myself get into some kind of funk or whatever you want to call it, and to believe that it wasn’t there anymore and I’m not a good person, or I can’t do this or something will never happen that I want to happen. (12:39) I: Yeah. So actually having people see your beauty, and your leadership, and your big heart . . .it actually had you being able to see all those things more clearly in your self? P: Exactly. Exactly. I: And how does that feel to realize all of those things about yourself? (13:03) P: It feels great. [Laughs] It just feels wonderful. I can’t tell you how, just a better perspective I have. I was such in a dark place before. I’m just not in that place anymore. I don’t ever want to go there again. And hopefully, I won’t. It opens up your eyes. It’s like, “What have you been doing the last couple months or the last couple years feeling this way?” There’s absolutely no reason to feel that way. It really helps you bring out your strengths and know that you have courage even coming there for one thing. It really says a lot about yourself, and it makes you believe. I don’t want to say, “Gives you hope.” because you always have—I always had hope, but it’s just the word that’s coming into my mind right now. It gives you hope, makes you believe, you know not go back into where you were before because it’s just not a good place to be. (14:05) I: It sounds like when you talk about all this stuff that you have a tool set now for making sure you don’t flip into that dark space again. P: Yes, I do. You’re absolutely right. I like set the foundation to build what I know what I need to do. It’s the push I needed to do it. It kind of sets you in motion for what you want to do, and it gives kind of like a goal to reach in the next couple months or the next year. And it kind of gives you the momentum after something like this to follow through with what I need to do for myself. (14:45) I: Well, cool. It sounds like a lot of healing took place for you over the course of the weekend. P: Yeah, it really did. It really was a good experience for me. I can’t thank you enough for pushing me because if I didn’t have the push, I’d still be where I was. I wasn’t in a good place, but I feel so much better now. And I’m just so glad that I came and I met everybody. It opened up whole new avenue of living my life. I don’t know, it’s kind of hard to explain, I guess. (15:19) I: That was beautifully explained. [Laughs] I love what you just said. P: Wow. Thanks. I: Yeah. I’m just really proud of you for having the courage to, like you said, to even come. (15:33) P: Yeah, it’s—thank you. I know that now. I didn’t think when I walked in there, “I have courage.” but it was… for everyone. Like you said, you just get into the mold and you get beat up so hard sometimes that it’s hard to come out of something, but with a weekend to really kind of look at yourself and hear feed back from other people. It’s really—it’s so valuable to me. Like I said, it’s worth gold. It’s worth gold. (16:10) I: [Laughs] That is so good to hear. I’m so glad that you came. P: I’m glad I came, too. And you did a really nice job facilitating, by the way. I: [Laughs] Thank you. P: Yeah, that was a huge thing to undertake—this is going to get really huge. I think you know that. [Laughs] (16:33) I: I hope so. I hope so. I can’t wait for it to blow up, and help as many people as possible. Just your help on the phone with me now really helps that. P: It will. This is going to get really big. It’s really a good seminar. You don’t how many more people you’re going to help. It’s just so wide open. And so many people need this that it’s going to be incredible. It really is. (17:04) Break in interview: Interviewer states, “Wow, pretty cool. And then we got talking about the possibility of coming back and helping staff again, and helping other people who need it. Here’s what we started talking about…” (17:17) P: I was just going to say that I saw a lot of me in some of the younger folks, and just some of the things they said because they were so newly diagnosed. I’m like, “Oh, my goodness. You know, I’ve been there. I know your pain. You’re going to get better.” To hear them say, “Oh, I’m just not—I don’t feel pretty, and I feel dirty. I’m never going to be able to get a date.” It’s just like, “Oh my gosh, you know, I’ve been through this…yes, you will.” [Laughs] It makes you want to really reach out to them…hey, listen, you’re going to be fine. You’re going to go through some stuff, yeah, but you’re going to come out of it okay. I never had that when I was diagnosed, so I want to be able to give that to somebody. They’re just going to take the ball and run with it, and just be overwhelmed with joy that someone’s actually taken the time to tell them they’re going to be okay. And you make all these friends along the way that you didn’t have before. The whole experience is like really incredible. [Laughs] (18:27) I: [Laughs] I like that little laugh at the end. [Laughs] P: A laugh of happiness. I: Awesome. It’s so good. (18:39)