Podcasts about mechanically

LW1447 - Limited Editions Years ago, after showing my work to a gallery owner, I was thrilled when she said she loved my work and would like to represent me. It was a lifelong dream come true. She then insisted, however, that I limit my editions as a prerequisite to her representation. I passed. Mechanically, there is no limit on how many "copies" you can make. This is especially true in the age of digital printing. No one knows how many you actually make unless you publicize that. A designation like 1/50 does not mean you have made 50 prints. Who benefits from limited editions? All previous episodes of our weekly podcast are available to members of LensWork Online. 30-day Trial Memberships are only $10. Instant access, terabytes of content, inspiration and ideas that expand daily with new content. Sign up for instant access! You might also be interested in. . . Every Picture Is a Compromise, a series at www.brooksjensenarts.com. and... "How to" tutorials and camera reviews are everywhere on YouTube, but if you're interested in photography and the creative life, you need to know about the incredible resources you can access as a member of LensWork Online.

On today's show, Jase is too good for one of Hollywood's hottest, Mike's mechanically-minded and Keyzie's got our best segment yet. TIMESTAMPS (we hope): (00:00) Intro: Clean and Shiny Keyzie(02:45) Mechanically-minded Mogey(07:56) Oil Chat, with the fellas(12:47) How to change a tyre(19:11) Intro: Hyped for Egg Chat(20:34) Big Show Improv(26:05) EGG CHAT BABY(30:39) GOAT RECAP(34:44) Intro: Another Night 'n Day helper(37:17) BREAKING NEWS(41:58) What's On The Telly, With Mike Minogue(46:54) 10 of the greatest films Keyzie's never seen(51:08) Farewell Follow The Big Show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/haurakibigshow Subscribe to the podcast now on iHeartRadio, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts! Featuring Jason Hoyte, Mike Minogue, and Keyzie, "The Big Show" drive you home weekdays from 4pm on Radio Hauraki. Providing a hilarious escape from reality for those ‘backbone’ New Zealanders with plenty of laughs and out-the-gate yarns. Download the full podcast here: iHeartRadio: www.iheart.com/podcast/1049-the-hauraki-big-show-71532051/?follow=true Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hauraki-big-show/id1531952388 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/20OF8YadmJmvzWa7TGRnDISee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We geek out over Brian Moses's 2025 DIY NAS build guide, contemplate future builds with the new Raspberry Pi Compute 5 module, and fully embrace our digital hoarding nature with a new app. Special Guest: Brian Moses.

We geek out over Brian Moses's 2025 DIY NAS build guide, contemplate future builds with the new Raspberry Pi Compute 5 module, and fully embrace our digital hoarding nature with a new app.

After an unexpected concert (and an unexpected plot twist for the GM), the heroes continue down the dark tunnel.

Darshan H. Brahmbhatt, Podcast Editor of JACC: Advances discusses a recently published original research paper on outcomes for mechanically ventilated patients with acute myocardial infarction admitted to medical compared to cardiac ICU.

Honda will launch upgraded HR-V SUV variants next month - all three models inthe small HR-V range more competitive and gaining price cuts - spearheaded by arevised new entry Vi X HR-V at $34,900 drive-away, some $1,800 more affordablewhilst the most affordable hybrid e:HEV X will arrive at $39,990 drive-away,shaving more than $7,000 from the previous hybrid entry price. The betterequipped hybrid e:HEV L will also reduce by $4,100 to $42,990 drive-away. Thenew price reduced Honda HR-V range will arrive with minor cosmetic changesincluding new adaptive LED headlights and refined tail-light detail while insidethey gain a changed centre console, some USB ports and extended storage trays.Mechanically, a retuned power steering system, better soundproofing, reviseddampers and updates to the hybrid control unit software and Honda safetysensing suite. I'm David BerthonSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Matthew 26:26-28

Matthew 26:26-28

I'm feeling full of beans. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we're talking about the DLC for Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Future Redeemed. This is an expansion type DLC which gives you a full new party of characters, starts you at level one and makes subtle but meaningful changes to the mechanics and has you set out on an entirely new story set in the same world as the base game. This is probably for the best given how long it's been since we've played the original, so we don't have to deal with high level enemies while forgetting all of the mechanics, but as is usually true with Xenoblade games, what is probably the most interesting development in the DLC concerns the story. The DLC features characters from far flung parts of Monolith's trilogy, and the ways and reasons they interact with your party take a focus in the narrative. Because of this the DLC focuses a bit more on the overarching narrative, which is on the more complicated side, but it still puts a decent focus on character stories, just maybe in a less impactful way than the base game. Mechanically, the new classes are largely fun and well designed, with some hitches here and there, and the new systems give you something novel to sink your teeth into if you are so inclined. All that said, the game plays mostly very similar to the base game so if you were a fan of that, you'll probably enjoy another 20-30 hours of this as well. We're going to be talking about how the mechanical changes affected our play, the characters and what archetypes they fill both in the story and as narrative devices, and we realize that maybe we've been the dumb guy all along. Thank you for joining us again this week! This was a game that we really liked originally and probably wouldn't have gone back to for the expansion for a long while if we hadn't done this DLC theme, so I'm happy we got the chance. If you've been through it, how did you feel about the changes from the base game? Did you feel compelled to fill out your affinity goals to level everyone up? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we're going to finish out DLC by talking about Echoes of the Eye, the DLC for Outer Wilds, so we hope you'll join us then!

Send us a Text Message.Diese Woche besprechen wir die Arbeit von Karagiannidis et. al aus Lancet Regional Health Europe zu Mortalität und Kosten von 1 Million beatmeten Intensivpatienten: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2024.100954Mit im Studio: Anian Mair, Wissenschaft. Mitarbeiter der Klinik für Anästhesiologie

In Episode 206 we're joined by Arwen from the Cardboard Time Podcast to discuss the reasons that we decide to buy games. We discuss a poll on how much thought you put into a game before purchasing it. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 04:45 Poll: How much thought do you put into your choice to purchase a board game? 09:24 Why do we buy games? 10:13 Interactive puzzle 14:16 Easy teach with strong decision space 18:12 I've played it, I LOVE it, and I have a group to play it with 22:14 Captivating system 27:34 Mechanically or thematically unique 31:15 The best version of a mechanism 34:27 Unique or novel 37:58 Accessibility 46:09 Intriguing and deeply discounted 50:22 Speed Round Questions 1:05:54 Listener Shoutout If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting us at https://www.patreon.com/boardgamehottakes Follow us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/boardgamehottakes.bsky.social Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/boardgamehottakes Join our Board Game Arena Community: https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=11417205

The Between is a tabletop roleplaying game about a group of mysterious monster hunters in Victorian-era London. They are residents of a place called Hargrave House, and their job is to investigate and neutralize monstrous threats terrorizing the city—threats that Scotland Yard won't or can't handle themselves. As the story progresses, they become aware of the plans of a Moriarty-style criminal mastermind they will eventually have to face in order to save Queen and country.The Between is directly inspired by the gothic horror TV show Penny Dreadful, but also takes a lot of inspiration from British horror classics, graphic novels like From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and pulp-era stories. Mechanically, it's Powered by the Apocalypse but also uses the mystery system from Brindlewood Bay. (Part 1)Buy The Between and PAY WHAT YOU WANT for a limited time to celebrate the release of our series!https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/360858/The-Between**Add our Patreon Feed to your Podcast App**https://open.acast.com/public/patreon/fanSubscribe/3607115This series is not suitable for listeners under the age of 18 and may contain material some people find disturbing.CONTENT WARNINGS: Profanity, ViolencePlayer CharactersJason Cordova as KeeperScott Dorward as Sebastian MelmothJosephine McAdam as Moyra InnesNic Rosenberg as Viola ArcherCorbin Cupp as Roland KesslerProduction and CreativeThe Between system by The Gauntlet.Editing by Corbin Cupp and Scott DorwardSound Design and Production by Corbin CuppPatreon ShoutoutAlthalos, Anthony D., Bridget, Caolán M., Drew M., E.M.F.D., Heather P., India thank you terror, Killius Manjaro, Matthew C., Not That Nic, Skip M., Call Me Dirt, Dan F., firecop890, Jeff F., Jessen, Mario S., Michael H., mmm0rphine, Nathanael C., Tomboi LaCroixNew PatronsFastJack75, Ryan P., Amanda R., Brent G., Andy M. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Craig Dalton and Justin Bowes reflect on the lead-up to the Unbound Gravel 200 race, sharing insights into the unique training approach adopted to prepare for the challenging event. They discuss the strategic training block, the importance of quality over quantity, utilizing power meters for training effectiveness, and the significance of recovery in a compressed time frame. The conversation dives into the pivotal four-day mini camp, highlighting the benefits of stacking workload and the nuances of balancing intervals and endurance rides.  Support the Podcast Join The Ridership  Key themes include strategically structuring training around time constraints, leveraging prior endurance experience, the impact of power meter training, optimizing recovery for peak performance, and the mental challenges faced leading up to a formidable gravel race like Unbound. Key Takeaways: Strategic training plans can be tailored effectively to accommodate time constraints and previous endurance experience. Balancing interval workouts with endurance rides is crucial for building strength and endurance for challenging events. Utilizing power meters can provide valuable insights into training progress and help optimize performance. Adequate recovery periods are essential for the body to absorb training load effectively, leading to improved performance. Mental preparation and breaking down the race into manageable segments can help athletes. Transcript: [00:00:00] - (): Craig Dalton: Justin, welcome back to the show, [00:00:02] - (): Justin Bowes: Craig. Thank you for having me. It's good to see you again. [00:00:05] - (): Craig Dalton: Post Unbound. We did it. [00:00:07] - (): Justin Bowes: That's right. You did it. Yeah, you did it a big way. [00:00:12] - (): Craig Dalton: I appreciate you coming on board and being my muse to help me tell my story. I feel like you were an integral part of my life for a while this year. **** - (): In our last episode, we talked about kind of what the run up to my non cycling related vacation looked like. And maybe we pick up the story post that vacation. [00:00:33] - (): Justin Bowes: Sure. Yeah, it was, we discussed on the, on the first pod that, we, we were having a little bit uncharacteristic buildup, um, not only because you had some, prior work, obligations with, as far as travel, but we were starting quite late, um, as well. **** - (): So we had to, be a little creative in how we wanted to, to approach your training. So, right when you were, uh, leaving, we had really built up your training load, um, because obviously we knew that you were going to be leaving and you're gonna have time off the bike. You weren't gonna be. **** - (): Completely immobile. I mean, you were, we're going to be able to, do some running and walking and some lifting and, and, um, a few stationary bike sessions in there and things like that, but it's not the most ideal unbound training, especially when you're training for the 200 and. We're only a couple months into it or, a couple of months out from it, I should say. **** - (): And so, uh, the thought behind, how I wanted to structure your training was to take advantage of the, the, the amount of time that you did not have to train. And so where a traditional buildup would have multiple big ride days on the weekends, um, not only that, but then also, during the week, You would have your meat and potato interval session, but also bookend it with some big endurance rides on the front and the back end of it, but you just didn't have that available to you. **** - (): So, um, I needed to make sure that we were going to take advantage of not only the lack of time that you had available to you, but also you're, you're no stranger to endurance, um, athletics. So you had a background that I could work with. And that makes all the difference. If you were just coming to me off the street and say, Hey, can you get me ready? **** - (): And less than four months, for a 200 mile gravel race, the hardest 200 mile gravel race in the world. It would, that would be a different story, but thankfully you, you had some background in endurance, so it wasn't. A foreign concept to your body. [00:02:48] - (): Craig Dalton: It was interesting in my training block leading up to Cuba because we really didn't do a lot of meaningfully long rides, but I also understood like, I'd never really done meaningful intervals before. **** - (): And clearly like the workouts you were prescribing to me that were one hour in duration. Pretty tired afterwards. Like I felt like I really gassed myself because now that we're looking at a power meter and we're really saying it's not like perceived level of exertion. It's like, here's the exertion you need to achieve. **** - (): Um, and it was really, I mean, frankly, it was like, I was burying myself on a lot of those workouts, which was very different than anything I'd been done doing in the, the decade before, to be honest. [00:03:32] - (): Justin Bowes: Right. Right. And I mean, it's, it's the old adage, quality over quantity. And again, I, I keep coming back to, the time crunch. **** - (): I mean, that's what we were up against. And so I really wanted to make sure that, the lead up to your trip to Cuba, but then also once you get back, we added enough low to you. to your training so that, um, the break was needed. And so your body would be able to absorb all of that load while you're gone because, yes, you would still be active, but you weren't training. **** - (): And so it allowed your body to recover from all that. And by the way, Um, Craig did an amazing job, um, of hitting all of his workouts. Like, I want to say there's less than a handful that were just kind of like, didn't nail them perfectly, but it wasn't for the lack of trying by any means. Um, and so, um, with that, and you brought up the point too, it's just like, you've never trained with power before, and so there was just, that was just another element to the training that we had to kind Yeah. implement. It wasn't like, Oh yeah, I've been training for years with power. So I know what my zones are and why and all of that. So kind of helping coach you through, the use of the power meters and, and the importance of that. **** - (): I think it gave us a really good detailed picture of where the training was going and you could see. Yeah. and ultimately feel, yourself getting stronger, after each week, things just got better and better and better. So once you got back into the country, then it was time to start, we'll continue on the interval workouts, but we're going to start introducing, the longer sessions as well. [00:05:21] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah. And I remember like I definitely felt tired when I left for that week off, um, and unfortunately not incredibly refreshed after my quote unquote vacation, because there's a lot of running around with the family, but coming back and looking at the training calendar, we had a couple of things up in the air, but we knew like that next six weeks was going to be a big build of long rides, endurance rides, and continuing on some of the interval work. [00:05:47] - (): Justin Bowes: Right, right. And so, had, had things been different as far as scheduling of the trip and things like that, we may have flipped the script a little bit and did all of your big rides be, on the front end, and then do all the more structured training, the higher, shorter, sharper stuff on the back end. **** - (): But I just felt like with your background and what we wanted to accomplish with Unbound, um, it was better for us to, to stack those. shorter, sharper workouts on the front end and then give yourself time to relax or, absorb. And then once you came back and we figured out, some pieces as far as like, Hey, when can we get out and do back to back big rides? **** - (): And I want to talk about that too, because I think it was really important, um, in the buildup, um, for the race, um, those, those four days of just, some really good rides, but it, it, it, It was working and from my standpoint, I could see, the fatigue building, but your recovery was also taking, it was, it was working as well, and so it was like, we'd stack the work on you. **** - (): But then the recovery days were structured so that, those. again, your body absorbs that work. And the cool thing with watching you is he can, you, Craig, he can handle a lot of work, so I'd be looking at your workouts, every day. And I'm like, he's, he's doing this, like he's actually absorbing all this workload. **** - (): And that's where it was really starting to fuel my confidence. And what you were going to be able to, um, accomplish at Unbound was, not only is he nailing all these workouts, but he's also recovering on the backside of it too. And that was just, again, it was fueling my confidence for you to egg you on to say, Craig, you can do this. **** - (): Like we're in a really good position. And I didn't want to get down into all the weeds with you as far as like what I was seeing, right? Right. Because ultimately it's just like, I just want Craig, you to understand you can do this. So it was really cool from my standpoint to see. [00:08:03] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's interesting. As you talk about, like, if, if we had given more time that you might've done the longer rides earlier and then that kind of high performance stuff later, right. **** - (): I kind of feel like I might've struggled with confidence With that approach, even though like, obviously I would've had massive workouts six weeks back. [00:08:24] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah, yeah. . But I [00:08:25] - (): Craig Dalton: kind of, I kind of like the, the idea that we were progressively testing me Yes. On these harder and harder weekends towards the end. **** - (): Right? [00:08:34] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. And I, and definitely by design , but at the same time it, it, it worked out, I think, better than I even. had hoped for because, again, in theory and on paper, I'm looking at what I want you to do, but ultimately it's what can your body and, now that we're getting deeper into it, what can your mind and your body do? **** - (): Handle. And so that's where, that's where, the coaching science and the coaching art kind of, blur the lines together of like, okay, this is what I expect him to be able to do, but this is what I'm seeing him, doing. And it's just, it's a really cool kind of blend of, the science and the art coming together. **** - (): And again, it just stokes my confidence. And hopefully that comes across in my communication with you is like, I'm really excited. I can see this happening. And this is why I believe that you're going to be able to, perform this, um, crazy, crazy event. So [00:09:39] - (): Craig Dalton: yeah, I think what was good for both of us was knowing that, and I'd said to you early on, knowing that I kind of put myself and you behind the eight ball starting late. **** - (): Yes. But that, I had this, I could make a four day. Kind of mini camp whenever we needed it in May as like this option to really kind of do some big volume. [00:10:01] - (): Justin Bowes: Right, right. And that was, that kind of gave me, that was kind of one of those moments of like, okay, good, at least. We, we, we've got it to where, it's in our back pocket. **** - (): I've got that card to play. Um, it's going to lend itself really well. And, fortunately it was, you were really flexible on, when that could actually happen. And that, that definitely makes a, a big impact because, within the month of an event like, the 200. **** - (): Like, we can't miss days. We can't, there's like no makeup days or anything. And each day is just that much more important for the next and the next and the next, and. Um, yeah, having you be able to go out and just knock out these four days of, big rides and, when we were talking about how we were going to do that, when a lot of, I don't want to say a lot, when, when most people have that kind of that opening of like, Hey, I'm going to do a, a mini camp, whether it's a long, four day weekend or in the middle of the week, however it works out, they're so excited to go and put in the big miles, they're, they've got free time. **** - (): They've got the, the hall pass to go and just train. That's awesome. That's great. But the biggest mistake made by most people that do that is. They go out and do a seven or eight hour ride, on day one, and they're not used to that. And on day two, day three, they're just like, yeah, two hours here, three hours there, whatever. **** - (): And if that, because they just completely blew themselves to the moon on day one and weren't ready for that. And so, so I prescribed to you that we'll just stair step ourself into the, into that block so that. We get the most bang for our buck out of that, that mini block of training. And. It worked. **** - (): It worked well. [00:12:03] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think that was definitely a critical weekend for me. I think I rode four hours kind of mixed terrain with a buddy of mine on Thursday, four, maybe five hours on Friday and then eight and a half or nine on Saturday and followed up by two or three on Sunday. [00:12:21] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah, that was, again, it was, it was a big, um, big chunk of time in the saddle. **** - (): Um, and it was a big, um, bite on your end. I mean, to take, to, to put in that much time, but again, it just, it, it just speaks to the training that we did leading into it helped. your body absorb those big days. And once you, once you came out of that, to me, like I didn't want to, I didn't want to like pile on just like the raw, raw cheerleader, like, Oh my God, he's going to do this sort of thing. **** - (): I, I was, I was, I internally, like on this side of the screen, I was like, hell yeah. Like this is, this is going to work. Like he, he's going to He's going to do okay at this. [00:13:12] - (): Craig Dalton: I think I got a hell yeah. In the comments and training peaks, [00:13:15] - (): Justin Bowes: you probably did. Yeah, [00:13:17] - (): Craig Dalton: that's sad. I think that for me, that Saturday ride was the one that I reflected on, on game day, because it was 10, 000 feet plus of climbing in. **** - (): Very, very challenging terrain. Like in fact, like I forgot, cause I don't go so far north as much like coming across pine mountain and up San Geronimo Ridge, things that the locals around here might understand, like it was just super rocky and this was like six, seven hours into the day that I hit just these trails that I just forgot how steep they are and how rocky they are. **** - (): So when I came home from that. And was able to get on the bike the next day. I was like, okay, like it was only 77 miles and I'm doing a 200 mile race, but I did the elevation and I can guarantee some of those miles were a lot harder to come by than what I'd experienced in Kansas. [00:14:13] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. Um, I mean, just quickly for the listeners, just kind of given, give them some numbers behind the, uh, that particular ride. **** - (): I'll, I'll preface this by saying, even the professionals in the 200, they're not going to be able to go out and mimic. an exact 200 mile, day. And so it's just, it's just, that's a big day for anybody. And so if you can get in, for you, we're, we're targeting, like, we had the kind of the, um, beat the sun, uh, goal. **** - (): Hey, I'd like to get in, under 15 hours, just a couple, just high level. This is kind of what I want to do. So when you were able to clock in at over eight and a half hours in the saddle with, over 10, 000 feet of climbing. And coming in with a TSS of over 400 in under 80 miles, that's a big day. **** - (): And you're right. It's it's it, of course it's not, a hundred miles or even 125 miles or anything like that. Like, most people will, who do the 200 who have serious training behind them. They're going to be pushing that 150 mile, training day on one of, on their last big. **** - (): Uh, training block, but you being able to get out there and produce the power that you did, the load that you were able to accumulate and the efficiency. I should note, the efficiency factor that you were able to, um, uh, complete this ride in again, it was just like, it's just pure gold in the bank, like, not even cash, like gold, like, it's solid, it's, it's, it's tangible, like, he's going to be able to reflect on this ride when things maybe get a little dark in Kansas and be able to say, I, Look what I did. **** - (): Like, I can do that. And so when you have a ride like that, Craig, it's, it's, it's really good. Um, and it's, it's hard to quantify from a coaching perspective to an athlete until they actually do it of like what that truly means, um, to the end goal. **** - (): Yeah, yeah, I think it's so important [00:16:24] - (): Craig Dalton: to have those just tough tough days to reflect back on and put in the bank and I feel like when I, when I got to Kansas, I had sort of maybe a 90 percent confidence interval on my ability to complete the event. I knew, as you said before, I knew that I had Done everything that was asked of me pretty put a pretty solid effort in, but there was always that little bit in my mind saying, like, I've never ridden in Kansas. **** - (): I don't know what the terrain's like, and I've certainly never ridden more than 130 miles. Right? [00:17:00] - (): Justin Bowes: Right. And that brings up an interesting, question that I don't know. I've, I don't think I've posed to you since to to unbound, but like, mentally. That week leading into it, where was your head at? Like you, you've touched on like, Hey, I've never ridden in Kansas. **** - (): I've never ridden the 200 miles, kind of speak to, mentally where, where you were at leading into the race that like that week of. [00:17:27] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. I think it was a little bit all over the place. Like I started seeing footage of the actual terrain and I started actually, let me step back for a second. **** - (): They talked about the North course being chunky. And when I think about chunky, I think about where I ride at home, but I realized in retrospect, it's chunky at home, but 15 percent grades [00:17:50] - (): Justin Bowes: and [00:17:50] - (): Craig Dalton: Kansas chunky is chunky, but 6 percent grade, so it felt a lot different. Um, so that's a point on the chunkiness. **** - (): And then second, I started to see some of the more, um, minimum a maintenance roads and they had these great dual tracks that. We're pretty hard pack. Yeah. And I was, I was definitely conscious that conditions could change and good God, if you were in the Facebook group, the, the amount of meteorologists that came out of the woodwork was pretty insane that week leading in, but there's definitely some rain on the calendar. **** - (): Right. Yeah. [00:18:23] - (): Justin Bowes: No, I just felt like I may have oversold, um, the northbound course as being as chunky and technical, um, but I think, I'd rather you go in. With a higher level of like, Oh, okay. **** - (): This could be pretty rough. Um, as opposed to, Oh yeah, the North course is fine. Yeah, it gets chunky in sections, overall it's fine. But then you get there and you're like, Whoa, I was, you did not warn me about this. You did not, my expectation was down here. And now it's like, what is happening? **** - (): I [00:18:55] - (): Craig Dalton: think what it left you with, Justin was just an awareness of. This could go wrong for my equipment if I'm not careful. And I'll get into a little bit once we start talking about the ride itself, like how I rode the race. [00:19:10] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. Um, [00:19:11] - (): Craig Dalton: but once I got to, I, I got out to Kansas on Wednesday night, got to Emporia on Thursday, did my first group shakeout ride for 15 miles on Thursday, actually in the rain. **** - (): Um, Start, it was nice to just get the bike on the dirt out there and start to get a sense for it. You start to understand, in any grid shaped race or race course, the 90 degree corners are what you have to be aware of because Right, while you may have good dual tracks when you're coming around a corner, it, it can be very much marbley, kind of gravel in the middle. **** - (): So it was good to sort of just. Test the cornering a little bit, so to speak. [00:19:53] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah, it's, yeah, a lot of gravel races. You just have that natural, flow of the course and, and everything, but yeah, out in Emporia, it truly is. a hard right, a hard left, and, and, if you get out of that line, um, or, you, you find yourself, drifting out of that corner or out of the race line and into the, the, the sides of the course. **** - (): Yeah. It can get, it can get pretty chunky and it's, and not only that or loose too, but not only that is just the amount of. Shrapnel being thrown up at you, with that, that many cyclists, on a course, um, yeah, it's, it's tough. [00:20:40] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. So then Friday I hooked up with the, my, my crew in the house. **** - (): I was staying with shout out to Doug Bucko and Phil. Uh, we did a little ride in the town we were staying in and then I went into the, um, the meat, mandatory media event. Yeah. That lifetime was holding, and it was interesting because I did glean some perspective there as well, because they talked about how they felt like the first 28 miles of this race was going to be incredibly fast and actually that turned out to be a useful tidbit. **** - (): Um, After the race started, so we can talk about that in a little bit, but I sort of, I did a little ride on Friday, felt good. The equipment felt dialed in retrospect. I sort of had tire size envy a little bit because it was weird because I normally ride like a 47 at home. And, um, we talked about this early on. **** - (): You're a big fan of the IRC Boken and the biggest they come in is a 42. And I was like, well, I'm riding my titanium unicorn. I've got a front suspension fork. Like I don't need all that volume. And it, it seemed interesting to me to kind of go to something a little bit faster rolling potentially. But the big tire guy in me, when all the pros were talking about running 50 started to get a little bit jealous. [00:21:55] - (): Justin Bowes: Right. Yeah, it's, it's, it's so personal. Like, um, yeah, I can give you my recommendations and, what I've seen work, for myself and other athletes and competitors and things like that, but it's, it's, yeah, it really comes down to your comfort level of, You know what you, what you, what you can ride and what feels good underneath you and, and things like that. **** - (): And I, yeah, I'm, I'm all about my IRC tires, but at the same time, yeah, I couldn't help but be a little like, [00:22:28] - (): Craig Dalton: Hmm, [00:22:28] - (): Justin Bowes: 50 would be pretty nice, and I did [00:22:30] - (): Craig Dalton: talk to the IRC guys and they said, Hey, the guys are from Japan are here. Yeah. And I'm making them listen to all these pros who are talking about fifties. [00:22:39] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. [00:22:42] - (): Craig Dalton: So I feel like, like Thursday, Friday was all going swimmingly. And then through like being part of a larger group, my dinner on Friday night, we didn't end up sitting down to like maybe seven 30 or eight. Yeah, which is later than we had all intended by a few hours, right? I had been drinking a bunch of electrolyte stuff that I had picked up in the the expo area and For whatever reason and I don't really think I wasn't really in my head about the race because I was very kind of just at peace with Where I was at and what was going to unfold was going to unfold Friday night. **** - (): I had a horrible night's sleep. I had a headache. I just kind of couldn't go down, which definitely rattled me, getting up at 4 30 AM to start eating on Saturday morning. [00:23:30] - (): Justin Bowes: Right, right. Yeah. It's, it's tough. Um, yeah, it's, especially when you're with a group of people at a big race like that and, Emporia, I mean, they do an amazing job trying to absorb. **** - (): Influx of what, uh, 12, 000 plus people with support staff and racers. And, but yeah, with dining options being as limited as they are, um, and then trying to, get a group to dinner or prepare dinner, whatever that case may be. Yeah. It's, it's, it's tough. And. I'm, I'm of the belief, I've always had this, in the school of thought of, it's not the night before, it's two nights before, um, as far as like your most important rest, um, and, recovery time and things like that, because even if, Craig, even if everything went perfect on Friday night, The enormity of what you're about to do on Saturday morning will keep you from having a restful night's sleep, it's just, yeah, maybe, maybe you fell asleep a little bit quicker, but, just knowing that, oh, my gosh, I got to get up at 430. **** - (): I've got to have, double check this triple check that. I've got to start eating like immediately. I got to, make sure, everything's functioning. And so it's even with the best laid plans, it's always going to be, um, um, a rough night. So, but, again, objectively looking at it. **** - (): And I think I shared with you on our call the other day was, if somebody just tossed this file in front of me. Um, and just said, Hey, tell me what you think, without any context or knowing who it was or anything like that. It's like, this guy had a great race and it was indicative of, um, again, I think just your confidence of, being prepared and knowing it is what it is at this point and yeah, you, strapped in and got to work. **** - (): So. [00:25:31] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean, I felt great about my equipment going in. I spent way more time thinking about hydration and nutrition than I ever had before, and I was, I was really jazzed with the way the First Endurance EPO Pro High Carb Drink worked for me. So to give some perspective, I used two 12 ounce bottles of the high carb drink, and then I had a use way backpack with water in it. **** - (): And my plan was at every opportunity to refill those bottles. I would refill with the. The first endurance high carb mix that kind of annoyed maybe my, my compatriots a little bit. Cause I was like, Oh, I got to dump this powder in. And by the way, for any product designers out there, I need a product that will encapsulate a serving of first endurance. **** - (): That's better than a plastic bag and faster to pour into [00:26:24] - (): Justin Bowes: a bottle. **** - (): So you felt like **** - (): the, **** - (): the first endurance high carb. That was. That was good for you. [00:26:31] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. So I was using that, uh, trying to goal was to drink a bottle an hour and do Right. A goo or something in addition to it. So Right. Aiming around, I think 85 to 90 carbs an hour. Mm-Hmm. . And I had, I had trained on that on every one of my long rides. **** - (): Exactly. [00:26:48] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. And some people will say, well that's on the low side now, but, um, and, and it. It is, but at the same time, if that's what you're training with and that's what your body's used to, and again, being able to get through all the training sessions the way you did, why, why change that, and, and try to like go all pro and be like, I'm getting 120, 130 grams, of carbs per hour. **** - (): And then all of a sudden, you're two hours in and your body's like, I. Don't know what this means, and just let's just shut down on you. Um, you were, you were talking about, um, you touched on it really quick on, um, your bike and everything. Talk a little bit more about like the equipment that you did, end up using, for the race. [00:27:33] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. So I was using, it's basically my standard setup at home with the exception of, I was running 700 by 42 tires as IRC Bokens. Uh, as we mentioned before, I did have the RockShox suspension fork on there as well as a dropper post. I considered taking the dropper post off, um, because I didn't think it was going to be warranted, but I'm glad I did not. **** - (): I'm glad I left it on. [00:27:58] - (): Justin Bowes: Interesting. [00:27:58] - (): Craig Dalton: Okay. Part of that rationale was nothing new on game day philosophy. Um, but I, I can go on and on and on about dropper posts and in the context of unbound. It certainly enabled a heightened level of comfort during any of the technical sections. So little Egypt and right. **** - (): Call reservation. And then oddly, like on the more, on the longer kind of just gentler downhills, it just allowed me to really get in sort of a chilled out yet arrow position. [00:28:33] - (): Justin Bowes: Okay. [00:28:34] - (): Craig Dalton: So it, it, it turned out really well. And. Obviously there's like a slight weight penalty, uh, with it, but it just provides me so much comfort when I go downhill and so much confidence that, I was like, I'm just going to leave it on. **** - (): And I'm totally glad I did. [00:28:51] - (): Justin Bowes: Nice. No, I, I don't think we talk much about droppers when it comes to, to unbound. I don't think that's like any, in any of the, like the hot topics it's, it's, it's all tires and and now that they've banned, arrow bars, from the pros and stuff. I mean, it's just like all the focuses, your, your number. **** - (): Uh, holder now, so you can keep it flat and arrow and all of that. Um, and then your tires and, and wheel choice. Um, but yeah, dropper, like I think it makes a lot of sense, especially, just from a positioning standpoint. of just giving you your body a different position for that long of a period, because if you think about how being in a static cycling position for, 13, 14, 15 hours, being able to mix it up and know that you can, like you said, just have a little confidence boost and just like a different position for those descents. **** - (): Taking some pressure off your lower back, off your hamstrings, the glutes, all of that. I mean, the little things like that really do add up, especially over that course of, that type of distance. [00:30:01] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I do feel like at this moment I should, I should make one admission to my, my training progress. **** - (): I will say like the one area, Justin, where I felt like I failed down and fell down when fortunately it didn't bite me in the ass is while I did do a ton of foam rolling, I wasn't as committed as I should have been to my foundation back exercises. Truth comes [00:30:27] - (): Justin Bowes: out. Um, it's funny because I, like I doubled down on my foundation, uh, back exercises, the, the month leading into unbound, um, I've, I've always had a really strong back, um, partly from, swim background and everything. **** - (): But, um, as we've gotten older, um, things are just a little bit, they make themselves a little bit more aware and a day like, unbound granted, I did the hundred, not the 200. Um, it's still, It adds up. And so I was just like, I'm doubling down on my, my foundation work. So instead of, a minimum of twice a week, I was doing it four plus times a week. **** - (): And, um, I, I, I definitely felt a difference. Um, Just finishing and standing in the finish corral with everybody. And it was like, wow, I can actually like stand straight up, normally, normally you have that pre or post race kind of like slouch and slump and you're like, and have to like come back up to, um, vertical, uh, slowly. **** - (): Um, but yeah, big time. So interesting that you mentioned that. Um, [00:31:42] - (): Craig Dalton: So yeah, a hundred percent. It was not a recommendation to not do those things to anybody listening to what [00:31:46] - (): Justin Bowes: Craig did on. [00:31:47] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. So talking about race day, I mean, so, we got, it was surprised, like it was very hassle free to kind of get to the start line. **** - (): Yeah. Probably got there maybe a few minutes later than probably could have gotten further up in the Peloton if you, if you will. [00:32:03] - (): Justin Bowes: Okay. [00:32:04] - (): Craig Dalton: If I got there a few minutes early, but we were there maybe 20 minutes early and we got right to the basically to the 14 hour flag, which is where we decided we were going to start. **** - (): Cause it was important to me. I know from, from past experience, it's important for me to kind of get swept up and make miles when miles are easy. And so I was pretty adamant with the career that I was with that, like, for me, this was like an imperative. Like I, I definitely wanted to start there and ride in a big pack for a while. [00:32:35] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. And, we, we, we did touch on this, um, a little bit that, while you, you definitely need to be with your people, and be with those people that are going to, you. get you through those first, couple hours. Um, but be cautious of not getting swept up in the moment, of, of what Unbound is. **** - (): And for, for anybody who's never been to Emporia on race day, um, I mean, it's a, it's a big deal and you, it's very easy to get caught up, even the days leading into the race of, Oh, we can go do another shakeout, right. Or let's spend five hours at the expo on our feet, because we're having so much fun and we're talking with everybody and things like that with, without much thought of like, Oh, by the way, the biggest race of your life is, two days away and you need to like, Chill and relax, but, um, I, I totally agree. **** - (): Like, you, when. You have to take advantage of those easy miles. Um, with, with, with the caveat that, Hey, I don't want to get swept up and do too much too soon. But I also want to, as you say, make, make hay while the sun is shining. Right. Um, and, and put it away. So when things start to turn south a little bit, no pun intended, um, it's. **** - (): It's you're further up and you're further along and you're feeling better than, had you been too conservative and held back. [00:34:07] - (): Craig Dalton: And maybe, I mean, maybe because we couldn't get farther up, it was actually kind of a, the pace felt very pedestrian. The first 28 miles to me, like, I never, I never had to really, put in any meaningful effort to cruise. **** - (): And I, I was watching some videos this last weekend about it. And a guy who had done it in 12 hours. And I saw the difference of what the 12 hour pace looked like in the 14 hour. And I was like, maybe if I'm like totally nitpicking my day out there, maybe I should have been up a little bit further, but there's something to be said for like, I definitely had a chill first 28 miles. **** - (): And then. We hit, we hit the first technical section and it was interesting. I was definitely conscious of my equipment because I had weirdly, like I'd seen flats like barely out of town. [00:34:59] - (): Justin Bowes: I was like, [00:35:00] - (): Craig Dalton: God, I don't, I don't want to have a flat, there, people are flatting all over the place. **** - (): We would hit these, the, uh, the technical descents and you'd sort of, You have to ride in one of the dual tracks. We're kind of the safest way there. And there was a little rocky kind of drop offs. Nothing too technical if you had a clean look at it, but as you were riding in a group, sometimes you're inevitably forced into a line that you wouldn't have opted into. **** - (): I think that's where you risk, flatting or crashing. [00:35:28] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. And I think that's where most people get in to the big trouble is, they try to, they try to switch those lanes. When they really shouldn't. Um, and that's, a couple of things, a lot of those dual track MMRs, we'll have like a, a big grass section down the center of it. **** - (): Yeah. And the grass looks inviting, but it hides a lot of stuff in there, whether it's, a rut or a. Bigger, nastier rock that's been kicked out of the track into, it's just laying there. And so that's where I think people really make the mistake of like, Oh, this line's going faster on the left. **** - (): So I'm going to hop from the right side to the left side or vice versa. And that's where the cuts happen. And the, even crashes just because they hit something that they weren't expecting and things like that. [00:36:18] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, that 100 percent started to be a necessity to do those cross lane jumps for me. **** - (): Like, as we came out of the other side of the, the first technical section, like, you would just see one group moving up and another. Kind of fading back on a climb. And I was definitely conscious of that middle section. Like this is when it could go all wrong, you feel the need to kind of keep joining groups with forward momentum. **** - (): And yes, I was very pleased that, um, my, my buddy Doug, Was right there with me. I had kind of no sense because I was just sort of focused on saying, with that group in the first 28 miles. And when we came through the technical section, it was great to see his enthusiastic face pull through. And I was like, this is awesome. **** - (): Like, cause I, we hadn't written together, but once or twice. So it was great to see that. We could potentially spend a bunch of time together. So from mile 30 to mile a hundred, we were riding together and riding with groups. Um, it's interesting and unbound cause the amateurs can use arrow bars. **** - (): So you would see these guys and girls who would kind of maybe go slower on the hills, but once you got on the downhill or a flat, they were happy to have a train of people behind them. And I was, I'm not ashamed to say I was taking advantage of that as much as possible. [00:37:35] - (): Justin Bowes: Heck yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Real quick, before I forget, um, I think on the first pod that we did, um, you were asking me about the climbs. **** - (): Um, and, cause I had given you some description of like, punchy, um, death by a thousand cut because of just the, how many there were, succession and things like that now that you've done it, like what, what was your overall, um, Observation as far as like the climbing was concerned. [00:38:07] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. I mean, everything's so short relative to what I'm used to. And I knew that was going to be the case going in, but on the plus side, you can always, you can generally always see the top of them. So you kind of knew, and you could measure your, you could gauge your efforts. When I, I think about sort of towards mile a hundred, it started, we started to get to some that required a little bit more effort. **** - (): And actually this was, One of the, probably the darkest mental moment I had was I kind of, I lost Doug's wheel. He caught some good wheels. I was behind someone, uh, who was not moving as efficiently and we kind of separated. And I, I thought to myself, I don't feel like I want to make this effort over the top of the hill to bridge this gap. **** - (): But I was also staring down the barrel of like the one guy I know in this race is now riding away from me. Right. Um, there's a little bit of a dark moment there, but to your question about the hills, like, I was comforted that I could always see the top. I knew they were quite short relative to what I'm used to riding, and it was really a matter of, for me, there was maybe, I think, three times. **** - (): I ended up getting off on the last 25 percent of a climb or last 15%. Okay. Because I gauged that I could do it, but I felt like I was going to go into the red too much. And it felt prudent to just hop off real quick and walk. [00:39:32] - (): Justin Bowes: And that was, that was pretty late on though, right? [00:39:35] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. [00:39:36] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. It wasn't like mile 30 and you're like, okay, I'm going to start saving. **** - (): Yeah. [00:39:41] - (): Craig Dalton: Not at [00:39:41] - (): Justin Bowes: all. Not [00:39:42] - (): Craig Dalton: at [00:39:42] - (): Justin Bowes: all. Yeah. [00:39:43] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. So it was interesting. I was, I, there was a lot of mental gymnastics between mile 100 and one 48, which was the, the second checkpoint for us. Cause I had lost Doug. Um, it was starting to get hot. It was just. I talked to a few people and you probably mentioned the same thing to me. **** - (): Like you can't think of the totality of the 200 miles you have to do. You really just need to break it down into chunks. Yep. Right. So I started really thinking about, um, our crew chief, Phil, who was a godsend out there. He had such great. Support for us at the aid station. We had an easy up. He had everything imaginable. **** - (): I knew he had bottles on ice for me. So I jokingly referred to miles 100 to 1 48 as project Phil. [00:40:30] - (): Justin Bowes: Okay. [00:40:31] - (): Craig Dalton: And. Everything I did either was a positive effect towards Project Phil or a negative effect. So if I was, if I found a good wheel or I was riding well, I was like, okay, we're making progress, we're going to get to Phil. **** - (): And if I, fell off the pace or something, I was like, this is a serious blow to Project Phil. And I, it's funny. I started sort of naming a few of the characters that I would ride behind and, There is a guy, a guy I was calling the orange crush because he had an orange jersey. [00:40:59] - (): Justin Bowes: Okay. [00:41:00] - (): Craig Dalton: And every, he was like one of those arrow bar guys. **** - (): Right, right. Which was quite helpful. And then, at one point, um, at one point I got a really nice, um, Uh, I've started following a guy with a, with a beat the sun patch on his hip pack. [00:41:16] - (): Justin Bowes: Okay. [00:41:17] - (): Craig Dalton: And I was like, that's a good sign, actually. Like if this guy is, has clearly beat the sun in the past, this is probably a good sign. **** - (): So, got into a rhythm that mile 110. Or 112 water stop I'd forgotten about. And that was absolutely a godsend because, um, I need it. I just needed some relief and the volunteers there and everywhere were just phenomenal. So they poured a bunch of water over my head and just kind of cooled me down and filled me up and set me on my way. **** - (): And so I got to mile one 48 and my buddy Doug was sitting in the chair. With Phil and I was like, this is great. Like, I wasn't expecting to catch Doug again. Right. So it was, that was a nice sort of mental jump. And, he, he had run outta water, so he wasn't feeling that great, but he's like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna head, he'd been there a little bit, I don't know how long, but Phil had taken care of him, got his bike all tuned up, and um, he's like, I'm gonna head out, but I suspect you'll catch me. **** - (): And in my head, I didn't know whether that would be the case, but yeah, I ended up heading out of town and catching up with Doug, um, which was great to just know that I had someone to ride with. And he rebounded quite well for that last, um, the last 50 miles of the race. So we were very simpatico. [00:42:37] - (): Justin Bowes: Nice. Did, um, I didn't, I didn't ask you this, but, um, just talking about the aid stations. Did you have, did you give yourself like any treats, like something to look forward to in the aid stations or did you just keep it strictly business? I had a vision [00:42:51] - (): Craig Dalton: of a lot of treats. I asked, I asked, uh, Phil to get me some gummy bears. **** - (): Okay. Unfortunately, all the gummy bears melted in the sun and he, he did have everything. Like we had like sandwiches, he got a pizza from Casey's and I, I just, I felt like my nutrition was working. And so I was kind of like, besides some, um, Lay's potato chips, it's like, I'm just going to stick with the program. **** - (): I never rolled in feeling like super hungry or anything. So I was like, I'm doing something right. So why don't I just keep doing it? [00:43:28] - (): Justin Bowes: No, that's great. Yeah. I know, from other athletes that I've coached for the 200, they always, we'll have. I mean, yeah, the Casey's pizza is clutch. Like I think everybody knows, like if you're coming to the Midwest, um, you got to get a Casey's pizza in your aid station, um, or, a cheeseburger or, potato chips seem to be like, high on the list as well. **** - (): Yeah. That's, that tends to, uh, be a really fit, good favorite, just because, I mean, it's like the salt you want, the starch and the carbs and all of that goes down really easy. And then usually like a Mexican Coke to, to, to wash it down with. So how were your, um, timing wise, how long did you stop? [00:44:12] - (): Craig Dalton: Very little amount of time. I think my, my ride time was just under 13 hours, 30 and my total elapsed time was 14. [00:44:22] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. So two, two dedicated aid stations and two water. Yeah. And I stopped [00:44:28] - (): Craig Dalton: at both, I stopped at both aid stations. I honestly think at mile one 12 at that neutral aid station, when they were pouring water on me, that might've been longer than my checkpoint to stop [00:44:40] - (): Justin Bowes: looking at your file. **** - (): I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. [00:44:44] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. So, yeah, it was a bit crazy. Like, I just didn't, I, like, I know myself, like I know I just need to keep going. So I didn't, I sat down for a minute and, Phil was great. He was like there with lots of stuff, but I was like, let's just swap the bottles out. He put some ice down my back, he put my pack in the cooler, like, to get ice water on it. **** - (): And, uh, after a few things, lubing up the chain, et cetera, making sure the bike was all right. Yeah. It just felt like it's time to go. [00:45:12] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah, no, that's good. I, that's, definitely, um, a word of caution to, athletes, especially new to the 200 of like, unless you're in a bad state, in a bad way, uh, you want to minimize the amount of time you hang around in the aid station, just because your legs start to. **** - (): revolt a little bit and they don't want to cooperate, and so the, the shorter time you can, uh, the quicker you can get in and get out, um, with giving yourself enough time to resupply and not forget anything is always going to be better than just, standing around for, 10 plus minutes, John, John with everybody and things like that. **** - (): Cause if you don't need to, man, Yeah. A hundred percent. Get back after it. So. [00:46:01] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, at that second aid station mile one 48, I think Doug was a lot more conscious of the idea that we could beat the sun than I was. I think the last, the last 50 miles had been a little bit mentally hard on me. **** - (): I was not in a dark place by any means, but I'd kind of was like, this is what it is. Like I gotta, I'll pedal as far as I can pedal and as fast as I can pedal and it is what it is. But. He, he had never beat the sun before. And I think he saw it as a really great opportunity. And as we had talked about as my kind of, my number one goal was to finish. **** - (): Second goal was to finish healthy. And third goal was to beat the sun. Right. It was great to know it was out there. And the funny thing was my, my Wahoo was, it had 54 climbs as the listed number of climbs. And I believe by aid station two, by checkpoint two, we've done 52 of 54 climbs. [00:47:00] - (): Justin Bowes: Right, right. Yeah. [00:47:02] - (): Craig Dalton: Which is pretty, it's pretty crazy. So we've done like, close to 10, 000 feet of climbing already. And I think they maybe have listed it as 11. Anyway, negligible amount of climbing over the next 50 miles. So I was like, well, that's, that, that feels good to know that most of it's behind me. And, and, and everybody had said this, like getting to checkpoint two Was really the hardest part, right? **** - (): And you just need to ride back to Emporia. [00:47:25] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's always there's always going to be, a Joker station or, segment. Um, generally, it's like the Kohola, uh, Lake climb. Yeah. Um, and, For those who don't know, um, or didn't follow the weather or anything like that, we had pretty optimal conditions all day. **** - (): I mean, we started, um, cloud cover, cool, nice, favorable breeze, um, all of that. And, for us in the 100, it wasn't until we really got closer to Kohola Lake, I mean, it was like. After the aid station, which, we shared, um, there in council groves, um, the, the clouds were starting to thin out and you could, you see a little bit more of a shadow underneath you and everything like that. **** - (): Um, but it, you guys were in it a little longer, the heat, the sun and everything like that, but it still wasn't like in 2021 where it was just essentially a hairdryer. on your face, the entire day. Um, and so with the Kohola climb, that can always be a spoiler. Um, and I think I mentioned this to you on our call the other day. **** - (): It was like a lot of people, as soon as they get over that climb, you're roughly, inside the last 25 miles basically to, to the finish and. Yeah, your climbing's essentially done too and people like, oh, this is great and just like get on the gas and in a 10 mile span They're completely shattered and on the side of the road because they just completely underestimated You know, whether it be the previous 70 miles or the previous, 180 that you just did are in your legs and Any extra efforts can really put a Put you in the box really quickly. **** - (): And a lot of people's wheels fall off after that Cahola climb. Um, because they're like, Oh, we're done. Yeah. Yeah. But you're not done. You still got some mileage ahead of you. Yeah, [00:49:27] - (): Craig Dalton: exactly. I think we were, we were looking over our right shoulders at the sun and looking at it kind of starting to go down and we're like, we do need to keep going pretty efficiently [00:49:41] - (): Justin Bowes: to [00:49:41] - (): Craig Dalton: make it. **** - (): And, you go, you continue riding the dirt roads and then you go under the highway. And then you're at the university and you've got that final paved climb before the finish line. Yep. Um, and we're like, we've, we're like, we're going to do this. We're going to do this. [00:49:57] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. [00:49:58] - (): Craig Dalton: And I think we ended up finishing like 15 minutes to spare before the sunset. [00:50:03] - (): Justin Bowes: No, it's, it's, it's awesome. And I think, uh, to, to put it in context, um, this is the first year. That a lot of people were nervous about it because The start time had been pushed back, uh, to accommodate the new, uh, starting protocol with the, the pro men. Then 15 minutes later, the pro women, and then essentially a half an hour behind them, you all started. **** - (): So I mean, taking away 30 minutes doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're up against the sun actually setting on you, it, it, it comes quickly. Like you said, I mean, you had 15 ish minutes to, in your pocket, um, that could have easily gone one way or the other, um, quickly. So, yeah, [00:50:53] - (): Craig Dalton: yeah, you, you could, you could see to your point earlier about the aid stations, like you could have very easily burned 15 minutes sitting around on your ass, having a pizza, [00:51:03] - (): Justin Bowes: totally. **** - (): And I mean, and not 15 minutes at one, you could do, Seven here, eight there. And in, in the grand scheme of things in a 14 hour raise, what's seven minutes. Right. Well, add that up and all of a sudden you're, you're finishing in the dark. [00:51:21] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. So a hundred percent. So, yeah, I mean, I haven't finished. **** - (): Crossing the finish line was, was great. I mean, riding down commercial street with, um, with Doug was just fantastic. That's so cool. Have us, yeah, have us both meet our goals and the crowd were great. And we've got our names announced and, uh, Yeah. It just like, it wasn't lost on me the entirety of the experience. **** - (): The town was wonderful. It's it's, it's obviously a grand spectacle of the gravel cycling community. Right. So I think coming down that I was, I was generally genuinely emotional, just felt very fulfilled with my day and effort to have it conclude before sunset and, come down that finishing line shoot. **** - (): It just. It felt great. [00:52:10] - (): Justin Bowes: Oh, I bet. I mean, I, I did share this with you, uh, the other day. Um, not only did I have you, have you, uh, competing, but I had, uh, one other in the 200 and another one in the a hundred and as a coach, even though I was racing, I still have like, you know, The best I could compare it to is, being a father of three, it's just like, it's like you're looking after your kids, right? **** - (): You're nervous for them. Yeah. And, um, and so after I got done and cleaned up and went about the rest of my day on, on, on Saturday and everything like that, now I turn my I turned my browser to the race results to see, how everybody's faring out there and projected times and, and things like that. **** - (): And when I, when I popped open my laptop and, and pulled up the results and you were still on a course, obviously, but, uh, just seeing your splits come in and everything, I was just like. Damn right, like, look at this guy go, like, he's, he's actually doing this and, um, we can talk about it all the time, as coaches of like, I know that I was giving you the proper training, and you were executing the training and things like that. **** - (): But you never, I mean, there's so many variables that can show up on race day and, Mechanically, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, you had a clean race mechanically, right? Yeah, [00:53:30] - (): Craig Dalton: totally clean. Yeah. [00:53:31] - (): Justin Bowes: And for that to happen just by itself is amazing. And then on top of that, you hit your nutrition and hydration and everything just, it worked, and so, um, with, with a race like unbound, You know that something's going to go wrong, somewhere, some way, something's going to happen. And it's, it's, it's such a rarity to have a clean run, especially on your first time, not knowing what to expect and, and all of that. Um, but for you to be so successful with that, um, And it was just, yeah, as your coach and now as your friend, um, I'm just super excited for you. **** - (): I was just, I was over the moon, um, excited to see your finishing time and, and, uh, to, to just hear, hear it in your voice and, and at first it was, it was just in text messages back and forth, but just, getting the tone of like, Your satisfaction with everything was just, it's, it's huge. And yeah, it was awesome to, to be a small part of that. [00:54:37] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, no, it means a lot. It's been, it's been a great journey working together. It's been very fun. I, I haven't had proper coaching in ages. Um, and I recommend it. I recommend you, I recommend fast cat. It was just, it was enjoyable to just Go through a process, see improvement, uh, along the way, build confidence to do something that I'd never done before. **** - (): And frankly, that I was, a bit scared of this whole journey started because I wanted to do something that scared me. Um, and, and to come out the other side of it, just, I'm very grateful for the entire experience, the last six months [00:55:18] - (): Justin Bowes: Oh man, Craig, it's, it, again, it's been a privilege and Just exciting to, to, to see how you developed and just your professionalism with, with regards to your training and, accepting some new guy that you've never met before, be like in charge of this craziness. **** - (): Um, and, um, yeah, it just, you, you didn't flinch. Um, I, I appreciate you being cautiously. Questioning about hate, why are we doing it this way? Why, where are we going? Um, why would you have me do this instead of that? Um, I mean that, it wasn't like I ever thought, Oh, he's questioning my ability or anything like that. **** - (): He just generally wants to know why we're doing the training that we're doing. And, um, and I appreciate that. Like I love, when, when, when my athletes are like engaged. To the point that they want to know, I mean, it's, it's nice to when you just blindly follow the plan, but, when, when you're so engaged and you're so invested in the outcome of this goal that you've set for yourself and you're like, Hey, I just want to know what's going on and. **** - (): It, it just, it tells me again, it's just another little, box to check, with, with my coaching hat on of like this, this athlete is he, he's invested, like he cares and he wants to do what needs to be done to, to, to succeed at this goal. And that makes a big difference on my end, um, because then I know, yeah, these are going to be hard workouts and they're going to put them in the box a couple times. **** - (): But because he wants it and he's, he's, he's wanting to follow the plan, um, and be consistent with it, he's going to do really well. And, um, yeah, it showed. So, um, one, one final question. If I can, um, and I, I touched on it on our call the other day is like on a scale one to 10, how would you rate this overall experience from training to the event to your, your overall experience with, with Unbound here? [00:57:34] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, I said it last week and I think I'll stick to it. It's a 10 out of 10 for me. Okay. And. Yeah, the only, I hesitated a second there, Justin, because I might've knocked it down to a 9. 5 because I, again, like I watched someone else's video and I was like, Maybe I could have pushed a little harder early on, but it's in the grand scheme of things, neither here nor there. **** - (): Like, I think again, like the, I learned a lot along the way. It was fascinating, working with a power meter, thanks to SRM, uh, using their power meter pedals. It was interesting to me going carb journey and trying to figure out, would that work for me? Along the way, everything was, great on the training. **** - (): Like we had to cram a little bit, but that was all good. The family was super supportive of it. And then, getting to Emporia and having that bluebird of a day, um, was something, that it couldn't have counted on at all in terms of the weather. The, the mileage came easy and fast. The technical elements of it were no issue for me whatsoever. **** - (): And I felt like I had the right bike to take a few hits harder than I might have wanted to, to keep the pace going, but never had any issues there. And then to, to ride with my buddy Doug and have the experience with the, the whole crew. We had a number of guys doing the hundred and one guy doing the three 50. **** - (): Great to make some new friends out there within the houses we were staying at. And the overall experience, yeah. 10 out of 10. [00:59:06] - (): Justin Bowes: Nice. Okay, good. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, yeah. When, when you shared that with me the other day, um, yeah, I got off our call and I was just like, Um, I was just like, all right, I, I, it just, it's, it's, it's so rewarding, um, to see an athlete just like check all those boxes and, feel good about, what they accomplished. **** - (): Um, because yeah, I can put together the plan for you. Um, but it's ultimately all on your shoulders to execute. Yeah. Take care of all this, the variables outside of the training plan that is, you know, recovering responsibly, being, diligent to, the consistency of, following the plan and all those little things that I can't, I can't even like begin to. **** - (): Yeah. Help you with, that's just your wife, and so, um, again, Greg. Congratulations. It's, it's so cool to, to see and, and have a time like that. Um, I'll, I'll give the listeners, a little, uh, number crunch here real quick. You're right. I mean, you were just in under, um, 1330 at 1327 for 203 miles. **** - (): Um, TSS, obviously off the charts with 645, um, that's, to be expected for sure. Um, average speed, I mean, just over 15 miles an hour for the 200 miles over that type of terrain is fantastic. Um, your normalized power, um, was so good. Um, Yeah, it was just the only thing that we didn't capture was heart rate. **** - (): Um, [01:00:48] - (): Craig Dalton: yeah, I failed to talk about that. I was so mad for so long that my strap wasn't working. [01:00:54] - (): Justin Bowes: It's the worst when it's on and there's just nothing you can do about it. I kept [01:00:59] - (): Craig Dalton: thinking like by the first aid station, I would take everything off and recover it, which I did. And then it still didn't work. Yeah. **** - (): And like halfway through. The next segment, I just like ripped it off my body and shoved it in my pocket. [01:01:12] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. I mean, just, I mean, that's, that's one like little nitpick on my end and sense of like, it would just been really interesting to see, um, the correlation between your power and the heart rate and where, I mean, it ultimately, it was always going to drop off and start to decouple, but you know where that was for you. **** - (): Um, because then, for me, I can go back to the training and say, okay, yeah, this is, this is white. We went as far as we did and, and all of that. So, oh yeah, yeah. I mean, so there's, there was one less than ideal thing, pop up out of here and it was stupid heart rate monitor. So. [01:01:51] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. **** - (): In the grand scheme of things. [01:01:53] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. [01:01:54] - (): Craig Dalton: Justin, thanks so much for coming back on board and helping me recount this, uh, this event or this experience that's going to be in my memory for a long time. [01:02:02] - (): Justin Bowes: With that, is there an Unbound in your future again or too soon? [01:02:07] - (): Craig Dalton: It's a little too soon. And I think I mentioned to you that last week, it's hard to imagine having a better day out there. **** - (): Then, then I had all things considered and with so many great events out there that I would love to do in time away from the family. I don't, I don't know if unbound would be it again. [01:02:26] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah, no, that's fair. That's fair. [01:02:27] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, [01:02:28] - (): Justin Bowes: no, I mean, it's hard to go out. And, as, as good as you did. And like you said, I mean, uh, another experience would it, taint this one, and in the sense of like, next year is like, flats on flats on flats or, body shuts down or, whatever the case may be, or the worst weather ever. **** - (): I mean, so yeah, go, go out on top. [01:02:50] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. I'm going out on top, I think on the 200. For me, it's either like. Go shorter and actually like, see what it's like to race an event. Cause I don't, the 200 miler, like it's hard to consider it a race for me. It was really about managing my way across the finish line as efficiently as possible. **** - (): Or going the other way, which has always attracted me, which is like the bike packing. route and, trying some of the real long distance stuff longer than 200 miles. Sure. [01:03:18] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. The, the 350, the XL crew, that is, that's next level, man. Yeah. I, I, I always, I always like tease myself, like, that would be so cool just like to push your limits. **** - (): Um, And, and, and see what that's like, um, for that distance and everything. But then reality kind of sets in on me and like, you, you're not going to do that. So I'll stick with my hundred. I love my hundred distance. [01:03:44] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like there is like an overnight riding experience that I need to have as that next unchecked box. I've sure I've done like the team racing 24 hours, but I've never done. Sort of a self supported overnight. [01:03:59] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. Yeah. [01:03:59] - (): Craig Dalton: Straight through. So I am, I am curious about that. Why don't we leave it at that? **** - (): That'll be a mystery. And if, if, and when I decide to do something crazy like that, we'll chat more about it. [01:04:09] - (): Justin Bowes: Heck yeah. Love that. [01:04:12] - (): Craig Dalton: Good to talk to you, Justin. [01:04:13] - (): Justin Bowes: Craig, it was great seeing you and congrats again, man. It's awesome. [01:04:17] - (): Craig Dalton: Thank you.      

Visual Builder Studio requires its data sources to connect to the webpage it produces using REST calls. Therefore, the data source has to provide a REST interface. A simple, easy, secure, and free way to do that is with Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS).   In this episode, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham chat with Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald about what ORDS can do, how to easily set it up, how to work with it, and how to use it within Visual Builder Studio.   Develop Fusion Applications Using Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/develop-fusion-applications-using-visual-builder-studio/122614/   Build Visual Applications Using Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/build-visual-applications-using-oracle-visual-builder-studio/110035/   Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/   X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu   Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode.   --------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript:   00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26   Nikita: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor with Oracle University, and with me is Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs.   Lois: Hi there! In our last episode, we took a look at model-based development tools, their start as CASE tools, what they morphed into, and how they're currently used in Oracle software development. We're wrapping up the season with this episode today, which will be about how to access Oracle database data through a REST interface created and managed by Oracle REST Data Services, or ORDS, and how to access this data in Visual Builder Studio.   01:03 Nikita: Being able to access Oracle database data through a REST interface over the web is highly useful, but sometimes it can be complicated to create that interface in a programming language. Joe Greenwald, our Senior OCI Learning Solutions Architect and Principal Instructor is back with us one last time this season to tell us more about ORDS, and how it makes it much simpler and easier for us to REST-enable our database for use in tools like Visual Builder Studio. Hi Joe! Tell us a little about what Visual Builder Studio is and why we must REST-enable our data for VBS to be able to use it.   01:40 Joe: Hi Niki, hi Lois! Ok, so, Visual Builder Studio is Oracle's low-code software development and project asset management product for creating graphical webpage front-ends for web applications. It's the tool of choice for designing, building, and implementing all of Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications and is being used by literally tens of thousands of engineers at Oracle now to bring the next generation of Fusion Applications to our customers and the market. It's based on standards like HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. It's highly performant and combined with the Redwood graphical design system and components that we talked about previously, delivers a world-class experience for users. One thing about Visual Builder Studio though: it only works with data sources that have a REST interface. This is unusual. I like to think I've worked with every software development tool that Oracle's created since I joined Oracle in 1992, including some unreleased ones, and all of them allowed you to talk to the database directly. This is the first time that we've released a tool that I know of where we don't do that. Now at first, I was a little put off and wondered how's it going to do this and how much work I would have to do to create a REST interface for some simple tables in the Oracle database. Like, here's one more thing I must do just to create a page that displays data from the database. As it turns out, it's a wise design decision on the part of the designers. It simplifies the data access parts of Visual Builder Studio and makes the data access model common across the different data sources. And, thanks to ORDS, REST-enabling data in Oracle database couldn't be easier! 03:13 Lois: That's cool. We don't want to focus too much on Visual Builder Studio today. We have free courses that teach you how to create service connections to REST services to access the data and all of that. What we actually want to talk with you about is working with Oracle REST Data Service. How easy is it to work with Oracle REST Data Service to add REST support, what we call REST-enable your Oracle Database, and why it is important?  Nikita: Yeah, I could use a bit of a refresher on REST myself. Could you describe what REST is, how it works for both the client and server, and what ORDS is doing for us? 03:50 Joe: Sure. So, REST is a way to make a request to a server for a resource using the HTTP web protocol from a client, like your browser, to a web server, which hands off the request to code that handles the request and sends the response back to your client/browser, which then uses it, displays or whatever. So, you can see we have two parts. We have the client, which makes the request, and the server, which handles the request and figures out what the response should be (static, dynamic, or a combination of both) and sends that back to the client. For example, a visual application built with Visual Builder Studio acts as a client making the request, just as your browser makes a request. It's really just a web app built with HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, and the JavaScript makes a request to the server on your behalf. Let's say you wish to access your student record within Oracle University. And now, this is a contrived example and it won't actually work, but it's good for illustrative purposes.  Oracle University, let's say, publishes the URL for your student data as something like https://oracle.com/oracleuniversity/student/{studentnumber} you put in some kind of number, like the number 23, and if you enter that into your browser address bar and press Enter, then your browser, on your behalf, sends a GET request—what we call an HTTP GET operation—to the web server. When the web server receives the request, it will somehow read the record for student 23, format a response, and send the response back to the client. 05:16 Joe: That's a GET or a READ request. Now, what if you are creating a new student? Well, you fill out a form on the webpage and you click the Submit button. And it sends a POST request, which tells the server to create a new record in its storage mechanism, most likely a database of some form. If you do an update, you change certain fields on the webpage and click the Submit button and this time, an update request is made. If you wanted to delete the record, you'd find the record you want to delete and press the Submit button, and this time a delete request is made. This is the general idea, though there are different ways to do creates and updates that are really irrelevant here. Those requests to the server I mentioned are called HTTP operations and there are several of them. But the four most popular are GET to retrieve data, POST to create a new record on the server, PUT to update a record, and DELETE to remove a record.  On the client side, we just need to specify where the record is that we want to retrieve—that's the oracle.com/oracleuniversity/student part of the URL and an identifying value, which makes it unique. So, when I do a GET request on customer or student 23, I'm going to get back a representation of the student data that exists in the student database for a student with ID 23. There should not be more than one of these or that would indicate an error. The response typically comes back in a format of a key:value pair called JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), but it could also be in a Text format, HTML, Excel, PDF, or whatever the server implements and is requested.  06:42 Nikita: OK great! That's on the client side making the request. But what's happening on the server side? Do I need to worry about that if I'm the client? Joe: No, that's the great part. As a client, I don't know, and frankly I'd rather not know what the server's doing or how it does it. I don't want to be dependent on the server implementation at all. I simply want to make a request and the server handles the request and sends a response. Now, just a word about what's on the server. Some data on the server is static like a PDF file or an image or an audio file, for example, and sometimes you'll see that in the URL the file type as an extension, like .pdf, and you get back a PDF file that your browser displays or that you can download to your machine. But with dynamic data, like student data coming out of a database based on the student number, a query is made against a database. The database responds with the data, and that's formatted into some type of data format—typically JSON—and sent back to the client, which then does something with it, like displaying it on a webpage. So, as we can see, the client is fairly simple in the sense that it makes a request, receives the data response, and displays it or does something with it. And that's one of the reasons why the choice to use REST and only REST in Visual Builder Studio is such a wise one. 07:54 Joe: Regardless of the different data sources or the different server implementations or how the data is stored on the server, or any of that, Visual Builder Studio doesn't know and doesn't care. What it sees is the REST request it sends and the response it gets back and then it deals with the response data regardless of how it's implemented on the server. I mentioned the server sends back a representation of the resource, in this case, for example, the student record. That's really where the abbreviation REST comes from: REpresentational State Transformation, which is a long way of saying, bring me back a representation of the resource—the thing—that I'm requesting. Now, of course, the server is a little more complex. On the server side, we would need software that is going to take the request from the web server using some programming language like Java, C#, C++, Python, or maybe even JavaScript in a Node.js application. You have a program that receives a request from the web server, executes the request (typically by connecting to the database if it's a database call), makes the request, receives a data response from the database, formats that into some form, and passes it back to the web server, which then sends it back to the client that requested it. 09:01 Lois: Ok… I think I see. I'm guessing that ORDS gets involved somehow between the client and the server. Joe: Yes, exactly. We can see that the implementation on the server side is where the complexity is. For example, if I implement a student management service in Java, I have to write a bunch of Java code, a lot of which is boilerplate, housekeeping, boring code. For simple database access, it's tedious to have to do this over and over, and if the database changes, it can be even more tedious to maintain that code to handle simple to moderately complex requests. Writing and maintaining software code to just read and write data from the database to pass to a client for a web request is cool the very first time you do it and then gets boring very quickly and it's prone to errors because it's so manual. So, it would be nice if we had a piece of software that could handle the tedious, boring, manual bits of this service. It would receive the request that our client, the browser or Visual Builder Studio for example, is sending, take that request, execute the request against the database for us, receive the response from the database, and then format it for us and send it back to us, without a developer having to write custom code on the server side. And that is what Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) does. 10:13 Joe: ORDS contains a lightweight web server based on the Jetty web server that receives the request from the client, like a browser or Visual Builder Studio or whatever, in the form of a URL, parses the request, generates a query or an update, or an insert or delete, depending on the nature of the HTTP operation sent or requested, and sends it to the database on our behalf. The database executes the request from ORDS, sends back a response to ORDS, and ORDS formats the response for us in the JSON and sends it back to our client. In nutshell, that's it. 10:45 Lois: So ORDS does all that? And it's free? How does it work? Uhm, remember I'm not as technical as you are. Joe: Of course. ORDS is free. It's a lightweight, highly performant Java app that can run in many different modes, from stand-alone on a server to embedded in an application server like WebLogic, to running in the Oracle Cloud with the Oracle Autonomous Database (ADB). When you REST-enable your tables, your web requests are intercepted by ORDS running in ADB. It's optimized for the purpose of handling web requests, connecting to the Oracle database, and sending back formatted responses as JSON. It can also handle more complex requests as well in the form of queries with special parameters.  So, you can see what ORDS does for us. It handles the request coming from the client, which could be a browser or Visual Builder Studio or APEX or whatever client—pretty much any client today can make an HTTP call—it handles the call, parses the request, makes the request to the server on our behalf, and of course security is built-in and all of that, and so we don't get to data we're not supposed to see. It receives a response from the database, formats it into the JSON key:value pair format, and sends it back to our client. 12:00 Are you planning to become an Oracle Certified Professional this year? Whether you're a seasoned IT pro or just starting your career, getting certified can give you a significant boost. And don't worry, we've got your back. Join us at one of our cert prep live events in the Oracle University Learning Community. You'll get insider tips from seasoned experts and learn from other professionals' experiences. Plus, once you've earned your certification, you'll become part of our exclusive forum for Oracle-certified users. So, what are you waiting for? Head over to mylearn.oracle.com and create an account to jump-start your journey towards certification today! 12:43 Nikita: Welcome back. So, Joe, then the next question is, what do we do to REST-enable our database? Does that only work for ADB? Joe: This can be done in a couple of different ways. It can be done implicitly, called AutoREST, or explicitly. AutoREST is very convenient. In the case of an ADB database, you log in as the user who owns the structures, select your tables, views, packages, procedures, or functions that you want to REST-enable. Choose REST and then Enable from the menu for the table, view, stored package, procedure, or function and a URL is generated using your POST, GET, PUT, and DELETE for the standard database create, retrieve, update, delete operations. And it's not just for ADB. You can do this in SQL Developer Desktop as well. Then, when you invoke the URL for the service, if you include just the name of the resource, like students, you get the entire collection back. If you add an ID at the end of the URL, like student/23, you get back the data for that specific student back, or whatever the structure is. You can add more complex filter parameters as well. And that's it! Very easy. And, of course, you can apply appropriate security and ORDS enforces it.  But you also can create custom code to handle more complex requests.  13:53 Lois: Joe, what if there's custom logic or processing that you want to do when the REST call comes in and you need to write custom code to handle it? Joe: Remember, I said on the server side, we use custom code to retrieve data as well as apply business rules, validations, edits, whatever needs to be done to appropriately handle the REST call. So it's a great question, Lois. When using ORDS, you can write a REST service handler in PL/SQL and SQL, just like if you were writing a stored procedure or a function or a package in the database, which is exactly what you're doing. ORDS exposes your PL/SQL code wrapped in a REST interface with, of course, the necessary security. And since it's PL/SQL, it runs in the database, so it's highly performant, fast, and uses code you're likely already familiar with or maybe already have. Your REST service handler can call existing PL/SQL packages, procedures, and functions. For example, if you created packages with stored procedures and functions that wrap access to your database tables and views, you can REST-enable those stored procedures, functions, and packages, and call them over the web. And maintain the package access you already created. I do want to point out that the recommended way to access your tables and views is through packages, stored procedures, and functions. While you can expose your tables and views directly to REST, should you really do that? In practice, it's generally not a recommended way to do it. Do you want to expose your data in tables and views directly through a REST interface? Ideally, no, access should be through a PL/SQL wrapper, same as it's—hopefully—done today for your client-server applications. 15:26 Nikita: I understand it's easy to generate a simple REST interface for tables and so on to do basic create, retrieve, update, and delete operations. But what's required to create custom code to handle more complex business operations?  Joe: The process to create your own custom handlers is a little bit more involved as you would expect. It uses your skills as a PL/SQL programmer, while hiding the details of the REST implementation to let you focus on the logic and processing. Mechanically, you'd begin by creating a module that has a URL associated with it. So, for example, you would create a URL like https://oracle.com/oracleuniversity/studentregistry. Then, within that module, you create a template that names the specific resource—or thing—that you want to work with. For example, student, or course, or registration. 16:15 Joe: Then you create the handler for it. You have a handler to do the read, another handler for the insert, another handler for an update, another handler for a delete, and even possibly multiple handlers for more complex APIs based on your needs and the parameters being passed in.  You can create complex URLs with multiple parameters for passing needed information into the PL/SQL procedure, which is going to do the actual programming work for you. There are predefined implicit variables about the message itself that you can use, as well as all the parameters from the URL itself. Now, this is all done in a nice developer interface on the web if you're using SQL Developer Web with ADB or in SQL Developer for the desktop. Either one can do this because under the covers, ORDS is generating and executing the PL/SQL calls necessary to create and expose your web services. It's very easy to work with and test immediately. 17:06 Lois: Joe, how much REST knowledge do I need to use ORDS properly to create REST services? Joe: Well, you should have some basic knowledge of REST, HTTP operations, request and response messages, and JSON, since this is the data format ORDS produces. The developer interface is really not designed for somebody who knows nothing about REST at all; it's not designed to take them step-by-step through everything that needs to be done. It's not wizard-based. Rather, it's an efficient, minimal interface that can be used quickly and easily by someone who has at least some experience building REST services. But, if you have a little knowledge and you understand how REST works and how a REST interface is used and you understand PL/SQL and SQL, you could do quite a lot with only minimal knowledge. It's easy to get started and it's fun to see your data start appearing in webpages formatted for you, with very little or even no code at all as in the case of AutoREST enabling. And ORDS is free and comes as part of the database in ADB as SQL Developer Web and SQL Developer Desktop, both of which are free as well. And SQL Developer Web and SQL Developer Desktop both have a data modeler built into them so you can model your database tables, columns, and keys, and generate and execute the code necessary to create the structures immediately, and they can create graphical models of your database to aid in understanding and communication. Now, while this is not required, modeling your database structures before you build them is most definitely a best practice. 18:29 Nikita: Ok, so now that I have my REST-enabled database tables and all, how do I use them in VBS Designer? Joe: In Visual Builder Studio Designer, you define a service connection by its endpoint and paste the URL for the REST-enabled resource into the wizard, and it generates everything for you by introspecting the REST service. You can test it, see the data shape of the response, and see data returned. You access your REST-enabled data from your database from Visual Builder Studio Designer and use it to populate lists, tables, and forms using the quick start wizards built in. I'll also mention that ORDS provides other capabilities in addition to handling REST calls for the database tables and views. It also exposes over 500 different endpoints for managing your Oracle Database, things like Pluggable Database Management (PDBs), Data Pump, Data Dictionary, Performance, and Monitoring. It's very easy to use and get started with. A great place to start is to create a free, autonomous database in Oracle Cloud, start it up, and then access the database actions. You can start creating tables, columns, and keys, and loading data, or you can load your own scripts, if you've got them, to produce the tables and columns and load them. You can upload the script and run it and it will create your tables and other needed structures. You can then REST-enable them by selecting simple menu options. It's a lot of fun and easy to get started with. 19:47 Lois: So much good stuff today. Thank you, Joe, for being with us today and in the past few weeks and sharing your knowledge with us. Nikita: Yeah, it's been so nice to have you around. Joe: Thank you both! It's been great being here with you. 19:59 Lois: And remember, our Visual Builder courses, Develop Visual Applications with VBS and Develop Fusion Apps with VBS, both show you how to work with a third-party REST service. And our data modeling and design course teaches the fundamentals of data modeling. You can access all these of courses, for free, on mylearn.oracle.com. Join us next week for another episode of the Oracle University Podcast. Until then, I'm Lois Houston… Nikita: And Nikita Abraham signing off! 20:30 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.

Co-hosts Toben Racicot (English Language and Literature) and Sid Heeg (Environment) interview Computing and Software PhD candidate Sasha Soraine (McMaster University) about her experiences with games and games research. Sasha is part of the interdisciplinary Gaming Scalability Environment (G-ScalE) Lab at McMaster. Fun fact, G-ScalE was a part of the IMMERSe network that helped establish the GI! For our 51st episode, Sasha goes in-depth about the concept of "mechanically achievable gameplay" and how it could help the game industry. This concept systemically evaluates if the target demographic will be able to play the game that is being developed. Sasha explains, “If we are building a game that we know we're going to target kids eight to nine [years old] or adults fifty to sixty [years old], are we, in our design thinking, in our design stage, when we're planning out the games, is that actually something they can even engage with or is it something that, in our design, is so far out of the realm of what they can do?" In addition, Sasha shares her experiences from the G-ScalE lab and why she sought out a more interdisciplinary style of research. Links IMMERSe Grant Game Scalability Lab Game Scalability Lab – Sasha Soraine Sasha Soraine's Website Bio  Sasha Soraine is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Computing and Software at McMaster University. Her research interests focus on understanding the player-game relationship through the intersections of game design and human-computer interactions. Her work with the G-ScalE lab focuses on understanding player experiences through the cognitive and motor requirements of common gameplay challenges. The core argument of her doctoral work is published in “Mechanical Experiences, Competency Profiles, and Jutsu” in the Journal of Games, Self, and Society. Her recent book chapter collaboration, “Pandemic Gaming and Wholesome Philosophy: How New Players Reimaged Gaming Practices” in Gaming and Gamers in Times of Pandemic, explores how gaming identities and practices have changed over the pandemic. When she's not researching games, Sasha enjoys playing a variety of video games, board games, and tabletop roleplaying games.

Of all the parts of this enjoyable conversation with Seth Zeren, now of Providence, RI, the part I liked the most was this quote:The worst fight is with your allies that betray you.The quote, which is mostly about perception, says a lot about people who are frequently in heated agreement with each other, but find themselves disagreeing on something that's very minor in the big picture. We discuss this as we discuss his post called, “When New Urbanists and YIMBYs fight.”Seth has a great Substack, talking about all the overlap in his interests from city planning to development and more. His path and his passion are impressive. From his early days working in local government, to now the cold, hard reality of making development projects work. And what's next? Perhaps some place management, perhaps some housing policy advocacy, perhaps just more really interesting redevelopment projects.Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin's Substack page.Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you'd like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.Intro: “Why Be Friends”Outro: “Fairweather Friend”Transcript:Kevin (00:01.269)Welcome back to the Messy City podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg. I'm excited today to have Seth Zarin here with me on the podcast. Seth and I have met in the past and corresponded a little bit. Seth has a sub stack that I definitely recommend called Build the Next Right Thing. And he's in Providence, Rhode Island, which is actually, I think, one of the sort of most underratedsmaller cities in the country. I've always really liked Providence, enjoyed it. So Seth, welcome to the podcast. I know we're going to have a lot of good things to talk about. We're going talk some housing and some other stuff, but glad to have you on so we can do this.Seth Zeren (00:43.574)Thanks Kevin, it's nice to be here.Kevin (00:46.261)I think, you know, Seth, I want to kind of start by talking about you're another guy who has a really interesting path and background into becoming into the development world, which is what you're doing now, but certainly not at all where you started. And I wonder if you could kind of walk people through your professional background and then even like why you wanted to do a sub stack.in the first place, as some of us silly people do to put thoughts out in the world.Seth Zeren (01:19.862)Yeah, absolutely. I usually introduce myself when I meet people by saying that I'm a former climate scientist, recovering city planner, turned real estate developer. I usually get a laugh on recovering. Much like people who have all sorts of addiction issues, city planning is something that you always kind of in the back of your head, always kind of want to work on, but can be really challenging.Kevin (01:35.381)Ha ha ha.Seth Zeren (01:48.918)I'm actually from California. I grew up in the San Francisco suburbs, south of the city in Silicon Valley, basically. And by the time I graduated high school, it was quite clear that I would never be able to afford to live there. At that point, houses were selling for about a million dollars for a little ranch. Now it's about $3 million. And so by the time I left for college, I sort of knew that the housing situation there had been a little bit of a mess.broken so much that it was really unlikely that I would be able to find a good quality of life there for myself at that time. In college, I ended up studying geology and climate science. So I was a geology major, geosciences major, and I narrowly averted the PhD. I dodged it, fortunately, and I found myself really becoming interested after college. I went and lived in South Korea for a year and I taught English there. AndIt was such a different experience than growing up in an American suburb or in a small town where I went to college. And it really got me thinking a lot. And when I came back to the U S and I went and worked at a boarding school while I was figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. And I started to read about cities and urbanism and architecture. And I realized that, Oh, actually at the time I thought I wanted to go to school and do architecture, but I was really intimidated by portfolio and drawing. And I had, I was a scientist. I mean, I could do data.I understood geology, but, um, so I was really intimidated by that. I ended up going to an environmental management program at Yale where I could kind of moonlight in law and architecture and business. And so that was kind of my entree. And I discovered I really liked zoning at the time. Uh, and I like to say like, I like board games and zoning is basically just the biggest board game imaginable. It's a huge map, bunch of colored spaces and a really long rule book, which was totally my jam. And.Kevin (03:38.485)Yeah. Yeah.Seth Zeren (03:46.038)So I was a zoning, big zoning nerd. I interned with the planning department, but you know, in between the two years of graduate school and then got a job as a zoning official after graduate school for Newton, Massachusetts, which is kind of that wealthy first ring suburb outside of Boston where the doctors and professors go to have children. And, uh, I was there for about three years before I kind of realized this was not the place for me. I wanted to do stuff. I wanted to shake things up and.One of the dynamics you'll encounter when you find a sort of a wealthy sort of trophy suburb, right, is that people buy there because they like what it is. Right. So the political dynamic in a place like Newton, like many wealthy suburbs around many cities in America is people are buying a particular place and they want it to stay that way. That's what they bought. And so there's a real change aversion there, which was just a bad fit for someone in their twenties, whose master's degree and wants to get stuff done. And.I had also at the time had the opportunity to work with a bunch of developers. And this was coming out of the financial crisis. So there wasn't a lot happening right away, but slowly, slowly things started to get back in gear. And after about three or four years there, I decided I was going to jump ship from the, from the planning side and eventually found myself working at a development shop as a development manager, kind of coming in to do the permitting work. Right. So I just basically switched sides. I was going to go do permitting for the developer.moving complex projects through design review and master plan approval and stuff like that. And I did that for my sort of early apprenticeship for about three or four years. And got to the point where, you know, I got married, we thought about buying a house and realized Boston was also too expensive. So we started considering other places and Providence was nearby. We'd visited, we had friends here. And at the time, certainly it was massively more affordable than the Boston Cambridge area.So we moved down here about eight, maybe nine years ago, about. And so I was working as a development manager, you know, for a larger firm. And then when I came down here, I was still working remotely, but I connected with some local developers and eventually joined a local firm, Armory Management Company, which is a 35 year old, almost 40 year old partnership now that has done historic rehab.Seth Zeren (06:09.782)Main Street revitalization ground up in field development and came on board here, you know, also as a development manager and kind of worked my way up. Now I'm a partner and working on kind of the future of the firm and future of development in the Providence area. So that's kind of my, my origin story. It's one path. I haven't met a lot of other people who've come through the planner path into development. I would say that I was one of those people that you probably remember this, Kevin, you know, whatever eight, nine, 10 years ago at CNU.There was this whole conversation about why are you working for shitty developers? You know, to architects, planners, engineers, go be your own. And I took that very much to heart and was trying to find a way to do it. And I've kind of managed to find a way to do it, come through that.Kevin (06:54.709)Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have met a few other folks who kind of started in the planning route and then ended up in development. But yeah, you're right. There's not too many. I mean, one thing I'm curious about, Seth, so like I'm a Midwestern or so. I don't have that experience of growing up someplace and then realizing like I'm never going to be able to come back. I mean, so a lot of Midwesterners like myself leave at some point.And then often we find our way back home, but it's like, and there may, there's lots of reasons why people do the things, but there's never seems to be this like logistical issue that says, well, I'm just not going to be able to afford to come back where I grew up. What, what's that? And what's that like to at some point have this realization in the place you grew up in, which you probably have some really fond feelings and memories for that you just, you weren't going to be able to make it back or you weren't going to be able to afford to.make it back. That must be a strange feeling.Seth Zeren (07:55.414)It is, and I will say it becomes a lot stranger when you have your own kids, which I have now. I have two young children and we go back to California, you know, once maybe twice a year visit my parents who are still in the house I grew up in. And you know that neighborhood that I grew up in, you know, hasn't built. More than a couple net new homes in the last 50 years, right? Homes get torn down and they get replaced by bigger homes, but.Kevin (08:00.501)Yeah, sure.Seth Zeren (08:24.246)There's no net additional homes. But my parents raised three kids in that house who all have their own households. My parents are still in that house. So sort of mechanically, if you have a neighborhood that doesn't add any homes, you're essentially, but you have, but you have children, those children have to leave, right? Mechanically, right? And if you then multiply that across an entire region, well, then they have to leave the whole region, which is like why people have to leave California. And I, so I have a very,like complicated relationship with it. It's like, obviously, it's my home, it has like a smell and weather and just like the culture that is what I grew up with. It's it's I have nostalgia for that. But I also go whenever I go back there, I'm like, this place makes me crazy. Because it's not like you couldn't build more buildings, you know, you couldn't, it's not like the soil can't support more buildings, right? There's no physical limitation, really. It's the self imposed limitation. And then when you go back, especially,after the last 20 years or so, and you look, you know, here's a region in the world that is the current sort of nexus of tremendous wealth accumulation, right, the Bay Area. And what did we get for it? Right, we got kind of mediocre drive it strip malls, and the, you know, single family houses that go for three and a half million dollars to $5 million. You know, it's similar times in the world, we got, you know,London, Paris, New York, Chicago, Shanghai, Tokyo, like these metropolitan areas were built and there's this tremendous physical capital that's created by economic growth. But in the Bay Area, it's, it's, it's, it's, so it's kind of depressing for me. I feel like it's helpful to go back as a, as like a cautionary tale, you know, it's, it's a, it's a practice, you know, you have to go to the meditation retreat and struggle. And that's a little bit like what it is for me. Um,So you would ask why I write and so I'm a full -time developer. I run, you know, commercial development, residential development, run commercial leasing, a lot of architecture design permitting, you know, I would say, you know, there's a lot of different backgrounds. One can bring into the development world and all of them come with different strengths. Uh, being the planner background gives me a lot of facility with permitting. And so zoning is an area where we're really effective zoning historic.Seth Zeren (10:50.74)neighborhood relationships, all that kind of stuff. And then finding value in buildings that other people don't see because we look around at what other people are doing in other parts of the country and we're able to import those ideas and try things out. Other people have different advantages that they bring. The reason I write is probably like you, I've got like some thoughts in my head that I have to get out. And, you know, development is a great practical.you know, craft practice, you know, and it's, I mentioned, I think earlier apprenticeship, like there are a few schools that teach development, real estate development, kinda, but mostly they teach what we think of institutional development. So if you want to go build a skyscraper, go to MIT or Columbia. Fine.Kevin (11:37.333)Yeah, MIT's got those great courses and everything else that, yeah.Seth Zeren (11:39.51)Yeah, and like, totally fair. Like, that's a reason that's a thing that makes sense in the world, but it's not going to help you, you know, renovate a triple decker or, you know, put up an ad or or renovate a Main Street building. It's just not the skill set. They're not teaching that. So it's an apprenticeship. I mean, it's still really an apprenticeship job. You have to go and you have to go through a lot of stuff and struggle and you see all the pain and suffering and you go through the stress andKevin (11:53.877)Yeah. Yeah.Seth Zeren (12:08.726)You start to learn stuff and it's one of those jobs. There's so much to learn that you, you know, here I am 40 a partner doing a bunch of development work and I'm learning stuff every day, right? And we're all learning stuff every day. So it's it's really satisfying in that way, but. It's not necessarily intellectual job, right? I mean, thinking about stuff is important. Math is important. Those are all relevant things, but it's not the only thing that matters. And so I write because trying to figure out some stuff, right? Trying to figure out.for myself, but then also how to explain things to other people. Um, cause one of things I say to people is that, and I learned this when I became a developer is that like as a developer, I had more in common with the blue collar tradespeople without a college degree in terms of my understanding of the built environment than I did with someone who had my equivalent class background, education, income level, like an attorney or something, right?They live in a house that they bought from someone else, right? They are a consumer of the built environment, but they know very little about how it gets built. They don't get under the hood. But conversely, like I, you know, the plumber and I under, you know, we're in it together. Now we have very different jobs. We might, you know, we're having a different experience of it, but we both are seeing this world. We're both participating in the making of stuff. And so we end up with this very different environment. And then.because of the way we've regulated the built environment, now there's this huge chasm between the people who build the cities and the people who consume the cities that are built for them. Because people don't build much for themselves or for their cousin or for their neighbor.Kevin (13:44.533)Yeah, yeah, that's a, I mean, that's a really interesting point. I like that Seth. And it sort of resonates with me too. And, you know, in my experiences in design and development and you get some of that in architecture too. If you're the kind of an architect who you spend a lot of time doing construction administration or on job sites, you really, I think get a very different feel for that than if you're just kind of working in schematic design all the time. But yeah, that art of.creating things. And this is what I kind of often tell people about development. One of the things that just completely, like routinely frustrates me is this sort of parody of developers that's put out in the world. It's like, you know, as the black hat evil people trying to, you know, ruin cities and, and not this understanding that actually, and not that there aren't those people, there are some, you know, there are crappy people in every field. But most developers are just simply in the act of creating things that other people are going to use.Seth Zeren (14:36.278)Yeah.Seth Zeren (14:44.022)That's true. And I say that all the time as well. And I would add to that, that one of things that's interesting about development, right, coming from planning. So like real estate or city planning, right? Graduate degrees, conferences, magazines, there's even a licensure, right? You get your AICP, go to the conference, get the magazine. It's a profession. Real estate development isn't really a profession.Kevin (14:44.181)Like that's the whole point.Seth Zeren (15:11.254)You get $2 million and buy a CVS, you're a real estate developer. There you go. You put it on your business card, it's your real estate developer. So there's no professional boundaries for good and for ill. I mean, sometimes I think the boundaries around some of these professions are actually really harmful, but you kind of know what you're going to get. You know what the professional culture is and you kind of know how it changes and you know the institutions. Development really doesn't have any of that. Even the Urban Land Institute, ULI, which is a major player still like,compared to like the APA and planning is minuscule. And so like part of the challenges is that, so that's one piece of it. It's not really a profession. The other piece of it is that one of the things that's happened in the 20th century is we blew up our development culture, right? We had an ecosystem of building places, you know, that was the design, the construction, the operations, the leasing, the materials.the trades, there was a sort of ecosystem of it, and we kind of blew it up. We radically transformed it over a short period of decades. And so there's no continuity. So when people do development, there's not a sense of there's any kind of private constraint or private rules. So it feels even less like there's a profession. There's not like a coherent culture, we're going to build more of that, or we're going to evolve incrementally from a coherent culture of building.We're just going to build whatever you end up. That's where you end up with the like two story building with a mansard. That's like with the weird landscaping. It's just this weird Chimera because the developer and to a large extent, the architects have no grounded. There's, there's no like lineage they're working from. There's no continuity. They're just throwing stuff at the wall, you know,Kevin (17:00.341)Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think one of the other aspects is that in development, so many of the players in the non -institutional world are entrepreneurs. At their heart of hearts, they're entrepreneurs. And it's hard to gather together a whole group of entrepreneurs who are, in some sense, in competition with each other all the time, to feel like a common sense of purpose.Seth Zeren (17:25.174)Yeah, and they're often grinding for their own private gain, which in many parts of the United States is sort of seen as not good, right? Profit is bad to a lot of people. And I think that's unfortunate because while certainly people can do bad things and that's not good, making a profit from doing good things is good. It's a good sign. It means you get to do more of it, right? We say we have to make a profit because that's what we, that's the...Kevin (17:30.101)Yeah.Seth Zeren (17:53.062)seed corn for the next project, right? If we ate all of our seed corn, we would have no next project, right? And if we run out of seed corn, we all starve, right? So you don't get to lose money very many times in real estate before you're out of the game. So it's...Kevin (18:05.685)Yeah, well, and nobody bemoans the local cafe or the barbershop or whomever from making a profit. We all want them to make a profit and succeed, but for some reason, the local developer in a business that's far riskier and more expensive, it's like we completely beat them up about the idea that they actually need to make money to keep going.Seth Zeren (18:22.326)Yeah.Seth Zeren (18:27.606)Yeah. And I think part of it is that there is part of this change in building culture, right? Is that there is where there is more of, or a greater percentage of the built of the new development is sort of seen as done by outsiders for short -term gain. And then they're gone. You know, you'll you've talked to other folks in the incremental development world between the farmer and the hunter, right? And it's we're, we're 90%, 95 % hunters now, you know, instead of 25 % hunters. And that just really changes.Kevin (18:41.397)Yeah. Right.Kevin (18:48.661)Yeah, sure.Seth Zeren (18:56.918)the relationship. So we're a local firm. I work in the neighborhoods in which we live. We work down the block from our projects. If we do a bad job, I have to look at it every day. People know who I am. They're going to yell at me. Like there's a level of responsibility. The profits are most, many of the profits are being reinvested again locally into the next project or into donations to local organizations. So it gets it, you know, not, it's not just as a matter of credibility, but as a matter of like the actual development culture and ecosystem, it's just a better way of life. Um,I think one of the things that's key though about the developer image, right? Is that there was this real period and formative period for, for you and for me, like in the 60s, 70s, 80s of the real estate developer is always the villain, right? And every hallmark movie and every, you know, real estate developers are always the bad guys. And it's a really easy trope, right? It's, it's, it's change for, you know, we're going to change something that's here now that's good for profit, you know, and then they're going to be gone. Um, we don't have any valorous.Kevin (19:37.811)Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Sure.Seth Zeren (19:56.442)examples of the real estate developer in popular culture. And I think if I had a magic wand, I would like I would have some great popular sitcom about, you know, a real estate developer, young Latino builder in LA doing interesting stuff and growing over the course of seasons and be hilarious because there's so much tragic comedy and development. So if anyone out there wants to pitch a show to Hollywood, that's that's what I would pitch. Oh, my God, no, that's not me.Kevin (20:19.893)Well, I think you've got your next screenwriting gig. So, give us an example of a project that you're involved with now, something you're working on to get people sent to what you're doing.Seth Zeren (20:31.798)Yeah, so yeah, I'll give two quick examples. So we just finished a rehabilitation of an historic structure, four story masonry building that was converted back to residential, right? It had been turned into actually a nursing home. It was first as a hospital than a nursing home in the 20th century. It was originally built as four brick row houses. And so we brought that back to residential. That just finished last summer, 12 units. And that project was really great. It's really beautiful building.We are a little bit counter -cultural in some times what we do. So we built, in part following the logic of the building, because we were doing a federal historic tax credit project, we didn't want to torture the building. So the units are large. We have, you know, 1500 square foot, two bedroom, two bath apartments, which is on current construction, like weird. It's just, they're really big and they're expensive as a consequence of being big. But what we're finding is there are people who will like nice stuff, and they're willing to pay.more for an apartment. And it's still cheap compared to New York or Boston. It's expensive in Providence, but there are people who will pay that. And right now we're working on the second phase of that project. So that's probably 26 unit building. We're going to try to get some three bedroom apartments in that, which is again, sort of philosophically, we think it's important that there are places where families could live in multifamily housing. It's on a park. It's a beautiful location. And then the project we just started,As we acquired a 50 ,000 square foot mill building in a kind of old industrial area of the city that has, it's one of those things where the previous owner kind of ran out of money and attention. So some things got done, but not other things. So we're finishing that up and that project, we are actually going to complete sort of the previous owner's plan, which was to create modestly priced commercial spaces. So we, in our portfolio, about 50, 50 residential and commercial, which isn't.necessarily by strategy. It's just sort of where we've ended up. Uh, but I think on the margin, we're a little bit more comfortable with commercials than the typical developer or landlord in our area. So because we run so much of it and it's full, I mean, we're 95, 97 % full and commercial across 300 and something thousand square feet. Um, and that's because we price to rent it, you know, and we take a good job caring for it. Uh, we follow the advice of making things smaller if they don't rent.Seth Zeren (22:57.878)Right? So if you make them smaller, then you make the rent smaller, which means more people can rent it. Um, and there's turnover, but you have a reusable unit, just like an apartment, people move right into it, uh, run their business out of that. So it's been good. I mean, you know, who knows things could always change, but we see a lot of value in, you know, one of the things that happened in American cities is disinvestment and white flight took place was not only did the people leave, but I'll sort of all the businesses.So it's like, what is your dentist? Where's your doctor's office? Where's your accountant? Where's your graphic designer? Or, you know, where's your retail shops, you know, your salons, your banks, your restaurants, your bars and restaurants and bars usually come first, but that's only a piece of the ecosystem. You know, it's a whole, you know, you need gyms and retail stores and yoga studios. And I know that sounds kind of trite, but it's sort of a, a, a curating kind of orientation. So this building, part of the strategy is to create a building that is safe.and modestly priced and not pristine so that it's a building in which people can do work. So it's artists, fabricators who have real businesses but need a space to operate their real business. It's not just a crazy building, spray painting the walls, but a reasonable building, not too expensive, not too fancy, but safe. Sprinklers and a roof that doesn't leak. So that's kind of our current project.Kevin (24:16.149)Yeah. Yeah. That's a great model. It reminds me a little bit of one of Monty Anderson's projects in South Dallas, sort of a similar deal, large former industrial building and essentially a minimal, very minimal tenant finish, but incredibly flexible. And if it's priced right, it, you know, in his case, at least up, you know, very quickly. That's a cool model. So I didn't really have any, a whole lot of personal experience withProvidence probably until the CNU was hosted there in what was that? Mid 2000s or so. Which was the best Congress up to that point and the best one until we hosted one in Savannah, of course. And anyway, I was really impressed by Providence. I thought it was...just an incredibly interesting city, very walkable, really cool architecture everywhere, nice downtown. Just seemed like it had a ton of assets, especially in that region. And like you said, priced very differently than Boston or New York. And so I'm curious about the last decade or so, what's going on in Providence. How's the market there? How are things changing? And as a...more of like a third tier city, what do you see that's different compared to some of the larger markets?Seth Zeren (25:47.094)Well, I think that the big story of the last 10 years is that we're no longer kind of isolated on our own. And I don't know if that's mostly a combination of remote work or if it also has something to do with just how expensive Boston and New York have become and other cities. And Providence has seen some of the highest year over year property appreciation in the country. So you're right. It's a nice place to live, you know, and then if you're paying, you know,$3 ,500 a month for, you know, kind of crappy two bedroom apartment in Somerville, you move to Providence and you can get a really nice apartment for $3 ,500 or you can save a bunch of money. And so that it's not so similar for me, right? We moved down here because it was cheaper. And so that adds demand. It adds demand in the upper end of the market. So a big part of what's happening in Providence, Rhode Island is, is that there's a relatively small number.but of people with a fair amount of resources, income and capital moving here. And the state chronically, because it's sort of been tucked away for a long time, it has very little home construction, right? We are the last, second to last, third to last in per capita home construction every year for the last few decades. And so the intersection of those two things is causing a really crazy housing spike and a lot of angst.And for myself, this is one of the places where like my own experience growing up in the Bay Area and then having my own kids has really hit home because, you know, I know in 20 years, I'm still going to need a house to live in. And my two kids are probably each going to want their own house to live in or apartment. Right. So I either got to build them one. They're going to buy yours or they got to leave. It's math. Right. And so it's put the question of housing shortage kind of on the sharp end of the stick for me personally.Right? Is, you know, am I going to be able to see my grandchildren more than once or twice a year kind of thing? You know, and that's a big deal. Right. And I know people don't quite appreciate it yet. I feel a little bit like a harbinger of doom sometimes because in Rhode Island, the feeling is like this could never happen here. Right. Because we're kind of this backwater sort of economically hasn't done well since deindustrialization. You know, there's some bright spots, but it's a little tough and nice quality of life, but not too expensive. And that whole script.Seth Zeren (28:13.142)of worked for a generation or two, but it's not relevant anymore unfortunately. And then that psychic cultural transformation is going to be really hard.Kevin (28:23.541)So coming from the background that you came from, how do you compare the development or the regulatory apparatus in Rhode Island and in Providence compared to places you've worked or pros and cons and what's going on there?Seth Zeren (28:36.086)Oh boy.Seth Zeren (28:41.494)Yeah, when I go to CNU and I'd say I'm from New England, they're like, how do you work there? Because it's hard. Yeah, we're more heavily regulated region. I think that in some ways that's beneficial to someone like me, right? If you're good at navigating the rules, then it's actually to your advantage to work in a regulated market because there's, you I'm not competing on how cheaply I can put up drywall. I'm competing on who can come up with the most creative use of land and get through the regs.Kevin (28:45.685)Ha ha ha ha.Seth Zeren (29:13.686)It's, you know, Providence itself has a mod, what I would call like a modern zoning ordinance. It's got a lot of, you know, there's things I would quibble with, there's things I would change, but it's basically a functioning ordinance that like does the right things more or less, right? And which is great. We mostly work in Providence. I'd say the rest of the state, like most of the rest of New England, it's still like 1955 and there's no...resources, no political impetus to like really fix that yet. I've, I've helped one of my responses is I helped found last year a group called Neighbors Welcome Rhode Island, which is a sort of strong towns meets UMB type or organization that we're still kind of launching a website now. We're working on legislation, state level legislation, and also trying to support local organizing in these towns.Seth Zeren (30:14.998)So it's a, it's, it's, you know, very similar to the markets I'm used to. It's a new England place. Everyone's in everyone else's business. The place has been inhabited buildings on it for, for, you know, hundreds of years. I think one thing that's always interesting about, about new England though, you know, compared to the national conversation is the missing middle is not missing here. Like our cities are made out of triple deckers, twos, threes, fours, sixes all over the place.Kevin (30:37.653)Mm -hmm.Seth Zeren (30:43.062)Our problem is we don't know what comes next. So a city like Providence right now, the only plan is, and this is true, Boston and these places, you can, sure, you can build on the vacant lots and there's a bunch of vacant lots and you can build those for a while. There's gonna be some bad commercial buildings. You can build on those for a while. There's some old industrial land. You're gonna build on that for a while. But in a different way, but similar to the regions where everything's zoned single family and it's built out single family, you can't add anything.to the bulk of the neighborhoods, which are zoned for two and three family homes, because there's already two and three family homes there. And what we don't have, and I don't think anyone has an answer to this, is how do you create a building typology and a business model and a regulatory framework, building code, zoning code, et cetera, to add density to those neighborhoods, to take a three -family neighborhood and bring it to the next increment.whatever that is, because I don't, I don't think we have a model for that other than to go to a full like five over one big apartment building, but the land assemblage there is really prohibitive. So what's the next thing that's denser than three families on 5 ,000 square foot lots, but isn't a big commercial building. And I don't think we have an answer for that yet. I mean, as a urbanist architecture development community, and we certainly don't have a regulatory framework that will allow us to build it either. So that's like an R and D project. That's sort of a back burner curiosity of mine.Kevin (32:08.981)Does the regulatory framework allow you to build the triple -deckers in place?Seth Zeren (32:14.198)Uh, under zoning. Yeah, kind of under building code. No, right. Cause triple deckers are commercial code. So you need sprinklers. So you can't build them. The cost difference. You'd just build a big two family instead of building a three family. It's a much better strategy. So one of the things that neighbors welcome is proposing this legislative cycle to follow on North Carolina's example and Memphis's examples to move three, four, five, six family dwellings into the residential code. And, you know, with no sprinklers, a single stair. Um,And, you know, we'll keep the two hour rating, just add more drywall. Okay, fine. But, you know, that's one of the things we're proposing along with a single stair reform for the small apartment buildings. But yeah, I mean, it's a chicken and the egg, right? There's no point coming up with the prototype and you can't build it. But then no one wants to reform the building code because there's no prototype that makes sense that people are excited about. So it's really kind of trapped. And so, you know, that's an interesting challenge that we struggle with.Kevin (33:14.069)Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting thing to think about what that next increment to would be beyond the freestanding, you know, triple deckers and stuff like that. Because, you know, I guess the first thing that comes to mind as you start to think about neighborhoods more like you would see in New York or Boston, certain parts of those cities that went to like five and six story walk up buildings that, yeah, yeah. And they're not.Seth Zeren (33:39.476)Buildings that touch. That's the big thing.Kevin (33:43.931)really townhouses wouldn't call them townhouses, but they might be like a five story walk up. Like you'd see, you know, on the upper East or upper East side or upper West side or something like that.Seth Zeren (33:49.598)Yeah.Seth Zeren (33:52.982)Yeah, there's two tiers, I think. There is a version that's more about lot subdivision, right? So we have decently sized lots and three families are big, but you might be able to get some more houses on them or bigger versions. And then I certainly moving to the part where you have party wall construction and the buildings that touch, you recover a bunch of lost area to thin side yards that no one can use. That tier is really interesting because you could probably keep them as owner occupant.Right? They'd be small, you know, two, three, four families, but on smaller piece of land, you know, buildings that touch whatever the next year above that, you know, which is like a single stair elevator, five, six stories, you know, 20 apartments. That's a commercial loan. It's a commercial operator. And, you one of the virtues of the triple decker, right, is that you have a distributed ownership, right? So that it's not just.You know, we have tons of landlords in the state, you know, because everyone I own, the triple decker I live in, right? Everybody owns, you know, a two family, a three family mom, grandma's two family, right? It's just it, there's so many opportunities for people to be small landlords for good and for ill, mostly I think for good, but there are, there are some limitations to it. Um, you know, so when I look around at international examples, right. You know, so for example, I teach real estate development on the side, cause I really care about bringing more people into this profession and not profession trade.craft, whatever. And I had some European students last fall, and I brought them to Providence on a field trip, took them around my neighborhood, which is, you know, to native Rhode Islanders like the hood. It's like the inner city. Ooh, scary. And they're like, this is a very nice suburb, right? Because to them, a bunch of detached two and three family dwellings with a few vacant lots in between them or parking lots, this is suburban density. And they're wrong. And they're not wrong. They're right.Kevin (35:19.893)Yeah.Seth Zeren (35:47.786)you know, historically like that, that was a transition. You'd go from town, right? Which is mostly detached, small multifamily buildings to herb to the city. The building starts to touch because the frontage is really valuable and you wouldn't just leave it for like, you know, five foot grass strips and whatever. Um, and so, you know, it still ends up being quite car focused because, you know, everything is sort of far apart and you know, you got to fill in the empty gaps.Kevin (36:13.781)Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of that reminds me a little bit of what Jane Jacobs used to talk about in Death and Life of Great American Cities as sort of like the gray zones. Yeah, the in -between density.Seth Zeren (36:23.094)Yeah, the gray density. Yeah. And what I would say is what happened to my neighborhood to a certain extent, and I think this is true of a lot of American, you know, urban neighborhoods, you know, sort of pre -auto suburbanization is that what happened, there was so much, there was a lot of removal, even where there wasn't wholesale urban renewal, you know, mercantile buildings were taken down and replaced with a gas station, right, or a parking lot. And the church is, you know, brought down, you know, there's little holes in the fabric.And when I look at the neighborhood as like someone who thinks about cities and can see, can, you know, learns to look in that way, it's kind of looks like someone who's slightly sick, right? Their skin's a little pale, a little drawn, you know, there's a little yellow in their eyes. That's what it kind of feels like. And so it's about kind of filling it back up again. I think we've kind of, in a lot of cases, we kind of dipped down into the gray zone and we're trying to get back into it because once we get kind of out of that gray zone, adding density is good.Right, it brings more services, more people, which can support more businesses. And there's this positive feedback that strengthens the neighborhood and makes it better. But in the gray zone, it's like, well, is more people gonna make it worse? Like, what are we? It's a nice callback, because most people don't make it past parks in death and life. It's just too bad. I tell them all the good bits are at the end.Kevin (37:37.781)There's many good bits. But yeah, I think there's an interesting aspect of American cities in particular there where you have, and I think about this a lot, we wrestle with this so much in my part of town in Kansas City where there is a sort of urban density that actually works pretty well where everybody pretty much drives still, right? If you know what I mean, like it.Seth Zeren (38:05.526)Yep. Yep. Bye, Norris.Kevin (38:06.869)The parking is easy and it's just not that, it's not really urban, but it's not really suburban. And I think there was a generation of people who re -occupied a lot of urban places like that in the 70s and 80s in particular, who love it for that. They love the fact that they're like in the city, but it's like parking was easy. Now the problem is, yeah.Seth Zeren (38:17.91)Yeah.Seth Zeren (38:32.182)Yep, we have that here too, absolutely.Kevin (38:34.997)The problem is like historically that was a complete non -starter. Those neighborhoods had far more people, were far more urban. And by today's standards, it would have been incredibly difficult to have a car and drive it around everywhere and park it.Seth Zeren (38:49.258)Well, people forget that like you could have the same number of housing units and have fewer people because house hold size is so much smaller today. So the street is relatively empty, right? Compared to when grandma was living here, you know, 80 years ago, um, as far fewer people around.Kevin (38:53.365)Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Kevin (39:03.381)Yeah. And now with the prevalence of like one car per adult everywhere, the challenge of trying to upgrade those neighborhoods to become more like their historical predecessors, it does create a lot of conflict because then all of a sudden we are wrestling with the, it's really the car issue in many respects. Yeah.Seth Zeren (39:15.798)Yeah.Seth Zeren (39:22.774)Yeah, you're moving from one equilibrium to another equilibrium. And that's always really painful because it's going to reduce quality along the trip, even if you end up in a better place on the other side. You know, one of the things I find really helpful or really valuable, and I admired your work about this, is the business improvement district. And I don't know, whatever we call that microform of government. And we're involved in helping create one on a main street near us that has suffered from a tremendous amount of urban renewal and...Kevin (39:32.501)Yeah. Yeah.Kevin (39:46.003)Mm -hmm.Seth Zeren (39:53.3)institutional concentration and we're trying to figure out how to improve that. And one of things that I've learned from doing that is that the city, even with a pretty strong planning department, Providence has a good planning department, lots of good people, plenty of staff. It's not low capacity, but they got a big city to run, right? And they can't know it super deeply everywhere all the time, right? And here, and I'm involved because we own a bunch of property nearby and I've been working in the area for years. And so I get to know all the other owners and I get to know thethe nonprofits and the businesses and residents and you know, but I'm working on like eight square blocks, if that right. And I know that really well. I can talk about this block versus this block and this crosswalk and that curb and this parking lot and that, that tenant and you know, at that micro level. And it just seems to me that that's gotta be the future of a lot of this governance stuff. Cause to get out of that bad equilibrium is going to require a bunch of really careful.tactical hands -on changes to infrastructure, to private development, public, you know, all those pieces. And when I look at the whole city, I'm like, there's not enough coordination, right? There's not enough attention. There's too many things going on, too many fires to fight. It's at that micro level that I could kind of organize enough people, run the small planning exercise, coordinate the private development, coordinate the public investment and keep on top of everybody. But it's only, you know, eight square blocks, right? In a big city.So how does that work?Kevin (41:21.525)Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's something we've wrestled with a lot and we obviously do a bunch of it here, but I'm a big believer in, you know, place management at that scale. And I think one of the issues that we've seen over and over again is, you know, my city is even much bigger. It's like 320 square miles geographically. It's insanely large. Half a million people in the city limits. So like relatively low density for that large of a city, but...the ability of staff to actually manage all that and know what's going on. It's impossible. It's literally impossible. Yeah.Seth Zeren (41:57.142)Well, I've been city staff and I remember how insane it was. I mean, you don't get out of the building because you're too busy answering emails. You know, this is like you fight with the engineers or whoever about an intersection is like, have you ever stood in the intersection for an hour? Because I have, right? Because I'm there all the time. But you can't run the city, you know, not getting out into the field and seeing the mucky bits, right? And that's like.Kevin (42:17.045)Yeah, there's just a there's a huge mismatch in how we manage cities and their ability to change and solve just solve problems, solve basic problems.Seth Zeren (42:25.43)Well, so one of my questions is, is that in part because like the way we teach kind of all the pieces of city building and management is kind of like, and it feels like they're individually busted and then the system is busted. So like public administration, civil engineering, architecture, planning, you know, development, all, you know, whatever that there's a whole package of different professional schools that you could go to that would teach you these different skills, but none of them talk to each other.And so when they're graduates, I remember being a planner and then talking to the civil engineer Newton being like, we're from different planets, man. Like the words I'm saying, you don't understand the words you're saying, I don't understand, like, and no one's in charge. So we're just kind of like, because every department, one of the things that happens in cities, right, is every department is co equal under the under a mayor or city manager or something. So like planning department can't tell DPW what to do. They're the same level, you know, and so we're just kind of butt heads.Kevin (43:01.493)HeheheheheSeth Zeren (43:23.67)But planning is in a particularly bad situation because they don't have any shovels or trucks or much free cash or anything else. They don't get to do much. Their only power is persuasion.Kevin (43:33.525)And it's the first jobs that are cut whenever there's a recession too. But yeah, I mean, the whole industry is very siloed. And this has kind of been the classic battle of the new urbanism from the beginning was really the push from our side was to create generalists, that people who could pull everything together. And our charrette process was designed to bring all those people together and problem solve at the same time.Seth Zeren (43:36.83)Yeah.Kevin (44:03.317)And that actually worked really well, and it does work really well when you're able to facilitate that. The challenge you have in a lot of city governments that I've seen is that they're just like you said, they're all vertically, you know, all differentiated vertically and it's all siloed. And there's not a ton of incentive for the different departments to understand each other and work together unless you have a particularly strong executive who forces that to happen.Seth Zeren (44:28.662)Yeah, that's really the game. It's like, does your executive get it and care and willing to spend the time on it? You've said something really interesting in the past on other versions of this podcast, which is that, I don't know if I'll get it exactly right, but we spend like 50 % of the time on design, 40 % on policy and 10 % on implementation. And we should be like a third, a third, a third. Here's the thing. I feel like the charrette process is really great, but then the charrette leaves. New urbanists don't have, as far as I can tell, much of an answer of how you actually run the city.There's no proposal on how to reorganize the departments of the city government. There's no proposal on charter reform for cities or, you know, there's a whole universe of, you what should the education for a city manager be? Right. We have, we have an idea about what planning should do differently, you know, and so there's bits and pieces, strong towns, urban three, talk a little bit about the finance side. We're just starting to think about it. When you open that door, you realize, oh my gosh, where are the new urbanist police chiefs? Where are the new urbanist fire chiefs? Right.the controllers, the tax assessors, there's this huge apparatus of public entities that are out there. And I guess part of the reason why the place management is so cool is that you get to actually just be a little micro government. And instead of having to silo off every little bit of things, you're a taxing entity, you can also go hire people to put out flowers, you can also write regulations, you're a whole thing. And so likewise, I feel like the CNU universe has not yet...Kevin (45:47.541)Yeah. Yeah.Seth Zeren (45:55.19)really contended with like the mucky bits of administering, managing the city.Kevin (46:00.245)Yeah, I think that's totally, I think it's totally fair. And, you know, I got a lot of that thinking from Liz Plater -Zyberg who, and so the way she broke it down was design, policy and management. That's the three legs of the stool. Most of the people who came to the new urbanism originally and were most passionate were designers. So they had a very heavy emphasis on design. There were also a lot of policy wonks. So you got that policy piece, but yeah, very few people from.the world of understanding how to actually manage cities. And we've had a lot of interaction and bring people to the table and conferences and all, but I still think very little understanding in that world of how things work.Seth Zeren (46:42.166)Well, and you go, I think, to the International Downtown Association, right? The IDA. How is it that the IDA and CNU are still, like, not connected at all? As far as I could tell, right? From the outside, it just, like, the stuff we're doing is so, so connected, right? And so this, I guess, is a plea to the CNU folks and a plea to the IDA folks, like, let's get together, guys. Because, like, CNU can bring a whole bunch of the design and policy ideas. But you're right, we need managers. And manager, Strong Town sometimes talks about howKevin (46:45.173)Mm -hmm. Yeah.Kevin (46:55.925)This is a good question.Seth Zeren (47:11.132)maintenance is not sexy, right? It's easier to get people to design a new road than just fix the damn road you got. But that's the problem, right? If nobody's interested and we have no way of making management or administration better, like you'll just keep doing new projects and then as soon as you leave, they'll just fall apart, right? Because no one's going to run them when you go.Kevin (47:32.981)Yeah, no doubt. And so hopefully we can make that happen. I would have talked with a few people about this that we need to find a way to link up. I mean, there's always been a linkage there, but it's just not nearly as tight and as strong as I think it could be. I'm amazed when I go to the IDA conference just how few new urbanist consultants even bother to attend, which is shocking to me. It's enormous. But yes, I think there's an in...Seth Zeren (47:53.558)Yeah, it seems like a huge missed opportunity on both sides.Kevin (48:02.965)One of the, I think, ill effects of the last 30 or 40 years of there's been a lot of education that's pushed really smart, ambitious young people into the policy world instead of emphasizing that how important really good management is. First of all, I would say design also. I mean, and problem solving with projects generally is incredibly important.My bias is doing projects is more important than policy, but I know there's a role for both. But management, God, if you don't have good ongoing management of a place, just like any business, if a business doesn't have good ongoing management, forget it, you're toast. And a city, if it doesn't have it, is gonna suffer tremendously. So, you one, go ahead, go ahead.Seth Zeren (48:54.038)Well, I was gonna say, I feel like in my head, I've been thinking about this for a long time. And when I went to school, I went into an environmental management program, quote unquote management, right? It was supposed to train professional people to manage environmental organizations, work in government, work at the forest service, work for nonprofits, working for profits, doing environmental stuff. Were there any classes on management stuff, right? Managing people, managing budgets.Communications, no, it was all science, which is great, fine, like I need to know some stuff about ecology or water management or whatever, but like, how are we a professional school? You know, we have to go out in the world and run organizations which have budgets and staff and HR and communications and negotiation. You know, you can go to the business school and learn some of that and a lot of people did, but you gotta ask yourself like, well, what are we doing here?Kevin (49:44.405)Yeah. Well, man, I had six years of architecture school and there wasn't one business course that was required the whole time.Seth Zeren (49:49.718)Yeah, I mean, I see that. And the planning people, you know, maybe it's gotten better. But when I was going through it, I took a negotiations class at the business school, which was the most useful class for being a planner. It was negotiations. Most planners, we don't need people with physical planning backgrounds. I mean, you need someone who can do some physical planning. Mostly you need some social workers because local government is like a family therapy. They have fights going back 20 years with their neighbor about whatever and who's yelling at who. And it's like, we need just some people to get people to talk to each other.It's not about technical analysis. No one ever voted for my zoning amendment because I had a great analysis. No, it's relationships. So, you know, I look at this as like, and I know there's been efforts around this at CNU, but I think we need to really get serious about building new educational institutions. I don't know that we can do it inside. I mean, we've tried it, you know, at Miami, we've tried it at Notre Dame, and there's been some successes, but it's just not enough, right? 30 years later, you know, there's just...it hasn't really changed anything in terms of what we're training. So we have another whole generation raised up in the old way of doing business and we're surprised when we get the same results.Kevin (50:55.829)Well, one of the things that even mystifies me, somebody who's gone to a lot of architecture schools to do student crits and everything else is like there's this, there's a whole group that have come through in the last, I would say 15 years that don't even know anything now about the early new urbanism because that was like so long ago and it's just not taught. So it's wild to me. It's like that has gone down the memory hole.Seth Zeren (51:14.038)Yeah.Seth Zeren (51:19.35)Yeah.Kevin (51:21.077)So I talk about that a lot with people that I know just to try to keep some of those things going and make sure people have a memory of what actually happened in a lot of those years.Seth Zeren (51:29.91)What I think is so striking is I don't think it's actually that much money that would be needed to build some of these institutions. So if anyone out there is listening and wants to write checks, fantastic. But you could get a lot done for not a lot of money building these new institutions. I really do think that. And the scale of impact on society could be really huge. Yeah.Kevin (51:51.893)Yeah. Seth, I want to switch gears and do one more topic before we run out of time. I want to hit on this piece that you wrote about Yenbys and New Urbanists in Strong Towns and sort of the differences or perceived differences, you know, amongst the groups. I wonder if you could sort of set the table and talk a little bit about what, where you were going with that one. It's a long piece for anybody who wants to read it, but it's, it's really good.Seth Zeren (51:55.862)Oh, sure.Seth Zeren (52:02.538)Yeah.Seth Zeren (52:14.326)Yeah, it's on my my sub stack build the next right thing which is I have small children So we watch a lot of Disney movies. That's do the next right thing, which is a song from frozen 2 But related to incrementalism, right? You don't have to know the final answer You just when you and you're confused you just do the next right thing, you know, you're gonna work your way through it solve the problem incrementally Pragmatically, it's very American way to work. It's good. That's build the next right thing andKevin (52:27.533)Know it well.Seth Zeren (52:45.27)It's a part because like getting to utopia is not like you're not going to take one jump to utopia. We got to like work in the world we're in. So this piece came out actually, ironically, I started writing this in the emergency room with my child in the middle of the night. Because when you have little children, sometimes they eat like stuff and you end up in the emergency room in the middle of the night. So I'm like, I'm like starting to jot down some notes and the notes were really stimulated by another guy, Steve Mouzon, who's been on your show, I think, who, you know, is active on Twitter and occasionally.regularly gets in fights with sort of the very online Yimby crowd. And then there was an exchange, you know, about a piece that Steve wrote and some other people responded. And, you know, a lot of people that I'm considered I like or I appreciate their work. I mean, I appreciate Steve's work. I assign his book on on on the original green. I appreciate Nolan Gray's work. I assign his his stuff. So but I was really struck by this continuing like fight.In this case, between the CNU and the Yenbis. And in my analysis, I mean, you can go read the piece, but I'll give you the really short version. It's basically that, and since I'm from California, I'm very sympathetic to the Yenbi argument, right? I feel it in my bones, right? I can never return to the soil I was raised on because of the failure that has gone before us. So in the Yenbi world, it's all about supply. We got to build a bunch of homes, right? And that's the overriding value and virtue and goal.right? You see it celebrate. We're going to build so many more homes. And the new urbanist orientation, which is really importantly different for a few reasons. First of all, it was started in the eighties and nineties when there wasn't a housing crisis. So the DNA is not built around a housing crisis was built around building crappy places, right? Go read, you know, uh, suburban nation, right? It's about building bad stuff. Read consular, you know, that's, that's the DNA. It's also mostly working in the South, you know, in the Midwest to a certain extent whereThere hasn't been a supply crunch, you know, because they're building stuff, right? It's building sprawl. We can build better sprawl, worse sprawl, but it's still just getting built. And so, you know, a lot of that is about quality. How do we build good places? And so what's so frustrating about, I think, to both sides about the EMBC and U debate is that often we agree. Often building density and building quality are the same. So we're on the same team, but sometimes they're not. And the worst...Seth Zeren (55:12.502)fight is with your ally who betrays you, right? Your enemies, yeah, f**k that guy, he's terrible, right? You know, that's easy, but my friend, I thought you were with me, but now we're not, ah. And so that's what keeps happening, right? The CNU folks are like, you know, that might be a little bit too much density, aren't you worried about the blank walls? Aren't you worried about X, Y, and Z? And then, and the, and the, the Yenbis are like, are you kidding, man? Like we're all homeless, like, unless we build this building, we don't have time for your cute little nonsense. You know, your ADU is just too slow, whatever.Kevin (55:15.477)YouSeth Zeren (55:41.878)And so that's, that's on sort of goals and the people are different, right? The CNU architects first developers planners, the Yimby movement really comes out of activists, uh, political advocates, regular people, software engineers who are not professional built environment people, uh, lawyers, right? It's a policy oriented movement, economists, right? That's the core. That's their intellectual DNA is.know, economists at George Mason, whereas the CNU, it's, it's an, a few architects at Miami. That's really different DNA, right? And I think the CNU has, for whatever reason, not really, it's done some behind the scenes politics, you know, policy change, right? There's been really important behind the scenes policy change, very not visible to normal people. It's never been interested in mass mobilization, you know, votes.persuading elected officials, it's not their jam. The Yenby movement is a political advocacy movement, right? So they're trying to like win votes and get lost. So the Yenby folks have gotten more bills passed that does a bunch of CNU ideas, right? The missing middle, ADUs, all the stuff that CNU came up with like 20, 30 years ago is being mandated by bills passed by Yenby. So they're like, CNU guys, we're doing the thing. Why are you yelling at us? Right? But the Yenbys don't always appreciate that the CNU has,rebuilt so much of the DNA of 20th century planning. So like, complete streets was like a CNU invention. People don't realize that anymore because it's now so mainstream. And so there's this sort of tension where people don't see the benefits the others have provided because they're kind of operating in different styles. So that's, I think, the sort of core tension. And then I added the strong towns because strong towns sometimes finds itself fighting with both of them.And often aligned, right? Often we're all the same team, right? I consider myself a Yimby. I run a Yimby organization. I also am a Strong Towns founding member and I've been at CNU a lot. But they're subtly different, right? The Strong Towns thing that puts them at odds with some of these groups is that Strong Towns core idea is that we need to reengage bottom -up feedback, right? That the system is too top -down, too...Seth Zeren (58:06.454)tightly wound, too fixed, too set. So we build these places that are built to a finished state. We can't ever change them. We have tables that are not responsive to content. So we're just locked up. We can't get anything done. And the Strong Town's idea is, well, we need the systems to be responsive, right? If housing prices go up, we should build. If they don't go up, we shouldn't build. We need to make the streets context sensitive. And so on the one hand, we're all for getting rid of parking requirements and upzoning stuff. So the inbys are like, great.But then sometimes we're like, well, that might be too much of zoning. Here's some reasons why. And the Yenbis are like, wait, I thought you were pro density. I thought you were pro development. We're like, yes, but right. Uh, the strong towns, people would worry that the Yenbis in 1950 would have been the suburban sprawl advocates, right? They would have said, we need the houses now. Damn the consequences. We're not going to worry about fiscal insolvency in 50 years. We're just going to build the houses now. You know, that's, so that's the strong towns. Sort tension with the Yenby movement is the top down, the sort of.And this is a result of your movement being led by political advocates and attorneys and economists, right? There's the concern about that kind of top -down policy orientation, these sort of single metrics, let's get it done. And then I think sometimes there's also debate with the CNU around things trying to be too precious. Ther

Hi everyone, this is a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I'm the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Mall Zombies by W.H Arthur. In this episode, I'll share my thoughts after reading the rule book. Hopefully this episode will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play Mall Zombies yourselves. Set up Get a deck of cards, preferable a zombie themed deck for that extra narrative spark Separate the cards into three piles, all of the number cards, the court cards (aka, j, q k), and the two jokers. We now shuffle the number cards together and create 7 face down piles of 3 cards by drawing from this deck. Once we have these 7 face down piles, we turn over the top card in each pile. Each pile should now have 1 faceup card and two face down cards underneath. We've just created our shops for the players to scavenge from. The top card number tells us what the Prompt is for that shop. This is a list of names given in the rules. Such as, Wisdom, Luxury, Power, etc. You can come up with the rest of the name of the shop yourself. If one of the piles has 6 as the top visible card the Prompt indicates it is an Eletrical store, so we could call it, Roberts Bits and Bobs. So we know what type of items might be in that store. (We will go into what our players want later on). We take the remaining cards we didn't draw and shuffle the two jokers into it that pile to create the “main deck”. The players will be drawing from this Main deck during the game when scavenging through the shops. The court cards are shuffled and set aside as the Zombie Deck. We draw from this deck when the players are attacked by the zombies. This completes the set up! Before we go on, let's discuss what our players are looking for during the game. The group first discuss what things the colony needs to survive. (e.g. food, batteries, heating, clothes, medicine, entertainment). Once they have decided on 5 needs this will be the basis for your players to focus on what they are scavenging for. So lets look now at how to scavenge the mall! Scavenging examples During the game the players will be scavenging for supplies by looking through the shops. Mechanically this is by searching through the piles of cards one after another. Example. Rosie, a widowed survivor of the colony has spotted Roberts Bits and Bobs and decides to scavenge through the shop to find some useful tools for the colony. Rosie describes how she would find her husband, Barry in the shop every time they went to the mall together thumbing through the bargain bins looking for a great deal on hammers. It would annoy her at the time, but now it just makes her miss him even more. The more narrative detail the better in this game, encourage your players to really go ham in their descriptions taking as long as they want. The GM now turns over the related pile of cards with the number 6 on and shows the group what they have found with their initial scavenge. The cards turned over now read the following. 6 hearts, 6 of spades, and 10 of spades. So, what are we looking for here? The players are trying to find one of three outcomes related to a poker hand. This being a “three of a kind”, aka 3x3, or 3, 10's, etc. A straight flush, aka, 123 of hearts. If this outcome is reached the players “You find more than what you need. Describe how the item fulfils one of the needs, and how it's better than what you expected.” Or, a Straight or flush, this is 123, in any suit or 3 cards all hearts, spades, etc. If they get this outcome, “You find what you need. Describe how the item fulfils one of the needs.” and lastly, a pair, aka, 2x2's or 2,10s, etc. If this is the outcome, “You find something, but it is either defective or of an inferior quality. Elaborate on the details.” If none of these outcomes happen, they find nothing of use, aka, it doesn't match any of the groups needs for the colony. Push your luck Now, what happens if the first three cards don't give them what they want? Well, they can push their luck and draw from the main deck, (the ones with now jokes, aka zombies in..oooooo). Rosie draws “6 hearts, 6 of spades, and 10 of spades” That's two spades, with is close to a flush, and two 6's which is close to a three of kind. Rosie decides to draw from the main deck and “pushes her luck”. When a player pushes their luck, they must describe what they're doing to do this. e.g. breaking down a locked door, removing rubble from a blocked corridor, etc). Rosie breaks through the employees only door at the back of the shop. The GM draws this card from the main deck and adds it to the pile. It's a 6 of clubs. This gives Rosie 3, 6's and a three of a kind. This means “You find more than what you need. Describe how the item fulfils one of the needs, and how it's better than what you expected”. Rosie describes finding a pile of brand-new tools from saws, hammers, and hand drills, perfect for fixing and building a better shelter for the colony. These cards are not placed back into the main deck once an area has been scavenged, they stay out in their respective shop piles. Zombies! What if Rosie drew a Joker card from the main deck. Well, this is where the brutality of the game comes into play. Rosie draws a Joker and the GM indicates she stumbled into a zombie attack! The gm draws a card from the “zombie deck” aka the deck of court cards and tells Rosie what she is facing. J : You survive by fighting or escaping from the zombies. How did you do it? Q : You are attacked by an infected survivor (an NPC). Tell us whether you noticed their strange behaviours recently. You are dead. K: You are attacked by a swarm of zombies. Tell us how you die. The zombie deck is reshuffled afterwards with the court card being placed back, and the joker is then shuffled back into the main deck. So how can you mitigate these effects? To have a little more sway or edge over the randomness of the decks? Character creation: Creating a character is very simple, each player takes control of a survivor in the zombie apocalypse giving their name, pronouns, and choosing one “special ability”. These special abilities give the players tools to look through the main deck before drawing from it. Careful : Look at the top card of the main deck in secret. You may put it at the bottom of the deck. Daring : Look at the top two cards of the main deck in secret. You may shuffle the deck. Wise : Look at the top three cards of the main deck in secret. You may put them back in any order. Scavenging with Special abilities. Let's now rewind time and figure out how Rosie could have mitigated the zombie attack! Rosie has the ability “wise” which means, Look at the top three cards of the main deck in secret. You may put them back in any order.” She enters Robers bits and bobs, does her description, looks at the cards, “6 hearts, 6 of spades, and 10 of spades”. She can now use her special ability to look at the top three cards of the main deck in secret. She draws three cards in order, Joker, 6 clubs, 8 spades. It's a good thing she checked as she would have drawn a joker. She now puts them back in this order, joker, 8 spades, 6 clubs. So, the next card drawn will be the 6 of clubs. Escaping Once the PCs have found all they need, it is time to leave the mall. Or, if they are dying out too quickly, it's time to escape and take what they can with them. Of the remaining surviving characters, a leader is chosen from them who will be drawing from a new set of cards created by the gm. The leader and push their luck as normal and if a joker is revealed standard zombie attack rules proceed. Three of a kind / Straight Flush : All remaining PCs escape. Describe how the group outsmart the zombie horde. Straight / Flush : One PC sacrifices themselves to allow the others to escape. Narrate their sacrifice. Pair (Only works if you have 1+ remaining PC): The leader can choose a single PC to escape. Describe what happens. (The remaining PCs can find an alternative exit by drawing a new set of three cards.) None of the above: You cannot escape. The ending If the scavenged supplies fulfil all of your needs (with less than half of them defective), and at least one PC is alive. : Your colony thrives. Describe how the living condition improves. If the scavenged supplies fulfil only some of your needs, and at least one PC is alive: Your colony survives. Describe how the colony aces setbacks from the unfulfilled needs. If all PCs are dead: Decide as a group if the scavenged supplies reach back to the colony. If so, apply the above ending that fits. If not, apply the ending below. If you fail to scavenge any items: Your colony collapses. Is there anything left? and epilogues surviving players now describe what happened after in the colony, and dead players can describe their after life as a zombie. Get this game for “pay what you want” on drivethru RPG.

Commentary by Dr. Candice Silversides

All things competitive in the world of Warhammer 40,000. With a light week in competitive play, Robert & Eric dive into the reviews of the new Necron and Ad Mech codices

What makes an elite horse feel the way they do under saddle is their mastery of these 5 "skills that scale" — Drive, Direction, Coil, Collection and Compression. These 5 abilities influence every single thing we ask our horse to do, and the more our horse masters these skills, the more balanced and correct movement they demonstrate, and more effortless responses they give us. If you've ever watched a high level Reiner or Cowhorse perform and felt the hair stand up on the back of your neck, it's precisely because great movement is beautiful to the eye. We can sense movement that is better by how aesthetically pleasing it is. The best performance horses in the world are fun to watch because the way they move and responds is, MECHANICALLY, better. And it's precisely those mechanics that our training system offers. There is GREATNESS in your horse, and we want YOU to feel it. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lundahl/message

In this episode of The Revenue Builders Podcast hosted by John McMahon and John Kaplan, Snowflake's CRO Chris Degnan delves into the pivotal decisions and strategies that led Snowflake to its incredible growth. Chris shares insights into recognizing key moments and adapting to changing market dynamics. From selling to large enterprises to navigating the shift to the cloud, Chris provides valuable lessons on scaling a successful business.KEY TAKEAWAYS[00:00:53] The pivotal moment when Capital One became a game-changer for Snowflake's growth.[00:02:21] Identifying an ideal customer profile and how it reshaped Snowflake's strategy.[00:03:06] Mechanically expanding the addressable market and pursuing a larger customer base.[00:06:40] Balancing the rapid expansion of the addressable market while maintaining focus and not overextending.[00:08:40] Adapting to changes and reorganizing the sales team to effectively target large enterprises.[00:10:32] The importance of adaptability, coachability, and a willingness to try new strategies.[00:12:40] The significance of understanding your company's culture and capabilities before making major changes.HIGHLIGHT QUOTES[00:01:19] "We got something, and it was a lot of work because they wanted us to do more engineering work than we originally planned."[00:04:43] "You can't build a business on just the large enterprise. Getting new logos matters."[00:05:53] "The competition can't help them vacate the data center; Snowflake can."[00:07:28] "You can't sell to the large enterprise the same way you're selling to small and medium businesses."[00:09:24] "What worked before doesn't mean it's going to work forever."[00:10:50] "You gotta figure out, is this game-changing? How do you balance it and understand what you have in the kitchen before bringing something new?"[00:12:40] "Before you decide to remodel, figure out what's in the kitchen first."Listen to the full episode with Chris Degnan in this link:https://revenue-builders.simplecast.com/episodes/scaling-and-growth-with-chris-degnanCheck out John McMahon's book here:Amazon Link: https://a.co/d/1K7DDC4Check out Force Management's Ascender platform here: https://my.ascender.co/Ascender/

Welcome home. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we're talking about Midnight Manor, a late entry suggestion for Pocket this Halloween that ended up probably saving our schedule. Midnight Manor is a short horror-themed platformer from a solo developer that encourages players to play the game multiple times in different ways to see all the narrative possibilities it has to offer. Mechanically speaking, the game is simple, revolving around carrying items necessary for progression from place to place and navigating the titular manor. This simple gameplay lends itself, in a way, to the multiple ending-based design of the game, encouraging you to make small optimizations to make each successive run a bit faster, but admittedly does very little to make the game more engaging to go through each time. With no enemies, and therefore no fail state, to speak of, what is left to really engage with lies in its atmosphere, music, art and narrative content. All of these things are subjective, but given the short time investment to actually complete the game, and even seeing all the endings isn't going to add all that much to your total playtime, it is likely worth the low barrier to entry to playing. We're going to be talking about how character design can raise questions and eyebrows and our thoughts on the intentionality of it, what vibes the presentational aspects of the game put off, and we theorize on what this game may be a sequel to. Thank you for joining us again this week! Midnight Manor was a strangely nostalgic experience that harked back to indie games during our more experimental years when we were just trying anything we could find. That said, it's a mixed bag, though still more polished and with more thought than you might expect from a project that was this tiny. Did Midnight Manor send you back to a simpler time? Did it get you to play through it more than once? Let us know in the comments, or over in the Discord, where the suggestion for this game came from. As I said at the beginning, our time was rather tight this month, and our last Halloween game is going to bleed over into November a little bit, but we're always happy to try weird things for October and this certainly qualifies. Next time, we're going to be talking about Anodyne for a bit more of an adventure-y feel for November, so be sure to check back with us then!

This week the boys go deep on their hatred of new movies, get touched by christ, and discuss bubbles' refusal to shower. Join us!

Dr. John P. Kress is a Professor of Medicine and Director of the Medical Intensive Care Unit at the University of Chicago Medicine. He presents a lecture entitled "Optimal Sedation Protocols in Mechanically Ventilated Patients" as part of the DC5 lecture series.

Along with her late husband, Tara Lordi has channeled her passion for the outdoors, lakes, and ponds she enjoyed in her youth into developing non toxic solutions to preserve our vital waterways and water treatment facilities from overgrowth of invasive weeds. With runoff from farms, industry, and faulty septic systems, the nation's fresh, brackish and marine ecosystems are under siege from invasive plants which pose a significant economic impact on communities and aquatic life. To help communities sustainably maintain their water resources without the use of herbicides, Tara's Florida based company has developed small workboat solutions to remove organic materials. With the giant seaweed blob headed towards the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, her aquatic weed harvester solutions are in high demand. Animal Care Software  Zoo Logic Podcast

If Benoit had a family show it would be called Better Call Mommy.  He's a mamma's boy.  His mom had to build up calluses in order to achieve. Surrender is not giving up. Benoit chose the path of highest resistance with his girlfriend gave up sex, and addressed their emotional and moral incongruences!  Better Call Daddy: The Safe Space For Controversy.   Benoit Kim, is a US army veteran, Penn-educated former policymaker turned psychotherapist, and host of Discover More- an Apple Podcasts Top U.S. 100 podcast.  Discover More is a show for independent thinkers by independent thinkers, with an emphasis on mental health. The topics include cognitive psychology and mental health, the power of hypnosis, why spirituality and science are related, exorcism and psychology, and more. Looking for practical mental health insights? Notable guests include Fr. Vincent Lampert, Brothers Green, David Rudd Ph.D., Austin Chiang M.D., Anthony Kaveh M.D., Zach Pincince, Pain Academy, and more.  He pivoted early into the non-profit and policy sector from management consulting upon graduation, then committed to Teach for America (AmeriCorps program) teaching in inner-city Philadelphia before taking a military leave from this commitment and graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania due to a 2017 near-deployment. In this 2017 near-deployment to the North-South Korean border, he experienced his first major depression and had to acknowledge that perseverance does not always prevail, which catalyzed his venture into the realm of mental health. Then, he worked in the policy sector for a few years after becoming the youngest policymaker in the agency's 100-year history and, then pivoted recently into the clinical field as an aspirational psychedelic-assisted psychotherapist. Lastly, he started the podcast in 2019 as a passion project which has turned into a growing business with an expanding team, and the show has been recently featured on Apple Podcasts Top U.S. 100 in 2023, Apple Podcasts Top 200 Global Chart in 2022, and is a top 2% globally ranked podcast in all categories.  He invites you to seek curiosity over fear by joining us in our collective journey of Discovering More. Transcript @podtexts on Twitter Reena Friedman Watts: Okay, so since you gave me an option in the beginning of which direction we wanted to go, would you rather go with questions from your friends or mine? Benoit Kim: Oh wow. You said, friends? Plural? Doesn't matter. Whatever's the juiciest. Reena: Juiciest are always who knows you better, right? Benoit: True. Yes, we'll start with friends. Speaking of memory lane. Reena: Yes. Okay, so let's go with Tony. How do you pronounce his last name? Is it Mena? Benoit: Mena. Yes. Reena: I was right. Okay, so Tony wanted to know, and I know you were recently on a Christian retreat, he wanted to know what motivates you to work for nonprofits or what motivates you to have a service-oriented career. Benoit: I love choosing the broke poor life, just kidding, but I think that we all have to choose our path in life and a lot of that is attributable to my parents' genetics. It's not necessarily cultivated. I think I had the privilege to exposure to six figure salary early on at age 21, 22, straight out of college into management consulting realm. I saw the rat race, I saw how miserable so many people were, and I remember this viscerally like yesterday where one of the partners, managing partners at Deloitte at the time, he was taking us out. He rented out the entire bar at Penn State for entrance to show us woo woos with that golden handcuffs. He got pretty drunk and I asked him a question, as I always do even before podcasting, that, "Hey, is that worth it? Is it worth making that $500,000, $600,000 salary plus vesting options?" He started being tearful. He straight up started crying. A grown-ass man in his 50s. He said that "I miss my firstborn. I didn't held him in the hospital. I wasn't with my wife. I missed my 10 year anniversary with my wife. I missed out on so many birthdays because the duty calls, and to get to that level comes with tremendous sacrifices." That story stuck with me, and then once I started to work as a management consultant I realized, "Wow, this is not the life I wanted." I always wanted to do something altruistic, even though I don't believe in altruism because there's always that feedback of feeling good, but I do believe in effective altruism, and I chose the path of nonprofit and giving back, and I always check myself. I'm not a savior. I'm not better than other people. Some people find money intrinsically incentivizing and they like money intrinsically. For me, intrinsically I like making impact and creating this legacy, and at the end of the day it's just a job and it's just a personal calling. Reena: When did you realize that? Benoit: The first few years in the nonprofit sector, I think I definitely had this extra chip on my shoulder that, "Oh look at me, I'm creating this impact. I'm parting the positive footprint in this world unlike all my private sector friends," and we always find reasons to put other people down when you have that hole internally. Then through my mid to late 20s I realized, "Wait a minute, I happen to choose this path because I find this fulfilling." It's not holy or sacred or better than anyone else. It's just what drives me well, and I can't survive that rat race background. I just can't. I can't even just suck it through, just treading forward. A lot of people do it. I can't do it with my personality trait. I think it was about mid-20s. Reena: Interesting. Now, you were just at this Christian retreat, and in our interview together you asked the audience, "How many of you want to get married?" You shared with me that 60% of people end up in divorce, but how many people wanted to get married? You said that a good chunk of the audience raised their hands. What did you take from this Christian retreat that you just did? What stayed with you from that event? Benoit: That's a great question. I tie this back to my previous, previous, previous career as a teacher through Teach for America, where that's how I ended up in Philadelphia, and that it was my entry point into the nonprofit sector. I taught inner-city students, like the Black and Brown kids who had nothing, drive-by shooting on a weekly basis, some crazy stuff, and I thought, "Oh, I'm going to go in and teach them the subject I was teaching because I was a subject matter expert as a teacher, but the reality is I learned more from my kids. Their grits, their resilience, their emotional maturity, and tie that into your question where I thought I was going in to volunteer my time to babysit 65 high schoolers, which is tremendous hard work, but the reality was, I saw the kids being really emotional, witnessing a lot of God moments. We have this worship night where it's like a sober rave. It's like a raving. Kids just go crazy. They jump around, they sing in this dark, and all the kids are crying, they're hugging each other because of depressions, the lonely path, just being Korean Americans and that heightens pressure from our parents. Just seeing them I realized, "Wow, I might be farther in life than they are due to my age and experiences, but in terms of spiritual maturity or this thing that we call faith, some of these kids might have stronger faith than I do because they're in high school. The opportunity cost of them hanging out with their cool friends outside of this retreat because it's a two days retreat. Yet all of them, sure, some of them are parental pressure. It's a tradition, sure, but a lot of juniors and seniors, they chose to come to this retreat by giving up their technologies, phones, and cell phone for two days and just spend time with God and each other, and I realized, "Wow, there's definitely things I could do better in my spiritual life." Yes, I definitely learned in terms of how mature and how vulnerable, and how honest they are with their feelings. Because as adults, we're not always honest and straightforward with how we feel inside. Reena: How do they get the kids to do that in today's social media addict world? Benoit: I just talked about this too on my way back. It's funny. There is this "formula." I'm part of the church called Yongnak Church. It's one of the Korean megachurches in LA, and a lot of these kids they're like legacies. We call them Youngnak babies. Their parents used to be students and then the parents became teachers, and it's like almost like three or four generations. It's extremely, extremely internally interconnected. I think they have this unwavering trust with their peers and other classmates who are there, and I asked the kid who's in my small group, I asked him, his name is Ryan. I said, "How are you guys able to cry just so openly in 50, 60 people?" A, having dark lights, having the lights off helps a lot, so people feel like they can be more honest, and B, he said, it's almost more embarrassing to hold your emotions back when your friends are being so radically honest. To nerd out a little bit, it's a group psychology. It's a group flow. Why is music festivals, why are these concerts so riveting? Why do people emote and have these group almost psychedelic experience without the substances? Because you are moved by this collective entity and this collective movement. The psychology behind group flow is fascinating. Where a lot of people who go on riots and these very violent behaviors and these circumstances, a lot of those individuals by themselves they will never do such a thing. They will never even harm a fly, but you put them in this group where they're emoting, whether through anger, resentments or whatever emotions, positive or negative, they just get activated, and it's almost like the hormones are being synced. I feel like all that helps with people feeling more comfortable, but at the end of the day, it comes to emotional safety. They feel safe and they feel like it's a perfectly fine container for them to embrace their faith and for them to emote the way they feel called to. Reena: That's really beautiful. I have a couple of questions that came to mind when you were saying that. One, have you come across any doubters and be able to understand them? Then, two, have you ever studied true crime cases? Benoit: I was a forensic clinician for a year three years ago, and I did work with individuals who committed felonies, atrocious crimes, murder. I know true crime a little bit all too well because I've sat in sessions with individuals who've committed multiple murders and homicide, but they pled guilty to NGI, which is not guilty by their reasons of insanity. What that means is at the times of their crime, they're under psychosis or psychotic episodes, and these are not fakeable. The process to get to that NGI pleading is one of the most rigorous process. As a reference point, out of all felonies and all homicide charges in all of America, only 1% is eligible for NGI plea, and out of that 1% eligible individuals, only 1% actually get NGI. Because you have to prove by psychiatrists, medical doctors, and psychologists, multiple panels to show that you are actually under psychosis, which means you are not yourself, and it's true. These individuals who have committed three or four murders, who killed their mom, like Ted Bundy type, we have those individuals, they're in their 50s and 60s now because they've been under these programs for like years. A lot of them don't really remember the time of the crime because they blacked out or they're just under psychotic episodes. Yes, I definitely have some experience with true crime, which is why I was saying your research skills are forensic-worthy, but to answer your first question, yes, there are a lot of skeptics, but many of them they go there because of their traditions, and many of them go there because of their relationships of friends. A lot of these Korean American kids, their parents are tiger parents. There's so much pressure because a lot of their socioeconomic backgrounds are more privileged. They feel like they can't really complain. They have "everything planned out for them" just like a lot of Jewish families. It's similar backgrounds, where you're really well off. What are you complaining for? Just work hard, put your head down, study, go to the best college. Yada yada ya. They don't really have a space in their household to share their emotions and express their internal realities to their parents because they get shut down the moment they do that. I think that's why they come to these retreats. Just have two days of unplugging from everything and just be themselves, but not everyone there believes, but I think to me, God means love, and I think God works through relationships. Reena: I've heard you mention that you yourself had a tiger mom. What did that do to you in terms of life expectations? Benoit: That is a deep question. A lot. Quick trigger warning. It catalyzed some of my first few suicidality like suicide thinking, I wanted to cut myself, I wanted to jump off the building. My mom also used to fat-shame me when I was in middle school because I was so stressed. I moved from France and then Korea, and then Korea to China at the time, and I didn't speak the language, so imagine the frustrations. I remember I used to stress eat a lot so my mom would be like, "Oh, you're a pig." She'll use very abusive hurt languages. In terms of expectations, I thought that life were linear. If you do X, then Y happens. If you work hard, then life is guaranteed to do well for you. If you do this, then that, but as you know, Reena, life is not linear. Life is not linear by any means. You can do everything within your power, life still may not pan out the way you want it to be. Because if you think about this, we didn't even choose our birthrights. We didn't choose to be born. If we didn't choose our birth rights, it's laughable to think that we can exert influence on this thing we call life. It's a greater force than we are. I think I had a very unhealthy and distorted expectations of how life works. If I just work hard enough, I'll get into the college I wanted to be. Then for my senior in high school, I got rejected by every single college my mom asked me to apply for. My mom didn't believe in safety school. She only made me apply to top 20 in the entire country, and she literally said, "Benoit, you are my son. You have my genetics." She has insane CV and resume. She's like, "You have my genetics. You have God as your cheerleader. With those two things, you can achieve whatever you wanted to do." Then six months later, I got rejected by all schools. Waitlisted by two. I was depressed. I didn't know what depression was because I was 17, 18 at the time, and I got really, really down. I thought, "Wow. God must not love me. I must be a failure. My mom can do this. Why can't I?" I was an older sibling, so I also had the additional pressure of being the role model, being the best example for my younger sister, but it definitely screwed me up well, until the early of my 20s. Reena: Whoa. Have you been able to communicate that to her? How did you start that conversation? Benoit: Your show is called Better Call Daddy. If I had a show, it'd be called Better Call Mommy because I'm a mama's boy, for sure. Yes, we've reconciled, and we had conversations in my early 20s, my mid-20s, and even now. I'm moving through some family situations, as I shared briefly on our episode earlier, but we never saw a therapist together, but we've had a lot of heart to our conversations, and she is extremely open, and she's very receptive, and as with the power of age and time, her fangs and her claws of tiger mom falls off a little bit, just with the power of time. She softened out a lot, and she's become a lot more receptive. She started to believe in mental health because she didn't believe that for the longest time, but a lot of older generations, people, especially as a woman in her generation, she's 60 now, navigating that space in Korea. If you think women get treated bad in America, go to Asia or some of these countries, women have no rights. It's not possible. She had to build up all these calluses to protect herself. It's a protective mechanism, so I understand where she was coming from. I always empathize with her upbringing because I work hard and I'm pretty high achieving, but I will never amount to what she's achieved, and I'm not comparing. I hate comparison syndrome and comparison Olympics. It's just the circumstances I'm seeing this for objectively. I always understood where she's coming from and she always told me that- We talked about this earlier, where every parent is a parent for the first time, and if you think about what adults and parents are, they're just older children who are parenting their own children for the first time in their lives. I think that understanding helps a lot, but she's very receptive. She's not afraid to say sorry, and she owns up to some of her mistakes and she has a lot of regrets. At the same time, I wouldn't be where I am now sitting across the screen from you if it weren't for her to burden the shoulder of being a single parent for the longest time. Reena: I love that you said your show would be Better Call Mommy. That's really sweet, and it's truly amazing that you had that compassion for her and that understanding, even though those are some hard words to hear. I actually definitely had some body image struggles because I was very close with my dad's mom. She was like a second mom to me. I grew up with all four of my grandparents, and my dad had very thin sisters who my grandmother loved to shop for, and she constantly made comments like, "Oh, well, when you're skinny, you can fit into so many more things." She loved to feed me, but then when I got curvier, she also loved to comment on that, and I think I started dieting at 12 and I started having eating disorders in college. Even before that, high school, and it took a long time to get over that, and then even as a mom, oh my God, having kids really puts weight on your body and loving yourself through that and realizing that you're bringing life into this world and you need to be healthy in order to do that. How did you resolve those body image issues? Benoit: Before that, I just want to add where it's funny you mentioned the grandparents, their love. I think Jewish culture and Asian culture are very similar, where we express love through food. It's like the best vehicle for love. My grandma will always say that "Oh, Benoit, you look like you lost a few pounds. Eat up." Then next time she's like, "Oh, you look like you gained a few pounds. Let's cut back a little bit." I was like, "Grandma, what do you want? I can't do both. Do you want to feed me or do you want to starve me? Please don't do both. It sends too many confusing signals." Because there's a difference between eating disorder, which is ED clinically. There's also disordered eating, and unfortunately, a lot of men who work out very religiously and who are rigorous workout, former athletes. I'm also a veteran. I think we all have some a body dysmorphia that we move through. Even now, I have some disorder eating tendencies where it's not that I'm conscious about how I look because I'm happily engaged. I'm very fit. I'll always be fit because workout is just part of my life. At the same time, I don't truly know actually work through that entirely but to go back to the time I just referenced in terms of when I was being suicidal, when I was being fat-shamed by my mom. In my early adolescent days, I think I just had to recognize that I'm really stressed. I'm in a new country, new language, new friends. I'm being uprooted every single couple of years due to my mom's business at the time. I think I just chose to be a little bit more gracious with myself, and I think I overcompensated my body image concerns by working harder, by striving for achievements. It's almost like I detached my self-worth from my body image because I knew I wasn't able to lose weight right away to achievements and being a scholar, but then my sophomore in high school. A few years after the fat shaming incident, because that happened in middle school, I lost 55 pounds in one summer. I just have that willpower it's given where I started to get bullied in high school because I was the first international student at the high school in Orange County ever, ever witnessed. I was bullied very severely freshman year, and then I found football. I was like, "Wait, there is a sport you can legally hit people in the field?" That was a very healthy way for me to cope through my anger, and also, I just got sick of being bullied. I said, "You know what? I'm going to lose 55 pounds." I lost 55 pounds in one summer. I ate special case cereals. I cut a lot of weight. I started to run every single night. It was dreadful, but ever since then, I started to get a little bit better and more healthier with my body. Reena: I can relate to some of that insanity because you can control it, and I have perfectionism in my blood, and so, yes, once I figured out how to start losing weight, I just made myself do it, and it is painful. I blacked out and took diet pills and diuretics and you name it, I've tried it, but that's not healthy [laughs]. Benoit: Even now, if I have a big gorging incident over the weekend or something, I will go on like 24 to 36-hour fast, even though I do like the lucidity you feel from fasting because it's like an ancient practice and it has a lot of health benefits, but I'm very self-aware and I'm a clinician, so I can't lie to myself. I know deep down the reason for me to do that is still because of body image or the so-called physique or some disorder eating tendencies. I recognize it and I'm working through it too. At the same time, I know my body really well and I'm really healthy. I get sick once every five, six years. I'm an athlete. I do a lot of mind-body connections exercises. What I do and what works for me is definitely not for everyone, but at the end of the day, it comes down to, do you know your body well. Reena: I totally relate to that. I ate too much peanut butter trail mix over the weekend, and then the next morning I'm getting on the treadmill. Every single time I have something sweet or a piece of cake or something that I shouldn't that's off the diet or off eating healthy, I hop on the treadmill. Yes, it's still underlying with me too. I would like to talk a little bit more about Korea because I know that you, in your military service, ended up there. What was that almost? What was your military experience like in the time that you spent? Benoit: I was in Army Reserve and I talked a lot about on the show and when I was interviewed where my military experience catalyzed my first major depression, which was the entry points to this realm of mental health. Because as I alluded to earlier, I didn't believe in mental health because my mom didn't believe in mental health, and a lot of children we uphold our parents' and authorities' and teachers' opinions as truth, and we internalize those truths even though they're just limited opinions. I have a lot of gratitude towards that experiences in retrospect, but going through it, it was a wild whirlwind of journey. I joined the reserve to become an American citizen. They used to have this specialized linguistic program. If you speak one of the languages that's in high demand for strategic reasons, you test into it and then you can skip green card. You can literally go from foreign national into become American citizen in about four months. It's unparalleled. It's a faceted accelerator program. It's been discontinued because of Mr. Trump a while ago. I was the second to last cohorts they've ever admitted. I got really lucky with that, but when I joined, I did a lot of front loading, a lot of calculus. I said, "Let's think about the international arena," because my majors in college was international relationships and economics, because I wanted to become a diplomat. Since I speak three and a half languages, I'm multicultural, I thought it would be the right path. Of course, God had different plans for me entirely, but because of that, I've always had great pulse on international politics, and I thought, "We're in a pretty safe post-Bush era. There is no likelihood of warfare." This is, of course, way before Trump and all that. I thought, "I put my six years in. I get my citizenship and I get out, and you make decent money, decent benefit." Then lo and behold in 2017, Mr. Trump and Kim Jong-un, the dictator of North Korea, started to have some measuring contest of "I got the red button." "No, I got the red button," and remember, the tension was very high. We were fearful, is this going to be World War III? Mine was one of the 12 units in all of the US to get deployed to support the American troops stationed in the North and South Korean border, and the chance of escalation was pretty high, and I had to confirm my mortality for the first time that, wow, I have this three-year, five-year, seven-year plan. I'm pretty smart, I'm capable. I got work ethic, I got a great vision, but God is like, "Nope, not happening. You're going to get deployed internationally and you may die." I confronted and flirted with the idea of mortality that I'm just one of the infinite floating stardust. What do I know? A lot of times what we think how life happens is not how it happens. It unfolds the way it does. The deployment was canceled the day of because it was way too expensive, and we, fortunately, came to this de-escalation point, but I was passed to Kentucky for three months of rigorous training because Kentucky has similar weather as South Korea, which is very humid. We were under this climate-controlled training to get ready for mobilization. That's what we call it. Yes, for those three months, I was depressed. I was like, "This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I'm going to die and I'm going to go back to Korea, not as a tourist and not visiting my family, but to be stationed at the north and South Korean border staring at the North Korean soldiers across the border." That is crazy, but that's how that was, but fortunately, everything calmed down and my deployment was canceled literally the day of when we're about to fly across the country, get shipped, and then I went to Coachella the week after to celebrate the difference between from potential death to life. Reena: Oh my God. Did that feel like a God moment? Benoit: Yes, and it's just so hard to describe that stark contrast going from majorly depressed to about to go across internationally for warfare to now in this beautiful California weather, not sober entire time, and just celebrating life and just hanging out with my friends who invited me. Yes, I couldn't believe how life worked, and that's when I realized, yes, life moves the way it does, and we have no influence or control over this thing that we call life. Reena: How are you surrendering now? Benoit: That's the biggest theme I think God put me on for the last three years with my multiple career pivots coming from Philadelphia, where I loved, to LA to support my fiance's medicine journey because she's a physician, and there's so many greater forces in life that are just beyond our control and amount of prepping it does nothing. It happens the way it does. In Stoic philosophy, because I love Stoic philosophy, a lot of people think Stoics are just emotionless people who fight on. That's actually not true. Stoics believe that you have to be honest with your feelings and you have to emote and release those feelings, but not for too long. Do it, and then you need to confront life and move head-on. That's Stoic philosophy at its core, and there is a philosophy in Stoics where I talk about, do not borrow unhappiness from the future because you're going to suffer, because suffering and pain is part of life. You're going to suffer by the circumstances of life anyhow. Why suffer twice? That's like the root of my answer, where I learned that over and over and over again. I think you can relate where I think I call it God. Some people call universe. God will instill and try to teach you the same lesson multiple times until you get that lesson. If you don't get that lesson, you're going to go through the same situations that looks differently and manifest differently, and I've gone through some of those four or five lessons, the same pain teacher just over and over again. I realize, God, you got me. I'm going to surrender. Your surrender is not giving up. You're giving in to a higher power, and that alleviates the pressure because if there's no God, we have to burden the pressure of uncertainties in the unknown. Humans are terrified of unknown. That's why pattern recognition works. It's, "Oh, let me check out the data points in my database. Let me pattern recognize. Let me look at some of the things in the past to predict the future," but the future literally means it hasn't happened. It's unprecedented. That's why pattern recognition is inherently flawed, but I think that's how I was able to surrender fully because I learned that hard lesson and I had to swallow that pill, I had to internalize it, and I think without this ability to surrender utterly. I'm not saying I'm perfect. Three years ago, it might have taken me three, four months to finally go to God and pray say, "God take me now." Now it would take me about a day. Within a day I will say, "God help me." Because I'll try to be resourceful and move through whatever situations and then go to God, but without that surrender I don't think I would have able to survive my three career pivots in seven years. Because all the careers I pivoted into were brand-new fields. No experiences, no connections. It's complete unknown, but now I love pivoting, I love the unknown because he keeps me exciting. Reena: Speaking of struggles, was it a struggle not to have sex for three years? Benoit: [laughs] Yes. That's funny. It's the most profound, challenging emotional training center I've ever gone through. Because I learned about self-control, I learned about creating systems like Atomic Habits by James Clear. Great book. The ethos of that book is about everyone has finite amount of willpower and discipline because that's also genetic variability. Not everyone is given the same amount of willpower, like David Goggins or Jocko, those people are given and birthed with a heightened threshold of willpower. That is a fact. Plus discipline, plus they work hard but they do have genetics. In the clinical literature we say about 20% to 30% is about genetics and 60% to 70% is about nurture, which is the environmental feedback where you grew up in. It's always both, nature and nurture. I have very high discipline. As I talked about, I lost 55 pounds. I chose to give up sex with my partner to address the internal moral and emotional incongruence and most people wouldn't able to do that and I able to initiate it and I had to realize there are some tough days. Sometimes temptation is really strong. Plus I lived with my fiance, who's now my fiancee now. It's not even like we're doing long-distance, we gave up sex, it's because we had to. It's like no, we chose to living and sleeping in the same bed, but I realized the importance of creating systems to ensure that what we want to achieve, the intention can be executed well, but yes, being hard is an understatement. I think we need a more challenging, deeper word than hard, but I learned a lot about myself and my partner and now we have this hyperactive, hyper-proactive communication channels and methods that we learned from those three years of profound experience. Reena: What gave you that idea? Benoit: Can I talk about psychedelics in this? Reena: Yes. Benoit: I'm an aspirational psychedelic assistant psychotherapist, I work at USC, got my masters at USC as well. My clinical orientations and my clinical focus is psychedelic therapy. I'm not here to explain the science because evidence is very robust. I tell people I'm not in the business of convincing. The evidence is out there. If you want to look it up, please look up and do more research after the fact. This is a little bit of long story, goes back to another thing where I had a sexual trauma in college, during my sophomore in college, and then that propelled me to this objectifying woman because it was a sexual assault by a woman because statistics is about one in seven men experience sexual trauma. Of course, woman that's like the more obvious, more explicit, but a lot of men experience that too and I fell victim to this. I was vindictive, I wanted to objectify woman. I said I got screwed over so I'm going to revenge back. I was never violent, and everything was consensual, of course, but I'm what people call a retired Fboy.  Because I would never lie for sex, but it was very common, and therapy didn't help. Self-help books didn't help. My introspection level didn't help. Nothing helped. That allow me to move through sexual trauma until I came across psilocybin, which is magic mushroom therapy in 2017. Ironically, around the same time as deployment, this healed both of my traumas in 8 hours. I witnessed the efficacy of psychedelic therapy. I was like, "Holy crap, there is more to this just being a party drug you trip on a music festival." There's the implications, the potential for healing is a lot greater. I subscribe to psychedelic therapy. Reason why I share that, to answer your question, is every single year I trip at least once a year because one of the documented evidence for psychedelic is we call it neural reset. With stress and just things you go through in life, lack of sleep, your brains accumulates toxins in your brain. That's why sleep is a non-negotiable. Because by you going to sleep, your neurons in your brain are literally neurologically working hard to cleanse through those toxins and release those toxins in your sleep through neuroplasticity mechanisms. By shortcutting your sleep you're also shortcutting your process to clean out the neurotoxins in your brain, and psychedelics is an accelerated way to do a neural reset. It was completely cleansed and reset the toxins in your brain. I do it microdose once a year just for the sake of that neural reset, and I wanted to finish my time and chapter in Philadelphia before I moved to LA by doing a psychedelic trip. I did a full heroes dose, which is like 5 grams. It's a lot, but I have a lot of rational and clinical experiences. I also do research so I'm very well equipped because there are warning signs and red tapes, and during that trip I had a God moment. I think at that time I tripped at least 50 times in hundreds of hours doing psychedelics, but I've never had a religious experience that people have described it as. Mine was always lessons and sure, it was very insightful and colorways but never had this God moment until then. Let me try to describe this visually. When you close your eyes, psychedelic opens a portal to a different reality. I call it the reality behind the eyelids, and I remember seeing this river of dots, like a stardust. If you've ever been to Yosemite or National Park, like 2:00 AM, you can see the Milky Way. It's almost like you can touch it. Imagine that but inches away from your face, and I remember this just beautiful, majestic, indescribable beauty of this floating river of this floating stardust, and it was billions of stardust. It was like a river, and I just instinctively knew, reflexively I was like, "Oh, that's God." Not this God, this beard, Jesus figure that we think about, but the embodiment of what God is. I think it represents humanity, because in theory, if 8 billions of us can collectively wield our power together, we can rebuild pyramids in probably two minutes. We can empty out the Pacific Oceans in probably three minutes, in theory, but of course, it's not possible. Mechanically, you can't control 8 billion people every single step of the way, but I just knew that that was gone, and I had this thought, "Benoit, I know-" it's literally spoken from a first-person view to me. It's like, "Benoit, I always knew that every time you had sex, even with your girlfriend at the time," because we've been dating for a year and a half before we gave up sex, "You always felt a little bit guilty because of your Christian faith," after the words because it was premarital sex. "Why don't you take this opportunity to start a brand new chapter by leaving Philadelphia, by giving up sex, by recommitting to absence?" It was literally a thought while I was hallucinating and having this trippy experience in my empty apartment in Philadelphia, and it was unshakable. It's one of those two things that once you see it, you can't unsee it. I thought, "Holy crap. Am I about to give up sex?" I gave up alcohol shortly after as well. I've been sober from alcohol for three years now as well. I had a conversation the next day with Becky, my fiance, saying that, "Hey, this is what happened. I had a God moment. How do you feel about giving sex?" She said, "I felt the exact same way my whole life." She tried to give up sex with her ex-boyfriend of seven years. They lasted for a month, and they failed. I told her, "I'm different. I have heightened willpower. We'll systemize this. We'll create systems to make this work," and lo and behold, her and I, we agreed, and she shared the exact same faith as I do. She's very spiritual, and that's what catalyzed and prompted both of us to give up sex, but it comes down to the God moments and the religious experience from doing psychedelics. Reena: That is amazing. What has that done for your relationship? Benoit: It leveled up all domains of relationships. It taught us to communicate better, more proactively. It taught us to be more patient with each other because you get frustrated through arguments and you want to short-circuit the frustrations of having sex, using sexuality or lust as a crutch. We don't have crutch because it's just us and emotions. It taught us to not run away from our problems and confront it head on. It's different for me because that's who I am, but she deals with avoidance tendency like attachment theory, so she's a lot more avoidance. Confronting emotions is not easy for her as it's easier for me. She learned a lot from me and I also learned to be more gracious with each other's mistakes because there are steeps, there's highs and lows. Some days the temptation is really, really loud and we just learn to be more attuned with what we need in the moment versus what the society said you should. Because what we did is not popular by the societal metrics. You could relate because you did it for a year and a half. I think it really taught us to communicate better, but more importantly to really trust our guts and follow what feels right for us internally versus the external noises and external standards of what you should do. Reena: Okay, but talking about what feels right, it definitely heightens your level of sensitivity to any touch. She could probably brush by you and that would turn you on because if you're not touching at all then you're noticing every little touch, right? Benoit: Here is a high level of the parameters and the boundaries we did. We tell people that we lived a hermit and like middle school life. The farthest kingship we will do is cuddle when we go to bed. That is it. Reena: That's dangerous. Benoit: Yes, but we leave room for Jesus in the middle. There's always a gap. It's not that intimate, which is what middle schoolers and high schoolers do. We did that. We will hold hands, we will kiss, but there's no French kissing. You're just dabbing. Literally, like middle schoolers to create temptations. We become a lot more shy and innocent with each other. Even thinking about it it's crazy where I haven't felt that level of innocence and purity since I was in high school. Yes, it wasn't easy at all, but I think by creating systems it allowed us to rely less on our willpower and it was easier to be disciplined because we had these mutually agreed upon rules and systems and housekeeping rules that allowed us to do it. Then when we do get a little bit more skinship, AKA like cuddling a little bit longer or kissing for two seconds instead of half a second dab, we get these jolts of energy. We get that high school chills like, "Oh, that was scandalous." Of course, that's a joke, but I think it in a way sparked us and kept us relationship more exciting and we have more things to look forward to because we knew that we're doing this A, because we believe we're going to get married. If we knew it wasn't a lifelong partnership, why will we subjugate us under this torture? Because it was torturous, for sure, but yes, it kept our relationship more innocent and interesting in a weird way that we didn't really foresee beforehand. Reena: I think that's something that the audience should take note of because if you want someone that you're dating to experience what it would have been like to spend time with you as a teenager, try that on [laughs]. Benoit: The running joke is since now we recommit a sexual relationship with the engagement, we'll get legally married in like a month or two because she has great physician insurance, so I need the insurance benefits ASAP. That's half joke, half-truth. It's almost like because we had known about every other skeleton, there is no skeleton in the closet. You really have to get deep and you really have to know yourself and your partner. Now we almost joke like, "Wow, we're virgins again." We joked about us being virgins again, like being the chosen virgin. In a sense, it is true because it's not even like forbidden fruit like Adam and Eve. We knew the forbidden fruit because we've partaken in it for a year and a half before we recommitted from abstinence from sex. We're like we chose to be virgins again, and it does keep the sex life or the current romantic and sexual chapter a lot more, not enticing, but just a lot more worthy. Because we know we both chose the path of highest resistance. Now we're here on the other side, everything just a lot more fruitful, emotionally, relationally, romantically, sexually. The benefits are great, but I also don't want to say that, "Oh, all these were planned out. This was all calculated. That wasn't the case. The reason was very pure. Let's address our moral and emotional incongruence. That was it, but all these unintended benefits start to happen because when you make a decision in life, Reena, you embrace that decision. You don't look back. You just move forward. A lot of new pathways tend to open up. Reena: Okay, I love that you just said my name. [laughter] What would you tell someone who has experienced abuse and has not shared that with their partner? Benoit: I'm going to have to bill you for a therapy session afterwards for all the therapy feedback. That's a really hard one. It depends. It depends who the person is. It depends on their circumstances. It also depends on the level of psychological and emotional safety that's been established within their relational container. Instead of answering, I would ask, why not? What is stopping you from sharing your abused history or some of the more vulnerable and intricate sensitive details with your significant other that you say you love? Why not? What's stopping you? What happens? Because I think we have to meet where they are at, whether it's therapists and clients or humans to humans like we talked about, where I don't believe in advice because too much context is required. Who am I speaking with? What is their upbringing? What is their aspirations? What do they want? What is their goals? Likewise to your question, it depends, what are they hoping to achieve out of their relationship. Are you seeking a lifelong partnership? Is it just a season? Is it just a rebound relationship? Is it just for fun? Because the ultimate goal of every relationship, friendship or romantic or otherwise, it's all about finding the world safe again. Because what trauma and abuse does to you psychophysiologically, is you feel that the world is no longer safe. Because the world is unsafe, I have to do everything within my power to protect myself. It's survival. There's nothing wrong with that. If someone is not sharing anything that's vulnerable and very close to their heart with their loved ones, I don't pathologize that. I just view it as, "Wow, they're trying to survive in this world where they feel unsafe." I would rather instead of what's making you feel unsafe currently with a person that you love, if you've been dating that person for three or four years and you still feel unsafe emotionally, there's something there. I don't use the word good or bad, but I think it's worth examining the archives of your behaviors, the archives of your patterns and what characters or what behaviors that is contributing to you feeling unsafe to a point that you feel you can't open up wholeheartedly to this person who tells you that they will love you no matter what. Reena: That's a great response. I have a follow-up, too, because you mentioned after that happened to you that you became an Fboy. Do you think when men are abused that it changes something in their sexual wantings or desires or anything along those lines? Benoit: I can't speak for all men, so I'm going to speak for my experiences where there is actual neurological and genetical changes. The field is called epigenetics. Once again, not to nerd out too much, but I love neurobiology, so please stop me when this becomes a Ted Talk or a lecture. Genetics is the given subsets of DNA genomes, which is a DNA expression, that's genetics. Y chromosome, X chromosome, et cetera. Epigenetics is a study of change of DNA expressions based on your environmental feedback. What that means is a given subset of genetic foundations of the chromosomes and genomes, they're unchanged because they're fixed, but the DNA expressions of how you express those given subsets, they do change based on nurture. That's why the people ask, is it nature or nurture? It's always both. Epigenetically, it does create psychological changes in men, and it's not just men, women, men, whoever you are, anything that's traumatic. Because trauma is this word that people are allergic to nowadays, but trauma literally means a scar because it's a medical word. Physical trauma means you have a scar tissue. That's what trauma is, literally, but then that trauma creates a scar tissue, which creates a physiological change. I'm a former athlete. I'm a veteran. I used to be pretty rowdy as a kid. I used to do a lot of dumb stuff, jumping off the rooftops, whatever. I have like four or five scars around my body, and they're permanent. Physiologically, the physical trauma changes your physiology. Similarly, psychological-emotional trauma changes your psychology. Also not permanently. A lot of it can be reversed, but it takes a lot of time. I don't really know how that changes people's or men's sexual preferences or their sexual expression. That's probably what you're asking about. I don't quite know. At the same time, what I do know is hurt people hurt people. With my case, I was hurt, so I wanted to hurt other people. Because when you feel like your life is missing control, that your life is spiraling out of control, you have no control or pulse over how your life goes. How do you get that power back? You exert influence other people by hurting them and a lot of people and the reason why a lot of perpetrators- For example, this is a very dark and sensitive topic. A lot of kids with sexual trauma, let's say they were raped and abused by their father, by their mother sexually. A lot of times they become perpetrators themselves when they grow up because it's about priming and role modeling. Imagine the only ways you know how to cope through a relational conflict is through alcohol. Because you grew up under alcoholic parents. Guess what you're going to do when you go through your own relational conflict? Alcohol. It's not because they're incompetent. It's because that's the only reference in data points they have in their databases, and likewise, if you've been abused sexually by your parents or by elders, your cousins because a lot of sexual trauma and assault happens within families, people that you know of, that's statistically accurate, is you're going to replicate that behavior unconsciously without because it feels familiar, and familiarity comes with comfort. Nobody likes discomfort. I think the answer is yes, but that's a long one and the answer is to say, I don't know, but hurt people to hurt people traumatically. Reena: I appreciate that answer, and I think it really segues into a question from Patrick Martin, who you've done an episode with. He was interested in your experience moving into the therapy field and wanted to know about how your military experience helped you transition into that, and then how do you take these experiences and all of these things that you've talked about with me today and how do you share that with your clients? Benoit: Shout out to you, Patrick. Great guy, and shout out to you for the thorough forensic research. I think it also depends who I'm speaking with. I think the short answer is, it gives me a sense of relatability. Because I could tell them that, "Hey," especially with men clients, because a lot of men come into our session saying that, "Oh, this is pseudoscience. We're just going to talk about my feelings. What are you going to do just talking about feelings? You're not going to change me?" I say, "Yes, I'm not here to change you. I'm here to hopefully help you going from a place of stuckness," because that's what trauma is. You get stuck. "To go from stuckness to unstuckness," but therapy is the same thing as reading a book, journaling, talking to people. It's a space of self-exploration. We all navigate our lives based on the idiosyncrasies, our belief systems, our thoughts and feelings, and a lot of times, many of those are distorted, like the way we started this interview with we internalize our parents as truth. If you're going to navigate your life based on your internal thoughts and feelings and belief system, let's make sure that the operating system you're basing your life out of is accurate. Let's just start there, and that's how I approach my therapy where I'm just a GPS system with certain expertise in certain modalities. I'm just here to show you, turn left, turn right, but I often ask them, "Can you get to where you want to be by taking a detour or not following a GPS?" Yes, of course. It might take you a little bit longer, it might take a few additional detours, but you can get to the same destinations by taking a different path, but at the end of the day, Reena, I tell all my clients that I'm the expert of clinical psychology and therapy, but you're the expert of your own life, always. To answer your question, I think it depends on who I'm speaking with, but if there are men, I relate because I'm a veteran, I'm a former varsity athlete, I'm tall, I have a great physique. If they want bravado and machoism, I got them, but if they want more emotionality and being attuned with their emotions and redefine what being masculinity means. I don't like the term toxic masculinity because what does that mean? It's more about let's redefine what does it mean to be a man in 2023? Because, like I said, Stoics are real men. These are gladiators. These are the greatest philosophers of our- not our generations, but historically, and those men will cry in public. They would talk about their internal stresses with their trustees, and then they would confront it, internalize it, and move on with their lives. That's how I define a man, is do the difficult things, even if that means going to see a stranger who's a professionally trained therapist and talk about some of your vulnerability. If that's difficult, it's worthy, because being fearless and bravery isn't absence of fear. It's in light of fear, you're still dealing it. That's what makes it courageous and fear. I think my veteran and military experiences, some of my experiences, that a lot of people view it as a bravado, and what a real man does, I think, gives me additional entry points and relatability and comes down to creating a buy in for the clients to feel comfortable, to share what they're sharing with me, probably for the first time in their lives. Reena: That's amazing. I'm now interested in finding out what my dad thinks a real man is [chuckles]. Speaking of that, do you have a question for my dad? Benoit: Yes, I do. It's related to what a real man is because your dad sees and he gives his high-level, two-cent advice at the end of each episode, and he gives great advice by the way. I have a question for him which is, what does being a good father mean to him? Reena: That's a great question. I'm excited to hear what he has to say about that, and one final question for you coming out of the pandemic. How has therapy changed in the time that you've been in it? Benoit: Are you asking for as a consumer of therapy because I see a therapist or are you asking as a therapist? Reena: I'll let you pick. Benoit: I'll give you both. [laughter] Benoit: I'll keep them succinct. As a consumer of therapy, it's a lot more scarce and a lot more difficult to seek therapy because there's just so much demand, and the pandemic was about physical illness. It was a pandemic, but then there is the invisible, hidden epidemic, which is mental health. The suicide rate during the pandemic, the adolescents, little girls, one of the highest suicide populations is adolescent teenage girls because social media, unrealistic beauty standards, the eating disorder we started this interview with, it's staggeringly high. It's extremely concerning how many little girls attempt to take their own lives, or they do end up taking their own lives because of cyberbullying and because of the beauty standards through social media. That's the consumer side. As the therapist giving therapy. Therapists are making more money now because I think they're finally recognizing the role of therapists and because supply and demand basic economics. Because of the rise of demand, there is the rise of supply. I do see more people going to therapy who want to help people, who want to help reshape and reimagine a lot of people's internal reality landscape, which is really exciting to see. It's mixed because the rise of therapy cost is deterring a lot of people from a lower or more marginalized socioeconomic background. The barrier to service is a little bit more difficult for a lot of people. It's mixed, but I do see that a lot of people believe in therapy a little bit more, but I want to caveat that because whoever is seeking therapy, unless you're first-hand therapy seekers, you've already bought into therapy before. We need to target the population that hasn't bought into therapy, who has never seen therapists before because those people are often the people who need help the most. Even though they're desperately in need of therapy or any other help-seeking life coaching, whatever, therapy is just one of many vehicles for help. They're often not getting the help they need because seeking help is hard. Because to seek help, you have to recognize that you need help, and recognizing that you need help, first and foremost, I think is the greatest barrier, especially for a lot of men. Yes, therapy landscape has been interesting and mixed with upsides and downsides post-pandemic. Reena: It's also expensive. I would think that that would be a barrier too. Someone in my audience even said, why is it so hard to get in with a therapist? She found it to be hard, and like you said, the supply and demand thing, that she's been told that she has to wait weeks to get in with one. Benoit: At USC. I work at Keck Counseling Center at USC on campus. I serve all USC populations, undergraduates, and PhD students. Our USC clinic site, we serve about 21,000 students a year. There is 65 of us clinicians. Let me say that again. There's over 20,000 students seeking help every year, and the number is growing. There are 65 of us therapists. Of course, it's hard to seek therapy. Addition to that is, not all therapists are made the same. Just like not all podcasters are the same. Not all doctors are the same, not all chefs are the same. There are competent ones, and there are- I don't like the word competency because it's very bourgeois who decides competency, but not all therapists have the same capacity for healing. Even if someone can go through and move through all those obstacles and barriers to finally get linked to a therapist for intake session, which is the first session, you may realize that, wow, this is not a good fit. They don't understand me. They don't validate me enough. I don't like the approach or the modalities they're using. Because I often say therapy is like a buffet. There's many different flavors, so you have to try out different flavors, but if you don't like a single doctor you've seen, would you just give up on emergency medicine? Would you just never go to hospital again? Probably not. You probably shop for a new primary care physician. Likewise, if you have a "bad" or less than ideal experience with a therapist, I strongly encourage you to do more shopping and check out a different flavor, because there will be someone to your liking and there will be a goodness of fit, which is what we call. Reena: There will be a different flavor and you can Discover More. Benoit: Discovering more with us in Reena. Reena: Let people know how they can find your podcast, Discover More, and learn more about you. Benoit: Exceptional segue. I have a podcast called Discover More. It's a show for independent thinkers, by independent thinkers, with an emphasis on mental health, and if you listen to my new introductions, you will hear Reena's voice in the background as part of my intro. She was gracious enough to submit her recording, and I love a lot of esoteric topics. Of course, I know mental health and psychology the best, but I speak with Christian philosophers, I have podcasters on like Reena, I have entrepreneurs, I have pretty much anyone that I think have fascinating and unique stories to tell. Like Reena, I'm a story junkie. That's what I borrowed from her during our last month of knowing each other. I love highlighting the stories and elevating the voices they need elevated the most, but if you found any common grounds or interest with the way I view things, my output in life, how I navigate life, if you want to ask me any questions, feel free to connect with me on Instagram and social @discovermorepodcast. You can find my YouTube channel if you're more visual @discovermorepodcast on YouTube. If you're more audio listener, you can find Discover More Podcastwherever you listen to your podcast. Reena: Amazing. Thank you so much. Benoit: Thank you.   Connect with Reena https://youtube.com/c/BetterCallDaddy bettercalldaddy.com linkedin.com/in/reenafriedmanwatts twitter.com/reenareena   My dad and I would love to here from you, subscribe, drop us a five star review podchaser.com/bettercalldaddy ratethispodcast.com/bettercalldaddy    

After a February break, the mothership is back to take on the good and bad of Spring Training 2023 — right after a couple of words from the top. We have not made a formal post because there are still details to be addressed, but no later than the end of this month, the South Side Sox family of podcasts will become Sox Populi, our new mothership podcast and podcast umbrella. Mechanically, nothing will change for you as a listener/subscriber. Materially, the podcast and network (Fans First Sports Network) is going to deliver much more to you. More details will follow And while we're at it, a reminder that the mothership, and daily coverage, is not attending to criminal enterprises on the White Sox, so the elephant in the rotation this season will remain unnamed and under-attended Get this: The pluses portion of the podcast was twice as long as the minuses! Plaudits are issued to Oscar Colás, the bullpen, basepaths aggressiveness, Yasmani Grandal, and more White Sox SB aggressiveness begs a discussion of whether a first-time manager like Pedro Grifol is more apt to push the envelope with strategy or lay back and play cautious; the panel is unanimous with their hunches On the negative side ... yes, we had to get to negatives ... the defense, the initial offense (at least to start Cactus League play), Romy González, and Tim Anderson's relative lack of power all fall under scrutiny Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this very special 150th regular episode of CORVETTE TODAY, Corvette Chief Engineer, Josh Holder, comes back to the show to talk about everything E-Ray, but from a mechanical and technological point of view.Your CORVETTE TODAY host, Steve Garrett, really delves into the technology that makes this 2024 Corvette E-Ray so special. You'll learn how the two engines (the electric front engine and the internal combustion engine in the back) work together, how the E-Ray generates and recovers electrical power. Josh even talks about his favorite thing about the E-Ray!It's a special 150th regular episode of CORVETTE TODAY with Corvette Chief Engineer, Josh Holder!

In this “Breathe Easy Critical Perspective” podcast, Dr. Dominique Pepper interviews Dr. William Checkley. They discuss outcomes in critically ill patients with pneumonia due to SARS-CoV-2 compared to other etiologies. Dr. Checkley is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore Maryland.

BLUE CAST - Ep 401 - BLUE CAST - Ep 401 - Mechanically Recycled TENCEL™ with Artistic MillinersThis BLUE CAST Episode, Tuncay Kilickan talks with Baber Sultan from Artistic Milliners as they discuss Mechanically Recycled TENCEL™   Baber Sultan - Director of Product and Research at Artistic Milliners. Hands-on and thorough knowledge of fibers, yarns, dyeing, weaving & finishing. Garments all the way to final wash. He's been behind some of the many innovations at Artistic Milliners these many years and with sustainability at the heart of the development.Tuncay Kilickan - Highly respected Industry figure, having cut his teeth at Turkish giant ISKO spanning 17 years. Most recently Tuncay was part of R&D team of ISKO. Tuncay has a number of patents under his name. No doubt most of us have worn fabrics developed by him and his team. Tuncay takes on the Head of Global Business Development - Denim at LENZING.  @carvedinblue  @tencel_usa   #tenceldenim #tencel #Circularity  #circulareconomyBLUE CAST by TENCEL™ / CARVED IN BLUE®A podcast series created Lenzing's TENCEL™ Denim team. Each month, they will host an in-depth talk with a special guest working in the industry or on the fringes of the denim community. Listen for discussions on sustainability, career trajectories, personal denim memories and more.Graphics, recording and editing by Mohsin Sajid and Sadia Rafique from ENDRIME® for TENCEL™ / CARVED IN BLUE®.Find us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @carvedinblue. And get in touch denim@lenzing.comhttps://carvedinblue.tencel.com/https://www.youtube.com/c/bluelenzhttps://bluecast.buzzsprout.com

Delayed episode but join Jordan and Dee as they talk about mechanics in survival titles. Does the addition of food automatically make it survival? (Half the titles in the past six months want to know!) What mechanics make it just...chefs kiss?? Some audio hiccups but did my best to edit them out. As always come check us out at the https://www.hashtagsurvival.net/ (Hashtag Survival website) and pop into the Discord!

In this episode I discuss and give an update on my Exmark Commercial 30 and chat about if you need to be mechanically inclined to run a lawn care business. lawncarebusinesssuccess.com Check out my new 3D printed String Trimmer Spare String Holders lawncarebusinesssuccess.com/shop Check out the Lawn Care Business Success Academy for downloadable products, courses, and one on one calls. instagram.com/lawncarebusinesssuccess follow Lawn Care Business Success on instagram YouTube.com/lawncarebusinesssuccess subscribe to Lawn Care Business Success on YouTube Check out recommended products on my Amazon affiliate store https://www.amazon.com/shop/lawncarebusinesssuccess Special thanks to the podcast sponsors below who help make this podcast possible! Check out Exmark Manufacturing, the number one brand of commercial lawn equipment! exmark.com Enjoy great discounts with some of our affiliate discount codes below! Get 50% OFF Equip Expo 2022 Show Passes lawncarebusinesssuccess.com/equip Use coupon code LCBS10 to get 10% off your order of Kujo Yard Wear lawncarebusinesssuccess.com/kujo Use coupon code LCBS10 to get 10% off your order of Equipment Defender lawncarebusinesssuccess.com/equipmentdefender Use coupon code LCBS10 to get $10 off your order of ISO Tunes audio bluetooth hearing protection lawncarebusinesssuccess.com/isotunes

When making major life decisions, we need a lot of support from other people. With that in mind, when our loved ones are making major life decisions, you have to be there to support them as well!    In this episode, we'll revisit a recent life event my son has gone through as he's about to go to college. As we go through it, we'll see the mechanics and design between both of us, and hopefully, yours too! Stay tuned.   Here are the things to expect in the episode: Mechanically hearing versus mechanical listening. What's the difference? Should you go with the flow or against it? Embracing the paradox of our own design. Psycho-social-spiritual-ener-genetics. What is it? Getting to know our “inner authority”.  Facing the “ripple effects” of the decisions you make.  And much more! If you prefer to watch the video version you can do that here: https://youtu.be/iLX8UlqgTkk   Eli's chart:  Connect with Kris Prochaska! Website: https://www.krisprochaska.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kris.prochaska Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/krisprochaskadesign YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/KrisProchaska  

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: A distillation of Evan Hubinger's training stories (for SERI MATS), published by Daphne W on July 18, 2022 on The AI Alignment Forum. This post is a distillation of Evan Hubinger's post "how do we become confident in the safety of a machine learning system?", made as part of the summer 2022 SERI MATS program. While I have attempted to understand and extrapolate Evan's opinions, this post has not been vetted. Likewise, I use training stories (and contribution stories) to describe the methodology of proposals for safe advanced AI without the endorsement of those proposals' authors and based on a relatively shallow understanding of those proposals (due to my inexperience and time constraints). The opinions presented in this post are my own unless otherwise noted. Epistemic status: Exploratory Some day, all too soon from now, people will deploy the AI that seals humanity's fate. There are many scenarios for how this comes about or what happens afterward. Some have multiple AI negotiating or fighting for dominance, others one. Some think the handoff of power from humans to AI will go slowly, others fast. But whatever the case, there is one question that these people need to get right: "Is the AI we're about to deploy safe?" For people to get this answer right when it matters, two things need to happen: we need tools to accurately determine whether an advanced AI is safe, and we need an advanced AI those tools approve of that we can deploy in time for it to matter. Training stories are a tool to evaluate proposals for making this happen. Specifically, they're meant to analyze complete proposals for training prosaic advanced AI: advanced AI which has similar enough architecture to current systems that most research is cross-applicable. The reason to focus on complete proposals is that it gets us to pay attention to what will be important when push comes to shove. From there, we can backpropagate and get an estimate of what research paths are most beneficial. Evan thinks theoretical prosaic alignment is the most beneficial in expectation for him and many others to pursue, though he supports a broad spectrum of research. Because I think the original post describes the central concept of training stories very well, I have avoided retreading the same ground, and instead focused on expanding its usability. I will start with some more case studies of using training stories to analyze proposals, and then expand on the original post with contribution stories: a method for analyzing research agendas by how they factor into training stories. Training stories Case study: Imitative amplification + intermittent oversight In this case study, Evan's comments in An overview of 11 proposals for building safe advanced AI map well to the training story evaluation, and I don't feel like much was missing. However, the training story itself makes it more clear to me what the training goal might look like, which could help point at potential experiments with toy models that can be done today. This demonstrates how training stories can be used to clarify a path towards working AI. Training goal specification: The goal is to end up with a model M which accurately answers whether a model similar to M is safe to run, which suggests possible tests to determine if that model is safe to run, and which answers questions about some other topic T. This can take several forms, but let's try to work one out:M can't take all weights of M as input for inspection, so M has to look at sections of a model and share a summary of its conclusions with other M's to form a reliable answer. This could be organized like HCH. Since M is trained to imitate the output of Amp(M), which is prototypically a human consulting M and some selection of transparency tools, these summaries would be human-legible.Mechanically, M woul...

The party witnesses the awesome might of the GlorpBombs and begins to feel like maybe they have a chance against the Beast after all. With the to-do list on the Southern Island done, it's time for a strategy session. What ideas does the team have for the Eastern Island? What powers does the newly acquired Air Key have in store? And again, how many Byzderas ARE there on this island? Find out on this week's episode of The Last Refuge.    TLR LINKS:  Twitter/Instagram: @dndlastrefuge  Email: dndlastrefuge@gmail.com  Website: www.dndlastrefuge.com  Patreon: www.patreon.com/dndlastrefuge  Merch: bit.ly/tlrmerchstore DMs Guild/DriveThru RPG (use this link when you purchase and TLR gets 5% of whatever you spend!): https://www.dmsguild.com/?affiliate_id=705437  Idle Champions Electrum Chest Code: ILEA-DOOL-LEAF (Game info available at CodeNameEntertainment.com)  VoiceMod: DM Jazzy Hands is a VoiceMod Partner! Check out the free version of their digital voice changer here: VoiceMod Website Use code JAZZYHANDS for 5% off a Pro license!    MUSIC/SOUNDSCAPES:  Druid's Grove - Maiden of the Wild - Score by Marc Cholette  Mountains - Roving Mountains in Day - Soundscape by Stuart Duffield  Fireball Spell - Sounds by Daniel Warneke  From: BattleBards.com  Under License: BattleBards Podcasters Audio License    Modern Vibes by Kevin MacLeod  Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4070-modern-vibes  License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license 

Biomechanical interactions, rather than neurons, control the movements of one of the simplest animals. The discovery offers a glimpse into how animal behavior worked before neurons evolved. The post This Animal's Behavior Is Mechanically Programmed first appeared in Quanta Magazine. Music is “Running Out” by Patrick Patrikios.

Seven Episodes in and the content is as unique as ever! This episode covers topics from lab reports to extended car warranties. You will want to listen to Gabe and Caleb discuss opinions from last week's episode, Pica eating disorder and the durability of Airpods. Also don't miss the facts you can live without! The results from the giveaway are also released in this episode. please enjoy listening to the origin of "Chowing Down" and finding a robotic assistant for your house chores. Thank you for listening!

FOLLOW UP: EU ADVISOR APPROVES PURSUING DEFEAT DEVICE DAMAGES CLAIMSAn EU court advisor has stated that owners of vehicles fitted with defeat devices should be allowed to pursue damages. This is not a final ruling but very rarely do the judges not follow such advice. This case is against Mercedes-Benz. If this is ruled upon, it will be up to individual countries to calculate damages that align with loss and damages caused by such devices. For more, click the Automotive News story here. NEW CAR REGISTRATION FIGURES MAY 2022The weakest May, in three decades outside of 2020's lockdown situation, meant that there was a 20.6% drop in registrations. Supply chain issues, including Covid lockdowns and the war in Ukraine are all contributing factors. You can learn more by clicking the SMMT link here. MERCEDES TO RECALL 1M CARS Mercedes-Benz is recalling nearly one million cars that could have faulty brakes. Owners of some R-Class, ML and GL models, built between 2004 and 2015, are being advised not to drive their cars until they have been inspected. To read more, click here for the Autocar article link. HMRC NOT KEEPING PACE WITH ENERGY PRICE RISESHMRC has now brought in their new mileage rates, which company car drivers can claim, however they do not match the rise in energy prices. They, in fact, do not rise at all, unlike petrol and diesel rates. This has caused much frustration from those who may well be out of pocket as prices continue to rise. More can be read on this, just click here for the Autocar article. FUEL PRICE SURGE IN MAYPetrol and diesel prices surged in May, rising on average 10p per litre. The war in Ukraine is being blamed for the 17% increase in wholesale costs. For more, click this Autocar article link. CARZAM CLOSES DIGITAL DOORSCarzam, one of the new breed of online only car purchasing sites has gone into voluntary receivership. Unlike Cazoo and Cinch, this entity was created by people from within the car retail industry and therefore thought of as one of the better prospects. For more on this story, click the Car Dealership Magazine link here. MERCEDES DITCHES MOST B-CLASS VARIANTSPrior to the facelift of the B-Class, later this year, Mercedes-Benz has cut all but two model options from the range. Only the 200 and 200d, a petrol and diesel respectively, versions will still be available to buy. Trim levels are also, well, trimmed down to now only give four options. More can be found out about this by clicking here for the Autocar link. FORD CUTTING FOCUS PRODUCTIONIn a move that likely indicates the demise of the Focus mode according to somel, the Saarlouis plant in Germany will reduce production of the model at the end of August. Ford has been vocal about prioritising more profitable models, therefore this does imply that the Puma is more favoured by management. To read more, click here for the Autocar article. ——————————————————————————-We are at the MOVE 2022 Conference at ExCel, London. Alan will be moderating a panel titled "All these EV targets, where's the charging infrastructure?" with Katie Black, head of the UK's Office for Zero-Emission Vehicles; Daniel Tibble, Director of Data Science and Analytics of the connected vehicle data company, Wejo; and Hui Zhang, the Vice President for Europe of EV company, NIO. More details on the conference can be found by clicking this link here. We have some complimentary tickets, which you can apply for, if you wish to attend the conference yourself. To do so, click this link here and fill out the details required. ——————————————————————————-If you like what we do, on this show, and think it is worth a £1.00, please consider supporting us via Patreon. Here is the link to that CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT THE PODCAST——————————————————————————-WRC: RALLY ITALYSardinia once again proved to be very tough, with an unlikely winner in the form of Tanak, who has shown no hint of his talent nor an appearance of being a leader this season, until now. He drove with purpose and intelligence to bring home a win for himself and Hyundai. Second was Criag Breen in the M-Sport Puma and Sordo rounding out the podium for Hyundai with another impressive drive. Championship leader Rovanperä was fifth, whilst Evans had a rally to forget, or is that a season to forget? For a review of the event, click the DirtFish article here. For the DirtFish What We Learned article, click this link. For the Colin Clark Driver Ratings article, click here for the link. DESIGNERS MOOD BOARD: MELVILLE LEAVES MCLARENRob Melville, McLaren's design director, has announced he will step down from his role. He is credited with giving McLaren their distinctive style. There is no indication of who will replace him yet. For more, click here for the EVO article. NEW NEW CAR NEWS:Hyundai i30N Drive-N - A very limited run, of just 75 examples coming to our shores, plus improved interior and design cues along with a £1535 premium on the “normal” i30N marks this out. Mechanically it stays the same. For more info, click this EVO link here. Mercedes-AMG One - The much anticipated mega Mercedes-AMG hypercar has now been revealed. Power comes from a combination of the F1 engine, a V6, being mated to four electric motors, to produce 1049bhp. Only 275 examples are being built, with them all snapped up already at £2.2 million. To read more about this car, click the Autocar link here. LUNCHTIME READ: MERCEDES-AMG ONE OR NOTHINGMichael Banovsky gives us his take on the Mercedes-AMG, well that and Mercedes the company. As ever, very enjoyable read, click here for the Speedster News article. LIST OF THE WEEK: 10 CARS THAT MASTERED AERODYNAMICSHagerty has a list, thanks to Antony Ingram, of some of the most aero efficient vehicles sold, through history. Run through the list, and see if you would pick the same as Andrew. Don't forget to tell the podcast Twitter account your choice! Click here for the list's link. AND FINALLY: US CAR SO BAD A DICTATOR SAID NOSaddam Hussein was so disappointed by the quality of specially-built 1981 Chevrolet Malibus, that he cancelled the second part of the deal with GM, meaning 12,500 cars did not end up in Iraq. How bad was US car quality at that time? Shockingly so, it would appear. Click here for The Drive article explaining how this all happened.

Make sure to check the rest of the description for all of our social media and charity links, including our Patreon (patreon.com/DoNotRelent)!  Slidewhistle, Immunization, and Aaron have dashed headfirst and eyes wide into what some are calling the BIGGEST patch of World of Warcraft! (Mechanically, at least.) The gentlemen cover the mission to save the Undercity, the Winter Queen gifting the residents of Teldrassil a new future, and the fart in an oven mitt that was the roll out of Heritage weapon sets! You're gonna a guide to make it through this swamp of content; might as well make it these three lads! Please send all your love mail, hate mail, and fighting mecha-gnome figurines to @DoNotRelentPod (Twitter) or on gmail at DoNotRelentPod@gmail.com! We will respond to literally anything and read it on the pod. Find us at: Patreon: patreon.com/DoNotRelent Discord: donotrelent.com Instagram: www.instagram.com/donotrelent Twitter: twitter.com/DoNotRelentPod Livejournal: donotrelentpod.livejournal.com E-Mail: DoNotRelentPod@gmail.com Finally, if you feel so inclined, please rate us on iTunes and warcraftradio.com. We will take a shot on air in your honor! Every rating helps! :D Additionally, here are the links to the charities that Blizzard employees have asked us to support in the wake of the sexual harassment and gender inequality lawsuit: https://www.blackgirlscode.com/  https://www.futureswithoutviolence.org/ https://girlswhocode.com/ https://www.rainn.org/ https://womeninanimation.org/ https://www.getwigi.com/

The No Nonsense Show Episode #723 I'm not saying that he is special needs or neuro-diverse...But I am saying that he is challenged. French Reggy self proclaims that he is not very good with his hands because he never had to use them. Is this the world we live in? While we are schooling our women on how to be better wives, we are allowing our mento grow up without any gumption or elbow grease? It seems that the days of the handy are gone. You won't find one under the age of 35. Shout out to Remorseless/LetMeBeFrank for providing us with a few Question The Nonsense submissions. And shout out to Baylor who hit us with a sentimental and heartfelt question that will be sure to leave no eye in the audience dry. Mechanically Challenged #TNNS723 Support the show by paying your laugh tax or becoming a premium subscriber HERE Get Show merch here: MERCH Follow us at: Twitter Instagram Facebook

Don't be alarmed - this is not the final hour of this podcast!  Actually, we are talking about a game called Arkham Horror: Final Hour from Fantasy Flight Games.  It being an Arkham Horror game, you can pretty much guess what this game is about and like.  If you do, you'll be half right and half wrong.  Thematically, this is pretty much the same game as Arkham Horror or Arkham Horror: The Card Game.  You are running around fighting monsters and cultists while trying to stop some GOO from showing up.  Mechanically speaking, however, you will be surprised.  This game feels and plays very differently from other Arkham Horror games. Arkham Horror: Final Hour (BGG, FFG)

Join Tyler and Jeff as the sit down with the Illustrious Kelly Scheffert and her Mechanically inclined husband Todd. They discuss everything from driving a book mobile, to library additions, to building with Legos!

This week I'm joined by Ray to talk about Legendary Resistances. We'll get into what they are, why they are good and not as bad as everyone thinks and then how to improve them. We'll talk about how to incorporate them narratively into your sessions and touch on the mechanics to back that up. We're also introducing Ray's Kitstarter: Emry's Log of Legendary Eminences. This new simple mechanic turns Legendary Resistances into story beats and new mechanical challenges. Check out the kickstarter today and head over to the We Speak Common Twitter to enter into the giveaway to win a digital copy of the book! Want to get involved? Support the Podcast on Patreon Find us on twitter: @WeSpeakCommon Email us at wespeakcommon@hotmail.com Visit us online at https://wespeakcommon.com/ Check out our Partners: The Dice Dungeon - Get beautifully crafted metal sets of dice for your D&D game at https://thedicedungeon.co.uk Use Code 'WeSpeakCommon' at checkout for 10% off your order while supporting the show. dScryb - Enhance your theatre of the mind with expertly crafter boxed text of monsters, locations and spells at https://dscryb.com Use Code 'COMMON' at checkout for 10% off your order while supporting the show. Podcast Theme: "Street Dancing" by Timecrawler 82 (freemusicarchive.org) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Check out the full Bard 5e guide here: https://www.skullsplitterdice.com/blogs/dnd/the-ultimate-bards-guide-for-dungeons-and-dragons The college of eloquence bard can use a well-reasoned, well-spoken argument as inspiration, literally inspiring confidence with logical arguments. Mechanically this blend of logic and theatrical wordplay is mainly represented in the silver tongue class feature you gain at 3rd level that gives you a minimum die result of 10 for all your Persuasion and Deception checks. That and the other 3rd level subclass feature that lets you use your bardic inspiration to lower a creature's saving throw with particularly persuasive arguments. You also get unfailing inspiration at 6th level that essentially lets players keep the inspiration die if their roll still fails. Universal speech makes communication even with bizarre creatures a breeze. And its subclass capstone infectious inspiration is a neat way to "gain" extra inspiration, and overall as a bard college eloquence is a solid buff and debuff option. Consider this bard college if you want to really cement your role as the face of the party. #5ebard #bard #bard5e #dnd #dandd #dnd5e #dungeonsanddragons #collegeofeloquence Support us on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/skullsplitterdice Check out our Metal RPG Dice here: https://www.skullsplitterdice.com/collections/metal-rpg-dice-setsSubscribe to SkullSplitter Dice Podcast on Soundwise

Episode Notes:Today, we're going to talk about US-China relations, the upcoming Sixth Plenum , Xi Jinping, and what we might expect for the next year heading into the 2022 20th Party Congress among other topics. I'm really pleased that our first guest for the Sinocism Podcast is Chris Johnson, CEO of Consultancy China strategies Group, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic International Studies and former senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. 4:45 on US-China relations - I think their assessment is that it's working. In other words, by maintaining that sort of very strict line, they've gotten Madam Meng of Huawei fame home. They've gotten the trade discussions going again. They've got the US saying, "Well, we might lengthen the timeline for you to implement phase one." In other words, it's working from their perspective.13:30 on the 6th Plenum - The first I think is that, it would represent, I think the net evolution in what I call Xi Jinping's further development of his leadership supremacy. And, I use those terms very deliberately because often times, the shorthand we see in describing this as references to Xi's consolidation of power. Well, in my mind that took place very early on in his tenure. 30:00 on the economy and heading towards the 2022 20th Party Congress - Equally important in my mind is how little the leadership and the economic technocrats seem to be rattled by that fact. In other words, we're not seeing the stimulus wave. We're not seeing monetary policy adjustments in a significant way. There's a lot of study as she goes. And, that could change. We've got the central economic work conference, obviously in December, which will give us a sense of how they're thinking about next year. But like so many other things, I think we as watchers and the investment community and others, we're slow to sometimes break with old narratives. One of which is you must welcome a party Congress with very high growth. And every signal coming out of the leadership is that, they're not playing that game anymore. I think that's fairly strong.37:00 On US-China relations - I think if you're a senior US policymaker, your working assumption has to be that China's more likely to get it right than to get it wrong, even if they only get it 30% right or 40%, something like that…Chris Johnson:Xi is here and will be here for the foreseeable future. And therefore there won't be any change in the policies largely that he's articulated.Links: More about Chris Johnson and his China Strategies Group here.Transcript:Bill Bishop:Today, we're going to talk about US-China relations, the upcoming Sixth Plenum , Xi Jinping, and what we might expect for the next year heading into the 2022 20th Party Congress among other topics. I'm really pleased that our first guest for the Sinocism Podcast is Chris Johnson, CEO of Consultancy, China strategies Group, senior fellow at the center for strategic international studies and former senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. Welcome, Chris.Chris Johnson:Great to be here, Bill.Bill Bishop:Chris, welcome. I think today, what I really like to start out with is just an overview where you see the state of US-China relations and how the new administration, I mean it's 10 months now or thereabouts, but how the new administration is doing and how the Xi Jinping administration is reacting.Chris Johnson:Great. Yeah. Well, it's obviously a unique time in US-China relations. I guess, if I had to characterize it in a phrase, I would say, things are a bit of a mess. I think, if we start, it's useful to start at a sort of high order level and then work our way down in terms of thinking about the relationship. So I think at the highest order, one of the things that strikes me is that arguably for the first time, since normalization of relations, really, we're in this strange position where I think both countries, both leaders and perhaps increasingly, even both peoples, aren't overly keen to engage with one another.Chris Johnson:I think, we've had times in the past during the last several decades where maybe one side or the other was feeling that way, but not both. And the sense that I get in terms of the leader to leader view is, both Xi Jinping and President Biden are kind of looking at each other and saying, "I've got a lot going on at home. I'm very focused on what's happening domestically. I know the other guys out there and I need to pay attention to what he's doing, and right now it's all just his. But, if I can kind of keep him at arm's length, that's okay with me." And I think we're kind of seeing that really on both sides of the fence.Chris Johnson:I think for Xi Jinping, it's a little more intense in that it's hard to see where the good outcomes are for him and trying to lean in toward the relationship and so on, because he's kind of getting what he wants to some degree without doing. So, as to your question about how the administration is doing, I think to be fair, I think we have to say probably about as well as they could given both the domestic constraints, what we might call China's own attitudes and approach toward the relationship right now.Chris Johnson:On the domestic side, by constraints, I mean, the administration from my perspective seems to have an almost neurologically fearful stance of being seen as weak on China. Obviously that comes out of four years of the Trump administration and its approach toward China, stories and tales and recreations of history about how engagement was a failure and how the Obama administration was somehow a main sort of group that failed to understand the reality of the relationship and therefore blew it and a lot of those people are back now. And I think that contributes to this fear. And I think the practical impact of that is that, it's inhibited the administration from doing what I think they need to do, which is to have sort of an objective racking and stacking of what they believe China's global ambitions actually are. And then I think critically beyond that, which of those ambitions the US can live with, because in my assessment, we're going to have to live with at least some of them.Chris Johnson:And then to be fair to the administration, I think that same needed exercise has been hamstrung by China's own approach, which at least so far, I think we could probably characterize as an unflinching resistance that the US must adjust it's as they like to call it hostile attitude, if progress is going to be made. And, it's my sense that there's really little chance of progress of China's unwilling to move off of that stance. But at the same time, I think their assessment is that it's working. In other words, by maintaining that sort of very strict line, they've gotten Madam Meng of Huawei fame home. They've gotten the trade discussions going again. They've got the US saying, "Well, we might lengthen the timeline for you to implement phase one." In other words, it's working from their perspective.Bill Bishop:And, they presented two lists to Deputy Secretary of State Sherman. And, it certainly seems like there are some of the things on that list that are being worked through. To follow up though, what do you think the administration is doing around Taiwan? Because it seems like over the last couple of weeks, we've had quite a push from Secretary of State Lincoln and others on Taiwan and sort of whether or not it's giving them, returning them to the UN or in a seat or at least giving them more participation in UN bodies. What do you think is driving that and what do you think realistically, the administration believes the outcome's going to be because it certainly seems to be touching the most sensitive point on the Chinese side?Chris Johnson:Yeah. Well, my sense of it is that, regardless of the administration's intention, and I'm not entirely sure what the intention is, the results in Beijing are the same, which is to say that there would be a perception there that the US is unilaterally making a change to what they see as the cornerstone of the bilateral relationship, which is the US adherence to the One China Policy. And, if you're sitting in Beijing's shoes and you're hearing, you're seeing things in the press, you're hearing the president himself say, "Well, we will defend Taiwan." Oops. We didn't mean to say that, but it wasn't, but I didn't misspeak, and these sort of things, and a lot of that has to do with the domestic. Look, the Chinese have never doubted that the US would probably mount some kind of a defense. So, it's not really that issue if the Chinese were to attack. It's the accumulation of what they see as salami slicing erosion of the US commitment to the One China Policy.Chris Johnson:And so in my mind, the only relevant element here is not really the motivations, but what's going on in Xi Jinping's mind. Can he see all of this activity and basically respond by making the appropriate judgment about this erosion in the One China Policy and then quietly taking the appropriate adjustments on war planning and on other things? Or does he feel that with the accumulation of these things, whether it's the debate over whether or not to break with strategic ambiguity, changing the name of Taiwan's defacto embassy in Washington, all these sort things, does he feel that he needs to do something demonstrative now to kind of reset the balance, which was really the motivation behind their military exercises in 1995, '96, for example, when [inaudible 00:07:53] came to the United States?Bill Bishop:And of course back then, they had far less capability as they do now. I mean, certainly, I've heard different things and looked at different reports, but it does sound like the PLA has advanced quite rapidly around in areas that they would be able to bring to bear, to deal with Taiwan from their perspective. And that the US, I think is ... One of the things I worry about is just that there's certainly in some quarters in DC, it seems like there's a belief in the US military power that may not be fully rooted in the new realities of the sort of PLA modernization campaign that really has, I think, dramatically accelerated and did much more efficient under Xi Jinping.Chris Johnson:Yeah, definitely. And primarily to the degree, there's been a chief innovation under Xi's leadership. They've finally taken the steps to address what we might call the software issues. In other words, the technology, the hardware, the shiny kit has been being developed since that '95, '96 period. And they've got some very interesting and capable systems now. But the software, the ability to actually conduct joint operations, these sort of things was always a fall down point for them. And then massive restructuring of the PLAs force structure, much along the lines of sort of Goldwater-Nichols that Xi launched early in his tenure is now bearing a lot of fruit and making them more capable from that sort of software side of things as well.Bill Bishop:And that restructuring, that was something that the PLA or that they talked about doing before but had never, no other leader had been able to push it through.Chris Johnson:Correct.Chris Johnson:Even Deng Xiaoping, who himself tried to do sort of a similar restructuring in the aftermath of Tiananmen and in the aftermath of the Yang period.Bill Bishop:That's interesting. I remember we talked when she convened the second Gutian meeting with all the generals that look clearly in retrospect was the kickoff to I think, a massive corruption crackdown inside the PLA.Chris Johnson:No. I call it political shock and awe which was the twin aspect of force restructuring and the anti-corruption campaign in the military, which basically the back of the PLAs political power in the system from my perspective.Bill Bishop:Interesting. So, well now moving on to politics, we have the Sixth Plenum. That starts in on the 8th of November, I believe. Can you talk a bit about why those plenums are important and what might be especially interesting about this one? Because, one of the things that we keep hearing about, and certainly there are rumors, but there's also, I think, some certainly the way they describe the agenda for the plenum in the official Xinhua release a couple weeks ago. It sure sounds like they're going to push through a third historical resolution.Chris Johnson:Yeah. No, my sense is that's a forgotten conclusion pretty much at this point. To your first question about why plenums are important. In my mind, I think they're employing both mechanically and substantively. Mechanically, having one once a year, since the reform and opening period started really, and really per the requirement in the party's constitution, that happened once a year. That has been fundamental, I think, to signaling both domestic audiences and international audiences that things in China are relatively stable. So, just look at the brouhaha that that occurred, for example, in this current central committee cycle that we're in the 19th central committee where Xi Jinping snuck in effectively an extra plenum early in the process in early 2018 to get the changes to the constitution about term limits put out there, which then meant they had to advance the third plenum from its normal position in that fall, after a party Congress to the usual second plenum, which manages the national people's Congress changes, personnel changes and so on.Chris Johnson:And then, a perception that the fourth plenum therefore had been delayed because it was more than a year before it actually took place. And you'll recall as well. And we talked a about it at the time, all the speculation. Oh, this means Xi Jinping's in trouble and so on and so forth, non-sense from my point of view. So, that's the mechanical aspect.Chris Johnson:Substantively, obviously I think they're important because outside of the political work report that the sitting party general secretary delivers at the five yearly party congresses, the decision documents as they're usually called that come out of the plenums really reflect the most authoritative venue for the party leadership to signal their priorities, their preoccupations and the policies, of course. And of course, there have been some very important plenums in the party's history, most notably the third plenum of the 11th central committee, which at least the official version is that's when reform and opening was launched. There's a lot of debate about whether that's true or not.Chris Johnson:But, turning to the upcoming six plenum, I think they have made it, as I said, a moment ago, pretty clear that there will be a history resolution. Obviously, there's only been two previous ones in the history of the party. One in 1945 and the other by Mao Zedong and the other in 1981 from Deng Xiaoping, largely closing the book on the mount period, and the culture revolution and so on. So from my perspective, if they do do it this time and I think they will, it it's important for several reasons. The first I think is that, it would represent, I think the net evolution in what I call Xi Jinping's further development of his leadership supremacy. And, I use those terms very deliberately because often times, the shorthand we see in describing this as references to Xi's consolidation of power. Well, in my mind that took place very early on in his tenure.Chris Johnson:I think, he's been there for a good long while. And so, this is just about further articulating his leadership supremacy. And indeed I think, his genius really from the beginning was to frame the party's history in these three distinct eras, each roughly 30 years from the founding of the PRC to Mao's death, Deng's reform, an opening period, and now Xi Jinping's so-called new era. And in fact, I think his signature political achievement, among many political achievements that he's had, has been to canonize that framing these three epics under the banner of Xi Jinping thought with on Chinese characteristics for the new era, so long I can never remember. Let's just call it Xi Thought for shorthand. Yes. And I think, he used it to both effectively erase his two immediate predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao from history, which is important and also simultaneously to vault past Deng Xiaoping in the pantheon of ideology by getting the autonomous thought. And of course, the next iteration will be to truncate Xi Jinping thought for horribly long name.Bill Bishop:Well, and there are multiple variants. There's thought on diplomacy. There's thought on economics. There's thought on law. Chris Johnson:All of that. And I think, the other thing is this ideological crowning, obviously, the significance of it lies in the codification and probably the legitimization then of the sum of all of his actions and pronouncements since he came to power and the equating of those developments and those statements with the party's line. And as you and I have discussed many times, to criticize Xi now then is not just to attack the man, but to attack the party itself. That's very dangerous. And if you're going to do it, you better get it right.Bill Bishop:To that point, isn't that part of his political genius, because he must have, that must have been by design, right?Chris Johnson:Oh, absolutely. It was completely by design and there was a reason I think why Xi, amongst recent leaders, was the one who, if you spoke to people for example, in the party, the central committee department for party history research, they would say when he was vice president leader in training, he actually cared about party history. Jiang and Hu didn't really care, or at least it wasn't a priority for them. It was very meaningful for Xi Jinping, I think for those reasons. And so, this new history resolution, I think, is important in helping him continue this process toward the next revolution, which is to truncate Xi Jinping thought.Chris Johnson:I think, in terms of the substance of a new resolution, it's my sense that there's a tension, not just in Xi's mind, but perhaps in the leadership circles of the people who are working on this thing, between a desire to make that document, only celebratory and forward looking, in other words, why the new era is so amazing versus a desire to tidy up, if you will, some of the bits from history that he doesn't like with criticism, which of course in a very similar fashion to say, Deng Xiaoping 1981 when criticizing the excesses of the cultural revolution. So in my mind, there's two aspects where that criticism could come to the fore, which are very valuable. The first is, will he do in effect to Deng what Deng did to Mao, which is to criticize the excesses of Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening policies.Bill Bishop:Which would be including criticizing then at least indirectly Hu and Jiang who are still alive.Chris Johnson:Well, we'll come back to that in a minute because I think it's a separate animal, but on the reform and opening piece, it very much relates obviously to common prosperity, to the new development concept. I'm seeing right over the last several months, but I think there's a separate aspect from that kind of economic excesses. There is this line. It was a very fascinating. You never want to put too much emphasis on one piece of propaganda, but I believe it was the 24th of September, People's Daily had their latest iteration in the Xi Jinping thought question and answer series. And, it was about kind of party leadership and so on and so forth. And there was a fascinating line in there in my mind, which was the quote was especially after the 18th party Congress in view of quote, the neglect dilution and weakening of the party's leadership for a period of time.Chris Johnson:Now, what period of time is he talking about? He's talking about the tenures of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. So once again, further re-raising them from history, boosting his own stature and creating a justification for him to certainly rule for a third term. And, who knows beyond that?Bill Bishop:And, having a historical resolution, the third one then really does create the third era, right?Chris Johnson:No. It formalizes the kickoff, if you will, of that new era. Yeah.Bill Bishop:And that's why, I struggle with sort of lots of the rumors. Xi's weak. Xi's up or he's down or there's the latest one is he won't travel abroad because he is worried about a coup. "Hey, it's Chinese politics." Maybe it's true, but it seems a little bit of a stretch to me. But, I look at, again, back to his ... You hear lots of things. And certainly, when I was in Beijing and sort of the, probably not now but back then, the Beijing chattering class. He was never the smart guy. He was always kind of slow. And yet, here we are. And here he is. And so I think, he may not be the best educated of Chinese leaders in some formal perspective, but he certainly seems to be as politically savvy as Deng or Mao.Bill Bishop:I mean, he certainly seems to have surpassed Jiang and Hu, but I think one of the things too, back to this question of, is he weak or will he be around? What's going to happen to the 20th plenum? One of the things I go back to is, when he got, Xi Jinping fought and appended, whatever you want behind it, it's a 19 party congress. Doesn't that basically mean though, that as long as Xi's alive, he's kind of the man? [crosstalk 00:20:16] Even, if someone else has the job title, unless the party changes his line and gets rid of Xi's thought, which seems like it would be extremely difficult for a whole bunch of reasons, ultimately as long as he's breathing, isn't he caught up kind of running the show.Chris Johnson:Yes.Bill Bishop:Or, is that too simplistic?Chris Johnson:Very much the case. And in fact, again, his interest in not just Chinese communist party history, but the communist movements history, you can have no Khruschev secret speech. If you do these sort of things, at least while he's alive, to your point. And I think, that's a very important aspect of what he's trying to do here. He's creating the conditions for him to be able to engage in, to steal Barry Naughton’s term for the economy, grand steer edge of the entire system, and I think, that's a very, very important aspect. And just to your point on the intellectual stuff, because I think it's important, there's a difference between book smarts and political street fighting skills. And probably, his education was disrupted. So probably, he may not be God's gift to intellect, but there's no question in my mind that from a political acumen point of view, he's a genius, a tactical genius.Bill Bishop:And, if you think about what his primary book education was when he was in his most formative years, it was Mao thought.Chris Johnson:Yeah. No, definitely. And, I just want to come back to that too, because I think it's so important on what could be the meaning, if you will, of this new history resolution, which is that Xi Jinping clearly has a problem with the period of the nineties and what I actually like to call the early naughties in both of their-Bill Bishop:Otherwise known as the Go-Go Years..Chris Johnson:and being naughty. Yeah. The wild west days. And I think, he feels also that the period in the run up to when he took power ahead of the party Congress in 2012, he in many ways saw that as the period of maximum danger for the party. And so, this will be criticized. There's no way in my mind there won’t be some mention of our friends Bo Xilai,and the characters that were purged at that time, maybe not specifically, but in the sideline propaganda and so on, I'm sure will come up.Bill Bishop:So, because one thing when you talked about the resolution, I mean, and what will be in it and sort of how do you balance the sort of criticism or judgment on the past 30 years with forward looking, I found it interesting in yesterday's People's Daily. I had it in the newsletter yesterday, was that very long piece by the sort of the pen name for the People's Daily theory department on Chinese style modernization, which was very forward looking, but also very global looking in terms of talking about how China has created this new style modernization and how it can be a sort of applicable to other countries. And so, tying that back a little bit to your earlier comment about sort of trying to understand, as you said, the administration's rack and stack, how do we sort of go through what we think they're global, the PRCs global ambitions are and what can we live with what we can, what do you think their global ambitions are?Chris Johnson:Well, there are a series of them in their region, certainly, and we can talk. There's endless debate about whether it extends globally and if so, on what timeline, but they certainly want to be seen as a major superpower. No question. I often like to say that their goal in the region certainly, and I think increasingly globally, is that they want countries when a country is thinking of doing something significant in terms of its policies, the leadership and Xi Jinping himself would like that country's leadership to think about how Xi Jinping's going to react to this in the same moment that they think about how will the US react to this? That's what they're after.Chris Johnson:And in my mind, as to whether it is a desire to subvert the rules based global international order and so on, I'm much more skeptical, I think, than a lot of our colleagues on that in part, because implicit in that is this notion of them sitting around in the Politburo meetings, stroking long beards and looking 50 years into the future. They have an inbox too, and they're not infallible nor are they press the end all the time. And, I just think that, it's too much of a teleological view, from my point of view, but that's certainly one of them.Chris Johnson:And I think, this ties to the history resolution bill, because, Xi, in my mind, needs or wants kind of three things from that. The first is, he too needs to create a justification for staying in power. The reality is, no one can stop what he's trying to do next year, or at least that's my opinion, but what they can do is build leverage for the horse trading for all the other positions that will be in play. If he can be criticized, as someone I spoke to about this situation put it to me, even Mao had to launch the cultural revolution to take control over the party again. In other words, even someone of his stature had to do that.Chris Johnson:Second, and it touches on what we were just discussing is his obsession with China breaking through the middle income trap to further prove the legitimacy of the country. And that means breaking from the old economic model. And third, also relevant to our comments just now is, he sees all of this as intimately bound to what we might call the global narrative competition with the US. In other words, if he can be seen as breaking through the middle income trap, doing a better job than the west on income and equality and so on, he sees that paying tremendous dividends for elevating China system.Bill Bishop:At least so for on dealing with COVID. It's paid dividends.Chris Johnson:Absolutely. Yeah. And, indeed further legitimizing the notion that they have found some third way between capitalism and socialism that not just works for them, but increasingly could be exportable.Bill Bishop:Right. So, it's not like everyone has to become a Marxist, Leninist exactly country, or people's dictatorship, but we have this China, this China solution, I think they call it. And certainly, one thing that's interesting too, I think is, and it hasn't gotten a lot of attention yet in more mainstream media, is this global development initiative that she announced at his speech to the UN in September, which now he is regularly bringing up in his calls with developing countries.Bill Bishop:And, it looks to me like it's effectively taking, it's a way of packaging up their lessons from the poverty alleviation campaign that they declared victory in early this year, and trying to take that global. And quite honestly, the world needs more positive development and if China's offering something that's reasonably attractive in the US or Europe isn't, then how can the US criticize these countries for signing onto it?Chris Johnson:No. I'm mean, increasingly, we always want to say, "Well, nobody wants to sign on to their model" or "It doesn't work in other places", but increasingly, what's the narrative that they're touting? One of it is, "Hey, we brought X hundred million people out of poverty." That's very attractive to some other countries. We have a system that works. We have a system that is tolerant of various and sundry approaches, doesn't insist that you change your governance structure or that you support human rights or avoid graft, and things like this. It's very attractive. But the global development initiative, I think in my mind, increasingly, it's sort of an agglomeration of the BRI aspects. And then, there's been so much attention of recent weeks about, particularly Wang Huning's dream weaving of cultural hegemony and all of these sort of//.Bill Bishop:I think people are a bit overindexing a bit on Wang Huning. [crosstalk 00:28:22] important.Chris Johnson:I know they are. I mean, the line I like to use is they're confusing the musician with the conductor.Bill Bishop:Okay. Oh, so you must be up to date on Xi Jinping thought on music. That's good.Chris Johnson:Exactly. Eventually.Bill Bishop:So, I mean, back to the plenum, moving forward from the next year to the 20th party Congress. I mean, normally, the year before a party Congress is a very, very politically sensitive and difficult year where you have the entire system is geared towards the party Congress and basically one not screwing up. And two, anticipating where the people or persons making the decisions on promotions want you to go in terms of policies. And so, in some way, usually it kind of freezes the system. Is there some risk of a fairly difficult year with China? Because, you've got clearly the economy is, I don't want to say struggling, but it's clearly not doing as well as they hoped.Bill Bishop:They seem to continue to be pushed pretty hard on the third tough battle of reducing financial risks. And specifically, I think evergrande is the poster child of that right now. But, what do you think she believes needs to happen over the next year? And what do you think that means for sort of the stuff, a lot of investors feel worried about around real estate, common prosperity? I mean, it just feels like for the first time in a while, things on the economic side at least look a little bit rickety right now.Chris Johnson:No. I agree with that general assessment. Equally important in my mind is how little the leadership and the economic technocrats seem to be rattled by that fact. In other words, we're not seeing the stimulus wave. We're not seeing monetary policy adjustments in a significant way. There's a lot of study as she goes. And, that could change. We've got the central economic work conference, obviously in December, which will give us a sense of how they're thinking about next year. But like so many other things, I think we as watchers and the investment community and others, we're slow to sometimes break with old narratives. One of which is you must welcome a party Congress with very high growth. And every signal coming out of the leadership is that, they're not playing that game anymore. I think that's fairly strong.Chris Johnson:This also comes back to the issue though of what I mentioned earlier about the politics. It's been quite striking to me given what a momentous occasion is happening next year, how little in the analysis of the crackdowns, the tech lash, these sort of things, property sector, how little attention's being paid to the political dimension. So for example, if you look at sort of this issue that I raised a moment ago of the danger for Xi is not someone's going to stop him or unseat him, but this issue of ... I think, my sense is he views the model of the changeover next year as being the ninth party Congress where I believe there was something like 80% turnover in the central committee.Bill Bishop:This was the 1969 during the middle of the cultural revolution.Chris Johnson:Yeah, in the midst of cultural revolution.Bill Bishop:And, the eighth party Congress was not five years before it was. There was quite a gap.Chris Johnson:Yeah. Huge gap. Yeah. And so, if he would like to sweep away that kind of level of changeover, that means getting rid of a lot of the dead wood of the other constituent groups, let's call them. And I think, his ability to do that is closely tied to whether they can criticize and what are the KPIs that he has put out for himself for this current term, and you just raised them. It's poverty alleviation, environmental improvement, and "guarding against financial risk". I think, we can say on the first two, he's done very well. On the third, it's a bit of a disaster.Chris Johnson:So the message, and I'm told that this was sort of some of the discussion on the margins of Beidaihe this year was that, you've got a year or arguably eight months because of the way the system does these things to get that grade on financial risk from a C-, D+ to an A, and poor Liu He in the role of having to figure out how to make that happen operationally. And I think to your point, oftentimes, we do get that paralysis as everybody's kind of looking over their shoulder. But if anything, I think these guys are more inclined to show they're overfulfilling the plan, if you will, in terms of representation and implementation. So, the risk in my mind is not that the various crackdowns will calm down or smooth out, it's that in their zeal to look like they're doing what the boss wants them to do to hopefully be promoted, they might badly over correct. And that I think, has applications for how they handle Evergrande and many of the other associated crackdowns.Bill Bishop:That's an interesting point. And, one of the things I wonder about because it just seems like she has been quite skillful at finding opportunity and what looks like messes. And, if we're looking at an evaluation in the last 30 years, sort of the historical resolution idea, certainly there's a lot to criticize about the economic model. I mean, they criticize it on a regular basis in terms of trying to transition the new development concept. It's an effectively saying the old model doesn't work anymore. And, one of the biggest problems we created was this massive debt problem for China. Is there a cynical way of looking at it and saying, "Okay, if we have this, we being sort of see the top of the party, we have a fair amount of confidence because we've done a lot, so much work on hardening the system and the stability maintenance system that we can tolerate more stress than people think"?Bill Bishop:And, by letting these things get really stressed, does that help remove some of the dead wood in terms of sort of surfacing officials who might be promotable to actually look like they were somehow culpable for some of the decisions that led to things like ever grand or some of these other messes, and then that clears the way for other personnel moves?Chris Johnson:I think, that's certainly part of it. I think, that might be adopting to sort of micro of a frame on it. I think where it's important is, from the perspective of, again, this is Xi's political genius, from my perspective, is the layering of these narratives in the buildup toward a major change or a major development. So, why in the depths of the trade war? Did you start talking about a new long march? And hardship and sacrifice and all of these things, they're preparing the ground. In some reason, why are they maintaining a COVID zero approach? There's lots of reasons. But one of the reasons in my mind is if indeed you feel you must fundamentally break with that old, dirty economic model, which was largely export led, and you want dual circulation to work and you want these things, why not keep the border closed and force the system to transition because it must?Chris Johnson:So, there's a number of these things where I think, again, I don't like to claim that it's all some master plan, but I think there's a lot of thought that's gone into some of these things.Bill Bishop:But clearly, things like the energy crisis, I mean, they clearly have ... There are a lot of moving parts that can blow up pretty quickly. And so I think, to your earlier point, the politics are always in command in China. I think they're more in command now, but it does just feel like the risks or the downside risks on the economy are greater than they've been in a while.Chris Johnson:Yeah. I mean, my sense is, again, what do the officials and particularly the economic technocrats see as the greatest risk? I think they think the great as risk is overdoing it, not underdoing it at this stage.Bill Bishop:Interesting. So, well, thanks. Anything else you want to talk about?Chris Johnson:No, I think I kind of covered the waterfront. I mean, I guess in summation, I would just say and it maybe kind of comes back nicely to US-China relationship and so on. Discussing what we've just been discussing, I think if you're a senior US policymaker, your working assumption has to be that China's more likely to get it right than to get it wrong, even if they only get it 30% right or 40%, something like that.Chris Johnson:Xi is here and will be here for the foreseeable future. And therefore there won't be any change in the policies largely that he's articulated. And if we have those as our working assumptions, I think we will find ourselves framing a better policy. And I guess, if it doesn't go that way, you could be "pleasantly surprised" or whatever you want to say. But is it really a pleasant surprise if you have a leadership crisis in China?Chris Johnson:I mean, this is another thing I think just in conclusion that I find very striking in the absence of information. And I think, one of the challenges for us as watchers, when a collective leadership system like we had before goes away, each one of those collective, all seven or nine, depending on the timeframe of the standing committee members, they all had coteries under them and so on and so forth. In other words, there was a lot of places to tap in to get insight and compare notes. And so, with Xi Jinping, it's a very small circle, clearly. Even Kurt Campbell and other US officials have discussed their frustration with not being able to get in the inner circle.Chris Johnson:And therefore, people just find themselves going to these memes such as, well, they're will inevitably be a succession crisis when Xi Jinping leaves the scene. In my mind, the biggest opportunity for a massive succession crisis in the history of the PRC was Mao's death. And yet, they managed to find a way largely through Deng Xiaoping. But I think in general, because there was a collective understanding that this whole thing's going to unravel if we don't get it together, China's not so worried about that, nor am I worried about an imminent invasion of Taiwan, but that's probably another podcast.Bill Bishop:That was a whole different podcast. And so ... No. Well, look, thank you so much. It's really great as always to talk to you. And, I do hope I can get you back on as a guest at some point.Chris Johnson:Always glad to do so. Anytime, Bill. And, your newsletter in my mind is the best thing out there in terms of keeping me up to speed and subsequently informed every day.Bill Bishop:Thank you. I didn't pay him to say that just to be clear. But, great. Thank you, Chris. Get full access to Sinocism at sinocism.com/subscribe

This episode of While You're Here, my mechanic buddy Joel W. stops by to talk about life as a technician, his old jobs, and of course a white knuckle while you're here moment. From construction, to pooping at the work place, we enjoyed this session and even had a special guest. Thanks for listening!