Podcasts about lmo

For this very special installment of LMO, Thomas and Matt have yet another contest! They've both brought in 5 songs to share with the other person, with the question being - is the song they've brought in one that they enjoy, or dislike? How well do the boys know each other's taste after all this time? Whoever gets more points by the end DOESN'T have to binge Taylor Swift's discography for a future episode...   https://www.thinlear.com/ https://www.niagaramoonmusic.com/ Bluesky IG Tiktok

LMO all-star (and former bandmate of Thin Lear) Nate Safren returns to the show! Thomas opens with a question - in terms of its influence on a pop, how much jazz is too much jazz? Nate then opens the group's minds over the bizarre sound of unlikely spoken word mashups.   LMO Survey   https://www.thinlear.com/ https://www.niagaramoonmusic.com/ Bluesky IG Tiktok

If you're in SF: Join us for the Claude Plays Pokemon hackathon this Sunday!If you're not: Fill out the 2025 State of AI Eng survey for $250 in Amazon cards!Unsupervised Learning is a podcast that interviews the sharpest minds in AI about what's real today, what will be real in the future and what it means for businesses and the world - helping builders, researchers and founders deconstruct and understand the biggest breakthroughs. Top guests: Noam Shazeer, Bob McGrew, Noam Brown, Dylan Patel, Percy Liang, David LuanFull Episode on Their YouTubeTimestamps* 00:00 Introduction and Excitement for Collaboration* 00:27 Reflecting on Surprises in AI Over the Past Year* 01:44 Open Source Models and Their Adoption* 06:01 The Rise of GPT Wrappers* 06:55 AI Builders and Low-Code Platforms* 09:35 Overhyped and Underhyped AI Trends* 22:17 Product Market Fit in AI* 28:23 Google's Current Momentum* 28:33 Customer Support and AI* 29:54 AI's Impact on Cost and Growth* 31:05 Voice AI and Scheduling* 32:59 Emerging AI Applications* 34:12 Education and AI* 36:34 Defensibility in AI Applications* 40:10 Infrastructure and AI* 47:08 Challenges and Future of AI* 52:15 Quick Fire Round and Closing RemarksTranscript[00:00:00] Introduction and Podcast Overview[00:00:00] Jacob: well, thanks so much for doing this, guys. I feel like we've we've been excited to do a collab for a while. I[00:00:13] swyx: love crossovers. Yeah. Yeah. This, this is great. Like the ultimate meta about just podcasters talking to other podcasters. Yeah. It's a lot. Podcasts all the way up.[00:00:21] Jacob: I figured we'd have a pretty free ranging conversation today but brought a few conversation starters to, to, to kick us off.[00:00:27] Reflecting on AI Surprises and Trends[00:00:27] Jacob: And so I figured one interesting place to start is you know, obviously it feels that this world is changing like every few months. Wondering as you guys reflect path on the past year, like what surprised you the most?[00:00:36] Alessio: I think definitely recently models we kinda on the, on the right here. Like, oh, that, well, I, I I think there's, there's like the, what surprised us in a good way.[00:00:44] May maybe in a, in a bad way. I would say in a good way. Recently models and I think the release of them right after the new reps scaling instead talked by Ilia. I think there was maybe like a, a little. It's so over and then we're so back. I'm like such a short, short period. It was really [00:01:00] fortuitous[00:01:00] Jacob: timing though, like right.[00:01:01] As pre-training died, I mean, obviously I'm sure within the labs they knew pre-training was dying and had to find something. But you know, from the outside it was it, it felt like one right into the other.[00:01:09] Alessio: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that, that was a good surprise,[00:01:12] swyx: I would say, if you wanna make that comment about timing, I think it's suspiciously neat that like, because we know that Strawberry was being worked on for like two years-ish.[00:01:20] Like, and we know exactly when Nome joined OpenAI, and that was obviously a big strategic bet by OpenAI. So like, for it to transition, so transition so nicely when like, pre-training is kind of tapped out to, into like, oh, now inference time is, is the new scaling law is like conv very convenient. I, I, I like if there were an Illuminati, this would be what they planned.[00:01:41] Or if we're living in a simulation or something. Yeah.[00:01:44] Open Source Models and Their Impact[00:01:44] swyx: Then you said open source[00:01:45] Alessio: as well? Yeah. Well, no, I, I think like open source. Yeah. We're discussing this on the negative. I would say the relevance of open source. I would specifically open models. Yeah, I was surprised the lack, like the llamas of the world by the lack of adoption.[00:01:56] And I mean, people use it obviously, but I would say nobody's [00:02:00] really like a huge fanboy, you know, I think the local llama community and some of the more obvious use cases really like it. But when we talk to like enterprise folks, it's like, it's cool, you know? And I think people love to argue about licenses and all of that, but the reality is that it doesn't really change the adoption path of, of ai.[00:02:18] So[00:02:19] swyx: yeah, the specific stat that I got from on anchor from Braintrust mm-hmm. In one of the episodes that we did was I think he estimated that open source model usage in work in enterprises is that like 5% and going down.[00:02:31] Jacob: And it feels like you're basically all these enterprises are in like use case discovery mode, where it's like, let's just take what we think is the most powerful model and figure out if we can find anything that works.[00:02:39] And, you know, so much of, of, of it feels like discovery of that. And then, right, as you've discovered something, a new generation of models are out and so you have to go do discovery with those. And you know, I think obviously we're probably optimistic that the that the open source models increase in uptake.[00:02:50] It's funny, I was gonna say my biggest surprise in the last year was open source related, but it was just how Fast Open Source caught up on the reasoning models. It was kind of unclear to me, like over time whether there would be, you know, [00:03:00] a compounding advantage for some of the closed source models where in the, okay, in the early days of, of scaling you know, there was a, a tight time loop, but over time, you know, would would the gap increase?[00:03:08] And if anything it feels like a trunk. You know, and I think deep seek specifically was just really surprising in how, you know, in many ways if the value of these model companies is like you have a model for a period of time and you're the only one that can build products on top of that model while you have it.[00:03:21] Like, God, that time period is a lot shorter than a, than I thought it was gonna be a year ago.[00:03:25] swyx: Yeah. I mean, again, I I, I don't like this label of how Fast Open Source caught up because it's really how Fast Deepsea caught up. Right. And now we have, like, I think some of it is that Deepsea is basically gonna stop open sourcing models.[00:03:36] Yeah. So like there, there's no team open source, there's just different companies and they choose to open source or not. And we got lucky with deep seek releasing something and then everyone else is basically distilling from deep seek and those are distillations. Catching up is such an easier lower bar than like actually catching up, which is like you, you are like from scratch.[00:03:56] You're training something that like is competitive on that front. I don't know if [00:04:00] that's happening. Like basically the only player right now is we're waiting for LA four.[00:04:03] Jordan: I mean, it's always an order of magnitude cheaper to replicate what's already been done than to create something fundamentally new.[00:04:09] And so that's why I think deep seek overall was overhyped. Right? I mean obviously it's a good open source, new entrant, but at the same time there's nothing new fundamentally there other than sort of doing it executing what's already been done really well.[00:04:21] Alessio: Yeah,[00:04:21] Jordan: right.[00:04:21] Alessio: So Well, but I think the traces is like maybe the biggest thing, I think most previous open models is like the same model, just a little worse and cheaper.[00:04:30] Yeah. Like R one is like the first model that had the full traces. So I think that's like a net unique thing in fair, open source. But yeah, I, I think like we talked about deep seek in the our n of year 2023 recap, and we're mostly focused on cheaper inference. Like we didn't really have deep, see, deep CV three[00:04:47] swyx: was out then, and we were like, that was already like talking about fine green mixture of experts and all that.[00:04:51] Like that's a great receipt to[00:04:52] Jacob: have[00:04:52] swyx: to be like, yeah.[00:04:52] Jacob: End[00:04:53] swyx: of year 20. Yeah. That's a,[00:04:54] Jacob: that's a, that's, that's an[00:04:55] swyx: impressive one. You follow the right whale believers in Twitter. It's, it's like [00:05:00] pretty obvious. I actually had like so, you know, I used to be in finance and, and a lot, a lot of my hedge fund and PE friends called me up.[00:05:06] They were like, why didn't you tip us off on deep seek? And I'm like, well, I mean, it's been there. It's, it's actually like kind of surprising that like, Nvidia like fell like what, 15% in one day? Yeah. Because deep seek and I, I think it's just like whatever the market, public market narrative decides is a story, becomes the story, but really like the technical movements are usually.[00:05:26] One to two years in the making. Before that,[00:05:27] Jacob: basically these people were telling on themselves that they didn't listen to your podcast. They've been on the end of year 22, 3. No, no,[00:05:32] swyx: no. Like yeah, we weren't, we weren't like banging the drum. So like it's also on us to be like, no, like this. This is an actual tipping point.[00:05:38] And I think I like as people who are like, our function as podcasters and industry analysts is to raise the bar or focus attention on things that you think matter. And sometimes we're too passive about it. And I think I was too passive there. I'd be, I'd be happy to own up on that.[00:05:52] Jacob: No, I feel like over time you guys have moved into this margin general role of like taking stances of things that are or aren't important and, you know I feel like you've done that with MCP of [00:06:00] late and a bunch of[00:06:00] swyx: things.[00:06:00] Yeah.[00:06:01] Challenges and Opportunities in AI Engineering[00:06:01] swyx: So like the, the general pushes is AI engineering, you know, like it's gotta, gotta wrap the shirt. And MCP is part of that, but like the, the general movement is what can engineers do above the model layer to augment model capabilities. And it turns out it's a lot. And turns out we went from like, making fun of GPT rappers to now I think the overwhelming consensus GPT wrappers is the only thing that's interesting.[00:06:20] Yeah.[00:06:21] Jacob: I remember like, Arvin from Perplexity came on our podcast and he was like, I'm proudly a rapper. Like, you know, it's like anyone that's like talking about like, you know, differentiation, like pre-product market fit is like a ridiculous thing to, to say, like, build something people want and then yeah.[00:06:33] Over time you can kind of worry about that.[00:06:35] swyx: Yeah. I, I interviewed him in 2023 and I think he may have been the first person on our podcast to like, probably be a GBT rapper. Yeah. And yeah, and obviously he's built a huge business on that. Totally. Now, now we now we all can't get enough of it. I have another one for, Oh, nice.[00:06:47] That was Alessia's one and we, we perhaps individual answers just to be interesting in the same Uber on the way up. Yeah. You just like in the, in different Oh, I was driving too. Oh, you were driving. So I actually, I mean, it was a Tesla mostly drove mine was [00:07:00] actually, it is interesting that low-code builders did not capture the AI builder market.[00:07:04] Right. AI builders being bought lovable, low-code builders being Zapier, Airtable, retool notion. Any of those, like you're not technical. You can build software.[00:07:14] misc: Yeah.[00:07:14] swyx: Somehow not all them missed it. Why? It's bizarre. Like they should have the DNA, I don't know. They should have. They already have the reach, they already have the, the distribution.[00:07:25] Like why? I I have no idea. The ability to[00:07:27] Jacob: fast follow too. Like I'm surprised there's Yeah. There's just[00:07:29] swyx: nothing. Yeah. What do you make of that? I, it seems and you know, not to come back to the AI engineering future, like it takes a, a certain kind of. Founder mindset or AI engineer mindset to be like, we will build this from whole cloth and not be tied to existing paradigms.[00:07:45] I think, 'cause I like, if I was, if I'm to, you know, you know, Wade or who's, who's, who's the Zapier person than, you know, Mike. Mike who has left the Zapier. Yeah. What's the, yeah. Like you know, Zapier, when they decided to do Zapier ai, they [00:08:00] were like, oh, you can use natural language to make Zap actions, right?[00:08:03] When Notion decided to do Notion ai, they were like, oh, you can like, you know write documents or, you know, fill in tables with, with ai. Like, they didn't do the, the, the, the next step because they already had their base and they were like, let's improve our baseline. And the other people who actually tried for to, to create a phone cloth were like, we, we got no prior preconceptions.[00:08:24] Like, let's see what we can, what kinda software people can build with like from scratch, basically. I don't know that, that's my explanation. I dunno if you guys have any retros on the AI builders?[00:08:33] Jacob: Yeah. Or, or, or did they kind of get lucky getting, you know starting that product journey? Like right as the models were reaching the inflection point?[00:08:39] There's the timing[00:08:40] swyx: issue. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Like I, I, to some extent, I think the only reason you and I are talking about it is that they, both of them have reported like ridiculous numbers. Like zero to 20 million in three months, basically, both of them. Jordan, did you have a, a big surprise?[00:08:55] Jordan: Yeah, I mean, some of what's already been discussed. I guess the only other thing would be on the Apple side in particular, I [00:09:00] think, I think you know, for the last text message summary, like, but they're[00:09:04] Jacob: funny. They're funny at how bad they had, how off they're, they're viral. Yeah.[00:09:08] Jordan: I mean, so like for the last couple years we've seen so many companies that are trying to do personal assistance, like all these various consumer things, and one of the things we've always asked is, well, apple is in prime position to do all this.[00:09:18] And then with Apple Intelligence, they just. Totally messed up in so many different ways. And then the whole BBC thing saying that the guy shot himself when he didn't. And just like, there's just so many things at this point that I would've thought that they would've ironed up their, their AI products better, but just didn't really catch on,[00:09:35] Jacob: you know, second on this list of, of generally overly broad opening questions would be anything that you guys think is kind of like overhyped or under hyped in the AI world right now?[00:09:43] Alessio: Overhyped agents framework. Sorry. Not naming any particular ones. I'm sorry. Not, not not, yeah, exactly. It's not, I, I would say they're just overall a chase to try and be the framework when the workloads are like in such flux. Yeah. That I just think is like so [00:10:00] hard to reconcile the two. I think what Harrison and Link Chain has done so amazingly, it's like product velocity.[00:10:05] Like, you know, the initial obstructions were maybe not the ending obstruction, but like they were just releasing stuff every day trying to be on top of it. But I think now we're like past that, like what people are looking for now. It's like something that they can actually build on mm-hmm. And stay on for the next couple of years.[00:10:23] And we talked about this with Brett Taylor on our episode, and it feels like, it's like the jQuery era Yeah. Of like agents and lms. It's like, it's kinda like, you know, single file, big frameworks, kinda like a lot of players, but maybe we need React. And I think people are just trying to build still Jake Barry.[00:10:39] Like, I don't really see a lot of people doing react like,[00:10:43] swyx: yeah. Maybe the, the only modification I made about that is maybe it's too early even for frameworks at all. And the thing that, and do you think[00:10:50] Jacob: there's enough stability in the underlying model layer and, and patterns to, to have this,[00:10:54] swyx: the thing is the protocol and not the framework?[00:10:56] Jacob: Yeah.[00:10:56] swyx: Because frameworks inherently embed protocols, but if you just focus on a protocol, maybe that [00:11:00] works. And obviously MCP is. The current leading mm-hmm. Area. And you know, I think the comparison there would be, instead of just jQuery, it is XML HTB requests, which is like the, the thing that enabled Ajax.[00:11:10] And that was the, the, the, the, the sort of inciting incident for JavaScripts being popular as a language.[00:11:16] Jordan: I would largely agree with that. I mean, I think on the, the react side of things, I think we're starting to see more frameworks sort of go after more of that, I guess like master is sort of like on the TypeScript side and more of like a sort of master.[00:11:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The traction is really impressive there. And so I think we're starting to see more surface there, but I think there's still a big opportunity. What do you have for for an over or under hyped on the under hype side? You know, I actually, I, I know I mentioned Apple already, but I think the private cloud compute side with PCC, I actually think that could be really big.[00:11:45] It's under the radar right now. Mm-hmm. But in terms of basically bringing. The on device sort of security to the cloud. They've done a lot of architecturally interesting things there. Who's they? Apple. Oh, okay. On the PCC side. And so I actually think of that.[00:11:58] swyx: So you're negative on Apple [00:12:00] Intelligence, but also on Apple Cloud,[00:12:01] Jordan: on the more of the local device.[00:12:04] Sort of, I think there'll be a lot of workloads still on device, but when you need to speak to the cloud for larger LLMs, I think that Apple has done really interesting thing on the privacy side.[00:12:13] Alessio: Yeah. We did the seed of a company that does that, so Yeah. Especially as things become more co that you set 'em up on purpose.[00:12:18] So that felt like a perfect Yeah, no, I was like, let's go Jordan, you guys concluding before this episode? Tell me about that company after. We'll chat after, but, but yes, I, I think that's like the unique the thing about LLM workflows is like you just cannot have everything be single tenant, right?[00:12:35] Because you just cannot get enough GPUs. Like even like large enterprises are used to having VPCs and like everything runs privately. But now you just cannot get enough GPUs to run in a VPC. So I think you're gonna need to be in a multi-tenant architecture, and you need, like you said, like single tenant guarantees in multi-tenant environment.[00:12:52] So yeah, it's a interesting space.[00:12:55] swyx: Yeah. What about you, Swiss? Under hypes, I want to say [00:13:00] memory. Just like stateful ai. As part of my keynote on, on for just like every, every conference I do, I do a keynote and I try to do the task of like defining an agent, just, you know, always evergreen content, every content for a keynote.[00:13:14] But I did it in a, in a way that it was like I think like a, what a researcher would do. Like you, you survey what people say and then you sort of categorize and, and go like, okay, this is the, the. What everyone calls agents and here are the groups of DEF definitions. Pick and choose. Right. And then it was very interesting that the week after that OpenAI launched their agents SDK and kind of formalized what they think agents are.[00:13:34] CloudFlare also did the same with us and none of them had memory. Yeah, it's very strange. The, pretty much like the only big lab o obviously there, there's conversation memory, but there's not memory memory like in like a, like a let's store a large across fact about you and like, you know, exceed the, the context length.[00:13:54] And here's the, if you, if you're look, if you look closely enough, there's a really good implementation of memory inside of [00:14:00] MCP when they launched with the initial set of servers. They had a memory server in there, which I, I would recommend as like, that's where you start with memory. But I think like if there was a better, I.[00:14:10] Memory abstraction, then a lot of our agents would be smarter and could learn on, on the job, which is something that we all want. And for some reason we all just like ignored that because it's just convenient to, and, but do you feel like[00:14:24] Jacob: it's being ignored or it's just a really hard problem and like lots of, I feel like lots of people are working on it.[00:14:27] Just feels like it's, it's proven more challenging.[00:14:29] swyx: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so Harrison has lang me, which I think now he's like, you know, relaunched again. And then we had letter come speak at our mm-hmm. Our conference I don't know, Zep, I think there's a bunch of other memory guys, but like, something like this I think should be normal in the stack.[00:14:44] And basically I think anything stateful should be interesting to VCs 'cause it's databases and, you know, we know how those things make money.[00:14:51] Jacob: I think on the over hype side, the only thing I'd add is like, I'm, I'm still surprised how many net new companies there are training models. I thought we were kind of like past that.[00:14:58] And[00:14:58] swyx: I would say they died end of last year. And now, [00:15:00] now they've resurfaced. Yeah. I mean they, that's one of the questions that you had down there of like, yeah. Sorry. Is there an opportunity for net new model players? I wouldn't say no. I don't know what you guys think.[00:15:08] Alessio: I, I don't have a reason to say no, but I also don't have a reason to say, this is what is missing and you should have a new model company do it.[00:15:15] But again, I'm an add here. Like, all these guys wanna[00:15:17] swyx: pursue a GI, you know, all, they all want to be like, oh, we'll, we'll like hit, you know, soda on all the benchmarks and like, they can't all do it. Yeah.[00:15:25] Jacob: I mean, look, I don't know if Ilia has the secret secret approach up his sleeve of of something beyond test time compute.[00:15:29] Mm-hmm. But it was funny, I, we had Noam Shaer on the podcast last week. I was asking him like, you know, is, is there like some sort of other algorithmic breakthrough? Would he make a Ilia? And he's like, look, I think what he is implicitly said was test time compute gets to the point where these models are doing AI engineering for us.[00:15:43] And so, you know, at that point they'll figure out the next algorithm breakthrough. Yeah. Which I thought was was pretty interesting.[00:15:47] Jordan: I agree with you folks. I think that we're most interested, at least from our side and like, you know, foundation models for specific use cases and more specialized use cases.[00:15:55] Mm-hmm. I guess the broader point is if there is something like that, that these companies can latch onto [00:16:00] and being there sort of. Known for being the best at. Maybe there's a case for that. Largely though I do agree with you that I don't think there should be, at this point, more model companies. I think it's like[00:16:09] Jacob: these[00:16:09] Jordan: unique data[00:16:09] Jacob: sets, right?[00:16:10] I mean, obviously robotics has been an area we've been really interested in. It's entirely different set of data that's required, you know, on top of like a, a good BLM and then, you know, biology, material sciences, more the specific use cases basically. Yeah. But also specific, like specific markets. A lot of these models are super generalizable, but like, you know finding opportunities to, you know, where, you know, for a lot of these bio companies, they have wet labs, like they're like running a ton of experiments or you know, same on the material sciences side.[00:16:31] And so I still feel like there's some, some opportunities there, but the core kind of like LLM agent space is it's tough, tough to compete with the big ones.[00:16:38] Alessio: Yeah. Agree. Yeah. But they're moving more into product. Yeah. So I think that's the question is like, if they could do better vertical models, why not do that instead of trying to do deep research and operator?[00:16:50] And these different things. Mm-hmm. I think that's what I'm, in my mind, it's like the agents coming[00:16:53] swyx: out too.[00:16:54] Alessio: Well. Yeah. In my, in my mind it's like financial pressure. Like they need to monetize in a much shorter timeframe [00:17:00] because the costs are so high. But maybe it's like, it's not that easy to, do[00:17:04] Jacob: you think they would be, that it would be a better business model to like, do a bunch of vertical?[00:17:07] Well, it's more like[00:17:07] Alessio: why wouldn't they, you know, like you make less enemies if you're like a model builder, right? Yeah. Like, like now with deep research and like search, now perplexity like an enemy and like a, you know, Gemini deep research is like more of an enemy. Versus if they were doing a finance model, you know?[00:17:25] Mm-hmm. Or whatever, like they would just enable so many more companies and they always have, like they had as one of the customer case studies for GBT search, but they're not building a finance based model for them. So is it because it's super hard and somebody should do it? Or is it because the new models.[00:17:41] Are gonna be so much better that like the vertical models are useless anyways. Like this is better lesson. Exactly.[00:17:46] Jacob: It still seems to be a somewhat outstanding question. I, I'd say like, all the signs of the last few years seem to be like a general purpose model is like the way to go. And, you know, you know, like training a hyper-specific model in this, in, in a domain is like, you know, maybe it's cheaper and faster, but it's not gonna be like higher quality.[00:17:59] But [00:18:00] also like, I think it's still an, I mean, we were talking to, to no and Jack Ray from Google last week, and they were like, yeah, this is still an outstanding, like, we, we check this every time we have a new model. Like whether there's you know, there that still seems to be holding. I remember like a few years ago, it felt like all the rage was like the, it was like the Bloomberg GPT model came out.[00:18:14] Everyone was like, oh, you gotta like, you know, massive data. Yeah. I had[00:18:17] swyx: a GPA, I had DP of AI of Bloomberg present on that. Yeah. That must be a really[00:18:20] Jacob: interesting episode to go back on because I feel like, like very shortly thereafter, the next opening AI model came out and just like beat it on all sorts of[00:18:25] swyx: No, it, it was a talk.[00:18:26] We haven't released it yet, but yeah, I mean it's basically they concluded that the, the closed models were better so they just Yeah. Stopped. Interesting. Exactly. So I feel like that's been the but he's I, I would be. He's very insistent that the work that they did, the team he assembled, the data that he collected is actually useful for more than just the model.[00:18:42] So like, basically everything but the model survived. What are the other things? The data pipeline. Okay. The team that they, they, they assembled for like fine tuning and implementing whatever models they, they ended up picking. Yeah, it seems like they are happy with that. And they're running with that.[00:18:57] He runs like 12, 13 [00:19:00] teams at Bloomberg just working. Jenny, I across the company.[00:19:03] Jacob: I mean, I guess we've, we've all kind of been alluding it to it right now, but I guess because it's a natural transition. You know, the other broad opening I have is just what we're paying most attention to right now. And I think back on this, like, you know, the model company's coming into the product area.[00:19:13] I mean, I think that's gonna be like, I'm fascinated to see how that plays out over the next year and kind of these like frenemy dynamics and it feels like it's gonna first boil up on like cursor anthropic and like the way that plays out over the next six months I think will be. What, what is Cursor?[00:19:26] swyx: Anthropic is, you mean Cursor versus anthropic or, yeah. And I[00:19:29] Jacob: assume, you know, over time Anthropic wants to get more into the application side of coding Uhhuh. And you know, I assume over time Cursor will wanna diversify off of, you know, just using the Anthropic model.[00:19:39] swyx: It's interesting that now Cursor is now worth like 10 billion, nine, nine, 10 billion.[00:19:43] Yeah. And like they've made themselves hard to acquire, like I would've said, like, you should just get yourself to five, 6 billion and join OpenAI. And like all the training data goes through OpenAI and that's how they train their coding model. Now it's not as complicated. Now they need to be an independent company.[00:19:57] Jacob: Increasingly, it's seems to the model companies want to get into the [00:20:00] product layer. And so seeing over the next six, 12 months does having the best model, you know let you kind of start from a cold start on the product side and, and get something in market. Or are the, you know, companies with the best products, even if they eventually have to switch to a somewhat worse, tiny bit worse model, does it not, you know, where do the developers ultimately choose to go?[00:20:16] I think that'll be super interesting. Yeah.[00:20:18] Alessio: Don't you think that Devon is more in trouble than cursor? I, I feel like on Tropic, if anything wants to move more towards, I don't think they wanna build the ID like if I think about coding, it's like kind of like, you know, you look at it like a cube, it's like the ID is like one way to get the code and then the agent is like the other side.[00:20:33] Yeah. I feel like on Tropic wants more be on the agent side and then hand you off the cursor when you want to go in depth versus like trying to build the claw. IDEI think that's not, I would say, I don't know how you think the[00:20:46] swyx: existence, a cloud code doesn't show, doesn't support what you say. Like maybe they would, but[00:20:52] Jacob: assume, like I assume both just converge eventually where you want have where will you be able to do both?[00:20:57] So,[00:20:57] swyx: so in order to be so we're, we're talking [00:21:00] about coding agents, whether it's sort of what is it? Inner loop versus auto loop, right? Like inner loop is inside cursor, inside your ID between inside of a GI commit and auto loop is between GI commits on, on the cloud. And I think like to be an outer loop coding agent, you have to be more of a, like, we will integrate with your code base, we'll sign your whatever.[00:21:17] You know, security thing that you need to sign. Yeah. That kinda schlep. I don't think the model ads wanna do that schlep, they just want to provide models. So that, that, that's, that would be my argument against like why cognition should still have, have, have some moat against anthropic just simply because they cognition would do the schlep and the biz dev and the infra that philanthropic doesn't really care about.[00:21:39] Jacob: I know the schlep is pretty sticky though. Once you do it,[00:21:41] swyx: it's very sticky. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's, it's, it's interesting. Like, I, I think the natural winner of that should be sourcegraph. But there's another[00:21:47] Jacob: unprompted point portfolio. Nice. We, I mean they, they're[00:21:51] swyx: big supporters like very friendly with both Quinn and B and they've they've done a lot of work with Cody, but like, no, not much work on the outer [00:22:00] loop stuff yet.[00:22:01] But like any company where like they have already had, like, we've been around for 10 years, we, we like have all the enterprise contracts that you already trust us with your code base. Why would you go trust like factory or cognition as like, you know, 2-year-old startups who like just came outta MIT Like, I don't know.[00:22:17] Product Market Fit in AI[00:22:17] Jacob: I guess switching gears to the to the application side I'm curious for both of you, like how do you kind of characterize what has genuine product market fit in AI today? And I guess less, you more and your side of the investing side, like more interesting to invest in that category of the stuff that works today or kind of where the capabilities are going long term.[00:22:35] Alessio: That's hard. I was asking you to do my job for you, like, man, that's a easy, that's a layout. Tell us all your investing[00:22:40] pieces. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I, I would say we, well we only really do mostly seed investing, so it's hard to invest in things that already work. Yeah. That fair. Are really late. So we try to, but, but we try to be at the cusp of like, you know, usually the investments we like to make, there's like really not that much market risk.[00:22:57] It's like if this works. Obviously people are gonna [00:23:00] use it, but like it's unclear whether or not it's gonna work. So that's kind of more what we skew towards. We try not to chase as many trends and I don't know, I, you know, I was a founder myself and sometimes I feel like it's easy to just jump in and do the thing that is hot, but like becoming a founder to do something that is like underappreciated or like doesn't yet work shows some level of like dread and self, like you, you actually really believe in the thing.[00:23:25] So that alone for me is like, kind of makes me skew more towards that. And you do a lot of angel investing too, so I'm curious how,[00:23:31] swyx: Yeah, but I don't regard, I don't have, I don't use, put, put that in my mental framework of things like I come at this much more as a content creator or market analyst of like, yeah, it, it really does matter to me what has part of market fit because.[00:23:45] People, I have to answer the question of what is working now When, when people ask me,[00:23:50] Jacob: do you feel like relative to the, the obviously the hype and discourse out there, like, you know, do you feel like there's a lot of things that have product market fit or like a few things, like where a few things? Yeah.[00:23:58] swyx: I was gonna say this, so I have a list [00:24:00] of like two years ago we, I wrote the Anatomy of autonomy posts where it was like the, the first, like what's going on in agents and, and and, and, and what is actually making money. Because I think there's a lot of gen I skeptics out there. They're all like, these, these things are toys.[00:24:13] They're, they're not unreliable. And you know, why, why, why you dedicating your life to these things. And I think for me, the party market fit bar at the time was a hundred million dollars, right? Like what use cases can reasonably fit a hundred million dollars. And at the time it was like co-pilot it was Jasper.[00:24:30] No longer, but mm-hmm. You know, in that category of like help you write. Yeah. Which I think, I think was, was helpful. And then and the cursor I think was on there as, as a, as, as, as like a coding agent. Plus plus. I think that list will just grow over time of like the form factors that we know to work, and then we can just adapt the form factors to a bunch of other things.[00:24:47] So like the, the one that's the most recently added to this is deep research.[00:24:52] misc: Yeah.[00:24:52] swyx: Right. Where anything that looks like a deep research whether it's a grok version, Gemini version, perplexity version, whatever. He has an investment [00:25:00] that that he likes called Brightwave that is basically deep research for finance.[00:25:02] Yeah. And anything where like all it is like long-term agent, agent reporting and it's starting to take more and more of the job away from you and, and just give you much more reason to report. I think it's going to work. And that has some PMFI think obviously has PMF like I, I would say. It's I, I went to this exercise of trying to handicap how much money open AI made from launching open ai deep research.[00:25:25] I think it's billions. Like the, the, the mo the the she upgrade from like $20 to 200. It has to be billions in the R off. Maybe not all them will stick around, but like that is some amount of PMF that is didn't they have to immediately drop it down[00:25:38] Jacob: to the $20 tier?[00:25:39] swyx: They expanded access. I don't, I wouldn't say, which I thought was[00:25:42] Jacob: really telling of the market.[00:25:43] Right. It's like where you have a you know, I think it's gonna be so interesting to see what they're actually able to get in that 200 or $2,000 tier, which we all think is, is, you know, has a ton of potential. But I thought it was fascinating. I don't know whether it was just to get more people exposure to it or the fact that like Google had a similar product obviously, and, and other folks did too.[00:25:59] But [00:26:00] it was really interesting how quickly they dropped it down.[00:26:02] swyx: I don't, I think that's just a more general policy of no matter what they have at the top tier, they always want to have smaller versions of that in the, in the lower tiers. Yeah. And just get people exposure to it. Just, yeah, just get exposure.[00:26:12] The brand of being first to market and, and like the default choice Yeah. Is paramount to open ai[00:26:18] Jacob: though. I thought that whole thing was fascinating 'cause Google had the first product, right? Yeah. And no, like, you know, I, we[00:26:24] swyx: interviewed them. I, I, I, straight up to their faces, I was like, opening, I mocked you.[00:26:28] And they were like, yeah, well, actually curious, what's[00:26:30] Jacob: it, this is totally off topic, but whatever. Like, what is it going to take for go? Google just released some great models like a, a few weeks ago. Like I feel like it's happening. The stuff they're shipping is really cool. It's happening. Yeah, but I, I, I also, I feel like at least in the, you know, broader discourse, it's still like a drop in the bucket relative to[00:26:45] swyx: Yeah.[00:26:45] I mean, I, I can riff on, on this. I, I, but I, I think it's happening. I think it takes some time, but I am, like my Gemini usage is up. Like, I, I use, I use it a lot more for anything from like summarizing YouTube videos to the [00:27:00] native image generation Yeah. That they just launched to like flash thinking.[00:27:02] So yeah, multi-mobile stuff's great. Yeah. I run you know, and I run like a daily sort of news recap called AI news that is, 99% generated by models, and I do a bake off between all the frontier models every day. And it's every day. Like does it switch? I manual? Yes, it does switch. And I, man, I manually do it.[00:27:18] And flash is, flash wins most days. So, so like, I think it's happening. I think I was thinking, I was thinking about tracking myself like number of opens of tragedy, g Bt versus Gemini. And at some point it will cross. I think that Gemini will be my main and, and it, it, I I like that will slowly happen for a bunch of people.[00:27:37] And, and, and then that will, that'll shift. I, I think that's, that's a really interesting for developers, this is a different question. Yeah. It's Google getting over itself of having Google Cloud versus Vertex versus AI studio, all these like five different brands, slowly consolidating it. It'll happen just slowly, I guess.[00:27:53] Alessio: Yeah.[00:27:54] Yeah. I, I mean, another good example is like you cannot use the thinking models in cursor. Yeah. And I know [00:28:00] Logan killed Patrick's that they're working on it, but I, I think there's all these small things where like if I cannot easily use it, I'm really not gonna go out of my way to do it. But I do agree that when you do use them, their models are, are great.[00:28:12] So yeah. They just need better, better bridges.[00:28:15] swyx: You had one of the questions in the prep.[00:28:16] Debating Public Companies: Google vs. Apple[00:28:16] swyx: What public company are you long and short and minus Google versus, versus Apple, like, long, short. That was also my[00:28:23] Jacob: combo. I, I feel like, yeah, I mean, it does feel like Google's really cooking right now.[00:28:26] swyx: Yeah. So okay, coming back to what has product market fit[00:28:29] Jacob: now,[00:28:29] swyx: now that we come[00:28:30] Jacob: back to my complete total sidetrack,[00:28:33] Customer Support and AI's Role[00:28:33] swyx: there's also customer support.[00:28:35] We were talking on, on the car about Decagon and Sierra, obviously Brett, Brett Taylor is founder of Sierra. And yeah, it seems like there's just this, these layers of agents that'll like, I think you just look at like the income statement or like the, the org chart of any large scaled company and you start picking them off one by one.[00:28:51] What like is interesting knowledge work? And they would just kind of eat. Things slowly from the outside in. Yeah, that makes sense.[00:28:57] Alessio: I, I mean, the episode with the, [00:29:00] with Brett, he's so passionate about developer tools and Yeah. He did not do a developer tools. We spent like two hours talking about developer tools and like, all, all of that stuff.[00:29:10] And it's like, I, they a customer support company, I'm like, man, that says something. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like when you have somebody like him who can like, raise any amount of money from anybody to do anything. Yeah. To pick customer support as the market to go after while also being the chairman of OpenAI, like that shows you that like, these things have moats and have longstanding, like they're gonna stick around, you know?[00:29:32] Otherwise he's smarter than that. So yeah, that's a, that's a space where maybe initially, you know, I would've said, I don't know, it's like the most exciting thing to, to jump into, but then if you really look at the shape of like, how the workforce are structured and like how the cost centers of like the business really end up, especially for more consumer facing businesses, like a lot of it goes into customer support.[00:29:54] AI's Impact on Business Growth[00:29:54] Alessio: All the AI story of the last two years has been cost cutting. Yeah. I think now we're gonna switch more towards growth revenue. [00:30:00] Totally. You know, like you've seen Jensen, like last year, GTC was saying the more you buy, the more you save this year is that the more you buy, the more you make. So we're hot off the[00:30:08] Jacob: press.[00:30:10] We were there. We were there. Yeah. I do think that's one of the most interesting things about the, this first wave of apps where it's like almost the easiest thing that you could you could get real traction with was stuff that, you know, for lack of a better way to frame it, like so that people had already been comfortable outsourcing the BPOs or something and kind of implicitly said like, Hey, this is a cost center.[00:30:24] Like we are willing to take some performance cut for cost in the past. You know, the, the irony of that, or what I'm really curious to see how it plays out is, you know, you, you could imagine that is the area where price competition is going to be most fierce because it's already stuff that you know, that people have said, Hey, we don't need the like a hundred percent best version of that.[00:30:42] And I wonder, you know, this next wave of apps. May prove actually even more defensible as you get these capabilities that actually are, you know, increased top line or whatnot where you're like, you take ai, go to market, for example. Like you're, you'd pay like twice as much for something that brought, like, 'cause there's just a kind of very clean ROI story to it.[00:30:59] And so [00:31:00] I wonder ultimately whether the, like this next set of apps actually ends up being more interesting than the, than the first wave.[00:31:05] Alessio: Yeah,[00:31:05] Voice AI and Scheduling Solutions[00:31:05] Jordan: I think a lot of the voice AI ones are interesting too, because you don't need a hundred percent precision recall to actually, you know, have a great product.[00:31:12] And so for example, we looked into a bunch of you know, scheduling intake companies, for example, like home services, right? For electricians and stuff like that. Today they miss 50% of their calls. So even if the AI is only effective, say 75% of the time, yeah, it's crazy, right? So if it's effective 75% of the time, that's totally fine because that's still a ton of increased revenue for the customer, right?[00:31:32] And so you don't need that a hundred percent accuracy. Yeah. And so as the models. And the reliability of these agents are getting better is totally fine, because you're still getting a ton of value in the meantime.[00:31:41] swyx: Yeah. One, this is, I don't know how related this is, but I, one of my favorite meetings at it is related one of my favorite meetings at AI Engineer Summit, it is like, like I do these, this is our first one in New York, and I it is like met the different crew than, than you meet here.[00:31:55] Like everyone here is loves developer tools, loves infra over there. They're actually more interested in [00:32:00] applications. It's kind of cool. I met this like bootstrap team that, like, they're only doing appointment scheduling for vets. They, they, yeah. And like, they're like, this is a, this is an anomaly. We don't usually come to engineering summits 'cause we usually go to vet summits and like talk to the, they're, they're like, you know, they, they're, they're literally, I'm sure it's a[00:32:16] Jordan: massive pain point.[00:32:17] They're willing to pay a lot of money.[00:32:20] Alessio: Yeah. But, but, but this is like my point about saving versus making more, it's like if an electrician takes two x more calls, do they have the bandwidth? To actually do two X more in-house and they get higher. Well, yeah, exactly. That's the thing is like, I don't think today most businesses are like structured to just like overnight two, three x the band, you know?[00:32:38] I think that's like a startup thing. Like mo most businesses then you make an[00:32:42] swyx: electrician agent. Well, no, totally. That's how do you, how do you recruiting agent for electrician, for like[00:32:49] Alessio: electrician. Great. That's a good point. How do you do lambda school for electrician? I, it's hilarious.[00:32:53] Jacob: Whack-a-mole for the bottlenecks in these businesses.[00:32:55] Like as, oh, now we have a ton of demand. Like, cool. Like where do we go?[00:32:58] swyx: Yeah.[00:32:59] Exploring AI Applications in Various Fields[00:32:59] swyx: So just to [00:33:00] round out the, the this PMF thing I think this is relevant in a certain sense of, like, it's pretty obvious that the killer agents are coding agents, support agents, deep research, right? Roughly, right. We've covered all those three already.[00:33:10] Then, then, then you have to sort of be, turn to offense and go like, okay, what's next? And like, what, what about, I[00:33:16] Jacob: mean, I also just like summarization of, of voice and conversation, right? Yep. Absolutely. We actually had that on there. I[00:33:21] swyx: just, I didn't put it as agent. Because seems less agentic, you know? But yes, still, still a good AI use case.[00:33:26] That one I, I've seen I would mention granola and what's the other one? Monterey, I think a bridge was one wanted to mention. I was say bridge. Yeah, bridge. Okay. So I'll just, I'll call out what I had on my slides. Yeah. For, for the agent engineering thing. So it was screen sharing, which I think is actually kind of, kind of underrated.[00:33:42] Like people, like an AI watching you as you do your work and just like offering assistance outbound sales. So instead of support, just being more outbound hiring, you say[00:33:51] Jacob: outbound sales has brought a market fit?[00:33:53] swyx: No, it, it, it will, it's come out. Oh, on the comp. Yeah. I was totally agree with that. Yeah. Hiring like the recruiting side education, like the, [00:34:00] the sort of like personalized teaching, I think.[00:34:02] I'm kind of shocked we haven't seen more there. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if that's like, like it's like Duolingo is the thing. Amigo.[00:34:08] Jacob: Yeah. I mean, speak in some of these like, you know,[00:34:10] swyx: speak, practice, yeah. Interesting. And then finance, I, there's, there's a ton of finance cases that we can talk about that and then personal ai, which we also had a little bit of that, but I think personal AI is a harder to monetize, but I, I think those would be like, what I would say is up and coming in terms of like, that's what I'm currently focusing on.[00:34:27] Jacob: I feel like this question's been asked a few different ways but I'm, I'm curious what you guys think it's like, is it like, if we just froze model capabilities today, like is there, you know, trillions of dollars of application value to be unlocked? Like, like AI education? Like if we just stopped today all model development, like with this current generation of models, we could probably build some pretty amazing education apps.[00:34:44] Or like, how much of this, how much of, of all this is like contingent upon just like, okay, people have had two years with GBT four and like, you know, I don't know, six months with the reasoning models, like how much is contingent upon it just being more time with these things versus like the models actually have to get better?[00:34:58] I dunno, it's a hard question, so I'm gonna just throw it [00:35:00] to you.[00:35:00] Alessio: Yeah. Well I think the societal thing, it's maybe harder, especially in education. You know, like, can you basically like Doge. The education system. Probably you should, but like, can you, I I think it's more of a human,[00:35:14] Jacob: but people pay for all sorts of like, get ahead things outside of class and you know, certainly in other countries there's a ton of consumer spend and education.[00:35:21] It feels like the market opportunity is there.[00:35:23] swyx: Yeah. And, and private education, I think yeah, public Public is a very different, yeah. One of my most interesting quests from last year was kind of reforming Singapore's education system to be more sort of AI native, just what you were doing on the side while you were Yes.[00:35:38] That's a great, that's a great side quest. My stated goal is for Singapore to be the first country that has Python as a first language, as a, as a national language. Anyway, so, but the, the, the, the defense, the pushback I got from Ministry of Education was that the teachers would be unprepared to do it.[00:35:53] So it's like, it was like the def the, like, the it was really interesting, like immediate pushback. Was that the defacto teachers union being like, [00:36:00] resistant to change and like, okay. It's that that's par for the course. Anyway, so not, not to, not to dwell too much on that, but like yeah, I mean, like, I, I think like education is one of those things that pe everyone, like has strong opinions on.[00:36:11] 'cause they all have kids, all be the education system. But like, I think it's gonna be like the, the domain specific, like, like speak like such a amazing example of like top down. Like, we will go through the idea maze and we'll go to Korea and teach them English. Like, it's like, what the hell? And I would love to see more examples of that.[00:36:29] Like, just like really focus, like no one tried to solve everything. Just, just do your thing really, really well[00:36:34] Defensibility in AI Applications[00:36:34] Jacob: on this trend of of, of difficult questions that come up. I'm gonna just ask you the one that my partners like to ask me every single Monday, which is how do you think about defensibility at the at the app layer?[00:36:41] Alessio: Oh[00:36:41] Jacob: yeah, that's great. Just gimme an answer. I can copy paste and just like, you know, have network effects. Auto, auto response.[00:36:47] swyx: Honestly like network effects. I think people don't prioritize those enough because they're trying to make the single player experience good. But then, then they neglect the [00:37:00] multiplayer experience.[00:37:00] I think one of the I always think about like load-bearing episodes, like, you know, as, as park that you do one a week and like, you know, some of those you don't really talk about ever again. And others you keep mentioning every single podcast. And one of the, this is obviously gonna be the last one. I think the recap episodes for us are pretty load-bearing.[00:37:15] Like we, we refer to them every three months or so. And like one of them I think for us is Chai for me is chai research, even though that wasn't like a super popular one among the broader community outside of Chai, the chai community, for those who don't know, chai Research is basically a character AI competitor.[00:37:32] Right. They were bootstraps, they were founded at the same time and they have out outlasted character of de facto. Right. It's funny, like I, I would love to ask Mil a bit more about like the whole character thing, but good luck getting past the Google copy. But like, so he, like, he, like he doesn't have his own models, basically he has his own network of people submitting models to be run.[00:37:54] And I think like. That is like short term going to be hurting him because he doesn't have [00:38:00] proprietary ip. But long term he has the network network effect to make him robust to any changes in the future. And I think, like I wanna see more of that where like he's basically looking himself as kind of a marketplace and he's identified the choke point, which is will be app or the, the sort of protocol layer that interfaces between the users and the model providers.[00:38:18] And then make sure that the money kind of flows through and that works. I, I wish that more AI builders or AI founders emphasize network effects. 'cause that that's the only thing that you're gonna have with the end of the day. Yeah. And like brand deeds into network effects you.[00:38:34] Jacob: Yeah, I guess you know, harder in, in the enterprise context.[00:38:36] Right. But I mean, I feel, it's funny, we do this exercise and I feel like we talk a lot about like, you know, obviously there's, you know kind of the velocity and the breadth you're able to kind of build of product surface area. There's just like the ability to become a brand in a space. Like, I'm shocked that even in like six, nine months, how an individual company can become synonymous with like an entire category.[00:38:52] And like, then they're in every room for customers and like all the other startups are like clawing their way to try and get in like one, you know, 20th of those rooms.[00:38:59] Jordan: There's a [00:39:00] bunch of categories where we talk about an IC and it's like, oh, pricing compression's gonna happen, not as defensible. And so ACVs are gonna go down over time.[00:39:08] In actuality, some of these, the ACVs have doubled, we've seen, and the reason for that is just, you know, people go to them and pay for that premium of being that brand.[00:39:16] Jacob: Yeah. I mean, one thing I'm struck by is there's been, there was such a head fake in the early days of, of AI apps where people were like, we want this amazing defensibility story, and then what's the easiest defensibility story?[00:39:24] It's like, oh, like. Totally unique data set or like train your own model or something. And I feel like that was just like a total head fake where I don't think that's actually useful at all. It's the much less, you sound much less articulate when you're like, well the defensibility here is like the thousand small things that this company does to make like the user experience design everything just like delightful and just like the speed at which they move to kind of both create a really broad product, but then also every three, six months when a new model comes out, it's kind of an existential event for like any company.[00:39:49] 'cause if you're not the first to like figure out how to use it, someone else will. Yeah. And so velocity really matters there. And it's funny in in, in kinda our internal discussions, we've been like, man, that sounds pretty similar to like how we thought about like application SaaS [00:40:00] companies. That there isn't some like revolutionary reason you don't sound like a genius when you're like, here's applications why application SaaS company A is so much better than B.[00:40:07] But it's like a lot of little things that compound over time.[00:40:10] Infrastructure and AI: Current Trends[00:40:10] Jacob: What about the infrastructure space, guys? Like I'm curious you know. What, how do you guys think about where the interesting categories are here today and you know, like where, where, where do you wanna see more startups or, or where do you think there are too many?[00:40:21] Alessio: Yeah. Yeah, we call it kind of the L-L-M-O-S. But I would say[00:40:24] swyx: not we, I mean Andre, Andre calls it LMOS[00:40:27] Alessio: Well, but yeah, we, well everyone else just copies whatever two. And Andre, the three of you call it the LMO. Well, we have just like four words of ai framework Yeah. Yeah. That we use. And LM Os is one of them, but yeah, I mean, code execution is one.[00:40:39] We've been banging the drum, everybody now knows where investors in E two B. Mm-hmm. Memory, you know, is one that we kind of touched on before. Super interesting search we talked about. I, I think those are more not traditional infra, not like the bare metal infra. It's more like the infra around the tools for agents model, you know?[00:40:57] Which I think is where a lot of the value is gonna [00:41:00] be. The security[00:41:00] swyx: ones. Yeah.[00:41:01] Alessio: Yeah. And cyber security. I mean there's so much to be done there. And it's more like basically any area where. AI is being used by the offense. AI needs to be applied on the defense side, like email security, you know, identity, like all these different things.[00:41:16] So we've been doing a lot there as well as, you know, how do you rethink things that used to be costly, like red teaming and maybe used to be a checkbox in the past Today they can be actually helpful. Yeah. To make you secure your app. And there's this whole idea of like, semantics, right? That not the models can be good at.[00:41:32] You know, in the past everything is about syntax. It's kind of like very basic, you know, constraint rules. I think now you can start to infer semantics from things that are beyond just like simple recognition to like understanding why certain things are happening a certain way. So in the security space, we're seeing that with binary inspection, for example.[00:41:51] Like there's kinda like the syntax, but then there are like semantics of like understanding what is the scope overall really trying to do. Even though this [00:42:00] individual syntax, it's like seeing something specific. Not to get too technical, but yeah, I, I think infra overall, it's like a super interesting place if you're making use of the model, if you're just, I'm less bullish.[00:42:13] Not, not that it's not a great business, but I think it's a very capital intensive business, which is like serving the models. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think that infra is like, great people will make money, but yeah. I, I, I don't think there's as much of a interest from, from us at[00:42:25] Jordan: least. Yeah. How, how do you guys think about what OpenAI and the big research labs will encompass as part of the developer and infra category?[00:42:31] Yeah.[00:42:31] Alessio: That, that's why I, I would say I search is the first example of one of the things we used to mention on, you know, we had X on the podcast and perplexity obviously as a, as an API. The basic idea[00:42:44] swyx: is if you go into like the chat GBT custom GPT builder, like what are the check boxes? Each of them is a startup.[00:42:50] Alessio: Yeah. And, and now they're also APIs. So now search is also an a p, we will see what the adoption is. There's the, you know, in traditional infra, like everybody wants to be [00:43:00] multi-cloud, so maybe we'll see the same Where change GPD search or open AI search. API is like, great with the open AI models because you get it all bundled in, but their price is very high.[00:43:11] If you compare it to like, you know, XI think is like five times the, the price for the same amount of research, which makes sense if you have a big open AI contract. But maybe if you're just like pick and best in breed, you wanna compare different ones. Yeah. Yeah, they don't have a code execution one.[00:43:26] I'm sure they'll release one soon. So they wanna own that too, but yeah. Same question we were talking about before, right? Did they wanna be an API company or a product company? Do you make more money building Tri g BT search or selling search? API?[00:43:38] swyx: Yeah. The, the broader lesson, instead of like going, we did applications just now.[00:43:42] And then what do you think is interesting infrastructure? Like it's not 50 50, it's not like equal weighted, like it, it's just very clearly the application layer has like. Been way more interesting. Like yes, there, there's interesting in infrastructure plays and I even want to like push back on like the, the, the whole GPU serving thing because like together [00:44:00] AI is doing well, fireworks, I mean I was, that worked.[00:44:02] Alessio: It's like data[00:44:02] Jacob: centers[00:44:03] Alessio: and inference[00:44:03] Jacob: providers,[00:44:04] Alessio: the,[00:44:04] swyx: you know,[00:44:04] Alessio: I think it's not like the capital[00:44:06] swyx: Oh, I see.[00:44:07] Alessio: I for, for again, capital efficiency. Yeah. Much larger funds. So you, I'm sure you have GPU clouds. Yeah.[00:44:13] swyx: Yeah. So that's, that's, that is one thing I have been learning in, in that you know, I think I have historically had dev tools and infra bias and so has he, and we've had to learn that applications actually are very interesting and also maybe kind of the killer application of models in a sense that you can charge for utility and not for cost.[00:44:33] Right? Which, where like most infrastructure reduces to cost plus. Yeah. Right. So, and like, that's not where you wanna be for ai. So that's, that's interesting for, for me I thought it would be interesting for me to be the only non VC in the room to be saying what is not investible. 'cause like then I then, you know, you can I, I won't be canceled for saying like, your, your whole category is, we have a great thing where like, this thing's[00:44:54] Jacob: not investible and then like three months later we're desperately chasing.[00:44:56] Exactly. Exactly. So you don't wanna be on a record space changes so [00:45:00] fast. It's like you gotta, every opinion you hold, you have to like, hold it quite loosely. Yeah.[00:45:02] swyx: I'm happy to be wrong in public, you know, I think that's how you learn the most, right? Yeah. So like, fine tuning companys is something I struggled with and still, like, I don't see how this becomes a big thing.[00:45:12] Like you kind of have to wrap it up in a broader, ser broader enterprise AI company, like services company, like a writer, AI where like they will find you and it's part of the overall offering. Mm-hmm. But like, that's not where you spike. Yeah, it's kind of interesting. And then I, I'll, I'll just kind of AI DevOps and like, there's a lot of AI SRE out there seems like.[00:45:32] There's a lot of data out there that that should be able to be plugged into your code base or, or, or your app to it's self-heal or whatever. It's just, I don't know if that's like, been a thing yet. And you guys can correct me if you're, if I'm wrong. And then the, the last thing I'll mention is voice realtime infra again, like very interesting, very, very hot.[00:45:49] But again, how big is it? Those are the, the main three that I'm thinking about for things I'm struggling with.[00:45:54] Jordan: Yeah. I guess a couple comments on the A-I-S-R-E side. I actually disagree with that one. Yeah. I think that the [00:46:00] reason they haven't sort of taken off yet is because the tech is just not there quite yet.[00:46:04] And so it goes back to the earlier question, do we think about investing towards where the companies will be when the models improve versus now? I think that's going to be, in short term we'll get there, but it's just not there just yet. But I think it's an interesting opportunity overall.[00:46:18] swyx: Yeah. It's my pushback to you is, well it's monitoring a lot of logs, right?[00:46:22] Yeah. And it's basically anomaly detection rather than. Like there's, there's a whole bunch of like stuff that can happen after you detect the anomaly, but it's really just an anomaly detection. And we've always had that, you know, like it's, this is like not a Transformers LLM use case. This is just regular anomaly detection.[00:46:38] Jordan: It's more in terms of like, it's not going to be an autonomous SRE for a while. Yeah. And so the question is how, how much can the latest sort of AI advancements increase the efficacy of going, bringing your MTTR

Portland, ME singer-songwriter Heather Lynn joins the show today - hosting the LMO crew while they're on tour!  In this special IRL meetup, Thomas shares multiple different covers of the classic "Angel Of The Morning", as they determine which version is the definitive cut. https://www.instagram.com/hther.lynn/   Catch Thin Lear live at the New York City Winery on March 29th, or Niagara Moon at the Fort Hill Brewery in Easthampton (also March 29th...)   LMO Survey   Bluesky IG Tiktok

Songwriter, author & educator Julie Beth Napolin joins the show today! Thomas opens with another round of the beloved game Guilty or Not Guilty. Julie explores the work of some contemporary avant-garde artists that deserve your attention. Catch Julie performing along with the LMO boys at The Avalon Lounge in Catskill NY on Sunday, March 16th.   https://juliebethnapolin.com/   LMO Survey   https://www.thinlear.com/ https://www.niagaramoonmusic.com/ Bluesky IG Tiktok

This episode of Unstoppable Mindset is for me a special one. It has been three years in the making. It is a celebration by any standard. At the beginning of the pandemic, I began realizing that while I had talked for years about escaping from the World Trade Center I had not begun teaching people to control fear: something I did successfully on September 11. So, I began working toward writing a book about the subject. I approached my co-author of Thunder Dog, Susy Flory, but she was quite busy studying in a PHD program, her own writing and running a writers conference. Susy introduced me to Keri Wyatt Kent. A friendship and team bond were formed. Today, August 20, 2024 the fruits of Keri's and my labors are released in a new book entitled “Live Like A Guide Dog: true stories of a blind man and his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity and walking in faith”. The book is our effort to help people realize that they can learn to control fear rather than being “blinded by it”. On this episode, Keri, Susy Flory and I discuss the book. Lots of stories as well as a discussion of what went on behind the scenes. I hope you like the episode and, if you haven't done so already, please order a copy of the book. About the Guest: Keri Wyatt Kent is the author or co-author of more than two dozen books. (see her website portfolio at www.keriwyattkent.com) She has been published in Christianity Today magazine, Today's Christian Woman magazine, Outreach magazine and many other publications. She is the founder and principal of A Powerful Story, an editing and publishing company. She publishes two newsletters on Substack: Welcoming and Wandering, which explores hospitality and travel (at https://welcomingandwandering.substack.com/ ); and A Powerful Story newsletter, which offers writing and publishing advice (see https://keriwyattkent.substack.com/. Susy Flory is a #1 New York Times best-selling author or co-author of fourteen books, including The Sky Below, a new memoir with Hall of Fame Astronaut/Explorer Scott Parazynski, and Desired by God with Van Moody. Susy grew up on the back of a quarter horse in Northern California and took degrees from UCLA in English and psychology. She has a background in journalism, education, and communications and directs a San Francisco Bay Area writers conference. She first started writing at the Newhall Signal with the legendary Scotty Newhall, an ex-editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and a one-legged cigar-smoking curmudgeon who ruled the newsroom from behind a dented metal desk where he pounded out stories on an Underwood Typewriter. She taught high school English and journalism, then quit in 2004 to write full time for publications such as Focus on the Family, Guideposts Books, In Touch, Praise & Coffee, Today's Christian, and Today's Christian Woman. Susy's books include So Long Status Quo: What I Learned From the Women Who Changed the World, as well as the much-anticipated 2011 memoir she co-wrote with blind 9-11 survivor Michael Hingson, called Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero. Thunder Dog was a runaway bestseller and spent over a dozen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Ways to connect with Kerri & Susy: www.facebook.com/keriwyattkent www.instagram.com/keriwyattkent https://www.linkedin.com/in/keri-wyatt-kent-328b2810/ http://www.susyflory.com/ https://www.facebook.com/everythingmemoir About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. .   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, Hi again, everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Today is a special one. I think it's special anyway, and I think our guests will agree today you're listening to this. It's It's August 20, 2024, and it's special because for the past almost three years, I and Kari Wyatt Kent, who you'll meet in a moment, have been working on a book. It's my next book, and the we had various titles, but we ended up deciding with the publisher, Tyndale house, to call it live like a guide dog, true stories from a blind man and his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity and walking in faith. All three of those are relevant, and we can talk about those. And along the way, we've also had a lot of help from Susy Flory, who worked with me when we did thunderdog, and we wrote thunderdog, which was a number one New York Times bestseller and was published in August of 2011 I don't know what it is about August, but, oh, that's okay, but I think there's relevance to it being August this time anyway. Susie Flory was on Episode 10 of unstoppable mindset, way back in December, December 1, specifically, of 2021, and 12 days later on the 13th of December, Keri Wyatt Kent was on episode 12 of unstoppable mindset. So if you guys want to hear those two episodes, you can go back and find episodes 10 and 12 and hear our individual conversations with Susie and Carrie. But now I'd like to introduce you to both of them and all three of us, I think, we'll tell you a little bit about ourselves, and then we'll get into other things that are related to what we want to talk about, unstoppable mindset. But the big thing is, today is the day we're celebrating that live like a guide dog is released. It was released today. It's out there. If you haven't ordered it, we hope you will from wherever you want to order books, and if you have pre ordered it, you'll be getting your copy pretty soon. So anyway, welcome Susy and Kari. I'm glad you're here. We really appreciate your time, Susy. Why don't you tell us a little bit about you? I   Susy Flory ** 03:33 certainly will. But first I want to say congratulations to the both of you. I'm so excited about this book. Can't wait for it to get out there and for people to enjoy it. Mike, I was thinking I did a little quick math, and you and I have known each other for 15 years now we have we How many marriages don't even last 15 years? Right? Really,   Michael Hingson ** 03:58 well, we we met because you called one day and were writing a book called Dog tales, and you wanted to include Rozelle story, and you asked me to tell what happened on September 11. And so I bit I did, and I took maybe, I think, close to 45 minutes, and then afterward, there was this pause, and all of a sudden, Susie said you ought to write your own book, and I want to help you write it. And I sort of was a little bit reluctant, because I'd been working on it for a long time and had some ideas and advice from people, but it just wasn't going anywhere. But it did with Susie and her agent became my agent. He got a contract with Thomas Nelson publishing, and the rest, as they say, is sort of history, yeah. And I   Susy Flory ** 04:43 have always loved animal stories. My first few books, I didn't get to do anything like that, but as soon as I could, I started writing animal stories. Dogtails was the first one, and then working with you on thunderdog was the second one. Yeah. And that's kind of been a theme of my life. My dad was a Texas cowboy, and I grew up on horses. He was kind of a horse whisperer. My daughter works in wildlife rescue, and she's a squirrel whisperer. And I just love the way that animals sort of make their way into your heart, and there's a healing and bonding process that happens that so gentle most of the time you don't even realize it's happening until you need them. And that really, has truly been my experience. So Mike, that's really a part of your story that captured my heart, along with a lot of other elements of the story, I've been writing now for about 20 years, writing and publishing, I direct a writer's conference, and Carrie's actually part of that. And we try to help writers become the best that they can be. And then in the last few years, I've been in seminary, furthering my education. Right now I'm in a doctoral program and working on my dissertation, so my hair is becoming more and more gray in that process. Well,   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 06:17 and I met Susy probably at least 15 years ago, maybe more, I'm not sure when it was, but we were both writers. We worked with the same agent at the time, and then I pretty soon got involved with the West Coast Christian writers the conference that Susie was leading, and we just clicked. We We are both animal lovers. I think that's part of it. I love dogs. I also grew up riding horses, as she did and and we both had horses later in life at at the same time. And I agree there's that there's just something that animals kind of intuitively know and connect with you on this emotional level. And, you know, the the dogs that that I met through helping Mike right live like a guide dog, when we initially started it, we were going to do, we were going to include some other dogs, you know, service dogs and other people's dogs. And so I just, I got to meet some really cool dogs during this whole research project. And so I think that people who you know, if the idea of this book is about overcoming fear and managing our fear figuring out how to live courageously. And I think even if you don't have a guide dog or a service dog, animals can help you do that. They force you to be in the moment, which is one of the one of the ways we that we can deal with fear and anxiety, is to be in the moment. And animals sort of force us to do that   Michael Hingson ** 08:02 if we pay attention to them. I think you're absolutely right. And one of the lessons that we talk about in the book is the whole issue of living in the moment, not doing so much, what if? Because, if we What if everything to death, we create a lot of fear in our own lives. And one of the the basic mantras I have lived by, especially since September 11, although even before, but mostly after September 11, is don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on what you can, and the rest will take care of itself. And the lesson really comes from dogs, because after September 11, I contacted the veterinarian department of Guide Dogs for the Blind, and also talked to Roselle trainer and so on and and said, How do you think that this whole event would affect Roselle? And one of the things that they asked me was, was Roselle threatened along the way? And I said, No. And they said, well, was she hit with anything? Or did anything endanger her? And I said, No, not that she would notice at all. And they said, Well, there you are. Dogs. Don't do what if and when it was over. And we got home on the night of September 11, I took Roselle harness off, and I figured I was going to take her out. She would have none of it. She ran off, went to her toy box, grabbed her favorite tug boda bone, and started playing tug of war with my retired guy, dog, Lenny, and that was it. The two of them just played. Eventually, she did have to go out, but by the same token, they played. It was over. Roselle was glad to be home, and we moved on from there, and I think it's an important lesson. When the pandemic began, I realized that although I've been talking for at that time, 19 years about surviving the World Trade Center terrorist attacks and so on, and being able to go down the state. And not exhibiting fear and not exhibiting panic. I learned to do that and created a mindset in my head, because I spent a lot of time prior to September 11, learning about all of the issues in the World Trade Center. Where do you go if there's an emergency? What are the rules? Because for me, of course, I'm not going to read signs, but also, I was the leader of an office, and I was responsible for the people in that office, or whoever might be in the office at the time. So it was really important for me to know that. And so as a result, I learned what I could I learned how to travel around the world trade center, learned where things were and all of that, although it wasn't until much later that I realized it. All of that created a mindset in me, you know, what to do if there's an emergency and when it actually happened, although certainly we didn't expect it, the mindset kicked in and when the fan, when the pandemic began, I realized we really needed to start to talk about teaching people how to deal with fear, and as I would put it, teach people that they don't need to be blinded by fear or overwhelmed by fear, that fear is an important tool, no matter what you might think about. Oh, well, if it happens, it's a natural reaction. You have control over what you do and how you feel when something horrific or something unusual happens, then fear can be a powerful tool that you can use to benefit you, rather than letting it overwhelm you and cause you not to be able to make decisions. And you know, today in our in our world, politicians and others are doing nothing but promulgating fear in so many different ways. And we don't learn enough about stepping back and really analyzing what they say, whoever they are, and going back and saying, wait a minute. Is this real? Do I need to be afraid of this? Or is there anything that I can do about it? And that gets back to the don't worry about what you can't control. Most of it we don't have direct control over, except, I would say, at the ballot box on november 5. But by the same token, there's so much that we take personally that we shouldn't because we're not going to have any effect on it. And so what we need to do, and what live like a guide dog allows us to do is to learn how to control fear. We talk about being introspective. We talk about taking time at the end of every day to look at what happened. Why did it work? What didn't work? I don't like the concept of failure. I think that failure is only a lesson that we can use to move forward and that it doesn't need to be bad if we don't allow it to be bad, but if we use it as a tool. So that's what live like a guide dog really is about, and it is one of the, I think, the books that can truly help so many people recognize that they have a lot more control over the specific things in their lives than they think they do. Or, as we say here on the podcast, they can be more unstoppable than they think they are.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 13:12 Mike, I think that's so good. And you know, some of the things that we have in the book, as you recall, um, are strategies like we can't worry about what we can't control. But for example, you mentioned, like learning your way around the world trade center. That was a step of preparation that enabled you to then in the moment when things were you know, where there's chaos. You had been. You had prepared yourself, and all of us can prepare ourselves, you know, for understanding the world around us, for gaining information that will help us in a long when, if, when, and if something happens, to deal with it in a in a brave way and not let fear get the upper Hand. Yeah, still feel afraid, but if we're prepared, we go, okay, I know we're I know what to do next. I know what you know. I know where the exit door is, whatever it was that you know, you were able to know your way around the world trade center that helped you as you were, you know, evacuating from a tower that was on fire, you know? Yeah, so it preparation was a great tool, and it's one of the strategies that we talk about in the book that can help us to not let our fear make us panic. So,   Michael Hingson ** 14:37 you know, one of the things that we do a lot in the book, at various places, is tell stories. And I, as a person who's been involved in sales most of my life, believe that the best salespeople are people who can tell stories that relate to whatever their customers are interested in, and so on. So one of the things that comes to mind is a story that took place a few years after September 11. I was in Oregon in. Working for Guide Dogs for the Blind, and I had to go up to Gresham, Oregon, where the, well, our boring Oregon, actually, I love that name, where the second campus of Guide Dogs for the Blind is located. And I got there and put stuff away, and decided I was going to go out to dinner. And I had learned where a restaurant was and how to get there. And I got there, that was no problem. But coming back for some reason, and I don't remember what specifically happened, but for some reason, I couldn't get back to the apartment where I was staying, and I felt real concern when I when I first couldn't make it work, I retraced my steps, got back to the restaurant, and then tried it again, and still we didn't get to the right place. But what I also realized is you've got to deal with this, because it's not rozelle's job to know when Roselle was the guide dog at the time. Guide Dogs don't lead. They guide. Their job is to make sure that we walk safely. I have to give and had to give Roselle direction, and that is the case with anyone who uses a guide dog. People always want to say, well, of course, the dog just leads you around. No, that's just not true. Anyway, as I after the second time of not making it work right, I suddenly realized, wait a minute, I have in my pocket, and it was fairly new, so we didn't think of using it as much at the time, but I had a talking GPS system. I turned it on, I put in the address of where I wanted to go, and within five minutes, I was at the apartment where, where we were staying. But the issue is, I had to step back and recognize, don't be afraid. There are ways to make this work, and what you need to do is to use your skills to resolve the problem and solve the problem. And so many people won't do that. They they just get afraid. Blind people oftentimes do it. Sighted people do it in so many ways. But the fact is that it's it's a very powerful tool to use something that we call in the rehabilitation world with blind people today, and I think others, but the National Federation of the Blind calls structured discovery. You get lost, you start to go back and analyze where you were supposed to go and how you were supposed to get there, and maybe where you actually went wrong. And structured discovery is a very powerful thing. I also think that using technologies like GPS have, especially now, become a lot more dominant, and that's fine, because it's the technology's job to give me the information that allows me to decide what I want to do. But you know the bottom line is that the fear went away as soon as I recognized, oh, I know how to do this, and I'll just use the talking GPS system, and it should be able to give me what I want to know. And it did,   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 18:07 yeah, I love that story. And I think one of the things I learned as as your co author, you know, it's your story, and I was, you know, helping, you know, you write it, but, but I learned so much about guide dogs. For instance, what you mentioned when you were telling that story, that the guide dog doesn't lead you, you don't say, go back to the apartment you've been to once, Roselle, she's, you know, it's not like Lassie, you know, movies,   Michael Hingson ** 18:35 and that's all right. And no matter what they say, Timmy never did fall down the well, but that's never fell down   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 18:39 the well, ever is that was just, anyway, the idea of, and I've, you know, when I was I got a copy of the book recently, and, you know, had a publication. And the I was explaining to my husband, well, the guide dog doesn't lead and he goes, Well, how does he know where he's going? I said, Well, the same way you do but, but it's, it's that the guide dog guides, but the the handler has to give direction to the dog. Because I think it would be more scary if, if the dog had the magical ability to just take you where you want to go. I feel like it would be scarier because that's literally you have no control or no awareness of what's going on, whereas the way guide dogs actually work, you're a team, and you're doing it together, so you both have agency and control over various aspects of your journey together, and I think that makes it less scary. So   Michael Hingson ** 19:41 it is a team effort, and, and you're absolutely right, and that the reality is that it's a team effort where we both learn to trust each other. And, yeah, I think that families who have dogs really need to learn more about their their dogs. Um. Or and other animals too, but we're going to talk about dogs today. The the fact of the matter is that, in reality, dogs love to be around people, and they actually want us and hope that we will set the rules so that they know what they're supposed to do. They love rules, and that doesn't mean in a negative sort of way. But you know, if you just let your dog run around the house, tear up the furniture and all that, and you don't do anything about it, the dog's going to do that until you say, wait a minute, this isn't what you're supposed to do, and you don't need to deal with that in a negative way. There are so many ways to train a dog properly with positive rewards and so on, food rewards and clickers and other things like that, to to really set the rules. But when the dog knows what the rules are, and you continuously say, Good dog, when they do the right thing, they love that, and they will be a much more value added member of the family. As I tell people, dogs do I think love unconditionally, but they don't trust unconditionally. And you have to develop that trusting relationship with your dog, whoever you are. It isn't just service dogs, but with service dogs especially, it is a true, absolute team effort that we need to deal with and that we need to form. I need to know that Rozelle is going to do or now Alamo, current black lab guide dog, is going to do his job and convey to him I trust you. And likewise, he wants to know that I trust him. It. It really does go both ways. And when you develop that trusting relationship, it's second to none. Just like any other kind of teaming relationship,   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 21:52 I think you hit on something important, Mike, is that your dog wants the structure of of rules and knowing your expectations and wants to meet them, and you'll enjoy your dog more. And your dog will enjoy being a part of what he's considers the pack you know, of your family. Everybody will enjoy it more and feel safer and less fearful if they their structure. You know, I think sometimes dogs are when they're they act out it. They're kind of like kids who act out they are because they're afraid, and they don't know where, where the boundaries are, and   Michael Hingson ** 22:30 they don't know what you expect of them. And if you don't convey that, and again, it's a positive thing, you don't go up and beat a dog because it doesn't do what you want. That's not the way to handle it. And there are humane societies, humane associations, and so many organizations around the country that can help you appropriately train your dog. And you should, you should do that. You should really learn what training is all about. But if you do that, you're also training yourself, by the way, we used to live up in Novato, California, which was right by the marine Humane Society. And one of the things that we had discussions with people at the society about, many times, was, in reality, they do more training of people than they do of dogs, because it's really teaching the person how to address and deal with the dog much more than it even is just teaching the dog what the rules are. Right. Now, I don't know about squirrels, Susie, but you know,   Susy Flory ** 23:34 they're in a whole other category. They're   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 23:37 a whole other category, although I think your daughter, who is very good with all animals. I I remember seeing her with her dog when I visited, and she had an amazing bond with them, with with, you know, and, and that was really cool to watch. There was just this mutual respect between the two of them.   Susy Flory ** 23:59 Now, our career actually came as a result of my dog. I have a little Terrier named sprinkles, a Silky Terrier who's 14 now, and when she was really young, I had taken her out in the backyard. Teddy was, I think, 16 at the time, and sprinkles started pointing. And I didn't know these little terriers did that, but she just looked like one of those English hunting dogs. And she had her paw up, her tail out, she was pointing at something. And so I went over to look. She wouldn't come inside. There was a nest of baby birds that had the nest had been destroyed, and the birds were on the ground, these little, tiny babies, and I just left them. That's how heartless I was. I just thought, you know, they're not going to survive. They looked like they were dead. I just left them and picked up sprinkles, took her in, and Teddy came home from school. About a half hour later, I was telling her, you never guessed what sprinkles did today. Well, she didn't care what sprinkles did, but as soon as she heard the word baby birds. She ran out and back. She picked them up, she nursed them back to hell. She stayed up all night feeding them, and the next morning, she said, This is what I want to do for my life. And there's just sometimes an intuition that dogs have, you know, sprinkles found these baby birds, and that connection I will never forget, you know, that bond between her and the dog and the birds and many other animals afterwards. So there's sometimes a mysterious way of working in our lives that dogs can have.   Michael Hingson ** 25:36 Well, talking about bonding in mysterious ways brings up the memory of a story of how you two bonded. Does anybody want to tell that story? You told it to me. So now you're stuck.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 25:49 Susy, this is your favorite story so and I've been talking so go ahead.   Michael Hingson ** 25:55 Susie,   Susy Flory ** 25:56 yeah, you know how sometimes in a friendship, when you go through something hard that I know you and Rozelle went through, and you know many of the other stories you tell them in the new book, it brings you closer together. And Carrie and I had a moment. We were already friends, but we decided to go snow skiing one day, and we both were not like champion skiers. It was just for fun, and we were all dressed in our gear and headed up the hill, and a woman came running from the side of the road up at the top of the mountain and was yelling at us that there was a man in the ditch, and we didn't know what was going on. We stopped. We went over and looked, and there was a man unconscious in a ditch with this motorcycle on top of them. And so it turned out that he had passed away. But, you know, there was a good couple of hours of, you know, summoning the fire department. We had no cell service, giving statements to the authorities, you know, taking this woman back to a restaurant nearby for soup, and really just kind of going through this awful experience together. I mean, it's very traumatic, you know, to see someone who's just passed away from an accident. And, yeah, I think sometimes those things bond us and give us that, that relationship of trust and of teamwork that goes very deep. And Mike, I'm remembering how thunderdog had the working title of trust and teamwork, and I learned so much from you about that concept and kind of how that works. And it's not easy to have a relationship like that. Sometimes the hard things are what, you know, kind of forges that bond. Well, you know,   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 27:45 Susie, as you were saying that, I thought, You know what? That's when I knew Susy was someone I could turn to in a crisis, and she would keep a cool head and know what to do, because you just went, Okay, this lady's crazy. You know, having this woman was, like, panicking. She was, she was having a panic attack, you know, almost ran in front of our car and, and you said, alright, we don't have cell service. Carrie, you're going to stay here with this lady and I'm going to drive to where I can get get help. And you just, like, kind of had very decisive, clear, but very calm, very nurturing kind of way with this lady. And I was like, I don't know what to do, and you're like, Carrie, you're going to do this, and I'm going to do this. And I was like, I really like how decisive and yet compassionate you are, and I think that's part of what bond just not just finding a dead guy, which makes for a great story, and, like, a traumatic experience we shared, but I saw you your leadership in action, and I was like, this is a person I can trust. And so I think sometimes that's true with our animals as well, you know, like but when you go through a difficult situation, a fearful situation, if, if you are with someone who handles that well, you learn from them, and you also learn to trust them.   Michael Hingson ** 29:06 So, you know, we talk about telling stories and so on, and one of the stories that I told a little bit in thunderdog, but didn't really, at the time, internalized it like I should have, and I have since is regarding going down the stairs. We got to about the 50th floor going down, and I mentioned it in thunderdog, and we also talk about it in more detail and live like a guide dog. But suddenly my colleague David Frank, who was in the office with me that day, because we were going to be doing sales seminars. And David came from our corporate office in California, and David's job was to deal with pricing models and all that, and he was going to teach our resellers all about the pricing options and so on, while I was going to do all the major technical stuff, because I was going to be the regular contact for these people. Anyway, we were going down the stairs and we got to about the. 50th floor. And suddenly David said, Mike, we're going to die. We're not going to make it out of here. And immediately I went, I got to stop that. I can't let him do that. We've been trying to keep panic off of the stairs, and various people at various times, help with that. So I just said in the sharpest voice, I could stop it, David, if Rosella and I can go down these stairs so can you. And that was intentional. What David told me later was that that did bring him out of his funk, and what he decided to do, and asked me if it was okay, and I didn't really care, but yeah, it really was okay. He asked if it would be a problem if I if he just walked a floor below me on the stairs and shouted up to me everything that he saw. And I said, Sure, go ahead. So we start down the stairs. I get to the 49th floor, and all of a sudden I hear, Hey, Mike, I'm on the 48th floor. All clear here, going on down. And he told me that he wanted to do that because he needed to take his mind off of what was bothering him, which was, who knows what and what are we going to get out of here? So then I get to the 48th floor, and he's on the 47th and says, 47th floor. All good couple floors later, I'm on floor 45 and he goes, Hey, this is the 44th floor where I am now. This is where the Port Authority cafeteria is not stopping going on down the stairs, and he went all the rest of the way down the stairs shouting up what he saw. Did I need it? No, was it helpful? Sure. It was. Because we got to the 30th floor, and all of a sudden, David said, hey, the firefighters are coming up the stairs. Everybody moved to the side. Let them buy and we had some interactions with them. But the point of telling you the story is that I realized, actually only in the last few years how important and how absolutely useful and necessary what David did was all about that is to say he kept saying, I'm on whatever floor he was on and going on down the stairs, he became absolutely a focal point for anyone on the stairs who could hear him. So anyone within the sound of his voice knew that somewhere on the stairs there was someone who was doing okay, or at least who sounded okay, and that had to keep so many people from panicking going down the stairs. 19th floor. All good here, and I think that's so wonderful that he did that. And he was doing it, I think, and he said to keep his own fears in check, but he was helping so many people go down the stairs and that that kind of thing isn't really talked about so nearly enough, but it helped him deal with his own fear, and it helped so many people as we went down the stairs. It   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 32:53 was just very reassuring, not only, you know, to every like you said to everybody who could hear him, and you know, sometimes we just need to know it's going to be okay. There's somebody you're not alone, you know, well,   Michael Hingson ** 33:04 and the re the reality is that he conveyed that message to so many people, probably 1000s of people, because, you know, we were all on these open stairwells, and so so many people above and below him could hear him. And I think that I love how important?   Susy Flory ** 33:22 Yeah, I love how he was keeping people in the moment. You know, everyone was focusing on the task at hand. And I think that helps keep fear at bay. It   Michael Hingson ** 33:33 does. And you know, the other part about that is we didn't know what was going on. We didn't know that it was a hijacked aircraft that crashed into the towers. We figured that an airplane hit the building because we were smelling burning jet fuel, but we didn't know what the details were. And so I'm sure minds were going in so many different directions as to what was going on. As I tell people, I love to read science fiction, so I was imagining all sorts of things. But I also knew that no matter what I was imagining, we got to deal with going down the stairs and focusing and all that which which we did. And I know people followed me because they kept hearing me telling Roselle What a good girl she was. Good dog. Keep going, what a good dog you are. And they, they, they told me later, look, if you could go down the stairs and just encourage Roselle and all that, we're going to follow you. Which is, which is what they did. And you know, the reality is that we can control fear. Fear doesn't need to overwhelm us. And again, as I've said, it's a it's a very powerful tool. And we talk about ways that you can learn to do that, ways that you can learn to calm and quell fears in your own lives, by introspection, by thinking about what goes on on any given day, and anybody who says that they don't have time at the end of the day or at the very beginning of the next day, but I think especially at the end of the day, to take a few moments. And go. How did it go today? What worked, what didn't? Why didn't? What didn't work? Why did that happen? What do I learn from that I'm a firm believer, not that I'm my own worst critic in everything that I do, although that's what I used to say, I've learned that I'm my own best teacher. Because ultimately, people can provide me with information, but I have to teach it to myself, and I have to take the time to allow myself to learn from what I'm thinking. And I believe that all of us are our own best teachers, and that we need to take into account what we feel and analyze it, and the more of that that we do, the more introspection, and the more self analysis that we do, the the stronger that mind muscle becomes, and the less we're afraid. And that's, of course, a lot about what live like a guide dog is really about.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 35:55 Mike, I'd love to share with your the listeners some of the strategies that, as we talked through, you know, your story, and the way that you have, you know, figured out how to, like you said, become more self aware, some of the strategies that are, you know, offered to people so that they can learn. In the book, we talk about awareness and we talk about preparation, which mentioned that before we talk about flexibility, we talk about perseverance, empathy, trust and teamwork, which, obviously that's a big one, right, even things like listening and rest, which seem more passive, actually help us to do like what you're talking about, live in the moment, right? And of course, Faith is an important part of of not being afraid, and we talk about that a lot, and just of listening to your instincts, listening to your own, you know, your own intuition. Um, so those are some of the like, the strategies in the book. And I think if people will, you know, read the book, they'll, they'll learn how to implement those strategies and teach themselves how to turn their Fear into Courage. And that's one of the reasons I'm excited about this book,   Michael Hingson ** 37:17 and the reason we call the book live like a guide dog is that it's all about all of these lessons that we're talking about are lessons that I learned from observing dogs over the years. I've said a number of times, no offense to them, but I've learned a whole lot more about trust in teamwork and dealing with life from working with now eight guide dogs and my wife's dog, Fantasia, who was Africa's mother, and Fantasia was a breeder for guide dogs also. But I learned so much more from those dogs than I ever learned from all the team experts like Tony Robbins and Ken Blanchard and all that, because it's no offense to them, they teach a lot of good things, but it's personal and internalized when you have to live it, and you live it working with dogs, when the team learns how to to work well together, and I think it's so important to do that. So there's no doubt that in so many ways, this is a book about dogs, but it's also a book about more than that people and the relationship between dogs and people, the human animal bond, and something we haven't talked a lot about, which we can talk about briefly here, is that this book, just like thunder dog, since I am a firm believer in teamwork, was a collaborative effort. Susie and I worked together on thunderdog. We both wrote, we we evaluated each other's writings, and we put together a book that was very successful. And Carrie and I have done the same thing with live like a guide dog. It is a collaborative effort, and I think that's so important, because I think that the whole idea of teamwork brings different perspectives and different ideas that all ended up going into the book, and I think will make it a very successful book.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 39:13 Yeah. Well, thanks, Mike. It's been a really a lot of fun to work on. And like I said, I learned a lot. You know, it's interesting. You talked about learning from the dogs. There were times where your dogs had to learn from you, not to be afraid. Like, I don't know if you want to tell the story, sure, Klondike, when you were training him.   Michael Hingson ** 39:32 Well, let me, let me first of all say, Well, I'll tell the story, and then I have a second Klondike story. So, and by the way, we talk about these in live like a guide dog, and some of it was referenced in thunderdog, but we get more relevant and detailed in live like a guide dog. But when I first met Klondike at Guide Dogs for the Blind, the class supervisor was Terry Barrett, who. Who I hadn't really gotten to know. But because of what happened, we became pretty close afterward. And what happened was when about the last week of the class, we started going into San Francisco to get good city work in and more populated areas and so on. And the first time we went in, everything was fine, but the second time we went in, when it was my turn to get off the bus, I stood up with Klondike, and as the closer I got to the front of the bus, the slower Klondike walked, and he started shaking and shivering and didn't even want to get off the bus. And so everybody else was off, and Terry came on and he said, what's going on? And I said, Well, I'm really concerned about this. And he said, Just be patient with him. Work it through. Dogs do develop beers from time to time, but they also are depending on us to show them the way to to to be calm. So we finally got Klondike off the bus, and as soon as we got off the bus, he began to work pretty well. The next day, the same thing happened, and again, Klondike was very fearful. By the third day, being patient with him and encouraging and supporting him, saw Klondike actually becoming less fearful, and we were able to work through that. You know, dogs do have fears. Roselle became afraid of thunder. And, in fact, the night before September 11, well the morning of September 11, at one or 12th midnight, or 112 30 in the morning, we had a thunderstorm, and Roselle was afraid of thunder. And I took Roselle downstairs, and she was shaking and shivering, but she was under my desk, and we got through it, and then we went upstairs, and we got some more sleep. And then, of course, we went into the World Trade Center, and people have said, well, she was afraid of thunder. Why wasn't she afraid when there was an explosion or whatever happened in the World Trade Center? The answer is, first of all, it wasn't that loud, but second of all, it wasn't thunder, they know. And so Roselle didn't have a problem with all the other stuff. Now, Klondike, let's just point out that Klondike is one of those religious dogs. One day we we were members of the San Marcos United Methodist Church, and the church had invited itinerant Minister Kimball Colburn to come and and do some some teaching. And that night, then the main night, he was there. He did an altar call, and Karen and I decided we'd go up. Karen was in her her wheelchair and and I said, you want to go up? And she said, yeah. So we, we were there. Klondike was there. And I told Klondike, just stay here. We'll be back. Just stay we get up to the front of the room. We're standing in line, and all of a sudden, right in front of us, comes Klondike and sits down. He wanted to be part of the altar call, and Kimball gave him the sacrament, you know, which? Which was great. But he was that kind of a very sensitive dog in so many ways, and so it's fun that he he did participate, and was such a wonderful companion for so many years.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 43:24 You know, Mike, I um, you said something about like when Klondike was afraid to get off the bus, and you didn't get mad at Klondike, you didn't shame him. You were just patient and reassuring and encouraging. And I think that you know whether you have a dog or not, when, when I feel afraid, one of the things I think that I live more like a guide dog now than I used to, is I try to be patient with myself and be okay. Kari, what's going on? Like, what's this fear? What? And instead of going, Oh, why are you so dumb, you should just be you should, you know, just tough it out and be brave and be strong. No, I'm patient with myself, I think, more than I used to be before I worked on this book. And I encourage myself. You can do this. You know, your feelings make sense. It's okay. Just stay in the moment. I kind of pep talk myself, but I'm very patient with myself, and I think that's a hard thing to do. We're all harder on ourselves than we are on other people. We say things to ourselves that we would never say to someone else, like, how many times you go I'm so that was so dumb. You know? You wouldn't say that to somebody else.   44:38 Some people do anyway,   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 44:41 and and we don't, because that's not helpful, right? So it's more helpful to be kind to yourself, and I think that's one of the things I learned from this that has helped me deal with when I feel anxious or afraid, to just be patient with myself.   Michael Hingson ** 44:56 Lashing Out is usually something that occurs because. Are afraid, and we've we've grown up learning those kinds of things rather than learning. Wait a minute, there are better ways and and unfortunately, as a society, we don't really teach people how to learn to deal with fear and to make it a positive attribute in our lives and help us stay more focused on whatever it is that we need to stay focused on, and that, in reality, the fear isn't the problem. It is how we deal with it. That's the problem, and we don't learn enough about how to step back and go, Wait a minute. We can do this differently. And the reality is, the more that we take the approach of Wait a minute and really analyze, the quicker the process becomes, yeah, the first or second or third time perhaps you do it, it's going to take you a while and you got to stop and analyze and so on. But that's why I say that the mind is a muscle, and you can develop that muscle and get yourself and your mind to the point where when something happens that's unexpected, you can have a mindset kick in that says, Wait a minute. Let's look at this, and very quickly, make the kind of determinations and decisions that you really want to make and that that other people learn to make, you know, I talk about steel Team Six and other kinds of military things, and all the things that that that they learn to do, and they do learn to do them, it's learned behavior. And the reality is that we all can do that we all can recognize that we can live in the moment, we can function in very productive ways, and that we don't need to allow fear to blind us or overwhelm us. I will not say, Don't be afraid, but you don't need to let it overwhelm you.   Susy Flory ** 46:59 Yeah, Mike, I have a question for you that I don't remember if I've ever asked you this before, but it seems perfect for this concept of live like a guide dog, and that is, I know you were really quite young when you had your first guide dog. They made an exception for you, and I'm wondering what was the very first lesson you learned as a teenager from your very first guide dog.   Michael Hingson ** 47:23 I think the very first thing that I learned, well there, there are a couple. The first thing that comes to mind is responsibility, because I was responsible for that dog, and at 14 years old, that's a pretty awesome kind of a task to be able to perform, and it isn't just feeding the dog, it's supporting the dog. And I had a month at Guide Dogs for the Blind where the trainers really talked a lot about that, and being the youngest kid there, it is something that I didn't necessarily learn instantly, but I did learn well over a few years. But the other thing that I did learn was a lot about trust. The the the trainers always said, Follow your dog. And I think some schools for a while were were very much in the mindset of your dog never makes mistakes, just follow your dog. Well, that doesn't work, and we all, I think, understood that, at least over time, but following your dog and learning to trust your dog and learning to establish that relationship with your dog was important. And what what happened was things like, I get to a street corner, and now, of course, it's even more relevant than it used to be. I get to a street corner, we stop. I'm listening to hear which way the traffic is going, and I will cross the street the way I want to go when I hear the traffic going parallel to where I want to travel, because if it's going across in front of me, it, you know, I have a master's degree in physics. I know about classical mechanics. Two pieces of matter can't occupy the same space at the same time. And classical mechanics, and I don't want the second piece of matter to be a big car that hits me, you know. So I need to make sure that the traffic is going the way I want to go before I cross, but I tell the dog forward, and the dog doesn't go. I have learned instantly, probably there's a reason. Now, it could be that the dog is distracted, although that's rare, because I've learned to trust my dogs. I mean, the dog could see a duck and wants to go visit, but typically, that isn't what happens, especially the more you get to know the dog and you realize there's a reason for the dog not moving. When we were running away from tower two, and we came to a place where there was an opening in the building next to us, and then we wanted. Get in and out of the dust cloud. I didn't know whether Roselle could hear me or see my hand signals, but I kept telling her right, right, right. And I heard an opening, and she obviously knew what I wanted. She turned right, she took one step, and she stopped. She would not move. And it took me a few seconds to realize, wait a minute, she stopped for a reason. It's what we call Intelligent Disobedience. That wasn't the term that we learned when I got squire my first dog. It was all about follow your dog, but Intelligent Disobedience is a very important part of working with a guide dog. The fact of the matter is that I need to trust the dog. When the dog stops and doesn't do what I expect, there's probably a reason. Well, Roselle stopped and wouldn't move. I investigated and discovered that we were at the top of a flight of stairs, and when I said forward, we went down the stairs, or likewise, getting back to the street corner. If I say forward and she doesn't go, or he doesn't go. There's probably a reason, and the reason, most likely today, is quiet cars or hybrid vehicles that are running in electric mode and I can't hear them, and there's one coming down the street and the dog doesn't want to get killed, much less get me killed, unless the dog doesn't like me very well. But I don't want that to be the case. So the fact of the matter is that we we develop that level of trust, and when the dog doesn't move, I'm going to stop and try to analyze and figure out what's going on, and then we go. But that trust was one of the most important things that I had to learn a lot about in ways that I had never learned before. You know, I've been blind my whole life. I trusted my parents and so on, and I I trusted my own skills. I walked to elementary school every day until we went to the fourth grade, and then I took bus to a different school, and I was able to learn to travel around the campus and all that, but still, creating a team was pretty new to me overall, when I got squire. And so learning that trust and learning that that's a very important thing, was something that that I had to do. And again, I think it's also important to recognize you don't trust blindly. And as I said before, dogs don't trust unconditionally. They're looking to develop trust, and dogs want to develop a trusting relationship with us, but it is something that that has to be done. So even today, if the dog stops and doesn't move, I'm not going to yell at the dog. I may be wondering, well, what's the issue here? But I will stop and recognize that most likely, there's a reason. And like I said, there's always that one possibility that it could be that they see a bird and they want to go visit the bird, but guide dogs generally are are chosen because they're not overly distracted. And I want to keep it that way, so it is all about trust. And that's that's something that we all need to learn. You know, I keep hearing people talk about in our political world, well, I trust this guy. He's talking to me. Sorry, that doesn't work. Trust has to be earned, and we have to each step back in whatever we're doing and look at what's going on around us, and when somebody says something to us, I'm generally going to take the time to analyze it and see if that's really true or not, and and the more that I find that I can relate to what someone says, the more I'm really apt to trust them. But I'm not going to trust them arbitrarily or, as I would say, blindly. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, that's great   Susy Flory ** 54:02 trust, but verify.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 54:04 Yeah, it's important Exactly, exactly.   Michael Hingson ** 54:08 But you know it's, it is? It is so wonderful when that kind of a relationship does occur, working with a guide dog, when the teaming relationship is there, working with people, when the teaming relationship is there, is so important and it's it's such an awesome experience to have.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 54:34 I think if you have trusting relationships, whether with an animal or another person, you will be generally less afraid because you feel a little safer in the world, not that you trust everyone, and not that you're never afraid, but if you have safe people or animals, or you know connections with others, that builds sort of a a. Reservoir within you of of goodwill that you are not afraid of everything you know. I think that's why you know people or animals who have been who have suffered abuse, are less are more fearful, right? They're less likely to trust because their trust has been betrayed in the past.   Michael Hingson ** 55:21 We had one of those in 2003 we indicated, when I was at guide dogs that we would care for geriatric dogs. And in 2003 I was called. I was in my office at guide dogs, and the veterinarian department called and said, we have a senior dog. She's 12, and we were wondering if you could take her. She's fearful, she's deaf, she's got arthritis. She's got a big lump on her back, which we think is an infected cyst that we can take care of. But she had never been a guide dog. She was career changed before becoming a guide dog, and they just said it was temperament. We figured it probably later we realized it was very strong willed. It wasn't a bad thing, and that today, or in 2003 they knew more about how to deal with that, and she would have made a great guide dog. But anyway, I called Karen and told her about this dog. And so we met Panama, who was a 12 year old golden retriever. She was very fearful. They thought she was deaf because they dropped a big, large Webster's Dictionary right by her in Panama. Didn't even respond. We took her home, and over a couple of months, we discovered that she wasn't really totally deaf. She was she was old and she was fearful. We think that the people who had her last had just locked her in a garage, and they maybe abused her, I don't know, but we just supported her. She was afraid to go on walks with Karen in the wheelchair, but eventually she decided that that was okay, and so Karen and she would walk. And you know, of course, all of us supported her. She was she had enough arthritis. She really couldn't play roughly with the other dogs, but she liked to be around them. One day, we were going up to Oregon for a guide dog event from where we were in Northern California, and I was putting luggage in our car, so I opened the door going from our house into the garage, and all of a sudden, like a shot, this dog ran past me out into the garage, and the van was open. She ran up into the van and went into the main part of the car, the vehicle. We knew when that happened, that Panama had gone somewhere, she had crossed a line and developed enough of a trust that she was willing to go out and get in the car and be more a part of the family. But she was very fearful, and there were still a lot of other issues with her, but the more we worked with her, the more she realized that she could trust us and we had her. For before that, she had been afraid of the car, she had been afraid of the car, she had been afraid of people were afraid. She was afraid of everything. She was afraid of everything. And it was pretty amazing when suddenly she took that leap, and it got better from then on, but she knew that we were with her and that we would support her.   58:35 Yeah, that's a great story.   Michael Hingson ** 58:36 Well, Susie, any any other thoughts or questions that you might have you you've been quiet lately.   Susy Flory ** 58:45 What is your newest lesson? I that makes me curious too, because you've had Guide Dogs for a while now. You had a number of them. Each one's different. Each relationship is different. So with LMO, what might be your latest lesson that you're learning? Because we're all lifelong learners, right?   Michael Hingson ** 59:05 I have been really impressed with some of the new training techniques that I've seen at Guide Dogs for the Blind. I mentioned clickers, which is sort of like a, you know, those metal crickets, you squeeze a minute ago, something like that. But the idea is that when I got Roselle, they had started really investigating new and better training techniques. And what I have found is that they actually have developed techniques using technologies and just different processes that they've been able to shorten the length of time it takes to learn to use, or it takes shorter times for the guide dog to learn to be a guide dog. When I went up to Oregon to get Panama. On excuse me to get Alamo, which was the first guide dog I've gotten in Oregon. So we went up in 2018 to get Alamo, and we graduated on my birthday, so he's a great birthday present. But anyway, when I was up there the first day we started walking, the trainer was right behind me, and I knew that she was carrying a clicker. We cross the street, and actually we got to the curb and and stopped, and she immediately clicked the clicker. What a clicker is is a device that's a demarcation. And when the dog does what you want, if you immediately click and then you follow it with food rewards, the click really tells the dog, good job. You don't use it in a negative way, and that's one of the positive ways to really work to develop good, strong relationships with dogs. Well, anyway, we crossed the street, and then we walked a little bit further, and suddenly we came to the opening to an alley, and the trainer said, Let's try and experiment, because Klondike or rose Alamo was going to just go across the alley, she said, the trainer did stop and back up. And when you get to the end of the alley, stop and tell the dog halt. I did. The trainer clicked. I gave Alamo a food reward. We went back a little bit and did that two or three times, and suddenly Alamo regularly would stop at the opening to that alley, which was a wise thing to do, because cars could come out. I don't know, but I bet today, six years later, if I were to go up to warring and we went down that same sidewalk and we got to that alley, Alamo would stop because the clicker reinforced the behavior in a very positive way, so much that he'll remember it. He's a very bright dog, and I'm absolutely confident that he would so some of the new training techniques and the brightness of the dogs to be able to take advantage of those things, I think, is so important. And I think one of the things that I found most intriguing going forward.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 1:02:06 I think you know that really points to positive reinforcement again. You know, with ourselves, with others. You know, if we're you know, you know, if we say we have a friend who is always fearful, and we if we just say, Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid, that doesn't really help, but if we notice them doing the right thing to point it out, I think that improves our relationship, and it can help that person overcome fear. Yeah, you know, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:32 And we've got to get away from so much negativity and really find more positive ways for us to reinforce ourselves and also to get that same behavior from other people. I think it is so important. Yeah, well, we've been doing this for a while. I guess I would ask if there are any kind of last thoughts that either of you have. We're, of course, excited that little like a guide dog came out today, and that hopefully everyone will now even be more intrigued and go buy it. We'd love it to be another best selling book. So we hope that you'll really join us in that journey. And so if anyone, if either of you have any other final comments or whatever, let's go ahead and do them. Just   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 1:03:20 you know what? I hope that people will get this book and tell others about it, you know, write a review, tell a friend. You know. I'm sure we all have people in our life who love dogs and people who wrestle with fear, and either those type people would love to get a copy of this book. I   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:41 think between those two classes of people that takes in everyone and I'm, I'm everyone   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 1:03:46 in the world, everyone they either love dogs or they're afraid,   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:51 or both, or both, and dogs can help teach us so many things.   Susy Flory ** 1:03:57 Dogs are bridge builders. You know, everyone, almost everyone, can look at a dog and, you know, kind of feel that connection to the dog. Dogs feel the connection to people. And dogs don't care what political party we are or what we think about the news or which way the economy's going. I love how they live in the moment. They look for opportunities to connect, to play, to rest and just the rhythms of life of a dog. I think, you know, there's something that we can learn there about what's important and what is not as important. And the people in our lives and those we connect to are important. The labels, not so much.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 1:04:45 Yeah, love that. That's good word, Susy.   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:48 And as long as at the beginning and end of the day we get fed, we're happy. That's what Alamo said. We   Susy Flory ** 1:04:55 get our treats, then we gotta get our toys. Yeah?   Michael Hingson ** 1:05:03 That is what matters. Well, I want to thank you both for being here and if, if either or both of you want to come on again. We we should do it, but I really want to thank you for taking the time to be here with us today. I would love to hear from all of you out there. Love to hear your thoughts about what you've heard today, what you learned. We would certainly appreciate it wherever you're listening or watching. If you'll give us a five star rating, we value those ratings very highly. If you'd like to reach out to me, it's easy. You can email me at Michael h i@accessibe.com that's M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S i b, E.com, or go to our podcast page, www, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast, and Michael hingson is M, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, S O N.com/podcast, and for you, Kari and Susy, both of you, how do people maybe reach out to you.   Keri Wyatt Kent ** 1:06:02 I have a website, Carrie Wyatt, kent.com it's K E R, I, W, Y, A, T, T, K E N T. I'm also easy to find just by Googling and on on social media. My My full name is my handle on everything. So I'd love to connect on Instagram or Facebook. Um, it's my where I'm mostly at, or LinkedIn. Um, so yeah,   Susy Flory ** 1:06:30 Susie, Yeah, same as Kari. You can find me kind of in those different places. And if you have a cute dog video or squirrel video, be sure and send it my way. And   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:40 so what's your website? And   Susy Flory ** 1:06:43 it's my name? Yeah, Susy flory.com my name is

Nach dieser Folge Happy HIT Podcast weißt du: - Was sich von unseren Plänen für das 1. Halbjahr bewahrheitet hat und was nicht - Was unser Fokus für das zweite Halbjahr ist - Was die an Neuem erwartet Alle Programme inklusive dem Happy HIT Code findest du hier: https://www.leben-mit-ohne.de/programme/ In unserem 0€ Webinar "NoNo – Histaminintoleranz muss NICHT unheilbar sein" erfährst du die 4 emotional-energetischen Schritte, die unabdingbar sind, wenn du - wie Nora - deine HIT wieder wegbekommen möchtest, was diese versteckten Muster sind, von denen wir immer reden & warum es sogar logisch keinen Sinn macht, dass HIT unheilbar ist. Hier kannst du dich für 0€ anmelden: https://www.leben-mit-ohne.de/nono-histaminintoleranz-muss-nicht-unheilbar-sein/ Folge uns gerne auf Insta unter https://www.instagram.com/leben_mit_ohne/

Welkom bij de 24e aflevering van Goalasooooo Podcast! In deze aflevering hebben we een speciale gast: Quincy Latupeirissa. Quincy is een behendige linkspoot uit Rotterdam-Zuid die zijn talent heeft laten zien bij clubs zoals Spartaan 20, Excelsior, Heerjansdam, Zwarte Pijl, LMO, en meer. Tegenwoordig speelt hij in een vriendenteam en geeft hij voetbalclinics in het weekend. Voetbal is zijn leven en passie.We bespreken de volgende onderwerpen:-

Welkom bij de 24e aflevering van Goalasooooo Podcast! In deze aflevering hebben we een speciale gast: Quincy Latupeirissa. Quincy is een behendige linkspoot uit Rotterdam-Zuid die zijn talent heeft laten zien bij clubs zoals Spartaan 20, Excelsior, Heerjansdam, Zwarte Pijl, LMO, en meer. Tegenwoordig speelt hij in een vriendenteam en geeft hij voetbalclinics in het weekend. Voetbal is zijn leven en passie.We bespreken de volgende onderwerpen:-

Matt shares his favorite standout performances from The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. Thomas showcases several so-called sophisti-pop artists from the 1980s in an effort to determine the true sound of sophistication.   Click here for the LMO survey!   https://www.thinlear.com/ https://www.niagaramoonmusic.com/ Twitter ("X"): https://twitter.com/losingmyopinion IG: https://www.instagram.com/losingmyopinion/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/losingmyopinion

University of Birmingham researchers have demonstrated a method to upcycle end-of-life battery waste into materials that can be used for 'next generation' battery cathodes. The team used the recovered material from end-of-life EV batteries to synthesize compounds with a disordered rocksalt (DRX) structure. Can EV batteries be created using Upcycling? DRX materials are seen as a promising alternative to the regular layered structure of conventional cathode materials, as they increase the capacity of the cathode, allowing development of higher energy density rechargable Lithium ion batteries. The researchers believe this is the first time such materials have been made from recycled EV battery feedstock. Results of electrochemical testing showed high performance, that is comparable to materials prepared from conventional high purity reagents, demonstrating the applicability of this new approach. The cathode, which is the part of batteries that supply electrical current, is the primary limitation for achieving the high-energy, low-cost lithium ion (LI) batteries needed for the transition to zero emissions at tailpipe that will be required to reduce global CO2 emissions and mitigate global warming. For electric vehicle (EV) batteries, the challenge is to design a high energy battery cathode that will maintain its ability to discharge electricity over a large number of charge-discharge cycles. For recycling experts, the challenge is to design recycling processes for lithium-ion batteries when they reach the end of their useful life. Researchers at the University of Birmingham have taken these challenges one step further, by tasking themselves with the objective of 'upcycling' recovered battery materials, so the waste streams from current EV batteries can be used to manufacture new high-performance batteries. The research, which is published in ChemRxiV, is a development of previous work demonstrating ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) can be used as a leaching agent, replacing the need for hazardous chemicals in cathode recycling. The research team led by Professor Peter Slater has now shown recycled material from a cathode containing lithium manganese oxide (LMO) and nickel-rich 'layered' oxide (LO), can be upcycled to lithium manganese nickel oxides (LMNO) - a high voltage cathode material, which is attracting high levels of commercial interest. For the current study the researchers used citric acid (a natural component of citrus fruits) as a leaching agent to further reduce the number of steps in the process, which they applied to cathodes from an end-of-life Gen 1 Nissan Leaf (2011 model, 40,000 miles), and used the recovered LMO as a starting point for LMNO synthesis. They then used the recovered material to synthesize compounds with a DRX structure. Professor Slater said: "The challenge is no longer about recycling. Battery chemistry has moved on considerably in the last decade, and, as first-generation EV batteries reach the end of their lives, their components need to be upcycled to deliver chemistries that can be reused in the newer batteries." The research team is working on a number of methods for recycling and upcycling battery cathode materials, and is looking for long-term partners for pilot studies, deliver technologies to existing infrastructure, or collaborate on further research to develop novel approaches. Upcycling of low value end-of-life cathode material into next generation cathode materials is published in ChemRxiV and available at: https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv-2023-hg9z8 For media information contact Ruth Ashton, University of Birmingham Enterprise, email: r.c.ashton@bham.ac.uk About the University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world's top 100 institutions, and its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers and teachers and more than 6,500 international students from nearly 150 countries. University of Birmingham Enterprise helps researcher...

 IvyWise Principal Counselor, Kimberly (formerly Rice University and Vassar College) and our host, Principal Counselor Tasha (formerly Boston University and USC) answer the question: What does it mean to be flat or LMO?

Fantastic NJ musician Mt. Feral (aka Mike) joins the show today! Thomas shares songs from 4 different countries, sung in 4 different languages, with zero clue what they're singing about in the lyrics - and that's ok! Mike then unleashes his piping hot take that Age Of Adz is a better Sufjan Stevens album than Illinois, and somehow doesn't get thrown out of the Zoom chat.   Click here for the LMO survey! Songs Thomas played: Bicho No Cio - Marcos Valle La donna d'inverno - Paolo Conte https://mtferal.carrd.co/   https://www.thinlear.com/ https://www.niagaramoonmusic.com/ Twitter ("X"): https://twitter.com/losingmyopinion IG: https://www.instagram.com/losingmyopinion/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/losingmyopinion

Matt just went to two weddings in one weekend and has lotsa thoughts on those certain songs you'll inevitably encounter on the dancefloor with grandma. Thomas then tries to untangle the whole Jefferson Airplane / Starship fiasco, and ponders how you go from White Rabbit to We Built This City... Click here for the LMO survey!   https://www.niagaramoonmusic.com/   https://www.thinlear.com/   X / Twitter: https://twitter.com/losingmyopinion IG: https://www.instagram.com/losingmyopinion/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/losingmyopinion

Matt unleashes his most horrific, merciless collection of scary songs for the true Halloween aficionado. Thomas didn't get the memo with his segment, and instead celebrates both his love of Hot Rats and his frustration with Frank Zappa... Click here for the LMO survey!   https://www.niagaramoonmusic.com/   https://www.thinlear.com/   X / Twitter: https://twitter.com/losingmyopinion IG: https://www.instagram.com/losingmyopinion/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/losingmyopinion  

Matt exposes Thomas to the world of MMA fighter walk-out songs. Thomas shows Matt some of his favorite themes from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild (and ToTK), but has him listen blind and imagine what kind of situation he'd encounter them in... Click here for the LMO survey!     https://www.thinlear.com/ https://www.niagaramoonmusic.com/ Twitter ("X"): https://twitter.com/losingmyopinion IG: https://www.facebook.com/losingmyopinion/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/losingmyopinion

The LMO boys are back with NFL recaps! Run through the NFL and show our disappointment in the NY Giants. A brief basketball update from Tommy and a Cub Scout Aftershow Extravaganza --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lastmansopinion/support

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2023.06.26.545546v1?rss=1 Authors: Bjorefeldt, A., Murphy, J., Crespo, E. L., Prakash, M., Friedman, N., Brown, T. M., Lipscombe, D., Moore, C. I., Hochgeschwender, U., Shaner, N. C. Abstract: The ability to manipulate neuronal activity both opto- and chemogenetically with a single actuator molecule presents unique and flexible means to study neural circuit function. We previously developed methodology to enable such bimodal control using fusion molecules called luminopsins (LMOs), where a channelrhodopsin actuator can be activated using either physical (LED driven) or biological (bioluminescent) light. While activation of LMOs using bioluminescence has previously allowed manipulation of circuits and behavior in mice, further improvement would advance the utility of this technique. Thus, we here aimed to increase the efficiency of bioluminescent activation of channelrhodopsins by development of novel FRET-probes with bright and spectrally matched emission tailored to Volvox channelrhodopsin 1 (VChR1). We find that pairing of a molecularly evolved Oplophorus luciferase variant with mNeonGreen significantly improves the efficacy of bioluminescent activation when tethered to VChR1 (construct named LMO7) as compared to previous and other newly generated LMO variants. We proceed to extensively benchmark LMO7 against previous LMO standard (LMO3) and find that LMO7 outperforms LMO3 in the ability to drive bioluminescent activation of VChR1 both in vitro and in vivo, and efficiently modulates animal behavior following intraperitonial injection of fluorofurimazine. In conclusion, we demonstrate a rationale for improving bioluminescent activation of optogenetic actuators using a tailored molecular engineering approach and provide a new tool to bimodally manipulate neuronal activity with increased bioluminescence-driven efficacy. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info Podcast created by Paper Player, LLC

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! Today we talk about what's been going on in life and why we have been missing here on the podcast channel.  Latest GabeBabeTV Vlog - https://youtu.be/AjslB4_LK2s Get a Wrk Hard Daily Planner, it's a 52 week Undated Planner, and it's discounted to just $20! Get it today at http://wrkharddaily.com Please do us a favor and leave a comment/review if you're enjoying the podcast, then share your favorite moments on social media with a screenshot and tag! #LetsMakeOutPodcast #LMOPodcast

LMO troublemaker Nate Safren is back again! Thomas takes him and Matt to task over their disdain of Waters-driven Pink Floyd. Nate then invites everyone to take part in The Challenge. Listener discretion is advised... The Challenge Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7vgbVWNyibNtIDJnJfP7e2?si=HpMGHLIzSuy6CrGnGgwn-w https://www.niagaramoonmusic.com/ https://www.thinlear.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/losingmyopinion IG: https://www.facebook.com/losingmyopinion/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@losingmyopinion  

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! Today we decided to talk about some great ways to improve your relationships. We give 7 practical ways to grow closer/reconnect in your relationships. Latest GabeBabeTV Vlog - https://youtu.be/AjslB4_LK2s Get a Wrk Hard Daily Planner, it's a 52 week Undated Planner, and it's discounted to just $20! Get it today at http://wrkharddaily.com Please do us a favor and leave a comment/review if you're enjoying the podcast, then share your favorite moments on social media with a screenshot and tag! #LetsMakeOutPodcast #LMOPodcast

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! In this episode of the #LetsMakeOutPodcast: Today's episode we talk about what has been going, where we have been and how we are just easing into the new year. Latest GabeBabeTV Vlog - https://youtu.be/AjslB4_LK2s Get a Wrk Hard Daily Planner, it's a 52 week Undated Planner, and it's discounted to just $20! Get it today at http://wrkharddaily.com Please do us a favor and leave a comment/review if you're enjoying the podcast, then share your favorite moments on social media with a screenshot and tag! #LetsMakeOutPodcast #LMOPodcast

Dan from The Story Song Podcast is here today! An expert on talkin' tunes in-depth, he joins Matt in the jury box as they both review Thomas's new round of potentially guilty pleasure songs - and decide the severity of his sentence. Dan then takes the reigns to discuss and defend the finer points of perennial LMO favorite - Billy Joel. (He's baaaaack...!)   https://thestorysongpodcast.wordpress.com/ https://www.thinlear.com/ https://www.niagaramoonmusic.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/losingmyopinion IG: https://www.facebook.com/losingmyopinion/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@losingmyopinion  

Acclaimed Canadian songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Nicholas Krgovich joins the pod to let Thomas and Matt in on a shocking secret - he's never actively listened to the Beatles! That's right, he could hardly name you any Fab Four tunes. Thus, the LMO crew each present two personal favorites to gauge Nick's honest reaction. https://nicholaskrgovich.bandcamp.com/ https://www.niagaramoonmusic.com/ https://www.thinlear.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/losingmyopinion IG: https://www.facebook.com/losingmyopinion/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@losingmyopinion

On another LMO minisode, titular Daddy Matt tries not to doze off while Thomas shares some peculiar favorites from his collection of tunes for falling asleep. This isn't your grandmother's ambient music... https://www.thinlear.com/ https://www.niagaramoonmusic.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/losingmyopinion IG: https://www.facebook.com/losingmyopinion/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@losingmyopinion

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! In this episode of the #LetsMakeOutPodcast: Today's episode is the last podcast of 2022 and we will be taking a break until February of next year. Gabrielle talks about her surgery, the recovery so far and what we look forward to in 2023. Thank you for all of your support this year, we love y'all! Latest GabeBabeTV Vlog - https://youtu.be/AjslB4_LK2s Get a Wrk Hard Daily Planner, it's a 52 week Undated Planner, and it's discounted to just $20! Get it today at http://wrkharddaily.com Please do us a favor and leave a comment/review if you're enjoying the podcast, then share your favorite moments on social media with a screenshot and tag! #LetsMakeOutPodcast #LMOPodcast

Happy Christmas and Merry Hannukah! On this special episode of LMO, Matt scrounges through the pop music canon for a decent Hannukah-themed tune that's not Eight Crazy Nights - he finds it, eventually... Thomas has the opposite problem. With a seemingly infinite supply of Christmas music at his disposal, he curates a special selection of songs to celebrate the longstanding (and often lucrative) musical tradition - and you know at least one of them is going to be Japanese. https://www.niagaramoonmusic.com/ https://www.thinlear.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/losingmyopinion IG: https://www.facebook.com/losingmyopinion/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@losingmyopinion Ask us a question via our DMs! We'll do an FAQ segment one of these days...

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! In this episode of the #LetsMakeOutPodcast: Today we come to you from a new podcast set! Also, it is surgery week so Gabrielle talks about how she is feeling. Latest GabeBabeTV Vlog - https://youtu.be/AjslB4_LK2s Get a Wrk Hard Daily Planner, it's a 52 week Undated Planner, and it's discounted to just $20! Get it today at http://wrkharddaily.com Please do us a favor and leave a comment/review if you're enjoying the podcast, then share your favorite moments on social media with a screenshot and tag! #LetsMakeOutPodcast #LMOPodcast

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! In this episode of the #LetsMakeOutPodcast: Today we talked about purpose and how to find true happiness for yourself. We cover a great #AskGabeAndBabe as well. GabeBabeTV Vlog - "HE LEFT ME!" - https://youtu.be/TSFdBy_owgk Get a Wrk Hard Daily Planner, it's a 52 week Undated Planner, and it's discounted to just $20! Get it today at http://wrkharddaily.com Please do us a favor and leave a comment/review if you're enjoying the podcast, then share your favorite moments on social media with a screenshot and tag! #LetsMakeOutPodcast #LMOPodcast

LMO "badboy" Nate Safren is back this week! Thomas kicks things off with an in-depth segment on the most successful band of the 21st century (for realsies), and all the contempt, confusion, and reluctant admiration they inspire. Nate then discusses the singular legacy of Matt Farley - writer of over 23,000 songs and Master of the Algorithm. Wild surprises ensue. https://www.niagaramoonmusic.com/ https://www.thinlear.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/losingmyopinion IG: https://www.facebook.com/losingmyopinion/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@losingmyopinion Ask us a question via our DMs! We'll do an FAQ segment one of these days...

Nach dieser Folge weißt du: - Was für bahnbrechende Erkenntnisse du aus dem LMO Gene Keys Profil für die Ursachen deiner HIT mitnehmen kannst - Ganze 10 Muster, die mit deiner HIT zusammenhängen - Warum es wirklich und absolut keinen Zufall geben kann (denn really: wer könnte sich ein Profil ausdenken, dass besser passen würde...?!) Und wer direkt mit-nerden will: Hier kannst du das Gene Keys Profil von LMO mitschauen: https://www.leben-mit-ohne.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/LMO_Profile.pdf Wusstest du, dass 66% der HIT-Ursachen nicht Lebensmittel sind? Und hast du als Mädchen Kalorien gezählt? Dann hast du gerade eine der verborgenen HIT-Ursachen gefunden. Möchtest du erfahren, wie du diese Ursache behandelst? Dann komm in unsere Masterclass: https://www.leben-mit-ohne.de/die-versteckte-hit-ursache-aus-deiner-jugend-masterclass/

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! In this episode of the #LetsMakeOutPodcast: Today we talked about building a house, Gabrielle getting a mommy makeover surgery, and give an update on Chad and Chad Jr's Tae Kwon Do training! "GabeBabeTV Vlog" Mom Moved In + Life Updates - https://youtu.be/iI34a_ZGx4Y Get a Wrk Hard Daily Planner! Get it today at http://wrkharddaily.com 25 Fun Date Ideas - http://eepurl.com/ggfBrH + Follow us on the Clubhouse App @gabeflowers and @chadrader! Please do us a favor and leave a comment/review if you're enjoying the podcast, then share your favorite moments on social media with a screenshot and tag! #LetsMakeOutPodcast #LMOPodcast

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! In this episode of the #LetsMakeOutPodcast: We have a really big decision to make and we don't know what to do! What do you think, should we do it? "GabeBabeTV Vlog" Mom Moved In + Life Updates - https://youtu.be/iI34a_ZGx4Y Get a Wrk Hard Daily Planner! Get it today at http://wrkharddaily.com 25 Fun Date Ideas - http://eepurl.com/ggfBrH + Follow us on the Clubhouse App @gabeflowers and @chadrader! Please do us a favor and leave a comment/review if you're enjoying the podcast, then share your favorite moments on social media with a screenshot and tag! #LetsMakeOutPodcast #LMOPodcast

Breaking knick news on LMO, NBA draft recap, Knicks fan theory, Sixers futures, MLB roundup, knicks updates as they break throughout --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lastmansopinion/support

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! In this episode of the #LetsMakeOutPodcast: We discuss our experience with gentle parenting and why we decided to go that route. Here are the resources mentioned: Dr.Becky Good Inside https://www.instagram.com/drbeckyatgoodinside https://www.goodinside.com Destini Ann https://www.instagram.com/destini.ann https://www.destiniann.com/ "GabeBabeTV Vlog" Mom Moved In + Life Updates - https://youtu.be/iI34a_ZGx4Y Get a Wrk Hard Daily Planner! Get it today at http://wrkharddaily.com 25 Fun Date Ideas - http://eepurl.com/ggfBrH + Follow us on the Clubhouse App @gabeflowers and @chadrader! Please do us a favor and leave a comment/review if you're enjoying the podcast, then share your favorite moments on social media with a screenshot and tag! #LetsMakeOutPodcast #LMOPodcast

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! In this episode of the #LetsMakeOutPodcast: We discuss what's been going on and why we think America is broke! "GabeBabeTV Vlog" Mom Moved In + Life Updates - https://youtu.be/iI34a_ZGx4Y Get a Wrk Hard Daily Planner! Get it today at http://wrkharddaily.com 25 Fun Date Ideas - http://eepurl.com/ggfBrH + Follow us on the Clubhouse App @gabeflowers and @chadrader! Please do us a favor and leave a comment/review if you're enjoying the podcast, then share your favorite moments on social media with a screenshot and tag! #LetsMakeOutPodcast #LMOPodcast

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! In this episode of the #LetsMakeOutPodcast: We give you some updates and talk about what's been going on. Hope you enjoy! "GabeBabeTV Vlog" Mom Moved In + Life Updates - https://youtu.be/iI34a_ZGx4Y Get a Wrk Hard Daily Planner! Get it today at http://wrkharddaily.com 25 Fun Date Ideas - http://eepurl.com/ggfBrH + Follow us on the Clubhouse App @gabeflowers and @chadrader! Please do us a favor and leave a comment/review if you're enjoying the podcast, then share your favorite moments on social media with a screenshot and tag! #LetsMakeOutPodcast #LMOPodcast

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! In this episode of the #LetsMakeOutPodcast: We give you some updates and talk about how to find things you enjoy as an adult. Plus, Babe has a new nickname! Hope you enjoy! "GabeBabeTV Vlog" Mom Moved In + Life Updates - https://youtu.be/iI34a_ZGx4Y Get a Wrk Hard Daily Planner! Get it today at http://wrkharddaily.com 25 Fun Date Ideas - http://eepurl.com/ggfBrH + Follow us on the Clubhouse App @gabeflowers and @chadrader! Please do us a favor and leave a comment/review if you're enjoying the podcast, then share your favorite moments on social media with a screenshot and tag! #LetsMakeOutPodcast #LMOPodcast

Na twee bizarre weken waarin Chelsea F.C. door regeringsssancties te koop wordt geboden door de eigenaar (Roman Abramovitch), Karim Benzema de CL topper tegen PSG in 10 minuten beslist en Manchester United nu achter de feiten aan loopt na een dikke nederlaag tegen Manchester City zijn wij weer terug met leuke voetbalvermaakDeze keer hebben wij een echte voetballiefhebber en oud hoofdtrainer van LMO Ramish Reenis uitgenodigd. Ramish heeft bij verschillende voetbalclubs in regio Rotterdam gespeeld zoals LMO, Leonidas, Overmaas, Sparta Rotterdam en HOV. Bij Sparta Rotterdam heeft hij met Tony Varela en Adil Auassar in de jeugd gespeeld. Ramis ademt voetbal en wij hebben zeer genoten van zijn kennis over voetbal enverhalen.Onderwerpen- Wie is Ramish en waar begon zijn voetbalreis?- Actualiteiten    - AZ - Feyenoord (2-1)    - Real Madrid - PSG (3-1)    - Man City vs Man United (4-1)    - Napoli - AC Milan (0-1)- Legend of the month by Ramish- Stellingen / topic:    - De politiek mag niet bemoeien met een voetbalclub op gebied van inkomsten, uitgaven of personeel    - Waarom debuteren er meer jeugdspelers bij de top drie eredivisie clubs in vergelijking met de rest?- Goalaso dilemma'sAflevering is mede mogelijk gemaakt door: Dailysmoothie, All-in marketing agency en NDLC BigplansOpstelling: Dennis, Ramish, Stenna en Sami Geef ons ook een beoordeling op Apple podcast en Spotify. Wij waarderen dat zekerOpname: zondag 14 maart om 12:00Volg en deel jouw mening op onze Facebook, Twitter en Instagram @goalasopodcastSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3erVxSzApple: https://apple.co/34QNpYMGoogle: https://bit.ly/3opSv65Website: https://bit.ly/35Wc7GlClubhouse: @goalasopodcastLinkedIN: https://bit.ly/3hAqKFq

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! In this episode of the #LetsMakeOutPodcast: We give you some updates on what's been going on and fill you in on some things! Hope you enjoy! "GabeBabeTV Vlog" Mom Moved In + Life Updates - https://youtu.be/iI34a_ZGx4Y Get a Wrk Hard Daily Planner! Get it today at http://wrkharddaily.com 25 Fun Date Ideas - http://eepurl.com/ggfBrH + Follow us on the Clubhouse App @gabeflowers and @chadrader! Please do us a favor and leave a comment/review if you're enjoying the podcast, then share your favorite moments on social media with a screenshot and tag! #LetsMakeOutPodcast #LMOPodcast

Colabora Con Biblioteca Del Metal: En Twitter - https://twitter.com/Anarkometal72 Y Donanos Unas Propinas En BAT. Para Seguir Con El Proyecto De la Biblioteca Mas Grande Del Metal. Muchisimas Gracias. La Tienda De Biblioteca Del Metal: Encontraras, Ropa, Accesorios,Decoracion, Ect... Todo Relacionado Al Podcats Biblioteca Del Metal Y Al Mundo Del Heavy Metal. Descubrela!!!!!! Ideal Para Llevarte O Regalar Productos Del Podcats De Ivoox. (Por Tiempo Limitado) https://teespring.com/es/stores/biblioteca-del-metal-1 Rage es un grupo de heavy metal fundado en Berlín (Alemania) en el mes de diciembre de 1983 bajo el nombre de Avenger, aunque posteriormente en 1986 se cambiarían el nombre al actual. Es una de las bandas más prolíficas de la historia del speed metal a nivel mundial. Con 25 LP y más de 200 canciones en menos de 40 años (además de una no menor cantidad de EP, trabajos en vivo, orquestados, DVD, etc.), Rage se ha transformado en una banda de culto en la escena del metal. De un lado, ha sido considerada una de los “cuatro grandes” de la escena originaria del power metal alemán (junto con Helloween, Grave Digger y Running Wild).​ De otro, siendo en 1996 la primera banda de metal en escribir y grabar un álbum con una orquesta sinfónica completa (Lingua Mortis), influyó en el desarrollo del metal sinfónico. Tampoco pueden obviarse los aspectos más bien propios del metal progresivo o del thrash metal que existen en sus composiciones.Todo ello hace que tenga un estilo único y difícil de catalogar.La historia de Rage comienza en 1984 cuando se forma Avenger, con su primera formación de 4 componentes con el mítico Jörg Michael a la batería. Después de la salida de su álbum debut Prayers of Steel y un EP, fichan por Noise y Avenger cambió su nombre a Rage, entregando Reign Of Fear en 1986. Posteriormente a la salida del disco Execution Guaranteed, la formación da un cambio drástico, con la salida de todos los componentes y dejando a Peavy solo. Se formaría, entonces un equipo de 3. Con Manni Schmidt ya en la banda, en 1988 lanzan su clásico disco Perfect Man, con el himno "Don´t Fear The Winter", con muy buenas críticas y considerándolo, por el líder de la banda, como el primer disco con éxito a nivel internacional. También se puede notar un gran salto de calidad hacia los anteriores discos. Con lo que se creó la primera etapa realmente importante y clásica del grupo. Su álbum de 1992 Trapped incrementó su reconocimiento internacional. La portada del álbum fue realizada por Andreas Marschall, ilustrador habitual de la banda. El éxito se repitió en 1993 con Missing Link, seguido de cambios en la alineación, como la salida de Manni Schmidt y la entrada de dos guitarristas, conformando de nuevo un cuarteto. Debutando con Ten Years In Rage y el excepcional Black In Mind, la nueva alineación graba en 1996 Lingua Mortis, siendo el primer álbum con soporte de orquesta en la escena del Metal alemán. Este material fue interpretado en vivo por primera vez a finales de verano en Kufstein, Austria. En ese mismo año editan otro disco, acogido con gran éxito, llamado End of All Days, totalmente heavy, el cual contiene una de las canciones más típicas en el repertorio, "Higher Than The Sky". Su decimotercer álbum XIII vio la luz en marzo de 1998. Seguido de ello, Rage, junto con la orquesta se embarcaron en tour, tocando en varios festivales europeos, marcando no solo otro gran momento en la carrera de Rage, sino también un nuevo capítulo en su alineación: el siguiente álbum, Ghosts fue seguido por drásticos cambios de personal, de nuevo se vuelve al trío con la salida de los dos guitarristas, resultando un potente equipo con Peavy Wagner, el bielorruso Victor Smolski en la guitarra y el norteamericano Mike Terrana en la batería El trío consolida su formación en el festival Wacken Open Air en agosto de 1999, presentando un impresionante álbum Welcome To The Other Side. Posteriormente se endureció el sonido y se le dio un matiz más progresivo, con respecto a los anteriores discos en las siguientes entregas, Unity y Soundchaser con reacciones igualmente positivas por parte tanto de la prensa como de los fanes. En 2004 Rage celebró su 20º aniversario, sacando un doble CD y un doble DVD From The Cradle To The Stage, documentando que, ninguna alineación previa de Rage había aportado la fuerza que la actual, conformada por Peavy, Smolski y Terrana. En el año 2006 sale a la luz,Speak Of The Dead, un disco con dos partes bien diferenciadas, el cual recibió críticas muy positivas y ha sido consagrado ya como una obra maestra de Rage. El 6 de diciembre de 2006, Peavy y Victor anunciaron que habían roto con Mike como batería del grupo. En el año 2007 y con motivo de la gira del disco, sacan otro directo, tanto en CD como en DVD, Full Moon in St. Petersburg. El 1 de enero de 2007, se anunció en el sitio oficial que André Hilgers, conocido por ser miembro de Axxis y Silent Forece, sería el nuevo baterista del grupo. En 2008 lanzan el álbum Carved in Stone. En el año 2009 lanzan con motivo del 25 aniversario de la band editan el EP "Gib Dich Nie Auf / Never Give Up" que cuenta con 6 temas y 2 Bonustracks. Un año más tarde lanzaron un álbum denominado "Strings To A Web" que consta de 9 temas dentro de su línea clásica y 5 temas más que conforman una Suite orquestada denominada "Empty Hollow", dejando un total de 14 temas que reflejan muy bien la identidad musical del grupo. El 24 de febrero de 2012 lanzaron su vigésimo primer álbum en estudio llamado 21. En 2013 Rage anuncian a Lingua Mortis Orchestra como un proyecto paralelo, en el cual editan un primer disco LMO. En este proyecto incluyen a dos cantantes femeninas Jeannette Marchewka y Dana Harnge, y como invitado especia a Henning Basse ex-inegrante de la banda Metalium En febrero de 2015 Peter "Peavy" Wagner junto a Victor Smolski anuncian el final de su colaboración juntos en Rage, la cual incluye también al baterista André Hilgers,Este mismo mes Peter "Peavy" Wagner aclara que la banda no se disuelve, seguirá con nuevos miembros en el futuro. Tras la salida del guitarrista Victor Smolski y del batería André Hilgers, el bajista y vocalista de RAGE, Peter "Peavy" Wagnet anuncia la nueva formación del grupo. La banda alemana es cuenta con dos nuevos miembros: Marcos Rodríguez (guitarra y voz) y con Vassilios "Lucky" Maniatopoulos (batería). Marcos Rodríguez, Venezolano, guitarrista y vocalista de la banda Soundchaser y es un gran fan de la banda desde su adoleciencia. Por su parte, Vassilios "Lucky" Maniatopoulos, vocalista de Tri State Corner es otro fan incondicional de Rage y alumno de Chris Eftimiadis desde 1988. El primer concierto de la nueva formación tuvo lugar el 14 de noviembre de 2015 en el festival Metal Hammer Paradise, en Alemania. Posteriormente el grupo realizó una gira Europea en la celebración de los 20 años del lanzamiento del disco "Black In Mind". Rage publicó su vigésimo tercer álbum de estudio llamado "The Devil Strikes Again" el 10 de junio de 2016, via Nuclear blast Records, acompañado de más de 60 conciertos por Europa y Asia.

Colabora Con Biblioteca Del Metal: En Twitter - https://twitter.com/Anarkometal72 Y Donanos Unas Propinas En BAT. Para Seguir Con El Proyecto De la Biblioteca Mas Grande Del Metal. Muchisimas Gracias. La Tienda De Biblioteca Del Metal: Encontraras, Ropa, Accesorios,Decoracion, Ect... Todo Relacionado Al Podcats Biblioteca Del Metal Y Al Mundo Del Heavy Metal. Descubrela!!!!!! Ideal Para Llevarte O Regalar Productos Del Podcats De Ivoox. (Por Tiempo Limitado) https://teespring.com/es/stores/biblioteca-del-metal-1 Rage es un grupo de heavy metal fundado en Berlín (Alemania) en el mes de diciembre de 1983 bajo el nombre de Avenger, aunque posteriormente en 1986 se cambiarían el nombre al actual. Es una de las bandas más prolíficas de la historia del speed metal a nivel mundial. Con 25 LP y más de 200 canciones en menos de 40 años (además de una no menor cantidad de EP, trabajos en vivo, orquestados, DVD, etc.), Rage se ha transformado en una banda de culto en la escena del metal. De un lado, ha sido considerada una de los “cuatro grandes” de la escena originaria del power metal alemán (junto con Helloween, Grave Digger y Running Wild).​ De otro, siendo en 1996 la primera banda de metal en escribir y grabar un álbum con una orquesta sinfónica completa (Lingua Mortis), influyó en el desarrollo del metal sinfónico. Tampoco pueden obviarse los aspectos más bien propios del metal progresivo o del thrash metal que existen en sus composiciones.Todo ello hace que tenga un estilo único y difícil de catalogar.La historia de Rage comienza en 1984 cuando se forma Avenger, con su primera formación de 4 componentes con el mítico Jörg Michael a la batería. Después de la salida de su álbum debut Prayers of Steel y un EP, fichan por Noise y Avenger cambió su nombre a Rage, entregando Reign Of Fear en 1986. Posteriormente a la salida del disco Execution Guaranteed, la formación da un cambio drástico, con la salida de todos los componentes y dejando a Peavy solo. Se formaría, entonces un equipo de 3. Con Manni Schmidt ya en la banda, en 1988 lanzan su clásico disco Perfect Man, con el himno "Don´t Fear The Winter", con muy buenas críticas y considerándolo, por el líder de la banda, como el primer disco con éxito a nivel internacional. También se puede notar un gran salto de calidad hacia los anteriores discos. Con lo que se creó la primera etapa realmente importante y clásica del grupo. Su álbum de 1992 Trapped incrementó su reconocimiento internacional. La portada del álbum fue realizada por Andreas Marschall, ilustrador habitual de la banda. El éxito se repitió en 1993 con Missing Link, seguido de cambios en la alineación, como la salida de Manni Schmidt y la entrada de dos guitarristas, conformando de nuevo un cuarteto. Debutando con Ten Years In Rage y el excepcional Black In Mind, la nueva alineación graba en 1996 Lingua Mortis, siendo el primer álbum con soporte de orquesta en la escena del Metal alemán. Este material fue interpretado en vivo por primera vez a finales de verano en Kufstein, Austria. En ese mismo año editan otro disco, acogido con gran éxito, llamado End of All Days, totalmente heavy, el cual contiene una de las canciones más típicas en el repertorio, "Higher Than The Sky". Su decimotercer álbum XIII vio la luz en marzo de 1998. Seguido de ello, Rage, junto con la orquesta se embarcaron en tour, tocando en varios festivales europeos, marcando no solo otro gran momento en la carrera de Rage, sino también un nuevo capítulo en su alineación: el siguiente álbum, Ghosts fue seguido por drásticos cambios de personal, de nuevo se vuelve al trío con la salida de los dos guitarristas, resultando un potente equipo con Peavy Wagner, el bielorruso Victor Smolski en la guitarra y el norteamericano Mike Terrana en la batería El trío consolida su formación en el festival Wacken Open Air en agosto de 1999, presentando un impresionante álbum Welcome To The Other Side. Posteriormente se endureció el sonido y se le dio un matiz más progresivo, con respecto a los anteriores discos en las siguientes entregas, Unity y Soundchaser con reacciones igualmente positivas por parte tanto de la prensa como de los fanes. En 2004 Rage celebró su 20º aniversario, sacando un doble CD y un doble DVD From The Cradle To The Stage, documentando que, ninguna alineación previa de Rage había aportado la fuerza que la actual, conformada por Peavy, Smolski y Terrana. En el año 2006 sale a la luz,Speak Of The Dead, un disco con dos partes bien diferenciadas, el cual recibió críticas muy positivas y ha sido consagrado ya como una obra maestra de Rage. El 6 de diciembre de 2006, Peavy y Victor anunciaron que habían roto con Mike como batería del grupo. En el año 2007 y con motivo de la gira del disco, sacan otro directo, tanto en CD como en DVD, Full Moon in St. Petersburg. El 1 de enero de 2007, se anunció en el sitio oficial que André Hilgers, conocido por ser miembro de Axxis y Silent Forece, sería el nuevo baterista del grupo. En 2008 lanzan el álbum Carved in Stone. En el año 2009 lanzan con motivo del 25 aniversario de la band editan el EP "Gib Dich Nie Auf / Never Give Up" que cuenta con 6 temas y 2 Bonustracks. Un año más tarde lanzaron un álbum denominado "Strings To A Web" que consta de 9 temas dentro de su línea clásica y 5 temas más que conforman una Suite orquestada denominada "Empty Hollow", dejando un total de 14 temas que reflejan muy bien la identidad musical del grupo. El 24 de febrero de 2012 lanzaron su vigésimo primer álbum en estudio llamado 21. En 2013 Rage anuncian a Lingua Mortis Orchestra como un proyecto paralelo, en el cual editan un primer disco LMO. En este proyecto incluyen a dos cantantes femeninas Jeannette Marchewka y Dana Harnge, y como invitado especia a Henning Basse ex-inegrante de la banda Metalium En febrero de 2015 Peter "Peavy" Wagner junto a Victor Smolski anuncian el final de su colaboración juntos en Rage, la cual incluye también al baterista André Hilgers,Este mismo mes Peter "Peavy" Wagner aclara que la banda no se disuelve, seguirá con nuevos miembros en el futuro. Tras la salida del guitarrista Victor Smolski y del batería André Hilgers, el bajista y vocalista de RAGE, Peter "Peavy" Wagnet anuncia la nueva formación del grupo. La banda alemana es cuenta con dos nuevos miembros: Marcos Rodríguez (guitarra y voz) y con Vassilios "Lucky" Maniatopoulos (batería). Marcos Rodríguez, Venezolano, guitarrista y vocalista de la banda Soundchaser y es un gran fan de la banda desde su adoleciencia. Por su parte, Vassilios "Lucky" Maniatopoulos, vocalista de Tri State Corner es otro fan incondicional de Rage y alumno de Chris Eftimiadis desde 1988. El primer concierto de la nueva formación tuvo lugar el 14 de noviembre de 2015 en el festival Metal Hammer Paradise, en Alemania. Posteriormente el grupo realizó una gira Europea en la celebración de los 20 años del lanzamiento del disco "Black In Mind". Rage publicó su vigésimo tercer álbum de estudio llamado "The Devil Strikes Again" el 10 de junio de 2016, via Nuclear blast Records, acompañado de más de 60 conciertos por Europa y Asia.

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! In this episode of the #LetsMakeOutPodcast: Today we catch up on what's been going on and also talk about a recent pregnancy scare!  Get a Wrk Hard Daily Planner! Get it today at http://wrkharddaily.com 25 Fun Date Ideas - http://eepurl.com/ggfBrH + Follow us on the Clubhouse App @gabeflowers and @chadrader! Please do us a favor and leave a comment/review if you're enjoying the podcast, then share your favorite moments on social media with a screenshot and tag! #LetsMakeOutPodcast #LMOPodcast

  TUNE IN: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | STITCHER | AMAZON Littlemore inc. is a Mom and pediatrician led company that makes the snacks you always wished existed for your kids. Their snacks are truly simple, wholesome and delicious with thoughtfully chosen ingredients, never any corn or rice and never any added sugar or salt. in the episode Joana and Lauren dive into how they met and the early start of Littlemore Inc. They talk about what it took to bring LMO to market and touched on some of the regulations and considerations surrounding the food industry and packaged foods. We also speak about some of the biggest challenges to getting started as well as some of the most exciting moments. Joana and Lauren touch on what makes their products different from other kids' snacks and recommendations for those just getting started in their niche. They also share their favorite tools and programs that they utilize for the business. links + A DISCOUNT Joana and Lauren are graciously offering all of our listeners a discount on Littlemore Organics. Head to their website and enter the code THECC30 for 30% off of your order!  WHERE TO FIND LITTLEMORE INC. website on instagram on facebook THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS     Today's episode is brought to you by the Marshfield Lobsterfest. Join in on the fun on Sunday, September 12th from 11am to 6pm in Brant Rock in Marshfield. Enjoy a family friendly coastal celebration, featuring over 20 food vendors, children's activities, marine education, live music and local artists. Grab a live lobster to take home from the Sea Box and snap a pic with the famous “Louie the Lobster”. We can't wait to bring the kids and enjoy the festivities. Tickets are on sale now at marshfieldlobsterfest.com.  

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! In this episode of the #LetsMakeOutPodcast: Today we talk about Red Flags in a relationship and why you shouldn't ignore them! Get your Wrk Hard Daily Planner - http://wrkharddaily.com If you enjoy listening, please subscribe, rate and review on iTunes! 25 Fun Date Ideas - http://eepurl.com/ggfBrH + Follow us on the Clubhouse App @gabeflowers and @chadrader! --------------- Today's sponsors: Ember Mugs - Use our code LMO for 10% off your first purchase at http://ember.com HelloFresh - Go to http://hellofresh.com/lmo12 and use code lmo12 for 12 free meals, including free shipping Ana Luisa - Use the code "makeout" to get 10% off at http://analuisa.com/makeoutownload for FREE on the Apple App Store or Google Play! --------------- Atomic Habits Book - https://amzn.to/3kJlmAr Shop all our faves - http://www.amazon.com/shop/gabeflowers --------------- Question Books: The Complete Book of Questions (1001) - https://amzn.to/2vi8D2I  The Questions Book (300) - https://amzn.to/2Q8RCPy 4000 Questions - https://amzn.to/3aLwrem  --------------- Watch This Episode on YouTube at Lets Make Out Podcast! Watch our Daily Vlogs on YouTube at GabeBabeTV Be Fearless Shirt https://teespring.com/befearlessnow  SAVE MONEY with Qapital. Sign up using our code sp45p9zm or this link and we'll both get $10! https://get.qapital.com/Jzu5YNuGNY Our IVF Journey Playlist - http://bit.ly/gbtvivf  + Keep the conversation going by FOLLOWING HERE: Let's Make Out Instagram Let's Make Out Twitter Gabrielle's Instagram Chad's Instagram Website - https://gabebabetv.com  GabeBabeTV Theme Song - https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/gabebabetv-feat-chad-rader-single/1098835534 Welcome to the 98th episode of Let's Make Out, a podcast by married duo Chad and Gabrielle Rader of GabeBabeTV. This is a place where we make out all things love, life, and laughter.

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! In this episode of the #LetsMakeOutPodcast: Today we talk about Mom Guilt, what it is and how to deal with it in a productive way! Get your Wrk Hard Daily Planner - http://wrkharddaily.com If you enjoy listening, please subscribe, rate and review on iTunes! 25 Fun Date Ideas - http://eepurl.com/ggfBrH + Follow us on the Clubhouse App @gabeflowers and @chadrader! --------------- Today's sponsors: Thirdlove - Go to http://thirdlove.com/lmo now to find your perfect-fitting bra and get 20% off your first order! Ember Mugs - Use our code LMO for 10% off your first purchase at http://ember.com Best Fiends - Download for FREE on the Apple App Store or Google Play! --------------- Atomic Habits Book - https://amzn.to/3kJlmAr Shop all our faves - http://www.amazon.com/shop/gabeflowers --------------- Question Books: The Complete Book of Questions (1001) - https://amzn.to/2vi8D2I  The Questions Book (300) - https://amzn.to/2Q8RCPy 4000 Questions - https://amzn.to/3aLwrem  --------------- Watch This Episode on YouTube at Lets Make Out Podcast! Watch our Daily Vlogs on YouTube at GabeBabeTV Be Fearless Shirt https://teespring.com/befearlessnow  SAVE MONEY with Qapital. Sign up using our code sp45p9zm or this link and we'll both get $10! https://get.qapital.com/Jzu5YNuGNY Our IVF Journey Playlist - http://bit.ly/gbtvivf  + Keep the conversation going by FOLLOWING HERE: Let's Make Out Instagram Let's Make Out Twitter Gabrielle's Instagram Chad's Instagram Website - https://gabebabetv.com  GabeBabeTV Theme Song - https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/gabebabetv-feat-chad-rader-single/1098835534 Welcome to the 97th episode of Let's Make Out, a podcast by married duo Chad and Gabrielle Rader of GabeBabeTV. This is a place where we make out all things love, life, and laughter.

Welcome back to the Let's Make Out Podcast! In this episode of the #LetsMakeOutPodcast: Today we talk about peoples intentions and how to decipher them. Plus, we tackle a pretty good #AskGabeAndBabe question. Get your Wrk Hard Daily Planner - http://wrkharddaily.com If you enjoy listening, please subscribe, rate and review on iTunes! 25 Fun Date Ideas - http://eepurl.com/ggfBrH + Follow us on the Clubhouse App @gabeflowers and @chadrader! --------------- Today's sponsors: Cubo Ai - Go to https://bit.ly/3t3zh87 and use our special code "LMO" for a discount off your order Thrive Market - Go to http://thrivemarket.com/lmo and get $20 off your first order and a FREE gift! Ember Mugs - Use our code LMO for 10% off your first purchase at http://ember.com --------------- Atomic Habits Book - https://amzn.to/3kJlmAr Shop all our faves - http://www.amazon.com/shop/gabeflowers --------------- Question Books: The Complete Book of Questions (1001) - https://amzn.to/2vi8D2I  The Questions Book (300) - https://amzn.to/2Q8RCPy 4000 Questions - https://amzn.to/3aLwrem  --------------- Watch This Episode on YouTube at Lets Make Out Podcast! Watch our Daily Vlogs on YouTube at GabeBabeTV Be Fearless Shirt https://teespring.com/befearlessnow  SAVE MONEY with Qapital. Sign up using our code sp45p9zm or this link and we'll both get $10! https://get.qapital.com/Jzu5YNuGNY Our IVF Journey Playlist - http://bit.ly/gbtvivf  + Keep the conversation going by FOLLOWING HERE: Let's Make Out Instagram Let's Make Out Twitter Gabrielle's Instagram Chad's Instagram Website - https://gabebabetv.com  GabeBabeTV Theme Song - https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/gabebabetv-feat-chad-rader-single/1098835534 Welcome to the 96th episode of Let's Make Out, a podcast by married duo Chad and Gabrielle Rader of GabeBabeTV. This is a place where we make out all things love, life, and laughter.

In this edition, we speak to Dr Shrikant Raje, the head of a hospital in Hyderabad. He tells us how his hospital is now using oxygen concentrators as an alternative to liquid medical oxygen (LMO). This as India battles a deadly second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

CanadianImmigrationPodcast.com Mark Holthe: I'm here with my good friend and colleague, Raj Sharma. Raj, thanks for joining me. Raj Sharma: My pleasure. Mark Holthe: We're testing this out with our digital recorder here. I usually do these interviews via Skype call, but I've got high hopes that the audio is going to be great regardless. Thanks for putting up with me, Raj, and happy to have you with us. Today, Raj has agreed to come in and talk a little bit about criminal inadmissibility and some of the consequences that can flow when people get themselves into trouble here in Canada, but before we get into that I want to take a moment to share a little bit of background on Raj, and where he's come from professionally, and where he's at. Raj Sharma's a lawyer and founding partner of Stewart Sharma Harsanyi, one of Western Canada's largest dedicated immigration law firms. He received his masters of law from Osgoode Hall and is a former refugee protection officer with the Immigration and Refugee Board. Now, I'll get to the question of how you got into immigration and I'm going to go out on a limb and think that that probably influenced it a little bit. Raj Sharma: That's right. Mark Holthe: With over a hundred reported decisions, Raj has indicated to me, he frequently appears before all divisions, as well as the Federal Court, the court of appeal, and has also appeared before every level of court in Alberta. Raj regularly speaks on immigration matters in the media, and he's been a panelist and speaker at the CBA National Immigration Conference in 2014 and '15. He also writes a lot on immigration, multiculturalism, and diversity. Recently he was the recipient of the Legal Aid of Alberta's Access to Justice award and has been recognized as well as one of Calgary's Top 40 Under 40. Raj is an extremely accomplished individual and I know that he won't plug himself, so I'll do that for him, but whenever I have a difficult case with respect to enforcement, or appeal work, or anything like that I send it to him and his firm. Once again, thanks for joining, Raj. Raj Sharma: Thanks, Mark. I'm East Indian, or as I like to describe ourselves as brown, so no matter how accomplished I am, obviously given that I'm not a doctor I'm probably a disappointment to my parents. Mark Holthe: Well, we'll have to get your parents on to come back and I'm almost positive with everything that you've done, at least within our industry and how you've distinguished yourself, that there wouldn't be a parent on this planet that wouldn't be proud of you. Enough of the feel good stuff, fill us in. How did you get into immigration? Raj Sharma: I never intended to get into immigration law. I did my JD at the University of Alberta. While I was there, I didn't take any immigration courses, immigration just wasn't even on my radar. I summered at a large law firm here in Calgary, Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer. I didn't like the large law firm milieu so to speak. Then I spent some time with Dennis Edney, who's now the lawyer for Omar Khadr. Then I also clerked up the Alberta Court of Appeal and ended up doing my articles with the federal department of justice. I think I had at that point an understanding that I would be somewhat closer to a barrister or a litigator than I would be in terms a solicitor. There was one case that I handled and my mentor at that time at the federal Department of Justice was Glennys Bembridge, who is now a Federal Court justice with a different last name, but there was one case and it involved a family, they're doctors, and their son had autism. I was the articling student, so I had to put together the affidavit and supporting the officer's finding of medical inadmissibility. I found that really, really interesting, but I kept saying to my mentor at that why can't we just consent on this file, the family's really deserving, and ultimately I think that the family did get relief. After that, I'd met my wife at Winnipeg at a wedding ... Mark Holthe: I'm going to jump in. Raj Sharma: Yes. Mark Holthe: You said, "Why can't we just consent to this?" What was his response? Raj Sharma: It was a strange response. The response was just like, "Oh, we just have to ..." Mark Holthe: Carry it through. Raj Sharma: It was more like it was like, "Oh, the client instructions ..." I'm like, "What client? We're the government." I was explained that different departments are actually clients of the department of justice. I found that very odd because I don't think that's true. I think that a client/solicitor relationship doesn't encapsulate departments of government being clients of each other. I found that odd. In any way, I'd met my wife in Winnipeg at a wedding, my cousin's wedding. She was in Calgary, born and raised in Calgary, so I needed a way to get to Calgary somehow, so I was applying for jobs in Calgary and I got this called up to do this test or examination at the Immigration Refugee Board. I was offered this position to become a refugee protection officer. That's where in fact I met my partner, Bjorn Harsanyi, so we both started off as refugee protection officers, hearings officers in 2002. Mark Holthe: Obviously that makes a pretty nice background for sliding over to the other side. It gives you an opportunity at least having worked on the other side to get a better understanding of how the government operates, how the department operates, a little bit more inside to the minds of what goes through a decision maker on that side. I have to assume that that helped you as you moved over to the other side with your advocacy on behalf of clients. Raj Sharma: I think so and I think that, and again there's this tradition of this entrepreneurial tradition within my community, and of course my second and third languages also helped, there was a burgeoning South Asian community in Calgary at that time. Really, it was timing, and so Calgary's just really good to me. I'd moved to Calgary at about the right time and I went into private practice at about the right time, right before Calgary took off, so to speak. 2004 I started my practice, late 2004 I started my practice. At that time, just trying to take whatever you can get, so again, I wasn't really centered in immigration. Then there was this legal aid file, this three hour legal aid file for criminal inadmissibility. It involved a foreign national in Canada accused or there was an allegation of weapons, and gun smuggling, and weapons trafficking. At that point I thought, "Well, this is a foregone conclusion." I looked at the IRPA and I said, "Well, this is just, there's no way out here," but my partner at that time pushed me a little bit and so I looked at it, I looked at it again. I put in far more hours than the three hours allotted to me, and low and behold I was able to succeed. I think that was the first time that I was in the media, that was the first time I was on TV or the newspapers, at least when it came to my legal practice. It was after that that my practice in immigration took off because it was after that that I joined Caron & Partners and then again after I left Caron & Partners there was another Vietnamese fellow, [another] fork in the road. There was another Vietnamese client, Jackie Tran, and that file I took on in 2009. Both of these cases probably had something to do with the direction of my practice. Mark Holthe: Yeah, that makes perfect sense because I think for most of us business immigration lawyers, I guess that's how I classify myself, when there's a sticky situation I get uncomfortable pretty quick. I have a tendency to try to take the path of easiest and least resistance with my clients. If there's push back from the government, I tend to try and say, "Do we need to refile? Do we need to rethink our strategy?" Sometimes it's faster to just accept the stupid decision that you get from an officer and then just try to satisfy whatever they want, and refile, and get it approved, but there's a number of situations where people get themselves into a corner where they really don't have a nice, easy solution other than taking the government on. Raj Sharma: I think .. it depends on what you're facing. Now, in your case you have to solve a sort of business problem. Prior to 2009, before Tran, I was actually doing hundreds of LMIA's, or LMO's that they were called at the time, so I was representing major corporations, I was getting fat, I was just doing pure solicitor work, and I think again timing came to my rescue because once I got into the Tran file, which necessitated three different Federal Court applications, [emergency] stay application, IAD, ID, and right about that same time the economy in Calgary sort of collapsed, so to speak. If you're a one trick pony, that is you're only doing one aspect of immigration, you could be susceptible to that sort of change. I was very lucky in the sense of I did quite a bit of solicitor business work, but given that strong litigation year we were able to just basically switch our practices over to a litigation aspect. In business [immigration], you're tasked with making sure that the business runs smoothly. Where it's an individual facing loss of status, it's a zero sum game. In business there may be not, it's not a zero sum game, but in someone facing removal or deportation to a country that they haven't been in since they were a kid, it's a zero sum game which is you win or you lose, so at that point you start bringing out all the arrows in your quiver and you're doing whatever you can for your client because it is, for them to some degree, it's life or death in the sense of it's a death of a relationship, it's a death of your relationship to Canada, and it's a death of your status in this country. Mark Holthe: Let's shift to the topic at hand. I think a lot of our listeners, this isn't something that they're very familiar with because I think genuinely people try to avoid committing crimes in Canada and getting themselves removed. Raj Sharma: Right, and we know for a fact that immigrants or first generation Canadians have a lower crime rate than native born Canadians, so you're absolutely right. Most of your listeners and our clients, most of them, the vast majority enjoy a lower criminal rate or criminality than Canadians would. Mark Holthe: Yes, absolutely. As those that are listening in here, as I introduced when I started the podcast here, the interview with Raj Sharma, I indicated that we're going to be talking a little bit about criminal inadmissibility, so Raj, can you give us a little bit of an introduction? When we talk about criminal inadmissibility, how does that play into this world of immigration? Raj Sharma: Immigration is about, and notwithstanding whatever we hear these days from Donald Trump or Hilary Clinton, there are no such thing as truly open borders. A country will always dictate who enters and who remains, so there was a case that went to the supreme court of Canada involving a woman actually -- most of the cases I deal with actually do involve men -- but Medovarski involved a woman and Medovarski reaffirmed that concept that non-citizens do not have an unqualified right to enter or remain inside of Canada. When we look at criminality, the threshold for removing non-citizens from Canada is spelled out in intricate detail in the Immigration Refugee Protection Act and there is a bifurcation, i.e., it's somewhat harder to remove permanent residents from Canada and quite a bit easier to remove foreign nationals from Canada. When we talk about foreign nationals, we're talking about students and those here on work permits or those that are visitors in Canada. When we talk about permanent residence, obviously those are individuals that have applied for permanent residency, they're not citizens yet, and so we have a paradigm, a very detailed framework that deals with non-citizens that get in trouble with the law. Mark Holthe: When we talk about getting in trouble with the law, does the Immigration Act or the government, do they view certain crimes more seriously than others? How is that distinction set up? Raj Sharma: No, and maybe they should. That would have been a proper starting point. Maybe you should have been involved in this sort of legislation of these laws, but unfortunately the distinction of the severity of a crime is based on the maximum term of imprisonment or the actual incarceral or term that's imposed. When we talk about prison or incarceral term, we're including conditional sentences or sentences to be served in the community, so the distinction is not between the type of offense, someone that's convicted of a white collar offense such as fraud could face removal just as easily or perhaps more easily than someone accused or charged with simple assault. Mark Holthe: Even if an offense, let's say it's a hybrid offense, so it could proceed summarily or via indictment, the person that is sentenced to ten years imprisonment for that offense versus someone that's sentenced to six months under the eyes of the lovely immigration authorities, it's irrelevant. Raj Sharma: That's right, and it also doesn't take into account your length of time in Canada, so you could be a permanent resident and you could be here since you were two or three, and you could be [here] thirty years, and you could have an issue. Of course, this is the fragility of the human condition, we all make mistakes, so it doesn't take into account the length of time that you're in Canada…, nor does it take into account the nature of the offense, whether it's violent or whether it's non-violent. It's a blunt instrument unfortunately, Section 36 in particularly. Mark Holthe: If you have an individual that's committed a crime in Canada it's pretty clear we know what the offense is, we know what the conviction was, there's not a lot of debate about it, but what happens if someone wants to enter Canada or comes to Canada and has a conviction that occurred over seas or in another country, how does Canada treat those? Raj Sharma: Those things get complicated really quickly because different countries have different legal systems and different countries have different standards in terms of the ... You could have a situation [if] you're from China. Now, China has a 99.9% conviction rate. Mark Holthe: Wow, maybe I won't ask too many questions as to how that justice system plays out for those people accused, but ... Raj Sharma: I mean, so when we start making equivalent, or making offenses, or acts that individuals have done outside of Canada, and we have to somehow try and make them equivalent to offenses in Canada, those things get tricky really, really quickly. That's one subset of what we do.[But] I just keep getting reminded, even this morning, had a client applied on the Alberta Immigrant Nominee Program, skilled individual, excellent English, everything's fantastic, no criminal record whatsoever, applied on the ANP, got the nomination, applied for the PR forms to [CPC] Sydney. We got the passport request two days ago, three days ago, problem. Last week after a birthday party or someone's party, one in the morning, [he's] charged with impaired driving. Those are the sort of simple, understandable criminality because I think some politicians paint criminals as this broad brush, but criminals are no different than [you or I], it's just there's one incorrect decision. I think impaired driving is like that, this is impaired driving, could result in no jail time whatsoever, probably will result in a fine if he ever gets convicted, and a driving suspension. Won't spend a day in jail, but that's a hybrid offense and that [a conviction] makes him [as a foreign national] inadmissible. That's where I feel a lot of sympathy because you're seeing literally in front of you the end of a dream and you're seeing a person that for all other purposes would be an ideal addition to Canada's multicultural fabric. It's not really the media, it's not my cases that hit the news or the front pages that really give a proper idea of my practice. It really is those guys that are within an inch of permanent residency and we wouldn't consider them to be criminals, but of course they've made a grievous and horrendous error by drinking and getting behind the wheel of a car. Mark Holthe: Let's carry that through, I think that would be interesting. An individual who is in that type of a situation, this happens to them. What can they expect? Raj Sharma: Number one, if they come to me my first response to them, and there may be some sort of false hope, or some sort of strange fever dream that they're existing under, or they may get some sort of strange advice from someone, or a friend, or a cousin, and there may be a suggestion as to just somehow let it ride out and CIC may not figure this out. My first advice to them is that if they want my assistance, that we will be disclosing the charge and the encounter with the police immediately. That's the first thing that should happen and once they agree to these sort of terms, then we can start figuring out a solution. Now, the solution of course, and I kind of outlined that earlier today in my speech here, which is now start looking into conviction options or post conviction options. These conviction options, number one, beat out the charge in trial, because the system is binary, because it's a zero sum game, we can't now ... I think criminal lawyers and immigration lawyers that dabble in criminal law, there's no options now. You actually have to go and try to beat this out, you got to find, even if your client is factually guilty, you got to find a way to make him legally not guilty because if he's not guilty, that doesn't lead to any criminal consequences. If it's an offense, a domestic violence type of situation, and a peace bond is in the offering, take a peace bond. A peace bond doesn't have any criminal consequences either. There may be possibilities for some offenses for absolute or conditional discharges, take it, take it. That bird in the hand, we can safeguard that immigration at that point. In terms of a DUI, we're really looking to these curative discharges now and that's one option as well. Mark Holthe: Maybe you can explain what that is. What is a curative discharge? Raj Sharma: Curative discharge involves a process by which there is a guilt or there is factual guilt and there's again…. A curative discharge we've used where there's indication of alcoholism [as a] medical condition. If we can establish that, then the judge may see fit to grant a curative discharge. If that happens, then there is no criminal record that could waylay an immigration application or application for permanent residence. That's not to say, by the way, that that won't lead to other issues, i.e., you may still need a waiver to get into the US, but the curative discharge is something that we explore for impaired driving, and conditional, and absolute where ever possible [for other offences]. Now, bear in mind there's a whole host of offenses that result in mandatory minimum sentences and so we can't do any number of these things for those types of offenses, but those are some of the arrows in our quiver in terms of post conviction. Where ever possible, if you are facing a charge, either you're a permanent resident or a foreign national, try to get immigration lawyer involved alongside your criminal lawyer. There may be options to get positive sentencing remarks or positive remarks that are spoken into the record. Those transcripts can come in handy. If you are convicted, if you are sentenced, it's important that the client demonstrate remorse, and rehabilitation, engage in programming, and try to turn that life around. If we can demonstrate that, there are some options, which is that that initiating document to establish criminal inadmissibility, the Section 44 report, there is a scope for the officer not to write that report. Again, when I started down this journey I didn't realize the scope of discretion that's in the act. There is significant discretion. An officer may choose not to write a report against a permanent resident or foreign national and that may be the first, and maybe the last, real line of defense for a lot of these individuals. We've seen that happen, we've seen permanent residents, I've represented permanent residents, young guys, a technical armed robbery, four years plus sentence ... Mark Holthe: A technical armed robbery. Raj Sharma: A technical armed robbery... Mark Holthe: I love this terminology, technical versus a real, is there any distinction there? Raj Sharma: Let me tell you and you tell me whether that terminology or that splitting of hairs is appropriate. A guy got fired from a job at a liquor store, was angry, young guy, and decides to rob the liquor store as some sort of payback, buys a gun that is not operational, just this old, rusted out gun. There's no bullets in it, it's inoperable. Goes into the store, people see the gun, so they flee, so he goes to the cashier, he tries to open the cash box, is unable to do so, and runs out without stealing anything. Misfortune added to his idiocy, there's an off duty police officer who immediately arrests him outside the liquor store, so this guy goes through this process and his criminal lawyer after wasting tens of thousands of dollars of his money, pleads him guilty to an offense that includes a mandatory minimum sentence. At that point, and I met the judge actually afterwards and the judge said, "Hey, I wonder why that lawyer did that because if the lawyer challenged that on a charter ground of cruel and unusual punishment, that that mandatory minimum sentence in this case offends the Charter, I would have granted it to him." This lawyer tells this guy and his family, "That's it, game over, you will be deported," but of course that's not actually the end of it. [So] I do stand by my characterization of that as a technical armed robbery because this guy, he's more of an idiot than he was a criminal. This family went through a lot, this family, his sister in fact, who lived with was married, [her] husband had some mental issues, and she was attacked actually. The police attended and in fact that man was actually brought down by the CPS, so the family went through a lot. We put all this together, put the sentencing transcripts in, the judge, they got a really compassionate judge who said a lot of things into that record. [The client] was out on bail for four years, and upgraded himself, and it really was an ill advised decision. Ultimately, we had an understanding officer. She ended up interviewing him over the telephone, I think, at the Remand institution, and [she ultimately] decided not to write the report. Mark Holthe: I guess that's the beauty of this is the discretion that's laced into the immigration process. Raj Sharma: They won't lightly do it, but if you've got the goods .. it can be done. We had another case, we had another individual originally from Hong Kong, came over as a kid, got into some gambling issues, and then got into selling drugs to pay off some of those debts. Served his time, was a model prisoner, and his entire family was here, we set out everything. In this case we asked the Report not to be written, it was written. We challenged the Report at the Federal Court, we received approval or leave on one, it went back, and ultimately a Minister's Delegate decided to issue a warning letter. That's drug trafficking [involving a “hard” drug] and that was again significant, so these things can be done for the right individual. You will have people that have turned their lives around and you can see, you can tell. There's no faking this because it's a year's long journey. If you've got it, you've got it, and thankfully our officers, what I've seen is that we have fair individuals, open minded individuals, and that's not to say that I haven't lost on something that I think I should have won, I have, but even that decision, at least that individual had an open mind. I think our [CBSA/CIC] officers by and large are open minded individuals. Again, this may be the last line of defense for a lot of these individuals because there may not be an appeal to the ID anymore because the atrociously entitled Fast Removal of Foreign Criminals Act has amended the IRPA, so permanent residents that have been sentenced to more than six months, including conditional sentences, don't have an appeal to the IAD anymore. Whatever they've got, they've got to address that Section 44 report, that procedural fairness process, maybe Federal Court, maybe a TRP, maybe an H&C, a humanitarian and compassion application, but without that IAD backup, options are limited. Mark Holthe: That's really interesting because like I said, from my perspective, someone who does not do a lot of that type of work, very little in fact, I see walls, absolute walls sometimes for people that I can't see past, whereas individuals such as yourself who have a little bit of a broader perspective, and have actually gone and looked behind the wall have realized that sometimes there's ways through. The message that I got, especially, and just to clarify for the listeners, Raj and I are just meeting at the Canadian Bar Association Office here in Calgary after Raj gave a presentation [to the CBA Immigration Subsection] on this similar topic. One of the messages that came through loud and clear is that maybe people give up too easy, especially counsel, us. I put us under the bus in many circumstances because sometimes we're just too willing to roll over. We need to take a serious look at what the possibilities, are and not be afraid to question and challenge an allegation that's being made against our clients. Even in circumstances where based on a clear reading of the law there's a certain outcome that's supposed to flow doesn't necessarily mean there isn't discretion to go around that and that there isn't some compassion laced into the system. Raj Sharma: I learned this relatively recently. I went to visit my eighty-five, ninety years old grandmother in Edmonton. I didn't learn until much later -- my grandfather died, so my grandmother came over with my youngest uncle to Canada to her children here. None of us kids actually knew that our uncle was actually her sister's son. Her sister had died, so she had taken my uncle in. I guess his dad wasn't interested in caring for him, so I learned this later that Uncle is not actually our uncle, he's actually my mom's cousin. …I knew that there was some immigration issues that he was going through early on when he came, so my grandmother explained it to me, because there was no adoption papers and because my grandmother I think is incapable of lying, she's very straight out that we have no adoption papers, but he has nowhere else to be other than with me. They battled for like three or four years to try and get my uncle to be here. Ultimately CIC indicated, "Well, he can't be here, there's no adoption papers, we have no consent from his guardian, or his biological father, or whatever the case may be." We're from this small mining town in BC and the family was helped by an immigration lawyer out of Vancouver. Ultimately my uncle got what was then called a minister's permit, which is now we call a TRP, a temporary resident permit. When I learned that I was, "Well, I guess that's what I do." So I [do] think people minimize or perhaps don't understand the scope of discretion that's available. There are roadblocks, there's hurdles, [but] there's very few problems without an absolute solution. That being said, if you are unmitigated, incorrigible criminal, no officer's going to give you the benefit of whatever doubt there may be, but there are these avenues that can be pursued and there is a sort of system. You got to work through that system, work with the criminal lawyers, put your client in the best possible light, take advantage of any little nook, cranny, any little shaft of light, and you might be able to widen that crack a little bit for your client to step through, but yes, very few things are foregone conclusions and it's our job as counsel to put the best possible foot forward for the client. Again, in my twelve years of practicing immigration law there's very few actual incorrigible [criminals]. I said this before … that hard cases make bad law and outliers shouldn't make the world a harder place for the vast majority of people that simply want to come to Canada and give their families a better life. These outliers don't reflect the vast majority of cases that we deal with. The vast majority of cases we deal with are human fragility, human error, understandable mistakes. Mark Holthe: You mentioned this concept of a TRP, a temporary resident permit, which is now the new version of a Minister's Permit. Raj Sharma: That's right. Mark Holthe: In some circumstances, individuals will have appeal rights when there is criminality involved and they're facing some harsh consequences, they have appeal rights and other times they don't. You had talked a little bit about the discretion that an officer has to write that report to refer it or not. Can you maybe clarify that just a little bit for counsel who maybe have individuals that are at the stage where the consequences could be pretty nasty? Maybe there is no appeal right and you indicated that sometimes an officer does have some discretion whether or not to write it. Raj Sharma: That's right. That Section 44 report, so let's say there's a conviction in Canada. Establishing that would be pretty straightforward, pretty easy. What counsel can do is respond to a procedural fairness letter, say, "Please don't write the Section 44 report and here's why," and these are going to be [modeled on] the typical Section 25 type of application or submission, so time in Canada, establishment in Canada, those ties here, the family ties here, hardship, or adverse conditions, or challenges upon return, children that are affected by the decision, the circumstances leading to the events, any indicia of remorse, rehabilitation, insight. All those should be placed squarely before the officer and you say to the officer, "Don't write this report, please. The guy's been here for a long time, this is a singular mistake, the criminal record is limited or none other than this lapse in judgment." If the officer writes the report, its then has to be referred under Section 44 sub 2 by a Minister's Delegate. If it's referred, for a permanent resident that means it goes to the immigration division. If it's criminality or serious criminality in Canada, that's Section 44 sub 2, that becomes a removal order for a foreign national. Again, there's less options for foreign nationals here. If it's referred to the immigration division, not much you can do if it's a conviction in Canada. The ID is not going to look beyond the certificate of conviction. If it's a conviction outside of Canada or an allegation that some offense has occurred outside of Canada, that would be equivalent to serious offenses inside of Canada. Then the immigration proceeding becomes a substantive proceeding. That's when it takes on some degree of significance. You are then going to start talking about foreign legal laws, standard of proof, burden of proof, and at that point you probably should be retaining a foreign legal expert. It gets complicated really quickly at that point. After a removal order is issued, post removal order options are limited. A TRP can overcome or allow you to remain in Canada notwithstanding a removal order. An H&C can do the same. One option might be to get a TRP pending record suspension for a conviction inside Canada, for example, if there's eligibility. Mark Holthe: If an officer chooses to write the report when you've made your submissions, can you challenge that part before it gets to the immigration division? Raj Sharma: Yes, you can challenge both the writing of a Report to the Federal Court and the referral of the report to the Federal Court. You probably won't do that if the person concerned is a permanent resident and has an appeal right to the IAD, there's no sense in that, but if you don't have that appeal, you're left with these limited options, so you're going to buy some more time. By going to the Federal Court either you buy some more time, it goes back, a different officer might come to a different conclusion, or you simply might need time for record suspension. Mark Holthe: Just buying the time, interesting. Raj Sharma: Might be one because you need strategic depth, so strategic depth is usually time, more time in Canada gives you more options. Mark Holthe: Define strategic depth for those who are not following. What are you talking about when you use that terminology? Raj Sharma: Strategic depth I was thinking more in terms of war. If you've got a country like Russia and you want to invade Russia, and Napoleon and Hitler both tried that. One of the problems is that Russia has a lot of depth, so you can invade, and invade, and keep invading, and the Russians will have time to mount a response. You can contrast that with, for example, Pakistan, which is thin wasted [country] geographically speaking, there's not a lot of strategic depth there. If we were to apply that terminology to immigration in Canada, then I would say strategic depth would be time. A lot of time, we don't have time, and so give me some time, give me enough time and I can do quite a bit. You need time to marshal resources, to file Federal Court obligations, to file TRP applications, to file H&C applications, to maybe get a rehabilitation application in, so time is our strategic depth and most of the time we don't have it. Mark Holthe: Yes, that is abundantly clear within our practice. I really appreciate that overview and the insight, it was awesome. Let's talk about some practice tips maybe. If counsel finds themselves in these types of positions dealing with an issue, a potential criminal inadmissibility, what are some of the things that go through your mind right away that you'd give in terms of advice, things that people want to make sure they do every single time, or little tips or strategies? You've already indicated here that you want to try to buy as much time as you can, that's obviously really important, but are there any specific things or pieces of advice that we haven't maybe talked about yet that you'd like to share with the listeners? Raj Sharma: I think definitely take a look at the IRCC or CIC policy manuals, Enforcement Manual 5, Enforcement Manual 6, take a look at the loose leaf publication by Mario Bellissimo and Genova, Immigration and Admissibility, they've got a handbook as well. You need to get an understanding of the facts and understand the law in a relatively quick fashion. Once you understand the context that you're in, so if the context is a permanent resident, and there's an offense, and you're looking at the loss of appeal rights, and you've got a procedural fairness letter, and the sentence has been served, what I would do immediately is probably do ATIP requests, access to information requests, and I would try to get and reconstruct the client's immigration history as much as possible. That's probably the first thing I would do is do an ATIP request. I would do FOIP requests for the correctional service documents, the institution documents, and see what's been going on over there and try to get access to those parole documents, take a look at their recidivism rankings. I would probably get the sentencing transcripts right away, I would get any pre-sentence reports that were filed or that were before the sentencing judge right away. After I looked at that I would see if I could update that pre-sentence report by a qualified forensic expert and reassess recidivism. Then I would probably put together these substantive submissions. Again, relying on maybe the IRB, IAD, Removal Order Appeals publication. Having regard to the sort of H&C factors and Ribic and Chieu factors. I would put all that together and get it into that officer probably as soon as possible. That's probably what I would do and that's probably what anyone should probably do with a PR facing removal where there's been a length of sentence greater than six months. If it was less than six months, then obviously maybe I'd just keep my powder dry to some degree, I'd still put in something, but I'd probably just keep my powder dry for the IAD. Mark Holthe: It's pretty much they're going to send it that way and choose not to make a decision at that stage. Raj Sharma: I would think as an officer, this is not in the manuals at all, but ... Mark Holthe: This is what we want, Raj, yes. Raj Sharma: As an officer, and I used to be an officer, but as an officer if I saw that a PR had a right of appeal, then really I would probably give short shrift to any sort of request for exercising my discretion at the 44 stage. I'd be like, "Look, let me just do my job, let me write this 44 report, and refer it, and let them make whatever submissions he needs to the IAD." I think the relationship to discretion and the loss of appeal rights is inverse, so if there's an appeal right, then I would narrow my own discretion. Then if there's no appeal rights, then I would probably take and expand my scope of discretion within, of course, the ambit of the law. Mark Holthe: That's awesome and it makes perfect sense. Officers, despite how some people feel, are human beings. When they feel like someone is trying to screw the system over, they're probably not going to give you a lot of help, but if they feel people are genuine and they've made a mistake, and there's a whole host of ... Raj Sharma: The system, maybe the system has been narrowed against, for example, any further request for relief. I think that they'll substantively consider. Mark Holthe: That's awesome. I really appreciate everything that you've shared here. Raj Sharma: Any time. Mark Holthe: This is fantastic. Now, as always when I have guests on, people are going to listen to this and they're going to say, "Hey, I've got a friend," or, "I know someone who's in this exact situation," and their counsel that they have right now is telling them that they might as well start singing 'Happy Trails,' and packing their bags, and they're saying to themselves, "There must be something else that I can do." They're going to listen to this and they're going to say, "Raj Sharma, how do I get a hold of this guy?" How do people track you down? What's the best way of getting in contact with you and engaging your services? Raj Sharma: For sure, Mark. Anyone can email us at info@sshlaw.ca, that's info@sshlaw.ca, number is 403-705-3398. I think we have a toll free number, but I'm not sure what it is. Mark Holthe: You can go to the website, right, too. Raj Sharma: Yes, you can definitely reach us and we'd be happy to help. It's something that we've developed for the last seven, eight years or so. Mark Holthe: Awesome, thanks a lot. I appreciate your time. Take care. Raj Sharma: Thanks a lot, Mark.

CanadianImmigrationPodcast.com Season 1 Episode 31 Have you ever experienced a refusal on your LMIA application because your advertising did not meet the rigid content requirements set out on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program website? If so, you are not going to want to miss the recent interview I did with Canadian Immigration Lawyer, Robert Leong. Robert shared some great insight on his Federal Court case challenging an officer's refusal of his client's LMIA application because the business address was missing from one of the advertisements. We definitely need more decisions like this. Many of us lawyers remember the good old days when obtaining a Labour Market Opinion (now Labour Market Impact Assessment) for a client was a relatively pleasant and straightforward exercise. After conducting recruitment efforts and not locating a qualified candidate, the LMO would be approved. In fact, Service Canada officers would actually work with employers to assist them in ensuring the forms were properly completed so the application could be approved as quickly as possible.......flash forward to today.......everything has changed! In today's LMIA world, employers are treated like the enemy by Temporary Foreign Worker Program officers who now look for any reason possible to refuse an application......including failing to include a business address in an advertisement. Despite the significant cost and time associated with challenging these ridiculous refusals, some employers have finally said: "Enough is enough!" and took the matter to Federal Court to have the officer's decision reviewed by a judge. In the vast majority of cases, when these types of Judicial Reviews are launched, things get settled pretty quickly by the government lawyers. However, in some rare occasions, employers and their legal counsel see things through to the end and we get amazing decisions that help the rest of us as we fight our own battles with ESDC and their delivery arm "Service Canada". In this Episode, Robert Leong shares his experience arguing his case: Canadian Reformed Church of Cloverdale B.C. v. The Minister of Employment and Social Development Canada (2015 FC 1075). During my interview with Robert Leong, we covered the following topics: Robert Leong's background. How he got into immigration law. Introduction into the LMIA regime. ESDC's minimum advertising requirements. Insight on the Canadian Reformed Church of Cloverdale BC decision. Tips and strategies for navigating the advertising requirements of Service Canada How people can reach Robert.