Podcasts about mike how

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Play Episode Listen Later Sep 10, 2024 51:06

Ever wonder if the Catechism of the Catholic Church is inspired by the Holy Spirit like the Bible? Patrick breaks down the distinction between divine inspiration in scripture and the wisdom found in the Catechism. Get clarity on how God breathes his Word through the apostles, while still allowing their personalities to shine. James (email) – Your advice is so bad that people can take legal action against you. I also think Relevant Radio pays actors to call into the shows (01:36) Dawn (email) – Is the Catechism of the Holy Church inspired by the Holy Spirit? (14:16) Todd - I really appreciate this dialog you are having! We need to pray for this person who emailed in. Mary - My friend's husband has family who are babying and enabling him. (23:37) Mike - How can I talk about the Catholic prohibition against gay marriage to my son? (44:42)

The Patrick Madrid Show: May 28, 2024 - Hour 1

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Play Episode Listen Later May 28, 2024 51:09

Patrick answers intriguing listener questions about spiritual experiences and the nature of God's mercy. Patrick explores the rarity of seeing the spiritual world, the significance of free will, and the concept of divine justice. Join us as Patrick navigates through these thought-provoking topics and provides insights inspired by the wisdom of the great saints. Laurie (email) – Praying for fortitude and being firm when struggling (00:41 Millie (email) – The history of North America makes me sad. Patrick shares audio from a doctor instructing drivers to not get out of their car if their car breaks down (05:07) Dorothy - How common is it for people to see the spiritual world? Patrick recommends “Whose Speaking” (09:20) Marisol (15-yeaers-old) - Why has God not punished humanity yet with all of the bad things they are doing? (13:52) Tracey (email) – Are Catholic cemeteries holy grounds? Should they be decorated with balloons? George - I don't think people who are protesting freedom of Palestine and the freedom of reproductive rights know what freedom really is (26:28) Carbon dating reveals true age of purported tunics of St. Peter and St. John (34:22) Barbara - Hamas just needs to surrender and then the war will be ended. Mike - How can I get my parents back into the faith?

Making Sense of Story Problems - Guest: Drs. Aina Appova and Julia Hagge

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 4, 2024 32:13

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 15 – Making Sense of Story Problems Guest: Drs. Aina Appova and Julia Hagge Mike Wallus: Story problems are an important tool that educators use to bring mathematics to life for their students. That said, navigating the meaning and language found in story problems is a challenge for many students. Today we're talking with Drs. Aina Appova and Julia Hagge from [The] Ohio State University about strategies to help students engage with and make sense of story problems. Mike: A note to our listeners. This podcast was recorded outside of our normal recording studio, so you may notice some sound quality differences from our regular podcast. Mike: Welcome to the podcast, Aina and Julia. We're excited to be talking to both of you. Aina Appova: Thank you so much for having us. We are very excited as well. Julia Hagge: Yes, thank you. We're looking forward to talking with you today. Mike: So, this is a conversation that I've been looking forward to for quite a while, partly because the nature of your collaboration is a little bit unique in ways that I think we'll get into. But I think it's fair to describe your work as multidisciplinary, given your fields of study. Aina: Yes, I would say so. It's kind of a wonderful opportunity to work with a colleague who is in literacy research and helping teachers teach mathematics through reading story problems. Mike: Well, I wonder if you can start by telling us the story of how you all came to work together. And describe the work you're doing around helping students make sense of word problems. Aina: I think the work started with me working with fifth-grade teachers, for two years now, and the conversations have been around story problems. There's a lot of issues from teaching story problems that teachers are noticing. And so, this was a very interesting experience. One of the professional development sessions that we had, teachers were saying, “Can we talk about story problems? It's very difficult.” And so, we just looked at a story problem. And the story problem, it was actually a coordinate plane story problem. It included a balance beam, and you're supposed to read the story problem and locate where this balance beam would be. And I had no idea what the balance beam would be. So, when I read the story, I thought, “Oh, it must be from the remodeling that I did in my kitchen, and I had to put in a beam, which was structural.” Aina: So, I'm assuming it's balancing the load. And even that didn't help me. I kept rereading the problem and thinking, “I'm not sure this is on the ceiling, but the teachers told me it's gymnastics.” And so even telling me that it was gymnastics didn't really help me because I couldn't think, in the moment, while I was already in a different context of having the beam, a load-bearing beam. It was very interesting that—and I know I'm an ELL, so English is not my first language—in thinking about a context that you're familiar with by reading a word or this term, “balance beam.” And even if people tell you, “Oh, it's related to gymnastics”—and I've never done gymnastics; I never had gymnastics in my class or in my school where I was. It didn't help. And that's where we started talking about underlying keywords that didn't really help either because it was a coordinate plane problem. So, I had to reach out to Julia and say, “I think there's something going on here that is related to reading comprehension. Can you help me?” And that's how this all started. ( chuckles ) Julia: Well, so Aina came to me regarding her experience. In fact, she sent me the math problem. She says, “Look at this.” And we talked about that. And then she shared frustration of the educators that she had been working with that despite teaching strategies that are promoted as part of instructional practice, like identifying mathematical keywords and then also reading strategies have been emphasized, like summarizing or asking questions while you're reading story problems. So, her teachers had been using strategies, mathematical and also reading, and their students were still struggling to make sense of and solve mathematical problems. Aina's experience with this word problem really opened up this thought about the words that are in mathematical story problems. And we came to realize that when we think about making sense of story problems, there are a lot of words that require schema. And schema is the background knowledge that we bring to the text that we interact with. Julia: For example, I taught for years in Florida. And we would have students that had never experienced snow. So, as an educator, I would need to do read alouds and provide that schema for my students so that they had some understanding of snow. So, when we think about math story problems, all words matter—not just the mathematical terms, but also the words that require schema. And then when we think about English learners, the implications are especially profound because we know that, that vocabulary is one of the biggest challenges for English learners. So, when we consider schema-mediated vocabulary and story problems, this really becomes problematic. And so, Aina and I analyzed the story problems in the curriculum that Aina's teachers were using, and we had an amazing discovery. Aina: Just the range of contexts that we came across from construction materials or nuts and bolts and MP3 players—that children don't really have anymore, a lot of them have a phone—to making smoothies and blenders, which some households may not have. In addition to that, we started looking at the words that are in the story problems. And like Julia said, there are actually mathematics teachers who are being trained on these strategies that come from literacy research. One of them was rereading the problem. And it didn't matter how many times I reread the problem or somebody reread it to me about the balance beam. I had no kind of understanding of what's going on in the problem. The second one is summarizing. And again, just because you summarized something that I don't understand or read it louder to me, it doesn't help, right? And I think the fundamental difference that we solve problems or the story problems … In the literacy, the purpose of reading a story is very different. In mathematics, the purpose of reading a story is to solve it, making sense of problems for the purpose of solving them. The three different categories of vocabulary we found from reading story problems and analyzing them is there's “technical,” there's “sub-technical” and there's “non-technical.” I was very good at recognizing technical words because that's the strategy that for mathematics teachers, we underline the parallelogram, we underline the integer, we underline the eight or the square root, even some of the keywords we teach, right? Total means some or more means addition. Mike: So technical, they're the language that we would kind of normally associate with the mathematics that are being addressed in the problem. Let's talk about sub-technical because I remember from our pre-podcast conversation, this is where some light bulbs really started to go off, and you all started to really think about the impact of sub-technical language. Julia: Sub-technical includes words that have multiple meanings that intersect mathematically and other contexts. So, for example, “yard.” Yard can be a unit of measurement. However, I have a patio in my backyard. So, it's those words that have that duality. And then when we put that in the context of making sense of a story problem, it's understanding what is the context for that word and which meaning applies to that? Other examples of sub-technical would be table or volume. And so, it's important when making sense of a story problem to understand which meaning is being applied here. And then we have non-technical, which is words that are used in everyday language that are necessary for making sense of or solving problems. So, for example, “more.” More is more. So, more has that mathematical implication. However, it would be considered non-technical because it doesn't have dual meanings. Julia: So, by categorizing vocabulary into these three different types, [that] helped us to be able to analyze the word problems. So, we worked together to categorize. And then Aina was really helpful in understanding which words were integral to solving those math problems. And what we discovered is that often words that made the difference in the mathematical process were falling within the sub-technical and non-technical. And that was really eye-opening for us. Mike: So, Aina, this is fascinating to me. And what I'm thinking about right now is the story that you told at the very beginning of this podcast, where you described your own experience with the word problem that contained the language “balance.” And I'm wondering if you applied the analysis that you all just described with technical and sub-technical and the non-technical, when you view your own experience with that story problem through that lens, what jumps out? What was happening for you that aligns or doesn't align with your analysis? Aina: I think one of the things that was eye-opening to me is, we have been doing it wrong. That's how I felt. And the teachers felt the same way. They're saying, “Well, we always underline the math words because we assume those are the words that are confusing to them. And then we underline the words that would help them solve the problem.” So, it was a very good conversation with teachers to really, completely think about story problems differently. It's all about the context; it's all about the schema. And my teachers realize that I, as an adult who engages in mathematics regularly, have this issue with schema. I don't understand the context of the problem, so therefore I cannot move forward in solving it. And we started looking at math problems very differently from the language perspective, from the schema perspective, from the context perspective, rather than from underlining the technical and mathematical words first. That was very eye-opening to me. Mike: How do you think their process or their perspective on the problems changed either when they were preparing to teach them or in the process of working with children? Aina: I know the teachers reread a problem out loud and then typically ask for a volunteer to read the problem. And it was very interesting; some of the conversations were how different the reading is. When the teacher reads the problem, there is where you put the emotion, where the certain specific things in the problem are. Prosody? Julia: Yes, prosody is reading with appropriate expression, intonation, phrasing. Aina: So, when the teacher reads the problem, the prosody is present in that reading. When the child is reading the problems, it's very interesting how it sounds. It just sounds the word and the next word and the next word and the next word, right? So that was kind of a discussion, too. The next strategy the math teachers are being taught is summarizing. I guess discussing the problem and then summarizing the problem. So, we kind of went through that. And once they helped me to understand in gymnastics what it is, looking up the picture, what it looks like, how long it is, and where it typically is located and there's a mat next to it, that was very helpful. And then I could then summarize, or they could summarize, the problem. But even [the] summarizing piece is now me interpreting it and telling you how I understand the context and the mathematics in the problem by doing the summary. So, even that process is very different. And the teacher said that's very different. We never really experience that. Mike: Julia, do you want to jump in? Julia: And another area where math and reading intersect is the use of visualization. So, visualization is a reading strategy, and I've noticed that visualization has become a really strong strategy to teach for mathematics, as well. We encourage students to draw pictures as part of that solving process. However, if we go back to the gymnastics example, visualizing and drawing is not going to be helpful for that problem because you are needing a schema to be able to understand how a balance beam would situate within that context and whether that's relevant to solving that word problem. So, even though we are encouraging educators to use these strategies, when we think about schema-mediated vocabulary, we need to take that a step further to consider how schema comes into play and who has access to the schema needed, and who needs that additional support to be able to negotiate that schema-mediated vocabulary. Mike: I was thinking the same thing, how we often take for granted that everyone has the same schema. The picture I see in my head when we talk about balance is the same as the picture you see in your head around balance. And that's the part where, when I think about some of those sub-technical words, we really have to kind of take a step back and say, “Is there the opportunity here for someone to be profoundly confused because their schema is different than mine?” And I keep thinking about that lived experience that you had where, in my head I can see a balance beam, but in your head you're seeing the structural beam that sits on the top of your ceiling or runs across the top of your ceiling. Aina: Oh yeah. And at first, I thought the word “beam” typically, in my mind for some reason, is vertical. Mike: Yeah. Aina: It's not horizontal. And then when I looked at the word balance, I thought, “Well, it could balance vertically.” And immediately what I think about is, you have a porch, then you see a lot of porches that balance the roof, and so they have the two beams … Mike: Yes! Aina: … or sometimes more than that. So, at no point did I think about gymnastics. But that's because of my lack of experience in gymnastics, and my school didn't have the program. As a math person, you start thinking about it and you think, “If it's vertically, this doesn't make any sense because we're on a coordinate plane.” So, I started thinking about [it] mathematically and then I thought, “Oh, maybe they did renovations to the gymnasium, and they needed a balance beam.” So, I guess that's the beam that carries the load. Aina: So, that's how I flipped, in my mind, the image of the beam to be horizontal. Then the teachers, when they told me it's gymnastics, that really threw me off, and it didn't help. And I totally agree with Julia. You know when we do mathematics with children, we tell them, “Can you draw me a picture?” Mike: Uh-hm. Aina: And what we mean is, “Can you draw me a mathematical picture to support your problem-solving or the strategies you used?” But the piece that was missing for me is an actual picture of what the balance beam is in gymnastics and how it's located, how long it is. So yeah, yeah, that was eye-opening to me. Mike: It's almost like you put on a different pair of glasses that allow you to see the language of story problems differently, and how that was starting to play out with teachers. I wonder, could you talk about some of the things that they started to do when they were actually with kids in the moment that you looked at and you were like, “Gosh, this is actually accounting for some of the understanding we have about schema and the different types of words.” Aina: So, the teacher would read a problem, which I think is a good strategy. But then it was very open-ended. “How do you understand what I just read to you? What's going on in the story problem? Turn to your partner, can you envision? Can you think of it? Do you have a picture in your mind?” So, we don't jump into mathematics anymore. We kind of talk about the context, the schema. “Can you position yourself in it? Do you understand what's going on? Can you retell the story to your partner the way you understand it?” And then, we talk about, “So how can we solve this problem? What do you think is happening?” based on their understanding. That really helped, I think, a lot of teachers also to see that sometimes interpretations lead to different solutions, and children pay attention to certain words that may take them to a different mathematical solution. It became really about how language affects our thinking, our schema, our image in the head, and then based on all of that, where do we go mathematically in terms of solving the problem? Mike: So, there are two pieces that really stuck out for me in what you said. I want to come back to both of them. The first one was, you were describing that set of choices that teachers made about being really open-ended about asking kids, “How do you understand this? Talk to your neighbor about your understanding about this.” And it strikes me that the point you made earlier when you said context has really become an important part of some of the mathematics tasks and the problems we create. This is a strategy that has value not solely for multilingual learners, but really for all learners because context and schema matter a lot. Aina: Yes. Mike: Yeah. And I think the other thing that really hits me, Aina, is when you said, “We don't immediately go to the mathematics, we actually try to help kids situate and make sense of the problem.” There's something about that that seems really obvious. When I think back to my own practice as a teacher, I often wonder how I was trying to quickly get kids into the mathematics without giving kids enough time to really make meaning of the situation or the context that we were going to delve into. Aina: Exactly. Mike, to go back to your question, what teachers can do, because it was such an eye-opening experience that, it's really about the language; don't jump into mathematics. The mathematics and the problem actually is situated around the schema, around the context. And so, children have to understand that first before they get into math. I have a couple of examples if you don't mind, just to kind of help the teachers who are listening to this podcast to have an idea of what we're talking about. One of the things that Julie and I were thinking about is, when you start with a story problem, you have three different categories of vocabulary. You have technical, sub-technical, non-technical. If you have a story problem, how do you parse it apart? OK, in the math story problems we teach to children, it's typically a number and operations. Aina: Let's say we have a story problem like this: “Mrs. Tatum needs to share 3 grams of glitter equally among 8 art students. How many grams of glitter will each student get?” So, if the teacher is looking at this, technical would definitely be grams: 3, 8, and that is it. Sub-technical, we said “equally,” because equally has that kind of meaning here. It's very precise, it has to be exact amount. But a lot of children sometimes say, “Well that's equally interesting.” That means it's similarly or kind of, or like, but not exact. So, sub-technical might qualify as “equally.” Everything else in the story problem is non-technical: sharing and glitter, art students, each student, how much they would get. I want the teachers to go through and ask a few questions here that we have. So, for example, the teacher can think about starting with sub-technical and non-technical, right? Aina: Do students understand the meaning of each of these words? Which of these could be confusing to them? And get them to think about the story, the context and the problem. And then see if they understand what the grams are, and 8 and 3. And what's happening. And what do those words mean in this context? Once you have done all this work with children, children are now in this context. They have situated themselves in this. “Oh, there's glitter, there's an art class, there's a teacher, they're going to do a project.” And so, they've discussed this context. Stay with it as a teacher and give them another problem that is the same context. Use as many words from the first problem as you can and change it up a little bit in terms of mathematical implication or mathematical solution. For example, I can change the same problem to be, “Mrs. Tatum needs to buy 3 grams of glitter for each of her 8 art students. How many grams of glitter does she need to buy?” So, the first problem was [a] division problem now becomes a multiplication problem. The context is the same. Children understand the context, especially children like myself, who are ELL, who took the time to process to learn new words, to understand new context, and now they're in this context. Let's use it. Let's now use it for the second piece. So, Mike, you've been talking about two things going on. There's a context, and then there's problem-solving or mathematical problem-solving. So, I believe posing the same question or kind of the same story problem with different mathematical implications gets at the second piece. So, first we make sense of the problem of the context schema. The second is, we make sense of that problem for the purpose of solving it. Aina: And the purpose of solving it is where these two problems that sound so familiar and situate in the same context but have different mathematical implications for problem-solving. This is where the powerful piece, I think, is missing. If I give them a division problem, they can create a multiplication problem with the same Mrs. Tatum, the art students, the glitter. But what I'd like for them to do and what we've been discussing is how are these two problems similar? Mike: Uh-hm. Aina: This kind of gets at children identifying some of the technical. So, the 3 is still there, the 8 is still there, you know, grams are still there. But then, “How are these two story problems different?” This is really schema-mediated vocabulary in the context where they now have to get into sub-technical and non-technical. “Oh, well there there's 3, but it's 3 per student. And this, there were 8 students, and they have to all share the 3 grams of glitter.” Aina: So, children now get into this context and difference in context and how this is impacting the problem-solving strategies. I'd love for the teachers to then build on that and say, “How would you solve the first problem? What specifically is in the story problem [to] help you solve it, help you decide how to solve it, what strategies, what operations?” And do exactly the same thing for the second problem as well. “Would you solve it the same way? Are the two problems the same? Will they have the same solutions or different? How would you know? What tells you in the story? What helps you decide?” So, that really helps children to now become problem-solvers. The fun is the mathematical variations. So, for example, we can give them a third problem and say, “I have a challenge for you.” For example, “Mrs. Tatum needs to buy 3 grams of glitter for each of her 8 art students for a project, but she only has money today to buy 8 grams of glitter. How much more glitter does she need to still buy for her students to be able to complete their art project?” Again, it's art, it's glitter, it's 8 students, there's 3, the 8. I didn't change the numbers, I didn't change the context, but I did change the mathematical implication for their story problem. I think this is where Julia and I got very excited with how we can use schema-mediated vocabulary and schema in context to help children understand the story, but then really have mathematical discussions about solutions. Mike: What's interesting about what you're saying is the practices that you all are advocating and describing in the podcast, to me, they strike me as good practice helping kids make meaning and understand and not jumping into the mathematics and recognizing how important that is. That feels like good practice, and it feels particularly important in light of what you're saying. Julia: I agree. It's good practice. However, what we found when we reviewed literature, because one of the first steps that we took was what does the literature say? We found that focusing instructional practice on teaching children to look for key mathematical terms tends to lead to frequent errors. Mike: Yep. Julia: The mathematical vocabulary tends to be privileged when teaching children how to make sense of and solve word problems. We want to draw attention to the sub-technical and non-technical vocabulary, which we found to be influential in making sense of. And as in the examples Aina shared, it was the non-technical words that were the key players, if you will, in solving that problem. Mike: I'm really glad you brought up that particular point about the challenges that come out of attempting to help kids mark certain keywords and their meanings. Because certainly, as a person who's worked in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, I have absolutely seen that happen. There was a point where I was doing that, and I thought I was doing something that was supporting kids, and I was consistently surprised that it was often like, that doesn't seem to be helping. Julia: I also used that practice when I was teaching second grade. The first step was circle the keywords. And I would get frustrated because students would still be confused in the research that we found. When you focus on the keywords, which tend to be mathematical terms, then those other words that are integral to making sense of and solving the story problem get left behind. Mike: The question I wanted to ask both of you before we close is, are there practices that you would say like, “Here's a way that you can take this up in your classroom tomorrow and start to take steps that are supportive of children making sense of word problems”? Julia: I think the first step is adding in that additional lens. So, when previewing story problems, consider what schema or background knowledge is required to understand this word, these words, and then what students would find additional schema helpful. So, thinking about your specific students, what students would benefit from additional schema and how can I support that schema construction? Mike: Aina, how about for you? Aina: Yeah, I have to say I agree with Julia. Schema seemed to be everything. If children don't understand the context and don't make sense of the problem, it's very hard to actually think about solving it. To build on that first step, I don't want teachers to stop there. I want teachers to then go one step further. Present a similar problem or problem that includes [the] same language, same words, as many as you can, maybe even same numbers, definitely same schema and context, but has a different mathematical implication for solving it. So maybe now it's a multiplication problem or addition problem. And really have children talk about how different or similar the problems are. What are the similarities, what are the differences, how their solutions are the same or different? Why that is. So really unpack that mathematical problem-solving piece. Now, after you have made sense of the context and the schema … as an ELL student myself, the more I talked as a child and was able to speak to others and explain my thinking and describe how I understand certain things and be able to ask questions, that was really, really helpful in learning English and then being successful with solving mathematical problems. I think it really opens up so many avenues and to just go beyond helping teachers teach mathematics. Mike: I know you all have created a resource to help educators make sense of this. Can you talk about it, Julia? Julia: Absolutely. Aina and I have created a PDF to explain and provide some background knowledge regarding the three types of vocabulary. And Aina has created some story problem examples that help to demonstrate the ways in which sub-technical and non-technical words can influence the mathematical process that's needed. So, this resource will be available for educators wanting to learn more about schema-mediated vocabulary in mathematical story problems. Mike: That's fantastic. And for listeners, we're going to add this directly to our show notes. I think that's a great place for us to stop. Aina and Julia, I want to thank both of you so much for joining us. It has absolutely been a pleasure talking to both of you. Aina: Thank you. Julia: Thank you. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2024 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

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The Patrick Madrid Show: April 03, 2024 - Hour 1

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Play Episode Listen Later Apr 3, 2024 51:11

Patrick explains the distinctions between panentheism and traditional Christian beliefs, providing ways to help a child understand God's presence in the world. Patrick then moves on to discuss the concept of indulgences and offers insights on true contrition and interior freedom. Patrick responds to an email about a person who doesn't go to Mass because he has a one-on-one relationship with God and asks “why does God allow children to die?” (01:39) David - How do I explain to my 6-year-old son that God is in everything? (20:45) Mike - How do you make sure you are free of venial sin? (27:32) Charlie - Do you think that the more sin you have the less effective your prayer is? (36:14) Zachary – Thank you so much! Jacinto - How do I talk with someone who says that faith alone is all you need to be saved? (45:55)

Translanguaging - Guest: Tatyana Kleyn, Ed.D.

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 8, 2024 20:51

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 11 – Translanguaging Guest: Tatyana Kleyn Mike Wallus: Over the past two years, we've done several episodes on supporting multilingual learners in math classrooms. Today we're going back to this topic to talk about “translanguaging,” an asset-focused approach that invites students to bring their full language repertoire into the classroom. We'll talk with Tatyana Kleyn about what translanguaging looks like and how all teachers can integrate this practice into their classrooms. Mike: Well, welcome to the podcast, Tatyana. We're excited to be talking with you today. Tatyana Kleyn: Thank you. This is very exciting. Mike: So, your background with the topic of multilingual learners and translanguaging, it's not only academic. It's also personal. I'm wondering if you might share a bit of your own background as a starting point for this conversation. Tatyana: Yes, absolutely. I think for many of us in education, we don't randomly end up teaching in the areas that we're teaching in or doing the work that we're doing. So, I always like to share my story so people know why I'm doing this work and where I'm coming from. So, my personal story, I work a lot at the intersection of language migration and education, and those are all three aspects that have been critical in bringing me here. So, I was actually born in what was the Soviet Union many, many years ago, and my family immigrated to the United States as political refugees, and I was just 5½ years old. So, I actually never went to school in the Soviet Union. Russian was my home language, and I quickly started speaking English, but my literacy was not quick at all, and it was quite painful because I never learned to read in my home language. I never had that foundation. Tatyana: So, when I was learning to read in English, it wasn't meaning making, it was just making sounds. It was kind of painful. I once heard somebody say, “For some people, reading is like this escape and this pure joy, and for other people it's like cleaning the toilet. You get in and you get out.” And I was like, “That's me. I'm the toilet cleaner.” ( laughs ) So, that was how reading was for me. I always left my home language at the door when I came into school, and I wanted it that way because I, as a young child, got this strong message that English was the language that mattered in this country. So, for example, instead of going by Tatyana, I went by Tanya. So, I always kind of kept this secret that I spoke this other language. I had this other culture, and it wasn't until sixth grade where my sixth-grade teacher, Ms. Chang, invited my mom to speak about our immigration history. Tatyana: And I don't know why, but I thought that was so embarrassing. I think in middle school, it's not really cool to have your parents around. So, I was like, “Oh my God, this is going to be horrible.” But then I realized my peers were really interested—and in a good way—and I was like, “Wait, this is a good thing?” So, I started thinking, “OK, we should be proud of who we are and let just people be who they are.” And when you let people be who they are, they thrive in math, in science, in social studies, instead of trying so hard to be someone they're not, and then focusing on that instead of everything else that they should be focusing on as students. Mike: So, there's a lot there. And I think I want to dig into what you talked about over the course of the interview. I want to zero in a little bit on translanguaging though, because for me, at least until quite recently, this idea of translanguaging was really a new concept, a new idea for me, and I'm going to guess that that's the case for a lot of the people who are listening to this as well. So, just to begin, would you talk briefly about what translanguaging is and your sense of the impact that it can have on learners? Tatyana: Sure. Well, I'm so glad to be talking about translanguaging in this space specifically, because often when we talk about translanguaging, it's in bilingual education or English as a second language or is a new language, and it's important in those settings, right? But it's important in all settings. So, I think you're not the only one, especially if we're talking about math educators or general elementary educators, it's like, “Oh, translanguaging, I haven't heard of that,” right? So, it is not something brand new, but it is a concept that Ofelia García and some of her colleagues really brought forth to the field in the early 2000s … around 2009. And what it does is instead of saying English should be the center of everything, and everyone who doesn't just speak English is peripheral. It's saying, “Instead of putting English at the center, let's put our students' home language practices at the center. And what would that look like?” So, that wouldn't mean everything has to be in English. It wouldn't mean the teacher's language practices are front and center, and the students have to adapt to that. But it's about centering the students and then the teacher adapting to the languages and the language practices that the students bring. Teachers are there to have students use all the language at their resource—whatever language it is, whatever variety it is. And all those resources will help them learn. The more you can use, when we're talking about math, well, if we're teaching a concept and there are manipulatives there that will help students use them, why should we hide them? Why not bring them in and say, “OK, use this.” And once you have that concept, we can now scaffold and take things away little by little until you have it on your own. And the same thing with sometimes learning English. Tatyana: We should allow students to learn English as a new language using their home language resources. But one thing I will say is we should never take away their home language practices from the classroom. Even when they're fully bilingual, fully biliterate, it's still about, “How can we use these resources? How can they use that in their classroom?” Because we know in the world, speaking English is not enough. We're becoming more globalized, so let's have our students grow their language practices. And then students are allowed and proud of the language practices they bring. They teach their language practices to their peers, to their teachers. So, it's really hard to say it all in a couple of minutes, but I think the essence of translanguaging is centering students' language practices and then using that as a resource for them to learn and to grow, to learn languages and to learn content as well. Mike: How do you think that shifts the experience for a child? Tatyana: Well, if I think about my own experiences, you don't have to leave who you are at the door. We are not saying, “Home language is here, school language is there, and neither shall the two meet.” We're saying, “Language, and in the sense that it's a verb.” And when you can be your whole self, it allows you to have a stronger sense of who you are in order to really grow and learn and be proud of who you are. And I think that's a big part of it. I think when kids are bashful about who they are, thinking who they are isn't good enough, that has ripple effects in so many ways for them. So, I think we have to bring a lens of critical consciousness into these kind of spaces and make sure that our immigrant-origin students, their language practices, are centered through a translanguaging lens. Mike: It strikes me that it matters a lot how we as educators—internally, in the way that we think and externally, in the things that we do and the things that we say—how we position the child's home language, whether we think of it as an asset that is something to draw upon or a deficit or a barrier, that the way that we're thinking about it makes a really big difference in the child's experience. Tatyana: Yes, absolutely. Ofelia García, Kate Seltzer and Susana Johnson talk about a translanguaging stance. So, translanguaging is not just a practice or a pedagogy like, “Oh, let me switch this up, or let me say this in this language.” Yes, that's helpful, but it's how you approach who students are and what they bring. So, if you don't come from a stance of valuing multilingualism, it's not really going to cut it, right? It's something, but it's really about the stance. So, something that's really important is to change the culture of classrooms. So, just because you tell somebody like, “Oh, you can say this in your home language, or you can read this book side by side in Spanish and in English if it'll help you understand it.” Some students may not want to because they will think their peers will look down on them for doing it, or they'll think it means they're not smart enough. So, it's really about centering multilingualism in your classroom and celebrating it. And then as that stance changes the culture of the classroom, I can see students just saying, “Ah, no, no, no, I'm good in English.” Even though they may not fully feel comfortable in English yet, but because of the perception of what it means to be bilinguals. Mike: I'm thinking even about the example that you shared earlier where you said that an educator might say, “You can read this in Spanish side by side with English if you need to or if you want to.” But even that language of you can implies that, potentially, this is a remedy for a deficit as opposed to the ability to read in multiple languages as a huge asset. And it makes me think even our language choices sometimes will be a tell to kids about how we think about them as a learner and how we think about their language. Tatyana: That's so true, and how do we reframe that? “Let's read this in two languages. Who wants to try a new language?” Making this something exciting as opposed to framing it in a deficit way. So that's something that's so important that you picked up on. Yeah. Mike: Well, I think we're probably at the point in the conversation where there's a lot of folks who are monolingual who might be listening and they're thinking to themselves, “This stance that we're talking about is something that I want to step into.” And now they're wondering what might it actually look like to put this into practice? Can we talk about what it would look like, particularly for someone who might be monolingual to both step into the stance and then also step into the practice a bit? Tatyana: Yes. I think the stance is really doing some internal reflection, questioning about what do I believe about multilingualism? What do I believe about people who come here, to come to the United States? In New York City, about half of our multilingual learners are U.S. born. So, it's not just immigrant students, but their parents, or they're often children of immigrants. So, really looking closely and saying, “How am I including respecting, valuing the languages of students regardless of where they come from?” And then, I think for the practice, it's about letting go of some control. As teachers, we are kind of control freaks. I can just speak for myself. ( laughs ) I like to know everything that's going on. Mike: I will add myself to that list, Tatyana. Tatyana: It's a long list. It's a long list. ( laughs ) But I think first of all, as educators, we have a sense when a kid is on task, and you can tell when a kid is not on task. You may not know exactly what they're saying. So, I think it's letting go of that control and letting the students, for example, when you are giving directions … I think one of the most dangerous things we do is we give directions in English when we have multilingual students in our classrooms, and we assume they understood it. If you don't understand the directions, the next 40 minutes will be a waste of time because you will have no idea what's happening. So, what does that mean? It means perhaps putting the directions into Google Translate and having it translate the different languages of your students. Will it be perfect? No. But will it be better than just being in English? A million times yes, right? Tatyana: Sometimes it's about putting students in same-language groups. If there are enough—two or three or four students that speak the same home language—and having them discuss something in their home language or multilingually before actually starting to do the work to make sure they're all on the same page. Sometimes it can mean if asking students if they do come from other countries, sometimes I'm thinking of math, math is done differently in different countries. So, we teach one approach, but what is another approach? Let's share that. Instead of having kids think like, “Oh, I came here, now this is the bad way. Or when I go home and I ask my family to help me, they're telling me all wrong.” No, again, these are the strengths of the families, and let's put them side by side and see how they go together. Tatyana: And I think what it's ultimately about is thinking about your classroom, not as a monolingual classroom, but as a multilingual classroom. And really taking stock of who are your students? Where are they and their families coming from, and what languages do they speak? And really centering that. Sometimes you may have students that may not tell you because they may feel like it's shameful to share that we speak a language that maybe other people haven't heard of. I'm thinking of indigenous languages from Honduras, like Garífuna, Miskito, right? Of course, Spanish, everyone knows that. But really excavating the languages of the students, the home language practices, and then thinking about giving them opportunities to translate if they need to translate. I'm not saying everything should be translated. I think word problems, having problems side by side, is really important. Because sometimes what students know is they know the math terms in English, but the other terms, they may not know those yet. Tatyana: And I'll give you one really powerful example. This is a million years ago, but it stays with me from my dissertation. It was in a Haitian Creole bilingual classroom. They were taking a standardized test, and the word problem was where it was like three gumballs, two gumballs, this color, what are the probability of a blue gumball coming out of this gumball machine? And this student just got stuck on gumball machine because in Haiti people sell gum, not machines, and it was irrelevant to the whole problem. So, language matters, but culture matters, too, right? So, giving students the opportunity to see things side by side and thinking about, “Are there any things here that might trip them up that I could explain to them?” So, I think it's starting small. It's taking risks. It's letting go of control and centering the students. Mike: So, from one recovering control freak to another, there are a couple of things that I'm thinking about. One is expanding a little bit on this idea of having two kids who might speak to one another in their home language, even if you are a monolingual speaker and you speak English and you don't necessarily have access to the language that they're using. Can you talk a little bit about that practice and how you see it and any guidance that you might offer around that? Tatyana: Yeah, I mean, it may not work the first time or the second time because kids may feel a little bit shy to do that. So maybe it's, “I want to try out something new in our class. I really am trying to make this a multilingual class. Who speaks another language here? Let's try … I am going to put you in a group and you're going to talk about this, and let's come back. And how did you feel? How was it for you? Let me tell you how I felt about it.” And it may be trying over a couple times because kids have learned that in most school settings, English is a language you should be using. And to the extent that some have been told not to speak any other language, I think it's just about setting it up and, “Oh, you two spoke, which language? Wow, can you teach us how to say this math term in this language?” Tatyana: “Oh, wow, isn't this interesting? This is a cognate, which means it sounds the same as the English word. And let's see if this language and this language, if the word means the same thing,” getting everyone involved in centering this multilingualism. And language is fun. We can play with language, we can put language side by side. So, then if you're labeling or if you have a math word wall, why not put key terms in all the languages that the students speak in the class and then they could teach each other those languages? So, I think you have to start little. You have to expect some resistance. But over time, if you keep pushing away at this, I think it will be good for not only your multilingual students, but all your students to say like, “Oh, wait a minute, there's all these languages in the world, but they're not just in the world. They're right here by my friend to the left and my friend to the right” and open up that space. Mike: So, I want to ask another question. What I'm thinking about is participation. And we've done an episode in the past around not privileging verbal communication as the only way that kids can communicate their ideas. We were speaking to someone who, their focus really was elementary years mathematics, but specifically, with multilingual learners. And the point that they were making was, kids gestures, the way that they use their hands, the way that they move manipulatives, their drawings, all of those things are sources of communication that we don't have to only say, “Kids understand things if they can articulate it in a particular way.” That there are other things that they do that are legitimate forms of participation. The thing that was in my head was, it seems really reasonable to say that if you have kids who could share an explanation or a strategy that they've come up with or a solution to a problem in their home language in front of the group, that would be perfectly legitimate. Having them actually explain their thinking in their home language is accomplishing the goal that we're after, which is can you justify your mathematical thinking? I guess I just wanted to check in and say, “Does that actually seem like a reasonable logic to follow that that's actually a productive practice for a teacher, but also a productive practice for a kid to engage in?” Tatyana: That makes a lot of sense. So, I would say for every lesson you, you may have a math objective, you may have a language objective, and you may have both. If your objective is to get kids to understand a concept in math or to explain something in math, who cares what language they do it in? It's about learning math. And if you're only allowing them to do it in a language that they are still developing in, they will always be about English and not about math. So, how do you take that away? You allow them to use all their linguistic resources. And we can have students explain something in their home language. There are now many apps where we could just record that, and it will translate it into English. If you are not a speaker of the language that the student speaks, you can have a peer then summarize what they said in English as well. So, there's different ways to do it. So yes, I think it's about thinking about the objectives or the objective of the lesson. And if you're really focusing on math, the language is really irrelevant. It's about explaining or showing what they know in math, and they can do that in any language. Or even without spoken language, but in written language artistically with symbols, et cetera. Mike: Well, and what you made me think, too, is for that peer, it's actually a great opportunity for them to engage with the reasoning of someone else and try to make meaning of it. So, there's a double bonus in it for that practice. Tatyana: Exactly. I think sometimes students don't really like listening to each other. They think they only need to listen to the teacher. So, I think this really has them listen to each other. And then sometimes summarizing or synthesizing is a really hard skill, and then doing it in another language is a whole other level. So, we're really pushing kids in those ways as well. So, there's many advantages to this approach. Mike: Yeah, absolutely. We have talked a lot about the importance of having kids engage with the thinking of other children as opposed to having the teacher be positioned as the only source of mathematical knowledge. So, the more that we talk about it, the more that I can see there's a lot of value culturally for a mathematics classroom in terms of showing that kids thinking matters, but also supporting that language development as well. Tatyana: Yes, and doing it is hard. As I said, none of this is easy, but it's so important. And I think when you start creating a multilingual classroom, it just has a different feel to it. And I think students can grow so much in their math, understanding it and in so many other ways. Mike: Absolutely. Well, before we close the interview, I invite you to share resources that you would recommend for an educator who's listening who wants to step into the stance of translanguaging, the practice of translanguaging, anything that you would offer that could help people continue learning. Tatyana: I have one hub of all things translanguaging, so this will make it easy for all the listeners. So, it is the CUNY New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals. And let me just give you the website. It's C-U-N-Y [hyphen] N-Y-S-I-E-B.org. And I'll say that again. C-U-N-Y, N-Y-S-I-E-B.org, cuny-nysieb.org. That's the CUNY New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals. And because it's such a mouthful, we just say “CUNY NYSIEB,” as you could tell by my own, trying to get it straight. You can find translanguaging resources such as guides. You can find webinars, you can find research, you can find books. Literally everything you would want around translanguaging is there in one website. Of course, there's more out there in the world. But I think that's a great starting point. There's so many great resources just to start with there. And then just start small. Small changes sometimes have big impacts on student learning and students' perceptions of how teachers view them and their families. Mike: Thank you so much for joining us, Tatiana. It's really been a pleasure talking with you. Tatyana: Yes, it's been wonderful. Thank you so much. And we will just all try to let go a little bit of our control little by little. Both: ( laugh) Tatyana: Because at the end of the day, we really don't control very much at all. ( laughs ) Mike: Agreed. ( chuckles ) Thank you. Tatyana: Thank you. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2024 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

It's a Story, Not a Checklist! - Guest: Dr. John Staley

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 21, 2023 32:40

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 8 – It's a Story, Not a Checklist! Guest: Dr. John Staley Mike Wallus: There's something magical about getting lost in a great story. Whether you're reading a book, watching a movie, or listening to a friend, stories impart meaning, and they capture our imagination. Dr. John Staley thinks a lot about stories. On this episode of Rounding Up, we'll talk with John about the ways that he thinks that the concept of story can impact our approach to the content we teach and the practices we engage in to support our students. Well, John, welcome to the podcast. We're really excited to talk with you today. John Staley: I'm glad to be here. Thank you for the invitation, and thank you for having me. Mike: So when we spoke earlier this year, you were sharing a story with me that I think really sets up the whole interview. And it was the story of how you and your kids had engaged with the themes and the ideas that lived in the Harry Potter universe. And I'm wondering if you could just start by sharing that story again, this time with the audience. John: OK. When I was preparing to present for a set of students over at Towson University and talking to them about the importance of teaching and it being a story. So the story of Harry Potter really began for me with our family—my wife, Karen, and our three children—back in '97 when the first book came out. Our son Jonathan was nine at that time and being a reader and us being a reading family, we came together. He would read some, myself and my wife would read some, and our daughter Alexis was five, our daughter Mariah was three. So we began reading Harry Potter. And so that really began our journey into Harry Potter. Then when the movies came out, of course we went to see the movies and watch some of those on TV, and then sometimes we listened to the audio books. And then as our children grew, because Harry Potter took, what, 10 years to develop the actual book series itself, he's 19 now, finally reading the final book. By then our three-year-old has picked them up and she's begun reading them and we're reading. So we're through the cycle of reading with them. But what they actually did with Harry Potter, when you think about it, is really branch it out from just books to more than books. And that right there had me thinking. I was going in to talk to teachers about the importance of the story in the mathematics classroom and what you do there. So that's how Harry Potter came into the math world for me, [chuckles] I guess you can say. Mike: There's a ton about this that I think is going to become clear as we talk a little bit more. One of the things that really struck me was how this experience shaped your thinking about the ways that educators can understand their role when it comes to math content and also instructional practice and then creating equitable systems and structures. I'm wondering if we can start with the way that you think this experience can inform an educator's understanding for content. So in this case, the concepts and ideas in mathematics. Can you talk about that, John? John: Yeah, let's really talk about the idea of what happens in a math classroom being a story. The teaching and learning of mathematics is a story that, what we want to do is connect lesson to lesson and chapter to chapter and year to year. So when you think about students' stories, and let's start pre-K. When students start coming in pre-K and learning pre-K math, and they're engaging in the work they do in math with counting and cardinality initially, and as they grow across the years, especially in elementary, and they're getting the foundation, it's still about a story. And so how do we help the topics that we're taught, the grade level content become a story? And so that's the connection to Harry Potter for me, and that's what helped me elevate and think about Harry Potter because when you think about what Harry Potter and the whole series did, they've got the written books. So that's one mode of learning for people for engaging in Harry Potter. Then they went from written books to audiobooks, and then they went from audiobooks to movies. And so some of them start to overlap, right? So you got written books, you got audiobooks, you got movies—three modes of input for a learner or for an audience or for me, the individual interested in Harry Potter, that could be interested in it. And then they went to additional podcasts, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text and things like that. And then they went to this one big place called Universal Studios where they have Harry Potter World. That's immersive. That I can step in; I can put on the robes; I can put the wand in my hand. I can ride on, I can taste, so my senses can really come to play because I'm interactive and engaged in this story. When you take that into the math classroom, how do we help that story come to life for our students? Let's talk one grade. So it feels like the content that I'm learning in a grade, especially around number, around algebraic thinking, around geometry, and around measurement and data. Those topics are connected within the grade, how they connect across the grade and how it grows. So the parallel to Harry Potter's story—there's, what, seven books there? And so you have seven books, and they start off with this little young guy called Harry, and he's age 11. By the time the story ends, he's seven years later, 18 years old. So just think about what he has learned across the years and how what they did there at Hogwarts and the educators and all that kind of stuff has some consistency to it. Common courses across grade levels, thinking, in my mind, common sets of core ideas in math: number, algebra, thinking, geometry, measurement of data. They grow across each year. We just keep adding on. So think about number. You're thinking with base ten. You then think about how fractions show up as numbers, and you're thinking about operations with whole numbers, base ten, and fractions. You think about decimals and then in some cases going into, depending if you're K–8 or K–5, you might even think about how this plays into integers. But you think about how that's all connected going across and the idea of, “What's the story that I need to tell you so that you understand how math is a story that's connected?” It's not these individual little pieces that don't connect to each other, but they connect somehow in some manner and build off of each other. Mike: So there are a couple of things I want to pick up on here that are interesting. When you first started talking about this, one of the things that jumped out for me is this idea that there's a story, but we're not necessarily constrained to a particular medium. The story was first articulated via book, but there are all of these ways that you can engage with the story. And you talked about the immersive experience that led to a level of engagement. John: Mm-hmm. Mike: And I think that is helping me make sense of this analogy—that there's not necessarily one mode of building students' understanding. We actually need to think about multiple modes. Am I picking up on that right? John: That's exactly right. So what do I put in my tool kit as an educator that allows me to help tap into my students' strengths, to help them understand the content that they need to understand that I'm presenting that day, that week, that month, that I'm helping build their learning around? And in the sense of thinking about the different ways Harry Potter can come at you—with movies, with audio, with video—I think about that from the math perspective. What do I need to have in my tool kit when it comes to my instructional practices, the types of routines I establish in the classroom? Just think about the idea of the mathematical tools you might use. How do the tools that you use play themselves out across the years? So students working with the different manipulatives that they might be using, the different mathematical tools, a tool that they use in first grade, where does that tool go in second grade, third grade, fourth grade, as they continue to work with whole numbers, especially with doing operations, with whatever the tool might be? Then what do you use with fractions? What tools do you use with decimals? We need to think about what we bring into the classroom to help our students understand the story of the mathematics that they're learning and see it as a story. Is my student in a more concrete stage? Do they need to touch it, feel it, move it around? Are they okay visually? They need to see it now, they're at that stage. They're more representational so they can work with it in a different manner or they're more abstract. Hmm. Oh, OK. And so how do we help put all of that into the setting? And how are we prepared as classroom teachers to have the instructional practices to meet a diverse set of students that are sitting in our classrooms? Mike: You know, the other thing you're making me think about, John, is this idea of concepts and content as a story. And what I'm struck by is how different that is than the way I was taught to think about what I was doing in my classroom, where it felt more like a checklist or a list of things that I was tracking. And oftentimes those things felt disconnected even within the span of a year. But I have to admit, I didn't find myself thinking a lot about what was happening to grade levels beyond mine or really thinking about how what I was doing around building kindergartners' understanding of the structure of number or ten-ness. John: Mm-hmm. Mike: How that was going to play out in, say, fifth grade or high school or what have you. You're really causing me to think how different it is to think about this work we're doing as story rather than a discrete set of things that are kind of within a grade level. John: When you say that, it also gets me thinking of how we quite often see our content as being this mile-wide set of content that we have to teach for a grade level. And what I would offer in the space is that when you think about the big ideas of what you really need to teach this year, let's just work with number. Number base ten, or, if you're in the upper elementary, number base ten and fractions. If you think about the big ideas that you want students to walk away with that year, those big ideas continue to cycle around, and those are the ones that you're going to spend a chunk of your time on. Those are the ones you're going to keep bringing back. Those are the ones you're going to keep exposing students to in multiple ways to have them make sense of what they're doing. And the key part of all of that is the understanding, the importance of the vertical nature as to what is it I want all of my students sitting in my classroom to know and be able to do, have confidence in, have their sense of agency. Like, “Man, I can show you. I can do it, I can do it.” What do we want them to walk away with that year? So that idea of the vertical nature of it, and understanding your learning progressions, and understanding how number grows for students across the years is important. Why do I build student understanding with a number line early? So that when we get the fractions, they can see fractions as numbers. So later on when we get the decimals, they can see decimals as numbers, and I can work with it. So the vertical nature of where the math is going, the learning progression that sits behind it, helps us tell the story so that students, when they begin and you are thinking about their prior knowledge, activate that prior knowledge and build it, but build it as part of the story. The story piece also helps us think about how we elevate and value our students in the classroom themselves. So that idea of seeing our students as little beings, little people, really, versus just us teaching content. When you think about the story of Harry Potter, I believe he survived across his time at Hogwarts because of relationships. Our students make it through the math journey from year to year to year to year because of relationships. And where they have strong relationships from year to year to year to year, their journey is a whole lot better. Mike: Let's make a small shift in our conversation and talk a little bit about this idea of instructional practice. John: OK. Mike: I'm wondering how this lived experience with your family around the Harry Potter universe, how you think that would inform the way that an educator would think about their own practice? John: I think about it in this way. As I think about myself being in the classroom—and I taught middle school, then high school—I'm always thinking about what's in my tool kit. I think about the tools that I use and the various manipulatives, the various visual representations that I need to have at my fingertips. So part of what my question would be, and I think about it, is what are those instructional strategies that I will be using and how do I fine-tune those? What are my practices I'm using in my routines to help it feel like, “OK, I'm entering into a story”? Harry Potter, when you look at those books, across the books, they had some instructional routines happening, some things that happen every single year. You knew there was going to be a quidditch match. You knew they were going to have some kind of holiday type of gathering or party or something like that. You knew there was going to be some kind of competition that happened within each book that really, that competition required them to apply the knowledge and skills from their various courses that they learned. They had a set of core courses that they took, and so it wasn't like in each individual course that they really got to apply. They did in some cases, they would try it out, they'd mess up and somebody's nose would get big, ears would get big, you know, change a different color. But really, when they went into some of those competitions, that's when the collection of what they were learning from their different courses, that's when the collection of the content. So how do we think about providing space for students to show what they know in new settings, new types of problems? Especially in elementary, maybe it's science application type problems, maybe they're doing something with their social studies and they're learning a little bit about that. As an educator, I'm also thinking about, “Where am I when it comes to my procedural, the conceptual development, and the ability to think through and apply the applications?” And so I say that part because I have to think about students coming in, and how do I really build this? How do I strike this balance of conceptual and procedural? When do I go conceptual? When do I go procedural? How do I value both of them? How do I elevate that? And how do I come to understand it myself? Because quite often the default becomes procedural when my confidence as a teacher is not real deep with building it conceptually. I'm not comfortable, maybe, or I don't have the set of questions that go around the lesson and everything. So I've got to really think through how I go about building that out. Mike: That is interesting, John, because I think you put your finger on something. I know there have been points in time during my career when I was teaching even young children where we'd get to a particular idea or concept, and my perception was, “Something's going on here and the kids aren't getting it.” But what you're causing me to think is often in those moments, the thing that had changed is that I didn't have a depth of understanding of what I was trying to do. Not to say that I didn't understand the concept myself or the mathematics, but I didn't have the right questions to draw out the big ideas, or I didn't have a sense of, “How might students initially think about this and how might their thinking progress over time?” So you're making me think about this idea that if I'm having that moment where I'm feeling frustrated, kids aren't understanding, it might be a point in time where I need to think to myself, “OK, where am I in this? How much of this is me wanting to think back and say, what are the big ideas that I'm trying to accomplish? What are the questions that I might need to ask?” And those might be things that I can discover through reflection or trying to make more sense of the mathematics or the concept. But it also might be an opportunity for me to say, “What do my colleagues know? Are there ways that my colleagues are thinking about this that I can draw on rather than feeling like I'm on an island by myself?” John: You just said the key point there. I would encourage you to get connected to someone somehow. As you go through this journey together, there are other teachers out there that are walking through what they're walking through, teaching the grade level content. And that's when you are able to talk deeply about math. Mike: The other thing you're making me think about is that you're suggesting that educators just step back from whether kids are succeeding or partially succeeding or struggling with a task and really step back and saying, like, “OK, what's the larger set of mathematics that we're trying to build here? What are the big ideas?” And then analyzing what's happening through that lens rather than trying to think about, “How do I get kids to success on this particular thing?” Does that make sense? Tell me more about what you're thinking. John: So when I think about that one little thing, I have to step back and ask myself the question, “How and where does that one thing fit in the whole story of the unit?" The whole story of the grade level. And when I say the grade level, I'm thinking about those big ideas that sit into the big content domains, the big idea number. How does this one thing fit into that content domain? Mike: That was lovely. And it really does help me have a clearer picture of the way in which concepts and ideas mirror the structures of stories in that, like, there are threads and connections that I can draw on from my previous experience to understand what's happening now. You're starting to go there. So let's just talk about where you see parallels to equitable systems and structures in the experience that you had with Harry Potter when you were in that world with your family. John: First, let's think about this idea of grouping structures. And so when you think about the idea of groups and the way groups are used within the classroom, and you think about the equitable nature of homogeneous, heterogeneous, random groupings, truly really thinking about that collectively. And I say collectively in this sense, when you think about the parallel to the Harry Potter story, they had a grouping structure in place. They had a random sorting. Now who knows how random it was sometimes, right? But they had a random sorting the minute the students stepped into the school. And they got put into one of the four houses. But even though they had that random sorting then, and they had the houses structured, those groups, those students still had opportunities as they did a variety of things—other than the quidditch tournaments and some other tournaments—they had the opportunity where as a collection of students coming from the various houses, if they didn't come together, they might not have survived that challenge, that competition, whatever it was. So the idea of grouping and grouping structures and how we as educators need to think about, “What is it really doing for our students when we put them in fixed groups? And how is that not of a benefit to our students? And how can we really go about using the more random grouping?” One of the books that I'm reading is Building Thinking Classrooms [in Mathematics: Grades K–12: 14 Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning]. And so I'm reading Peter [Liljedahl]'s book and I'm thinking through it in the chapter when he talks about grouping. I think I read that chapter and highlighted and tapped every single page in it multiple times because it really made me think about what's really happening for our students when we think about grouping. So one structure and one part to think about is, “What's happening when we think we're doing our grouping that's not really getting students engaged in the lesson, keeping them engaged, and benefiting them from learning?” Another part, and I don't know if this is a part of equitable systems and structures or just when I think about equity work: One of the courses that they had to take at Hogwarts was about the history of wizarding. I bring that up in this space because they learned about the history of what went on with wizards and what went on with people. And to me, in my mindset, that's setting up and showing the importance of us sharing the history and bringing the history of our students—their culture, their backgrounds, in some cases their lived experiences—into the classroom. So that's us connecting with our students' culture and being culturally responsive and bringing that into the classroom. So as far as an equitable structure, the question I would ask you to think about is, “Do my students see themselves in my mathematics classroom?” And I say it that way versus “in the mathematics,” because some people will look at the problems in the math book and say, “Oh, I don't see them there. I don't see, oh, their names, their culture, their type of foods.” Some of those things aren't in the written work in front of you. But what I would offer is the ability for me as the educator to use visuals in my classroom, the ability for me to connect with the families in my classroom and learn some of their stories, learn some of their backgrounds—not necessarily learn their stories, but learn about them and bring that in to the space—that's for me to do. I don't need a textbook series that will do that for me. And as a matter of fact, I'm not sure if a textbook series can do that for you, for all the students that you have in your classroom or for the variety of students that you have in your classroom, when we think about their backgrounds, their culture, where they might come from. So thinking about that idea of cultural responsiveness, and really, if you think about the parallel in the Harry Potter series, the history of wizarding and the interaction, when you think about the interaction piece between wizards and what they call Muggles, right? That's the interactions between our students, learning about other students, learning about other cultures, learning about diverse voices. That's teaching students how to engage with and understand others and learn about others and come to value that others have voice also. Mike: I was just thinking, John, if I were to critique Hogwarts, I do wonder about the houses. Because in my head, there is a single story that the reader comes to think about anyone who is in Harry's house versus, say, like Slytherin house. John: Yes. Mike: And it flattens anyone who's in Slytherin house into bad guys, right? John: Mm-hmm. Mike: And so it makes me think there's that element of grouping where as an educator, I might tell a single story about a particular group, especially if that group is fixed and it doesn't change. But there's also, like, what does that do internally to the student who's in that group? What does that signal to them about their own identity? Does that make sense? John: That does make sense. And so when you think about the idea of grouping there at Hogwarts, and you think about these four fixed groups, because they were living in these houses, and once you got in that house, I don't think anybody moved houses. Think about the impact on students. If you put them in a group and they stay in that group and they never change groups, you will have students who realize that the way you did your groups and the way you named your groups and the way they see others in other groups getting more, doing different, and things like that. That's a nice caution to say the labels we put on our groups. Our kids come to internalize them and they come to, in some cases, live up to the level of expectations that we set for “just that group.” So if you're using fixed groups or thinking about fixed groups, really I'd offer that you really get into some of the research around groups and think, “What does it do for students?” And not only what does it do for students in your grade, but how does that play out for students across grades? If that student was in the group that you identified as the “low group” in grade 2, [exhales] what group did they show up in grade 3? How did that play with their mindset? Because you might not have said those words in front of students, but our students pick up on being in a fixed group and watching and seeing what their peers can do and what their peers can't do, what their group members can do and what their group can't do. As our students grow from grades 2 to 3, 4, 5, that really has an impact. There's somewhere between grade 3 and 5 where students' confidence starts to really shake. And I wonder how much of it is because of the grouping and types of grouping that is being used in the classroom that has me in a group of, “Oh, I am a strong doer [of mathematics]” or, “Oh, I'm not a good doer of mathematics.” And that, how much of that just starts to resonate with students, and they start to pick that up and carry that with them, an unexpected consequence because we thought we were doing a good thing when we put 'em in this group. Because I can pull them together, small group them, this and that. I can target what I need to do with them in that moment. Yeah, target what you need to do in that moment, but mix them up in groups. Mike: Just to go back and touch on the point that you started with. Building Thinking Classrooms has a lot to say about that particular topic among others, and it's definitely a book that, for my money, has really caused me to think about a lot of the practices that I used to engage in because I believed that they were the right thing to do. It's a powerful read. For anyone who hasn't read that yet, I would absolutely recommend it. John: And one last structure that I think we can speak to. I've already spoken to supports for students, but the idea of a coherent curriculum is I think an equitable structure that systems put in place that we need to put in place that you need to have in place for your students. And when I say a coherent curriculum, I'm thinking not just your one grade, but how does that grow across the grades? It's something for me, the teacher, to say, “I need to do it my way, this way…”. But it's more to say, “Here's the role I play in their pre-K to 12 journey.” Here's the chapter I'm going to read to them this year to help them get their deep understanding of whichever chapter it was, whichever book it happened to be of. In the case of the parallel of Harry Potter, here's the chapter I'm doing. I'm the third grade chapter, I'm the fourth grade chapter, I'm the fifth grade chapter. And the idea of that coherent curriculum allows the handoff to the next and the entry from the prior to be smoother. Many of the curriculums, when you look at them, a K–5 curriculum series will have those coherent pieces designed in it—similar types of tools, similar types of manipulatives, similar types of question prompts, similar types of routines—and that helps students build their confidence as they grow from year to year. And so to that point, it's about this idea of really thinking about how a coherent curriculum helps support equity because you know your students are getting the benefit of a teacher who is building from their prior knowledge because they've paid attention to what came before in this curriculum series and preparing them for where they're going. And that's quite often what the power of a coherent curriculum will do. The parallel in the Harry Potter series, they had about five to seven core courses they had to take. I think about the development of those courses. Boom. If I think about those courses as a strand of becoming a wizard, [laughs] how did I grow from year to year to year to year in those strands that I was moving across? Mike: Okay, I have two thoughts. One, I fully expect that when this podcast comes out, there's going to be a large bump in whoever is tracking the sale of the Harry Potter series on Amazon or wherever it is. John: [laughs] Mike: But the other question I wanted to ask you is what are some books outside of the Harry Potter universe that you feel like you'd recommend to an educator who's wanting to think about their practice in terms of content or instructional practices or the ways that they build equitable structure? John: When I think about the works around equitable structure, I think about The Impact of Identity and K–8 Mathematics: Rethinking Equity-Based Practices by Julia Aguirre, Karen Mayfield-Ingram, and Danny Martin as being one to help step back and think about how am I thinking about what I do and how it shows up in the classroom with my students. Another book that I just finished reading: Humanizing Disability in Mathematics Education[: Forging New Paths]. And my reason for reading it was I continue to think about what else can we do to help our students who are identified, who receive special education services? Why do we see so many of our students who sit in an inclusive environment—they're in the classroom on a regular basis; they don't have an IEP that has a math disability listed or anything along those lines—but they significantly underperform or they don't perform as well as their peers that don't receive special education services. So that's a book that got me just thinking and reading in that space. Another book that I'm reading now, or rereading, and I'll probably reread this one at least once a year, is Motivated[: Designing Mathematics Classrooms Where Students Want to Join In] by Ilana [Seidel] Horn. And the reason for this one is the book itself, when you read it, is written with middle schools' case stories. Part of what this book is tackling is what happens to students as they transition into middle school. And the reason why I mentioned this, especially if you're elementary, is somewhere between third grade and fifth grade, that process of students' self-confidence decreasing their beliefs in themselves as doers of math starts to fall apart. They start to take the chips in the armor. And so this book, Motivated itself, really does not speak to this idea of intrinsic motivation. “Oh, my students are motivated.” It speaks to this idea of by the time the students get to a certain age, that upper fifth grade, sixth grade timeframe, what shifts is their K, 1, 2, 3, “I'm doing everything to please my teacher.” By [grades] 4 or 5, I'm realizing, “I need to be able to show up for my peers. I need to be able to look like I can do for my peers.” And so if I can't, I'm backing out. I'm not sharing, I'm not volunteering, I'm not “engaging.” So that's why I bring it into this elementary space because it talks about five pieces of a motivational framework that you can really push in on, and not that you push in on all five at one time. [chuckles] But you pick one, like meaningfulness, and you push in on that one, and you really go at, “How do I make the mathematics more meaningful for my students, and what does it look like? How do I create that safe space for them?” That's what you got to think about. Mike: Thanks. That's a great place to stop. John Staley, thank you so much for joining us. It's really been a pleasure. John: Thank you for having me. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. ©2023 The Math Learning Center - www.mathlearningcenter.org

The Patrick Madrid Show: July 14, 2023 - Hour 2

god jesus christ old testament eucharist judgement day jehovah witness jehovah witnesses patrick madrid mike how matt read

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2023 51:10

Patrick answers listener questions about what happens after Judgement Day, how best to debate a Jehovah Witness, is it a good idea to read meditation prayers, and how are we to understand God's mercy if he sends good people to hell? Jackie – What happens after judgement day? Mike – How do I debate Jehovah Witnesses properly? Matthew - Is it a good idea to read meditation prayers? Matt - Read that souls that perish with original sin go straight to hell. How do we balance that with the hope we have that God will save us? David - When others have done wrong to me, I seem to sympathize with them. How can I balance this better? Matthew - How best can I separate the requirement of kosher food from the Old Testament with the blood of Christ being present in the Eucharist?

Building Fluency and Procedural Understanding with Work Places - Guest: Lori Bluemel

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Play Episode Listen Later Jul 6, 2023 13:18

Rounding Up Season 1 | Episode 20 – Work Places Guest: Lori Bluemel Mike Wallus: When I meet someone new at a gathering and tell them that I work in math education, one of the most common responses I hear is, “I was never good at math in school.” When I probe a bit further, this belief often originated in the person's experience memorizing basic facts. How can we build students' fluency with facts, encourage flexible thinking, and foster students' confidence? That's the topic we'll explore in this episode of Rounding Up. Mike: One of the challenges that we face in education can be letting go of a practice—even if the results are questionable—when the alternative is unclear. In elementary math, this challenge often arises around building computational fluency. We know that speed tests, drill and kill, and worksheets, those are all ineffective practices. And even worse, they can impact students' math identity. So, today we're going to spend some time unpacking an alternative, a component of the Bridges in Mathematics curriculum called Work Places. We're doing this not to promote the curriculum, but to articulate an alternative vision for ways that students can develop computational fluency. To do that, we're joined by Lori Bluemel, a curriculum consultant for The Math Learning Center. Mike: Lori, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you with us. Lori: Thank you. It's good to be here. Mike: Well, let's just start with a basic question: If I'm a listener who's new to the Bridge's curriculum, can you describe what a Work Place is? Lori: The simple answer would be that it's math activities or games that are directly focusing on the skills or the ideas and concepts that students are working on during Problems & Investigations. The best aspect, or the feature about Work Places, is that teachers have an opportunity to be like a fly on the wall as they're listening into their students and learning about what strategies they're using and the thinking process that they're going through. Mike: How do you think practicing using a Work Place differs from the version of practice that children have done in the past? What changes for the child or for the learner? Lori: Well, I always felt like a piece of paper was pretty static. There wasn't a lot of interaction. You could run through it so quickly and be finished with it without really doing a lot of thinking and processing—and with absolutely no talking. Whereas during Work Places, you're discussing what you're doing. You're talking to your partner. You're listening to your partner. You're hearing about what they're doing and the different methods or strategies that they're using. And [there's] nothing at all static about it because you're actively working together to work through this game or this activity. Mike: That is so fascinating. It makes me think of a book that I was reading recently about thinking classrooms, and one of the things that they noted was, there's data that suggests that the more talk that's happening in a classroom, the more learning that's actually happening. It really connects me to what you just said about Work Places. Lori: Yeah, and I feel like that's the big difference between Work Places and doing a worksheet on your own. You can do it completely isolated without any outside interaction, whereas Work Places, it's very interactive, very collaborative. Mike: Yeah. So, as a former classroom teacher who used Work Places on a daily basis, how did you set up norms and routines to make them successful for students? Lori: Well, I actually went through several different methods, or routines, before I landed on one that really worked well for me. One that worked best for me is, at the beginning of the year when we first started doing Work Places, I would take that very first Work Place time, and we would just have a class meeting and talk about what we're doing in Work Places. Why would we even have Work Places? We would create an anchor chart, and we'd have one side that would say “Students.” The other side would say “Teachers.” And then we would talk about the expectations. And the students would come up with those. Then we would talk about me as the teacher, what do they think I should be doing? And again, that would come up with all different ideas. And then we always came back to that final thought of, “We need to be having fun.” Mike: Hmm. Lori: Math needs to be fun during Work Places. And then we would start in, and students would go to Work Places. They would choose their partner, and then they would get started. And that first few times we did Work Places, I always just kind of watched and listened and walked around. And if I felt like things needed to be slightly different, maybe they weren't talking about math or they weren't really playing the Work Place, then we would call a class meeting. And everyone would freeze, and we'd go to our meeting spot, and we would talk about what I saw. And we would also talk about what was going well and what they personally could do to improve. And then we'd go back to Work Places and try it again. Needless to say, a lot of times those first few times at Work Places they didn't play the games a lot because we were setting up expectations. But in the long run, it made Work Places run very smoothly throughout the rest of the year. Mike: Yeah. The word that comes to mind as I listen to you talk, Lori, is investment. Lori: Um-hm. Mike: Investing the time to help set the norms, set the routines, give kids a vision of what things look like, and the payoff is productive math talk. Lori: Exactly. And that was definitely the payoff. They needed reminders on occasion, but for the most part, they really understood what was expected. Mike: I think it's fascinating that you talked about your role and asked the kids to talk about that. I would love if you could say more about why you asked them to think about your role when it came to Work Places. Lori: I wanted them to realize that I was there to help them. But at the same time, I was there to help their peers as well. So, if I was working with a small group, I wanted them to understand that they might need to go to another resource to help them answer a question. They needed to make sure that I was giving my attention to the, the small group or the individual that I was working with at that time. So, by talking about what was expected from me, my hope was that they would understand that there were times when they might have to wait a minute, or they might go to another resource to find an answer to their question, or to help them with the situation that they were in. And that seemed to be the case. I think I alleviated a lot of those interruptions just by talking about expectations. Mike: So, I want to return to something that you said earlier, Lori, 'cause I think it's really important. I can imagine that there might be some folks who are listening who are wondering, “What exactly is the teacher doing while students are engaged in Work Places?” Lori: Um-hm. Mike: And I wanted to give you an opportunity to really help us understand how you thought about what your main focus was during that time. So, children are out, they're engaged with the Work Places. How do you think about what you want to do with that time? Lori: OK. So, I often look at the needs of my students and, and think about “What have I seen during Problems & Investigations? What have I seen during Work Places previously? And where do I focus my time?” And then I kind of gravitate towards those students that I want to listen in on. So, I want to again, be like that fly on the wall and just listen to them, maybe ask a few questions, some clarifying questions about what they're doing, get an idea of what strategies or the thinking that they're going through as they're processing the problem. And then from there, I can start focusing on small groups, maybe adjust the Work Place so that they can develop that skill at a deeper level. It helps me during that time to really facilitate my students' practice; help students make the most of their practice time so that as they're going through the Work Place, it's not just a set of rules and procedures that they're following. That they're really thinking about what they're doing and being strategic with those skills as well. So that's my opportunity to really help and focus in on my small groups and provide the support that students need. Or maybe I want them to advance their skills, go a little bit deeper so that they are working at a little bit different level. Mike: You know, I'm really interested in this idea that Work Places present an opportunity to listen to students' thinking in real time. I'm wondering if you can talk about an experience where you were able to tuck in with a small group and listen to their thinking and use what you learned to inform your teaching. Lori: ( chuckles ) One experience kind of stands out to me more than others just because it helped me understand that I need to not assume that my students are thinking about, or thinking in a specific way. So, there was one student, they were playing the Work Place game in grade 3, Loops & Groups, and she had spun a six and rolled, I think, a six as well. So, her problem was to solve six times six. And this student had actually been in front of the class just a few days before, and several times actually when I had worked with her, had solved a problem similar to this by thinking of it as three times six and three times six, which is a great strategy. But what I really wanted this student to develop was some flexibility. Lori: So, I asked her to explain her thinking, and I fully expected her to solve it: “Oh, yeah. I thought of it as three times six and three times six. And when I add those two together, I get 36.” And she totally shocked me. ( laughs ) She said, “Oh, I, I thought of it as five times six, and I know what five times six is. That's 30. And if I just add one more set of six, I get 36. So, she had already developed another strategy, which was not what I was expecting. With that, her partner was a little bit confused and said, “I don't understand how you could do that.” So, I asked this little girl if she could use tile maybe to explain her thinking to her friends. So, we got out the tile. She set it up and she explained this thinking to her partner. And her partner was still a little bit unsure, not really sure she could use that with her own thinking. But what it did was, in the future, just days later, that partner started trying that particular strategy. So, it taught me several things. First of all, don't assume. You don't always know what students are thinking. And also, students are their peers' best teachers. It really encouraged her partner to try that method just a few days later. Mike: We kind of zoomed really in on a pair of children and, and kind of the impact. The other thing that it makes me think is, by doing the fly on the wall, you as a teacher get a better sense of kind of the themes around thinking that are happening across the classroom. Lori: Yeah. You definitely do get that, that perspective. And I think the questioning that you use also will help draw that out. Asking students to explain their thinking: “How did you solve the problem? How could you check your work? Is there a different strategy that you could use that would help you make sure that the answer you came up with, the first strategy you used, was correct?” Those kinds of questions always seem to really help students kind of pull out that thinking and be able to explain what they were doing. Mike: Lori, thank you so much for joining us today. It has really been a pleasure to have you on the podcast and to be able to talk about this. Lori: You bet. Thank you for having me. It was fun. Mike: I want to thank all of you who've listened in during the first season of Rounding Up. We're going on a short break this summer, but we'll be back for Season 2 in September. Before we go, we're wondering what topics you'd like us to explore, what guests you'd like to hear from, and what questions you'd like us to take up in Season 2. This week's episode includes a link you can use to share your ideas with us. Let us know what you're thinking about, and we'll use your ideas to inform the topics we consider in Season 2. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2023 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

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How will we feel about the Mavs' roster after tonight's NBA Draft? Mike Likes it, Combo Platter

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Play Episode Listen Later Jun 22, 2023 46:20

On the third hour of the K&C Masterpiece, Kevin Cory, and Mike How do you think you'll feel about the Mavs' roster in another 24 hours? And a week from tomorrow? Then the Lunch Rush / The Expressway, The Combo Platter: National Onion Ring Day (Give us a sports opinion and then, what is your favorite appetizer to order? And perhaps where from?) Finally, Mikes like it.

Canadian Natural Gas Has Gone Global: An Interview with Mike Rose from Tourmaline

ARC ENERGY IDEAS

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 25, 2023 34:09

This week Michael (Mike) Rose, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Tourmaline joins us as our guest. Tourmaline made some exciting announcements last week. First, they announced a partnership on a compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling station network across Western Canada to enable heavy-haul trucks to get off diesel. The company also announced that they plan to double the amount of gas they ship as LNG by 2026. Here are some of the questions that Jackie and Peter asked Mike: How have Western Canadian gas producers survived low gas prices? Why is Tourmaline investing in natural gas stations for heavy-haul trucking now, considering it still has GHG emissions? Has Tourmaline reduced its environmental footprint, including greenhouse gas emissions? How challenging is it to achieve the federal government's goal of reducing oil and gas emissions in the range of 40 to 45 percent by 2030? Are you exporting LNG to international markets today? Can Canada compete with the U.S. to supply gas to LNG export terminals on the U.S. Gulf Coast? How much WCSB gas could ultimately be shipped off Canada's West Coast? Other information referenced in this podcast:  Alberta Government's aspirational plan to reach net zero by 2050 “Alberta emissions reduction and energy development plan.” Global News (April 18, 2023) “Tourmaline, Clean Energy Fuels to partner on natural gas fueling station network.” Bloomberg (April 18, 2023) “Tourmaline Aims to Double Portion of Gas Shipped as LNG by 2026.” Please review our disclaimer at: https://www.arcenergyinstitute.com/disclaimer/   

Laura Graber on Sexual Abuse, Part 1

Blazing Grace Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 3, 2023 25:20

Growing up, Laura Graber's father was an alcoholic. He was also addicted to pornography and molested his daughters. There was constant tension and the fear of sexually inappropriate behavior of their father in their home, to the point that Laura was afraid of taking a shower. Laura grew up in an Amish family; while many have the perception that the Amish live pristine, peaceful lives, an undercurrent of unspoken sexual abuse is alive in their community. In this first of two interviews, Laura shares her story. Laura Graber on Sexual Abuse - Part 1 - Transcript ANNOUNCER: This radio program is PG-13. Parents strongly cautioned: some material may be inappropriate for children under the age of 13. Jesus's mission was to comfort those who mourn, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to captives, and open prison doors for those who are bound for those who want more than status quo Christianity has to offer, Blazing Grace Radio begins now. And here is your host, Mike Genung: MIKE GENUNG, HOST, BLAZING GRACE RADIO: Hey, Mike Genung here, and welcome back to Blazing Grace Radio. Glad to have you along. It's a beautiful sunshiny day here in Phoenix, AZ. And before I introduce our guest, a couple of quick announcements. May 5th - 7th I'll be in Italy, the north side, leading a men's retreat there. May 13th I'll be in Vienna, Austria leading an all day conference. On that Saturday, May 20th, we'll be in Finland for several speaking engagements. And then, May 27th, I'll be back to the UK in Frimley Green, which is a little southeast of London, holding an all day conference on that Saturday. And then June 3rd holding another conference - all day conference - in North Wales. So for our listeners there in the UK and Europe, I'd love to see you. Go to the website at blazinggrace.org, there's an events calendar on the homepage. And so today I have back with me at the program, Mrs. Laura Graber from James Port, Missouri, Laura my friend and welcome back to the program. LAURA GRABER: Thanks for having me, Mike. It's an honor. MIKE: Thanks for coming on. And so, Laura's going to be with us the next two weeks, and today we'll be talking about some sexual abuse issues she encountered growing up in her family. And then next week, what she's been through with porn addiction in her marriage. And a common thread that can run through both of those scenarios, is anxiety and fears. So along the way, we'll be picking that conversation up and looking at what recovery looks like. So let's begin, Laura, and go and begin by sharing what you went through growing up. LAURA: Sure, absolutely. So I grew up in a in a Baptist Amish home. So, you know, a lot of people have their opinion of how they think the Amish are [laughs] who they are and how they live their lives. Granted, my home that I grew up in was was an exception. Thankfully there's not many of them in the culture, but my father was an alcoholic. And with that came lots of anger and rage, and, you know, all the aspects of that. And as I grew up there became more and more sexual impurities in his life, became more evident, until it got to the point where he definitely was sexually abusing us through a lot of different forms. For a long time in my life I was able to ignore it, and not, you know, call it for what it was because it didn't seem like that big of a deal. Which is, a lot of times, what sexual impurities and sexual sin... you can lie to yourself for a while, believing that it's not as bad as you perceive it to be. But... so, obviously, growing up with a father that you know was an alcoholic, and angry, there was lots of tension in our home. My parents would fight a lot, and argue a lot, and just always being tense, never knowing when something would tip them off. And he would spank you, per se, but it was much more than disciplining you. It was a way for him to unleash his anger, you know, using a whip or, you know, whatever he had close to his hands to use. So a large part of my childhood was spent, like, just living in constant fear. I remember bumping his chair one Sunday afternoon as a little kid, when he was taking a nap, and getting a beating because I bumped his chair. MIKE: Mmm. LAURA: You know, just instances that were completely crazy, you know? Yeah. Sometimes he would come to the table and I'd have to sit beside him and... because that's how we sat at the table, in that row. And he would be angry because he's looking for an excuse, you know? Someone to take his anger out on. And it was so nerve wracking trying to eat, you know, just fear, just complete fear. So obviously as I got older, you know, in the age of eight, nine, ten years old, I started becoming aware that... I can't necessarily pinpoint, like what happened, that I knew to never be alone with him. But I was always very aware at a young age, you know, if he was in the house and there's no one else in the house, like, don't be in the house with him. Yeah, I just... I spent a large part of my life just not being in the same place as him, alone. So by the age of 8-9 years old, he would make me uncomfortable with staring at me. And that led to, you know, occasionally he would, you know, try to touch me as I walk past him, or depending on where you sat or what you were wearing, he would be staring at you. He would write vulgar things on, you know, papers and leave them laying around where... you know, if I was, if he was out in the shop and I was out there too, he'd be sitting there, you know, looking at, like, magazines that were full of, you know, porn, literally. MIKE: Right in front of his daughter? LAURA: Yes, yes. MIKE: Mhmm. LAURA: I mean, he would sometimes try to hide the cover, but I knew they came in the mail. And, you know, we knew that's what he had in his hands. You know, we walked behind him, you'd see what he had. There was just like... slowly but surely it kept getting worse. And I was very naive, like no one... like, my mom would have never talked to me about sexual things, you know, growing up. So for me it was, it was all foreign. It was disturbing to me, like, disgusting to me. Like, I knew it wasn't right, and yet I had no one to explain to me, like, that this is wrong. So it's kind of, yeah, a lot of confusion mixed in with that. But it kept on going throughout my teenage years. You know, like, if in the morning, if he would hear that you're awake then he would all of a sudden, you know, open the bedroom door in hopes to catch us changing. Or if you were showering, the the lock on the door didn't work very well. Which I'd say it was probably done on purpose. And he would, you know, open the door and pretend he didn't know you were in there. It got to the point where us young little girls would, you know, if one of us were showering, the other one would be hanging around the bathroom door or be inside the bathroom just so he didn't try those things. He would, by the time I was like 13-14 years old, he would, like, in the living room evenings, he would sit on his recliner in front of everyone and be masturbating or something. You just... yeah, lots of very disturbing things. MIKE: In front of the whole family? LAURA: A lot of disturbing things. Yes. Yes. I mean, obviously I had older brothers, and if they were around he never acted out in front of them as much. He definitely hid it from them, because there was a time when some of us younger girls started speaking up a bit, and my brothers were just kind of like "What?", you know? Like they didn't know this stuff was happening. So I think he hid it more from them than what I realized, you know, at the time. But yeah, like, my mom would be sitting there sometimes, so us girls would just, I spent... I remember spending quite a bit of evenings in the bedroom until he went to bed. He'd go to bed fairly early. You know, 8:30, 8:00, something like that. And then coming out in the living room and hanging out with mom after he went to the bedroom. So yeah, that was just reality. And I somewhat knew that other dads maybe weren't like that, but it just felt too much for your brain to even process that, that this isn't completely normal. Because then I would have had to admit that this is wrong and there's something wrong. And that felt terrifying to me. Yeah. I would have much rather just had to live in an alternative reality and not face the actual effect that all of that was having on me at the time. MIKE: Mhmm. LAURA: So yeah, he was very... a vulgar person. I mean he would tell me that I was made to satisfy the other half of the population. Oh, that would that would make me very, very angry. [laughs] Obviously. Yeah. Those things kind of all continued until my parents separated when I was 16 years old. And yeah, so obviously that released me from having to live in the same house as him. The last year before they separated I would be home a lot alone with him and my mom. And that last year was... it was awful. It was completely awful. I know there was other people around on the weekends, a lot to distract him. And yeah, it was just a lot that happened that, sometimes I wonder if I even gathered, you know, mentally, today - years later - you know, what all took place. But yeah, so that obviously left me with a lot of, like, the mindset of, like, anything sexual is disturbing and disgusting. And even viewing men in general, in a very... ungodly way. Just, like, being disgusted by males in general, which in a sense, like, God used for good. Because I didn't have a lot of boy drama in my life [laughs] as a teenager. So that was... that was a little positive in the whole aspect. Yeah. Kind of a small glimpse of of my childhood growing up. MIKE: How many kids in your family? LAURA: There was nine of us, and I was the youngest. MIKE: How many boys? How many girls? LAURA: There was five boys and four girls. Actually, I said that exactly opposite, four girls... five girls and four boys. MIKE: And your brothers had no idea that a chunk of this was going on. LAURA: There was things that they did know. I mean, they were aware of, like the magazines he got in the mail. They were aware of different things because, you know, after he was done with the magazines, he would lay them in on my older brother's bed, you know, gave them to the boys. So he was very, like... entitled, you know, as a male. That was just what males did. This is who they were. So my brothers, you know, he... he tremendously impacted their purity at a young age. And they knew some of the things, but a lot of the things that he did toward us younger girls, we just didn't talk about, not even really that much to each other, nor to my mom. It was kind of something that you just didn't want to talk about because it was hard. And subjects like that in the Amish culture, you don't hear anyone talking about sexual things. They're just like a, yeah, a silent subject. Especially in the community that I grew up in that era... you didn't get taught any of that in school, you know, there was no sex ed classes in school. So there was just a lot of silence on the subject. So I remember, you know, several years after my parents had separated, I was talking to one of my brothers and sharing about the showering and he was just horrified. He was like, you know, he remembers me asking him if he could hang out in the hallway while I'm showering. And he remember just like being like, "Okay, what's wrong with her?" you know, "She's acting strange," you know? But he did and he would do that for me if I asked him. But I guess I always just assumed he knew why I was asking him, and he didn't. That's just how less we talked about it at the time. Now, today, and even, like, you know, by the time I was 17-18 years old, all of that stuff was definitely discussed and very openly talked about. At the time it was just a silent subject, yeah. MIKE: Well, a lot of people, myself included, have or had a perception of the Amish community, of being peaceful. They're living life the way it should be. There's wonderful families and communities. And so our listeners know, I've been to James Port where Laura lives, and you guys have kind of educated me that that's not quite the situation. So is there a lot of sexual abuse... immorality in the Amish community? LAURA: There is, there definitely is. And it greatly saddens me because of how that subject is not discussed. It's not taught. It's not addressed. There's, you know, a lot of young kids, you know, things happen between kids, and adults view it as, "Oh, it's just kids doing things." And that's not just kids doing things, you know? I don't know as far as, like the ratio of, you know, the difference between the Amish culture and the so-called English culture - [laughs] MIKE: [laughs] LAURA: - you know, that if you do statistically the difference between the two. But I would say in the Amish culture there is more, from my personal opinion. For the mere fact that A: it is hidden. Few people bring it to the light, talk about it, actually find healing. And it's, like... the Amish community is a really close knit community. So if one person finds it out, like everyone knows, a large part of the time. So it's something that a lot of shame and fear and just complete terror is associated with, so you don't want anyone to know about it. So it's better just stay silent and shove it to the back of your mind and forget that it exists. MIKE: Mmm. LAURA: So that's definitely, like, a lot of times when, like, instances do come up that you catch, you know, little snippets here or there, that you know something may not be quite right. Or something may have happened, but you never know, like, full details, or people don't just openly talk about it or share, you know, that "Hey, I was sexually abused, and this happened, and this is how I found healing." Those conversations would not be a part of the life and Amish community in James Port where I lived. It's more of a yeah, definitely a very shameful thing that hidden scraped under the rug, you know, covered it up. MIKE: Well, the official numbers are that one out of every four women have been abused or molested and one out of every six men have been abused. But those, those are the official numbers. That doesn't even include all those that had even reported it. So the real numbers are - LAURA: Exactly. MIKE: - probably much higher. So was your family going to church when all this was going on? LAURA: Oh yes, yes. We were in church every Sunday that there was church. My dad was actually looked up as a respected person of the community, at one point, a lot. I think as the years went by, more people... he might have happened to show his anger at the wrong time, and more people got to know that there was definitely, maybe some issues, you know, happening in the background. But there was... like, when we left, when my mom and dad separated, we actually - my dad left for work, and my mom and my brother, me and my sister, we just loaded up in the car and left and left him a note. That's how we separated because that's... we just left. And at that point, you know, I think a lot of people were shocked. And still today there's people in the community that they don't know the full story, you know, they don't know what all happened and they would still view us as being wrong. For having just left because my dad was, I mean, in public, he was a jolly person, he was funny, you know. Still today I hear a comment, you know, oh, you know, his laugh or they so enjoyed talking with my dad or something my dad said or, you know, whatever. And there's still a lot of people today that would not, yeah, would not know the real Jake as I knew him growing up. MIKE: And part of the reason on this program I have people who come on and share stories of being molested, like you've been willing to do, Laura, is because a lot of this gets repressed in the family system, and then people grow up thinking, "I'm the only one that's gone through this," and it's far from the truth. LAURA: Yeah. MIKE: So how did you unwind the idea that men are basically scumbag pervs? [laughs] LAURA: Umm... [laughs] That's a big question, Mike. Do you have a couple hours? [laughs] First of all, my brothers were pivotal in that. I mean, obviously God was in the background, you know, orchestrating all of this, but my brothers played a huge part because they treated me differently than from what my dad did. They cared about me. They were, you know, never sexually... toward me in any form. They advocated for me, did things for me, they loved me, they looked out for me. They, you know, were there. They were vibrant in my life and I could trust them completely. So that was huge. And, like, to hear they might be hanging out with guy friends or they might be hanging out with people. Like, if they were comfortable with them, I was comfortable with them a lot of times. Like, who they liked, I liked because I knew that they they had grown up with the same dad as I did. So that that was huge for me. Definitely my brother's impacting me. And also you know, as I became a Christian in later years, recognizing that there are a lot of men out there who have a heart for God. And, you know, as I started sharing my story, little bits here and there, you know, I barely wouldn't say much, you know, because I'd still be scared. But people's reaction, like men's reaction, the same like, "Wow!" like, "That is so wrong!" Or, you know, like, "That's awful!" And recognizing like, "Oh, they would think it's wrong to do this?" You know, "They wouldn't think that's okay?" You know, "That's not just how males are?" So those are probably the two biggest aspects of, yeah, my brothers, and then, like, hearing other males react to parts of my story - MIKE: Mmm. LAURA: - was huge. MIKE: So when I first met you was in 2018 when I led a wive's retreat in Colorado. So, you and seven or eight other women. So I'm wondering what was going through your mind when you're going to a wive's retreat that a man is leading [chuckles] with your background. LAURA: [laughs] Well, I definitely... I was... most of the reason why I went to the retreat was because I needed to get away from my husband. I was losing my mind, it felt like, and I was just desperate to get away. And my friend invited me and I was like, "Hey, let's go. Who cares?" But when I showed up there and I met you and I realized like, "Whoa, like I'm spending the weekend at a retreat that's being led by this male." And it was... yeah, there was thoughts in my mind, definitely, of like "Who are you?" Like, "Why would you do this?" You know, yeah. "What type of person are you?" And then that first evening we were broke up in groups to share a story, and you just happened to be in my group. And you shared your story, and that... yeah. That instantly, I... through hearing your perception and seeing your love for purity and calling things out for what they were to be wrong. You know, speaking the truth over subjects, not just brushing them under the rug, or making them sound better than what they were. Yeah, you gained a lot of respect for me that first evening and I continued to go on that. MIKE: Well, we've got several minutes left, and so I'm wondering what your healing journey... Can you give us a point or two on what that has looked like? Because that was a lot of damage to recover from. LAURA: That was a lot. In a lot of different areas, you know. A lot of small things that I even today, sometimes something strikes me and I'm like, "Wow," like, yeah, "I didn't recognize that until today." Probably the biggest, obviously the biggest thing was becoming a Christian and having God, like, the Holy Spirit, to walk me through those things. And I did a lot of counseling... have done a lot of counseling. And my siblings. My siblings have been pivotal in my life. And, like, we can sit together and we can talk openly and honestly about our childhood and connect and, like, just talk about the hard stuff. You know, the disturbing stuff that's really hard to talk to other people about openly. We do that with each other. We're not afraid to go there and to talk. We can talk about anything. And that has been majorly healing to have people who understand what it was like, and being able to just share and talk and not people freaking out about what all happened. Yeah. MIKE: And at what age did you become a believer? LAURA: I was 20 years old when I first... Yeah. I happened to go to church, which is kind of a crazy thing because I hadn't been in church for a long time, because all of this, really, I was really bitter toward God. MIKE: Mmm. LAURA: I was. I just had the mindset of "If there is a God and he would allow me to live like this, you know, for close to 17 years, then I don't want anything to do with him," you know. If he... yeah. MIKE: Hmm. LAURA: You know, people would tell me, you know, "God's good," or, you know, I would hear things like that and I'd be like,"Yeah, whatever." I would mock Christians and mock people who believed in Him because to me it was like, "How could he turn a blind eye while we suffered all those years?" I mean, just day after day of complete agony and darkness and just horribleness. I mean, just complete terror and fear, and... yeah. It was awful. MIKE: My friends [clears throat] we're going to continue this conversation with Laura next week, so I would encourage you to join us. And Laura, thank you so much for your honesty and transparency, and I look forward to seeing you next time. ANNOUNCER: Blazing Grace is a nonprofit international ministry for the sexually broken and the spouse. Please visit us at blazinggrace.org for information on Mike Genung's books, groups, counseling, or to have Mike speak at your organization. You can email us at e-mail@blazinggrace.org, or call our office in Chandler, AZ at (719) 888-5144. Again, visit us at blazinggrace.org, email us at email@blazinggrace.org or call the office at (719) 888-5144.

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Talk Dirty To Me Q&A: Question to Ask Before Marriage, Ideas to Keep a Long-term Relationship Flirty and How to Ask Out a Hyper-Independent Woman

The Down and Dirty Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2023 16:02

In this week's episode, I tackle your questions regarding image, sex and dating! I answered three questions regarding questions to tackle before marriage, ideas to keep a long-term relationship flirty and how to catch the attention of a hyper-independent woman. If you need help regarding these topics, this is a must listen! In this week's episode, we discuss: [1:25] Question 1 (Vince): What questions do you ask your partner before getting engaged/married? [7:24] Question 2 (Joe): What are some unique ideas to keep things flirty in a long-term relationship? [12:18] Question 3 (Mike): How do I ask out and impress a hyper-independent woman? Please tell us your thoughts about the Q&A over on Instagram and submit your question for our next Q&A here, and be looking forward to more of these in the future! Come hang out with me on Instagram @celestemooreimage and let me know your thoughts of this episode because I love hearing from you all!

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The Patrick Madrid Show: February 23, 2023 - Hour 2

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Play Episode Listen Later Feb 23, 2023 48:26

Patrick helps a new listener navigate marital issues and answers questions about who can give blessings. Answers young callers questions about whether or not Mary came before Jesus, how to dispose of a crucifix and is the devil happy. Cecilia - Mom left her first husband because of abuse and got remarried- can she receive communion? Donald - Wife filed for divorce and not sure what to do next? Maria - What authority do parents have to bless their children? Charles - Who came first God or Mary? Carmen - follow up-I say God Bless you to everyone-co-worker was an Satanist- Was that phrase a way of protection for me? Mike - How to properly dispose of crucifix that is broken? Kerry - First penance for RCIA- how can I explain it to them? Joe - Is the devil happy?

The Patrick Madrid Show: February 13, 2023 - Hour 3

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Play Episode Listen Later Feb 13, 2023 51:11

Patrick responds to an email about how to give a truthful confession without being crass or scandalous Judy - A young mother with 4 children has a husband who became associated with Society of Saint Pius the 5th. Does she need to join him? Philip - I was told to not talk about religion and my beliefs or I'll get fired. Is it okay for me to agree to this? Kate - There is a man who likes to stand while we should be kneeling at Mass. How should I address this? Is it okay to sit if you can't kneel? Mike – How to have “the talk” with your kids? Melba - On some instructions for how to say the rosary they left out the Our Father. Is that a way of saying the Rosary? Cade - Christine Watkins book 'the Warning': Have you heard of this book and what are your thoughts on my mom getting into it?

Cultivating Positive Math Identity - Guest: Nataki McClain and Annelly Rodas

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 1, 2022 24:40

Rounding Up Season 1 | Episode 6 – Cultivating a Positive Math Identity Guests: Nataki McClain and Annelly Rodas Mike Wallus: Today I'd like to start our episode with a bit of a thought exercise. I'd like you to close your eyes and picture your childhood self, learning math in your elementary school. What are some of the memories and feelings that come to mind? And when you reflect on those memories, what do you think the unspoken messages you may have absorbed about what it means to be good at math were? And then maybe most importantly, how did those early experiences with mathematics shape your belief about yourself as a doer of math? Today on the podcast, we're talking about identity; specifically, math identity. What is it? And how can we as teachers shape our students' math identities. Let's get started. Mike: Well, hey, everyone. Welcome to Rounding Up. I'm excited to have our friends Nataki and Annelly joining us today. And I think I'll just start by welcoming the two of you. It's great to have you on the podcast. Nataki McClain: Hi, Mike. Thank you for having us. Annelly Rodas: Thank you, Mike. Mike: Absolutely. So the two of you are currently curriculum consultants for the Math Learning Center. And I'm wondering, before we get started with the topic of the day, can you tell us just a little bit about your teaching background and your experience in education? And, Nataki, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to go first? Nataki: Sure. Well, I have been in education in some capacity for about 25 years. I spent 16 years in the classroom. Fourth grade was my favorite year of all time. And then I've spent eight years as a math specialist. This past year, I am now a curriculum consultant for the Math Learning Center. Mike: Annelly, how about you? Annelly: So I started my career as a pre-K teacher at a head start program, and then I moved to the New York City public school system, where I taught second grade and fourth grade. Later, I had the opportunity to work as a math coach at my own school. And I supported pre-K to eight. Mike: Fabulous. Thanks to both of you. So let's jump into the topic of the podcast: Cultivating a Positive Math Identity. Getting ready for this, what I found myself thinking about is that there is so much conversation in the field right now around math identity. And CTM has position statements about the importance of supporting a positive math identity. There's a ton of research that validates that need. I think I'd like to start by just asking you, from your perspective, how would you describe math identity to a listener who's new to this conversation? Annelly: I think that it is important to understand that math identity is our own personal view on how we engage with mathematics, right? And it has to do with our disposition and our beliefs on our mathematics ability. I know for me, this topic is really close to my own personal journey in mathematics because I grew up thinking that I was not a math person and that changed with my experiences really late in life. So it has become my mission that kids get to experience math in a different way, and that they feel comfortable engaging with mathematics. Nataki: And Nelly, um, I have to agree with you. I share a similar experience in that, I guess in my elementary school days, I didn't think of math as something that you got to either enjoy or not. It was just kind of, it's just there and you do it and you learn it. But then in high school I did not have a positive experience. I was made to feel like math was not my thing. And so, Mike, to address that question about what is math identity, it really—to Nelly's point—it really is how you view yourself as a mathematician. And again, my experience in high school was such that I did not feel like I was a mathematician. So to everyone's surprise, when I go off to grad school I'm studying math and now I'm working at the Math Learning Center, right? It's kind of a big deal. And I think it's important that everyone feel like a mathematician. Mike: Yeah, gosh, you know what you two are saying, I suspect that it resonates with so many people who, whether they're teachers or parents or folks who are just kind of going about living their lives, think this resonates so much. I really resonate with what you said, Nataki, about this idea that math was just there. Nataki: Uh-hm. Mike: It was about a series of procedures that you do quickly and that you try to always find the answer as soon as possible. And get it correct the first time. And if you didn't, that meant something about who you were, what your ultimate capacity as a mathematician was. Nataki: Uh-hm. Mike: And I think for a lot of folks, that really shapes their belief about what school math is and what math is in general. Nataki: Absolutely. Mike: Yeah. So I'm really curious, when you think about the resources that helped you all build your understanding of math identity, what are some of the kind of seminal pieces of work that helped you begin to think about this idea? Nataki: Well, Anelly and I are reading this book. It's called ‘Choosing to See.' It's written by Pamela Seda and Kyndall Brown. And I have found that this is a relevant resource, especially to our work at the Math Learning Center, because it focuses on equity specifically in the math classroom. And as you're reading it, hopefully you'll find, like we have, that the authors do a really good job in describing those instructional strategies that help teachers to build positive math identities for students. Right away in the introduction, Kyndall Brown outlines a framework for the principles that guide equity, agency, and also identity in the classroom. And he uses an acronym. I see you care. So it's I, the letter C-U-C-A-R-E. And that stands for Including others as experts; being Critically conscious; Understanding your students; Using Culturally relevant curricula; (Assess), activate, and also to build (on) prior knowledge; Releasing control; and Expecting more. And the idea here is to be intentional about what you see, to also be compassionate and purposeful enough to respond. And when we allow this mindset to be prevalent in our classroom, it really does help to support a positive student math identity. But it also serves as a guide to help the teacher understand what, particularly, is at stake. Annelly: And I love that resource. The two of us are, are reading that book and always have conversations about it. But I also think that a starting point for a teacher should be examining their own journey with mathematics, right? Like I talked about how I didn't feel as a mathematician. And I taught, at the beginning of my career, I taught the way that I was taught: very procedural. Expecting quick answers. And the more I started putting my students at the center of my teaching, I started realizing that I was not meeting the needs of all my students. So I would say another research—and I'm going to do a plug in here for our blog—'A Summer Dive into Teacher Math Identity.' That might be something, like a starting point, right? We have to examine our own thinking and our own role before we can create those opportunities for students to develop a positive math identity. Nataki: I like that, Annelly, that's a good one. Mike: Hmm. Yeah. I think one thing that jumps out for me is, it would be hard for me to imagine that there's a lot of people who disagree with the aspiration of helping children build an identity about mathematics. That's positive. But I think what's hitting me is you all are kind of highlighting that there are actual practices and things that one does that actually helps build that. And, Annelly, I think I'm really struck by the statement that you made, where you said, ‘I realized that I needed to put kids at the center of my instruction.' And I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit about, for you, in your journey as a math educator, what did it look like to do that in your classroom? Annelly: What happened to me was that I started exploring my own math identity at the same time as I was teaching. And one of the things that I noticed is that for me, I need processing time and I needed visuals. So I started playing with that in the classroom to see what my students needed, right? I started bringing in visuals, and we started thinking about—I started thinking about—like, processing time for my kids, giving them time to think, slowing down their thinking. And that made a huge difference for my kids. And it provided a lens where I was pushed to, to think about and really pay attention to, what are the other things that they need? How can I open up space for them to share their thinking? And also, where are the opportunities for them to develop that agency as well? Where they can feel like, ‘I can tackle this,' even though it's hard. Mike: Hmm. Nataki I, I was going to also offer, like, from your perspective, what did this journey look like for supporting students? Nataki: Well, kind of similar to Annelly, you know. When I, when I am reflective of my own experiences as a math student, but also reflective in my practices as a teacher, one of the things that I noticed that was missing is the element of fun, right? And also how that fun factor makes room for accessibility. When students start having fun, then the math is accessible to them. And so one of the things that I can say that absolutely was consistent in my classroom, is that we were having fun. Now, of course, fun looks different for different people. And for me, it wasn't just, ‘We're being goofy and being silly.' But fun meant that we are enjoying thinking about the math, doing the math, talking to our friends about the math, looking at math in different ways. In fact, I remember many days when we were at recess and students would come up to me with something that they'd noticed on the playground, right? Being that, ‘Oh, you know, Ms. McClain, that this merry-go-round is a circle. And it's going around and around and around and around. And it spins in the same, in the same distance from the center all the time.' That's something that I didn't teach them. It was something that they noticed because they were having fun on the playground. And they were able to bring in the math concepts from the classroom into their own fun spaces. Mike: You know, one of the things that I find myself thinking about is a really old piece of research. And gosh, I forget the actual researcher. But this idea that teaching is a cultural experience, right? That there are certain cultural narratives around mathematics education that exist just under the surface for lots of people. They're the scripts that they learned when they were in childhood. And that's the picture that shows up in people's heads when they think about math education. So part of the work really is offering kind of a counternarrative to that cultural script. Where I'm going with this is, my cultural script is: Teacher stands in front, shows me what to do, we practice it, and then I go and I sit and do 15 problems, and then two story problems at the end. And that's kind of the cultural script. Nataki: Right. Mike: And I suspect that it's fairly difficult to make that kind of cultural script fun. So it makes me wonder, ‘What did your classroom look like to make things fun?' Nataki: Well, one of the things that was really important to me is that students could see themselves in the math that we are doing. So there wasn't a division problem that wasn't accessible to all students in the beginning, right? So we had to make it accessible. And then I would always find ways to turn everything into a game. To provide, again, that level of fun for kids. So whether it's that I've watched a game show like ‘Jeopardy' … well, ‘How could I use this game show to create a math lesson or a math event or an experience for students?' And so sometimes I could do that in the planning stages. OK, thinking about the content that I wanted students to learn, and then, ‘How can I make it fun? How can I make it engaging?' And then sometimes it just happened in the moment. You know, if you read the room and you discover that, mmm … they're not really having a lot of fun. And again, fun looks different for different people. And for me, I knew that it was fun when all students were engaged and all students had access to the learning. Mike: So you all are really making me think about the fact that part of building identity is task structure, right? The way that you design tasks, the context that you provide that helps kids connect to it, and also really knowing your kids and knowing the fact that if I'm in second grade, you know, having the agency to actually use some of the materials and have choice around that, that's part of being fun, right? I have a question for you. When you all think about the fact that you also supported a Bridges implementation, what's your lived experience with the places where you see opportunities for building math identity within the structure of the Bridges curriculum. Um, how did that play out for you? How did that connect to the story that you're telling about your own journey? Nataki: Kids would come barging in the room expecting Number Corner to happen. They were just so excited to discover the next pattern. Or, what are we collecting this month, right? And then, I mean, talk about fun. Work Places was just a natural place for that fun to happen. So I would say Number Corner and Work Places were the places in which I saw kids just really engage. And it was also a great time for teachers to help build that math identity in students, right? To offer supportor just to be there next to students, watching them as they're playing the Work Place games. Those were two components where I saw the most where students really were engaged and having a lot of fun. And not only students. Cause I have to admit that I might have been on a couple of floors, and I might have been caught playing a couple of games, and laughing and chuckling myself ( chuckles ). Mike: ( chuckles ) Annelly, how about for you? Because I know that you actually, you were not only a Bridges teacher for quite a while, but you also supported the implementation in your building. Annelly: I think that something that we saw when we implemented Bridges was the opportunity to allow kids to show their thinking. And I think that was so big, right? Like in thinking about, ‘There are so many subtle ways.' Like when we ask kids, ‘Can you show me eight on your number rack,' right? We're not dictating how they should think about it. They're jumping in and creating their own strategies and their own learning. And I think that that's an important way to develop that math identity. Because we are telling kids, ‘You can do it. You have all of the skills to do this.' So I see it in that. I see it also in, when we ask kids to write their own math problems—this is something that I've been thinking about a lot—like, when we give kids the opportunity to become authors in the math classroom, we want to hear their ideas and their strategies. Nataki: Uh-hm. Mike: How does the role of the teacher shift in a classroom that's really supporting a positive mathematics identity? Part of what's on my mind is that idea of a cultural script, where the teacher is the knower and the place where all of the knowledge lives. And then it's really just kind of beamed out to the kids. What's the shift? If I'm trying to just reconceptualize what teaching looks like in a classroom where I am actively building a positive math identity for my students, how would you describe that? Annelly: Like, I think that, for that I'm going to connect to my years when I was a coach. I used to love going into classrooms where I wouldn't know where the teacher was. Nataki: Right. Annelly: And it's even physical, right? The teacher is not in the front of the room. The teacher might be, like Nataki said, on the floor, playing with the kids. Or at a table, meeting with them. And I think that's a sign that shows you how the teacher is moving away from a teacher-center into a more of a student-center. Also, when we can see kids thinking. Where we can see strategies being named after kids. Again, it seems as something so simple, but it's so powerful for them. It gives them validation that what you are thinking is important. I value your strategies. I used to say, ‘Even if they take you down to a rabbit hole value, their thinking … ‘ Nataki: ( laughs ) Annelly: ( laughs ) Mike: That is really powerful. And, Nataki, how would you answer that question? Nataki: Everything that Annelly said, I 100 percent agree with. I also think where there are opportunities to ask questions of students, to take those opportunities. Particularly when you have a student who doesn't always get to shine in the class, you know, when that student does something that you think the entire class should hear, find time and find moments to highlight that again. That's giving the student a different feeling about math and a different feeling about where that student finds himself or herself in that math classroom. It makes them feel like they are a mathematician. So I think asking questions and finding moments to allow all students to shine. Mike: You know, I'm trying to put myself back into the world of a classroom teacher. I wonder if for a lot of folks, part of the hesitation is this fear of, what happens if kids say something that quote unquote is wrong or incorrect? And especially if that happens publicly in front of other children. I think there's this hesitation on the part of people. Because, again, the cultural script is, ‘I'll correct that and show you and tell you exactly what to do.' And I wonder, when you've been faced with that spot where you have used questioning, you've been building discourse, and something just comes out of left field … When you think about a classroom again, where you're supporting identity, what does it look like in that moment for a teacher who's working to support identity, and they have some information that kids are putting out that they're concerned? Like, what do I do? Nataki: Right. Mike: Yeah, tell me about your thinking on that. Nataki: Before we start to build discourse, we need to take some time at the very beginning to build a classroom community where everyone in the room feels free to share their thinking. No matter if it's quote correct or incorrect. And I always find opportunities to kind of press more when those incorrect answers come out, because we can learn a lot from those incorrect answers. We don't just learn from the things that are right. We learn from the things that are incorrect. So can you tell me more about that? Or maybe we could write the ideas on sticky notes and revisit them, right? If there are conjectures, which we talk a lot about in our classroom. Conjectures are always meant to be proven right or wrong, not just in that moment, but for as long as we are in the classroom. We're going to be thinking about the conjecture that Sally made. And the students love—and it's fun for them—when they can prove or disprove Sally's conjecture. That's fun for them. But because we've built the community, it's safe to do that. Annelly: I love that, Nataki. I think that also creating a culture where it's OK to make a mistake and also modeling from teachers, right? Modeling that, ‘Oh, I made a mistake.' But what I love about math is that I just think, ‘Cross it out and, and kind of like, think about it again.' The one tip that I will give teachers that are just starting with math discourse, and they're afraid to get into gray areas: Do a turn-and-talk and listen to your kids before you ask them to share. And then you can kind of like select which kids are going to share, and you know where they're going. The other thing is that you have to do the math before you do the lesson, right? So that you know where they can go. One of the things that we used to do is, uh, we used to sit down and think about all the different ways that kids can answer a question, like a problem string. What are all the different ways kids can tackle problem strings? And then that gives you kind of like the foundation, right? Granted, you might have some kids that want to be really creative, and they might break it apart into ways that you were not even thinking about. But I think those two are, like maybe two tips, that open up the space for kids to share their ideas. Nataki: And, Annelly, I think that's an important thing to mention because that anticipation of student responses that comes in the planning. And so it's important for teachers to remember that planning is part of your teaching. That we just don't show up and just start teaching, right? That there has to be some thought that we're giving to the anticipated responses. Mike: Yeah. I mean, I think when you say that you, gosh, I'm so glad that we talked about this question. I mean, a few things jump out: 1) the idea of positioning student thinking as not being immediately judged right or wrong by the teacher, but as an opportunity to actually build an understanding, to actually have kids justify, to have kids turn to one another and talk about, ‘What is your understanding of this?' And then to build the conversation. So again, it goes back to agency, right? Nataki: Uh-hm. Mike: You are not the source of right or wrong. You're actually asking them to engage in thinking about that. But I think, Annelly, I'm really keying on what you said earlier about the idea that you have to anticipate where kids might go, because it actually means something. Regardless of whether they've arrived at the correct answer or whether they've arrived at something that shows partial understanding, they're telling you something, and you can use that place to help build an understanding for the whole group. Cause if one kiddo says it, it strikes me that there's probably a fairly good amount of other kiddos who might be thinking the exact same thing. Annelly: And I think that's another way to build that math identity when we tell them, ‘It's OK if you just have the beginning of an idea' … Nataki: Uh-hm. Annelly: … right? ‘Can you share with us? And we can build on that.' Because what Nataki was saying before: We have the power to position kids in a positive light with the rest of the class … Nataki: Uh-hm. Annelly: And that it's also so important. Mike: I just want to thank the two of you for joining us and sharing your thinking. One last question, I think before we have to close things out. You know, if I'm a listener, we've covered a lot of territory in the last bit. If I'm thinking about taking some steps in my classroom, where do you see opportunities for people to get started? Particularly if they're using the Bridges curriculum. Nataki: I'd say one of the first places—not only a teacher, but any person in, in a school building could start—is taking a look at the blogs that are posted about math identity. One of the blogs, I think Annelly mentioned earlier is, helping teachers to be reflective of their own math journey. And I think that's an important step. So reflection, I would say, is a great place to start. And it starts perhaps by reading the blog. Annelly: I would say don't be afraid to have conversations with your kids. And letting them lead some of those discussions. Mike: Hey, thanks so much to both of you for joining us today. It was really a pleasure to hear your thinking and to have you on the podcast. Annelly: Thank you, Mike, for having us. Nataki: Yes. Thank you, Mike. This was a lot of fun. But listen, next time … can you bring cookies? Mike: Hey, you got a deal, my friend. Thanks so much. Nataki: Thank you. Bye now. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by the Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2022 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

The Patrick Madrid Show: November 30, 2022 - Hour 3

church cross godfather patrick madrid mike how

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2022 49:10

Patrick answers listener questions about the Sign of the Cross, what it means to be a Godfather, why do we classify churches as cathedrals or basilicas, are we doing the Sign of the Cross too much, should I raise my hands in church, and is it okay to adopt an embryo that is frozen and abandoned by in vitro fertilization? Ross - Should we be making the sign of the cross at the beginning of mass? When did that start? Dave - Can I be a Godfather to child if their parents aren't really serious about teaching the faith? Noah - Why do we classify churches as cathedrals and basilicas? What does that mean and where does it come from? Danielle - In Church during communion when the bells ring, should we be bowing? What about the Sign of the Cross? Mike - How do we participate in mass properly? Should I raise my hands? Arianna - Is it okay to adopt an embryo that is frozen and abandoned by in vitro fertilization? Ana – I've been away from the Church since 2008. How can I catch up with everything I've missed? James – I'm dealing with some crosses and not sure if I should seek spiritual or physical therapy

#20: Best of Coaching Calls with Mike Cohn

Agile Mentors Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 5, 2022 31:27

Mike and Brian take audience questions in the “best of” from the Agile Mentors Community’s monthly coaching calls. Twice a month, there is an open Q&A session we offer as part of the Agile Mentors Community where anyone from the community can join in and ask either Mike or Brian questions. These are open discussions and allow the users to ask their own questions that are unique to their situations. We call these “Coaching Calls” because they are there to help coach the members and help them overcome obstacles along the way. Everyone who takes a class with Mountain Goat Software receives 12 months membership in the Agile Mentors Community and they are able to attend these calls and ask questions. Take a listen to some of the best questions we’ve received over the past few months to get an idea of what these sessions are all about. By the way, we are aware there are a few places where the audio is not perfect in this episode and apologize for the less-than-ideal audio in several places. This is because these answers come from live sessions and there were a few streaming hiccups while delivering them. Listen now to discover: 3:10 - Brian: How to conduct fun retrospectives when you aren’t allowed to use cloud-based tools? 7:40 - Mike: How much planning is needed to ensure we complete items in a Sprint? 11:50 - Brian: Do you change the story points on an item if it turns out to be bigger than you thought? 14:50 - Mike: Why use Fibonacci numbers to estimate? 18:05 - Brian: Should Product Owners attend a Daily Scrum? 20:25 - Mike: What’s the best practice for capturing Non-Functional Requirements? 23:00 - Brian: How do you get your first experience as a Scrum Master if you have none? 26:46 - Mike: Tips for starting out with a new team? Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… Next week we will be taking a very short break of just one week. We are trying to practice a sustainable pace approach and are taking just one week off in order to do that. References and resources mentioned in the show Funretrospectives.com Agilementors.com Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? It would be great if you left a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us as podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Mike Cohn is co-founder of the Scrum Alliance, and founder of Mountain Goat Software. He’s a veteran of applying Scrum and agile principles and practices to help organizations build better products and ship them on time.

sprint svp references scrum coaching calls fibonacci scrum masters scrum alliance daily scrum mike how brian how mike cohn

#20: Best of Coaching Calls with Mike Cohn

Agile Mentors Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 5, 2022 31:27

Mike and Brian take audience questions in the “best of” from the Agile Mentors Community’s monthly coaching calls. Overview Twice a month, there is an open Q&A session we offer as part of the Agile Mentors Community where anyone from the community can join in and ask either Mike or Brian questions. These are open discussions and allow the users to ask their own questions that are unique to their situations. We call these “Coaching Calls” because they are there to help coach the members and help them overcome obstacles along the way. Everyone who takes a class with Mountain Goat Software receives 12 months membership in the Agile Mentors Community and they are able to attend these calls and ask questions. Take a listen to some of the best questions we’ve received over the past few months to get an idea of what these sessions are all about. By the way, we are aware there are a few places where the audio is not perfect in this episode and apologize for the less-than-ideal audio in several places. This is because these answers come from live sessions and there were a few streaming hiccups while delivering them. Listen now to discover: 3:10 - Brian: How to conduct fun retrospectives when you aren’t allowed to use cloud-based tools? 7:40 - Mike: How much planning is needed to ensure we complete items in a Sprint? 11:50 - Brian: Do you change the story points on an item if it turns out to be bigger than you thought? 14:50 - Mike: Why use Fibonacci numbers to estimate? 18:05 - Brian: Should Product Owners attend a Daily Scrum? 20:25 - Mike: What’s the best practice for capturing Non-Functional Requirements? 23:00 - Brian: How do you get your first experience as a Scrum Master if you have none? 26:46 - Mike: Tips for starting out with a new team? Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… Next week we will be taking a very short break of just one week. We are trying to practice a sustainable pace approach and are taking just one week off in order to do that. References and resources mentioned in the show Funretrospectives.com Agilementors.com Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? It would be great if you left a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us as podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Mike Cohn is co-founder of the Scrum Alliance, and founder of Mountain Goat Software. He’s a veteran of applying Scrum and agile principles and practices to help organizations build better products and ship them on time.

sprint svp references scrum coaching calls fibonacci scrum masters scrum alliance daily scrum mike how brian how mike cohn

Launching The Adelaide Icons Mural

Ben & Liam

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2022 39:25

We're broadcasting live in front of our Adelaide icons mural and it looks epic. We speak to the icons and get the premiere to cut the ribbon. We're launching the mural! 610 Quiz: Slap in the face from Julie Congrats to our amazing artist Mike How did 13yr old Remi spend $200 at Priceline? What's trending: Leo's advice to Timothée Chalamet Adelaide's mother Jane Doyle loves the wall Jodie Oddy: Backhanded compliments Big Debate: Charles will be a good king Olympic Gold Medallist Kyle Chalmers is happy with his giant face The Premier cuts the ribbon Liam puts the googly eyes on scotty See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

premier launching icons timoth mural priceline mike how

The Nazi Lies Podcast Ep. 18: Human Biodiversity

The Nazi Lies Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2022 26:37

Mike Isaacson: Encouraging inbreeding won't get you very far. [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOsLizards wearing human clothesHinduism's secret codesThese are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genesWarfare keeps the nation cleanWhiteness is an AIDS vaccineThese are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocideMuslim's rampant femicideShooting suspects named Sam HydeHiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the copsSecret service, special opsThey protect us, not sweatshopsThese are nazi lies Mike: Welcome to another episode of The Nazi Lies Podcast. I am joined by Uppsala University professor of animal conservation biology, Jacob Höglund. He is literally the perfect person to talk to about today's Nazi lie: human biodiversity. He has a book from Oxford University Press called Evolutionary Conservation Genetics, which is the thing that Nazis obsess about. The book is great because it doesn't get lost in the weeds with too much theory, it has tons of examples, and totally unintentionally, it absolutely demolishes the Nazi case for racial segregation and ethnic cleansing. I'm sure this is not at all where you expected to be interviewed for this book. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Höglund. Jacob Höglund: Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here. Mike: All right. So obviously, you were not intending to write a book to dispel Nazi lies writing a book about the genetics of extinction and conservation. So talk a little about what inspired you to write this book and what you learned along the way. Jacob: Yeah, you're right. It's a completely different context, but the background is basically that the earth is facing a major biodiversity crisis. Biodiversity is defined as three basic levels; ecosystems, species, and genes. And I focus on genetic diversity. I'm concerned about loss of genetic diversity, and that's why I wrote the book. Mike: Alright. By page two, you're already undermining the core of Nazi racial theory by asserting that diversity, both genetic and demographic, is important for avoiding extinction. Before we get into why that is, talk a little about what diversity means in this context, because the human biodiversity crowd might be like, “Well, I believe we need diversity too.” But what they mean is a humanity segregated by race. So, what do we mean by that diversity here? Jacob: Actually, in biology it means completely opposite. It's a bit complicated, but fragmentation-- So basically biodiversity loss or habitat loss, leads to smaller populations that become separated in a sense. Imagine that you have a large population which is connected, and then human action causes land loss and changing land use and all that sort of stuff. So populations that once were big and connected now become small and fragmented. And these small and fragmented populations tend to lose genetic variation through a process called genetic drift. Genetic drift is basically the random loss of genetic variants. This is what conservation genetics is trying to understand and to counteract. Mike: Okay. You talk a bit about segregation and its evolutionary consequences in your book. Obviously, you don't mean to refer to race here, but for practical purposes the effect of segregation would be genetically the same for humans. Talk about what happens to species with segregated populations. Jacob: Yeah. We biologists don't talk about segregated populations; we talk about fragmented populations. So it's a small distinction, right? But as I tried to explain before, when you have fragmentation because of this process called genetic drift, you lose genetic diversity. Genetic diversity is sometimes also called heterozygosity when geneticists talk to one another. Mike: What does heterozygosity mean exactly? How is it defined? Jacob: It's again, a bit technical and complicated. But many organisms like plants and animals, the ones we are most familiar with, they are what we call diploid. And what a diploid is, it means that basically, these organisms have one genome from mom and one genome from dad. So it means that on every position in the genome, there would be one variant inherited from mom and one from dad. And when they are different, the two positions are different. That's called an heterozygous site. And when they're the same, so when Mom and Dad had the same variant, that's called a homozygous site. And the more sites that are heterozygous, the more diverse the genome is. Mike: Right. So it's kind of like having enough genes in the gene pool to make sure that– Okay, so now let's talk about why genetic diversity is important. Why do we want heterozygosity? Jacob: We want diversity in the populations because if we have– One way I can explain this is that, you know, in our homes many people keep good-to-have boxes; you save nuts and bolts and nails and whatever-- you put them in this box that you find is good to have in the future. Because if you face a problem in your home and you want to repair something, it's good to have different kinds of nuts and bolts and nails and whatever tools. And the more tools you have, the more problems in the future you can solve. So it's the same with a biological population, if there are lots of variants in the population it means that this population will be able to adapt to future changes in the environment. And if the population has lost most of genetic variation, it means that they're sort of stuck to the circumstances that they're facing right now. Do you follow the analogy? Diversity is good because then you have more options to change when the circumstances change. And one thing that we know for sure is that life on earth is always evolving, it's always changing. Nothing stays the same. So having a lot of variance means that a species or population can adapt to future changes. Mike: Alright. So now, one thing that I think is pertinent in this discussion is the notion of inbreeding, which you talk about in your book. First, how is inbreeding defined by evolutionary biologists? Jacob: Inbreeding is caused by something that we call the non-random mating, for example between close relatives. Mating between close relatives leads to increased homozygosity, that is the loss of genetic diversity. That's why in this context that it's good to have lots of genetic variation, inbreeding is bad because it leads to exaggerated loss of genetic variation and genetic variants. That's why we want to avoid inbreeding. But there's also another problem and that is that inbreeding might also lead to fixation of bad genetic variants. Because we had this diploid thing that, you know, you had genetic variants inherited from mom and dad. And if you have inbreeding, it might be that both mom and dad have a bad variant at the zygous site. And such site might become fixed in offspring, so the offspring ends up with a bad variant at the zygous site. And that leads to something called inbreeding depression. I think, Mike, that's your next question. That's what you're leading to. Mike: Yeah let's talk about inbreeding depression. Jacob: Yeah. So, inbreeding depression is the loss of fitness or what we call viability due to expression of these deleterious variants. That might lead to the organism being less able to cope. It might lead to disease, genetic diseases might be expressed, or it might lead to other malfunctions in the organism. Mike: And how does genetic mutation play a role in this story? Jacob: It's because most mutations, the vast majority of mutations, mutations induce changes to the genome, and a set of new variants that pops up because of the biochemical changes in the DNA structure, basically. And most of these variants, the vast majority of them are actually bad for the organism. There are a few that are what we call neutral, they don't make a change so they might stay in the population. And a small minority might actually even be good, and they are sort of favored in the population. But most mutations are selected against and lost from the population. But they might-- because we have this fact that most organisms are diploid–some of these bad mutations might linger in the population because they are masked by a good variant at the zygous site. Mike: How does that mutation story fit into the inbreeding story? Jacob: If you have bad mutations, both inherited from both mom and dad, then these bad mutations may become expressed at the phenotypic level. If you're heterozygous at such site, it might suffice to have one good unit variant that would mask the phenotypic effects of the bad one. But if you have inbreeding, these bad mutations become expressed because there's no masking effect. Do you follow? Mike: Yeah. Basically, the idea is that because you're breeding with the same small pool, basically those variants don't end up breeding themselves out through evolutionary adaptation. Right? Jacob: Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of related to what we've discussed previously that, in small populations, these bad alleles might become fixed. And that leads to poor effects. That's why conservation biologists are concerned about inbreeding and the inbreeding depression. Mike: One thing you include at the tail end of the inbreeding chapter is a short section on rescue effects, so measures taken to rescue subpopulations on the path to extinction due to inbreeding depression. So, what do those measures look like? And how effective are they? Jacob: Yeah, what conservation biologists are aiming at is to try to counteract this fragmentation process that I talked about by creating corridors between fragmented populations to increase gene flow between populations. And in some cases when making corridors and promoting natural dispersal, it might actually be-- well, I shouldn't say possible, but sometimes it might be necessary to translocate individuals between populations to increase the gene flow over the migration between populations to keep up the genetic variation in these fragmented populations. Mike: Okay. So basically the idea is that if you can find populations elsewhere, you can hopefully repopulate an area by basically connecting those areas with these corridors. Jacob: Exactly. Mike: Okay. So besides executing plans to racially segregate the population, how else does human action bear upon genetic diversity in the ecosystem? Jacob: The big problem with human action is that we are too many, basically. And the fact that we are so many means that we use up the Earth's resources at the expense of other organisms. And we're transforming, we're changing the land use, so we're making agricultural land, and we're cutting down forests, and we're polluting lakes and streams and whatever. We're basically taking over the life space of the other organisms for the benefit of our own species. This might actually bite us in the end after a while because when we have transformed all natural habitats, it's going to be a very difficult Earth to live on. Mike: Let's talk about invasive species, because I'm sure Nazis are VERY interested in applying this logic to immigration. So, what makes a species invasive? How would you define invasive species? Jacob: A species may become invasive if it's translocated or accidentally being moved to an environment where it does not face any natural enemies, and the population might grow unchecked because there is no predators, there's no disease keeping the population numbers under control. That's why it's called invasive. It grows unchecked, basically. Mike: Okay. I guess, let's dive more into that. What's the problem with unchecked growth? Jacob: It might be that an invasive species might knock out species that are native to an area, and may disturb ecosystems by changing the food webs and a lot of other problems. Mike: Okay. Can we talk about some examples of that? Do you have any? Jacob: Of invasive species? Mike: Yeah. Jacob: Oh, yeah. It depends on where you are, but in my country here in Sweden, there are lots of plants that have been brought in because of agriculture that takes over and might suppress the growth of the native species. There are also organisms that come with shipping. You know, when the ballast water is released– So there might be a ship from Japan and they have loaded ballast water in Japan, they have accidentally brought Japanese oysters, which is a different species for European oysters, to the coastal areas of Sweden. And then they release these Japanese oysters and these Japanese oysters grow a bit faster and become a bit bigger than European oysters, and they sort of take over the living space of the European oysters. In these contexts there are lots of sort of accidents that might happen, and it's very much depending on the context of what happens. Most of these accidental removals of organisms from one area to another, they don't become invasive. It's only a few translocated species that do become invasive. Under what circumstances they become invasive or not is a bit hard to understand still, we don't really know what makes a species invasive. Mike: With this idea of invasion, this logic or this-- I don't know what to call it. I don't want to make it sound minimal by calling it a theory, but I mean, it's basically a theory-- it works only at the species level, it's not something that works intraspecies, right? It's not something that works with different phenotypes or anything like that. Jacob: No, no, no. As you say, it's at the level of species, not on replacing populations. I mean, first of all species, might come as a surprise, but it's a concept which is not– There are lots of different– Biologists differ in what they call a species. We, biologists, are not at all– we don't all agree on what we think is a species. And when it comes to other biological entities like subspecies, we have an even lesser agreement on what we mean as subspecies. And when it comes to concepts like race, race is not at all defined by biologists at all. It's a social construct thing, basically. So it matters what we mean by a species or not, but invasiveness when you sort of talk about a particular role with this like humans, it's out of context completely. It doesn't have any bearing at all. Mike: Now in certain instances, conservation geneticists are interested in preserving specific genotypes. What do these programs of genetic conservation typically look like? Because these are not the selective breeding programs imagined by Nazis, right? Jacob: Yeah. But it's not at all. I mean, preserving certain genotypes comes in the context of something that we call local adaptation. Local adaptation means that certain populations might be adapted to the local circumstances. In such cases, it means that by introducing something which is adapted to something else might actually lead to problems of the population that is aimed to be rescued. So this is called outbreeding depression: that we might introduce alien or not-so-well-adapted genetic variants into a population that may jeopardize that population's ability to work. The local variants may become swamped by something that comes from another population. Mike: Right. And this idea of outbreeding depression is this idea that if you bring this genetic material in without concern for the history of local adaptation, right? Then you basically undo evolution, basically. Jacob: In some cases, that may lead to the undesirable effects that we lose these local variants. So this continuum of inbreeding and outbreeding, in most cases most people think that what the big problem is loss of genetic diversity and that we should increase genetic diversity by aiding translocations and counteract biodiversity or habitat loss. But in very special circumstances, we might need to think about how we should perform these translocations. Mike: Okay. You talk a great deal about MHC genes (and a little bit of a few other categories of genes) and their interest to conservation geneticists. Why are MHC genes and these other genes you list, why are they of interest to conservation geneticists but probably not the genetic markers that are subject to ancestry tests? Jacob: Yeah. So this, again, goes back to this thing that I said. Most mutations are bad and there are some that are neutral, so there are some genetic variants that doesn't really matter whether or not we have different variants or not. But in some cases, there are genetic variants that are beneficial to the organism. And MHC genes especially in this circumstance, because MHC genes are involved in disease resistance. So they are involved in the immune defense of vertebrates, basically. And because of their link to disease resistance, they are an obvious target for conservation biologists because we want populations that are able to resist diseases. That's why there has been a lot of focus on MHC genes. Another reason is that because of this link to disaster resistance, MHC loci or MHC genes are known to be the part of the genomes of vertebrates that are the most diverse. So there has been a natural selection for diversity in MHC genes. So it's the part of the genome that is the most diverse part of the genome, which also makes it interesting to understand. It's a bit complicated to study, but it makes it interesting to understand how diversity is related to disease resistance and so on. It goes back to this analogy of the toolbox like I said. The more disease-resistant genes you have, the more viruses and bacteria and other disease agents you're able to combat basically. Mike: Okay. So, I guess, bringing this back to kind of where I think you were hoping to go with the book, what can people who are not biologists do to help with environmental conservation efforts? Jacob: Yeah. I think it's a really, really important area to understand and it's a big problem for humanity, the biodiversity losses. So what I encourage people to do is engage, read, educate yourselves, partake in citizen science, and in the end promote biodiversity. So that's more education and counteract habitat destruction and the fact that we are sometimes for greedy reasons, just destroying our nature. We should cherish and try to keep natural habitats as much as possible. Mike: Okay. Well, Dr. Höglund, thank you so much for coming on The Nazi Lies Podcast to undermine the theory of human biodiversity. The book, again, is Evolutionary Conservation Genetics out from Oxford University Press. Thanks again. Jacob: Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Hope my contribution makes a difference. Mike: You missed reading Evolutionary Conservation Genetics with us in The Nazi Lies Book Club but there are still plenty more books to read by our upcoming guests. Join the Discord server where we host the book club meetings by subscribing on Patreon at patreon.com/Nazilies. For show updates and general mayhem, follow us on Twitter @NaziLies and Facebook at facebook.com/TheNSLiesPod. [Theme song]

earth japan talk race european japanese diversity dna local army lies dad mom nazis jews sweden discord iq genetic hollow biodiversity biologists oxford university press mating uppsala university mhc mike you jacob h mike yeah mike how mike let mike one mike right mike all jacob it

Interview with Letitia Shelton from City Women – Australia

Blazing Grace Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 27, 2022 25:21

Letitia Shelton, founder of City Women in Toowoomba, Queensland calls in from Australia to discuss the ministry God gave her more than 20 years ago. City Women goes into strip clubs and brothels in Australia, ministers to the sexually abused, and leads a campaign called "A City Free from Porn" that includes billboards. From Letitia: “If you want to find Jesus, you go to the broken. I think I've learned more from them than from a trillion sermons.” "We (the church) are going to have to step out and take some high level risks." “I'm just so thankful that God saved me from a boring Christian life.” Podcast Transcript: ANNOUNCER: This radio program is PG-13. Parents strongly cautioned - some material may be inappropriate for children under the age of 13. Jesus's mission was to comfort those who mourn, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to captives, and open prison doors for those who are bound. For those who want more than status-quo Christianity has to offer, Blazing Grace Radio begins now. And here is your host, Mike Genung: Mike Genung, Host, Blazing Grace Radio: Hey, Mike Genung here, and welcome back to Blazing Grace Radio. A couple of months ago, I ran into a news story on an Australian news website, and the title was "Disruptive Women Leave the Church World to Reach the Brokenhearted", and that caught me. I'll read you a couple of paragraphs from it. It says, "You might think the last place you'd find a Christian anti-porn campaigner is in a brothel. But Letitia Shelton regularly visits the brothels and strip clubs in her hometown in Queensland, Australia. In fact, she's been visiting sex workers for years. For the past 22 years, Letitia Shelton has been leading a radical movement. It's a movement made up of Christian women from different denominations who, together, are ministering in the same way Jesus did, moving beyond the four walls of the Church to serve those in need in their local communities". They quote Letitia, saying, "If you want to find Jesus, you go to the broken. I've learned more from them than from a trillion servants". We're blessed to have today Letitia calling in from Australia. Letitia, thank you so much for doing this. Welcome to the program. Letitia Shelton, Founder, City Women: Hello, Mike. Thank you for having me. Mike: So I want to invite you to share your story, stories about your ministry, and what you see there. Letitia: Well, that's a huge open-ended question. [laughs] We've been on a journey for the last 20 years. How do we, together as churches, reach our city? How do we pastor a city? We've got to do these things together. We always say, "It takes a city-wide church to win a city-wide battle". So 20 years ago, when we became aware of some of the issues in our city, I thought, "We've got to work together as churches." The biggest sin in the city is the disunity of the Church. The most dysfunctional family in a city is the Church. We compete. We don't join together. We work against each other. So we've been on a journey of "How do we not only move into our community, but how do we work together in that way?". So I started the organization "City Women" 20 years ago to mobilize women across the churches to work together into our city. So not only have we been involved in strip clubs and brothels, but we've been in our schools. We've been helping refugees, kids in care, pregnant women, women on drugs, the whole range. So it's just been an exciting journey. Mike: The article mentions where you took 20 girls away to the mountains and five of the girls were sitting around a table and sharing about [being] sexually abused. Talk about that. Letitia: Yeah, that was one of the catalysts that really kicked it off for me. That was our very first camp - back in 2001, would you believe? - after the mayor of our city had challenged us to get outside church and do something for the young people of our city. So we took away 20 girls up to the mountains, just 2 hours from where I live, and had these five girls sitting around the table. On the second night they're still sharing their abuse stories, and so it was, I guess, a bit of an epiphany for me that night, realizing, "What the heck are we doing?" We are so busy inside our church, but we've got to get outside and move the Church into the pain. I think quite often we expect the world to come into the Church but that's not going to happen... it certainly won't happen in Australia. People don't come just to do religious duties. So it's been a continued journey of, "How do we mobilize people?" and hearing those girls stories that night certainly woke me up to the fact that we have got to be a lot more, I guess, on the front-foot and running into the pain, instead of expecting it to come to us. Mike: Here in the US, we see numbers of two-thirds of Christian men in the church, and 30% of women in the church, viewing pornography. 74% of youth viewing porn, and sexting is blowing up in our youth. What do you see there in Australia? Letitia: Yeah, exactly the same. It's a worldwide culture, unfortunately. We've all got access to the same mobile phones, don't we? Have access to the same garbage. I've just been in a little country called Fiji, little Pacific island off the east coast of Australia. Population is only a million people, but they rate fourth highest in the world for googling porn. And 64% of their nation attends church! So these same issues are everywhere, unfortunately, because it's a global culture that are seeking to destroy lives. So we decided in our city about five years ago that we would address the issue of pornography, and we launched a campaign called "A City Free From Pornography". Now that might seem like a bit of a crazy title, or an impossible goal, which in the natural it probably is, but the kingdom of God coming to my city looks like a city free from porn. I think it's important that we declare something that is different. We've been just wanting to highlight and really educate our city on the harms of porn, especially the parents. I think so often they don't have a clue what is going on, and kids are into it, but parents don't know how to speak to their kids. So part of our campaign has been to do billboards, which happens around a lot of cities. But we've done radio ads, television ads, school presentations, church talks... and I'm just actually, today, heading off right up to the top of Australia to cycle my bike 1000 km - which I don't know how many miles that is, sorry - but I'm raising money to get a book into homes in my city. It's a book on how to speak to your kids about pornography. So I'm doing this cycling trip and I've raised $107,000 so far, and we've been able to deliver 19,000 books into homes. So trying to get on the front-foot and give parents of our city a resource. Even though it's available online and they could get it for free, I just want a hard copy of a resource that fits in their home, maybe for years, and makes them think about pornography and what it's doing to their children and how to speak to their kids. So we're just having a go and doing what we can with the limited resources we have. But yeah, it's fun. Mike: What we see here is that kids are getting smartphones as early as age six, and then we have people come people come to us for help, and it's a parent and they're saying, "My nine or ten year old is addicted to porn, what do I do?" So that connects with what you're saying about parents haven't gotten a clue. Is that what you're seeing there? Letitia: Absolutely, yeah. And again, parents parenting is hard enough without having to keep up to date with the latest pornography, and where it's coming from, and how it's affecting our kids. But unfortunately, you can't parent without talking about pornography these days, and it's damaging effects. Our Australian government surveyed Australian parents, and 77% of parents believe it's their job to speak to their kids about pornography, but less than half actually do, just because they don't know what to say or how to say it. So we're trying to take away any excuses by putting a resource into their hands. So anyway, I'll be cycling for the next two weeks. Mike: You must be in great shape then. That's 650 miles on our side. Letitia: Okay, you've done a good job. I might be by the end of it, because I've been overseas the last month. I have some limited training. But anyway, I hope for the best. Mike: So tell us what you encounter in the way of spiritual warfare. Letitia: Yeah, there's always opposition, but I've got to be honest, a lot of things... I don't know, I just feel the grace of God in a lot of what we do, and we experience a lot of favor. Yes, there's opposition and I've got some great prayer teams, but I don't make it a big focus. You just got to keep going and keep walking, all that God has called you for, the long term. We've been at this for over 20 years now and we're not going away anytime soon, so it just takes a long term obedience in the same direction, doesn't it? Mike: Yes, it does. Letitia: Making sure you got good prayer teams, you walk in wisdom, you have good people surrounded by you. But I think as we've worked together as churches, the Bible says God commands a blessing, and you really experience a different grace and joy that you don't when you're just doing it on your own. I think a lot of our spiritual warfare comes because we're trying to fight alone, and the Enemy can pick us off easily. But fighting together is God's way, and it brings a lot of fruit and joy in that. So I don't want to make light of the work of the Enemy, but he's not my number one problem. Mike: Well, when I go and speak, sometimes I'll ask the audience to raise their hand if they meet with another believer consistently for the purpose of prayer and support. Usually only about 15% put their hands up. Letitia: Yeah. Mike: So that goes back to what we see here, is most Christians are isolated. Letitia: Yep. No, they can be. Most churches are isolated, and most ministries are isolated. When you think that God has called us to be one body, there's one body in each city. There will be many congregations, but we're the Church of Jesus, and the sooner we can find each other, the more powerful, and can make a greater impact. Mike: One quote from something you said in the news article was, "If we can have less porn, we'll have less domestic violence, we'll have less rape, we'll have less abortions, we'll have less broken marriages". So it's really preventative. Talk about that. Because I think a lot of people think, "Well, porn is just... we're just looking at pictures, we're not really hurting anyone". Letitia: Yeah. This is why I started our campaign in our city, because when you look at all the research, pornography fuels all those things you just mentioned. While we work with vulnerable women and girls - and we'll continue to pick up the pieces and help those suffering - you want to prevent and get to the bottom of what is causing a lot of this pain. I'm not sure what it's like in your nation, but our nation has a huge domestic violence problem, and we spend billions of dollars per year trying to fix it. But no one wants to address the issue of pornography. Not that porn causes every bit of domestic violence, but it sure does a lot, and shapes those violent tendencies within - especially young boys - from a young age, and their ability to look at girls and women as human beings. So, yes, we've got to begin to speak up and it's not always a popular discussion. But especially as I keep it focused on our children, no one disagrees that kids should not see pornography. If we can stop them from seeing it and ending down roads and years of addiction, hopefully that will stop them from acting out in ways that could end them up in prison and with criminal charges. In the nation of Fiji, where I've just been, I've got a friend who works in the prison in the capital city, and his job is to interview sex offenders as they come in, and he said 100% of them have been addicted to porn. 100% of the sex offenders. So is that a coincidence? No, not at all. So that's why we stand up, and not just to stop these evil things from happening, but we want to see beautiful marriages, beautiful relationships, beautiful intimacy and sexuality. So we've got to fight for the beauty of all that God has created, don't we? Mike: Amen. So on a nationwide basis in Australia, do you see pastors talking openly about porn and equipping people on how to overcome and break free from it, or what do you see? Letitia: The by and large, no. I mean, there will be little pockets, and maybe the youth pastor will do one or two talks a year. But generally, no, it's not on their radar. Again, it depends. Some are brilliant. But that's not really the majority, and that's why they have me come and speak. It's hard for them to keep up to date with where it's all at - not that they need to be up to date - but look at a big rate to see the church engage in a lot more of the cultural issues, not just porn. And not just speak about them, but actually come up with solutions in their cities, really. Because yes we need to talk to our people, but we're also here to pastor a city. That's why I just didn't start a campaign to the churches in my city. I started a campaign to the city, because actually Jeremiah 29: says, "When you seek the welfare of the city, you will be blessed." So it's amazing that as you look at the bigger picture first, it trickles down into the churches as well. Very few pastors think city-wide and think with the big vision like that. And that's okay. They're not all wired that way. But there's people - that's why we need the body of Christ - because there's people in our cities who think bigger, and we need to tap into each other. Otherwise we're going to get nowhere, and we are getting nowhere. Look at our nations, your nation and my nation. If only we'd stop and go, "Is that really working as churches? No. What does the Bible say?" But we continue on thinking that we've got the latest and greatest, don't we? Mike: The early Church was devoted to prayer, fellowship, and teaching, and they changed the world. And we focus on the worship band and the teaching, and we're crumbling. Letitia: Yeah, well, when you look at the books of the Bible, Corinthians was written to one church in Corinth. Philippians was written to one church in Philippi. So they weren't all these little denominations there that were competing against each other. They were devoted together in unity, meeting together daily, and the Spirit of God fell upon them and they turned the world upside down. Mike: You're quoted, and this really resonated with me, "I'm so thankful that God saved me from a boring Christian life", and I can relate to that because I'd rather be right in the thick of the fight than sitting on the sidelines and watching. Letitia: God calls all of us into an adventure with Him, and I've just been called to the vulnerable in my city. But wherever people find themselves - we're all missionaries, aren't we? Mike: Yep. Letitia: Whether we're a truck driver, or mother at home, we're on the street with neighbors. Whether we're a school student, we're at school. So we're meant to be a missionary. And again, I think most... 99% of Christians want to wake up every day going, "I'm going to the mission field today". They think it's a boring life. So they're not engaging with the Spirit of God to see his kingdom come, where we find ourselves, the missionaries, each day. So we just allow the boredom of life, rather than stepping out and seeing what God wants to do, where he's placed us, and taking some risks. Every time I take a risk, yes, it's scary, but I find that God is out there in the unknown. He's waiting for me to step out. He needs us to move. We're his plan A for his kingdom come. I don't know who else we think is going to do it, but when God decided that he wanted to populate the Earth, he put us, human beings, and Adam and Eve were given a job right at the beginning. So I think we don't have an understanding of what our role is on Earth, and we live just like the rest of the world, and it's boring. And just going to church every week is boring, too. Maybe not your church [laughs] but mine can be, sometimes. So I'm thankful that God gave me a bigger vision than even just pastoring my own church. He gave me a bigger vision that we're here for the city, that we've got to do it together, and that we're going to have to step out and take some high-level risks, which are exciting. Mike: I couldn't agree more. I also agree with what you said about sometimes church can be boring, because we've been looking for a new church here for the last two years. Sometimes it just feels like there's too much of an emphasis on comfort and making people feel good, but not challenging them to take those risks like you're talking about. Letitia: You know that you're following Jesus and he can... obviously, he's got you on a journey that's exciting as well. Mike: We're doing a billboard campaign ourselves in Las Vegas beginning the end of next month. So we're right there with you. Letitia: Good on you. Yeah, keep going. Mike: How did your billboard campaign go? Letitia: Yeah, we just kind of do them every... probably twice a year. I'm in - compared to las Vegas, I'm in a tiny little city, called Toowoomba with about 150,000, so we're nothing like you guys. But we've got some big digital billboards in the middle of town which we use, and whenever we put them up there there's always a greater foot traffic to our website. We always get more letters of abuse. Conversations are happening in workplaces. The local newspaper usually picks up on it. So to me, it just keeps creating conversations, and if you can send people back to our website where we have a lot of information and resources and just local people speaking. So, again, it's not going to change the world, but it's just kind of something to keep a pebble in your shoes to make you feel discomfortable and get the conversations happening. Again, this is long term stuff, so one billboard campaign's not going to win the day, but I just got to keep going for many years from different angles, I think are really important. Mike: Yeah, it's "planting seeds" is what I would call it. Letitia: Yep. Mike: So talk about City Women. I think we have about a minute left here. Talk about City Women. So who's coming to you to help out? What does your organization look like? Letitia: Yes, we're an umbrella for about ten different ministries that are helping different people in the city. I mentioned before, we're out there with the sex workers, the refugees, kids in care, school kids, pregnant women, a whole range. So each of those ministries have different leaders over them, and our job has just been to make women across the city aware of these ministries and how they can get involved. Generally, I find that women really want to do something; they feel the pain of a city, they want to get involved, they're happy to work together, they don't have so many hangups. So, yeah, it's just great to see them come forward and want to volunteer, in whatever area they're passionate about. As we've work together, we've been able to accomplish a lot more than if we do this work by ourselves. So that's the general gist of how it works. It's been an exciting journey, and it's changing. Things start and then they stop. There's seasons for different ministries that we've run, but it's just been an exciting journey as we've tried to look at how we can meet the needs. Mike: Well, we're out of time and I want to thank you very much, Letitia, for joining us and calling us. I know it was five in the morning, your time when you called. Letitia: Yeah. Mike: I love what you're doing, and I love the impact you're making. So thank you for joining us, and we'll talk to you next time. Letitia: My pleasure, Mike. Thank you so much. ANNOUNCER: Blazing Grace is a nonprofit international ministry for the sexually broken and the spouse. Please visit us at blazinggrace.org for information on Mike Genung's books, groups, counseling, or to have Mike speak at your organization. You can email us at email@blazinggrace.org or call our office in Chandler, Arizona at (719)-888-5144. Again, visit us at blazinggrace.org, email us at email@blazinggrace.org, or call the office at (719) 888-5144.

The Patrick Madrid Show: May 17, 2022 - Hour 2

god roe v wade sanctifying grace patrick madrid mike how

Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2022 51:05

Patrick - What is the difference between Grace and Sanctifying Grace. Can you receive Sanctifying Grace by reading the bible? Linda - My husband is saying the end times are near because of some bible verses. What are your thoughts? Mike - How do we combat Roe V Wade and what should we do about needing to pay taxes for abortions? Suzanne - Would it be reasonable for me to ask my husband to not be with another woman alone for long periods of time while he is volunteering? Cynthia - Facebook almost ruined my marriage. We got rid of it and our marriage got so much better. Deanna - I have an adult son who says he believes in God but not religion. How do I respond to this?

The Patrick Madrid Show: April 15, 2022 - Hour 3

jesus christ english bible spanish greek jerusalem good friday passover holy thursday patrick madrid mike how

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 15, 2022 47:54

Good Friday Maria – What is the difference between the Spanish and English naming of Good Friday? Why does it translate differently? Mike - How do we know that the Bible and holy sites in Jerusalem are genuine? Marcello - Why did Jesus have to fast in the desert for 40 days? Will - Are acts of penance or mortification okay? George - Is there a difference between blurting out the lords name and using it as a curse word in making it a mortal sin? Pablo - Why were we condemned with original sin in the first place? Greg – Do you know about the Holy Martyrs Catholic Church? James - The calendar says today is Passover. Why did we celebrate it yesterday on Holy Thursday? Victoria - Can I go to an Easter mass at Greek orthodox church?

#60: Are you the head of a family? What skills do you need to "Lead Yourself First" in these uncertain times?

Kickass Boomers

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 29, 2021 40:07

Our Kickass Boomer of the Day is Michael Wader, who has more than 40 years of hands-on experience in implementing Lean Technology and Leadership principles. His over 4 decades of experience include 22 years of mentoring, coaching, teaching and consulting experience in 16 countries. He joins us in this episode to talk about "leading yourself first" and why it is important whether in a personal or professional setting. Mike also shares some practical tips for Boomers to build good habits and in turn live better lives. Join me in this episode and learn why Mike is a Kickass Boomer! [00:01 - 04:46] Opening Segment Let's get to know Michael Wader What does it mean to “lead yourself first?” [04:47 - 14:51] Why Lead Yourself First Why you should take care of yourself too! What business owners can learn from Michael's teachings The importance of taking care of your partner or spouses [14:52 - 24:30] A Leader's Priority Mike tells us how to find our passions in life The process should not be a leader's priority Mike reveals what should be The benefits of volunteering in the community [24:31 - 34:50] The Simple Step to Build Habits The simple step to build habits according to Mike Why accountability matters for Mike How to deal with crises whatever your situation [34:51 - 40:06] Closing Segment Why prepare for a succession plan now Regardless if it's business or personal Connect with Mike! Links below Final announcements Tweetable Quotes: “If you are not taking care of yourself, how can you take care of anybody else? How can you lead a team if you don't know how to lead yourself?” - Michael Wader “We owe it to our spouses and our families to stay in good condition and that takes effort.” - Michael Wader Email mike@michaelwader.com to connect with Mike or follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Visit his personal website to learn more about his work. Resources Mentioned Kickass Boomers previous episodes Ep. 4: Hear how Mike Wader reinvented himself 3x's and look for a free surprise Ep. 59: From a small town in Wales, Great Britain, Carol talks with Terry about the benefits of NLP! Michael's books Lead Yourself First Leadership Survival in a Crisis ----- BEE BOLD, NOT OLD. LEAVE A REVIEW and join me on my journey to become and stay a Kickass Boomer! Visit http://kickassboomers.com/ to listen to the previous episodes. Also check us out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You can also connect with me by emailing terry@kickassboomers.com.

family head leadership crisis leader skills wales priority nlp inspirational motivational great britain uncertain times simple steps boomers lead yourself first mike how closing segment why

#87 Storytelling in sales with Mike Adams

Sales & Marketing Talk Show

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 24, 2021 52:03

In this Sales & Marketing Talk Show, we discuss storytelling in sales with Mike Adams. We will discuss the following topics: -Why story-powered sales works? The seven stories: -A personal connection story – about something that happened to you. It shows your character and credibility, and allows you to ask your buyer “what about you?” to hear their story -Key staff stories – the story of important people in your company that your buyer must trust -Company foundation story – how your company came to exist and how it supports its customer -Insight stories – The story of how your company discovered an important insight that your buyer should know about -Success stories – The story of another buyer who succeeded with your offering. -Values stories – How your people behave after you have signed the deal -Negotiation stories – to get around deadlocked negotiations -How to take all of this into action? -Last guest, Richard Harris, question to Mike: How to get customer to share their story before telling your story?

success sales storytelling values negotiation richard harris mike adams mike how

Issue 13: Superboy 109 & 110

Debating Metal: The Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 19, 2021 62:33

Today we're checking out a couple of Jessika's latest estate sale finds: Superboy 109 & 110. Are these swingin' sixties stories about the Boy of Steel any good? Well, no. Not really. But they certainly gave us something to talk about! ----more---- Episode 13 Transcript Jessika: [00:00:00] Dude. It's always fucking Florida, Mike: I can't think of anything that comes out of Florida that's good. Jessika: Hello. Welcome to Ten Cent Takes, the podcast where we traverse tumultuous time continuities, one issue at a time. My name is Jessika Frazier and I am joined by my cohost, the dastardly dog dad, Mike Thompson. Mike: That's a fair description. Jessika: That was a segue. We need to talk about your newest acquisition. Mike: What, Mo? Jessika: No. We've talked about Mo. What was your newest acquisition in relation to the squad? Mike: Oh, right. We bought a dog wagon over the weekend. Jessika: Yeah, you did! Mike: And then, uh, already busted it out and taking them all over the neighborhood [00:01:00] and to the beach. I think it was proven to be a wise investment when this neighbor who we'd never seen before stopped his car in the middle of the road and yelled at us about how cute he thought it was. He was like, “that's the cutest thing I've ever seen!” He was this big old dude. I'm like, alright, I'm on board with this. All right. Success. Jessika: Amazing. Mike: It was very wholesome. Jessika: Well, I think Mike'll have to post at least one or two pictures of the dogs in this week's transcript. Mike: Yeah, no, we can absolutely post photos of the dogs in this episode's transcript. Jessika: Yes. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Well, the purpose of this podcast is to study comic books in ways that are both fun and informative. We want to look at their coolest, weirdest and silliest moments, as well as examine how they're woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history. Today we'll be discussing the boy of steel, Superboy. While there are many variations of this character, we are going to be focusing on the OG [00:02:00] comics from 1944 to 69 as the ones that we talk about, but we will also just briefly touch upon the other comics, TV shows, and movies sporting the same character, as well as touch upon the absolute nightmare that is the timeline continuity, or lack thereof, that is Superman's life story. But before we do that, what is one cool thing that you've read or watched lately? Mike: Sarah and I have been watching a show called Motherland: Fort Salem. Have you heard of this? Jessika: I have, I was interested. Should I start it? Mike: Yeah, we really dig it. It's on FreeForm, but it's streaming on Hulu. It takes place in this world where the United States stopped hunting witches 300 years ago and there was something called the Salem Accords signed. So now we have a world that's dominated by the USA and witches make up, as far as I can tell, the entirety of its armed forces. Jessika: [00:03:00] Oh, snap. Mike: It's really cool. And the whole thing is magic is based on sound and resonance. And it's really a unique spin on things, but the show follows these three young witches who are recruited into the army and then start navigating their way through it. And the larger society, that's a part of the military and it's very comic book-y in terms of its plotting and character development and then the meta narrative as well. It's really cool. And it's really diverse in terms of casting. The storylines are really thoughtful in a lot of ways, and it's very queer. Like, extremely queer. Jessika: Yes. Mike: And the shows in the middle of its second season. And it's gotten much better. Like, I mean, it was already, it was already very good, but it feels like the second season, they really got the kick things up and they've really upped the creep factor. There's a whole thing about witch hunters re-emerging in kind of striking back at witches and riling up public sentiment. It feels very topical. [00:04:00] And then the whole thing is that because which is get their powers from the sound of their voice, what these witch hunters are doing is they're actually like cutting out witches' voice boxes and then weaponizing them. It's really cool and really creepy. And I really like it. Jessika: Oh, damn. That is like horrific. And like wow, that's an interesting concept. Mike: Yeah. Sarah and I have been really, really enjoying it. And it's definitely something that we put on when the kids aren't around obviously, but, Jessika: Oh, yeah. Mike: but it's really solid. So yeah, not a comic book this time. But certainly something that I think a lot of comic book fans would enjoy. How about you? Jessika: Well, once again, Lauren from Outer Planes in Santa Rosa comes through on the recommendations. Because she suggested the Image series, Man Eaters: The Cursed. Mike: Hm. Jessika: It's so fun. It starts off with 15 year old Maude being forced to go to summer camps. So her parents can go on this romantic vacation by themselves without her. Mike: [00:05:00] Relatable. Relatable, mom and dad. Jessika: Absolutely. Well, and it's so funny because they put these fun little, like. It's almost like little artifacts in there , for you. So they have the registration card where they're registering her. And so it's like, will you be on vacation while your child is at camp? And it's like, YES. Like it literally asked that as a question like it's expected. Mike: Good. Jessika: It's pretty funny. Another thing I found that's really funny is they have the campers have these buttons. They're like warning buttons for insurance purposes. And they say things like sleepwalker or lice, or like Gemini. Which like big Gemini myself, like absolutely issue some warnings. Mike: I love it. Jessika: And I love that there is one male character so far in this, and he's the least prepared for everything and Maude totally [00:06:00] roasts him a couple of times. Mike: Again, relatable. Because the one who does all the home repairs around here, it ain't me. Jessika: Oh my gosh. So yeah, no, I added that to my pull list. Mike: Yeah, that sounds great. Jessika: All right. Well, welcome to another episode of Jessika's estate sale fines. This week we'll be looking at Superboy, the comics, and I'm going to run us through the timeline of the comics as they came out, along with the TV shows and movies that were associated with those. So a lot of this is going to be like informational about when the comic came about and the character, Superboy as Kal-El Mike: I'm super excited. Jessika: there was a lot to it. And actually there was a lot of different weirded consistencies that we're definitely gonna get into. As I've already hinted at that, I think you'll find very [00:07:00] funny, Mike: I'm so excited. Jessika: Okay. before I get too deep into this topic, I want to give a shout out to the resources that I use to compile my information today: An article from DC on DC comics.com fan news blog by Megan Downey, titled “Reign of the Superboys: The strange history of the Boy of Steel,” the Wikipedia article on Superboy, a blog post on captaincomics.ning.com in a forum called the comics round table by username commander Benson titled “deck log entry, number 176 Superboy: the time of his life,” and IMDB. for those of you who are. For those of you who are somehow unfamiliar with the basic storyline of Superboy's origins. not to be confused with Superman's origins, which he swoops in a little bit differently initially in the comics than this. but Kal-El in this instance was sent to earth by his parents before their home planet of Krypton [00:08:00] was destroyed. He was discovered in the crater left by his arrival by locals Martha and Jonathan Kent, who adopted him, raising him as their own son and naming him Clark. At age eight, Clark is told how he was found and finds out more about his origins from Krypton. Martha makes him an indestructible suit out of a blanket that he was found with one that came from Krypton and is imbued with the same powers that he himself holds. And it's basically just like Superman fucking around and not being in school. Mike: Yeah, it almost entirely takes place in Smallville, which… it's kind of like the DC universe version of Cabbot Cove from Murder, She Wrote, where you're just like, how many fucking people die in this town? You know, in Smallville, it's, it's more along the lines of how many fucking supervillains hang out in this town in the middle of nowhere, Kansas, Jessika: That's just it. What is it? A convention? Mike: I guess. Jessika: Oh, so Superboy as a character was created by Joe Schuster and [00:09:00] Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel in 1938, but was rejected twice by Detective Comics before the growing popularity of the comic Robin, the Boy Wonder, finally convinced them to change their stance and they then decided to use it to try to relate to a younger readership with a younger character, which makes sense. Thus, Superboy made his comic debut in 1945, but just as a feature in the anthology, More Fun Comics issue 101. Now, of course, it wouldn't be comics without a little bit of drama. Schuster had assistance from Don Cameron instead of Siegel, as Siegel was serving in World War II and stationed in Hawaii. And he actually had to hear about Superboy's and inaugural publication through a letter from Schuster. DC didn't send them any notification nor was he able to actively participate in the trajectory of the plot line since he was serving. It [00:10:00] was kind of a fuck you. Mike: considering how heavily Superman was a part of propaganda. There is literally a cover of Superman running a printing press that says, I think it says, like, “help slap a Jap.” Jessika: Oh, that hurt me. Mike: Yeah. Like, I mean, Superman was very much part of World War II propaganda, and that's insane that they wouldn't let one of his creators participate in the storylines because he was serving in the, uh, okay. Whatever. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty, it's pretty rough. So apparently there was already a rift in Siegel and Schuster's relationship. And so this just increased that strain. After that first issue, Superboy appeared in More Fun Comics, bimonthly issues through number [00:11:00] 107, but was picked up by Adventure Comics debuting in April of 1946. So he was bouncing around, that was issue number 103. And he was the lead feature for the anthology on this one Mike: Hm Jessika: and remained the headlining feature for over 200 issues and continued being featured in Adventure Comics until 1969. Mike: That's such a huge, just, that's an incredible run. Jessika: Yeah. It's a ton of time. And especially considering like he had, this was just like a side gig for Superboy. Really. He had other stuff going that he was doing. Mike: Yeah, I do know that at one point in the sixties, Superboy was I believe the number two comic in America and the only one that was doing more than that was Superman. Jessika: It's like you were reading ahead. No, seriously. That's in my notes. Mike: Oh, really? Okay, cool. Jessika: Yeah, Yeah, yeah, no. And actually was frequently number two. We'll just get to it now. It was frequently number two for a lot of it's run.[00:12:00] So notable storylines that we got from Adventure Comics were intro to Krypto, the super dog, the origin story of his rivalry with Lex Luther, which that continues pretty far. So it's interesting that they, like, created the origin story. Mike: Yeah. They had like teenage Lex Luther show up in Smallville, right? Jessika: Yeah, yes, yes. Correct. Mike: I think he had hair Jessika: Back when he had hair, yeah. Mike: Yeah. And that's something that's continued up until modern times as well. Mark Waid's Birthright, I know, did that… where it basically revealed that Clark Kent had been for a short time friends with Lex. Jessika: Oh, wow. Of course. They had to be friends before they were enemies. Frenemies. There was also the the debut of the 30th century superhero team, the Legion of superheroes. As Superboy, continue to frequent the pages of anthology comics in April of 1949, he became the sixth superhero to get his own comic book. and was the first new superhero [00:13:00] title to succeed after World War II. Mike: Oh, wow. That's crazy. Jessika: Right? Mike: I had no idea that there were only six superhero comics back then. Jessika: Yeah. Not with our own titles. Mike: I mean, that's wild. Jessika: Totally. I didn't realize that either. Mike: yeah Jessika: notable storylines from this namesake comic were intro to Ilana Lang and Pete Ross, the storyline of the first Bizarro and first appearances of Legion of superheroes characters, Mon-El and Ultra Boy. He also appeared in Legion of superheroes volume. One, which was printed as an anthology. Superboy itself continued until 1976 when the comic was renamed Superboy and the Legion of superheroes. Superboy was involved in the storyline until issue number 2 59. When he leaves after learning new information regarding the death of his parents.[00:14:00] Dramatics. Mike: Yeah, I haven't read a lot of those, but the idea is that he's displaced through time and he winds up hanging out with the Legion for a while. And then if I remember right, Supergirl winds up joining the Legion after a while, too. Basically, so they can have kind of a headliner. Jessika: I smell them trying to fix a time continuum. But that's maybe I'm biased. Based on the research I've been doing, The series was then retitled Legion of superheroes volume two, and ended with issue number 354 and 1979. There was also a three-part mini series called Secrets of the Legion of Superheroes that was published in 1981. And despite the general decline of superhero readership, Superboys' popularity continued to grow and adventure comics and Superboy frequently sold over a million copies combined. Mike: That's an insane amount of comics these days. You know, back then that [00:15:00] was wild. Jessika: I mean, it definitely groundbreaking for its time. I would say it was, it sounded like it was huge. The popularity may also have been due to the fact that Superboy was found on more than just comic book stands. He was also on the TV and in the movies, he appeared in a 26 minute movie called the Adventures of Superboy and multiple six-minute episodes airing with the New Adventures of Superman, which aired for 1966 to 70, the Superman Aquaman Hour of Adventure from 67 to 68 and the Batman Superman Hour 68 to 69. All of which were just continuations are within that same world as the initial comic book. Mike: Right. And those were all animated series too, I think, right? Jessika: they were. They were. And here's something fun for you to watch if you wanted to click on that link. Mike: Okay. [Superboy INTRO AUDIO PLAYS] I love the image of like infant CBRE, boy, just lifting a piano. All right. Jessika: Very patriotic. Mike: Yeah. I love the fact that they have Krypto in there. Like I've always had a soft spot for Krypto. I am a little offended that his cowlick isn't in the shape of an S though. Come on guys. You know, this is an amateur hour. Jessika: Missed opportunity. Mike: Right. But yeah, that was super cute. Jessika: Wasn't that fun? Yeah. So I can, I could see kids get getting really excited about seeing that. And then they walk by the newsstand and they go, I just saw that on TV. Mike: yeah, exactly. Jessika: [00:17:00] So I think they had a good thing going with that at that point. Mike: Oh, a hundred percent. So that was in the sixties, you said, right? Jessika: Yes. Mike: So that was right when television was becoming the dominant form of entertainment in the United States. I think by 1959 or 1960, it was something like 90% of households in America had televisions. And Saturday morning cartoons were starting to become a thing, which by the way, you guys should go back and listen to that episode about Saturday morning cartoons. It's our first episode. And we talk all about the evolution of that and how it connected with Comics. Jessika: It was a fun one. So pretty much right after the Legion of Superheroes volume two ended, the New Adventures of Superboy was published in 1984. That had 54 published issues, Mike: Okay. That's a respectable run. Jessika: Yeah. It's not anything too wild. Yeah. In 1985, DC tried to tie up some of those pesky plot holes that we're going to discuss later [00:18:00] on, for sure, by creating a comic that told the story of Clark Kent's transitional years in college at Metropolis University, going from Superboy effectively to Superman. And while this was supposed to last for 12 installments, they only ended up publishing six, mostly due to the fact that Crisis on Infinite Earths was published Mike: I was about to ask. Yeah. Jessika: Yep. That actually featured the eraser of Superboy and yet another attempt to correct a timeline. Mike: Well, Crisis on Infinite Earths was the first real attempt by DC to sit there and stream everything into a coherent timeline. And at the same time they had John Byrne's The Man of Steel, which came out I think right after. Crisis on infinite earths. And that also streamlined Superman's very convoluted history. The problem is is that by that point in time, you had almost 50 years of continuity, which made no fucking [00:19:00] sense. Jessika: And we'll discuss it later, but there wasn't necessarily a need for continuity back in the day. I mean, they didn't have to have it. They were just there for like, we're doing this adventure. This is fun. They're going to enjoy it. And there wasn't a feeling that you had to necessarily link it with what came before it or what was going, coming after it in the same way that we want now as readers and as fans, we want everything to make sense because we want more of the story in that way. Mike: We want that overarching meta plot. Jessika: Exactly. Exactly. So despite DC's attempt to write Superboy out of the universe completely, he appeared once again in Legion of Superheroes Volume Three, which ran from 86, 87 and while Crisis on Infinite Earths had erased Superboy. To some extent in other time, continuations, they now needed to recreate him in order to have a cohesive storyline for [00:20:00] Legion of Superheroes. Mike: God. Jessika: So they were like, what are we going to do? Oh, I know pocket universe. Mike: Why not? Jessika: Why not? So in this version, it's set in a pocket universe created by the villain Time Trapper. Mike: I think the Time Trapper… so the Time Trapper is like a villain who has had multiple identities. It's the same villain ultimately, but it's different people wind up becoming the Time Trapper. And I think, Superboy became the time trapper point. Jessika: This doesn't surprise me at all. What the hell? Mike: Yeah, don't, don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure that it happened, uh, during one of their big, crossovers, Jessika: Oh, no, Mike: Comic books are dumb and I love them. Jessika: I do, too. This is actually part of the reason I really do like them. Because I like seeing all of these little differences. It doesn't make me mad. I just find it very funny. Mike: Yeah. so the Time Trapper created a pocket [00:21:00] universe and then they used him to bring Superboy back. Jessika: Yeah, exactly. And so he, but here's the funny part. He was really just like a sideline character in this. He came in and issued 24 and he was killed off in 38. Mike: Superboy was going. Okay. I'm not going to ask question. Jessika: Yeah. Cause he had to like sacrifice himself to save the world. I mean, that's, you know, common trend in these, right. Mike: Of course. Jessika: Yeah. It was convenient. If not obvious. Mike: Okay. Jessika: Superboy apparently would not, could not be stopped. As was apparent in 1988 with not only a comic publication, but also a TV appearance. Once again, this time live action. Mike: I remember that show. Jessika: Yeah, it was here and that was gone. Mike: It lasted for a couple of seasons, but I think they had a couple of different actors play Superboy. Jessika: They did. Yeah. So it was four seasons and it started out starring John Hames Newton for season one [00:22:00] and then recast replaced for the remainder of the four seasons. So the rest of the three by Gerard Christopher. Mike: Oops. Jessika: So that was a 22 minute runtime, pretty normal for that time. but there again, it went along with the same year that the Superboy volume two hit shelves. You know, they did another one of those timing things thinking, Hey, it worked what? 30 years ago. Let's do it again. Mike: Yeah. It's that whole transmedia thing. Jessika: Yeah, exactly. the show ultimately lasted until 1992, the same year a one-shot comic called the last Superboy was published. But that seemed to be the last dying ember from the fire that is Superboy, as we've talked about up until this point, except one thing. And I know that we want to talk about it a little bit, which is Smallville. And I know we've mentioned it, but I didn't watch that. Did you watch that show? Mike: Oh, yeah. Are you kidding me? I, I was all over that show for the first few seasons. Jessika: Okay. I [00:23:00] just really, it was just cause I had a crush on Kristin Kruek, but unfortunately she got involved with that horrific NXIVM cult. Mike: I thought It wasn't her. It was the… Jessika: It was Alison Mack, but like, but she was involved for a few years, unfortunately. Big. Yikes. Mike: I don't know too much about it. I just know that Alison Mack was one of the big ringleaders for it and it was wild. Jessika: She was, yeah. Mike: Like she, I think she left Smallville to like devote herself full-time to that cult. Jessika: That sounds right. Yeah, she was, she was definitely a big part of it. yeah, it was rough. I've been following it. Mike: I really liked Smallville when it first came out. I remember getting so excited when they had a little teaser ad for it where I think it's Krystin Kreuk is wandering through the darkness and she hears something and turns and then you see Tom Welling step out of the shadows and he says something along the lines “Oh, Hey, it's just me. It's it's Clark.” and then it just says Smallville, and I was like, oh mother fucker. That's amazing. [00:24:00] And yeah, it was, it was fine. It was very teen angsty, but they had a lot of deep cuts for comic fans. And, I think I stopped watching around season four because it just started to, it felt like it really sort of jumped the shark, Jessika: Oh, okay. Yeah. I was going to, ask if it's something I should rewatch. I don't know. Stuff from that. Timeframe is so cringey these days. Mike: A lot of it's cringey. I remember a whole thing with his heat vision was tied to like him being horny. Jessika: No. Why do you have to do that? It's so unnecessary. Mike: But you know, what's funny is they actually brought Tom Welling back in the whole DC Arrowverse recently where they have a version of Lex Luther. Who's traveling the multi-verse and he shows up at, he shows up at the Kent farm and Tom welling is there. I thought it was just, it was great. It was, it was just, it was a really cute little nod. Jessika: That is pretty cute. I do like that. Mike: And then he got all mad because he was trying to suck Superman's powers [00:25:00] away. And then it turns out Superman gave up his power so that he can have a family and a normal life. And then the now powerless Superman pops him in the nose. It was kind of good. Jessika: That is cute. Mike: I was fine with this. It was very, it was very wholesome. Jessika: So there are other iterations of Superboy, but they're not necessarily Clark Kent and some of them are, but they kind of stray off into different timeline. And I could have gone down that rabbit hole, but Mike: Yeah. Jessika: you know, I didn't. Here we are. Mike: that's fine. Jessika: So I also know that I, more than hinted, we've talked about a little bit, uh, the continuity troubles that plagued Superboy. Mike: Right, Jessika: I, I gotta say some of these transgressions are just capital B A D bad. But they get a bit of a pass again, you know, like I said, because Comics at that point [00:26:00] really didn't hinge on a time continuum. Mike: Right. That wasn't a thing. Jessika: No, it wasn't. So, we got to give them a little bit of credit except when they actually started figuring it out and they still did absolutely nothing about it, which is what we're going to talk about. Mike: Okay. Jessika: Because after Superman, they kind of figured out, oh, people are wanting more of a storyline and we've already given Superman kind of a timeframe. And now this has to be Superboy. So it needs to be earlier. So they were like, Okay. Superboy is from the 30s. Mike: Right. Jessika: But Superman at that time, I think was supposed to be set in the 60s or the 50s. And the math did not add Mike: Right. Jessika: at all to get to that point. So right off the bat. You've just you're wrong about the dates. what's even more funny to me is that in the first iterations of the Superman comic, the origin story is always [00:27:00] that the first time he came to earth was when he came to metropolis, like as a full ass adult. Mike: Right. Jessika: So what's, what's up, you know, so that's where it's like, all Right. this is already… Mike: This is convoluted. Yeah. Jessika: exactly. So you and I read a couple of comics from the time period of those original comics, and we read them from specifically from 1963. What I love about these is you could actually, at that, I don't, maybe they still do this. I haven't seen it yet in my Comics. You could write in and they would publish the comments and the editor … Mike: they still do this. Jessika: Okay, cool. So the editor writes a comment back, Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So we have a few of these. Mike: Okay. Jessika: And I would love for you to read them for us. Mike: Okay. So we have a few of these here. the first one says dear editor, since Superman was a Superboy before World War II and television sets, weren't perfected and [00:28:00] sold to the public until after World War II. How come you show TV roof antennas, and Superboy stories. Kevin Herron, Tiffin, Ohio. And the editor responded with you're right, Kevin, we're wrong. We made a booboo. Editor. Jessika: Okay. Mike: The next one is dear editor. How come in Superboy comics. You illustrate such modern inventions as a bombs, atomic subs, jet planes, television, et cetera, all devices, which weren't invented until 1945 for later. And which certainly weren't around when Superman was born, Ken parent Wheaton, Illinois. The response is historians refer to such inconsistency as anachronisms. They are a necessary form of literary license required to achieve dramatic effects. Movies exercise this option very often. For example, the first umbrella was invented in 1740 yet numerous period films devoted to the life in the middle ages have shown heroines protecting themselves from the sun with a parasol. Editor Jessika: I love how he's getting like a little salt here with his answers. Mike: Just a little bit. [00:29:00] Jessika: He's like, but Webster's dictionary says… Mike: God. Yeah. I don't miss those days. These days. Usually when you see the letters section of a comic, it's usually people talking about how much something meant to them, or at least in the ones that I read it. It's always really nice. So. Jessika: That's sweet. Mike: All right. So the last one: dear editor in the recent story, the amazing bizarro you had Superboy dropping an atomic bomb on bizarro. How is this possible, as Superboys adventures. They're supposed to have happened before 1945 and scientists had not perfected the H-bomb until 1945. Steve Spangler, Sonoma, California, Jessika: Boom representation. That's right down the road from us. Mike: the response is “we goofed! From now on no more a bombs in Superboy. Editor.” Jessika: Well, that's easy. Mike: Oh, that's great. At some point it's like, come on guys, it's a comic book. Jessika: Yeah, Mike: I think it's, are you [00:30:00] really expecting the science fiction comic, starring an alien who just happens to look exactly like a human, but has more super powers than God is going to be historically and scientifically accurate all the time. Okay. Whatever. I don't… Jessika: I know. I know. I know. I hear you. I do well. And what's funny too, is at one point, Lana Lang is in a beauty competition and it says 1952. Mike: Well, it's reassuring to know that nerds were always this nitpicky. Jessika: Absolutely. That really is. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So the time in consistencies didn't end there. As I mentioned, there have been multiple timelines that have been created and destroyed to ensure some kind of consistency in the Superman universe. But whether or not that was actually a success is really anybody's opinion. It's up to the listener. [00:31:00] But if you're interested in finding out more about this travesty of a timeline, go check out that blog post I mentioned at the top of the episode, I'm on Captain Comics Presents, it's got a lot more examples of the inconsistencies from those OG comics. Mike: Yeah. Well, okay. One thing I will note is that DC kind of figured this out recently where they, ran a series called doomsday clock, and it's Dr. Manhattan from the Watchman universe with Superman. And the very end of it is revealing that there is now a “metaverse” in DC. Where it's like, oh yeah. So Superman arrived in the 30s and started being a superhero, you know? And then also he also arrived in the 60s and then he also arrived in the 80s and so on and so forth. And so it, it sort of makes sense of that for those people who care. Jessika: Well, and it's like the same kind of Marvel multi-verse that we have going on with that, with the Spider-Man is pointing to each other. Mike: Yeah. It [00:32:00] basically, it takes the concept of a multi-verse and then it adds another layer and it does it in a way that feels, hm, I'm not going to say plausible, but it just, it kind of works and, you know, I actually liked it, but that's just me. Jessika: Yeah. you know what, and what's funny about Superman is I don't like Superman, so it's funny that we're doing this whole episode. I just thought it, was interesting. These Superboy comics when I saw them, well and I picked them up because like, honestly, like the titles were horrific and I will have some very liberal things to say about them, but yes, I, you know, but honestly, what's very funny, even though I hate Superman, I don't know what it was about the Superman symbol that I used to love. And I didn't read the comics. I'd watch the show from the eighties. And I'd seen the Christopher Reeves movies. We loved those. But other than that, I wasn't like huge in the Superman, but if I had gotten a tattoo, when I was 18 years old, it would have been a Superman symbol. So I'm very glad my mom never, she never [00:33:00] listens to this. So she will never know that I'm confessing that, she talked me out of making a very bad tattoo decision because she doesn't need any more gloating rights, Mike: Yeah. I don't know. I kind of viewed him like Captain America, where I thought he was really boring. And then I realized that if you find the right writer, Superman really, really works. I've come to really enjoy a lot of Superman stories, but you know, it depends. Jessika: And I think you're right. That I, I probably just haven't found the right writer or the right style. And I did recently start do I start birthright? I started something recently. Mike: I think it was Birthright, based on our conversations. Jessika: yeah. So I will get back into that at some point in time. I just have such a stack now will obsessed. Oh no. Mike: Oh no, Jessika: Oh, no. more Comics. So Mike, you and I read a couple of these issues that I found at that estate sale. That was Superboy boys. Numbers, 109 [00:34:00] and 110. So do you want to recap 109 us? Mike: Yeah. Okay. You've mentioned that these are anthology comics and so Superboy at this point in time, apparently was having two or three storylines per issue. based on the two that we read, each one had two different stories in it. Superboy 109 has the first story is the Super Youth of Brozz. The title story about the rival super dogs doesn't show up until later, which that always surprises me, when the cover action isn't the first story and everything else is in a backup, but whatever. Jessika: It's a little confusing. Mike: the Super Youth of Brozz is about how a young Clark Kent winds up sort of becoming friends with another teenage orphan in Smallville named Fred who's, quote, timid that's his like defining character trait. That's all that anybody used to describe him. And he gets picked on by the towns in crowd of teenagers. It's revealed that he lives in the [00:35:00] Smallville orphanage, which okay. He literally walks back to the orphanage and then Superboys spies on him and he's crying because he overheard people talking about how they didn't want to adopt him because he was too much of a wimp I'm just like, oh, okay. Jessika: Thanks for being super toxic Superboy. That's so great. Mike: Superboy winds up deciding to give him confidence. And so he takes him to a planet called Brozz where Fred gains super powers from the atmosphere. And then Superboy actually loses his overtime for reasons that are not really well explained because you know, Superboy, he gets his powers from the yellow sun. And then later on, he gets his powers back sort of from the little spacecraft that they brought Fred over in, because it had some remnants of Earth's atmosphere, which that's not how science works. I was a history major and even I can tell you that. Superboy has this whole convoluted plot about how if he can get Fred to have super power's he'll gain confidence, which Fred sort of does. He eventually saves Superboy's life and then decides to stay on the planet and be a superhero. And he gets offered to be adopted, but he declines the offer for some bizarre reason, something about like, you know, basically he doesn't want to put his, foster parents at risk. And Superboy heads home to earth and has a final thought about how he wouldn't be the person he was, if it hadn't been for the Kents. The end. Jessika: Yeah. Yup. Mike: Yep. But the title story, which is the Super Dog That Replaced Krypto is basically at some point, Superboy rescues a dog named Swifty, which looks like a Greyhound. Swifty winds up months later, tracking down Superboy in Smallville, which means that Superboy didn't [00:37:00] even drop this dog off at a shelter. Apparently he just got him out of harm's way and then just left him. So strike one, Supes. Jessika: Yeah. It's not. Mike: Then Superboy winds up temporarily granting Swifty the same powers that Krypto has. And then it seems like he's testing them out, but it doesn't quite work out that way. Swifty loses his powers and then he's, again, I guess, left alone. He's just as far as I can tell, he's a homeless dog in Smallville. Jessika: Yeah. There's a lot of orphans in the story. Mike: after his powers fade some villains who were trapped in the Phantom zone, but crossover and are sort of the Phantom zone wind up trying to take mental control of Superboy and Krypto, they don't have any luck. They are able to influence Swifty. And then they guide him through a process that grants him super powers. And then I think it also makes them evil, but it's not really well explained. Jessika: Oh, it's because the Phantoms were influencing him. [00:38:00] And so their intentions were like his intention. So because they had negative vibes against Superboy. That's what I got out of it, but it's, it's really vague. Mike: Super vague. Superboy decides to randomly hold a series of tests for Swifty and Krypto to be the new super dog. And like, he does this as opposed to like, just like letting them both help him out. Jessika: that's what I'm saying. Like, it wasn't even to like, be the next super dog. It was like to go be the ambassador on this trip Mike: Oh, is that it? Okay. Jessika: yeah. And then , why wouldn't you want like an entourage of fucking, like super dogs with you? Why would you two super dogs is way better than one super dog. Like, I don't know what the fuck his problem was Mike: 100%. So anyway, the Phantom zone criminals helps Swifty, win the contest, Swifty becomes the super [00:39:00] dog for at least this instance. And then he leads both Krypto and Superboy into a kryptonite death trap. Like there's literally a spring that like hurls kryptonite at them. And then at the last second Krypto manages to blast Swifty with the duplicate Ray, which creates a bizarro Swifty, who's good as opposed to the original version. Superboy comes up with a potion or, sorry, the Bizarro Swifty saves them. And then Superboy comes up with a potion that strip Swifty's powers and restores his good nature. And then he creates a collar that repels the Phantom zone ghosts so they can't control the dog again. And that's it like, Swifty's apparently the sad homeless dog in Smallville who just gets sad every time that he sees Superboy and Krypto fly by. And he thinks about how he wants to be Superboys' dog again. Jessika: It's really depressing. And I would never do that to Carl for the record. I would never. Okay. Mike: I mean, [00:40:00] yeah, this, this issue definitely rubbed me the wrong way. Just for that, where I'm like, God, Superboy. it couldn't even find a home for the dog who tracked you down across the country and just wanted to be your friend. Jessika: You're fucking Superboy have two fucking dogs. Like, I don't know how difficult this is. Like, well, where Martha. Martha is like, no, we've already gotten one super dog in the house. Mike: Yeah, right. Jessika: No, this one's just normal, now! I swear. Mike: between the two of us, we have four dogs. So, I mean, we're definitely the wrong audience for this, Jessika: for sure. And I bought this comic for the fact that there were like super dogs on there. I got very excited. Mike: yeah. And the thing is, is that there's a whole menagerie, a super pets like you eventually get like Comet the super horse. Like it's no, there, there was a monkey. There was, I think, I think it was Streaky the super cat too. Jessika: Oh, no. Mike: It's not like, you know, [00:41:00] there wasn't a whole collection of super pets. But whatever. Jessika: Yeah. What did you think of this since you haven't told, since you haven't started telling me already. Mike: It reminded me that Superman and Superboy stories from this era just a lot of times don't make any sense. I have a collection from the late eighties called the Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told, and It's got stories from the forties to the eighties and even those early great stories, in quotes, they're pretty out there. And neither of these stories are anywhere close to what's contained in that book. I don't know. My biggest complaint is how Superboys' logic is always terrible. Like why does Fred need to be made into another version of the Superboy in order to gain confidence? Why not just help them with the core issue, which is that nobody wants to adopt them from the Smallville orphanage, which again, lawl. Jessika: Yeah. Like what does it have two orphans in there? Mike: It just, it seems like helping them find a [00:42:00] family would do a lot more good. And likewise, why not just adopt Swifty too? Like it's shitty and it's dumb, but all of this reminded me of the site called Super Dickery, which I showed you. Jessika: Yes. Mike: It was the site that's originally focused on the absolute insanity of Superman comic covers. So many of these comics would feature things like Superman, just fucking over his friends. That was a repeated theme for years. There's one where he has Lois lane strapped to the grill of a truck and he's flying out after he drove it off a cliff. And just saying something to the effect “I'll see you later, Lois.” Jessika: Holy shit. Mike: And there's another one where Aquaman, Jimmy Olsen are dying of thirst in the desert and Superman's just lording over them with this pitcher of water. the site was around at least in 2005, which is when I first came across it. It's kind of defunct. Now. I don't think has been updated for a couple of years, but you can go back on archive.org and just scroll through all these things. The [00:43:00] tagline was Superman's a Dick and here's the evidence and it's great. Like that is a way to kill an afternoon. Let me tell ya. Jessika: Oh, I definitely checked out a few of those today and I was rolling. Rolling. He definitely came off as an asshole in this comic. Like, no question, no question. You know, what makes me the most mad is that he has the ability to give Swifty super powers. He has the ability to make both dogs talk. Mike: Oh my God. Yeah. Jessika: What the fuck are you doing? Mike: there was a cover on Super Dickery where it's young Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, and they've created a computer that lets them see the future and like, Hey, we're going to grow up to be crime fighters and superheroes. So we're going to be best friends. It's like cool. You know, what also would be useful? I don't know. Maybe telling Bruce Wayne that his parents are going to get murdered and it can be avoided. Jessika: Seriously. Holy shit. Oh my God. Yeah. But then he wouldn't have his [00:44:00] homie. Superboy's just all in it for himself. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And like, why does he just have something lying around the has fandoms as I can get out? Why does he have that? Doesn't make any sense. Mike: We don't have another two hours to discuss the Phantom Zone. Jessika: Kal-El you silly boy. So let's, let's move on to the other comic we read, which, uh, we're just be just as angry about, by the way. Spoiler case you were wondering. So what happened in issue? Number 110? Cause I did get sequential ones, which is great, kind of. Mike: Right. Okay. So again, we have two stores. We have the Surrender of Superboy and the runt of steel, the surrender of supervise story is the one that we actually get on the cover. It's Superboy in Krypto losing a tug of war match to some old man. And we're basically told, well, you won't believe who the old man is. In the Surrender of Superboy, Clark [00:45:00] Kent, and Lana Lang traveled to South America to accompany her, I guess he's a college professor, dad on an archeological dig. One of the flowers recovered is this legendary hate flower, which causes any living, being that smells it to hate the first human they see after smelling it. They're like very specific that it's, you will hate the first human. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: When they get back to Smallville, Lana smells the hate flower by accident. She sees Superboy flying outside and then dun, dun dunnnn winds up developing an intense hatred for the boy of steel. She grabs. I think it's like, it's… do we ever get a name for this thing? It's like a devil's mask? Jessika: I think she just calls it devil's mask. Cause it's a devil's witch mask or something like that on the wall. It's very vague again. Mike: So she's in this museum, she grabs this thing off the wall because there's no fucking security anywhere. And it specifically says what it does, where it's says the person who wears this can summon souls , or spirits from the past and have them obey them for an hour. And then she [00:46:00] starts using it to cause trouble. Sir Lancelot and then George Washington are her first minions, but they refuse to help because they claim that they've heard about Superboy's heroic deeds and even in the past, which Jessika: No, no, no, It's not a thing. No. Mike: I just, I can't, man, it's so dumb. Jessika: When I read that, I was like, what, what is actually going on right now? I literally stopped reading for a few minutes. Mike: Everything about the story it feels like monkeys at a typewriter. Jessika: Yes, Mike: So then she summons Merlin to humiliate Superboy at this super strength exhibition that he's doing in order to benefit the old folks home and Merlin, it turns out is the old man who beats him in the tug of war on the cover. Which by the way, this is like three panels in the comic. And it's not that big a deal. Jessika: it's really not. Mike: yeah, after that she summons Edgar Allen Poe and [00:47:00] Sherlock Holmes. She says they're the two greatest detective minds of the past. So they help her solve a jewel highs that Superboy can't and then she framed Superboy by having Hercules, Samson, and Atlas tear apart the Smallville Scientific Institute. Um, let's see, she summons Venus, Helen of Troy, and Juliet to basically seduce Superboy. And then she spurns him at a dance. And also I'm sorry, but really? JULIET? Like, come on. Jessika: Juliet was a child who fell into a situation and was a tragic figure. Mike: Juliet was a stupid teenager. Like, I can't, I can't even, I'm sorry. Jessika: She probably had acne and Superboy definitely had that hair where it was brushed forward and then spiked up in the front. Mike: Yep. Jessika: Absolutely. Yep. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Fuckin' assholes. All of them, Mike: So she [00:48:00] spurns them at this dance and her dad gets mad at her. He's like, I heard you were very rude to Superboy. Jessika: Which by the way, the fact that he wears that fucking suit to every occasion, like, come on, dude. Mike: I just love that idea. Jessika: Can you have like a literal suit, like, a super suit. That actually looks nice? Mike: Just get something, like, get a nice Navy blue, kind of slim fitting suits have an Ascot popping out with your Superman logo. All the girls would be all over you. It'd be great. Jessika: Oh, my gosh. Can you imagine the Kent's first trip to a fancy restaurant where they have to like, get the borrow jacket, like the loaner jacket from the restaurant, because he's wearing his stupid ass suit and they're like, Oh, Sir, excuse me. Mike: He's just walking around with his Cape, sticking out from under the jacket. I would read that comic. Jessika: I would too. [00:49:00] Mike: Anyway. So finally Lana decides to pull Jor-El, Superboy's dad from the past, in order to help her discover Superboys' secret identity. Instead of, I don't know, reuniting Jor-El with his son who he never got to see, but whatever. Okay. Jor-El gives you this device that's supposed to detect Kryptonians. It leads her to a closet where Krypto the Superdawg is Krypto shakes himself, and basically gives off a bunch of dust. Actually counteracts the flowers' hate pollen. And it turns out that Superboy and Lana's dad switched the mask with a dummy, once they realized what was going on and then her dad disguised himself as GRL and then everything just goes back to normal and nothing matters. Jessika: Yeah, we're again, they have access to these devices that are like powerful and they like have instructions on the wall, but don't use them. Like he literally says to his daughter at one point like, oh, well stay away from the superstition side of things. It's quite dangerous. And she's like, oh, what's that?[00:50:00] Let me check out this mask. So fricking ridiculous. Mike: So then we get the second story, which is the Super Runt of Steel, which is about a criminal named Peewee Reagan, who we don't know who this dude is, but he shows up at this dilapidated house, he pays some amoral super scientist to grant him super powers. Peewee goes on a crime spree that even Superboy can't stop because Superboys' powers are weirdly fading for no real reason. Peewee flies away to a distant planet because he spotted treasure inside it. He gets to the planet, he wrecks a bunch of the alien robots that are there and then goes inside this vault that's full of space gems and minerals, and he winds up screaming in pain. Superboy finds out the scientist it turns out leached his powers and transfer them over to Peewee. And he's able to track the criminal to the aforementioned planet. And it turns out Peewee died because the vault also contained kryptonite and then Superboy [00:51:00] buries Peewee and flies away the end. Jessika: Because he somehow gets his powers back by just being around him. It was weird. Mike: Everything about this issue just made me roll my eyes. And a lot of the stories from this era, if you go back and read a lot of these things, they had those kinds of surprise endings. That just feel so dumb these days. Like it was that weird, ironic twist. They're not really ironic because they don't really make a lot of sense. Jessika: Yeah, they're just kind of like a left field thought. Mike: Yeah, there's a lot that just doesn't work. And it's like if you go down this very specific logic train that these writers force you along, it's like, you know, the whole thing. Having Lana's dad disguise himself as Jor-El, like Superboy, just, knew that this was going to be the next step. You're like, all right. Well, I don't know, and then also, I'm sorry. But she's supposed to be calling all of these characters from history, all these spirits or people from history and then it's gods and fictitious characters like [00:52:00] Lancelot and Juliet and uh, whatever. Jessika: No, they were really contrived figures. I mean, even when they had real people in there, they weren't used to their purpose. Mike: No, and it's one of those things where you read it and you're like, this is just, this is so dumb. Oh, it's Samson and Hercules. Okay. Whatever, why not? Random characters from the Bible and Greek mythology. Why not? Jessika: Dude, where do I even start on this issue though? They had so many problems. The beginning, when the scientists negate the word of the locals as superstition, even though it actually did have dangerous poisonous properties to it. They're like, oh, it's just a myth. Mike: Because there's a whole thing where one of the boroughs winds up attacking a guide and then when they sit there and say, oh, it must have like gotten near the hade flower and they're like, oh no, it just got bit by a fly. All right. Jessika: Yeah. And the scientists are like, I mean, gosh, darn. How big of a [00:53:00] supremacist asshole do you have to be to not trust the people who live there to know anything about the plants that they have been living with their whole lives. I truly don't understand that. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Then the scientists were like, oh, woopsie, Daisy. I guess they were right. Chuckle, chuckle. Mike: This was also still a period in time where anyone who was not white, especially native populations were viewed with a healthy degree of just kind of, well, like you said, it like supremacy. Like if you go back and read those old Tintin books, woof. Jessika: Oh, yeah. I've read someof those in the original French and they're... Yeah. Mike: Yeah. And if you go back and read those and then like up until really, I want to say the 70s or 80s was one thing started to get a little bit better, but even mainstream in the 60s were still pretty awful when it came to depicting people who weren't [00:54:00] white. Jessika: Yeah. There was that whole segregation thing. You know, just that. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Yeah, I, it was really gross when the quote unquote historical women came to give her beauty advice so that she could do seduce Superboy, like that was so contrived and odd and sexist and strange, Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Or the part where Superboy is not only supposed to be earning money for an old person's home. He's also making agist jokes about the quote unquote old man that ends up beating him. Both him and his dog, a tug of war. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: But then the comic itself is so obviously like they so obviously made it agistly clear that this man only be Superboy because he was Merlin, the wizard, which yikes guys, I know people way older than me that could kick my ass at most anything. So that's pretty [00:55:00] ridiculous. Mike: yeah. Jessika: Oh. Or the fact that the little guys or men that are like smaller and stature or timid, they are constantly the ones that need quote, unquote saving by Superboy in these really odd, like vague ways. Like they need to get physical strength to be appreciated. And it's super toxic. Mike: Yeah. And I mean, that kind of hinges on the old ideas of masculinity as well. Jessika: Oh, and I'm sorry, why Lana's dad keeping again, keeping legit magic items where people can access them. It just, I can not get past that because they just have all this shit sitting around where people are like, oh, let me touch it. Mike: look, here's the thing, like gun control, wasn't a thing back then you think they're going to seriously guard supernatural weapons of destruction. Jessika: that is a valid point. That is so valid. at least he wasn't mistreating his dog in this issue, I guess. Mike: I guess. I don't know. He locked him in the closet for a few hours. Jessika: Shit. That's right. [00:56:00] Nevermind. Fuck. So that wraps up our Superboy conversation. Let's move on to our brain wrinkles. And this is the one thing comics are comics adjacent that's just been rattling around in your brain. Since the last time we talked. Mike: Yeah. So I was going to talk about free comic book day and how I was originally pretty excited about it. But now, we're recording this a couple of weeks before free comic book day is going to happen. And we are still in the middle of a pandemic when we record this, the Delta strain has started to rear its ugly head and lead to cases spiking all over the place, including here in the Bay Area. So, As someone who has immunocompromised kids who are too young to get the vaccine still, we're not going to be able to participate. Um, so yeah, I don't know. I think I'm instead going to talk about The Suicide Squad and actually how I'm really [00:57:00] excited about that movie. And it's getting rave reviews and it's opening this week on HBO max and in theaters. And then, because people can't leave shit well, enough alone, David Ayer, the director of the original Suicide Squad movie talked about how this one is great, but then he proceeded to shit all over Warner Brothers and talked about how the version of just Suicide Squad that got released back in 2016, was not his version of the film and how it's terrible. And he wants, vindication now. And I just, I can't go through another Snyder Cut. I just, I don't have… Jessika: Alright like, you know, at least, okay. At least it's not the Justice League. At least it's Suicide Squad, Mike: But like the Snyder Cut almost broke me. Jessika: No, I hear you. I already don't like, I already wasn't like on board and I had to watch like so much Justice League that weekend. Mike: I remember. Jessika: Then I had prequel films I had to [00:58:00] watch. No, I don't want to do this again. I don't. Mike: I can't. I am happy to talk about Suicide Squad. And I'm pretty sure there'll be jazzed up to talk about it after this movie. But I just, I can't bring myself to care about these auteur directors who are just… when I was working in the video games industry, we had this term that we used for certain people who were on the development side, who were all about their vision and how, they wouldn't compromise anything. And we, we just refer to them as the genius babies, because they would have these ungodly meltdowns. I can't bring myself to just, I can't bring myself to care about another genius baby throwing a temper tantrum. Jessika: I don't want it. Mike: How about you? What is, uh, what is sitting in your head these days? Jessika: I've been thinking a lot about representation in the media, including comic books. [00:59:00] And that's partially because we've been reading all these old comics where we don't see a lot of different representation. Versus the comics that I'm drawn to, which are full of representation, because that's what I prefer to read. I want to see everyone and it's been really nice to read destiny, New York and some of these other recent comics that actually show different types of bodies, different skin tones, different sexualities and genders. But I think there's so much more that we need to do, and that can be done to add and continue to build upon that representation. Like just in general, it's 2021. And we're still shaming people for being a certain size and, you know, airbrushing people who are already considered to be the epitome of beauty in our society. Like what is it going to take for us to allow people to just exist as we are. I mean, you know, besides the whole capitalist bullshit [01:00:00] game, telling women, they need more and more products to achieve beauty. But aside from that, but it's giving me, it's definitely making me feel better to see all of the representation, but there, again, it just reminds me that we need more. Mike: I was gonna say, it's that reminder of we've come a long way, but we need to go further. Jessika: Yep. It is. It is. You had mentioned, your inability to go to free comics day. and I feel like there are probably a lot of people who had a really difficult time getting anywhere. To go to something like that, you know? And so thinking about accessibility in that way of, what about those readers? Like what are we doing about them? So you know, it's just something I think about I've worked at social services too. I mean, I'm just, I'm a bleeding heart, but we need people like me or else, I don't know, get rid of that. We don't need people like me. So that's, that's, what's been rattling for me. [01:01:00] It's just more of a continuous disappointed buzz in my brain that we don't respect all people. Mike: Yeah. Well, we do on this podcast. Jessika: So on that uplifting note, that's it for today, but stay tuned for another episode in two weeks and until then we'll see it in the stacks. Mike: Thanks for listening to Ten Cent Takes. Accessibility is important to us. So text transcriptions of each of our published episodes can be found on our website. Jessika: This episode was hosted by Jessika Frazier and Mike Thompson, written by Jessika Frazier and edited by Mike Thompson. Our intro theme was written and performed by Jared Emerson Johnson of Bay Area Sound, our credits and transition music is Pursuit of Life by Evan McDonald and was purchased with a standard license from premium beat. Our banner graphics were designed by Sarah Frank, who goes by. Look, mom draws on Instagram.[01:02:00] Mike: If you'd like to get in touch with us, ask us questions or tell us about how we got something wrong. Please head over to Tencent takes.com or shoot an email to Tencent akes@gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter. The official podcast account is Tencenttakes. Jessika is Jessika with us, and Jessika is spelled with a K and I am Vansau: V A N S A U Jessika: If you'd like to support us, be sure to download, rate and review wherever you listen. Mike: Stay safe out there. Jessika: And support your local comic shop .

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Ep. 68- Iron Maiden's Greatest Hits

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 9, 2021 74:29

This week the guys give their take on Eddie and the boys with Iron Maiden's Greatest Hits. Kenneth and Chris will each give you their 20 favorite Maiden songs. Whichever songs are duplicated automatically make the list. The ones that are not are debated to see which ones make the list. Then they put them in a concert setlist order for the Ultimate Iron Maiden Greatest Hits. And this week they also serve up their take on the BIG 4 Iron Maiden albums. And recently, Mike How, lead singer of Metal Church, Joey Jordison, ex-Slipknot drummer and Dusty Hill, bassist for ZZ Top, all passed away in the same week. They passed away on the heels of Jeff Labar, Cinderella's guitar player and Gary Corbett, keyboard player for Cinderella and KISS also passing away. It was a rough July for hard rock/metal musician's, so the guys offer a little tribute to Mike, Joey and Dusty. So sit back, relax, turn it up to 11 and let the debate begin...

kiss iron maiden greatest hits maiden slipknot zz top joey jordison metal church jeff labar mike how gary corbett

Issue 10: Judge Dredd in Film

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 8, 2021 81:07

Freeze, creep! This week, we're checking out the 1995 and 2012 attempts to bring Judge Dredd to American movie audiences. Spoiler alert: It didn't work out like the studios hoped. ----more---- [00:00:00] Mike: That's a little too thirsty, I think. Welcome to Tencent takes the podcast where we violate Mega City One's judicial codes, one issue at a time. Coming at you live from the hot box of my closet; I have not showered in 24-hours, and I smell fantastic. I'm Mike Thompson and I am joined by my co-host, the princess of pain, Jessika Frazer. Jessika: Yaar! I'm also - Mike: How are you smelling? Jessika: God, I'm in a hotbox of pain at the very least, I had to go to work like physically into the office today. So I actually, you know, had to be decent enough to be around people that are masked, so the deodorant had to at least be applied, but. Mike: No hard pass. I work out of my bedroom now, you're lucky if you get pants. Jessika: Well, that's nice. [00:01:00] Mike: Would you like to explain why we are here? Jessika: You know, we're here because we love comics. Mike, Mike: True. Jessika: We love comics. We want to talk about all the comics. We want to do deep dives about our favorite comics and their heroes, and where they came from. And wild little stories that we find out about them and bringing in nefarious characters like Eric Estrada. He's not a nefarious. Mike: He's a little nefarious. He was involved in a really weird kind of scammy land sale thing. He did also endorse Trump on Twitter. Remember that where he was like - Jessika: Oh God. He is nefarious. Gosh, darn I, why do I always want to give Eric Estrada so much credit? I'm like way too nice to the guy. I don't even know him. I do follow him on Twitter now, but. Mike: No. He literally told Donald Trump on Twitter that he should run for president because he tells it like it is. So thanks, Eric. Thanks. Appreciate that. Jessika: No. That was a bad idea. Like, for [00:02:00] the record, I don't know if anyone else knows that. Everyone else knows that, every other country knows that. Mike: They do now. Jessika: Oh man, we're going to get into some hot topics today, too. This is already a good start. Mike: Yeah. So before I interrupted you, is there anything else that we'd like to cover or talk about or look at? Jessika: Oh, their video games, all the related media movies. Everything, everything comics related, we want to talk about it. Mike: Fair. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: Well, today we are going to hop on our Law Masters and cruise the Cursed Earth as we check out both the cinematic adaptations of Judge Dredd. But, before we do that, before we dive into this episode, we'd like to acknowledge a small milestone because this is our 10th episode and we've received over 500 downloads. So, you know, that may not sound like anything major compared to a lot of podcasts out there, but we're incredibly proud of what we've been able to achieve and how far we've gotten so far. And if you're listening to us, we're super [00:03:00] grateful that you've just given us your time. We really appreciate it. So to celebrate, we're going to do a giveaway. If you go to our page on Apple Podcast and leave a rating, and then email us a screenshot of said rating and a review, but that's only if you're inclined, really, we just care about the rating. We'll enter you to win a $25 gift card from NewKadia. NewKadia actually offers international shipping too. So, even listeners outside of the continental us are eligible. Jessika: That's super exciting! Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So Yeah. Rate us, review us. We appreciate you all. Mike: Even you. Yeah. So I'm talking to you right through your car stereo right now. Jessika: We're there with you driving along. Hey, watch the road. Mike: All right. We're at the point of the episode where we like to start off with one cool thing that we've read or watched lately, do you want to start off? Jessika: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I needed a little bit of a palate cleanser after watching the [00:04:00] 2012 dread film so much gore. So I ended up watching Guardians of the Galaxy 2, which I hadn't seen before, and it was super fun. Loved the music as always characters had a really good chance to further develop. Okay. But I have to say, dude, I like still Stalloned myself. I did not know he was in that movie. And then he just shows up and I was like, what the fuck? Cause I literally had just watched them both in a row. And so I literally had just seen Stallone like the movie before that. And then he shows up again and I was like, good lord. Mike: Well, and you know that his crew is like the original Guardians of the Galaxy from the comic books. Jessika: I do. Yeah.I do. Now. I know I looked that up afterwards and I was like, oh, okay. All right. Mike: Yeah. And it was like Michael Rosenbalm, who did the voice of Superman and was Lex Luther in Smallville and the Michelle Yeoh and Ving Rhames. I was totally here for that cameo. That was great. [00:05:00] Jessika: Yeah. It was, once I looked that up, I was like, oh, that makes more sense. Cause I wasn't aware of that. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: it was super fun, but then I Stalloned myself again because I today a guest hosting of trivia for North Bay Trivia in Santa Rosa, at Shady Oak Barrel. And they have like a little arcade game. That's Stallone on the front. And I can't remember, I sent it to you, I think, cause I frickin' Stalloned myself again, secondary Stallone. Mike: I feel like you did. And I can't remember what it was. Jessika: I'd have to look it up, but I'm too lazy to look through my phone. So we'll just leave it. Anyone knows I don't, I don't care anymore. Mike: Fair. Jessika: So, back to the Guardians of the Galaxy after that Stallone detour, I really, really liked the evolution of Gomorrah, Nebula's relationship. Mike: I love that. I thought it was fantastic. Like I thought honestly, Almost all the characters had really nice [00:06:00] development, except really, I mean, I don't know. I feel like Peter didn't actually develop that much as an actual character. Jessika: No, he was just taken on some Shamaylan twists and turns. Mike: Yeah. But yeah, the whole bit where, Yondu is yelling at Rocket about, you say that I don't know you, but like you're me. And it was oh, oh. Jessika: Gosh. I definitely cried during that movie. I'm not going to lie, but I'm a crier. Mike: There's a lot of feels. There's a lot of feels in that movie. Jessika: Yeah. Oh, it was so good. So overall two thumbs up. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: What about you? What have you been reading? Watching? Mike: Yeah. So, Sarah and I started watching Loki because that just began airing last week, and ahead of that I wound up reading a couple of old issues of Thor, specifically Thor 371 and 372, which are the issues that actually introduced the Time Variance Authority. And the funny thing is that these issues also introduced a character who [00:07:00] may look a little familiar to you, especially as we've been prepping a bit for this particular episode. So check out the cover and tell me if he reminds you of anyone Jessika: Okay. That looks like a, that's so funny. That looks like Captain America, but it also looks like one of those those Doctor Who, like, what are those things called? Mike: The Daleks. So if you take a closer look at that guy that is so his character, his name is Justice Peace. And if you look at the shape of his helmet and he's actually on a sky cycle. Jessika: Oh shit. Mike: But, yeah, it's a pastiche of Judge Dredd. Jessika: He does look like Judge Dredd. You know what threw me was the bright colors, because Judge Dredd has darker tones. So I kinda got drawn more to that kind of vibe, but you're right. He's got the helmet across his face. You can see one of his eyes and the other one looks like it's probably bionic. And it's kind of like a samurai helmet, it looks like. It's, I think it's supposed to be shaped like more of a samurai style. If I'm not mistaken. Mike: Kind [00:08:00] of which - Jessika: It's big. Mike: Like actually the, Jessika: I don't. Mike: The old school Judge Dredd helmets, actually, like some of them have actually taken on that look too. Like they've kind of played with the shapes, but anyway, I thought it was just kind of a funny, a funny, a full circle moment. Jessika: He's got some arm bandoliers too. Mike: Yeah, man. Those were big in the eighties. Jessika: I guess. So, dang dude, I'm loving this. Mike: Yeah. It's a lot of fun. We are going to be talking about Judge Dredd in general. We're not going to do a deep dive on the comics, but we're going to talk a bit about the background. And so before we actually do that, I felt like we should take a minute and talk about how of us have grown up with pretty close connections to law enforcement. Do you want to go first? Jessika: No. Sure, sure, sure, sure. So my dad was a police officer for, I think, close to 30 years. And for a lot of it he worked in public safety, which is really like policing and [00:09:00] firefighting and they rotate duties. So you have to know both, you go through both academies. It's supposed to be that you're a little bit more well-rounded and involved, and I don't know, it was. At the time the community was a lot smaller and it probably made more sense, but it's getting bigger. And, I don't know how much sense it makes, but I'm also not an expert. And I haven't lived there for a while, so I don't know what the politics there are these days surrounding that as much as I used to. As far as police officers go, I do know a few really decent people who are police officers and, you know, growing up, I had mostly good experiences. However, that hasn't been the case for everyone. And my privilege of being raised white and a child of a law enforcement officer has absolutely shielded me from so many of the issues and policing that plagues our country. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And I have to say like, unironically, my dad was a decent cop. He's still alive. But when he was still in law enforcement, he was a decent cop and [00:10:00] he definitely let his ethics guide him, and he left positions based on his moral compass. And I'm really proud of him for leaving organizations that were more on the corrupt side or that weren't doing things that he thought they should be doing and abiding by their own rules. However, he's also the one who taught me about profiling, which is a conversation I remember having with him around 9 or 10 years old, maybe earlier than that. And that's just such a racist tactic that has never really sat right with me. And that I adamantly oppose now that I'm older and I have a better understanding of how we as a society, villainize people of color just for existing. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So without getting too far into what is a really, really massive conversation and discussion, the judicial system in this country is absolutely broken, and we statistically arrest convict and give longer incarceration timeframes to people of color. Mike: Yeah. I mean, there's, [00:11:00] that's just a fact. Jessika: It's a fact. There, there are numbers, you can look it up, you know, it's yeah. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So, I know, on that fun note, whatever, I'm such a downer. Mike: That's okay. I should have known better than to start us off on this, you know, really positive note for the episode. Jessika: I already got fired up. I'm already going to have to edit out my mumbling. Mike: That's all right. You know, it's funny because I have to wonder if my uncle actually knew your dad because my uncle was in the same area and works in public safety as well. So, he always did the firefighting and police work as well. My uncle is the guy that I grew up idolizing when I was a kid. He was the cool uncle to me. He taught me the basics of photography. And I worked as a freelance photographer for awhile. He was a forensic specialist dealing with fingerprinting. So you and I [00:12:00] grew up in the 90's in the Bay Area. So Polly Klaas is a name that any, anyone who was here during that time knows, and she was a girl who was kidnapped out of her home, basically just taken while she was having a sleep over with some friends out of her home in Petaluma. And the FBI apparently came in and did a Palm print, but they use some fluorescent powder that the local PD couldn't read, but my uncle had the training and I guess the equipment, I don't quite know all the details, but so he worked the Polly Klaas case. He and my aunt are both retired police and they were both so incredibly cool to me when I was growing up. And I've since had to reckon with the fact that, you know, not all cops are good, and I'd hope that they were great. I hope that they were the bar that other cops were measured against, but who can say it, this. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: So we, we both have connections to law enforcement, and I think it's safe [00:13:00] to say that we're approaching Judge Dredd from a perspective that is influenced both by our backgrounds, as well as the current environment that's going on because we're recording this in June of 2021 when things are still real bad in a lot of ways. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: So now that we've got that highlight out of the way. I'm curious, what was your awareness of Judge Dredd prior to this. Jessika: You know, besides name recognition, I didn't know much about the plot line, other than some vague notion that it was futuristic or post-apocalyptic. So, I came into this super fresh, and I'm super excited to learn more now. Mike: Yeah. So, I definitely have a lot more familiarity with the character. I read some of his stuff in the 90's and 2000's. I would just kind of randomly find things and I thought he was pretty cool. When I was in roller derby, my roller derby name actually wound up being Judge Dreadful. [00:14:00] And so I've since then bought a number of collections. I've read most of the big storylines that they did from the 70's up until the mid-90's. And then I also read one of the more recent American series as well. I've seen all the movies. Dred is still one of my favorite movies of all time, even though we'll talk about that later on, it's got its own issues through today's lens. I guess the best way I can describe myself is: I'm more than a casual fan, but I'm not a diehard fan. Part of it is just because there's so much lore at this point. So, I have an unfair advantage in terms of familiarity, I guess. Sorry. Jessika: No, that's okay. That's why you're hosting this episode. Not me. Mike: Yeah. So, we're going to do some basic background. Dredd was originally created in 1977 for this newly launched comics anthology called 2000 AD. There was this guy, he was an editor named Pat Mills and he brought on a writer that he'd worked with named John Wagner to create new content for this magazine. [00:15:00] And, basically comics, anthology magazines, they were printed on like newspaper stock. They were magazine format. And what it was very kind of, you know, old school pulp magazine, like where it was serial stories usually, or a little one-offs. So it'd be four to five pages, usually of content per story. And then a lot of times they would end on a cliffhanger so that, you know, the readers would come back the next week. And that's generally how British comics have worked. At least that's my understanding of it. That's how a lot of them are. And actually when they were trying to do US style sized comics, supposedly they didn't do as well because they would get covered up basically and overshadowed by the sheer size of these magazines, which were much bigger and flashier. So Wagner came into 2000 AD. He'd had a lot of success writing this Dirty Harry kind of character called One-Eyed Jack for another anthology series called Valiant, and both he and Mills realized that 2000 AD needed [00:16:00] a quote unquote, a hardcore cop character as part of the magazine's content. So, Wagner has since then described, dread as a psycho cop with no feelings. And then he worked with this artist named Carlos Escuera to create the character and then Escuera wound up designing a character who reflected that kind of hardcore, no feelings ideal. He actually died a couple of years ago and the Guardian ran a really, it was really nice ,tribute talking about his accomplishments and his style, but there's this really great quote, which I think you should actually read out. And it gives us a lot of background in a nutshell of Dredd and who he is. Jessika: Escuera started his career drawing war comics in Barcelona before moving to the UK and working for the anthology 2000 AD and others, He brought the iconography of fascist Spain to Dredd's extremely weird and [00:17:00] vivid design and combined it with his experiences of living in Croydon through the 70's and 80's, the punk movement on his doorstep and TV images of policemen, charging striking miners. The Eagle motif and helmet were drawn from fascism, the permanently drawn truncheon from police on the picket line. The zips chains and knee pads from punk. I was living in Franco, Spain, he told an interviewer last year, but also I was living in Mrs. Thatcher's England. Mike: I think that kinda tells us all we need to know about what they're going for with the vibe of Judge Dredd. Jessika: Yeah. No, that, that definitely showed. I was thinking that about the Eagle. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: When they were showing the big building and it was super, everything was just cement and. Mike: Yeah. It's got that brutalist kind of architecture. Yeah. Jessika: Yes. Mike: Yeah. So Dred exists in this world. That's left standing after World War III, and [00:18:00] most of the planet's just been devastated. America is largely uninhabitable, say for a couple of what are called Mega Cities, which are these autonomous city states that housed hundreds of millions of people. At one point in the comics, I think it's up to 800 million and they've had different events where they've kind of knocked it down repeatedly, Jessika: Yikes. Mike: And at one point it got as low as like 120 million or so I think that was kind of after I stopped reading though. But anyway, mega city one was originally going to be a future version of New York City. But that was quickly retconned to that specific part, being some sort of capital area for this urban sprawl that covers most of the Eastern seaboard. And from the get-go, Dredd stories were kind of this extreme form of satire. It was presenting the society where democracy basically failed, and the office of the president of the United States has been retired, and society now runs under this, to be honest, terrifying gaze of the Judges. How would you sum up the [00:19:00] Judges based on what we saw in the movies? Jessika: As a whole, they were pretty robotic and unfeeling. They were doling out the letter of the law as it happened and per their protocol, and their justice is swift and immediate, which is really terrifying. Like you said to imagine. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And what's even scarier is that all crimes were treated the same. You are either sent to a prison called an isopod, or killed right then and there. There was, there were no middle grounds between those points. It was like, you're hauled off then, you serve a sentence, or you're just killed. Mike: Yeah. I mean, that's really not that different from the comics. Jessika: And then, as far as their appearance, as with most uniforms, they dress the same with helmets and body armor and they are just armed to the gills and they look just as scary as they act. Mike: Yeah. And, I think a safe way to describe the system of Mega City [00:20:00] one is to call it authoritarian, but it's just a little bit different than what we normally associate with that term. Jessika: Yeah. I wonder if there's some sort of like a law-tarian like judiciatarion. I don't know, somebody is going to @ me and tell me how stupid I am, but that's fine. I already know. Mike: I like, I like, I liked judicialtarion. I think that's, uh, if that's not a word we should make it one. Jessika: Here we are, TM TM. Mike: Yeah, we're just going to sit back and let the royalties roll in after this. Yeah, but in spite of all this, there's this very weird, dry, British humor that kind of makes the whole narrative a little more palatable. So like one of the early stories is focusing on how robots were doing most of society's work and that's resulted in rampant, unemployment and boredom, so citizens of the mega blocks start engaging in what they call block wars, where neighboring blocks basically just start opening fire on each other because they want something to do. There's another story where the Dark Judges, who [00:21:00] are, they're effectively movie monster versions of the Judges as we know them crossover into Dredd's reality. And then they start slaughtering people, indiscriminately, because all crime is committed by the living. And, thus the sentence for life is death. Jessika: Yikes. Mike: Or, there's also the idea that recycled food is, what they call it, is how they eat these days. But recycled food is actually made from people you know, it's Soylent Green Jessika: Oh, How Soylent Green. Yeah. Mike: Yeah. The Dredd comics always have this kind of underlying tone of absurdity. It's that slight bit of levity that makes this really brutal comic actually pretty enjoyable because it becomes ridiculous. It's a comic of extremes. Over time, the comics gone on to deal with things like Dredd having to resolve how the system that he represents is actually problematic, and it needs some kind of reform. The ramifications of how the push to move back to democracy fails and, [00:22:00] you know, actually fleshing him out as a character who occasionally has feelings, not all the time, but just sometimes. He goes from being kind of a lawful neutral character to a lawful kind of good alignment, like sort of good, kind of, some of the time. There's only so long that you can have a character be a robot for justice, if nothing else before, you know, people are going to sour on them. Jessika: You mean a veritable killing machine? Mike: Yeah. The other thing is that the core Dredd stories haven't really been reset. They're still going from 2000 AD, so at this point we have nearly 50 years of stories that are all canon. And the other thing is that they keep on aging Dredd in realtime. So, at this point he's absurdly old and they hand wave it away by he spends time in the Rejuva-pods or whatever they are. But as a result, he's the same guy who has seen everything that has gone on in the comics. [00:23:00] And as a result, he's matured and changed a bit. And it's kinda neat. So in the UK Dredd's a pretty big deal, but his presence in America isn't quite the same. Like UK comic magazines back then were very different from comics here in the states. So, when they decided to bring them over here across the pond, 2000 AD wound up working with this guy named Nick Landau, who a couple of years earlier had created tightened books to publish comic collections of Judge Dredd in the UK, and then was publishing more collections of other things. Landau had just created Eagle Comics to collect and publish Dredd stories and other 2000 AD stuff. Uh, here in the States in 1983, the Eagle series lasted for about three-ish-is years, and then it moved on to another publisher. And this is pretty much how Dredd existed in the states in the 80's and 90's; a publisher would pick up the rights, and then try to make them click with American readers, and then the [00:24:00] series would get canceled, and then someone else would pick them up and try to do it again. And arguably his most quote unquote mainstream moment was when DC comics published an 18 issue series from 94 to 96. I've only gotten through a couple of these issues and they don't quite bite like the originals. They feel more like an action sci-fi series. Some weird kind of sarcastic humor, but it doesn't quite translate the same way. It feels like a knockoff product, to be honest. I mean, honestly the best American adaptation I've seen is from the 2012 series that IDW did. And that condensed several of the iconic Dredd storylines from the original British run. So they were a little bit more palatable for American audiences, but basically American awareness of the characters generally stayed that level of, oh yeah, that sounds kind of familiar. And then he's never really been a household name, which was what the 1995 movie was trying to change. [00:25:00] Jessika: Yeah, well, it didn't change it for me, but I was also, you know, I was also nine in 1995. So. Mike: *Sigh* I was 14. Jessika: You're only a few years older - you say that like you're 90 now, by the way, every one for the record, Mike is 90. Mike: I am. Jessika: Since he's making a huge deal out of it. Mike: I'm waiting on my Rascal. Scooter Just gonna, just gonna drive through downtown Petaluma with my dogs in my side car. We're all gonna be wearing goggles and flight helmets. And you'll see me go by and just gol “RASCAL!” Jessika: My dude, you can do that now. Mike: Sarah has told me I can't do that yet. We've had this discussion. Jessika: Oh, that's too bad. Mike: Now that we've got the background out of the way, why don't we actually talk about what we're here to talk about? Which is the 1995 Judge Dredd movie. [00:26:00] Jessika: Here we are. Mike: Yeah. Do you remember those TV schedules that used to be in the back of the newspaper, they would show you like A) what was on the air that night and B) provide one sentence summaries of what the movies were? Do you remember those? Jessika: I do because I loved reading those. Mike: I know I did too. How would you summarize Stallone's Judge Dredd, if you were writing it up in that format? Jessika: Oh, need a throat clear for that. In a world where chaos reigns, one man stands between justice and lawlessness. But what happens when the Judge becomes the judged? Find out this Wednesday at 6:00 PM Pacific standard time, 9:00 PM Eastern on Spike TV. I just assume Spike TV would play that. Mike: Spike TV would be all over this. Are you kidding? Jessika: Yeah, no, exactly. That was the first television channel that I thought of that was like, yeah, they would [00:27:00] absolutely have this on like they'd have a Dredd marathon. Mike: God, what an absolute time capsule of a TV channel - is, Spike TV isn't around still, is it? I don't know. Jessika: I have no idea. I was my, my 90's brain just woke up and was like, this is what you say. Mike: God. I remember that was such a mid to late aughts TV channel. It was basically toxic masculinity, the TV channel. Jessika: Yeah. It was, it was either super masculine movies like this, or it was just a game show about people falling all over each other and just laughing at people. Mike: Oh yeah. Was it Most Extreme Challenge? Jessika: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge Yep. As I sit here and I know exactly what it, cause I didn't watch a million episodes of that. Mike: No I'm, that was the only reason that I would turn that fucking channel on. Jessika: Yeah. It's true. My brother and I would roll. Mike: No, so, okay. I just looked it up and we don't need to [00:28:00] actually record the sorry, uh, Paramount Network, formerly Spike, which is still used for the Dutch in Australian feed as an American, but you know, whatever, fuck Jessika: The Australians don't even listen to us. I'm leaving all of this in, and the Australians don't listen to us, yet. Oh God. They're going to listen to us now. And they're going to be like, oy yes we do. I can't, I'm not even going to try, not even to try to do some like, incredibly offensive Australian accent. Mike: No, no, don't do it. Jessika: No, no, I know about it. Mike: Okay. Let's go for an actual movie summary now. Jessika: Sure set in a, oh, sorry. Regular voice, Jessika. Set in a dystopian future complete with a densely populated metropolis and flying cars, order is dictated and carried out by people called Judges, whose job is to convict, judge, and punish those moving outside of the law. The punishments [00:29:00] are severe, being jailed or even killed for their transgressions. Stallone, who plays Judge Joseph dread is seemingly one of the most feared and respected judges until he is framed by a maniacal and presumed to be dead ex-judge Rico. Dredd has to prove his innocence in order to continue providing his particular brand of justice. Oh, and how can I forget about Rob Schneider? Whose main role in this film was to say Dredd's named really loudly. So they would get caught when they were trying to be covert. I mean, at least that's how it felt. Mike: Yeah, whenever I talk about this movie, I always sit there and reference how Robert Schneider is the worst choice to provide, you know, it's not even comic relief. It's like air quotes, comic relief. Schneider was really big at that time. Like, he had just come out of SNL and I never found them really to be all that funny. But, this was like at the [00:30:00] start of his whole 90's. I don't know. What would you call that movement? Jessika: God, it was like the stupid humor movement. Mike: Yeah, it was that Adam Sandler. Jessika: I talk like I'm a baby. Adam Sandler. I can deal with, to a certain extent. There are some movies, I'm just like, whatever, but I've liked him in some things even, but I feel like Will Ferrell is a result of Adam Sandler. I feel like Adam Sandler, birthed will Ferrell and I'm not happy about it. I do not like Will Farrell Mike: Man, I. Jessika: @ me Will Ferrell. I do not like you. Mike: Just watch, he's going to like angrily tweet and then we're going to get a bunch of, you know, I guess, angry gen X-ers I'll all up in our DMS. Jessika: OPress? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that bad press wasn't just good press also, because it is. Mike: Yeah. And I mean, this was before Schneider was given starring [00:31:00] roles in movies like Deuce Bigalow, which I have yet to see a Rob Schneider movie that I don't find absolutely abhorrent for a number of reasons. Yeah. Jessika: Especially in retrospect. Mike: Yeah. I mean, he's not offensive in this movie, he's just not very funny and kind of useless, even though he's supposed to be the plucky comic sidekick, which, I mean, this was part of that era of buddy action cop movies, except just in a different setting. Jessika: Yeah. I don't know. It was just very grating. The humor Mike: Yeah. , Jessika: And forced. Mike: Yeah. So, your summary is spot on. There's also detours into the Cursed Earth where Dredd is wrongfully convicted. And then, this is something where they diverged from the comic lore, but they're traveling to the penal colony in Aspen, when actually the penal colonies are all off-world. So it's, you basically get sent there for hard labor, off-planet and it's not exactly described what, and then he has to come back from the Cursed Earth, after dealing with the [00:32:00] cannibalistic Angel Gang. And then there's the reveal that he's a clone, which at this point in time is not really a big deal. Like, everybody knows it in the lore and yeah, we get a climactic battle at the statue of Liberty. Also, Joan Chen shows up for no real reason other than to be a woman for Diane Lane to fight. Jessika: Yeah, exactly. Mike: But yeah, it's not a great movie. Jessika: No, no. Mike: But there are parts of it that I still really enjoy. Sarah and I wound up watching it together and all of the practical, special effects that they did are still so good and they look so good. And, and honestly the action scenes are pretty decent for, you know, a mid 90's movie, even where there's that bit with the flying motorcycles, where they're being chased and they knock off one of the Judges chasing them that bit, where he's falling into the bottomless abyss of Mega City looked [00:33:00] really good and I couldn't help, but think of Ninja Turtles 3, where on the other hand, the bad guy getting knocked off into the ocean looks like garbage. Jessika: Yeah, no, that, I was really impressed by that. Especially considering the timeframe it was in. Mike: Yeah. So this movie really tried to smash together a lot of those classic Dredd moments from the comic book. And it was trying to basically create something new while giving fans a lot of nods that they would appreciate. The funny thing is that it was really focusing on the story of Rico Dredd after he comes back from serving his prison time, but in the comic, he only shows up for a one-shot serial story. If I remember right where he comes back from serving prison time in a colony on Saturn's moon of Titan. So if I remember this, right, he's just this kind of one-off character who shows up pretty early in the Dredd stories. Like, I, [00:34:00] I don't think the Dredd stories had even been published for a year by that point. It's like the 30th issue or so, and then he's shot down by Dredd in a duel and the whole, the logic behind it is that he tries to get the drop on Dredd, but his reactions are slower because he's been operating in lower gravity for a while. Jessika: Interesting, but he's still supposed to be a clone, right? Mike: Yeah, he's he, it's originally noted that he's Dredd's brother. And then there's the whole club thing that, that shows up later on and all that, but he also looks way different from Armand Assante in the movie, I'm sending you an image, you can take a quick look and see what Rico Dredd looks like after his prison time in the comic. Jessika: Oh, you would not get those two confused. Mike: Yeah. It's um. Jessika: This guy's got this, guy's like a metal face. Now he's got a nice little head band with probably a laser coming out the top. And then he's got like, no nose any longer. He's just got metal over his nose. There's metal stuff going into his mouth. And like [00:35:00] half of his face just doesn't have skin anymore. And you can tell one of his eyes is blind. It's pretty wild. His hair is all crazy. He's not having a good hair day. It's a look. Mike: It's a look. Yeah. So the whole idea is that when you get shipped off to these colonies, you are basically surgically modified to survive in the environment. Jessika: Oh. Mike: Yeah. So, definitely not what we got in the movie. Jessika: No. You had a guy that actually looked a lot like Stallone. They did a pretty good job of that, if they were going for lookalikes. Mike: Yeah. They were both very fit dudes who had those very strong chin lines. And then they also gave them cosmetic contact lenses so that they would actually have blue eyes, which is why. Jessika: That's what I thought. Mike: When you look at Stallone, you're like, mm, pretty sure God didn't make those eyes. That color. Jessika: Yeah. It's not so bad from certain angles, but other ones you're like, wow, Snowpiercer what's up. Mike: Yeah, it looks [00:36:00] very weird when you're, especially when you're watching it in high-def these days, it looks unnatural. I'm not sure how it would look on a TV or in a movie theater in 1995. I'm a little curious because I didn't get to see it. I was too young to go see an R-rated movie back then, womp womp. But yeah, so likewise, the character of Hershey, who is Diane Lane's character, she first appeared in a 1980 story called the Judge Child, which is this it's this cool thing where it starts off as a road trip across the Cursed Earth, and the Angel Gang who we see in the movie shows up, and then it becomes this weird space opera as Dredd winds up chasing after the Angel Gang and the kidnapped Judge Child across multiple star systems, which again, talking about the weird absurdity of Judge Dredd. So, it's weird to see her in this movie because I always associate Diane Lane with Under the Tuscan Sun. I mean, I've never even seen that movie, but that's just always what I [00:37:00] think of when I see her. Jessika: Oh, same. I definitely see her in an Italian villa and I have not seen that either. Mike: Yeah. Although she did play Superman's mom in the DCEU. Jessika: Oh yeah. Mike: So there was that, her finest role, you know, when she gets sad about Superman with Lois Lane, and then it turns out to be a Martian green dude. Jessika: We're going to have so many movie stars, not happy with us. Mike: I know. Jessika: They'll just be crying in all of their money. It's fine. Mike: Oh, no two lame nerds on the internet were mean to me. I just, uh. Jessika: My nightmare. Mike: They made vaguely negative remarks about me. All right. Jessika: Oh, let me use this 50 to dry my tears. Mike: Anyway. Yeah, so [00:38:00] Diane Lane shows up in Judge Dredd, and she's like way more of a damsel in distress and then weirdly a romantic interest for Dredd than anything else. And that was really bizarre to see, because with the hindsight of the comics, that character in Dredd A) Hershey is like a bad-ass cop. She is a hardcore street Judge. But she and Dredd actually have often had kind of an antagonistic relationship based on differing perspectives about how the justice system should operate. Jessika: Oh, interesting. Mike: Yeah. And eventually, she goes on to be the Chief Judge. Jessika: Oh, good for her. Mike: Yeah, you know, she busted through that glass ceiling. Jessika: Man. It just took, you know, going through a third world war, ladies, this is what we have to look forward to. Just wait for the flying motorcycles. We'll be there. Mike: Well, you know, you don't have to cook because we're just recycling people at that point. So, you know, frees up a lot of time. [00:39:00] Jessika: Oh, perfect. Mike: You don't have to, don't have to stand in the kitchen and make all of us men folk roasts all day. Jessika: Oh, perfect. Well, dang. What will I do? Mike: Okay. overthrow the patriarchy, I guess. Jessika: Let's do it. Mike: Yeah. And then additionally, you know, Dredd himself was pretty different from what we had in the comics. The movie violated this key component of the character by spending a lot of time focused on Dredd out of uniform, which means that we got to see his face. And it's such a known thing that this is not something that Dredd does, but it's actually one of the first points in Dreads, Wikipedia article, if you would be so kind. Jessika: Sure. Dredd's entire face is never shown in the strip. This began and is an unofficial guideline, but soon became a rule. As John Wagner explained, it sums up the facelessness of justice. [00:40:00] Justice has no soul, so it isn't necessary for readers to see Dredd's face. And I don't want you to. Mike: Which I mean, I think that's actually a really cool defining aspect of the character. Jessika: And it's always scarier if you can't see what you're fighting. Mike: Yeah. Agreed. Jessika: I mean, that's basic horror film rule, you know, it's always scarier if you can't see what's chasing you. Mike: Yeah. I kind of equate it to the recent Alien movie that they did. Alien Isolation, where they explained the origin for the alien species. And I was sitting there and going, there is nothing that you could tell me that would be worse than what I come up with in my mind when you've got a really nebulous origin. Jessika: Exactly. Mike: And then I watched the movie and I was like, that's dumb. I'm going back to my original design. I like that better. Jessika: Yeah. It's like Signs was really scary until they brought that stupid alien life being in. And then I was like, well, there it goes. Mike: Yeah. [00:41:00] Curse you, Shamaylan! Judge Dredd is one of those movies where when you watch it, it feels like the people that were involved with making it really had a lot of fun, and were really passionate about what they were doing. Like I've got the making-of book, and you can actually see the set that they built basically on a patch of farmland that became the street for Mega City One. And it's crazy. It wound up having hundreds of neon signs after they built it. It looked like a living, breathing street from this strange city in the future. It was really cool. And likewise, there's that ABC warrior robot that we get to see a couple of times who looks absolutely incredible. And the costume designs are really cool. They don't quite work because you know, it's spandex, but it's very faithful to the comic. And, even the final scenes in the Statue of Liberty where you're in the lab and you've got all those clones being grown, I don't quite understand why the clones are [00:42:00] mostly grown, but we can still see their intestines, but they look really cool. Jessika: I agree. Yeah. Mike: That said, the movie had a lot of production problems. And in fact, it actually had to get re-cut and submitted to the NPAA five times in order to get just an R rating down from an NC 17. Jessika: Dang. Mike: And by the way, we need to talk about the fact that this movie is rated R and if you watch it, it does not feel like an R rated movie. It feels like maybe a PG 13 movie at this point, maybe. Jessika: Maybe, I mean, and that would just be for the violence, Mike: I mean, yeah, but, compared to what gets rated PG 13 these days? Jessika: Yes. Mike: I think if I remember right, one of the Aliens vs Predator movies, maybe both of them are rated PG 13 and they're way more violent and gory. Jessika: Really? Wow. Mike: I mean, I could be completely wrong. Jessika: Who rates these movies? I mean, not a real question. We don't need to get into that, but that's wild to me. Mike: We'll go on a very tiny side tangent, but. Highly recommend you watch the movie. This [00:43:00] film is not yet rated, which talks about the NPAA and the ratings board and how weird and secretive it is. And just a how dumb and arbitrary their system is. Jessika: I might watch that tonight. Mike: It's great. I highly recommend it. So there was an interview with Steven D'Souza, who was the guy who actually wrote the script for Judge Dredd. e was talking to Den of Geek, he shed some light on how the movies, problematic production wound up leading to this mess that we wound up receiving, if you would be so kind. Jessika: Why sure. Judge Dredd was actually supposed to be a PG 13 movie, the production company at the time, Synergy, they were having some financial troubles, so they didn't have any UK executives on location in England. And in their absence, the director, Danny Cannon, wanting to make it true to the comic book, was making everything more and more and [00:44:00] more violent. So when the movie was delivered to be cut, it was rated X and it was rated X four times. They say you can't appeal after four, four is all you get. Somehow the producer, Ed Pressman, managed one more time to get it rated R which actually wasn't a victory because this was supposed to be PG 13. They had made a deal with Burger King, oop. I think, and a toy company. And you can't advertise toys for an R-rated movie and no hamburger plays, wants toys for an R-rated movie. So they hamburger people and the toy people turned around and sued Disney, the distributor whoop. Mike: Hmm. Oops. Jessika: Well, Disney then said, we'll take this out of the director's hide because he signed a piece of paper saying he would deliver a PG 13, but Synergy who was releasing it through Disney at that point had never done [00:45:00] anything, but an R-rated movie, nobody in the entire company had ever had the experience of putting that piece of paper in front of a director. So they had to pay him. They couldn't withhold his salary for violating a legal promise they never asked him to make. Mike: I kind of love that. Jessika: Blunders. Mike: Yeah. That interview also notes that the scene where the reporter gets killed by Rico and he's framing Dredd. It was way more violent and gory, and it looked like something out of Robocop. And then additionally, there was the bit where Rico tells his robot to tear off the arms and legs of the council of five Judge that he's been working with. And he says, rip off his arms and legs and then save his head for last. And so it was originally supposed to be a scene where basically it cuts away to Rico walking away or something like that or shadows or something, and then you just hear the screams and that's it. But [00:46:00] apparently they made a full animatronic robot that had the arms and legs actually getting ripped off and like spewing blood. Jessika: Yikes, no. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Guys. Mike: Yeah. So this was clearly one of those things desires were not clearly communicated. So Stallone gave an interview to Uncut Magazine in 2008. And he talked about a bunch of the things that, that went wrong with that movie, including this weird story about Danny Cannon, where he said, I knew we were in for a long shoot when for no explainable reason, Danny Cannon, who's rather diminutive, jumped down from his director's chair and yelled to everyone within earshot. Fear me, everyone should fear me. Then jumped back up to his chair as if nothing happened. The British crew was taking bets on his life expectancy. Jessika: Yikes. Yeah, the guy's going to give himself a coronary. Holy moly. Mike: It reminds [00:47:00] me a little bit of the stories that were coming out of the Suicide Squad set. Jessika: Oh. Yeah, I'm hearing more and more stories of just things that actors are being put through on set, and it's just, I don't care who you are, you shouldn't have to deal with this bullshit while you're working. Mike: I don't envy them. Jessika: Yeah, I don't either. I mean, there has to be ways that doesn't hurt people to entertain us. Mike: Yeah. Back onto this topic of Judge Dredd itself, it was this movie that costs $95 million and that's in 1995. So adjusting for inflation, that's roughly $190 million in 2021 dollars. Jessika: Whew. Mike: For reference there's a bunch of MCU flicks that when adjusting for that inflation costs less than Judge Dredd did. The R rating in turn, and kind of the lackluster end product, resulted in $113 million at the box office worldwide. And that was a lot less than Stallone, and really everyone else, was hoping for, [00:48:00] they were legit hoping that this was going to be just a blowout success story, and they could make a franchise out of it. So we've already talked about how they were trying to make this into something that they can market to kids. And we still got some products that show that was the plan. There were a couple of associated products, like a junior novelization, and a comic adaptation of the movie from DC comics itself. And then a video game that's actually, it's not bad. It's like a side scroller and the movie story ends about, I think, halfway through. And then you go on to a bunch of different worlds and end up fighting those Dark Judges that I was talking about earlier, which is kinda cool. Yeah. It's fine. But anyway, none of these tie-in products really seemed to land. How did you feel about this film overall? I'm curious. Jessika: Is it bad to say a came across as a little cheesy? Mike: No, not at all. [00:49:00] Jessika: Like a nice wholly Swiss cheese. There were some mega plot holes that were very apparent. That kind of took me out of the experience saying that a lot this episode, but way to go guys. And it made me really overthink aspects of the storyline. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Like the whole, how did you not know where were clones? Did you not accidentally ever pick up the other person's gone and we're like, why can't I use this? If you have the DNA testing, it just, it didn't make a lot of sense. And how can you sequence two different guns if you only have one sequence of DNA? I don't get that either. Mike: Yeah. Part of that is just because it was 1995. DNA was still like a really hot topic for plots. It was new science. It was really exciting. I mean. Jessika: That's fair. Mike: We were in the throws of the OJ Simpson trial, and so DNA evidence was a really big thing there, but yeah. Jessika: Hot button item. You're right, I think, buzzword. Mike: And so that kind of goes into the whole [00:50:00] idea of clones as well, but that's an established plot line of Dredd itself. But I mean, like I remember, there's a bit where they focus on the flying Law Master motorcycle and they say, well, if you can ever get it to work, it will be yours. And they bust out and then there's several other flying Law Masters chasing after them. Jessika: Well, when they're talking about those motorcycles, I think they're trying to liken them to really bad quality, government issue, like these things are a piece of shit, but you can probably get em into the air, and have the worst model sitting there for the newbies to fuck around with. But I don't know, that's that was my takeaway from it just because I also remember, not that the cars are bad necessarily, the police cars, but it's like, they're stripped down to nothing, they're just like a car. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: None of the fancy shit. Mike: Yeah. Those, those good old Crown Vics. Jessika: Oh Yeah. And I think that part of it for me was the serious scenes, like the courtroom scene, especially mix in Rob Schneider in any of [00:51:00] those situations. And it was just a little much. Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Stallone played it really straight and really intense and it doesn't quite work. It feels almost like a high school drama production where you're watching those kids onstage, they're acting too hard. They've turned their acting dials up to 11 and you're like, okay buddy, we needed it like a seven. Jessika: I'm just imagining a man, like a child on stage, shaking. His arm is shaky. He's got a skull in his head and he was just screaming out lines from Hamlet. You're like, ooh, buddy, calm down. Mike: Yeah. Yurick can't hear you Hamlet. He's already dead. I think it's okay. Jessika: Womp womp. Mike: Yeah. My take on it, aside from the fact that it's a little bit too faithful and too earnest is that this reminds me of that situation where you take a bunch of different ingredients that you think are going to taste amazing and you've slapped them together into a sandwich. And then you realize the combination doesn't work, but yet you end up eating it anyway. [00:52:00] Jessika: Been there. Mike: Like, we talked about the sets, the makeup, the costumes, even the special effects, those are all great, but the script and then Stallone's performance really kind of do it a disservice, and even Sly has acknowledged that the movie missed the mark. So that earlier interview that I mentioned with Uncut Magazine, he had a really great point where he talks about how it didn't work. Jessika: I loved that property when I read it, because it took a genre that I love what you could term the action morality film, and made it a bit more sophisticated. It had political overtones. It showed how, if we don't curb the way we run our judicial system, the police may end up running our lives. It dealt with archaic governments. It dealt with cloning and all kinds of things that could happen in the future. It was also bigger than any film I've done in its physical stature and the way it was designed, all the people were dwarfed by the system and the architecture. It shows how insignificant [00:53:00] human beings could be in the future. There's a lot of action in the movie and some great acting, too. It just wasn't balls to the wall. But I do look back on Judge Dredd as a real missed opportunity. It seemed that lots of fans had a problem with Dredd removing his helmet because he never does in the comic books. But for me, it is more about wasting such great potential there was in that idea, just think of all the opportunities there were to do interesting stuff with the Cursed Earth scenes. It didn't live up to what it could have been. It probably should have been much more comic, really humorous and fun. What I learned out of that experience was that we shouldn't have tried to make it Hamlet. It's more Hamlet and eggs. That's so funny that I brought up Hamlet! I didn't read ahead. Mike: I was laughing about that actually. Yeah. And I mean, he's not wrong. I think he played it too straight and too serious. And they also tried to make it an action buddy comedy [00:54:00] movie, which it just, it doesn't quite work. Like the, the tone with Dredd is you have to walk a really fine line. They didn't stick to it this time. Yeah. I feel like it was trying to be extremely faithful to the source material, which always walked this very fine line tonally, and then it blew past it to create something that's just it's way too earnest. And over the top, it kind of reminded me of Jupiter Ascending. If you remember that movie. Jessika: I do. Mike: Yeah. It's this movie that has crazy high production values, a pretty great cast actually, and a really big story. And then it all combines into something that's honestly kind of underwhelming. Jessika: And forgettable, cause I kind of forget what that whole plot line of that movie is. And I think I've seen it twice cause I was like, I don't think I've seen this before. And I sat through the whole thing again. It's one of those movies. Mike: I just remember a lot of shirtless Channing Tatum and. Jessika: Oh, yeah, he wasn't at sea. I don't even know. Mike: Yeah. Do you have any more thoughts before we move on to [00:55:00] the 2012 remake kind of, it's not really a remake. It's just the 2012 movie. Jessika: No let's Rob Schneider, our way out of this. Mike: I'm not sure I liked that verb. Jessika: I was using it as: do something really stupid to get out of a situation. And I think I did it just by saying that. Mike: All right. How would you describe this movie? Give it, give another quick summary. Jessika: Mega City One. The future. There are still flying cars, but less of them. In a packed city rife with violence, Judge Joseph Dredd is assessing a new potential recruit to the force. This recruit isn't like the others. However, she is psychic; a mutant! In answering their first call, they inadvertently get themselves involved in a large scale drug operation and have to kill or be killed in order to survive. This film has no sympathy for innocent bystanders, who are killed by the dozens each [00:56:00] scene. And the Judges are swift to kill any who might oppose them. They finally escape using their wits and these psychic's ability, all while taking down a drug ring. Ta-da, all in a day's work. Mike: Dread came out right around the same time, I think a little bit after, as this movie out of, I think Thailand called The Raid. Which it's about a police force. That's basically working their way up through a skyscraper. And it's another really intense action movie. It's got really kick-ass action scenes. It's really good. And the sad thing is it's just that and Dredd have a similar plot based on that, but it's also very different. So there were a lot of unfair comparisons to that at the time. Jessika: I see. Mike: How do you feel this movie compares with the Stallone one? Jessika: It was definitely more serious and more bloody, for sure. It really leaned into the death and carnage aspect [00:57:00] becoming more and more creative and destructive as the film progressed. Like was it strictly necessary to aim towards and blow up an entire floor of a densely inhabited building? I dunno. It was kind of hard to watch some times, it was pretty graphic. I did like that it took on a more serious tone though. And I think the reason that it's so hard to watch for me is more for the social implications. Like, when the film made it clear that vagrancy could carry a similar sentence to other more serious crimes. Mike: Right? Jessika: Which was really wild. Mike: Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like it did a lot more subtle world-building with moments like that, or when they're describing the Mega Block that they're investigating and it's noted that there's only a 3% employment rate. It's weird because it's such a violent movie and don't get me wrong, I think the action scenes are just incredible. They look great. But at the same time, it's a more [00:58:00] subtle movie in a lot of ways than the Stallone one was. Jessika: Yeah. Definitely it's scarier. Like the idea of it is more, it seems more real and in your face, and for me, it definitely put a spotlight on how scary policing can be to targeted groups. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And this might be an extreme example, but how extreme is it really? Mike: Yeah. And it's interesting because you and I talked about this before, this is a movie that is very, it's very binary with its morals. Like there's only the good guys and the bad guys. This isn't this, isn't one of those movies where you sit there and you watch it and are really given a lot of moral things to consider. There's not a lot of philosophy here, but it doesn't sit there and say that Dredd and the Judges themselves are in the right. It's basically showing that there is a force who is basically the gang that is running the apartment block that they are in, which is headed up by a fucking terrifying Lena Headey and A), [00:59:00] they really uglied her up. Which, I was actually really impressed. I didn't recognize her because this came out right after game of Thrones had just had its first season. I think maybe its second season had hit, but I mean what a stark contrast between her in the mama role and then Cersei Lannister. Jessika: Stark. I like what you did there. Mike: Hey, was totally intentional. Or that was totally, that was totally intentional. I totally did that on purpose. Jessika: Okay. Mike: Like I said, there is no wiggle room. They sit there and they basically say no, this woman is a monster, and she does need to be taken down. You know, to the movies credit, the judges, don't really mow down innocent bystanders, it's all the thing of, no, they're going up against bad guys who have guns and are trying to kill them. But at the same time, it does also acknowledge how they aren't completely in the right either. Like there's a scene where they take shelter in an apartment. And Olivia Thirlby's character reads the mind of this woman who they're basically holding up to give them shelter for a few minutes. [01:00:00] And she realizes that, oh, this woman's baby daddy is one of the gang members that they just killed a few minutes ago. Jessika: She herself had killed that guy. Mike: Yeah. And I appreciated that. There are those moments where it takes a more mature look at, maybe everything that's going on isn't great. And then there's that moment at the end where Anderson sits there and talks about how, when she lets the hacker character go, because she realizes that he is just as much of a victim as a lot of the other people in the block are, even though he's been aiding Ma Ma. Jessika: Yeah. And then I like how Dread tries to call her on it. She's like, I've made the judgment. He's a victim. Mike: Yeah. And I thought that was great. Also, that actor is the guy who played General Hux in the Star Wars movies that we got recently. Jessika: I thought I recognized him and I could not place him, and I was too lazy to go on IMDB. Mike: But yeah, thought it was a much more, it's weird to call that movie subtle, but I felt like there were a lot of nice little subtle moments in it. [01:01:00] And I really liked how A) Ma Ma was a genuinely frightening villain, especially because you never see her flying off the handle or being over the top or anything like that. She delivers everything with this really kind of scary, calm, in which we see in the first few minutes, when she tells her officer to skin, some guys who were selling drugs on her territory without her permission. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: And then the order is given after they've been skinned, to be given hits of slow-mo, which is the drug throughout the movie that slows down perceptions of time. So they were thrown off the top story of this apartment block. And basically they have this long, awful, painful plummet into the courtyard below. Jessika: God, that's gotta be so terrifying. Mike: And that really set the tone for who we were dealing with, which I thought was incredibly effective. Jessika: I thought they did such a nice job on the cinematography on that, by the way, when they did those scenes with the slow-mo and they [01:02:00] had it kind of shimmery and they put you in the mindset of the person having used the slow-mo, and I thought that was such a good technique. Mike: So yeah, and the whole thing was that they released this movie in 3D. So, you can tell that those scenes were filmed specifically for 3D cinematography. Jessika: That makes so much sense. Mike: I actually saw this movie opening night in the theaters and A) I remember tweeting about it and saying that movie was way too good for the theater to be that empty on a Friday night. But I remember that was the first, and really that's the only time, I've ever enjoyed a movie in 3D because I felt the 3d actually added something as opposed to just being a cheap gimmick to ring an extra couple of bucks out of my wallet. Jessika: That's usually how I feel about it. Mike: Yeah. But I liked how Olivia Thirlby's character Judge Anderson was actually way less of a damsel in distress than Diane Lane's character Judge Hersey. And then on top of that, a lot of the [01:03:00] superhero movies rely on that whole female heroes have to fight female villains trope that it always feels like they don't get to participate in the end boss battle. And I thought it was really cool how Anderson wound up using her powers to A) escape, her captors, B) actually rescue Dredd, and then C) really be a giant aid to him throughout the movie. She felt like a viable, real character as opposed to just kind of, window trim. Jessika: Yeah. Agreed. I was nodding vigorously when you were talking about that, because I am an absolute agreement. I was a little worried when she first got captured, cause I was like, oh, here we go, so fucking typical. But then when she was actually using her powers and she was getting out of the situation herself, it was like, okay, fine. You got this. You're fine. Mike: Yeah. On top of that, the intro to the movie we get is so tight and efficient. And aside from the intro where we get a chase scene, where we see slow-mo and effect, we see how brutal Dredd is himself. We also get [01:04:00] the intro to Anderson, where she's demonstrating her powers by basically reading the mind of Dredd from behind a two way mirror. And there's that great line about like, oh, well, you know, there's another Judge with you. He's male. I sense control and anger and then something, something more something. And then the judge cuts her off just like, that's enough, that's fine. And I'm like, cool. So we've got a really good summary of who Dredd himself is. Okay. We get it now. This is all we need. Jessika: Yeah. It was a really good narrative tool. I did like that. Mike: Yeah. And then, in the comics, Anderson actually won is a pretty big ally of dread himself. And she's also never romantic interest, but she winds up being key to defeat those monster movie versions of the Judges. And actually, it's been a little while since I read this, but if I remember right when she first confronts Judge Death, who is the leader of the Dark Judges, she winds up, trapping him inside her own mind because he's this psychic entity. And so I was really happy that they took a strong character and [01:05:00] kept her really strong. Jessika: It's good to hear that she also had a really strong role within the comics. Mike: And then the other thing is that I kind of liked how they had Dredd himself be a little bit more subtle. Like, Hey, we never haven't take off his helmet, which I thought was great. And I thought Karl urban, I mean, how did you feel about Karl Urban as Dredd compared to him? Jessika: I thought he was great. And I think I, it would've made less sense if he had taken off his helmet just as far as the character goes. And honestly, I think in this situation, there wasn't much room for him as a character to have his helmet off because they were pretty in a battle mode. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: The whole movie, truly, except for the introductory first few minutes. Mike: Yeah. And I liked the bit where, so Anderson loses her helmet pretty early on and Dredd actually calls her out on it. And he says, you're not wearing your helmet. And she goes, oh, well, the helmet interferes with my psychic abilities and you just go solo bullet and then that's it. That's Jessika: Yup. Mike: I thought that was great. Jessika: Yup. He'll give her the advice he will give, but he's not going to [01:06:00] tell her to do it, which I thought was good. Mike: Yeah. I'm curious. We're going to get to this in a minute about like how it is through the 2021 line. But did you enjoy the movie? Jessika: I think for me, because I'm such an empath, it was a little bit too much innocent blood death. Mike: Okay. Jessika: Even just like, they didn't need to kill the vagrant, it, that was a very like, oh, the gates closed. And the Vagrant just happened to be sitting there and he got squashed and they both kind of looked at it like, well, guess we don't have to deal with that. And I was like, well, fucking hell guys, come on. Mike: Yeah. And I mean, at the same time, from my perspective, and I understand where you were coming from with this, but from my perspective, it was kind of the embodiment of that weird absurdist, gallows humor that is often prese

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Issue 07: Marvel's Christian Comics (Part 1 of 2)

Play Episode Listen Later May 27, 2021 46:12

Alright, everybody. Gather round. It's time we talked about how Marvel tried to get right with Jesus. Twice. ----more---- Episode 7 Transcription [00:00:00] Mike: is there anything more offensive than lazy comic books? Welcome to Tencent takes the podcast where we apologize for comic books ends one issue at a time. My name is Mike Thompson and I am joined as always by my co-host, the celebrated comedian, Jessika Frazer. Jessika: Hello. Hello. Mike: How are you doing? Jessika: Oh, I'm pretty good, wild week, but I mean, we have comics to go with. Mike: Comics make everything better. Jessika: It's true. Mike: If you're new to the show, the purpose of this podcast is to look at comics in ways that are both fun and informative. We want to look at their coolest, weirdest and silliest moments, as well as examine how they're [00:01:00] woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history. Today, we’re venturing out of our fool's paradise and checking out how Marvel tried to get right with Jesus through not one, but two runs of Christian comics. Jessika: Gawd, you almost wished they had stopped. Mike: It’s a ride. Jessika: It's such a ride. Mike: Before we get started though, Jess, what is one cool thing that you've read or watched lately? Jessika: Well, I am very excited about what I'm about to share. And I was recently at my local comic shop and grabbed the first copy and started a subscription for the comic Alice in Leatherland by Iolanda Zanfardino and Elisa Romboli and published through Black Mask Entertainment. Mike: Oh, Black Mask is awesome. They're a smaller imprint, but they were super supportive of local shops when the lockdown happened. Jessika: Oh, that's lovely. I'm really glad I supported them then. Mike: Yeah. I, if I remember right, Brian’s, our [00:02:00] local shop in Petaluma, they did a deal where Brian's was talking about it, and basically they had, if you did a direct order from them, they would split the revenue 50, 50, as long as you provided the name of the local shop. Jessika: Oh, that's so nice. Mike: Yeah, they're rad. I really liked them a lot. Jessika: I already really liked this comic. I mean, I'm one issue in. Mike: Yeah. I haven't heard of it. Jessika: Oh, it's amazing. It's queer. You know, I love me some queer content. It's emotional. The animation style right now is monochromatic and detailed. So I'm interested to see if the color vibe continues that way, or if it goes in another direction, kind of, as the story continues. Mike: Okay. Jessika: The storyline seems like it's going to take us on a really fun sex and kink positive adventure, and I'm excited to see what the next issue brings us. Mike: That sounds really cool. Jessika: Yeah. What about you? Mike: Well, I have not been reading new comics, it’s kind of the opposite of [00:03:00] that. I finally got my old comic collection from my parents' house and I've been digging through it for the past couple of days. Jessika: Nice. Mike: Yeah, it's, it's a time capsule. And it's also, it's, it's a lot of fun to see what I was reading and also cringe a little bit, but also see that in some cases I had really good taste and that collection is appreciated better than some people's stock portfolios, I’m sure. So that was kind of cool to find the first appearance of Bain in the middle of the box. Jessika: Oh, that's cool. So you curated that collection, it wasn't like things that were kind of given to you or was it a combination? Mike: It was a little bit of both. But I mean, I started, I started really collecting comics when I was about nine or 10, and so it was, it was several long boxes. So, you know, the first appearance of He-Man was in there as well. And then, one of the things that I actively collected was a comic series called X, and it was from Dark Horse in the early 1990s. So. [00:04:00] Dark Horse was using this in a couple of other books to launch their shared superhero universe. And X was this really interesting take on a Batman kind of figure. He was this character who would mark criminals with an X. If you crossed him, you'd receive a slash across your face as a warning, or you'd be marked for death with a full X. So. Jessika: Damn. Mike: Yeah. A large part part of the character is the mystery around him and his abilities and the writers weren't afraid to let it stay a mystery for the most part. It's very much one of those, you know, grim and gritty nineties books, but it's also pretty good on the reread. It doesn't quite age as well as, as I would hope it would. But for the most part, it's really fun. Jessika: That's great. It's always nice. When things meet your expectations, most of the way. Mike: Most of the way. Jessika: On the reread. Mike: I'm not embarrassed to like 80% of what came across. Jessika: I dig that. [00:05:00] Mike: Well, after our last episode, I found myself thinking of weird Christian comics that I've come across and I realized I actually have some in my collection. So I started digging, and then I wound up digging some more, and it turns out Marvel had two different runs of very different comics for Christian audiences. And this is a first for us, we’re going to do this as a two-part episode. So we're going to talk about the first run tonight, but we're also going to talk around some of the background with Marvel and religion. Jessika: I'm so excited for this. You have no idea. I've been thinking about it all week as I've been reading these again, bananagrams comics, but like bananagrams in a totally different way than the last ones we read. Mike: It's a very mixed bag this time around. Jessika: Ooh, scary mixed. Mike: Yeah, Marvel and the Bible never really had a strong relationship, although ,they've done some flirtation every now and then. Back [00:06:00] in 1953 Atlas, which is the publisher that would become Marvel eventually, they had a short-lived series called Bible Tales for Young Folk, which adapted iconic stories from the Bible for younger readers, but it only ran for five issues. So I'm gonna put that in a little bit of perspective: comics circulation in the 1950s was still incredibly high, partially due to the fact that televisions weren't as commonplace as they would be by the end of the decade. Do you remember when our first episode I mentioned, that only 9% of us households had TVs at the start of the decade versus 90% by the end? Jessika: Yes. Yeah, I do remember that. Mike: Yeah. So I came across an article that actually talks about the average comic sales per month in 1959. What do you think that number was like what the average circulation of comic books, the entire market. Jessika: 1959. Well, gosh, they had comics that they were sending through the army and everything. Gawd, it had to have been in the millions. Mike: Yeah, 26 million. [00:07:00] Jessika: Wow, wow wow wow. Mike: So it was, it was pretty substantial, and the fact that a comic series based on the Bible only sold well enough to last five issues during that insane circulation period is pretty telling about what kids were and weren't interested in reading. But anyway, overt at Christian iconography and characters generally haven't appeared in Marvel's books too often. Certain characters like Daredevil and Nightcrawler are strongly defined by their respective Christianities, but it's generally just treated as faith. It's not identified as the quote true religion. And Marvel's actually made a good point in recent years of setting up a complex Pantheon of gods, so it makes it seem like there's no wrong religion to follow. Side note though, one of my favorite comic details is that Dr. Doom had a recent confrontation with Dracula and he revealed he had splinters of the true cross in his armor as a vampire deterrent. I thought that was just chef's [00:08:00] kiss. Jessika: Oh, wow. Mike: It was great. Jesus himself never really appeared in mainstream Marvel books though. There's been occasional messages or sometimes you'll see the iconography or occasionally there'll be cameos as well. But honestly, the most notable appearance that I'm aware of was in the 1970s with Ghost Rider. In the 1970s Ghost Rider comic, when a mysterious character only identified as a friend shows up to save Ghost Rider on occasion. It was very clearly meant to be Jesus, but this character was eventually retconned to be an illusion created by the demon Maphisto. This is one of those things that's just, it's so weird, I want to take a moment to focus on it. So writer, Tony Isabella, who is actually the guy who created Black Lightning, which I know you've been reading a bit of lately. Jessika: Yeah! Mike: So he explained how this character came to be in an interview a while [00:09:00] ago with Comics Buyer's Guide. Would you like to read what he said out loud for our audience? Jessika: Certainly Mike: Alright. Jessika: Getting prior approval from editor, Roy Thomas, as I would from later editors, Len Wein and Marv Wolfman. I introduced “the Friend” into the series. It looked sort of like a hippie Jesus Christ. And that's exactly who He was, though I never actually called Him that. It allowed me to address the disparity that had long bothered me about the Marvel Universe. So we had no end of Hells and Satan surrogates in our comics, we had nothing of heaven. After two years, I had written a story wherein, couched in mildly settled term, Blaze accepted Jesus as his savior and freed himself from Satan's power forever. Had I remained on Ghost Rider which was my intent at the time the titles [00:10:00] religious elements would have faded into the background. Blaze would be a Christian, but he'd express this in a way you led his life. Unfortunately, an assistant editor took offense at my story. The issue was ready to go and the printer, when he pulled it back and ripped it to pieces, he had some of the art redrawn and a lot of the copy rewritten to change the ending of a story two years in the making. The friend was revealed to be not Jesus, but a demon in disguise. To this day, I consider what he did to my story one of the three most arrogant and wrongheaded actions I've ever seen from an editor. Mike: Someone's still got feelings about this. Jessika: Feelings, Mike: All capitals. Jessika: Salty. Mike: That assistant editor that he's talking about has been later identified as Jim Shooter, who eventually became Marvel's Editor-In-Chief in 1978. Shooter's kind of an interesting guy. He's [00:11:00] hailed as the person who really righted Marvel’s ship after a lot of prolonged instability. So during his tenure, there were a lot of acclaimed runs and storylines, like all those Saturday morning cartoons we talked about in our first episode, those all happened under his watch. So, you know, you can't say that he didn't do a good job, but a number of major industry figures have also gone on record to state that he forced a lot of editorial decisions on people working for him. Interestingly, though, Shooter actually gave a video interview last year where he actually addressed Isabella's description. He said he was concerned about the Jesus' storyline, because it would have quote, basically established the Marvel universe as a Christian universe and that all of the religions were false and he felt that would have alienated other readers. Jessika: That's kinda how I feel about it. Mike: Aye. I can't say I disagree with them, but I can also see Isabella’s [00:12:00] point. Um, I don't know what the right answer would have been, but it's an interesting moment of comic history. Jessika: Yeah, absolutely. Mike: Now the funny thing is that the first comics that we're going to talk about actually were published by Marvel when it was running under shooter's guidance. So two of these were co-written by Roy Gasnick. Gasnick himself is also a pretty fascinating guy. He basically spent the entirety of his adult life in the Franciscan order. He wound up serving as the Director of Communications for the Franciscan Province of the East Coast Holy Name Province, which was headquartered in New York. And he worked there for 18 years and he dealt a lot with the media. He was also a big believer in civil rights, and apparently he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. Not what I would have expected. Jessika: No, like the whole end of that, I was like, oh, oh, oh, okay. All right. Mike: Yeah. And granted I'm reading largely obituaries about them. And so they're going to [00:13:00] paint them in a good light, but to recap, his public image is that he was a dude who devoted himself to the church for basically his entire life. He wrote best-selling comic books and he fought for others' rights. So kind of interesting. It sounds like the proverbial cool priest that everybody wants to be. Jessika: it's that priest you call uncle? No, don't do that. Mike: No. Jessika: There were one of the comics that did that. Mike: Yeah. Yep. Jessika: I didn't like it. It was, it was really creepy. I was like, no, you took it too far. Mike: Yeah, it was the Pope Mike: Yeah, it's, it's really awkward because it's the Pope and you're just like, oh, oh, I don't know a Catholic priest who wants young men to call him uncle, I don't know how I feel about that. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: okay. So Gasnick wrote the first comic that we're going to talk about, which is Francis Brother of the Universe. This is a book that came out in [00:14:00] 1980 and it was actually published in order to celebrate the saint’s 800th birthday. It would have been 1981 or 82. His actual birthday has been lost to history, they just know it was really late in one year or really early in the other year, Jessika: Hmm. Mike: But effectively, it tells the life story of Saint Francis, which has definitely taken on a mythological quality since he reformed the church about 800 years ago. Jessika, would you do me a favor and describe the cover of this comic? Because it is a trip. Jessika: It is a trip. Okay. So it is first of all, at the very top in the box that would usually have the comics code, the little emblem, it actually has Francis himself with like a Wolf. It says 75 cent one first issue, Marvel Comics Group Francis, [00:15:00] Brother of the Universe, his complete life story, and okay guys, this is exciting. It is an exciting cover. So first you see a guy on horseback, medieval guy on horseback and it's white horse, and he's got a sword in the air and it's cutting through the text at the top and there's fighting behind him in a big cloud. And then there, then you see bald Francis. We're going to talk about why is he bald? Okay. It's like, why do you have to do that? Like, just get rid of the whole thing. I dunno. Anyway, so bald Francis, and then you've got, you know, another guy, I think it was also Francis. I think this is all Francis. Mike: That, that, is young Francis. Jessika: Young Francis on a table with a cup he's like screaming into, you know, a crowd. Mike: Hosting a party at a Tavern like you do. Jessika: That's right. Yeah. Hosting a, yeah he was a big [00:16:00] party hoster that's right. And then you've gone him with the Pope when he's the monk or he's with some other type of religious leader of some sort. And then he's got his back to the viewer and his arms are outstretched and there's light coming down onto him. It looks like he's about to be beamed up into heaven. There's doves behind him. Mike: It should be noted that this is a wraparound cover, too. Jessika: It is a wraparound. I'm sorry. I, yeah, I'm describing the back now. Oh, and then there’s. Mike: It is a work of art man. Jessika: It is a work of art. It's really pretty, it's very colorful. It's all very eye catching. There's more fighting. There's, a sultan or a king and then there's Francis singing at the bottom is he is just singing his little merry heart out. It is, it's a fun cover. Mike: Yeah. And it, it does a really nice job of being very visually attractive, and it also showcases a lot of the big moments from the comic itself. [00:17:00] Jessika: Yeah. Agreed. Mike: Yeah. So the book’s origin is another one of those examples of the power in asking that we talked about during the Highlander episode. So the way this happened was Jean Pelc, who was Marvel's representative in Japan in the seventies, he was a devoted Catholic and he was regularly attending mass at the Franciscan Chapel center. And according to the forward in the comic. He was having coffee with two friars who asked him, why don't you do a book on St. Francis and reportedly Pelc thought about it for about a minute and then said, yeah, sure. Why not? Jessika: I thought that was funny. Mike: I thought it was great. So as I mentioned, the comic story was overseen by Gasnick. He basically kind of oversaw the dialogue and the general story, but he didn't write the script. The comic script was written by Mary Jo Duffy, who had recently been reading Marvel Star Wars series in the seventies. [00:18:00] And then it was illustrated by Eisner Hall of Fame member, John Buscema, who is a legend in the industry, but he's one of those pencilers who basically became a patron Saint for other comic professionals. So, Buschema’s involvement feels especially relevant in this case, because this is a medieval comic. And one of the comics that he really worked on a lot was Conant the Barbarian. So he was really very much in his element. And you can tell because the art in this book is great. Jessika: Oh, it's amazing. Mike: Yeah. Marvel clearly believed in this book and they put some serious talent behind it. What was your overall reaction or impression of the comic? I'm curious. Jessika: I feel like this is the type of religious comic that kids won't get embarrassed over liking. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: It's got adventure, it's colorful, and those cheeks could cut glass. I was im, I was [00:19:00] impressed. Mike: Yeah, Jessika: There were, of course the subversive, like white supremacists tones when they were talking about the good people and all the floating heads were Caucasian. So thanks for that, everyone. Mike: Yeah. Which I mean, Not great, but also it was the seventies. And also they're talking about medieval Europe, which was not the most racially sensitive environments. Jessika: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is true. But also loving that a lot of these guys low-key operated, like co-leaders like St. Francis even got a whole acapella group together to hang out with his cult. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Sounds pretty rad until the leader gets the incurable stigmata. That seems like it would be a real bummer. Mike: Yeah. He and he clearly has untreated PTSD, like, you know, from his time where he was held in the dungeon for a couple of years. Um, you know, and like that's the whole thing is that he's, he's a prisoner of [00:20:00] war. And then he starts hearing voices. Jessika: Mm, mm, Mike: Like, you know, and granted it's, you know, this is Catholic propaganda, so it's presenting it as, oh no, he heard the divine call and he answered and he gave up everything and blah, blah, blah. I'm with you. I personally, I really dug it. So the funny thing is that when I was 11, I came across a copy of this and the kid's school room for Sunday school. And I really fell in love with it. Like, I basically just didn't want to actually pay attention to Sunday school and they were doing all the actual religious study activities. And so I would just sit in the corner and read this, and they couldn't really get mad at me because I was reading about a religious leader who the church was named after. So. Hmm. But you know, it felt like a fantasy comic more than anything else. And when I re-read it, this week, I was struck by both the art and the storytelling being as good as they were like, yes, it’s, as I said, it's [00:21:00] Catholic propaganda, but it's good propaganda. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: So. According to Gasnick's obituary, this comic was actually the best-selling single issue in Marvel history at the time. And, you know, clearly that record has been shattered a few times since then. It apparently moved more than a million issues, which in 1980 was like, unheard of. I couldn't find a resource to fact check this though, because all the sites that track comic sales numbers don't seem to go that far back, or at least they don't yet, but it was clearly popular enough to spawn a couple of other related comics that I've seen referred to on the web as the Saint series. That's where we're going to go next. Following the success of Francis brother of the Universe, Marvel launched Pope John Paul II's biographical comic, which it's a thing. Jessika: It happened. Mike: Yeah. So this was, again, one of those books where Marvel really put some talent behind it. They had art [00:22:00] by John, I’m going to butcher his last name, Tartaglione, I believe. But he was known for doing historically accurate work with his art. And then the book was written by Steven Grant who went on to write the first Punisher series for Marvel in the eighties. Jessika: Hmm. Mike: And then he would go on to write Dark Horse’s 1990 series, X. Full circle, baby. Jessika: Here we are. Mike: Yeah. Would you be willing to provide a quick summary of the book? Jessika: Oh, certainly. I like the evil laugh too, that’s just perfect. So this follows the life and spiritual journey of Pope John Paul II. And, it does this very Tarantino's thing where it starts with the assassination attempt against his life. And it goes back to earlier in his life to tell the story of how he got to that point, [00:23:00] which oddly enough, involves a lot of hiding theater from Nazis. True, true. It then discusses how he gained interest in the church, how he rose through the ranks of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and eventually was selected as Pope, which leads us back to his assassination attempt from which he recovers. Mike: And then that's where the book ends because his assassination attempt had only happened a year or two prior. But the funny thing is that it doesn't start with the assassination attempt. I thought it did, too, until I was reading up on it. So that's where it's weird. So the comic opens at his 1979 visits to Yankee stadium. And it spends so much time there. When we're not being shown his life. That it feels like the assassination attempt also took place there, Jessika: Oh, I that's. I did think that you're right. Mike: Yeah, but like, that's the thing is he wasn't actually shot until two years later in ’81 when he was back at the Vatican and it's very vaguely shown [00:24:00] and that's only one page after everyone is leaving the stadium. So the first time I read it, I thought he basically got shot at the stadium as well, because it's super vague. They only show you that one kind of like small frame where you see a gun being held high. You don't even, it's just a hand holding a gun and that's it. And I mean, I get it. You don't want to show the Pope getting shot in a Pope propaganda comic, but it was one of the things that was actually pretty brutal, in real life. Like, he got shot multiple times and lost a lot of blood and they didn't know if he was gonna make it. Jessika: Oh yeah. Mike: And then later on, he went on to basically forgive and become friends with his would-be assassin. Jessika: Oh, wow. Mike: It's very strange, but it, but it feels like a very Catholic turn the other cheek kind of story. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: Honestly, as I was writing all my notes on this episode, I thought that he had been shot at Yankee stadium. And then I had to go back and [00:25:00] reread that section specifically. And it’s not obvious unless you pay very close attention to the dialogue. Jessika: There, this has to be spring, like a whole generation’s worth of kids thinking that the Pope was shot in America. Mike: Well, especially now because we're so like gun fetish oriented or what is it? Ammo-sexual. That's the word that I keep on hearing. We're we're a nation of ammo-sexuals. Jessika: I am tickled by that. Mike: Yeah. You can thank Sarah for that one. Jessika: Oh, she's amazing. Mike: Yeah. I don't know why she's with me, but I'm not complaining. Um, so how did you feel about this comic? Jessika: I think they did a good job making a continually captivating storyline, especially as biographies go, all things considered. It was funny because I was picking up some super queer vibes from him. The whole, like, not just the whole [00:26:00] theater thing, cause that's, that's a generalization I don't follow necessarily, but it's just, it was that whole, like having his actor friend move in with him so they could continue practicing their craft, as it was. I'm just like, man, I've heard that before. And yes, we hear you loud and clear. Mike: Well, and I mean, you know, like it portrays his younger life and he is shown as a, being an alter boy and very devoted to the church. And then, and this is for anyone who is not familiar with the life of Pope John Paul, he became really interested in theater after his brother died. And he went and visited his brother's friends who were a theater troupe. And so he got super into theater and there's a note about how a priest really wanted him to join the priesthood, and they were like, oh no, he's like, he, yeah, he's a great orator and all that, and he's got a wonderful presence, but he's going to be an actor. And the priest was apparently heartbroken, but yeah, like, anyway, sorry. So side tangent over. [00:27:00] Jessika: No, that's okay. I was also irritated. So at the end of the comic, they made a big deal about how a woman was also shot when he was, and that he was going to go visit her before he went back. He even said, when I, before we go back to Rome, that's what it said in the thing. So I don't know what happened. I don't know what the whole thing was with that, because I specifically wrote back to Rome, but they never said her name nor did they actually show him going to see her, and that, definitely rude. Mike: yeah. And I mean that whole, for something that got billing on the cover, it's featured very little in the comic, so. Jessika: What about, how did, how did this rub you? Mike: I dug it. I didn't dig it as much as Francis Brother of the Universe, to be honest but overall, if you're going to do a biography as a comic, you could definitely have a worst subject. It felt pretty exciting. [00:28:00] He lived a pretty interesting life, growing up between two world wars and in Poland. Parts of it, like the bit where he joined the secret seminary in Poland during World War II felt almost like something out of a spy story, more than anything else. And it also felt like the comic wasn't afraid to poke a little fun at him, like when he volunteered to clean out the toilets that the Nazis had ruined. So, I kind of appreciated that it wasn't taking him as seriously as I felt it could have. A lot of biographies would be like, no, you can't show him in any way that makes him seem less than saintly, which we'll get to, we'll get to that in our next comic. But, I, I, appreciated the moments of levity as well. The book itself, though, it does a pretty good job of making him seem like a good guy who just happened to be called to greatness, I felt. The only parts where I really got bored [00:29:00] were the bits with the unnamed journalist who provides the framing narration while he's waiting for the Pope to speak at Yankee stadium. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: First of all, this is the first guy we see, he's the one who's the narrator and he doesn't even get a name. And then, I kind of laughed at how he opens the comic, stating the Pope is my beat, and then later on states that the Yankee stadium speaking event is the only time he sees the Pope in person. Jessika: Yeah. I noticed that too. I thought that was weird. Mike: It was really weird. And I mean, Jessika: It was inconsistent. Mike: It felt like the editor should have given it one more pass and they could have sat there and it, I mean, honestly, if they just said this was the last time I saw him in person or something like that, it would have been fine. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: And then, like I said, I was a little surprised at how little the assassination attempt was featured since it's literally called out on the cover, like whatever. Oh, fine. [00:30:00] Jessika: Yeah, I you're visibly watching your face. You're visibly mad about it. Mike: I'm sorry, if you're going to promise me in assassination attempt, I want to see an assassination attempt. Don't tease me. Jessika: Oh my gosh. How will you ever get over this? Mike: Uh God. It was a solid B, B+ equal to what I feel was kind of an A-, A comic book, or spiritual sequel, if you will see what I did there. So the last of these Marvel Saint series comics is mother Teresa, and that's another official biography of a major Catholic figure. This one obviously focuses on mother Theresa, who was enjoying a huge amount of publicity in the 1980s. I grew up, throughout the eighties and I often heard her [00:31:00] and Gandhi mentioned together as people who made the world a better place. And I'm not sure, honestly, if that was because they both operated out of India and they both won the Nobel peace prize, but I feel like that sums up how the Western world perceived or , what was your awareness of her when you were growing up? Jessika: Pretty much the same level of you'd always see her in these kind of photo-ops of helping children out of cars and stuff. Mike: Yeah. The other thing is that we grew up, like, I, I feel like she's one of those people who was always old in terms of her media appearances. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: You know? So the book came out in 1984 and that was just five years after she'd received the Nobel peace prize, and this was when she was really, really big. Like these days, this is viewed as an incredibly problematic figure based on things she said about poverty and suffering. And then there were some serious ethical and financial weirdness that [00:32:00] went on with her missions. But the public just wasn't aware of that stuff back then, and so given her amount of celebrity, it makes sense that they would have turned to her because she was a really relevant figure in the world back then. And then again, because they'd had so much success with Francis and Pope John Paul, they committed some serious talent to this comic. So Gasnick actually came back and he wrote the overall story for this, but the script was done by David Michelinie. So miscellaneous had earned a lot of acclaim for his runs on Ironman and he co-created characters like venom and carnage and Scott Lang, who's also known as ant man. Yeah, so legit people. And then the art was once again handled by, John Tartaglione. So they committed some serious stuff to it, but, I feel like you're on the same wavelength as me where you weren't as impressed this time around. Jessika: No, no. I was like [00:33:00] snooze Fest, Mother Teresa. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: She didn't have any facet. She's like Superman. She was just a good person, all the way around. It's not like she had any trouble with that, I guess. Not like the normal folk. Mike: I felt like she was more of a prop than a character in the story. Jessika: I see that. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Yeah. I had a hard time paying attention to it, to be honest with you. Mike: no, that's fair. It took me about three times as long to read this book. Jessika: It's true. And the other thing that was, of course this is going to bother me. I was of course getting some serious pro-colonialism vibes from the whole Jesus and the white men know best, here I go on a mission trip. Aye. You don’t need to convert everyone. Not everyone has to believe the same thing as you, it's just not necessary. And I'm really bothered by the mindset that we all need to be on the same page about these [00:34:00] spiritual and philosophical questions, because we just never will be. Mike: Right. And that was actually a huge thing. That was one of the big controversies about Mother Teresa is that she would do these kinds of deathbed conversions. And it seems like they weren't always to be honest, consensual. Like you, I wasn't all that amazed. The biography of the Pope was really interesting and exciting, but this book story was a framed by some mediocre white journalists who are just going around the world and interviewing people who know her because she won't give them the time of day at the beginning of the book, which I actually kind of enjoyed. Jessika: I did like that, actually. Mike: But that's the thing is you're seeing the memories of other people. And like you said, it feels very much like Superman where there's no flaws whatsoever and it's just, oh, she's always been selfless. Oh, she grew up in hardship. Oh, she's always wanted to make the world a better place, but you keep on hearing that story over and over again. And there's no real action. It's also a lot of really dull exposition where [00:35:00] you know, where people are telling her about all the good things she's doing and then how they're going to help her out. And the impact that she had on the world. It's undeniable. I'm just not sure that her life makes for an interesting comic book. Maybe it's just the way the book was done since she doesn't really feel like a main character in her own story. Also the fact that they're basically using the same framing device that they did in the last one, and Jessika: Yeah. Mike: Those narrators play a much bigger role in the Mother Theresa comic, because they're clearly trying to make it interesting and hold the reader's attention. I did learn that this book won the Catholic press associations award for best book of the year in the youth category in 1984, which yeah. Jessika: What? Who was judging that? Mike: I feel like that kind of says more about the availability of Catholic kid-friendly books at the time. Jessika: Yeah. And the youths weren't judging that contest. Mike: No, like, no. I mentioned earlier, I'm [00:36:00] not sure how well these other comic books sold, but there is an obituary for Tartaglione that claimed the Pope John Paul biography actually sold millions of copies. And it's the same thing with the Francis Brother of the Universe one, because it clearly did well enough that they wanted to make this Pope John Paul comic. And then there's an online archive for Gasnick that's hosted by a Catholic organization and they actually show all the different languages that the comic was printed into. Now. I really want to get a copy of the Japanese one now, because it came with a really beautiful book cover. It's lovely. And plus, it's just kind of a cool artifact, you know. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: But, I don't know how well the Mother Theresa books sold, because , there are numerous articles providing circumstantial evidence, talking about how well Francis and Pope John Paul sold. And then they'll say, oh, and then there was also this Mother Teresa comic. There's no further information. So, I [00:37:00] get the impression it maybe didn't do as well as everybody wanted it to. Jessika: Oh, big dreams, Mother Teresa. Mike: I know, to be honest though, my impression is that the Catholic church didn't really have any other figures with this much name recognition, like St. Francis is a pretty major character, even outside of Catholicism. My parents' church was named after Saint Francis and they were Episcopalian, and Pope John Paul and Mother Teresa had that kind of international rockstar, celebrity, that few others could even dream about in an age when viral fame wasn't really a thing. Jessika: Agreed. Mike: So yeah, it seems like everyone kind of looked at these books overall its wins and then they decided to walk away from the table while they were still ahead, which, is kind of the opposite of what happened in 1992, but we're going to talk about that next episode. [00:38:00] Jessika: Ooh. Mike: I'm going to leave it on a cliffhanger moment, but, what are your final thoughts? How do you feel about these eighties Catholic comics? Jessika: I mean, so far it's kind of a mixed bag. The Francis Brother of the Universe, I thought that was, it was fun. I enjoyed reading that one. You know, I, I even enjoyed reading the majority of the Pope John Paul II. And then we got to mother Teresa and literally I fell asleep and like, yeah, I do a lot of my reading in the evening, Mike: Yeah. Jessika: I'm a night owl it's it was not the time. Mike: Yeah. Comic books shouldn't want you to sleep. Jessika: No, it was the content. So. Mike: Yeah. I think I've got that nostalgia factor a little bit too with the Francis book. So there's one of these books that I still absolutely love. And it's got this [00:39:00] very soft spot in my soul, if you will. And the Pope John Paul comic, I agree. It's mostly fun. It's not flawlessly there's no part of the Frances book that I sat there and really skipped through. It was all interesting. And then Mother Teresa, I. I'm not exactly thrilled that it's part of my collection now. But at the same time, I feel like I can't get rid of it because it's, you know, part of that trilogy, that holy Trinity of Saints comics, if you will, sorry, all the religious puns keep on coming out tonight. Jessika: Well, I was just thinking about the fact that I don't even think it's that I think . You're worried about throwing away Mother Theresa don't lie to me. Mike: Yeah. I feel like I, what happens when you piss off a Catholic Saint? I don't know. Jessika: She's going to be staring at you from the trash can. Like, why did you do this to me? Mike: Oh, she already looks like a goblin. That'll be scary enough. [00:40:00] So now is the part of the episode where we discuss our brain wrinkles, which are the one thing comics or comics adjacent that has been on our mind lately. I've been talking for a spell. So why don't you go first. Jessika: Okay. So I've actually been really irritated about something comics related. Mike: Ooh. Jessika: Aye. You're shocked. I'm sure I've never heard about irritated about anything in this world. Mike: What you, no, go on. Jessika: What, what? So, I collect this six inch Marvel Avengers action figures by Hasbro. They're just the really simple ones, really only the arms and the head kind of moves and the arms kind of move one way. They're cheap. They're just like what, five, six bucks at the checkouts stand. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And I collect them because I action pose them in my hanging plant garden in all my macrame. So they're just in all my plants, just flying around, but [00:41:00] what irritates me, I'm convinced that they just don't make the female characters in their widespread kids toys series. Mike: Oh, they don’t. That's. Jessika: It pisses me off and they make some of the antagonists even. I have Thantos and I can't get the Scarlet Witch or Black Widow? It just bothers me so much. It's hard enough to get the female characters in any kind of movie of their own or any kind of thing of their own. I was really happy the Scarlet Witch, getting a spotlight. And I'm glad that Black Widow is getting one too, but it's just you could say leaving the best for last, but you just kind of forgot didn't you? Mike: Yeah, that actually reminds me a little bit of the cartoon Young Justice. So they had two seasons of that show and then it got canceled and apparently it got canceled because the core audience for it wound up being [00:42:00] young women. And as a result, they weren't buying the action figure toys that were being marketed because they were all male action figures. Eventually they wound up bringing it back for DC Universe and then HBO Max, it's a great cartoon, but I just remember getting so irritated where I was like, really, instead of actually trying to make toys that would appeal to the audience, you just canceled this fucking show. All right. Jessika: That's so annoying and it, you know, it really bothers me that we always assume that boys won't play with action figures of girls. Mike: Yeah. It's dumb. Jessika: And yeah. And we absolutely need to quit. Assuming the girls won't play with action figures at all. Because they will. Mike: I'm actually, I'm really surprised that they're not making female character action figures now. Like it's like the last couple of years, I feel like that's been flipped, but I guess it's still a [00:43:00] thing. Jessika: Yeah. It's it's just. *sad noises* Mike: I'm sorry. Jessika: No, it's okay. It's okay. It just makes me want to write like angry letters and, you know, cause I want action figures too, goddammit. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Well, what about you? What's sticking deep in your brain? Mike: It's going back to that collection that I got from my parents' house. So part of that collection, one of the other cool things that was included is the 2002 Taskmaster mini series from Marvel, which sent me down a rabbit hole of Marvel Unlimited because you know, they've got all the back issues on there. Taskmaster is a villain who's also become a bit of an antihero. He's been around Marvel for a while. He's this mercenary who usually uses his power of photographic reflexes to mimic the moves of other heroes. And he's had three dedicated mini series so far and they're all really good. Like they're really fun, and [00:44:00] each one tells a very different story and they all explore his character in really interesting ways. And the last two series have been really funny, which means I'm kind of bummed about how generic he looks and all the promo stuff that they've put out for Black Widow the movie. Like he's a dude who wears a cape with a hood and has pirate boots and is just bristling with weapons. And that is not what we're getting. Jessika: I love that though. Mike: Oh yeah. It's super over the top and theatrical. His whole thing is that he has a mask that looks like a realistic skull, as opposed to that helmet, that's got kind of a vague skull motif. Jessika: Yeah, that's way scarier. Mike: It is, but at the same time, he hangs out a lot with Deadpool. And so there's that zaniness to him as well. And instead we're getting this kind of, I don't know, mute generic [00:45:00] bad-ass character and all the trailers who looks like he has some cool flashy moves, but it doesn't really seem to go much beyond that. I don't know, like it might surprise us, but who knows, but it's also made me realize how forgettable most of the villains in the MCU are. And I wish Marvel would just give us more characters, like Loki who make repeated appearances and then develop some real depth and then evolve into something more than what they are when they first appear. Jessika: Yeah, it'd be nice to see. Mike: Yeah. Well with that, I think it's time to wrap things up. We'll be back in two weeks, where we will continue the story of Marvel's foray into Christian comics, and until then we'll see you in the stacks. Jessika: Thanks for listening to Ten Cent Takes. Accessibility is important to us; text transcriptions of each of our published episodes [00:46:00] can be found on our website. Mike: This episode was hosted by Jessika Frazer and Mike Thompson written by Mike Thompson and edited by Jessika Frazer. Our intro theme was written and performed by Jared Emerson Johnson of Bay Area Sound, while our credits and transition music is Pursuit of Life by Evan McDonald and was purchased with a standard license from PremiumBeat. Our banner graphics were designed by Sarah Frank, who goes on Instagram by cut_thistles. Jessika: If you'd like to get in touch with us, ask us questions or tell us about how we got something wrong, please head over to tencenttakes.com or shoot an email to tencenttakes@gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter, the official podcast account is tencenttakes. Jessika is Jessikawitha, and Jessika is spelled with a K. And Mike is Vansau. V A [00:47:00] N S A U. Mike: Stay safe out there. Jessika: And support your local comic shop.

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Issue 05: Highlander

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Play Episode Listen Later Apr 29, 2021 96:50

There can be only one, but Highlander's had a surprising number of media adaptations and spin-offs over the years. We take a look at all of them and even get some behind-the-scenes gossip about the infamous comic book tie-in: Highlander 3030. ----more---- Episode Transcript Episode 05 [00:00:00] Mike: It's fine. It's fine. I'm not bitter. Mike: Welcome to Tencent Takes, the podcast where we make comics trivia rain like dollar bills on Magic Mike night. My name is Mike Thompson and I am joined by my cohost, the mistress of mayhem herself, Jessika Frazer. Jessika: Muahahaha! It is I hello, Mike. Mike: Hello. If you're new to the podcast, we like to look at comic books in ways that are both fun and informative. We want to check out their coolest, weirdest and silliest moments, as well as examine how they've been woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history. Today, we are traveling through time and talking about the 35 year legacy of one of the strongest cult franchises around, Highlander. But [00:01:00] before we do that, Jessika, what is one cool thing that you've watched or read lately? Jessika: My brother has some copies of classic Peanuts Comics, and it's so much fun. It's good, wholesome, fun. And Snoopy- related media always makes me nostalgic. And Mike you've mentioned before that we're in California in the San Francisco Bay area, but fun fact, I live right near Santa Rosa, which is the home of the Peanuts creator Charles Schultz when he was alive. So there's a museum there and an ice skating rink. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Which is super awesome And Snoopy on ice was huge when I was a kid. And that is definitely the place I also learned to ice skate. By the way, they throw a mean birthday party, just saying, not right this second. Not this second. [00:02:00] We should do it is what I'm saying. Mike: We should do it for ourselves. Jessika: No, that's what I'm saying. Oh, I don't have children. Mike: But we do. Jessika: Yes, they can come with us, like they're invited. Mike: I mean, are they? Jessika: Look at you hesitating. Mike: We took the kids to the Peanuts museum right before the lockdowns happened. that really Jessika: That's really lovely that's nice got to do that. Mike: There’s a lot of cool stuff to do. It's really interactive. It's also just a really fascinating experience because there's so much about the Peanuts during their, what 50 year run give or take. It may not have been that long. It may have been 30 or 40, but it was a long time, and I really dug it, like there was a lot of cool stuff, so yeah . And also the cool thing about Santa Rosa is they've also got all those Snoopy statues all over town too. Jessika: They do. Yeah. All the [00:03:00] Peanuts characters actually. Cause they, the Charlie Browns and the Lucy's now and the Woodstocks. Yeah they're all over the place. But that used to be something fun we could do as a scavenger hunt, and actually that's something you guys could still do even with the lockdown. Cause most of them are outside is just find that list of where all the Snoopy's or whatever character is and go find them all. Cause we did that at one point, like as an adult, obviously. Well, what about you, Mike? Mike: The complete opposite of something wholesome. Jessika: Perfect. Mike: We didn't actually have the kids for a few days. They were with their dad and we couldn't find anything new to watch. So, we wound up bingeing the entire series of Harley Quinn on HBO Max. Jessika: Oh, you’re ahead of me then. Damn you. Mike: This is my third time going through the series. We've just gotten to the point where we turned it on when we want to watch something that's kind of soothing in a way, even though it is not a soothing TV show. But I still am [00:04:00] having these full on belly laughs where I'm breathless at the end and it's just, it's so smart and funny and absolutely filthy with the violence. And then there are these moments of sweetness or genuine reflection, and it's just so damn refreshing. I was never much of a Harley fan, but this show and then the Birds of Prey movie really made me fall in love with that character. Also side note, Michael Ironside who played General Katana and Highlander II. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: He shows up in Harley Quinn doing the voice of Darkseid, which is a character he's been voicing since the nineties when he first started doing it for the Superman animated series. Jessika: Oh, damn. Mike: So, just a little bit of symmetry there. Mike: All right. So before we begin, I have to say that this episode wound up being a rabbit hole full of other rabbit holes that I kept going down. So, I want to give a little credit where it's due for a ton of my research. I really wound up leaning on two books: John Mosby's Fearful Symmetry [00:05:00]; and A Kind of Magic: The Making of Highlander by Jonathan Melville. Likewise, there's a YouTube series called Highlander heart hosted by Grant Kempster and Joe Dilworthand, and an associated Facebook community with the same name that were just invaluable for my crash course. And finally, I want to give special, thanks to Clinton Rawls, who runs Comics Royale, and Matt Kelly for taking the time to chat with me because they didn't have to, and they provided me with some really useful information for this episode. Jessika: Yeah, I'm super excited about what lies in store. What's really funny is I've actually, I feel like a kid before it test. Mike: Right? Jessika: like I'm a little nervous because I've been cramming so hard for this Mike: We both have. Jessika: No, you, especially you, especially like you should be much more nervous than me, Mike. No, I’m just kidding, please don't take that on. Oh, but yeah, no I'm super excited and really ready to talk about all of this stuff and learn more because I've just been consuming the media and the [00:06:00] comic books. But, you’re going to give me some back knowledge that's gonna blow my brain and I'm excited. Mike: Oh, well, I'll try to live up to that high expectation. Let's assume that you didn't know what the topic of this episode was. And if someone asked you what cult property from the 1980s. Spawned five movies, two TV series, a Saturday morning cartoon, an anime film, several video games, multiple tabletop games, audio plays, roughly a dozen novels, and four okay, technically six different comic books. What would your first answer be? Jessika: Oh, goodness. What's funny is probably not Highlander. I'd probably I would say like Batman, honestly, Mike: Yeah I would've gone with something along the lines of G.I. Joe. Jessika: Oh, yeah. Mike: Or some weird Saturday morning cartoon, something like that. I never would have guessed Highlander. I never would have assumed that. but it's just, it's really surprising to see how [00:07:00] much has been generated out of this initial movie. Were you fan of the movies or the show before we started bingeing everything for this episode? Jessika: So I was actually a fan of the show via my dad who had it on hadn't watched the films before, because I was born in 1986 fun fact. Mike: Right. Jessika: I was born when this thing was sent into the world. We both were at the same time, apparently. I didn't have that exact experience of growing up watching it, but he definitely had the TV show on in the nineties Mike: Okay. Jessika: So that was what I was familiar with and I loved it and I would run around chopping things; I'd be at work, I was actually like when I got older I'd be like, there can only be one, and I’d like have to like swipe at someone. Mike: It’s such an iconic line. Jessika: iIt is! it transcends. Absolutely. Mike: Yeah. I was pretty young when the movie came out and the show was how I became aware of it. And then when the show was airing, I was in high school. And then I became [00:08:00] aware that there was a movie that had inspired it. And so I was able to rent that when I was old enough to be trusted, to go rent movies on my own by my parents. Back when we couldn’t stream everything. Jessika: Oh my gosh. Mike: And there were rewind fees, Jessika: Oh, my gosh. Be kind rewind. Mike: Speaking of things from the eighties: it’s funny we'll talk about it later on, but the show really brought in, I think a lot of people that otherwise wouldn't have been fans. Before we start talking about the comic books, I really want to take a few minutes to talk about all the media and content that spun out of Highlander because it's a lot. And it was honestly in a couple of cases, really surprising. I didn't know about half of this stuff before I began researching for the episode, and then. Like I said, it was just constant rabbit holes that kept on leading me down more and more research paths. And it was really fun. But I want to talk about all this now. Jessika: Perfect. This is exactly what we're here for, and I think that people want to hear it too. [00:09:00] Mike: I hope so. Okay. So why don't you summarize Highlander? If you had to give an elevator pitch, Jessika: The film follows the past and present of Connor MacLeod, an immortal who is just one of many vying to be the sole victor in an age old battle, where in the end, there can only be one. Like very simply a lot more to it, but like how much of an elevator pitch. Mike: I think that's pretty simple. It's about an immortal who basically keeps on fighting his way through history and there's these really wonderful catch phrases that get us hooked. The movies got actually a really interesting origin story of its own. It was written by this guy named Gregory Widen when he was in his early twenties. That was when he wrote the initial screenplay. But he had already had a really interesting life up until then. He was one of the youngest paramedics in Laguna Beach at that point in [00:10:00] time. And then he went on to become a firefighter while he was still a teenager. By 1981, he'd also worked as a DJ and a broadcast engineer. And then he signed up for a screenwriting course at UCLA and he wrote this feature length script called Shadow Clan. And it would go through a number of changes before it became Highlander. But the core theme of an immortal warrior named Connor MacLeod wandering across the centuries is there. He wound up getting introduced to producers Bill Panzer, and Peter Davis who decided to option the film. And then they hired the screenwriters, Larry Ferguson and Peter Bellwood to rework the script into what we eventually had wind up in theaters. And once the movie was green-lit, they brought in Russell Mulcahey to direct it. And I vaguely knew that Mulcahey had been doing music videos before this, for the most part, he had one other cult movie ahead of time. It was a horror movie, I think, called Razorback. But I didn't realize which music videos he'd been making until I started doing all [00:11:00] this research. So I'm going to give you a small sampling and you're going to tell me if you've heard of these. Jessika: Okay. Sure sure sure. Mike: Okay. The Vapors “Turning Japanese”. Jessika: Uh, yeah. Mike: Yeah, okay. The Buggles “Video Killed the Radio Star”. Jessika: Wow. Yes. Mike: Duran Duran Duran’s “Rio”. Jessika: Wow. Mike: And Elton John's “I'm Still Standing”. Jessika: Yeahwow. That's actually a variety of characters. Mike: Right? But also those all really iconic music videos. Like not only songs, but music, videos cause those were all in the very early days. And the dude's entire portfolio is just iconic. If you think about the music videos that really defined the genre Jessika: Yeah, sometimes you just got it, I guess. Huh? Mike: He has a lot of those music video elements. A lot of times in the movie, it feels like a music video, like when Brenda's being chased down the hall by the Kurgan and it's got all that dramatic lighting, or that opening shot where they're in the [00:12:00] wrestling match and you see the camera flying through everything. Jessika: Yes! Mike: That was wild. That was really unusual to see camera work like that back then. The movie was distributed by 20th century Fox. And I think at this point, We'd be more surprised of 20th century Fox did a good job of marketing weird and cool, because they really botched it. They wound up forcing cuts to the movie that created really weird plot holes because they didn't feel that audiences needed it or what would understand it, and they wanted to make it simpler, but it really made things more confusing. European audiences on the other hand, really embraced the film because they got a much better version. So case in point, I'm going to show you the two main posters for it. This is the American poster for the movie. Jessika: Mmhmm. Oh, wow, he’s scary. Wow wow wow, okay. Before I even say any of the words, what you first see is Connor [00:13:00] MacLeod, but it's this awful grainy picture of him. He looks like there's something wrong with his face, which he shouldn't necessarily. And he looks like he's about to murder someone. He's like glaring off into the distance. And at the top it says, Oh, it's in black and white, by the way. at the top it says, He fought his first battle on the Scottish Highlands in 1536, he will fight his greatest battle on the streets of New York city in 1986. His name is Connor MacLeod. He is immortal Highlander! Credits at the bottom, rated R, absolutely rated R. Mike: Also, I feel like featuring original songs by Queen does not get the billing that it should. Jessika: I agree. I jammed my way through that film and this just the whole series, [00:14:00] actually the whole franchise I jammed my way through. Mike: Yeah. And if you listen to the kind of Magic album that is basically the unofficial soundtrack to the movie, and it's so good I don't know how they got those perpetual rights to Princes of the Universe, did. Every time I hear that song, I get a little thrill up my spine. All right. So here's the poster though for the European release. Jessika: All right. So, Ooh, this is totally different. This is Whoa. This is way more exciting. Okay. First of all, it's full Color, my friends, right in the middle in red it says Highlander right under it “There can only be one” in yellow. Oh it's amazing. There's a little sticker at the bottom that says featuring original songs by queen. Look it, trying to sell it, I love it. And then there's Connor MacLeod in the center of the screen [00:15:00] dramatically head back eyes closed screaming his sword thrusts forward and behind him is the Kurgan, oh my gosh so good. It's so - Oh, and a backdrop of New York city. All in lights. It's beautiful. Mike: Yeah. It’s one of those things where basically, that documentary that we watched seduced by Argentina, they talk about that where they're just like 20th century Fox fucked us. Jessika: And I didn't realize how much until, because I did watch that as well. And I'm like how bad could it be? But I that's pretty bad. It's a pretty big difference. It's like watching, that'd be like going, expecting to see like psycho or something. Mike: Honestly, I keep on thinking of Firefly and Fox and how they just totally botched the marketing for that show and then the release, and issues with Joss Wheden aside. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: It’s one of those [00:16:00] things where again, it's a really beloved cult property with a really devoted fan base, even, 5 years after it was released, shit, almost 20. Jessika: And I do love Firefly, again, Whedon aside. Mike: I do too. Jessika: And it makes me a little sad think about it because it had so much potential. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Oh, it's so rough. It's rough to see. Mike: Yeah. What were your overall thoughts on the movie now that you've seen it because you hadn't seen it before this, correct? Jessika: No. I had only seen the TV show and probably rightfully so, because that was much less violent. I mean, much less graphically violent. They were still beheading motherfucker every episode, but, versus the film, which is like blood and like half a head and wow, there, it goes the head. But I actually really liked the movie. It was adventurous, it was thrilling and told a fairly cohesive and interesting storyline which unfortunately had an ending. But it still took us on an emotional journey. [00:17:00] Mike: Yeah, and I feel the same way. Jessika:: And how all the camp that I love from the 1980s and the special effects are just chefs, kiss love it. Mike: There is something so wonderful about the special effects from the 1980s, because they're so earnest all the time. And at the same time they look so cheesy by comparison now. Jessika: But you can tell they were trying so hard. It's almost like a little kid who's just learning to finger paint and they walk up and they're like, I did this thing. It's so good. You're like, it is really good. It's really good for where you're at. Mike: Yeah, exactly. Highlander is very much a quintessential eighties film to me, and there's both that nostalgia factor, but also it's a pretty tight little film. It doesn't really try to do anything too grandiose or too world-building because I don't think they expected to really make the sequels that they wound up doing. Which speaking of which we should discuss the sequels. [00:18:00] Mike: Like, I feel like you can’t discussion without talking about the sequels. And honestly the first time I ever heard of Highlander as a brand really was when I was visiting family in Texas And we were watching a Siskel & Ebert episode where they were thrashing Highlander II. Jessika: Dude, Siskel and Ebert I'm sure hated this. This does not surprise me in the least. Mike: I don't remember much about it, I just remember being like, oh Sean Connery's in a movie, well that's cool. Because my parents had raised me on all of the Sean Connery James Bond movies. Jessika: Yeah casting, come on. Why? Why? They had a French dude playing a Scottish guy and a Scottish guy playing a Spanish Egyptian guy. It's. Mike: I believe label was a Hispaniola Egyptian. They kinda darkened up Sean Connery a little bit too. I'm not sure. Jessika: It felt that way. I was just hoping he had just been under the tanning beds, but no, I think you're right. [00:19:00] Mike: Highlander II was definitely the most infamous of the sequels. And I mean a huge part of that is because it had such a batshit production and there’d been so many different versions of it. It was so bad that Russell Mulcahey reportedly walked out of the film premiere after only 15 minutes. There's this great documentary that you and I both watched on YouTube, it's split up into a bunch parts, but it was a documentary they made for the special edition of Highlander II. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: It was the third release of the movie that they put out because the first one was basically the bonding company for the films. Investors took over the production and assembly of the movie due to the fact that Argentina, where they were filming. And they had gone to Argentina because a, it was gorgeous, but B because it was supposedly going to be a third of the cost Jessika: Yeah. Mike: To make a movie there than it would elsewhere. Argentina’s economy collapsed and went through hyperinflation. And as a result, everything just went haywire. But they went back years later and they not only recut the [00:20:00] movie, but they refilled or added in certain scenes I think four or five years later. And then on top of that, they did the special edition a few years after that, where they redid the special effects. And I don't know it's kind of funny because it's not a bad movie now. It's not terrible. I feel it's an enjoyable film in its own way. But it's also funny where you watch that documentary and they're talking about the stuff that they're so proud of. Russell Mulcahey was talking about how proud he was of that love scene. I'm using this in quotes, love scene between Virginia Madsen and and Christopher Lambert where they just decided to do it up against the wall of an alley? Jessika: That’s always an interesting choice to me. Like you really cannot wait. Mike: Yeah. And then he was like, I thought that was a really hot scene. And I got to sit there and I'm like, I don't, I can't view this through the lens of, a 20 something guy in the 1990s. I don't know what my interpretation of it would have been then, [00:21:00] but watching it now watching it for the first time when I was in my twenties and the, in the early aughts, I just was like, this is weird and sorta dumb. And also they don't really have a lot of chemistry, but okay. Jessika: Yeah, it just kind of happens. They're just like, Oh, here you are. Mike: Yeah Right I don't know. At the same time it was cool to see they did all those really practical, special effects where they actually had them whipping around on the wires on like the weird flying skateboards and stuff. I thought that was cool. Jessika: I thought that was neat too. And how he was like, yeah, I actually got on top of the elevator and he was excited. Now he got on top of the elevator. Mike: And then they basically just dropped it down, like that's wild. So how about Highlander three? Jessika: Ahhh… Mike: Yeah, that’s kinda where I am Jessika: It’s very forgettable in my book. Mike: I feel like you could wipe it from the timeline and no one would care. Really, it felt like a retread of the first movie, but with the shittier villain in a way less interesting love story. honestly, it was a bummer because Mario [00:22:00] Van Peebles, the guy who plays that the illusionist I can't even remember his name. It was that forgettable. Jessika: Yeah, no, I can't either. Mike: Mario van Peebles is a really good actor and he's done a lot of really cool stuff. And it just, it felt like he was the NutraSweet version of the Kurgan Jessika: I like that. Yes. Yes. Mike: All of the mustache twirling, none of the substance. Jessika: It leaves a little bit of a weird taste in your mouth. Mike: Right. Splenda Kurgan! Moving on Highlander, Endgame. Jessika: What I do like about this film is that in both the TV series, as well as the film, there is the actual crossover. Connor shows up in Duncan's world and Duncan shows up in Connor's world and there is that continuity, which is good. And I do appreciate that because, before I got into this, I assumed that the character was interchangeable and we were just seeing different actors James [00:23:00] Bond situation. And when I went back and realized like, Oh no, he's his own character, they're blah, you know. Mike: I dunno I saw this in theaters I love the show and I appreciated that it felt like an attempt to merge the movies in the series and of the movies, I feel like this actually has the strongest action scenes. There's that bit where Adrian Paul faces off against Donnie Yen. And I was like, that's gotta be really cool to be able to sit there and show your kids much later in life: hey, I got to do a martial arts scene with Donnie Yen and he didn't kill me in the movie. that's pretty dope. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: Again, it felt underwhelming. It just wasn't all that interesting. And also I spent years being mad at that movie because the trailer brought me into the theater expecting something way different than what we were going to get Jessika: Okay. And I don't know that I saw the trailer. Mike: It has, it has a bunch of scenes with Magic where Connor and Duncan jumped through a portal [00:24:00]. Jessika: What? Mike: And a sword gets thrown at Jacob Kell and he catches it midair. And then he does something else where he's holding a sphere where you see Connor's face screaming and then it shatters. Jessika: What’s with all this weird, extra scene stuff in these trailers. I don't understand. Mike: Yeah, it turns out that this hasn't, this has never really been officially confirmed, but reading between the lines yeah, it’s been confirmed. They basically filmed extra scenes just to make it more appealing for people. So they would show up to the theaters. Like they filmed scenes, effectively they filmed scenes just for the trailer the director when he was asked about it in Fearful Symmetry. He basically said, yeah, I know there was some stuff that they filmed for marketing afterwards, and I wasn't involved with that. And then I think it was Peter Davis that was asked about this for the book. And he basically said, Oh, this is a really standard practice. People, or accompanies [00:25:00] film stuff for for marketing purposes all the time. And that's where he left it. Jessika: Oh, okay. to know. Mike: I was really grumpy about that, but that said I've softened a little since then. Do we even want to talk about the Source? Cause I feel like that's something that we shouldn't talk about in polite company. Jessika: No pass. Mike: Okay. Jessika: It happened? Mike: It happened, it was a thing that happened that was going to be a trilogy. They were planning to make that into a trilogy of movies. Jessika: Ohh rough times. Mike: Oh it's real bad. I don't think you were able to watch this, but Highlander, the search for vengeance. It's the anime. Jessika: No, I couldn't find it. Mike: Yeah. It's not available for streaming and it really it's really a bummer because it's actually pretty good. I'm not quite sure how to qualify it because it's not a live action movie and it doesn't star Duncan or Connor, but it's a full length anime. It's a full length movie in its own right. It focuses on Colin MacLeod who he’s [00:26:00] an immortal, who's technically part of the MacLeod clan. He's born as a Roman Britain and then he's adopted into the MacLeod clan after he fights alongside them later on. They keep on doing this. They keep on going back to dystopian SciFutures, which I kinda like, Jessika: I love, bless their little hearts. Mike: Yeah. A lot of the story actually takes place in this post-apocalyptic 22nd century, New York. And I haven't seen this in about a decade because it's not available on streaming. I don't have the DVD anymore. I really should pick it up before it goes out of print. But the movie fucking slaps. It was directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, he was really big in the nineties. He did Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust. He's known for really cool looking movies that are also really violent at the same time. Like you look at his characters and you're like, Oh yeah, no, they all look interchangeable because they're also similar one movie to another, Jessika: Oh, I see. Mike: But they're really cool. And the movie was written by David Abramowitz, who was the head writer [00:27:00] for the TV show. So it felt like a pretty legit Highlander story. Honestly, if we had to talk about this and ask which of these movies or the sequels were our favorites, I would probably say the Search for Vengeance. Because I loved it so much, but since that wasn't a theatrical release, we'll exclude that and you didn't get to watch it. Of the sequels, which did you enjoy most? Jessika: Mike, why don’t you go first. Mike: Okay. I'm a little torn, I guess I enjoyed Endgame mainly because it feels like part of he in quotes, real Highlander story, I guess it's the least terrible of the sequels. And it brought in my favorite characters. The final version of Highlander II, is I don't know. I don't hate it. It honestly feels like a cool dystopian cyberpunk story with some bizarre Highlander lore shoehorned in, but at the same time, it's not the worst thing I've ever watched. How about you? Jessika: Funny [00:28:00] enough, I was going to say Highlander II, but maybe just a bit more so if it were its own standalone movie and not try to be a part of the Highlander franchise. The idea of the shield is super interesting and I think they could have elaborated more on the lead-up and the resolution of that issue rather than having to also make it about the Immortals in their forever game. Mike: Yeah, I agree. How do you feel about moving onto the TV series? Jessika: Oh, I am pro. Mike: Okay. I personally feel like this is the property that sucks all the air out of the room when you're talking about Highlander. Jessika: Oh no. Mike: Yeah, I mentioned that this is how I really got introduced to the brand. I started watching it in high school, around season three, which was when it was really starting to get good. The first two seasons I feel were kind of when they were ironing out all the rough spots. But I wound up watching it through the end. So if you're listening to this podcast and you have never seen the [00:29:00] show Highlander, the series ran for six seasons, which is a good length of time for any TV show. And it followed the adventures of Duncan, who was another member of the MacLeod clan. He was a distant cousin of Connor. And the show bounced between Seacouver, which is a fictionalized version of Vancouver in Paris. And it basically retcon things so that the original movie didn't end with The Quickening, but that the battle between the Kurgan and Connor was it's implied, it was the start of The Gathering. That's my interpretation of it. Jessika: That was what I got too. Mike: Yeah. And Christopher Lambert, he shows up in the pilot to help set things up and get them moving. But I think that's the only time we ever really seen him on the show. Jessika: Correct. He's really just an intro. He's in that first episode only. Mike: You have rewatched it as a have I . We haven't watched the entire series all the way through, but we've watched a lot of episodes. Jessika: Correct. Mike: How do you feel [00:30:00] it measures up today? compared to that nostalgic view that we had before, Jessika: I had a lot of fun watching it, actually. definitely super cheesy. I don't love all of the characters I watched a lot of the first season, then I bounced around I think I did the top, like 25 on a list that you sent me. But Duncan’s just so codependent sometimes with his characters and it's like the one time the Tessa goes on a hike by herself, she gets kidnapped by an, a mortal and it’s like, oh my God, she can't even go on a fucking hike, are you joking me? And the one time he goes to the store by himself, he gets kidnapped and it's like, oh, come the fuck on you guys. Mike: Yeah, I feel like it generally holds up pretty well. It's a little uneven, but when it hits , it really hits. And it's a lot of fun. And considering that it was a relatively low budget show on basic cable in the early to mid-nineties, there's a lot of stuff that has aged way worse. [00:31:00] Jessika:: Absolutely. It exceeded my expectations on the rewatch, for sure. Mike: Yeah, and I have to say that one really cool thing about Highlander is it's got a really large female fan base. And I suspect that the show is really responsible for that. Jessika: I would agree. There's a few reasons. Mike: Are six of those reasons. Duncan's abs? Jessika: Like 10 of those reasons are all the times he gets surprised in a bathtub. I know I messaged you while I was watching them, because I was like Duncan got surprised in a bathtub again. Mike: I don't remember which episode it was, but there's one where he is surprised while he's in a bathrobe and he's got, it's not even tighty whities, it’s like a bikini brief, and watching that, I was just sitting there going, thank you for this gift. Thank you. Thank you for this visual treat that you have given us in the middle of my very boring work day. Jessika: It’s [00:32:00] also that there are such a wide variety of female characters. I would say, Iit’s not just the other female person he seeing or whatever, the love interest, there are other female Immortals and they a lot more frequently than they do in the films. I can't recall if they have any female immortals in the films. Mike: They do in Endgame. Jessika: Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I thought there was, there were some in there, but that’s tailing into, I mean yeah. Mike: Yeah. And the Source had them too, but meh. Jessika: Oh yeah. Mike: I will say that the show was pretty good about writing pretty strong female characters, I felt. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: And we'll talk about Amanda in a little bit, but I have to say that I really liked how she was written and how Elizabeth Grayson played her through the original series and then her own afterwards. I dunno. I, what do you think is the sexiest thing about Duncan MacLeod? I'm curious. Jessika: He seems [00:33:00] really like trustworthy, but like and sexy trustworthy. It's like, he'd be the dude. I called if some guys were fucking with me. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: I kept on thinking about how there's this Tumblr post that's been going around the internet, regularly, and it's this discussion about which Disney men women find the sexiest guys always thinks it's Gaston. Jessika: Oh lord, why? Mike: It’s that male power fantasy thing where they're just like, oh no, like he's like really charming. And he's really muscly. And the counterargument from women is usually A no Gaston sucks and B we all like Roger from 101 Dalmatians. Jessika: Oh yeah. Roger. Mike: Which, Roger is very much my personal role model. The dude's a talented musician, he loves animals and he's got that great, a snark where he literally is trolling the villain when she comes to his house with a motherfucking trombone from upstairs [00:34:00]. And I think Duncan's a little like that. Like he's cultured and he's worldly and he's got this wicked sense of humor. And he's also the type of dude who has no problem reciting poetry in public or making his partner breakfast in bed. Jessika: Yeah, absolutely. Mike: So it just it was something that came to mind while I was rewatching all this stuff. Jessika: Yeah. just as like a wholesome guy. Mike: Right? Jessika: He always has good intentions. So that's actually what it feels like. He's always coming at things with good intentions. Mike: Yeah, and he's not perfect, but he's always trying to do the right thing, which I really appreciate. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: What was your favorite episode? Jessika: I went back and forth. I really like the Homeland episode, and like I said, I've really only watched a good chunk of most of season what I would say, and then so kind of bounced around, but season four, episode one. It was really sweet to see [00:35:00] Duncan take the obligatory trip back to his Homeland to pay respects. And it also had a good lesson in not judging a book by its cover as the main character assumes that Duncan is just an ancestry tourist, which was super interesting. She was super hating on it but I was like this is interesting instead of visiting what once was literally his home during formative years. So it was just such a wild thing to see her be like, what are you doing near those graves? And he can't really be like, they were my parents because you cannot even read them. They are so old. Mike: The funny thing is I didn't rewatch that episode during our refresher, but I remember watching that episode when I was about 15 or so. Because it's stuck out to me. Jessika: It’s really good. And of course, Duncan, he always has a good intention. The whole reason he went back was because he figured out that somebody had been [00:36:00] pilfering graves Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And he had to return what was in this grave. Mike: I know he's making the rest of us look bad. So mine is, it's unusual suspects. It's from season six, which I feel is actually pretty weak season overall. And it's this really silly one-off episode, starring Roger Daltry of the Who fame. He plays Hugh Fitzcairn, which is a character that he shows up in plays a couple of times throughout the series. And at this point in time in the story, he was dead, but it's a flashback to the 19 teens or 1920s. 1920s, because it ends with the stock market crash, but it's a take on the British country, house murder, mystery genre, and it's really fun. And it was just this really refreshing moment of levity after what I felt our run of really heavy, and in my opinion, not very good episodes. The end of season five and the beginning of season [00:37:00] six are all about Duncan confronting this demon named Aramon and it's weird and it's not very good. And I really don't enjoy it. This is all my opinion. I'm sure that I'm insulting some Highlander fan who absolutely loves this, but it's a fun episode in its own. And then it's a good moment after one that I didn't really enjoy. And so it's got that extra refreshing bonus. I just, I want to note, it's really funny to me how intertwined Highlander has always been with rock and roll and music in general, because they had Mulcahey who do it, doing all these music videos and stuff. And then they kept on having musicians show up as guest stars. I think it was there's a character named Xavier St. Cloud, I think who was played by one of the guys from, again, I think, Fine Young Cannibals? Jessika: Yeah, I think I actually watched that episode. Mike: I think he was using nerve gas to kill people. Jessika: Yes I did watch that episode. That was a wild one. Yeah. Mike: Yeah, and I think he shows up later on too. [00:38:00] I can't remember but anyway, I really appreciate that they gave Roger Daltry of all people, this character, and he just really had fun with it and they kept bringing him back. Jessika: Yeah. He was a good character every episode he was in my other favorites was the one where they had Mary Shelley and he was in that one too. I believe. Mike: I think so. Yeah. No, it was, the series was really fun, and I liked that we can sit there and pull all these episodes just from memory that we really liked. Jessika: Absolutely. Mike: So season six , they were trying to find a new actress who could carry her own Highlander show. And so they tested out a bunch of different actresses in season six and gave them either really strong guest appearances, or they were basically the main character for episodes. But they wound up not going with any of them. They went with Elizabeth Grayson and gave her the Raven where she reprised her roles Amanda. Did you watch any of that? Did you get a chance to? Jessika: I watched the [00:39:00] first and the last episode of season one, I can only find the first season. Is there only one? Mike: There’s only one season, it didn’t get picked up again. Jessika: Oh then there you go. Then I could have only, I know I was scratching my head. Worried about where else do I find this? Mike: Well, and it ends on a cliff-hanger. Jessika: Yeah, exactly. That's where I was like, let's go. Mike: It ends with Nick becoming immortal. Jessika: Oh, see, I didn't quite finish it. Cause I was hurriedly setting it up in the background. Mike: Yeah it was fine. I thought Elizabeth Grayson is really charming in that role, but at the same time, there wasn't a lot of chemistry initially between Amanda and Nick, I felt at the very beginning. Jessika: I agree, not in the first episode. Mike: By the end of the season, it was there, and I think they were also, as is the case with most shows first seasons, they were trying really hard to figure out what they wanted to do. And so originally it was a cop show with an immortal, which there are certainly worse pitches that I've heard. Jessika: Yeah. No, I agree. Mike: But yeah. sad that it didn't get to go further [00:40:00] Jessika: I'm tempted to go back and watch all of these things. I may have to do a pallet cleanse of something different. I may have to go back to my Marvel watching. Mike: On top of this, there was a Saturday morning cartoon called Highlander, the series or Highlander, the animated series, and it was set in the future. It's in a weird alternate timeline. It stars another MacLeod. It's fine It's a Saturday morning cartoon. I didn't even care enough to really go back and watch it because being that great. They did some interesting stuff. Like they brought Ramirez back if I remember, right. And then they also had a thing where instead of beheading other Immortals, the main character had an ability where he could be voluntarily given their power. Jessika: Oh. Mike: So he had all of their knowledge and power. And again, it’s again in a dystopian future where another immortal has taken over the world. Jessika: Wow. They just love their dystopian future. Mike: They really do. But yeah, it's fine. I think it's streaming on Amazon prime. I was just so focused on everything else that I didn't get a chance to go and [00:41:00] rewatch it. Jessika: Huh, good to know. Mike: We're going to go over all the other various pieces of media real quick. and then we've got one side tangent and then we're going to go through comic books, but. Jessika: I'm so excited. Mike: Books, Highlander wound up having a pretty substantial literary footprint. The original movie had the official novelization. There wasn't really anything after that until the show came out and then the show had 10 novels and an anthology and an official behind the scenes kind of book called the Watchers Guide and it's full of essays and interviews and photos. And since then, there've been a couple of non-fiction books, like Fearful Symmetry, which is about everything Highlander related. And it's almost like a textbook, but it's pretty good. And then there's also A Kind of Magic, which is more focused on making of the original movie. And those are both actually really good. I liked them a lot. They were really easy to read. [00:42:00] There were audio plays, which I keep on forgetting audio plays are a thing at this point, but it's by this company called Big Finish in the UK. They do tie-in audio dramas for television properties. Most famously they do Dr Who. They wound up doing two seasons of audio plays. The first had Adrian Paul reprise his role as Duncan and they take place after the series ended. And then also after the events of Endgame, you can't really find them anymore. Because they just, the license expired so they aren't selling them as far as I'm aware. Jessika: That's super interesting though. Dang. Mike: Yeah. And then the second season focuses on the four horsemen Immortals, remember Jessika: Okay. Mike: Do you remember them? Jessika: I sure do. Mike: Because we were talking about this a little bit, but it was all about Methos and the other guys that he hung out with when he was effectively, a comic book villain who would've if he’d had a mustache to twirl, he would have done it. Jessika: So quickly. Yes. Mike: I thought that was really interesting. There were a couple of people in the Highlander Heart [00:43:00] group who talked about it and they seem to really like them. I can't comment, but it was really neat. Games, this is the one that's really interesting. Highlander actually has been turned into a number of games over the years. There's a couple of tabletop games we're going to breeze through. So there was two different card games in a board game. One of the card games was released back in the nineties, it was a collectible card game. And this was right when Magic: The Gathering was really hot and everybody was trying to get in on that action. And then recently there's a new one called Highlander: The Duel. And it's a deck-building game where you play as Connor or the Kurgan going up against each other. And just a couple of years ago, there was a board game that got kick-started, it was in 2018 and it's this fast paced game for two to six players. The reviews across the web were pretty positive. And again, it's one of those things where it's Immortals battling for that mysterious prize. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: But it's cool. Jessika: Nice. Mike: I’m actually pretty surprised [00:44:00] we never got like a tabletop RPG because they are not precious about applying the license for Highlander to stuff. I'm amazed that nobody went to them and said, Hey, we can make this cool historical RPG where we sorta start having players wake up and then they have flashbacks or whatever. And Jessika: Yeah Oh that would have been cool Yeah Mike: Right? But yeah we never got anything like that which I was really I actually that was the one thing I expected and was surprised to see that we never got. Okay. So we're going to go into mini tangent with video games even though they aren't technically related to comics. The first game for Highlander was a 1986 tie-in release for home computers. It was a really simple fighting title. It wasn't well received. It was apparently pretty bad. So after that the animated series had a tie in called Highlander: Last of the MacLeods. It was released on the Atari Jaguar CD console. If you remember that. Do you remember the Atari Jaguar? Jessika: Oh my god, no. I don't. [00:45:00] Mike: It kinda got lost in the shuffle in the early to mid nineties of all the different consoles that were coming out. But you can find footage of this on YouTube and it's one of those early 3d games. And so it got a lot of praise for his exploration elements and animated video sequences, but it also got a lot of criticism for its controls in combat. After that there was actually going to be an MMO called Highlander, The Gathering. And it was in development by a French studio called Kalisto entertainment, which was honestly weird because Kalisto's catalog up until now were mostly middling single-player games. They'd gotten famous for a series called Nightmare Creatures, but they also did a Fifth Element racing game on PS2 that I had and was actually pretty fun. Anyway, Kalisto went bankrupt before the MMO could come out. Jessika: Oh! Mike: And none of the folks who, yeah, that's video games. Jessika: Fair enough. Mike: So they went bankrupt. The MMO hadn't come out yet. And the folks who wound up with the rights afterwards just decided to kill the project. There's [00:46:00] one other game. That's become the source of a lot of speculation. And it's only known as Highlander: The Game it basically came about because Davis Panzer productions that's, the guys who own the rights to Highlander, and SCI, which was this holding company that owned a bunch of video game groups. They decided to ink a deal, to make a Highlander game. They announced that they basically had done a partnership back in like 2004, 2005. And at the time SCI owned Eidos who was the publisher that gave us Tomb Raider. So they were a pretty big name. The game itself was formally announced by Eidos in 2008 and the development was being handled by another French developer called Widescreen Games. It was going to be an action role-playing game. It would star a new Immortal named Owen MacLeod. The story was going to be written again by David Abramowitz and that added some [00:47:00] serious legitimacy to the project for fans. Actually, why don’t you read the summary. Jessika: Would love to my pleasure. Summary: Owen is captured and enslaved by Romans who force him to compete as a gladiator. During this time, Owen dies only to come back to life. Methos, the oldest living immortal approaches Owen to be his mentor. He teaches Owen about the game and how he and other Immortals can only be slain by beheading. As with other immortal MacLeods Owen is pursued throughout his life by a nemesis. This enemy proves to be extremely powerful. One that Owen is unable to defeat Owen learns of a magical stone, fragments of which are scattered all over the world. Throughout the game, Owen embarks upon a quest to recover these fragments and restore the stone in an attempt to gain the power to overcome his foe. [00:48:00] So dramatic. I love it. Mike: What's Highlander without any drama? But that sounds rad right? Jessika: Oh, it sounds amazing. Mike: The game was announced with a trailer in 2008 that really only showed some of the environments from different eras and then it ended with an image of Owen, but it looked promising. And then there wasn't much else after a couple of years of pretty much nothing but radio silence, Eidos wound up canceling the game and that's where a lot of the speculation has started. There's not a lot of information on Highlander: The Game. I keep waiting for one of those gaming history YouTubers to get ahold of an old dev kit and then do a video with a build, but that hasn't happened yet. So really it's all kind of speculation and wishful thinking about what could have been. And it also seems like some of the details are getting muddied as time goes on. Like Fearful Symmetry talks about the game of it but they [00:49:00] have the segment. And again I want you to read this. Jessika: Sure sure. The gam was so far along in its development stages that segments including backdrops and some of the gameplay options were presented at a Highlander Worldwide event in Los Angeles 2006 and got a very positive reaction. The beautifully rendered backdrops were almost movie quality and included the likes of Pompei, a dark forest in the Highlands, New York, and Japan as gameplay locations and introduced us to another MacLeod, Owen, the same surname but a much earlier vintage. Mike: Yeah, so, I think Mosby is a little overly enthusiastic about all of this, and this is because I think Mosby doesn't have much familiarity with how game development works. It sounds like they had concept art on display and were discussing gameplay [00:50:00] rather than showcasing a build of the game. Concept art and design discussions are things that happen very early in game development. But if you're an outsider, looking in this stuff could easily be interpreted as things being much further along than they were. Jessika: Ah. Mike: Yeah. Now that said, I did work in video games for almost a decade, and a few of my coworkers were actually involved with Highlander the game. Jessika: What? Mike: Every one of them over the years has told me the cancellation was a mercy killing. And again, this is from multiple sources, so I'm not going to name or identify because, I don't want to make things awkward for them. But basically the game was garbage . It's not really surprising to hear cause widescreen never really made a good game, the best reception that any of their titles got was just kinda mixed. But earlier this week, I actually called one of my friends. Who'd been [00:51:00] attached to the project because I wanted to get more information about this game before we recorded. Jessika: We need to get you a new shovel, you dug so deep for this. Mike: With both hands. But, they confirmed what I've been hearing from other people the gameplay itself wasn't just bad. It was boring. The biggest problem was it didn't know what kind of a game it wanted to be. Basically, it was trying to do everything all at once. There were a bunch of traversal elements, which didn't really make a lot of sense. Like why would you climb a Manhattan skyscraper when you're a roided out dude with a sword? Couldn't you just take the elevator? Or I don't know the stairs? There was going to be a bunch of Magic elements in the gameplay, which, isn't really, that's not really a thing in Highlander. There's that fantasy element because we're talking about Immortals who can't die unless you cut off their heads, but generally Magic isn't a part of the accepted Canon. And then the combat, what they were aiming to do something like [00:52:00] God of war, which was really big at the time. But, it wasn't great. My friend also pointed out that Owen looked like a bodybuilder, but his fashion sense was from that industrial metal scene of the late nineties, which neither of those things really fits with the Highlander aesthetic because Adrian Paul was arguably the most in shape of the Highlander actors. But even that was, he was a dude who was like, yeah, I could achieve that if I was really good about my diet and then just worked out aggressively but not like Hugh Jackman does for his Wolverine roles. Jessika: Yeah, yeah. Mike: So I'm going to send you a screenshot of what Owen looked like in the key art the initial title it does. Jessika: What? It looks like Criss Angel. Mike: Right. And they're trying to recreate that iconic pose of The Quickening from the first movie that Connor does at the very end where he's getting raised up and, by the rails of Lightning, or the wires [00:53:00] of lightning. Jessika: Yeah, I get what they were trying to do. Mike: Yeah,I wanna know, what the fuck is up with those weird straps with rings that are going down his legs. Jessika: I don't really know, I was trying to figure that out myself. So just so that everyone can really get the picture that we're getting here and you'll, you might understand why it's taken me so long to describe it. I had to take it all in first. Mike: Yeah, it’s a ride. Jessika: It’s all very monochromatic. And the background is of course, a cut of the statue of Liberty, the backdrop of parts of New York that I'm sure aren't even next to each other, which is always funny. And then what is this? Is this the new guy, or is this supposed to be Duncan? Mike: Yeah, this is the new guy, Jessika: It’s Owen. Mike: Yeah. It's Owen. And then Connor and Duncan were supposed to appear, supposedly. I know Peter Wingfield was recording his lines for Methos. Jessika: Well, if they haven't killed off Methos that makes sense. And I don't know in the series if they have, and maybe Duncan makes [00:54:00] sense if he hasn't died yet, but. Mike: Yeah they can't kill off Methos, Methos was my first gay crush. Jessika: Yeah. He's. Slightly problematic in a couple episodes, but he's a great character overall. But he's very Chriss Angel, he's wearing like a trench coat and that has to be some sort of a lace undershirt or something. Mike: lAnd he’s got like a weird really, like baggy leather pants. Jessika: Yes. Which cannot be comfortable. It's doing this weird pooching thing in the front. Mike: Yeah, and then I think I saw another screenshot where it looks like he's wearing skater shoes tennis shoes as well. Jessika: Oh, Vans Off the Wall, man. Mike: Just once I want to see a MacLeod in the movies with a good fashion sense. Jessika: Yeah, I mentioned that I wanted to cosplay as Duncan, which overall would be a great idea. But then I was looking through his outfits and I'm like, what do I wear? Do I wear this weird white tank top with these like acid wash jeans [00:55:00] and a belt? Or is this the one where I'm wearing like five shirts and a long jacket? Is it that day? Mike: You know who he looks like that guy, Canus. Jessika: Yes! Yes, does. He has the lace shirt and everything. Mike: And the dog collar. Jessika: Oh my god, it was so funny. I told you, I think it was trying to be edgy. Mike: Yeah, and instead it comes off as really queer-coded. Jessika: It really does though. I know, my little queer brain was like bling. Mike: Yeah, It feels like they weren't really getting the essence of what Highlander actually was and who these guys were, because usually the Highlander characters are a little bit more believable and ordinary because that's the whole idea is that they're walking among us and we have no idea unless they tell us. Okay. On top of all this. So remember how I mentioned that trailer was just showcasing environments for the [00:56:00] game. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: There was a reason for that. The reason was that they couldn’t get the character models to work. Jessika: Oh! Mike: So the shot of Owen at the end it's actually just animated key art it's the same it's the same art that you just saw. It's that image. It was just slightly animated. And then they released a couple of screenshots for the game, but apparently they were really heavily photo-shopped well, beyond industry standards. So, it was one of those things where, this was a turd and it needed to be flushed. And it finally did. But Widescreen went under about a year after the game was formally announced. They were working on another big project and apparently that got taken away, and as a result, it just caused the studio to implode. By this point in time Square Enix the guys do all the final fantasy games had bought Eidos and they formally canceled it. We're not sure why exactly, my guess is that it was probably, they just looked at cost it would take to finish this game and then the [00:57:00] amount that it would need to sell in order to be profitable or to meet their sales expectations for it and they just thought it wasn't worth it. But yeah, my friend actually said they were embarrassed to work on it and they would have been fine even if it had been an average game, but it was just bad. Even one of those kind of middling average games, I think that would have been fine, that would have lived up to the Highlander bar. Finally, there's that Highlander game that spark unlimited was working on. I never even heard a whisper about this until. We watched that episode of Highlander Heart focusing on video games, and they brought Craig Allen on to talk about the project. Based on what we know now, I think this might be why Square Enix was holding onto the rights for another year after they shut down Highlander, the game, just because they had this other title, theoretically in development or very early development. Based on the footage that they have, it looks like they had at least done enough development work to put together a vertical slice that they could show for pitch [00:58:00] purposes and at conventions. But I thought it was really promising looking overall. What did you think? Jessika: I thought it did look really interesting the game play itself I did like the idea of having a female Highlander. That being said, they had this whole concept about what Craig Allen was calling beautiful damage. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And it was this whole thing about, oh it was the first female Highlander and her looks go when she gets damaged, and that's her whole motivation is to stay pretty. And I just, that gave me a huge headache, and it of course was super male-gazey I mean, the game itself seemed that way. Mike: It was weird because I would love to see women and Highlander being built a little bit more like warriors, like a little bit more muscly, which would be in keeping with people who battle across the centuries. [00:59:00] They don't need to be super jacked like the Amazons in Wonder Woman, but making them look like stick thin suicide girl, punk rock chick from the late aughts. Didn't quite gel with me. I understood what he was talking about though, because that was the thing where they were starting to do permanent cosmetic damage in video games. That was something that was really big in the Batman Arkham games. Every time that you got knocked out, you'd come back and you'd have a little bit more of your outfit chipped apart. So, after a while Batman's looking pretty ragged and you realize maybe I'm not as good at this game as I think I am. Jessika: Yeah And the concept itself is really interesting It just I guess was the way it was phrased by this person. And it very much was he was so proud of the fact that it was the first Highlander female in a video game. And then everything was just like so incredibly sexist. I was excited that I wasn't Mike: We're also viewing it, with the lens of 2021 at this point. At that time, [01:00:00] that was before they had relaunched Tomb Raider, in 2013, 2014, where they made her much more realistic. She was still very fit, but she wasn't the Lara Croft that had generated a lot of criticism. I think possibly, I don't know, but I hope that it would have been marketed a bit differently if it had been done today. That said we also don't know exactly what it would look like as a final product. Jessika: Oh absolutely, yeah. Mike: It’s, I agree. It's a little bit problematic viewed through the current lens. At the same time, like a lot of the Highlander properties when it was being done, I think it was kind of just par for the course. Jessika: Yeah, fair enough. But, I did like the idea of having a female Highlander and having her have a whole story regardless of whether it's the first one to be completely [01:01:00] tragedy laden which was the other comment like her experience a ton of loss because she's female and experiences empathy unlike the male characters. Mike: I really didn't like that. Actually. I thought that was. I mean the, the whole thing where they were saying we wanted to focus on lifetimes of tragedy as opposed to enjoying multiple lives. And I'm like, that's the whole purpose of Highlander. That's what I really like is when you sit there and you watch them having fun and doing all this interesting stuff. Jessika: Women aren't allowed to have fun, Mike. Mike: Apparently. Jessika: We just have to have lives full of tragedy and pining for people that we've lost in our lives. Mike: Well, yeah. And we all know that the dudes don't have feelings, so we just, you know, go on and enjoy things. Jessika: That does suck that Hugh they don't give men the ability to have that capacity or give them the the credit to have that capacity. Mike: I will say, I am sorry that this one didn't get further along the development [01:02:00] stages, because it certainly seemed like it had a lot more promise than the title that was canceled right before it. Jessika: Yes, the gameplay itself looked more interesting, it looks more complex, it easier to navigate. What they were showing us was really intense. Mike: I really liked that whole idea of being able to view the environments in two different eras. It reminded me a lot of another Eidos game called legacy of Cain soul river, where there was a spiritual world and then a physical world. And you could flip back and forth between them, which was kind of cool. Jessika: Oh, that’s neat Mike: Yeah. I dug that. I liked the idea of exploring the same environment in two different areas. I thought that was really neat. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: Let's move on to Comics. Jessika: Sounds great. Mike: Okay, so, I’m curious. When do you think that Highlander got big enough to get a comic book? Jessika: I don't know maybe late nineties Mike: 2006. Jessika: Wow [01:03:00] That's later than I had expected. Mike: Yeah. There wasn't a comic adaptation of the movie when it came out, which is weird, there wasn't one here in the States. Highlander Heart, in their YouTube podcast, noted there was a series of five newspaper comic strips that were published as part marketing promotion. The hosts weren't entirely certain if they're exclusive to Europe or not. I don't know. I haven't been able to really find much reference to it. After the movie came out, though there was a two-part comic adaptation in Argentina. It was published through El Tony Todo Color and El Tony Supercolor they were sibling comic anthology magazines, and here's the weird twist. It looks like this was an unlicensed adaptation. Jessika: Mmhm, interesting. Mike: So now we're going to take another side tangent. The important thing that you need to know is that Argentina had just come out of a brutal military dictatorship that came about as part of Operation Condor, which is this horrific program the United States was involved in. And it isn't really taught about in high school history, at least it [01:04:00] wasn't when I was going through high school and I went to a pretty good one. did you ever learn about that? I'm curious. Jessika: No, I did not. Mike: Okay I'm giving you an extremely TLDR read of this, but basically this was a program in the seventies and eighties when the US backed military dictatorships across South America. So our country helped these groups, kidnap, torture, rape murder, thousands of political opponents, like Argentina was especially brutal. There were literally death squads, hunting down political distance across the country. It was a really horrific time. I want you to read this summary of what was going on during that time, actually. Jessika: Give me the really fun stuff I see. Mike: Sorry. Jessika: No you're good. It is estimated that between - 9,000 and 30,000 that's a huge span. Mike: I know, it’s such a margin of error I don't understand. Jessika: Lack of record taking will get you there quick, I think. I'm going to start over, but we’ll leave that in. It is estimated that between [01:05:00] 9,000 and 30,000 people were killed or disappeared, many of whom were impossible to formally report due to the nature of state terrorism. The primary target, like in many other South American countries participating in Operation Condor, were communist guerrillas and sympathizers, but the target of Operation Condor also included students, militants trade, unionists, writers, journalists, I don't love this, artists, and any other citizens suspected of being left-wing activists - well take me the goddamn way away. Mike: Right. Jessika: Including Peronist guerillas. I don't love that. Mike: No it's really awful. And based on that list of targets, it's not surprising that there was a lot of media suppression during this time. Democracy returned to the country in ’83, and there was this explosion of art across the mediums. Argentine Comics [01:06:00] saw this Renaissance period. A lot of them though, weren't really licensed and let's be honest. It's not like there's an internet where IP owners could monitor stuff like this and shut it down when they learned about it. There was also this drastic comics increase in the area due to create or publishing Zines because the eighties was the decade where personal computers suddenly became commonplace and all of a sudden pe

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Vlog Squad Discusses Nature of Reality

Simulation

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 26, 2021 71:34

Calling all LA Influencers to play Metaphysics Mike Tyson promoting Entheogens on Impaulsive More people asking the main questions: Who are we? Why are we here? What is our true nature? What is I? Who am I? How to maximize planetary prosperity? Old Hollywood has no idea what’s going on with Digital Quotient (DQ) TikTok, Snapchat, IG, YouTube, CGI, VR, AGI, Avatars, Neuralink New Hollywood understands DQ Need Metaphysical Truth as Anchor Focus for what to build around One Infinite Creator expressing itself Maximizing Human Potential Great place to start is influencers already discussing the Q’s VIEWS with David Dobrik & Jason Nash Episode: Biggest Life Failure Timestamps: 20:20 — 26:36 David to Mike Sheffer: “Mike do you think the world revolves around you?” Mike: “Anything not directly in front of me doesn’t exist.” David: “My math teacher used to tell me that all the time.” Mike: “Nothing exists outside my own mind.” Mike: “How do I know you exist when I leave this room?” Very aligned with Metaphysical Idealism Consciousness is inextricable from reality Realities require observers just like dreams Clouds (thoughts, perceptions, forms) appear inside Sky (Awareness) Advanced stages reach All-Inclusive Awareness Donald Hoffman’s Conscious Agent Theory Render only local experience like in GTA Other agents are rendering China, India, Russia Jason: “How do I know I haven’t been dealing with a narcissist this whole time?” Solipsism would be narcissistic: “Everyone else is an NPC.” Our GTA games overlap — multiplayer missions like VIEWS podcast

132 Systematic Investor Series ft Mark Rzepczynski – March 21st, 2021

Top Traders Unplugged

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 21, 2021 88:48

Mark Rzepczynski joins us today to discuss Jerome Powell’s recent speech and how central banks can often confuse markets, the potential of Artificial Intelligence in systematic investing, whether or not holding government bonds is a good idea, the recent rise in interest rates and what it means for the stock market, the relationship between correlations and volatility, why policy makers should avoid trying to engineer future expectations, how recency-bias affects our decision making, complexity versus complicatedness, robotic systematic investing versus human discretionary investing, how to tell the difference between a systematic and discretionary trader by looking at returns only, and why ‘low-cost’ funds can often end up being more expensive than normal. You can find Mark’s latest writings here. If you would like to leave us a voicemail to play on the show, you can do so here. Check out our Global Macro series here. Learn more about the Trend Barometer here. IT's TRUE

SI132: Overcoming Recency Bias for Better Decision Making ft. Mark Rzepcyznski

Top Traders Unplugged

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 21, 2021 88:48

Mark Rzepczynski joins us today to discuss Jerome Powell's recent speech and how central banks can often confuse markets, the potential of Artificial Intelligence in systematic investing, whether or not holding government bonds is a good idea, the recent rise in interest rates and what it means for the stock market, the relationship between correlations and volatility, why policy makers should avoid trying to engineer future expectations, how recency-bias affects our decision making, complexity versus complicatedness, robotic systematic investing versus human discretionary investing, how to tell the difference between a systematic and discretionary trader by looking at returns only, and why ‘low-cost' funds can often end up being more expensive than normal. In this episode, we discuss: Whether artificial intelligence has a place in systematic investing Interest rates and their effects on the trading markets How correlations can increase volatility The benefits of a more 'hands-off' approach to policy-making The common perils of 'recency bias' Spotting a discretionary trader just by looking at returns The hidden costs behind supposed 'low cost' funds Follow Niels on https://twitter.com/toptraderslive (Twitter), https://www.linkedin.com/in/nielskaastruplarsen (LinkedIn), https://www.youtube.com/user/toptraderslive (YouTube) or via the https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/ (TTU website). Follow Mark on https://twitter.com/mrzepczynski (Twitter). IT's TRUE

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Get a Grip on Lighting with Michael Colligan and Greg Ehrich

Distribution Talk

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 18, 2020 36:58

"I've always been about time management and efficiencies and finding ways to do the right thing quickly. ~Greg "In your career, there's 5% of your time in service to your industry. Period. End of the story. And people need to hear that. ~Mike How do two affable guys with several successful businesses between them find time to record three podcasts a week and run a leading trade organization? For Michael Colligan and Greg Ehrich, the duo behind Get A Grip On Lighting podcast, their secret sauce is a commitment to serving the lighting industry. It’s been a while since I appeared as guest number one on their show; now, Mike and Greg are here to return the favor, shedding light on how they keep these interconnected parts running smoothly. “I have a couple of different angles. I love distribution, I love contracting, and all these things dovetail together,” says Mike of the businesses he runs when not behind the mic - although he’s often managing business even while recording. The show he created and that he and Greg now co-host, is the official podcast of The National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors (NAILD). It’s a great fit, not least because Mike and Greg embody what it means to innovate in all areas. *** Distribution Talk is produced by The Distribution Team, a consulting services firm dedicated to helping wholesale distribution clients remove barriers to profitability, generate wealth and achieve personal goals. http://www.distributionteam.com This episode was edited & mixed by The Creative Impostor Studios. Connect with Jason Bader on LinkedIn. Connect with Michael Colligan on LinkedIn. Connect with Greg Ehrich on LinkedIn. *** Through their individual companies, each had championed advanced lighting technologies like CFL and LED, getting on board when cool lighting was just getting hot, paving the way for their collectively bright future endeavors. “It's kind of like your card in the door everywhere because everybody needs lighting,” Greg says. Even during the pandemic, the pair continue to innovate. Connection is key for both men. Separately, each is driven to find the best fit for their customers and the planet. Together, Mike and Greg have committed to giving back to an industry that has provided an abundance of opportunity to forge relationships. Podcasting and live streaming trade show events (remember those?) are two of their activities. The other is participation in the industry’s trade organization. Participation is probably too soft a word for what Mike and Greg do. Rather than stopping at board participation, they signed on to oversee the organization’s interests and advance its standing. And they created an entire management company to tackle the job. “We wanted to bring it to the next level,” Greg says, and they’ve done just that, with enhanced education options and a fresh appeal to the next generation of industry leaders. With all they’ve accomplished to date, it’s hard to believe that Mike and Greg have the same twenty-four hours in a day as the rest of us. It’s not magic; it’s time-management. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Distribution Talk e17 - Commodity vs Consultation w/ Brenda Puckett Get A Grip On Lighting e1 - w/ Jason Bader Get A Grip On Lighting e45 - Women In Lighting w/ Brenda Puckett Get A Grip On Lighting e132 - Disrupt Or Die w/ Brenda Pucket CONNECT WITH MICHAEL COLLIGAN & GREG EHRICH: Atlas Lighting Premier Lighting Get A Grip Studios Podcasts Get A Grip On Lighting NAILD

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How do you define cheating?

Basic Suburbia

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 20, 2020 68:34

Practicing baseball with Cam, turmeric lattes, Among Us game.Tip of the Week - Don't ever pay full price for holiday cards on Shutterfly!3 for 3Allison:If you could change one thing about your personality what would it be?Ever think about how inefficient humans are built?Can’t remember :)Mike:How do you define cheating in your relationship? Is it important to do so?What’s better than sex?What was your favorite show to watch as a kid/young teen?Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/basicsuburbia)

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Practical China Marketing with Mike Golden

Wealth Without Borders Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2020 9:37

How can you be sure that your business will do well in China? What is the perfect and practical approach to marketing in China that will help you bring more sales and income into your business? The marketing approach that works best in America may not be the best approach here in China. Marketing your content and building your brand using a Chinese approach will help you save bucks and will grow your business both in China and internationally. Mike Golden is the co-founder and China President of Brandigo, which is a marketing communications agency, which has its China office in Shanghai. Mike's been based in Shanghai for the last 18 years. In this episode, Mike shares his insights on how to approach the complications of marketing in China in a simple and practical way by understanding your target audience, building digital campaigns and content that works in China, building awareness, and getting leads in China. What you will learn from this episode: Learn how to market your business in China without wasting too much money Discover how to build digital campaigns, and content that works in China Know more about practical China marketing that can help you gain more customers specifically in China "Test out different types of meditation. And then, choose one and stick to that." - Fionn Wright Topics Covered: 01:37 - Mike defines his ideal client 02:45 - Problem Mike solves for his clients: Building awareness and getting leads in the Chinese context 03:33 - Applying the correct approach in marketing, why coming out with a Chinese approach but with a global understanding is important when expanding to China 04:17 - Starting off with poor localization and not understanding their local audience in China, one of the common mistakes people make trying to solve the problem of China marketing 05:11 - Mike’s Valuable free action: “I think a good action they can take and this is some part what we do to help our clients, they can also do themselves to some degree, is really talk to people, their target audience, their target customers, get them in a room or give them a call and dig into what type of channels they actually use.” 06:13 - Mike’s Valuable free resource: Go to Newrank.cn to see the live listing of social media channels 07:29 - Books alert: Advertising by Ogilvy and The Sales Playbook by Jack Daly 08:15 - Question that should have been asked to Mike: How do we grow our WeChat channel? Key Takeaways: “A good action they can take and this is some part that we do to help our clients, but you know, they can also do themselves to some degree, is really talk to people, their target audience, their target customers, get them in a room or give them a call and dig into what type of channels they actually use.” - Mike Golden “We recommend getting out there and talking to your customers, talking to your sales team if you have one here, and really see what they're interested in because it might surprise you. It's not always what you think it's going to be.” - Mike Golden People / Resources Mentioned: Advertising by Ogilvy The Sales Playbook by Jack Daly Ways to Connect with Mike Golden: Website: https://brandigo.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanghaigolden/ Ways to Connect with Howard Whiteson: Website: http://www.wealthwithoutborders.net Podcast: https://wealthwithoutborders.net/podcast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/howardwhiteson

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第994期:Portugal in Comparison

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Play Episode Listen Later Oct 5, 2020 3:20

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Mike: So Ana, Portugal is not a very big country, is it?Ana: No, it's not. We're actually quite small compared to most countries in the world.Mike: But you are next to some pretty big countries in Europe, right? You're next to Spain, and France, and Germany, which are all bigger countries.Ana: Yeah. Yeah, we are. Right by Spain. Spain is so much bigger than Portugal. And it kind of covers some of the Portuguese borders, so it's very interesting.Mike: Okay, yeah. I've even heard Portugal being referred to as a province of Spain. What do you think about that?Ana: Yeah. And they think it might be in South America or part of Spain, but not really. Actually, Portugal and Spain, they have a lot of things in common but also a lot of differences.Mike: All right.Ana: So the people are similar but our food is actually very different.Mike: How so? What are the differences between Portuguese food and Spanish food?Ana: Well, I think Portuguese food, we have a lot of grilled fish, and we're right by the ocean so for us, fish is really important.Mike: Ah, I see.Ana: Whereas in Spain, I think you get a lot of meat and food that's a little bit less healthy, I think. But maybe that's just my opinion.Mike: All right. So is Portuguese food very healthy?Ana: It can be but not always. Our desserts are really rich, so you should be careful. There is a lot of egg and flour and sugar in there. So you don't want to eat too much of that.Mike: And you like very rich, cured meat, and sausages, as well as they, do in Spain?Ana: Yes, we do. Smoked ham, and cheese is also very important.Mike: Oh, that sounds good.Ana: But you know there are also a lot of similarities between Portugal and Spain.Mike: Oh really? What sort of similarities?Ana: For example, our love for football is very important.Mike: Ah, of course.Ana: So both Portugal and Spain have very big football teams that are important in the whole world. And when we play against the rest of the world, Portugal and Spain really unite and we support each other.Mike: What's the name of that famous football player from Portugal?Ana: Oh, Cristiano Ronaldo.Mike: Oh yes, Ronaldo.Ana: Yeah, yeah. He's really good. I think he won the best player – well, yeah, the title of world's best player recently.Mike: Really? Wow. Are you big fan of football?Ana: Yes, I am. I used to be a big supporter of Porto, so that was really interesting. And Portugal also hosted the European tournament a few years ago.Mike: Ah, I see. And Porto, is that a place in Portugal?Ana: Yes, it is. It's in the north. Even though I'm from the Lisbon area, I actually support another team.Mike: And why do you support Porto?Ana: I don't know. I guess, I just like Porto when I was growing up and that's why.Mike: All right. Have you visited Porto?Ana: Yes, I have. It's really a beautiful city.Mike: Oh well, maybe I should visit there as well when I go to Portugal this summer.Ana: Yeah, you should.

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It's the start of the NFL season! Producer Jill's birthday. Rainy days in FL.Tip of the week - Cleaning shower glass3 for 3 Allison:What thing that’s useful now but won’t be around in 50 years.If you had tons of money what would be your guilty pleasure?What does it mean if you think a lot of people will come to your funeral but you don’t have a lot of people in your life?Mike:How many chuggas before a choo choo?Is it too early to put up Halloween decorations?Two beers and a puppy test for people in your life.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/basicsuburbia)

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936 weeks

A Mom's Life

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 19, 2020 49:17

Episode 25. Did you realize how little of time you have with your child from birth to age 18? Follow us on Instagram: @amomslifepodcast @KatieLKenney @ntendallClick here for our website and like us on Facebook @amomslifepodcastWHAT YOU'LL FIND IN THIS EPISODEIn this week's episode we talk about transitioning to college after that time is up! We talk to Julie, mom of three who just sent her twin girls to their freshman year of college during a pandemic. (minute by minute breakdown)1:30: Katie & Natalie talk briefly about their drop off experiences at college 6:00: Sending our kids to college and why we need to make those 936 weeks count. 7:00: App called Parent Cue that can help you track that time. 9:45: Welcome Julie!14:00: Sending your kids to college during a pandemic.16:00: HIPAA consent forms and why parents should know about them.17:45: Safety on campus20:00: Tips for parents to stay connected. Julie recommends the Facebook group Grown & Flown and says usually the college has a Facebook page for parents. 20:45: Affording college23:45: Coming back home after drop-off24:15: Kids still needing you26:00: Celebrating the accomplishment of launching kids 28:45: Resources Julie suggests for parents. APP: Life 360. 30:30: Advice on making moments count 32:30: FERPA form and why it's important if you want to see gradesMIKE'S MINUTE38:00: Minute with Mike-How involved should parents be?-Navigating homesickness-Safety on campus-Why preparing your kids for college starts when they are young-When your child should see a social worker on campus MOMS MUST HAVESThe Comfy - The blanket you can wear!Peachskin sheets - The best sheets ever!Skinny Freezers wine chillers - like Fla-vo-ice for adults!STAY WITH USNext week, and every week, a brand new episode just for you, Momma!Subscribing, following, and five-star reviews are our love language!Thank YOU for being part of our community.

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Is Allison codependent?

Basic Suburbia

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 17, 2020 53:08

We're going from Samsung Galaxies to iPhones! Our puppy got shaved down like a lamb with no wool!Tip of the week - Lanyards for kids at school this year.3 for 3Allison: Jim Carrey said “Solitude can be dangerous and addictive.” Agree or disagree?What would you do if you were offered 6-figures to do the podcast, but not with you?Favorite and least favorite movie?Mike:How do you feel about being invited to something as an after thought? Do you still go?Do you mind when I fall asleep while we watch movies or shows?What would we do if someone at the kids school gets COVID?Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/basicsuburbia)

The Fastest Way To Make 6-7 Figures…With Joel Erway

The Mike Dillard Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 20, 2020 53:27

There are millions of people who are being forced or inspired to start their own business for the first time right now, and unfortunately, they’re walking into a jungle filled with landmines. The vast majority of them will spend the next 3-5 years trying to figure out what kind of business to start, what products to sell, how to create a marketing funnel, advertise online, and everything in between. The ones who keep going despite the failures and false starts, are the people who will eventually make it, and create a new life of freedom for themselves as a self-employed entrepreneur. With that in mind, what would I do if I had to start all over again? Well there is one business model that provides the best chance at replacing a 6 figure salary, and that is selling your product or service for a premium price of at least $3,000 to $5,000. For example, if you want to make $10,000 per month, then you only need to make two $5,000 sales to make that happen. But if you were trying to hit that same goal by selling a $49 Ebook, you’d have to make 200 sales every single month. And yes, making 2 sales per month at any price, is infinitely easier than making 200. This is a lesson I learned way back in my networking days and it completely changed my life. I went from struggling and trying to build a business selling supplements and health products, to selling access to investing seminars for $10,000 each. Within months I was making 7 figures as a distributor for that business because higher prices provides you with so many advantages… Higher profits, higher end customers, and the bigger margins you need to market, and still have plenty of money left over to pay your bills. So if I had to start all over again, I would build a business that offered a premium product, for a premium price. So how do you do that, well today we’re joined by Joel Erway who is arguably the best in the world at helping people quickly and easily create a high-ticket sales-based business. When I started to really study this business model again over the past few months, he’s the guy I called because he has the simplest, and most elegant business model I’ve found in this space. So let’s dive in, and let Joel teach you how you can build a brand new business from beginning to launch in less than 10 days, that has the potential to produce 6-7 figures per year in revenue with one single product and marketing funnel. Resources: HighTicketCourses.com/Mike How to Create Irresistible Offers: The Easiest Way on Earth to make Your Marketing Generate More Leads, Orders, and Sales Music: Track: Tokyo Machine & Guy Arthur - GET UP [NCS Release] Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds. Watch: youtu.be/HV7mLcsUp5U Free Download / Stream: ncs.io/GetUp

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第826期:Sea Turtles

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Play Episode Listen Later Apr 20, 2020 4:02

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Mike: So Dusty, your background is in Marine Biology. Is that right?Dusty: Yes.Mike: You're kind of a marine biologist.Dusty: Mm-hm.Mike: You've mentioned before yesterday, we're at the aquarium, you mentioned that you've done work with sea turtles in helping sea turtles. Can you tell me what you were doing there?Dusty: Yeah. Well, when I was in university, during the first two summers of my university, I would go to Greece, and I worked at a sea turtle rehabilitation center.Mike: Wow.Dusty: Basically, I kind of worked like a sea turtle nurse. So I went out, give injections to turtles that were sick, and help sew up wounds, and basically, just do first aid for sea turtles.Mike: Were you wearing like a cute little nurse's outfit?Dusty: All the time. Actually, I found that helpful a lot.Mike: What kind of care do sea turtles require?Dusty: Well basically, what happens is when a sea turtle gets sick, their defense mechanism is that they just float, you know. They're not fish; they can't breathe water.Mike: Right.Dusty: So for them, it's better to be on the surface.Mike: Okay.Dusty: Sometimes, kind fishermen find them, or people on the beach find them, and they bring it to us. The first thing we do is we give them a freshwater bath, because, you know, sea turtles live in saltwater, so all their parasites are things that are used to being in saltwater. So when you give them the freshwater, that kills most of them. We get some of the barnacles, clean up their shells a bit, and try and see what the injury was.After that, we put them usually on - give them vitamin injections to kind of get their systems up a bit. And then, we take them to a professional vet if they're really badly injured. The most common things we found were fish hooks stuck in throats.Mike: Wow!Dusty: Or sometimes, they'd swallow things. Sea turtles will eat anything.Mike: Really?Dusty: Yeah. The amount of cigarette butts you'll find coming out of one sea turtle is incredible. You'd think they were chain smokers.Mike: Holy smoke! Holy smoke is right, I guess. What was the worst sea turtle kind of situation that you found?Dusty: You know, one of the things, apparently, in Greece - and I don't know if it still goes on; it's just almost ten years ago - but apparently, it's bad luck to catch a sea turtle in your nets, and so they try to kill the turtles. Not all fishermen, but many fishermen would try to injure the turtles. It's really hard to kill one. They only use what they had on the boat, which meant their boots or their fish hooks or their knives, or whatnot. They're tough creatures.So we had one turtle came in, who's head had just been split open. You know, it looked like someone had opened a book all the way, and you could see its skull and even a section of its brain. And they've gouged out, I think, one of its eyes. It was not in a good shape. The kind of sad thing is that, you know, the best thing to do would be to euthanize the turtle, but we're not allowed to do that because they're threatened or endangered species. So you have to get permission from the government first to do it, and they have to - yeah.Mike: Wow! Sounds like a process. I'm assuming that the turtle didn't make it out too well.Dusty: No. Yeah, that one's been set down. It's really a hard choice, you know.Mike: Yeah. I got to understand that. Any happy turtle stories?Dusty: Yup, lots of happy turtle stories, too. A lot of times, we get turtles that come in with a flipper that's missing, and that's actually not a big deal.Mike: Really?Dusty: Yeah. They can survive with missing a flipper.Mike: Really?Dusty: Sometimes even two flippers, depending on which ones.Mike: Really?Dusty: It's kind of nice to rehabilitate them and see them go from when it's not eating and is very weak, within just a few months, be much stronger and ready to swim off.Mike: Can you give them like a peg flipper or something?Dusty: Actually, some scientists are looking to do that.Mike: Really?Dusty: Yeah. In Japan, there are scientists now that are working on making fake limbs for sea turtles. And that's one of the possibilities.Mike: Fascinating stuff! Wow!Dusty: Yeah. In one of the islands, the veterinarians there were using actual bird wings, like the bones inside them -Mike: Really? Wow!Dusty: --to help rebuild the sea turtle shells. Sea turtle shells will grow back, as well, if they're injured. We had one turtle that was missing about 15% of its shell from the backdown. And we just watched in less than two months, a good chunk of that had grown back. Actually, it was really surprising.Mike: How did it lose its shell?Dusty: Probably a propeller. Sea turtles - they're not very fast, and they're not very smart. And they tend to get hit by boats a lot, as well. So you'll see these big gashes in their shells sometimes.Mike: Okay. So you won't see too many sea turtle mathematicians.Dusty: No. Sea turtle politicians, perhaps.Mike: We got plenty of those, yes.

第826期:Sea Turtles

japan holy sea greece marine biology sea turtles mike you mike yeah mike how mike right

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 20, 2020 4:02

第826期:Sea Turtles

japan holy sea greece marine biology sea turtles mike you mike yeah mike how mike right

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 20, 2020 4:02

#9 | Mike Kerns | You Don't Have To Be A Green Beret To Be In Medical Sales, But It Helps!

Brand Rounds

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 15, 2020 24:03

Mike Kerns is an Army Green Beret Officer and Medical Device Sales Consultant.I ask Mike:How did being a Green Beret prepare you for medical sales? What is the one thing that you’re doing for your clients that’s making the biggest difference? You and I have joined forces and are not just selling products, rather helping to build doctor practices. What difference does that make? What are the pivots that doctors need to make to attract more patients around a particular perspective or technology? Many military veterans are listening to this podcast. What can you say that may make them consider medical sales as a profession or as a proving ground to become their own boss?

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Criminal Law with Mark Galler

The Agruss Law Firm Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 4, 2020 58:42

Mike: Welcome to the Agruss Law Firm video podcast. We are a different kind of law firm and that's on purpose. At Agruss Law Firm, we see you as a person and not just a client and that makes us better at what we do. We're not just lawyers and you're not just a client. We're friends, neighbors and family. This is a show about all things legalish that friends, neighbors and family want to know. This is season one episode two and today we're talking criminal law. Today's guest is Mark Galler, the owner of Mark Galler Law. Founded in November 2018, Mark focuses on criminal defense and civil litigation, primarily contract disputes and fraud. Mark, how are you?Mark Galler: Great, Mike. Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate the invite here and this is a really wonderful setup you have.Mike: Yeah, thanks. Absolutely. I just started doing this video podcast and when I was thinking about doing it, I knew for sure, I would have someone on early on to talk criminal law. When I was in law school, I loved criminal law. I love criminal procedure. My wife and I are total junkies for Law and Order, Dateline. I love the documentary series, Making a Murderer and the Aaron Hernandez Show that also recently came out. Tell me a little bit about what you do at your firm.Mark Galler: Yeah, thank you Mike. My firm has been in existence since November 2018. I primarily practice and I'd say about 80% of my practice is criminal defense. I handle everything from simple traffic violations up into, including homicide and class acts offenses, everything in between. I'd say the real nuts and bolts of my practice would involve cases of possession of firearms, illegal possession of a firearm, drug cases and also, DUI practice as well.Mike: Okay, and I think you'd agree with me that I think criminal law and family law and I'm sure there's other areas of law that are sort of their own separate animal, right? Tell me the difference between a criminal case and a civil case, what's the difference?Mark Galler: That's a great question and a lot of times, I get that even from my clients or people that don't really understand how criminal law works. Criminal law is initiated by a victim of a criminal offense. Someone that they were either harmed by and they felt that they have been wronged so they go to the police, they file a report or complaints with their local police departments and then the police from there will initiate the proper procedure of filing a formal report. Maybe if it's a felony level, they'll reach out to the local states attorney's department.Mark Galler: They will look to see if the assistant states attorney, that's in charge of maybe felony review, thinks that there is enough evidence or proper procedure to bring in a case in front of either a grand jury or a preliminary hearing which is where the officers or other victims would come in to testify or witnesses would testify if there's enough probable cause to bring a case. It's really, where the government comes in and steps in to protect individuals who have been harmed and they try to set an example for anyone else looking to commit a crime and saying, "Hey, if you do this, these are going to be the repercussions and we're going to protect the citizens of our state or our government."Mike: Okay, and you just briefly touched on it as far as like the process from the time someone is arrested until trial. Walk me through all of the stages from what happens from day one until trial.Mark Galler: Exactly, so there's a couple of ways that the criminal case can be initiated. The crime could have already occurred and the individual might not have been caught yet, okay? What often happens is, if the victim has some idea of the identity of that individual or maybe there is a video recording at a store location or from someone's cellphone, they will then try to track that individual down. Try to look at the person's identity. If they can identify the person through visual quality or if they have a name and then they'll issue an arrest warrant and that is to bring in that individual to face the charges against them. If they were arrested on the spot of committing the crime, say, they were trying to break into a phone store and the police were nearby, somebody saw them breaking in and they arrested them on the spot, then formal charges would start at that point.Mark Galler: Now, the way that the next step works is once you're arrested, they have a certain amount of time to bring you in for a bond hearing. Typically, it's the next day. If it's in the morning hours, they'll bring you in, in the afternoon at the same day, where you'll go in front of a judge and try to get a bond set and hopefully be released from custody. Custody is where you remain in the protection of the police. That's the first step. The second step then is, they have to bring you in front of either a grand jury which is roughly 16 members of the community that'll hear evidence and testimony from witnesses from police officers who will basically explain to the jury, under oath, what they saw.Mark Galler: Try to prove that there is problem ... the government is trying to prove then through question that there's probably cause to bring a formal case against that individual.Mike: Let me jump in there because I've got a quick question about that. Is there always a grand jury depending on what type of charge, whether it's state or federal or if it's like a minor DUI or I don't know if you would consider that minor but is there always a grand jury?Mark Galler: Great question, no, it really only applies to felony level cases which is anything ... class four felony is the lowest level of felony in Illinois and that's because you can spend at least 366 days in jail or longer. What separates a misdemeanor from a felony is simply that. The highest level of misdemeanor is misdemeanor A and you could spend up to 365 days in jail there. What Cook County did specifically for the longest time was, they would go through a preliminary hearing, which affords criminal defense attorneys like myself the opportunity to go into court, with my client and then question the officer or witness, under oath.Mark Galler: Then ultimately be able to argue to the judge that there is no probable cause to bring the case and try to get it dismissed at that point but it's easier for the state now to just skip that step, bring the evidence and the officers into court and essentially, feed them the questions that they need without opposition from somebody like me and their chances of getting the grand jury to indict the individual is extremely high.Mike: When someone is indicted, what is the next step?Mark Galler: After they're indicted, then if the individuals are already in custody, then they have to go through an arraignment process and that's where they are brought into court. They're formally read the charges that are being brought against them. They're told the possible punishment and jail time that they could face and from there, after that arraignment takes place, now, you're in a full-fledged case.Mike: Got it, and during the full-fledged case, I know what it's like in a civil case when you go through the discovery process, you answer interrogatories or questions, you turn over documents, parties sit for depositions and I want to know what's the difference in that discovery phase in a criminal case, right, like are there depositions, do you answer written discovery? How does that work?Mark Galler: Yes, absolutely, the very first thing at least I do and most ... I would say most attorneys do in the criminal setting is they file right away a motion for discovery and it's a multi-paged document where you're seeking certain pieces of evidence and while it's the state's responsibility and the government's responsibility to prove their case, you want to try to collect all the evidence you can to maybe find pieces of evidence that are missing or that part of an investigation that wasn't done correctly and then you can use that in your defense and there are certain items that we wouldn't have to turn over, even with the state asking us for particular materials. We wouldn't have to turn over to them to use that at trial unless we were actually going to use that at trial.Mark Galler: There's a little bit of leverage that is provided to the defense side but yeah, immediately you file the motion for discovery and you start collecting evidence and I try to tell my clients, that could take a while, depending on the county you're in, especially, and the judge you're in front of. It might have certain deadlines and they set out a clear schedule for you right off the bat in terms of when production of discovery should be completed by and then from there, you're looking at what you have and what you can use and you potentially start doing motion practice and whether or not you need to bring in people for evidentiary depositions or you need to deal with experts.Mark Galler: It could open up the floodgates, depending on the type of case and the documents and evidence that are being produced.Mike: Got it. In a civil case, you can take a deposition of a witness. How does it work in the criminal case, if you have a witness and you want to get their testimony, what would be the next step?Mark Galler: Absolutely, so what you could do is there's several avenues. You can utilize services of a private investigator. If your client has the funds and the means to do that, it's not always necessary. In more egregious cases, when you start getting up to the higher level felony cases or cases where your client is being wrongfully accused and I would highly recommend that in certain circumstances, absolutely. That's one way where you can try to get witness statements and eventually maybe bring those in by way of an affidavit later on because an affidavit then is a sworn statement, that's notarized.Mark Galler: It becomes official or you could bring them in for evidentiary depositions which is where they would be giving testimony under oath which then you can use at trial, even if you bring them in as a witness to testify during a trial.Mike: Okay, and after that discovery process or phase is done and you approach trial, what happens or what are some things that go on typically before a trial and your trial date.Mark Galler: Excuse me, that's one thing to start moving pretty quickly. Once discovery is completed, and depending on whether or not you have motions to file and I keep saying motions for example, say, you have a gun case and by gun case, I mean, illegal possession of a firearm. Maybe they don't have their FOID card and they were walking around with a firearm and an officer spotted that and they weren't supposed to have this firearm on them. Depending on whether the officer conducted the stop properly, there could be motion to suppress evidence which is what's done most often in drug or gun cases to try to show that there maybe was probable cause or a reason for the officer to approach that individual.Mark Galler: If they hadn't approached that individual, they wouldn't have found the firearms so you're trying to remove that firearm as evidence from the case because then, if the government doesn't have that piece of evidence it makes it much more difficult, sometimes impossible to prove their case moving forward at trial.Mike: Okay, you bring up something interesting that I wanted to ask you. I look at part of this, we're going to talk criminal law, the procedure, how it all works and then I also am thinking of general questions that people always ask me, friends, family, neighbors, stuff like that and you just mentioned someone being stopped and they've got ... there's a search that police take over the gun and whether or not that can come in at trial. If a police officer stops you, should you talk to them?Mark Galler: I always like to say, no, don't talk to them. Are you being respectful? Absolutely, you acknowledge their presence. You could be cordial, like you and I talking right now and you can have a normal conversation with them, give them your name, the basic information but if they start getting into details about the case, sorry about what you're doing there, or why you're sitting in your parked car, you don't need to directly respond to that. It creates ... The more you speak to an officer, the more you give them, the more evidence that is supplied to them to use in the case, if it's brought against you.Mike: At what point during that conversation ... This is a twofold question, so what are your Miranda rights and at what point during that conversation, if you do decide to talk to the police, are the police required to read you your Miranda rights?Mark Galler: Absolutely. If I give an example, it might make it a little bit more clear for those that might not understand the procedure. Let's say, we're dealing with a driving under the influence, a DUI case, all right. Say, you're sitting in a parked car, you're in a Target parking lot, you're lawfully parked between the lines, your car is off and you're hanging out in your car, maybe you have a friend with you and you're just sitting there. An officer approaches your vehicle. At that point, in your mind, you've done nothing wrong, right? The officer says, "Hey, why are you sitting here, what are you doing?"Mark Galler: You're not doing anything illegal unless there's maybe a sign post that says you shouldn't be here past 10:00 but say, it's mid day on a Tuesday, when the stores are open, you're doing nothing wrong. You have to at least answer the officers but if they start saying, have you've been drinking, have you've been doing this or doing that, you respectfully decline to answer any questions because what happens at that point is you start opening the door or the window and they might start smelling an odor of alcohol and now, they're going to start using that information and then they're going to start using their standard language of, "He's got bloodshot, glassy eyes, an odor of alcohol upon his breath."Mark Galler: Now, next thing you know, you're going to admit to drinking a beer or two, while that isn't illegal, it's now providing more and more information to the officer that you were drinking. They're going to start asking if you've been driving, where you came from and you might out of instinct answer where you came from, right? Now, he's got you out of the car, asking to do field sobriety tests which are tests to determine for the officer just probable cause to arrest you for a driving under the influence charge. Now, to answer your question, it's a subjective ... it's an objective question really, whether a person in a similar situation and the officer in that situation would think that the person has either committed a crime or was about to commit a crime.Mark Galler: That's when they can arrest you, if that's the case. If those elements are met and you're arrested, any questioning after that, that isn't voluntarily, there should be Miranda rights read and the other part of your question was what are Miranda rights? The second part of that is, there's five Miranda rights that I'm sure everybody has heard, right? You have to an attorney. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law. You have a right to a counsel with you. If you can't afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. At that point, if they're questioning you and you're under arrest, that becomes a constitutional issue, right?Mark Galler: If they haven't read you your Miranda rights and they start asking questions, that's where that issue comes into play.Mike: I was going to ask you this later on but you brought it up with the drinking, driving example. If you've been drinking and you think you're over the legal limit and you do get pulled over, what should you do?Mark Galler: Well, if you had one of my business cards, I actually have on the back your rights and again, it goes back to being respectful. Always be respectful to the police. They're doing their job. They're trying to ensure the safety of yourself and others and if you know you've been drinking, if you know you've had too many, and they're going to be asking you if you've been drinking and I can't tell you to lie but you don't want to answer those questions so you respectfully decline to answer the questions or if you had a business card similar to mine, you hand that to the officer and then, if you don't even speak then they can't start using some this evidence saying, "Oh, I smelled an odor of alcohol."Mark Galler: Well, they wouldn't be able to smell an odor of alcohol in your breath if you weren't actually talking to the officer, right? I mean, you presume unless somehow, you're opening up your mouth and the odor is actually coming out but you would respectfully decline field sobriety test. You respectfully decline all that and that's where it's going to get a little scary. They're going to arrest you, all right. They're going to take you into custody and they're going to take you to the station. You're going to be sitting at the police station for a while and they still might ask you to do certain things but if you don't give them the opportunity to collect that evidence, you're not obstructing justice if you're complying with them.Mark Galler: If you respectfully are placed in custody and taken to station, nothing is going to happen, except the case of driving under the influence but then they don't have any evidence against you besides maybe what your eyes look like. Maybe if you had a sway in your walk to the car, a little gait, something that might be off. That's all they have. They don't have the full proof evidence to try to bring a DUI case against you.Mike: I remember in law school, there was a difference between ... regarding Miranda rights, there was a difference in saying, I want to be silent and I want a lawyer. I don't know if that distinction still applies now or the case law applies but is it ... would it be ... sure in an ideal world, someone gets pulled over and they have your business card and they can pull it out without saying anything and show it to an officer, that would probably be your ideal situation. I would imagine that doesn't happen often. You get pulled over, you know you're drunk, can you simply say, I want my lawyer. I've heard that that's the four magic words you should say is I want my lawyer. Would you agree with that?Mark Galler: I wish it worked that simply but yes, I mean, then it invokes another constitutional right of yours, the right to an attorney but at that point, I mean, you're not under arrest. There isn't a criminal proceeding against you. Unless you're under arrest, then that invocation of your rights would come into play but at that certain moment, the officer is going to be like, "Okay, great but I'm still going to have to get you out of the car," and then they could still ask you ... because at that point if you're not under arrest, having an attorney present isn't going to do anything. You need to respectfully decline it, let them place you under arrest and then, that's when you say, I want to speak to my lawyer.Mike: You simply say, when they start asking you, have you've been drinking, you say ... what would you say?Mark Galler: I mean, me personally, I would say, I respectfully decline to answer any questions and you could just keep saying, I want my lawyer. Sometimes, I've heard with police officers that that might ... depending on how you say it can be respectful. It might smooth things over if you try to refrain from saying that without ... just don't simply answer the questions, you say I respectfully decline to answer the questions.Mike: Got it. Let's move on to searches and seizures. What's search and seizure? What's required? Do you always need a warrant? Let's talk a little bit about that.Mark Galler: Okay, perfect, perfect and we could tie that back into, let's say an unlawful possession of a firearm and you're in a newer vehicle that's involved in a traffic stop, that the officers engage in a traffic stop. You have a constitutional right to protection of illegal searches and seizures by persons of authority, right? Whether that's Cook County sheriff or a Chicago police officer or an officer in your area. You have a protection and security from just invasion of those rights. What that means is, the only time you could be ... there's really three ways that an officer has the right, constitutional right to search, let's say your vehicle.Mark Galler: Say, you're speeding down the road and they clock you going 85 and a 55. They pull you over for speeding and nothing else is going wrong. If they say, can I search your car and you say no, and they start searching your car, this is when these constitutional rights come to effect. There's two different ways that this could come into play. The first is called a terry stop. That's kind of the slang, legally sort of term that an officer has to see that, they reasonably thought a crime was being committed or that it had been committed. It's an investigatory stop where they're just trying to make sure that the person they're talking to is either an actual suspect of a crime committed or they've heard that this person was involved in a crime.Mark Galler: They're just trying to make sure that they arrest the right person. When you get into probable cause to do a more thorough search of a vehicle like the speeding car or the car that had sped and they're searching the car for a firearm, they would have to have some sort of reasonable article of suspicion that they either saw this firearm or somebody maybe called in a 911 report and said, "Hey, this guy is waiving a gun at me. Here's his license plate, here's his car." That would rise potentially to the level that the officers can now search your vehicle because they have this eye witness testimony or if they saw the gun in person, same situation, that'll give them enough probable cause to know that there's ... that there could be more in the vehicle that they can actually end up searching the entire vehicle.Mike: Okay, and while we're talking about searching cars, I remember from law school, I thought something that was interesting is searching apartments because you're oftentimes dealing with significant others, roommates, who has authority so who can give permission to search an apartment and in particular when you're dealing with multiple people living there. You could have a minor child, you could have a significant other, you could have a roommate so how does that work? The police shows up ... the police officer shows up and they want to search your apartment, who can consent to that?Mark Galler: That's a great question. A lot of times people do with ... live with other roommates, maybe one, two, three or four are their roommates or they have like you said, their significant other over. Obviously, if it's your apartment or if it's your house, you can certainly give permission to search but if you have roommates that have ... that are part of a lease and everybody is on the lease or maybe they're paying you for rent, you can allow the police to go in to search at least your room and then the common areas. If your roommate's door is locked and the officers has no reason to believe that a specific or that individual has done anything wrong or illegal, you can't give permission to the police to search anyone else's room.Mark Galler: There's a common mistake with the communication and maybe how much control they have over these different areas of the apartment if it's not your room. If it's your significant other for example and say, they're just visiting and you're in the back of a squad car and she's ... and then the officer says to he or she, yeah go ahead, I live here, go search the house, it's all yours. That's where a constitutional issue can come into play, whether or not that person actually had authority to do so. In that particular circumstance, that would not be the case.Mike: Okay, let's talk about I guess what I would consider some sort of just like general legal terms that people have maybe heard that they don't know about. What's a bench warrant?Mark Galler: A bench warrant is typically issued by a judge if an individual who maybe has a bond in place fails to show up to court and it's the way that a judge can control the individual by use of the county's sheriff's department to go out and say, this person is in direct violation of the court order. They're supposed to be in court today. They didn't show up. I'm issuing a bench warrant and let's say that's a $25,000 D amount. What that means is then that the sheriffs are going to go affect or take control of that warrant to go try to track down that individual and they can place him under arrest and now the only way they get out of custody typically is if they can pay 10% of that $25,000 so $2,500 or if they have an attorney or an excuse, maybe a medical emergency took place and an attorney came in and filed a motion to quash and recall that warrant, then they can avoid having to pay the 10% fee before getting out of custody.Mike: What's the difference between bail and bond?Mark Galler: Bail and bond are pretty synonymous. The difference would be bond is ... where maybe say you've got a bail bonds company that an individual can't afford to pay a bond or bail by themselves. They can go to a company that'll post that bond on their behalf and they would have to supply some sort of item of value, maybe it's a title to a vehicle. Something of actual value to ... that the title company can hold on to issue the bond. Really, it's the same thing. The amount that's set by a court, by a judge that is going to either ensure that ... that's going to ensure that you show up to court and it's kind of a security that'll keep you coming back.Mike: Got it, and if you don't come back, what happens to that money?Mark Galler: The money could be forfeited. There's times where clients just disappear and you don't hear from them again and you try to explain to the judge that you've reached out to the individual. They've come to court for year and a half and now, all of a sudden, you can't get a hold of them. Then, there's a ... the judge will give an opportunity to appear in court one more time. Say, it's two weeks out from the date that that warrant was issued, the bench warrant. You come to court in two weeks. Your client is still not there. Now, the judge is going to enter a judgment for bond forfeiture, which means then that ... there's that final date. If they don't show up on their final date, then your bond is forfeited and it goes to the county.Mike: I've seen in the news recently, there seems to be a lot of new stories in Illinois and particularly nationally dealing with cash bail and people who can't afford it, who are sitting in jail, waiting for their trial date, especially for non-violent acts. Tell me a little bit about what this reform is and what people are trying to do to change it. In other words, it seems like if you have money to post bail, you don't have to wait for your trial date in jail but if you don't, you sit there and wait and I've read articles, I couldn't give you any numbers or statistics right now but it seems like, there's a lot of people sitting in jail for non-violent offenses who simply can't post bail or get a bond to get out. What is ... and I don't know how new it is but what's this movement and why is it getting so much attention?Mark Galler: That's a really great question. Bond money was the way that a lot of attorneys would set up contractual agreements with their clients on how to get paid. It was a way for individuals who were able to post bond to then pay their attorneys maybe down the road or whatever that agreement might be. Those amounts used to be higher and the counties were trying to defendants to post the cash bonds and that was the only form of payment and so the way that it has been going now and the reason it's become such ... kind of a contentious issue and a topic is because you have some ... and I know we're talking about non-violent offenders.Mark Galler: We have some violent offenders that are getting lenient bonds now because the government has kind of shifted in policy in terms of making sure that it's not based on a monetary consideration for somebody to be able to post bond. They should look at the totality of the circumstances that maybe their education, if they're going to school, if they're working, if they have a family, who they have to really provide for. Now, you've got this mix of, is the bond appropriate for somebody in non-violent offense or if it is a violent offense and if they're able to get out but they're lowering the bond amounts and that's creating an issue because now you've got individuals who maybe are going out, and committing another offense.Mark Galler: Now, they're facing a violation of their first bail bond, maybe they had an I-bond. An I-bond is where you're release on your own recognizance. You don't have to pay to get out. You're just released right away after the arrest process is complete. Then, they go out and they pick up another case or two. The issue is, and a lot of maybe police departments argue that that shouldn't be the case, that the bond amounts need to be higher, they need to be more strict so that we can make sure that these repeat offenders aren't going out and committing more crimes so that's where the issue is.Mike: Right, and I think the main concern and what I keep reading in the news is that, these people are ... can't afford a bond and they're in jail on a non-violent charge. Do you think eventually cash bonds will go away for say first time offenders with non violent charges in Illinois. What do you think it'll look like in 10 years?Mark Galler: I think it's turning that way. I think you're exactly right, Mike and a lot of judges are really good at looking at that specific information, especially for non-violent offenders, they're going to give you a chance. You have to prove to them and especially if your attorney or public defender who is handling the case is adamant about explaining your background and why you should get an I-bond as a non-violent offender and a first time offender. I think your chances are very, very great where you won't have to post a monetary bond and I think that trend is going to continue and it will keep diminishing I believe.Mike: Okay, let's move on to expungement. What is it? How does someone expunge their criminal record? How does it work? Do you do it? Do you help clients do that?Mark Galler: I do. Yes. Yes. So, there's expungement and there's sealing. Expungement is the ultimate goal of individuals and typically ... there's numerous requirements but typically, if there's a conviction involved, you're not necessarily able to expunge your record. If you are able to expunge your record, say, it's for maybe a petty drug offense. In today's day and age with marijuana being legal in Illinois, there's numerous requirements for what and how your potential convictions or arrest and how they can be expunged but when you're successful in getting it expunged, the file is essentially deleted.Mark Galler: It's torn up, it's thrown away and you're not able to track it down. I've actually tried to do this for some clients that have had records expunged in the past and now, they're trying to get particular licenses and at least I have not been able to find, and I've talked to numerous agencies all the way up to high level FBI agencies seeing if we can track down this information. Whether or not they do keep this information, I have not found a single shred of successful expungement. So, if you can get that, that's wonderful. Sealing is also another great step. That's essentially where any ... most non-government entities cannot see that you've had a prior conviction, if you meet certain requirements for your case to be sealed.Mark Galler: You lawfully can say that you have not been convicted of a crime if you have that case sealed. The only way you can get that unsealed is by court order. You have to file a particular motion and the judge has to unseal that file of which then can be seen. That typically doesn't happen for individuals looking for employment, unless it's with a government agency or of course some sort of law enforcement.Mike: How does someone determine if they should try to get their record expunged or get something sealed? Can everyone do it or, how does that work?Mark Galler: Absolutely. Yeah, at least try to call your attorney. Call your local expungement attorney, criminal defense attorney, any attorney that handles those types of issues will be able to inform you in a matter of few minutes. If it's not clear, then that attorney or if you can provide them with the case information of the case you're trying to expunge or seal, they can look that up in the system, go to the courthouse and then get an answer for you with a few minutes. If you are trying to look for a job and you do have a felony conviction, numerous statutes or I should just say, cases that you might have a conviction for can be at least sealed and a lot of them can be expunged.Mark Galler: It's really worth looking into and especially with ... Now, with marijuana being legal in Illinois, there's been thousands of convictions for possession of marijuana back in the day. Now, with this case being in effect, you can get effectively and there are certain requirements, automatic expungements for at least the arrest, if it was under ... if you were under possession of 30 grams of marijuana and in case, at least a year old and you hadn't delivered the marijuana to people that were at least three years younger than you. The way that the government has set this up now, the state of Illinois still offer automatic expungements for those arrests but the rollout dates are quite far.Mark Galler: If you want to do it for free, that's one way to do it, if it's just for the arrest. It could take up to one to five years depending on how long ago your conviction was, for the government to actually start rolling out the expungements. If you were convicted of possession of marijuana and it was 30 grams or less and you meet the other requirements, now what happens is they have to go through the parole board. A petition has to be filed and then there has to be a pardon made by the governor and then the governor has to submit certain paperwork to the different entities and that could take even longer than what, the one to five time year frame could be.Mike: Okay, and I wanted to talk to you about this, about marijuana is now legal in Illinois, as of January 1st 2020. You had mentioned that you can possess, what was it, under ... well, tell me, how much can you possess as an individual person in Illinois, without getting in trouble?Mark Galler: Yeah, good question, good question. You can legally possess, under 30 grams of actual marijuana buds. I believe it's 500 milligrams if it's edibles and then even a smaller amount if it's a concentrate of THC and you can lawfully carry that in your house. You can't grow marijuana unless you have a medical marijuana license and this new law actually created an interesting issue too with Illinois, also allowing concealed carry license. If you have a concealed carry license or your FOID card, while the federal government hasn't recognized marijuana as a lawful drug, it's still illegal federally, so there's an interesting question now if these states are allowing the purchase in owning of marijuana, will that affect your FOID card or your concealed carry license and the technical answer is yes. I mean, technically, it can be revoked. That's something people need to really be careful about.Mark Galler: Obviously, if you carry the marijuana outside of your home, and you're driving around with it, it needs to be in a concealed compartment, somewhere that's not easily accessible. Anytime you're carrying an alcohol or now marijuana, you want to keep it in your trunk, keep it simple, just keep it as far away. You don't need to have it in your front seat. You don't need to have in your center console, there's no reason. Obviously, you can't smoke and drive and that's also going to create new complications with now lawful searches of cars, when the car can be searched if an officer smells marijuana. It's going to create a whole new string of case laws that will be coming down in the next couple of years.Mike: Yeah, and that was something else I was going to ask you, I think it's interesting if you've been drinking and you get pulled over, I think most people can smell alcohol from a mile away. Let's say at your house, you get high and then an hour later, you hop in your car and go pick up a pizza or whatever you're going to do, right? I sort of see the issues that officers may have in this situation where I leave work at the end of a long day. I've had my contacts in all day and someone might look at me and think like you're high based on glossy eyes and bloodshot and so on and so forth.Mike: How is that going to work with people who are pulled over and officers think that they are high but they don't smell anything, they don't see anything, there's nothing on them. I mean, have you run into this yet with your clients? To me, it seems like it's going to be a little bit like of a cluster.Mark Galler: Absolutely and it really is. It's much easier to look at somebody in a setting where they might be suspected of a DUI and do proper procedures for that because you are ... you do get that slurred speech or some individuals can develop slurred speech or they might wobble a little bit more when they walk or they're falling over. It's more unlikely for somebody, if they're high or under the influence of THC to exude the same sort of symptoms as somebody in the DUI. To answer your question, it's going to take some cutting edge technology at least in terms of if they can develop some sort of portable breath test like they do for detection of alcohol in someone's breath.Mark Galler: If they could do something like that in a portable setting without having to draw your blood to detect a THC level. Now, there is a certain limit that you can have in your system at the time you're driving, it depends on how many hours you smoke. It depends on body weight. I mean, you're getting to more into like a scientific level of what's appropriate in driving. It's much more rare for somebody to face a driving under the influence of a substance than it is for alcohol. It's really hard to prove and now, with it being pro se legal, meaning that just because you smell like weed, doesn't give an officer probable cause to just search your car.Mark Galler: Now, if they see that you're carrying weed and it's right on top of your dashboard, well, now, you're violating the statute and that you might be able to open the door for the officers to search the car so you want to try to avoid that obviously. Similar too with the new gun laws that came out not too long ago, right? Just because somebody might ... if an officer sees a firearm in your coach jacket, while that is lawfully being concealed and maybe the wind blew it open for a second, it's not pro se illegal to have a gun. Okay? That doesn't mean, the officer can just come to you and start searching and patting you down.Mark Galler: They would need to ask proper questions. Do you have a FOID card? Do you have a concealed carry and it doesn't just open the door for the officers to do anything they like and same thing with marijuana now.Mike: Got it. I think what's interesting about marijuana and maybe that's ... I find challenging is it's legal in certain states, like in Illinois but it's not federally legal. What type of situation could someone get in trouble possessing marijuana legally in the state of Illinois but because they maybe in a federal building or on federal grounds, for example, you can't show up to O'Hare with marijuana, right, because the airport is federal property. Can you explain this distinction and the difference between it being legal in a state and not being legal federally and where people could run into issues although they're still in Illinois?Mark Galler: That's a great question and it does apply to people visiting these types of states as well. Illinois is now the 11th state that has fully legalized marijuana. If you're visiting a state like Illinois, Colorado, California, your ability to purchase and maintain weed is different than the actual citizens of that state. The way you can get in trouble and to answer your question if I'm understanding correctly is obviously, you can't bring a little baggy of weed on a plane with you. Otherwise, now, you're violating state and federal law. You can't just smoke in public. There has to be certain areas that you can smoke.Mark Galler: Some dispensaries might allow you to maybe test their product or they might have a smoking lounge and if everything is licensed property, that's fine. You can't go into a place of amusement like a bar or a restaurant and smoke, even if they might sell it there, if it's at least a place for amusement like that, that's not allowed. You can't smoke in a park, you can only smoke in your own residence if you are renting and there's a landlord. You need permission from the landlord. That's something that you might not think about but that's very important and it might be kind of awkward to ask the landlord, "Hey, can I smoke in my own apartment?"Mark Galler: Those are things you aren't able to do. Once you start stepping into the federal grounds of an airport and you have, are in possession of what is legal in a state setting, that's where you're going to get in trouble because now you're kind of crossing state lines into a federal territory.Mike: Right, and so for example, could you walk into a post office, that's in Illinois carrying a legal amount of weed where if you were ... where it's legal to carry in the state of Illinois but now, you're in a post office which is a federal building and so, then does it become illegal in that building?Mark Galler: It does. It wouldn't become ... it wouldn't be crossing the lines of a federal offense. It's still would be a state offense but like a firearm, there are certain places and restrictions on where you can carry it. Same thing with alcohol, right, you can't just carry around open alcohol where you please. If you walk into a post office with a bottle of open alcohol, now, you've got problems. Same thing with marijuana. You got to keep it in a concealed compartment in your car or if you're going somewhere else, you need to plan the transportation for that accordingly.Mike: Okay, I want to switch gears and talk about when police can interview or question minors. We talked at the top of the podcast about Making a Murderer and we were talking actually about Brendan Dassey before we started rolling the cameras.Mark Galler: Yes, yes.Mike: How he was questioned and he was a minor and then, recently in Illinois, there's a new law that I want to talk to you about dealing with Corey Walgren and so, I think that's all ... it seems like this new law in Illinois now and the Making A Murderer, it seems like this idea of when police can question minors, who needs to be present? Do they need their rights read? Tell me what the law is and tell me why this is becoming such a hot topic and if you know about the Corey Walgren case, if you could talk a little bit about that. I find that super interesting after watching Making A Murderer and then things that have gone on recently in Illinois about when you can interrogate a minor, who needs to be present and what are the rules?Mark Galler: The answers can be quite convoluted. I'll try to keep it as simple as possible because it's a very tricky situation and most people think that you can't ... the police can engage in a conversation with a minor at all and that's simply not the case. Let's start with the Corey Walgren case, which effectively created some new laws. At least for the school settings, so if you're on school grounds and you're suspected of committing some sort of crime or violation of school code or something is going on but I think you've committed some sort of illegal activity, the officer, maybe if there's an officer with the school or they call in a police department, they cannot question you on school grounds without a parent being present.Mark Galler: That also leads to the next point, if you're not on school grounds and an officer wants to question you and you're underaged, it's under 16, 16 and younger, they would have to break it down, whether maybe it's a misdemeanor or a felony and that depends on the age range. If they are suspecting you of either of those and we can get into the age differences later, they at least need to make a reasonable attempt to contact either your guardian or your parents, so what's reasonable is always open for interpretation with most of these types of issues in law, whether there's probable cause, whether the officer had reasonable suspicion. That's where the factual issues come into play.Mark Galler: If you are suspected of committing a crime that I'm sure they'll ask you, "Hey, do you have mom or dad's number, maybe grandma, somebody? Can you give us their number and we can try to call them." They have to make a reasonable attempt and hopefully they log that properly. If not, that might create issues and whether or not the questioning was done in violation of the constitutional rights. The Walgren case though was quite sad, really a tragic case. The individual was suspected of possessing underaged child pornography which can happen even if you're underaged yourself and a lot of people don't know that.Mark Galler: You could be 15, you could be in possession of some provocative pictures of another underaged individual and you could be facing charges for underaged child pornography and that's what this is individual, Mr. Walgren was facing at that time. You're 16 years old. The schools officer is questioning him about it, saying, "We know you had these pictures, why do you have these pictures," and the student ended up running out of the building, slipped away and jumped off the parking space and killed himself. Then, obviously, the parents were shocked, the school officer or the principal, nobody tried to contact the parents at all, which is absolutely absurd.Mark Galler: They didn't even give a reasonable attempt. Now, you're on school grounds which should be a little bit ... even more protected because those individuals are there to ensure a safe ground for students to attend school at, right? They're the most vulnerable individuals typically other than obviously a certain specified classes of people but they're young, they don't know any better. This law effectively changed that by ... because these parents really pushed for change. They filed civil law suits. They really pushed for legislation change and that became effective and now, the children can't be questioned on school grounds without a parent present or guardian.Mike: What would you, if you had a teenage kid, what would you tell them? What would be your advice if you're stopped by the police, you're pulled over, you did something wrong at school and you're getting questioned, like we were talking about earlier, when the police pull you over and you've been drinking, what you're supposed to say, what would you advise a teenager to say in those situation? Should they say contact my parents, I don't want to talk to you? What would you say in that situation?Mark Galler: I would always ask to contact my parents and you tell, "Hey, I'm 16. I'm 15. I'm 17. Contact my parents," and if you are at that age, where you're 17, 18 years old, and you're going to want to try ... you could still ask for your parents but then at that point if you realized you have rights to have an attorney present, you want to try to kind of say what we talked about before or respectfully decline to answer the questions and then once you're arrested, then you get your right to contact an attorney but yeah, if you're underaged, you always contact and tell the official or school personnel, I want to talk to my parents or my legal guardian.Mike: Sounds good. The last topic, I want to talk about is DNA. I was watching a movie with my wife, recently. It's actually a docuseries and the name is slipping me but it dealt with whether or not people who are arrested are required to give their DNA and I think most people are used to when you get arrested, you go to the station, they take your fingerprints, that's put into a database. The show I was watching was now talking about, "Okay, can they DNA swab you?" I find that interesting because I think there's all sorts of privacy issues and they obviously use the DNA to run it through a bank to see what else ... what other crimes you're associated with.Mike: What's the current law on taking a DNA swab? Does it matter if someone is just arrested and not convicted? How does it work?Mark Galler: That's also a very heavy question too and I've been dealing with a lot of very contentious litigation through motion to suppress illegal blood draws that I'm arguing are unconstitutional and this deals around DUIs, where somebody is suspected of DUI and they weren't involved in an accident, no one was injured and the individual was found unresponsive in a vehicle and the next thing you know the officers have paramedics arrive and they take him to the hospital and they're drawing blood. By that point, the person was conscious, was able to communicate with the hospital personnel and there's absolutely no reason that the hospital should be taking the blood of the individual and then telling the officers this person has above the legal limit of alcohol in their system, even after the conversion.Mark Galler: Some of the case law is starting to change in that respect. To answer your question specifically abour DNA swabs, it depends on the type of charges against you and the severity. So, if it's like criminal, sexual assault or homicide, you can object to it if you're in custody and they say, "Hey we need to take your DNA." You could say no, I've had clients now starting to get punished within certain facilities but the proper procedures for the government to file a motion to ask the court, to allow a DNA collection of a sample from the accused, from the defendant. It's granted almost 100% at a time, unless there's certain issues or illegality of police conduct or something that maybe causes that separation of why the DNA should be taken.Mark Galler: If the charge is serious enough like criminal sexual assault then, it's pretty much like clockwork. You can get DNA swab for it because then they need to compare it from maybe some DNA samples that they've collected through evidence at the scene, on the suspected victim. Then, yeah, that'll stay in the system at least until the outcome of the case and that's where it could changed.Mike: Got it and I guess my question is this. So, the way I understand it, everyone is arrested and booked, they give their fingerprints, right?Mark Galler: Fingerprints. Yeah, absolutely.Mike: I think what's interesting about this is, is it now, everyone is arrested and booked? Is it fingerprints and the DNA swab or is it not that clear cut? In other words, if I went and vandalized the building and was arrested and brought to the station, they take my fingerprints, right?Mark Galler: Yes.Mike: Would they take my DNA?Mark Galler: Not at that time. Not legally at that time, no. You have to meet a certain requirement of the level of charges against you. Again, you'd have to be charged with something severe than just burglary or defacing a building, theft or DUI, for the most part, you have to meet a certain exceptions and ... that would rise the level of a higher charge against you, like a class acts or a class one if it's a sexual assault, something like that, then that's when they're able to start collecting your DNA but anything ... there's a long list. It's hard to list them all but for say simple battery, now, they can't just come in and take your DNA.Mike: Okay, I know I said, that was going to be the last topic but I've got one question in general that I think a lot of people would want to know and then we're going to move on to some other non-legal stuff. When does someone need a criminal defense lawyer? At what point, should someone say, I need a lawyer?Mark Galler: That's also a great question. I get that asked all the time and I think it's a matter of comfort. Okay? What an attorney is able to do in a criminal setting is essentially provide a shield between law enforcement and the government and the individual you're trying to protect, like the suspected defendant. My first question is when I ask clients this, if they're calling on behalf of somebody who is about to be questioned maybe they've heard rumors that the police are looking for this individual for whatever reason, I ask, "Well, would it make it you feel better to have an attorney there because if you were to retain me, what I offer is pre-retainer agreements," right?Mark Galler: What I do is I send a letter to the client. I set up a certain line of communication with them or if I know there's detectives involved, I contact them immediately. I'll go to the police station right away. I'll let them know, "Hey, this is my client. If you need to contact them, if you need to question them, please call me first. I'll be happy to work, to bring them in. We can sit down, do what needs to be done on your end but respectfully, we're not going to answer any questions." That's where I can come in because now that invokes going back to the constitutional rights of when you should ask for a lawyer, when do you ask for a lawyer?Mark Galler: Now, if you're being asked by detectives, I would always advise to try to have that lawyer retained. If you know that they're coming to question you or if you know that you might be arrested soon, at least for me, that would provide some comfort. Other people wouldn't maybe want to wait until they're already arraigned and the case has already started. It really depends on the individual.Mike: Got it. I guess, I watched these shows and like I said, I'm super interested in criminal law. The first job I had at a law school, there were two partners there, one partner did criminal defense and the other one did personal injury and the personal injury partner took me under his wings. I still did a little bit of criminal defense work there. I loved it. I would always talk about the cases with my girlfriend at the time, she's my wife now, about the criminal law cases and I remember her telling me, she's like, I don't ... she's like if you would gone into criminal defense, I don't know how that would have made me feel. Who knows what would have happened but I find it super interesting but, I find it interesting, I watched all these shows and I'm super paranoid.Mike: I always tell her ... to me, it seems like if you have the means to have a lawyer, you should always have a lawyer. I tell my wife like if anything would ever happen to me and I joke, like even if we have nothing to do with it, don't talk to anyone, right? In other words, is there ever anything good that could come out to talking to the police or talking to an investigator?Mark Galler: You think you're going to be able to handle the situation until you start saying something that starts ringing bells in the investigator's mind or the officer's mind, or the detective's mind and now, you've opened up the floodgates. Now, they might be smelling blood and maybe now, they know who else to go talk to based on something you said. Maybe, you didn't have anything to do with ... maybe anything you did but now, they know who to ask and now, maybe that person know. I always say, it's best to be respectful, to decline to answer any questions, even if you didn't do it, you have an attorney with you, all the time. Contact somebody you know just to have a card on you.Mark Galler: You might not have to pay that individual just to get a card but at least you have something on you, so that if something does happen, you know who to call and in most times, they'll be good. If I get a call late at night, I'll be at the jail immediately. I put on a suit and tie, if it's 10 at night, I'll head there and that's where we can afford that protection. Absolutely, 100%, like you're joking, and all these documentaries, it's always maybe the husband that murdered his wife or something and they're claiming he did but he actually didn't do it. The first person they're going to look at is always the spouse.Mark Galler: Whether it's husband and wife, wife and wife, whoever that happened to, they're always going to look at the spouse first and they're going to start asking questions and it's better to, I would say clam up and some people think well, isn't that going to make me look bad? Aren't they going to think, well, why would I ask for an attorney right away if I didn't do it? That's just being smart. That's just being smart because you don't want to talk to police and start answering questions that you might not know is actually digging you into a deeper hole, where an attorney might be able to catch that at least that they know you a little bit and they know a little bit of the facts, they're at least going to be able to prevent that from even happening.Mike: Right, and this is a good segue into letting all the viewers know how ... what's the best way to get in touch with you and we'll put all your information up at the bottom of the video but if someone wanted to get in touch with you, what's the best way to get in touch with you?Mark Galler: I appreciate it. Yeah, so I have a website, it's mark@mgallerlaw.com. My phone number is 708-406-9797. I answer text all hours of the day. If you would like to set up a phone call, in person meeting, my office is in Downtown Oak Park at 1010 Lake Street. It's floor ... unit number two but yeah, I answer text and calls all day, you can go to my website. Check out the information there. I've got different information on all various crimes and activities, what you should do in certain circumstances and there is actually an inquiry form you can fill out, which will lead right directly to either my computer or my phone and I can help answer any questions right away that you might have and I'd be happy to do so.Mike: Awesome. All right, before we finish, I'd like to do a couple of rapid fire questions here with you. Tell me what's your favorite animal?Mark Galler: Cheetah.Mike: Cheetah?Mark Galler: Yes.Mike: Okay. Cool. How about your favorite app?Mark Galler: Favorite app?Mike: Yeah.Mark Galler: That's a great question. I would have to say my favorite app ...Mike: What do you use the most?Mark Galler: Boy, I would like to say, I honestly use Facebook a lot for news purposes.Mike: Okay, sounds good. What's your perfect vacation?Mark Galler: Somewhere in Italy. I love Tuscany. Somewhere where I can drink some wine and eat some good food.Mike: What is your favorite food?Mark Galler: Favorite food is, I got to say pasta.Mike: Sounds good.Mark Galler: A meat pasta.Mike: Okay. How would you finish this sentence, weekends are for ...Mark Galler: Relaxing.Mike: Okay. I think that's what I have on my bio. Someone ... my other guest who is here, Melissa said ... when I said, tell me how to finish this sentence, weekends are for, and she said I'd have a different answer for you, if you ask a few years ago but she said now it's working. That's what weekends are for.Mark Galler: Yeah, sure. It's a good problem to have.Mike: Last one, if you weren't a lawyer, what would you be?Mark Galler: An astronaut. If I was smart enough to. That's also the problem.Mike: You realized you weren't smart enough and then went to law school, right?Mark Galler: I couldn't do math. I was terrible at all forms of math and yes, so then I went to law school.Mike: Perfect. Well, this has been great. Like I said, when I started doing these video podcast, I knew I have someone on to talk about criminal law early on. I find this super interesting. I think it's something that everyone should want to know about and so, I appreciate you coming on, answering all my questions. I think it's helpful for just everyone in general to know what criminal law is all about, so this has been great. I appreciate you coming on, giving your contact information out in case anyone wants to get in touch with you and stay tune for our next podcast.Mark Galler: Thank you so much Mike for having me on. I really appreciate your time. Thank you.Mike: Thank you. I appreciate it.

R-Rated #51: Mike Sommer – Wax Pack Hero Blogger Interview

R-Rated Sports Card Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 16, 2020 38:19

Ryan talks to Mike Sommer, @TheMikeSommer on twitter, WaxPackHero.com and host of the Wax Pack Hero Sports Card Minute. What is the concept of a self sustaining hobby and how has it worked for Mike? How does Mike keep 130,000 cards for sale on Sports Lots organized? Can selling low end and common cards be profitable? What does Mike think about hobby influencer Gary Vee? Thoughts about card blogging and podcasting.

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BluHorn 049 - "5 Minutes With" Todd Evans from Rivendell Media

BluHorn Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 17, 2019 4:00

Each week on BluHorn TV, our host Mike White, CEO of BluHorn, talks to experts in the marketing industry. This week, Mike talks to Todd Evans from Rivendell Media. With 40 year of experience, Rivendell Media handles media planning and media placement best. They are the established experts in LGBT media planning and placement for print, digital, and mobile platforms. To learn more, visit http://www.rivendellmedia.com Company: Rivendell MediaWebsite Address: www.lgbtmarket.com /www.rivendellmedia.comMike: Tell me about the services you guys offer your customers. Todd: So we mostly market ourselves to ad agencies and our elevator pitches we make it simple easy and profitable to utilize and recommend LGBT media. We represent 95 percent of all LGBT media properties in the United States. And this year is our 40th year in business.Mike: How did the company get started?Todd: It's it's an interesting story. The founder was Elton John's first promoter in the United States. He flew around with Elton John on his first tour in the US and was an out-gay man at the time. He saw the viability of the LGBT market. And 1979 changed to Shingle Firm Rivendell Music Marketing to Rivendell Marketing and started repping LGBT publications.Mike: So what has been the biggest challenge over the last 40 years of growing with the segment that you have.Todd: Well I would say the biggest challenge is these last five years in that we've always grown. We've never had a down year really, but with this conversion to digital and then trying to get people in both the diversity space and then also in mainstream media to understand how LGBT media habits are very different than other minority markets media habits.

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Your New Opinion - Ep. 138: Cavemen vs Astronauts REDUX

Your New Opinion

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 4, 2019 56:21

It's Mike's penultimate episode! The boys are getting ready to send him off and what better way to do it then by bringing back one of the #family to redo an old topic? Mike gets to blast off with arguments about astronauts! And Producer Grant--that's right Producer Grant--gets to club facts to death by discussing cavemen. Ryan and Nick judge and then get thrown off by a twist! Points include: neanderthals, Greta Thunberg, emojis, Crossfit, Apollo 11, Uber, thinking on one's feet, hitting fiances in the head with a mallet, heavy machinery, the hair of a prehistoric man, and the moon. How will the electoral college affect Mike? How does Ryan order an Uber? How hairy is Nick? And how many times has Grant died? It's Cavemen vs Astronauts REDUX!

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第600期:Cool Spots

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 6, 2019 2:26

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Mike: Hey, Mari, so you said New York was very diverse. What parts or neighborhoods do you like?Mari: I really like Soho because there's lots of great shopping to do. Really small shops and really cute restaurants and cafes and then if I'm lucky sometimes when I'm walking around or eating I see like movie stars, so recently before I moved back to Japan I was shopping on Broadway and I say Claire Danes with her boyfriend. It was pretty cool.Mike: So, I always hear about Central Park. Can you tell me about Central Park?Mari: Yeah, Central Park is obviously in the middle of Manhattan. It's really big and people go and play sports or they just hang out and walk around. If you go there on the weekends, you see a lot of joggers because the roads are closed off, so there's no cars. Cars are not allowed, and in the summertime you see a lot of roller-bladers, and bikers.Mike: How big is the park?Mari: It's really big. It goes from I think 56th Street to 110th, so it's pretty large.Mike: So, what other parts?Mari: I went to grad school at Colombia so I lived right near Harlem and I actually really like Harlem because you get a very neighborhood feeling. You hear... You see people walking on the street talking to each other. You walk by the barbershop and you know that everyone knows each other. Everyone is interested in the other. They're gossiping about people in their neighborhood.Mike: Is there any area you don't really like?Mari: Because I am from New York City, I really don't like going to Times Square. I feel like it's very commercial and touristy, so I really don't like Times Square, but I guess for tourists it's very exciting. There's all these lights and, and I don't know, it's probably very exciting, the side street vendors, the musicians and all these things. It would be exciting for tourists, but I try to avoid it.

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第600期:Cool Spots

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 6, 2019 2:26

new york new york city broadway manhattan colombia cars spots soho central park times square claire danes mike how mike so mike is

Mike Michalowicz Becoming a Shareholder of Your Entrepreneur Life

Success Champions

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 11, 2019 55:38

Donnie: Alright was this is going to be an amazing episodes we are going to sit down with mike Michalowicz, We didn’t spend whole lot of time on a back story, we just started jumping in a lot of the philosophy of business, entrepreneurism and there wasn’t any flop, it was a pretty cool conversation, I really enjoyed and I know a lot of you guys asked for me to get him on the show you could more of an intimate conversation with him so I think you are really going to enjoy this one. And this show has been for a quite few episodes now, is brought you by point blank safety services, so Stacy and Mike are doing awesome and amazing things for the freeways and highways and everything they do by protecting the constructions workers, drivers and just keeping everybody safe while helping police officers that we know aren’t just paid enough to do what they do and put their lives on the line every day for us, so they are really helping this police officers not only protecting us in the afterhours but protect their families financially by giving them additional jobs and work they can do on a regular basis, these guys are doing just tremendous work. And I love that they have taken their business success and turned it out over to the nonprofit they started which is called … family fund you know that organization is giving scholarships and is helping out the families of fallen officers, you know it’s really cool to see a company remember really where they came from and really giving back to the community as a whole, so do me a favor guys, go follow them on Facebook, go them out on Instagram, check out their website, send them messages and let them know Donnie sent you , you can find almost everything that they are at either at … family fund or point safety in almost all platforms, say hi to them, I couldn’t do this show without them. So I know a lot of you guys have been harassing me about get mike on the show, so I’m bringing on Mike Michalowicz and this going to be a lot of fun, we already smoke and joke about two Polish guys on a podcast, what could be wrong? But this is going to be interesting, I’m Donnie Boivin this is Donnie’s success champions, mike tell us your story brother, welcome to the show! Mike: Donnie thank you for having me, I’m an author, I’m excited to be here and I’m on a missing to eradicated entrepreneur poverty, there are so many elements I struggle with entrepreneurship and some many fellow entrepreneurs struggle with and my goal is to fix that for all of us. Donnie: I love the whole phrase, entrepreneur poverty, because that was my business for a long time you know. Mike: Well you know what it is, Donnie when you started your business I suspect is the same as I started mine and everyone listening, you star your business and his friends who never own a business, they look at you and they who “oh you started a business, you are millionaire and you sit in the beach and all you do is sit and all you do is drink margaritas” There is this perception as that if you are business owner, you are wealthy and you got all the time in the world, the reality is the opposite, so we have no time, we work our ass off, we sacrifice family, we don’t go on vacations anymore and we make no money! As the general population we are struggling financially, so there is this gap and I called entrepreneurial poverty and so my mission is to resolve that, to make us what we are envisioned to be and when you have wealth and you have time you can be of impact you can serve others, I mean we need to do this. Donnie: No I love this, because Ii think there is one more twist on that whole entrepreneurial jump, because if they don’t think are automatically super wealthy the other questions is, what the hell do you actually do for a living? Laugh Donnie: So you are not only battling how much money you are supposedly making and all this freedom that you have, you know my wife, people still ask her, what does Donnie do? And she’s like, he kind of does this podcast, speaking, I don’t know what he does. Mike: Is fine, so when I sold my first company I go proud, I came home to my dad and said “Dad I sold my business” and told them what happened, and he goes “congratulations, so you are gonna have a really job now” and I’m like what? And he’s “yeah because your security and all that” And I love my parents, they have been extraordinary to me, they love me, both of them tho are in trap in their perception of what success is, get a job, stick to a job for entirety of your life, and I think we are surrounded by that perception, spouse, have other perceptions, as entrepreneur the rule is to break the rules, to challenge industries, to bring in our concepts, is new to everyone, Everyone’s is like “what the F are you doing?” is not comprehensible. Donnie: You know is all interesting, I don’t about you, but when I launched my business, it took me a long time to realize that I spent so long as an employed so when I launched a business I kept constantly trying to almost create a job for myself vs a company and I get lost in the business because it was so hard to make that shift, that is why I tell people that entrepreneurs a made not born because you get punched in the face a lot by life to start figuring things out, was that kind of the same thing to you or you just stepped in gold and riches fell from the sky? Laugh Mike: Oh of course that was exactly my journey! I started the business and people where throwing money at me like what= Is this real? NO! No of course, my first business was in computers system, I was a computer guy and I open the door. Donnie: Where’s your pocket protector I don’t see it? Mike: Yeah well yeah, actually Donnie that’s what happens , I made a few phone calls and said I started a business and the money will flow in, I called a few people and they were “Oh congratulations, but I’m already taking care of” I said what? You know! I’m your friend! “No, I’m taking care of” and at the end of the day of and they didn’t mean, the holy crap moment kicked in, I think, in the beginning stages, and actual motivators for us entrepreneurs is fear, the first few years of my business I was terrified and what that terror does is kept me awake, I would wake up at 4 in the morning and get to work whatever it takes and I worked until midnight and repeat the process all over again because I was scared I was desperate as parent, the challenge tho is that fear in certain point becomes detrimental it gives you energy but it also gives you stress and start breaking you down, so illness kicks in or exhaustion so of course is a flip side, you don’t want to live in fear for the entirety of your life, use it as a spark and the over time you need to convert that idea was to confidence and when I started to get a bit of a routine I started to see some results, I said ok I’m gonna trying and repeat on that and I started to focus on what was working and doing more of what was working. Mike: But of course for none of us, you don’t start a business and the money falls in your laps and if it does, you are lottery winner but is actually a curse because then you believe that you don’t need and effort to make this money and so I think when you see on the cover of Ink Magazine “Oh started a business when she was 23 years old and by 24 is a billionaire” In many cases that becomes detrimental because they don’t understand the real journey of an entrepreneur, which is the struggle on the valley to get to the peaks. Donnie: Yeah Jim Ron when back to as far as motivational speakers go, he’s got a great phrase, he said, the first thing you done when you are handed a million dollars is you mentally have become a millionaire because most people will go through that ride and journey to whatever success they get through and is all those lessons that mold and prepared them for that success and I looked on people that entrepreneur is the new multilevel marketing thing because people go into multilevel marketing or neuro marketing and they are like “Oh Imma be a millionaire tomorrow you know, this I the greatest thing, I can sleep whenever I want t and do all that” so they launch businesses thinking along the same lines and I was just guilty of it, when I launched my business I thought the heaven was going to open up and everybody was going to be “Finally Donnie show up, let’s make a lot of money together” not knowing that you have to learn to run a business before you can try to find any sort of success but is a really interesting twist that how much you have to personally evolve along that journey to become a better version for yourself Mike: Holy F and true, and I love it you called the multilevel marketing but I sort of had a sentiment of it about a year ago kicked in, everything I talked about is entrepreneur and entrepreneurship and all the books I write, everything’s is of the entrepreneur, I’m sort started to becoming convinced that the word entrepreneur I a dastardly term now, I think is actually hurting us because entrepreneur has been equated to hustle and grind and I hate those terms, I hate them, so I understand the sentiment tho, I understand hustle and grind means you gotta make effort, like when I started my businesses fear was my motivator, I had to hustle and grind, here is the problem I think people are interpreting that entrepreneurship is perpetual hustle and grind and ten years into you belter be grinding out, in twenty years you better be grinding harder, you gotta carry this business on your back and this is the antithesis of what entrepreneurship is, the true definition is identifying n opportunity, taking a risk to make it happen and the choreographing all these resources, people, technology and even your clients to make that vision a reality, is not doing the work is the choreographing of other resources. I tell people, I was speaking yesterdays at an event and I’m on a room as an entrepreneur and I say yeah I got a challenge for you, when you are at a dinner party and someone ask you got you do, what do you say? And often is “I’m an entrepreneurs that does X” What about we don’t use the word entrepreneur anymore, and not even business owner because is the same thing, what if you call yourself a shareholder in a business, just by changing that label people are “what the what? Donnie: If somebody hit’s me that I would be like “what?” Mike: You know many people are shareholders, I own some stock, I’m in mutual funds, I’m a shareholder, no do I go to these companies and hustle to make successful? No, Do I do anything in the business? No! I do row when it comes to share holder boats and stuff, I do give I some directions as shareholder but I’m not actively participating in it, when we use the label entrepreneur we are saying that we actively work our asses of inside the business and I think we use the term shareholder is shocks ourselves back to reality, that our mission is to vote maybe through some action but. Donnie: Wait you should make a book out of this. Mike: How should I call it? Donnie: I don’t but something along the lines of start calling yourself a shareholder I think because is a cool philosophy. Mike: Is funny, so I may have a title now called “entrepewhore”. Laugh Mike: My publisher I told him and probably nah I don’t think so but maybe, because I think we bastardize ourselves so much we got to change our label if we change our label we change our behavior, is hard to change our behavior first still holding all labels Donnie: I agree with that, I got a funny book too, it’s called, “that’s not how you journal jackass”, so I got one of those too, is an eBook is free. Here is what I do, when I launched my business I had no idea how to call myself, I really didn’t think I was an entrepreneur because I think in true to my opinion, are the craziest sons of a bitch on the face of the earth because you got to be jut that shit crazy nuts to go launch a business, so I was warping my head around that I more this business owner that wanted to create this one business, this one company , this model and take it through, wasn’t it really worried about even a legacy type thing, I just wanted to get to that freedom state and I never been hung up on titles and such and people keep asking me, what do you put on a business card, my name? I didn’t know what to actually put in there, but it evolved, now is says business owner, I think I out CEO in one point but I’m like, Am I a CEO? I got virtual assistants but I don’t really have employees so am I a really a CEO? You know, but you dance with all this thought processes and I really love this whole idea of your shareholder because it really makes you shock your own system to reinvent how you position yourself in the market place. Mike: You know this plays out to employees too, my company is tiny we have 13 employees, I am number 14, we were a micro business and I used to give my colleagues big titles, so I bring someone on and maybe call them the CFO or the office manager and what I found is this that they just like me started believing the title as like who they are, so I had a person who has not even a degree in accounting, she was part time, but she was handling our number so instead of calling her the internal booking person I said we are going to call you the CFO, she went online and found that instead of paying $30.000 that’s what we were paying for that a typical CFO makes a $125.000 so she came back to me literally and said Mike I’m being so freaking underpay I’m being a CFO for this organization I’m not on 125.000 you are ripping me off, and I’m look whoa is just a title and she is no all CFO’s make that and my response was, you can’t got to Ford or GE and say I want to be your CFO and 125, is just a title , didn’t matter she quit, she couldn’t comprehend that, what I realize is that once we star owning a title that becomes who we are, is not just true for us the entrepreneurs, it’s true for all the humanity, if we call ourselves stupid then you become stupid if you say I’m lazy you will become lazy, if you say I’m driven you will become driven, but you have to keep on repeating enough times until you actually believe it to comply with that title otherwise we can’t own that title. So be very judicious in how you use titles is kind of the lesson here. Donnie: Yeah I love it, so Kevin is known to build all the automation to backing up my stuff, he put under the title of my first email campaign “founding badass of success champions “ and I’m like ok I take that, so if you are going yourself a tittle that you want to step into , you know that you want to own, like “founding badass” or something else along those lines, but is interesting I can see that, going through my career there was part that wanted to be a sales manager and I got sales manager and I’m said “fuck, I don’t want to be a sales manager” so there is a lot to be said in those roles, in corporate America structure formality, there’s a lot of responsibility in owning certain titles. Mike: Totally is, I think as a small business owner I aspired, not anymore, I aspired to be the big company, I wanted to have a billion dollar corporation, I wanted to be the CEO of Amazon after Jeff retire I wanted to take over, so I wanted to make my own version so I said if I want be that I have to act as if, that’s a popular term, act as if, so I’m gonna start using those tittle right now, but in the outside world that’s kinda of a shame, if I call myself the CEO and I walk in with my little company, people are like, who many people report to you? But none is only a couple of virtual people, are you really a CEO? O are you an entrepreneur that’s is starting in bootstrapping, so there is a risk there too, theirs is this disconnect and if we package ourselves in the wrong way is dangerous in fact our business … no titles whatsoever, because I do know that I go into a sales situation, sometimes it helps to say that I’m the owner and sometimes it helps to say that I’m the sales guy and being the owner is actually a detriment so I think a title is just a thing of conversation in what e aspire to have but also have to see the outside perception around titles. Donnie: I got other question because I know my followers have been counting on me and I got a lot of people that followed your book First, it was the first book that I read of yours and horrible book by the way. Laugh Mike: Worst book of all the time, hey at least I got a ranking somehow. Donnie: Hey you put profit in there; at least it has to sell one book. Mike: Right! I should have put an F bomb because that seems to be the popular books now, the subtle art of F’ing and I should put like F profit or something. Donnie: You know I’ve been getting a lot of the guys out of the UK right no on the podcast because they are really trying to make a push, they are calling it “the UK invasion” where a lot of the UK speakers are trying to come to the US and is so funny when they come to the podcast because I cursed a lot but those dudes say cursing to a whole other level. Mike: The brits do? Donnie: Oh my god yeah! And I have to forward warning because there a couple words they throw around like candy and I’m like, ok look, this is a US based primary show, I mean it plays in almost a 100 countries now but you got to be careful with the certain couple of words, the F bomb fine, but there are some other words they can’t just bring to the table! But profit first, that and pumpkin plan I think two of the two books of yours that get thrown around the most, at least on my circles, is profit first the first book out of the collection. Mike: So I’ve written 5 books, technically 6 as profit first has been re-released as revising expanded so that counts too, so I wrote this book of toilet paper entrepreneur. Donnie: Oh I remember that! Mike: Kind of a spit on the face of traditional authorship and it was my angry teenage years but it worked, it worked to put me on the map, at least with the publisher and it built a small … The pumpkin plan was my first kind of mainstream book and profit first was the break through. Donnie: That’s the one that really put you on the map, I’m in forward Texas, you know my hometown and I know there is a little workshop group to get together and discussed that book- Mike: Oh that’s awesome I love to hear- Donnie: And the content and everything is out of that, but I’m curious, when you wrote that book was that philosophy for your business? Or something you were attempting to do and you thought it would be the breakthrough for other people if you took on the same thing. Mike: No, it was purely for me, here’s interesting when you hear the resume of an entrepreneur like me I share the highlights, got a company, sold it, the thick of the story for most entrepreneurs is the struggle, the entrepreneur poverty and I have evaporated all the wealth I’d accumulated in some priors businesses that were dealing with debt, I was able to sell them pay off the debt and make money and never really understood profit, I started this 3rd business that … my resume I evaporated everything I had, lost my house over it, lost possessions, did not loss my family, that’s one thing, they stood by me, went through depression for a couple years, from 2008 to 2010, the highest level was called functional depression, you are a drinker and stuff and during that phase I realized that I fundamentally didn’t know the most basic elements of entrepreneurship, profits is one, I realized all the things I was doing was misunderstood, and profit what I realized is that we have been told profit is the bottom line or were you rent, every book I read is profit comes last, and I realized omg I’ve been putting profit last, I didn’t consider it until once a year I looked at profit and I’m like “Dammit, maybe next year”. Donnie: Wait so your business is supposed to profit? I’m confused by that. Laugh Mike: That’s what my old accountant said,” you don’t want to profit, hey congratulations you got nothing left” And I’m like “what?” Donnie: Hey that’s the whole reason I’m in business. Mike: And that made no sense, and entrepreneurship is not a parent child relationship, I call it BS on that, we often say hey I started a business I gave life to it is my child and one day I will nurture it and it will come back and feed me, no, is more of conjoint twins, as the business goes we go and as we go the business goes so if I’m struggling at home my business is going to struggle and if I’m going struggling on business my home is going to struggle, especially the finances, pour finances are in so last step, so I say I really gotta resolve this and I realize that is human nature when something comes last is insignificant , so profit can’t be last, profit has to be first, and the exclusion of course says, make profit to have it, every time you sell take a predetermined percentage of that money, is profit, hide it away in your business, repeat day in and day out and you will assure profitability. Donnie: Is awesome, is one of those book, at least it was for me when I read through it, it just made sense, because same thing, school hard … somebody could tell me the stove is hot three times and still touch twice to just to make sure. Laugh Donnie: But it’s one of those book that when you read you are like “ok that make sense to me why I don’t do it”? So I started to employing some of the principals of the company and the being typical growing up financially foolish, “oh we are hitting a down turn, let’s just pull form the profit pile we have already put into the business” and you are like ok that’s not the whole principles of the book but it was a fun read, what did the success of that book do for your business, you company, what evolved or changed for you? Mike: That’s an interesting question, there’s a couple of realizations, when the book hit, so it came out 4 years ago and 2 years ago I did the re-release and it hit right away, is funny how ego is, I got like omg all this main stages, Seth Golden move here comes Mike “Polish” Michalowicz. Donnie: Because you got that name that belongs in light. Mike: Right, exactly, when you hit the movie theatre and my name is two lines.. Donnie: Or is turned down on the edged Mike: I think the better one is a limp penis of an A, So first my ego is move over Seth Golden, here comes the new main stager and it was like deadly silence, I’m like for how long? The book is so popular and went on for a year like this and my agent who I spoke to me was “get ready for the pumped up fees” nothing, and so I was like I guess it takes more than just a popular book, and yea about a year ago also did … is not move over Seth Golden but is oh you are speaking Seth Godin is coming after you. So that happened, so I realize is when a book hits it takes time for it to start playing out in other facets which is speaking but I think that satisfies my ego and I love public speaking and is a joy. Donnie: Look, nobody writes a book without waiting a little bit of that ego. Mike: I call it C list celebrity. Donnie: So if there’s another alphabet out there I am in that I alphabet. Mike: I put myself in position C , what’s funny that means that if I walk through an airport none knows who I am, except one person every like 3 or 4 airport checks will say “AAAAA” and you get one fan that comes and say “ARE YOU MIE MICHALOWICZ?” actually one person came up and said “ARE YOU TONY HAWK?” And I’m like fuck no, but somebody will say that, and I’ll be like who is this guy, is very weird. Donnie: You next book you just gotta put your picture on the cover that is all. Mike: I will put a Tony Hawk picture, be my strange brother tony hawk. Is this kind of weirs moments when none knows who I am but one person who just happens and lose their shit but everyone else is confused by and everyone’s like why? Who’s this guy? Is he a doctor? Did he save your life? But the bigger thing is I’m on my mission to eradicated entrepreneurial poverty now we get the metrics in place, and I get emails actually I can see we get two since we started the interview, I get emails in 3-4 5-6 hour now of people saying, because I actually ask people to email me on the book, I say emails if you commit to this and they are coming constantly now and I can see I can measure the changes having in business and that is the greatest joy of my life, If I am ever down, for me is just log in the email now and sit there for an hour and everything is ok Mike, you are not looser. Donnie: I wanted people to hear that last phrase you said, everybody’s chasing something you know and I had a lot of coming even this morning with the couple guys I was talking to, they were liken men I could just have this happen to my life, life would be X, and I keep telling life is never X, life is right now, is that time you need to embrace you don’t need some sort of trigger mechanism to be catapulted to the next version of your life and I love the fact that you were humble enough to say that there are days like, this day sucks, this day is horrible and you gotta go look in the email to make sure life is on the same path and track, because is good for people who aren’t even in the first level on the alphabet list, you know you got the C list rockstar status to hear those kind of things because they are a lot of people, I know fans of the show I know were like “holy cow is Mike Michalowicz, he’s got “Profit First” and this and the other and they put you into rockstar status and often times when people put people on that rockstar status they gave them like the super power feed of strength and everything else, like nothing ever happens to them they are always killing it and crushing it and I really appreciate that humility you speak through. Mike: I want to speak that because I think is so important, I believe when we see someone as in a better position we put them on a pedestal, we look up to them, really that is a form of envy and I think is really damaging to ourselves, if you say “oh this guy is better than me, I wish I liked him” but in the same we are saying “I’m less than” and when we see ourselves as less then we want to disassociate, we actually one to pull someone down, as human nature say, well that person is not observing, Michalowicz they guy that probably got myself in driving, you pull in down, pity is just as damaging, pity is where you see yourself here and then there’s this homeless person in the street and “Thank god is not me” that causes a voidance when we move around them, both are form of dissociation an so I think they are very damaging. I don’t think we should ever use the term look up towards someone or look down to someone, I think we should always say look over, as cheesy as it is I’m big on like totems and this things you can see as the infinity circle and is my reminder that all of us are on the exact same path, no one is front or behind each other, we are on different positions of the path and we have just much to learn from someone who’s in the deepest struggles as someone that we perceived is having the greatest successes, all of them are learning experiences and we can call from each other but if we look up or look down we disassociate, I think we need to say Donnie I look over to you I want to learn from you, tell me your secrets, Mike I look over to you, so I say never look up, never look down. Donnie: I love that, I never heard it put in that perspective but you know Richard Branson when he takes people out to his private island , one of the first things he asked to everybody out there is, teach me something and I’ve always been fascinated by it because you got Richard Branson, one of the wealthiest man in the world , one of the most cool CEO, at least that is the brand he puts in the market place, a whole part of that is true but the fact that everybody comes back from me to the island going “Richard Branson asked me to teach him something” and I’m always curious to say, what could you teach as Richard Branson and I think a lot of those pull some random shit out their ass but “I taught Richard Branson” Really? Really!? Mike: I never heard that story I love it and I think it speaks therefore to great intelligence because I bet you, we all got something to teach as much as he teaches us, I don’t think he is more successful than a brand new startup entrepreneur, by certain definitions, the wealthy accumulated, the exposure he’s gotten, I don’t know and this is no judgment, I don’t know what his family is like , I don’t know what is balance is like, I don’t know his contribution to society is like, I don’t know, I also think that we hold people to a higher celebrity ship when they have broader impact as oppose to deep impact and I think most of us are designed for deep impact, Let me use doctor Oz because that example come to mine, Initially he was a cardiovascular surgeon with very deep impact, he saved some people’s life forever, he gave people not 6 more hours of life but 60 more year of life because of his work, he then made a choice to go broad meaning he went on Oprah he started to talking about health and then the guys is Impacting many people, the difference is , Doctor Oz now has a very broad impact but is very shallow you see him on tv shows and eat your vegetables is the lessons, when we worked as a cardiovascular surgeon, now he’s got a very deep impact, I think is a choice and I don’t think is one is better than the other, the shame is we hold up to celebrity ship people with only broad impact, it’s the famous football player, the famous movie start or the famous author like Malcom Gladwell, someone I exalt but never met Malcom Gladwell he just had an impact in some many people and is a name other people recognize I think is equal regardless of what we do of significance and people that are going for deep impact, I guess the lesson here is don’t aspire to be broad, aspire to be who you are call to be, if it’s deep go deep, if it’s broad is broad if it’s something else do it, just speak truly to yourself, they are all significant. Donnie: Man I love that, is such a powerful message because most people in my belief that have hit a celebrity status they are really good at one thing. It comes down to … marketing, I tell people all the time Tony Robbins, one of the biggest motivational speaker of the world and I ask people all the time and they are like omg is Tony Robins, Tony Robins, he’s done amazing things I’m not knocking down for anything but I ask people all the time, What’s Tony’s job? “Oh he is the CEO of the company blah blah blah” and I mean no he is not, and they look at me like “ what do you mean?” He is the face of the company, Garyvee, he is the face of the company and even Mike Michalowicz a C list celebrity is the face of the company, now all that to say is not meaning they are not making decisions, they are not having vision but they are the PR machine their job is to build brand new awareness for the company is the broad stroke. Mike: Is like a band, the front man is the one who everyone knows and is constantly with the groupies but the drummer and the bassist and the keyboardist who’s behind the curtains sometimes they are the ones collectively that need to make the music and I think that is what this organizations have, I think we can positon ourselves as the spokesperson and we will get all the accolades, I think the day I sort believe in that, over. Donnie: Have you seen bohemian rhapsody yet? The movie? Mike: Yeah. Donnie: I love the whole scene where the lead singer of Queen, can’t remember his name. Mike: Freddie Mercury. Donnie: Yes Freddie Mercury, thank you, that he hits all the fame and he goes out of his own and launches his own band and he’s trying to create the music and it all fails and he goes back to his guys and he goes “they did everything I told them to do” and I’m like that’s it! And he goes “They weren’t pushing back they did everything and the problem is I don’t know how to do all the stuff that you are great that” Mike: I think a great leader recognizes that , as a spokes persons you gotta be careful about being inauthentically humble, I see that too, and is like “oh is not me is not me” and declining as is actually discrediting the people who are fans of you, you can’t do that, the same thing you can’t say “this is all me” because you discrediting the people collectively making the product or the service that you do, so is a fine balance, I also think for the rest of the band, like Freddie mercury was the recognize brand and you have Brian May and then two guys like what was their names? That’s an ego check for them too but they are just as important. Donnie: Even if Freddie would have made it in a solo type carrier thing, even then he still has a band behind him. Mike: Even that is true. Donnie: The craziest thing about this whole ride and journey, I know the good things I’m good at, I’m really good on podcast, really good on interviews, well talking on stages but here is the thing I suck at the accounting side of things, I should read you book again “profit first” maybe probably help me out a little bit, but it’s a lot for entrepreneurs, business owners, whatever screwing tittle you want to give yourself, founding badass, is knowing your lane and knowing what you are good at and finding the right people that geek out on the stuff you suck at, is like I’ve got people that do some video editing for me, they freaking love that stuff, I’ve got people that do automated email for me, the gal who does some of the writing for me I call her a magician every Tim, I don’t know how she takes all the crap I put together spins it up and turns it into a master piece, she’s just got gift and a talent for it, but a lot of that is a humbleness for an individual to go “ok this is my lane, this is what I’m good at, how do I get other people to come along for that ride to pick up the slacks for me”. Mike: There is this thing I call the super hero syndrome when we first start a business we have to do everything, you have to do the accounting, you have to do marketing, there is no one else there, you have to, and we start believing wow I can do anything and then we start superheroing in swiping in when there’s problem oh I will fix this I will fix that, and the trap is, when we bring on employees we actually interning with their progress, they start doing something and we swop in we fix it we resolve, disabling them from doing the work themselves, plus we leave often awaken destruction behind us, entrepreneur like myself are known to fix the 5% of the problem, the big part that is noticeable and 95% like we can skip that and there is this shattered destruction behind us that needs to be swooped and cleaned up, I found that I can’t change my ego, I can’t tell “I’m just going to be mister Mike humble and everything is fine” what I did find is that I can rechannel my ego, I used to be very proud of being the superhero, the savior of my business, and now I use the term supervisionary and what that means to me is that I’m clear of where I want to take this organization but I am also as importantly clear about where my individual colleagues want to go with their lives and then my job is ok “how can I help Amy and Mike and Ron and Kelsey to achieve what their vision is personally and have that aligned the business” and I put more significance on that than being a super hero, now my ego is being filled, hey! I’m doing what I meant to do and the interesting is what I revert to being a super hero because I revert to that often and I say oh I fix this and I swipe in again, I realize that is a step down in where I see myself and put negative context around and I’m less likely to do it, before I thought if I had to remove myself form the business and no longer be the super hero I saw that as a step down so when I reverted back to this super hero role I was stepping up and therefore be stuck in it, so the goal is to put more significant to something else and it will naturally pull us put of doing the stuff that is actually not helping our business. Donnie: Yeah that’s a really interesting thought, I don’t have kids but I will say the next statement with that in front me, but often times, people that went through a rougher childhood, maybe didn’t have all the things they wanted as a kid and by the time they have kids they spoil they hell out of them because then have become success and the kids don’t learn the grind and drive that they learned to get and find the success, they hit the workplace and everything else and they will be a bit lost, entrepreneurs do the same thing with the employees, when you are taking care of the problem you are taking out he learning they need to evolve, I ran into this all the time in the creative side of things and Think this is probably the biggest screw that entrepreneur s have is they have a creative vision of their brand, their image, their everything else and when they try to explain to somebody else that other person doesn’t grasp their visions of what those color schemes or whatever else side of the businesses so they are like “Oh I screw up I will do this myself” Mike: I was talking to this guy Scott Alfred, I actually put him in one of my books, he said an entrepreneur would tell to an employee “hey we need to cook food here, get something that will cook food here” and they come back with sticks and rocks to spark a f ire and we are pissed of Like” Don’t you understand? I wanted a Viking?” and the employee is like “Oh I’m so sorry” but the reality is that we didn’t communicate what we wanted, they did the job, In other times they want the Viking and we just wanted sticks and rocks. So I think first of empowering them to make decision but also giving them the freedom that if they don’t comply to our vision to realize that maybe is not their fault, maybe we didn’t communicated well or maybe their vision for that thing is actually better than ours, maybe sticks and rocks is better, is this clinginess we have to what we have a personal vision or mission, how we see things in our mind and we can get upset when people don’t see what we see but we are often to communicating well at all. Donnie: Well and I would also add in there that I think, I want to speak for myself, there were a lot of times along this journey so far that I wanted somebody to swop in and take care of that problem for me, If this was an issue or problem and I wanted to go like “hey this is now yours” and take it completely of my plate and when it comes back and not what I had in vision and I am like “What the hell -” Mike: “ - Are you an idiot” Donnie: Right! Mike: That is called abdication; so many people think you are doing delegation when they are doing abdication. Donnie: Thank you I just added a whole new word today. Mike: Big word, I wanted to drop it, sort of finding where to use it. Laugh Donnie: You have been waiting the whole episode just to use that one. Mike: So I just thought of blurring it out if you didn’t have a question, but abdication is simply point someone and say you take care of this and that is the entire instruction said, and entrepreneurs are notorious for to scenarios, either micromanagement where is total control, here’s step 1, step 1.a - 1.b, or abdication which is the polar opposite and both of them are extremely ineffective, both of them prohibit growth to the organization. Donnie: So how does an individual doesn’t go to the extreme of both of those and actually find that happy medium combination because I’m guilty of both, Because sometimes I’m like “ok I have to tell them what to do or they are not going to figure it out so let’s roll out the power point and walk you through the 500 steps because I need it to get done” but other times I’m just off it, so how do I find the happy medium between those two? Mike: Is simply, you ask the employee, you say listen I want you to achieve certain results in the organization, I know you want to achieve these results, I will give you information, I need to know form you exactly what is enough information to give you direction or when am I going to the field that is too much, where’s actually hurting your creativity, I need the reverse too, if I’m giving just giving you way too little and you can’t achieve the visions that Ii have I need to know them too, is communication, is asking, shockingly we don’t do that often, is that you sit down the first day of the job and say “your job is to tell me when I’m not telling you what you need to know about me” that doesn’t make sense, is constant communication. Our little company we are going to a company retreat to Nashville Tennessee, literally next week and the whole thing is about communication, we are just going to sit there, have a talk, build a report, we have half day to set and learn from each other’s stories, because I know to grease the wheels of this organization is the communication and trust among each other is the ability of my colleague who I write her paycheck out to come back at me and say Mike you’re being an ass about so and so and not feeling threaten or in risk, that will only happen if we have a true connection beyond functional connection, if we have a human connection, I think there is where the answer comes. Donnie: And I love that, I think some people when they go into business they are looking for the pedestal, they are looking for people to look up to them and be that guy and I think that was a hard lessons for me because I know that was a part of my struggle as well is that I wanted people to seem me in a certain way which put me in this weird situation on how I was dealing with vendors and stuff until one of my mentors and coaches said dude, knock it off, but the whole thing is realizing that you are not superman, you are not creating something that hasn’t been created before, you are just repackaging somebody else’s shit up into a better more usable consumable product and format Donnie: I love the fact you are taking your employees in things like retreats and stuff, is that something you did out of the gate with your company or is that something you evolved into. Mike: Well we got it out the gate but is also something you have evolved into, well we had it out the gate but we’ve also evolved into, like going into Nashville is because we’ve had quarter after quarter of profitability that’s grown and we actually set an account called the retreat account so the firs retreat we went to Starbucks because we couldn’t afford lunch, me and my partner we jut said hey let’s just hang out before we get back to go back to work is something evolves, but what I did, recently I did the 4 week vacation, is something I wrote about in one of my book, so if you are going extract yourself from your business for 4 weeks, full disconnect and the business can grow or operate in your absence, you’ve proven the business can likely run into perpetuity in your absence. Donnie: I think that across the world every entrepreneur that just go and take this big gasp because they know way their business functions if they are gone. Mike: Which is a major problem, if you’re carrying the business on your back, and everyone will take the 4 week vacation or over, when get sick or die, so it’s going to happen, we are going to make it delivered so we are prepared for. The funny thing is that I’ve been presenting this concept around the world, when I was in Europe talking about this, we did this, literally yesterday, I flew back form BMW as there yesterday, all august, Germany shuts down and BMW ain’t going out of business, we need to do this for small businesses and so I went for 4 week vacation last year and when I did is not that business was perfect, I put a lot of structure in place to make it happen but there were some problems, one of the problems I realized is internal communication, I’ve become this choke point, when people have questions they come to me a group of come to me to see what’s Mike’s decision but they weren’t making laterally and internally, well I’m absence they were forced to, but there were some uncomfortable things like this person doesn’t really know the other person should approach them? Even if they went only 14 people, so that’s why we are doing this retreat, is all about just building report, we are going to do some cooking sessions together, we are going to have some wine together, we are just going to talk about our lives together, we are going to talk about our struggles and challenges, just to have that human connection, I really believe it greases the wheels. Donnie: Love it, I don’t why this popped to my head but I have strange question for you, what is your actual business? Mike: I don’t freaking know, laugh, I am a full time author, I write books, that’s what I do, so people think you can’t make any money out it, which is total bull, you can become very wealthy as an author if you do it right, the lessons here is I interviewed Tim Ferris on how to be an author a long time ago, he isn’t talking to me now, and he said of course you can make money, before that I was talking to people about being an author, and they said you make no money is horrible, and I said what has been your experience? I’ve never written a book, I don’t know, don’t trust people that haven’t done it, trust people who’ve done it, people that have failed learn why the fail and then learn and then I have talked to people who have been successful and find out the difference and go for the ones who are successful, I have a license: profit first, the pumpkin plan, clockwork, I have a new book coming out, to other companies and they pay me override of revenue so I have a constant revenue stream from all these different companies. Donnie: What do you mean by license, like program? Mike: Yes the program is called run like clockwork that teaches the clockwork system, they pay me a license in fee in front and 15% override … processionals for accountants. Donnie: You have accountants around the world. Mike: Yes over 350 and now and I license this organization but also in the case In that case I took an equity interest but the other two companies I don’t have any equity just the license in fee they pay me. So one of those things as people run their journey, one of the things I had to do was to turn to the people that has done it before , and realize somebody else had cut the trail, go learn from them and get advice from them along the way. Donnie: I gotta tell you man, this has been one hell of a ride I had no Idea about what you and I we were going to get into tonight and actually it has been kind of fun. Mike: Yeah on the recap my head says oh we talk about entreprewhore, you learned a new word abdicated. Donnie: Dude, don’t do the spelling bee on me, if you ask me to spell abdicate. Mike: I don’t know how to spell it I think it starts with an A Donnie: We talked about C level celebrities in there somewhere I am sure. Laugh Donnie: So that’s awesome, but dude I really appreciate the job done here, here’s how I like to wrap up every show and I do stump some people over this so get ready… Mike: 17 INCHES. Laugh Mike: Take it right? What’s the question? Laugh Donnie: I don’t want ask what 17 inches is! Now if you were going to leave the champions who listen to this show, people from all over the world, business owners, entrepreneurs, people who are trying to make the next movement in their life, if you were going to leave them with a quote a phrase a mantra or a saying, something they can take with them on their journey, especially when they are stack up against it and goring through what would be that quote or phrase you would say? Mike: So, I have it above my desk, Oscar Wilde says: Be yourself, everybody else is already taken. Donnie: Oh I love it is one of my favorite quotes from all time, didn’t know it came from Oscar Wilde, I saw it on a meme on Instagram and I thought “Oooh is brilliant”. Mike: Actually I went to Ireland, not specifically for this, but visited statue from him, visited his own home. Donnie: Where ahead in Ireland? because we were just there last year. Mike: Outside Dublin Donnie: Oh no kidding, Dublin was my least favorite city. Mike: Did you see the “Stiletto in the ghetto” the big spike in the middle of the city? Donnie: No we didn’t see that. Mike: I would say it was my least favorite too because is like any other metropolis. Donnie: That’s what my wife and I kept saying, is that if you go to Ireland go to Dublin and I would not knock in Ireland would no knock in Dublin by any means. Mike: No Omg. Donnie: Is like any other big city. Mike: The people in Ireland I would argue are the nicest people, India is number 2 but Ireland is number 1. Donnie: Did you do the breakfast thing? Mike: Yeah! Donnie: Dude I wanna tell you the nicest people, they were so genuine, and the breakfasts were insane. Mike: Insane, blood pudding. Donnie: And the two different styles and all that, so awesome, but look man I really appreciate what you doing, thanks for joining out and looking forward to many big things coming. Mike: Thank you! END OF INTERVIEW Donnie: Wow, what a fun episode, got to tell you, when you see one of these guys and hit some of the celebrity status and maintain this cool level of humility like Mike did all the way through this is just a fun thing to see is a great conversation you are part of. If you like those rise together authentic style conversations o a regular basis you really need to come and hang out with us in our Facebook group “success champions”, daily we are putting cool inspirational stuff or having awesome stories and we helping other rose and go together, so come hang out with us, just go to Facebook type In “success champions” look forward in groups join up and come tell us hi, we will be glad to have you there, if you got any value of this show whatsoever do me a favor, rate it, review it, share it with at least one fiend that would get value out of it, it would mean everything to me to get more people sharing and listening to these stories and ratings and reviews mean everything, so wherever you are listening this podcast, leave a rating leave a review, share it with a friend I really appreciate you guys, thank you for being a champion, thank you listening this show, keep on rolling shit up and keep going baby! Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MikeMichalowiczFanPage/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mikemichalowicz/ Twitter https://twitter.com/MikeMichalowicz Success Champions https://www.facebook.com/groups/SuccessChampion Music by Freddy Fri To book Freddy Fri or for more information -- freddyfrimotivation@gmail.com Follow Freddy Fri Motivation for WEEKLY MOTIVATIONAL VIDEOS and other content: Website -- http://www.freddyfri.com Twitter -- https://twitter.com/realplayya1000 Facebook -- https://www.facebook.com/FredWins/ Instagram -- http://instagram.com/freddyfrimotivation LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/freddyfri/

Mike Michalowicz Becoming a Shareholder of Your Entrepreneur Life

Success Champions

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 11, 2019 55:38

Your New Opinion - Ep. 120: Discworld vs Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Your New Opinion

Play Episode Listen Later May 31, 2019 49:15

Fantasy or science fiction? Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams? Discworld or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? The boys know this is a tough question for fans of comic literature, but that's what they're here for! Ryan fights on the side of Discworld, carrying his luggage with him. Mike argues for Hitchhiker's Guide, trying his damndest not to panic. Nick judges the whole thing! Talking points include: bookshelves, towels, The Big Read, Marvin the Paranoid Android, the Wheel of Time, wordsmiths, Conan the Barbarian, Alzheimers, Christopher Lee, Sean Astin, and making 13 year old girls cry. What got Ryan into sci-fi? What kinds of characters annoy Mike? How many books can Nick read in a year? Listen to this mostly harmless episode: Discworld vs Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!

第438期:Chance Encounter

Casual Cinecast: Blockbuster Movies to Criterion & Classic Film

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2019 2:49

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: Hey, Michael, I just met your wife. She's a really nice woman. Really friendly.Mike: Yeah. yeah. We met a long time ago. We've been married a lot of years, now.Todd: How did you meet actually?Mike: Oh, gosh, we back when we were both students, at Arizona State University in Tempe Arizona, and I had volunteered to be one of the tour guides for new students, foreign students who just come in for that school year, and it was the end of August, and it was very steamy, a very hot day, and I remember I met the students, there were maybe four or five of them at the Student Union for this walking orientation tour of the campus. It's a beautiful campus, by the way, and so, you know, I remember she was sitting on this bench and I went and, you know, she smiled at me and I smiled at her, and there was some kind of spark.Todd: Yeah, yeah, like a connection.Mike: There was a connection. There was a connection there, and I, you know, we went on this walking tour of the campus and when we were you done, you know, I kind of reluctantly, sort of said goodbye to her and the rest of the group, and you know, kind of said, see you around, and I think the next day even, she went found out who I was and where I worked and she dropped in my office.Todd: Wow, that's pretty cool. That's pretty romantic.Mike: It was very cool. Very romantic. You know the funny thing is, that particular bench, where we met, on our anniversary, 20th anniversary, we went back to the campus (no way) where we met and we took a picture of ourselves on the same bench because this is where we first met.Todd: What a great story.Mike: It was very cool to go back there.Todd: So, in terms of your personality, how are you guys similar?Mike: How are we similar? Oh, man, I think we're more different than anything. I think our biggest similarity is that we're both so different, in other words, that we're both very tolerant (yeah) of people who are different and so we, you know we kind of get along. We have an understanding that's we're going to misunderstand each other most of the time.Todd: Right, right.Mike: But we sort of approach that with a kind of humor and flexibility so I think that's what makes our relationship work is that we got that kind of agreement.Todd: So you think that's the key to any successful marriage?Mike: Is not getting so upset at misunderstanding each other or kind of using misunderstanding as a way of getting to know each other. I think that is one of the keys.Todd: That's nice. Thanks.Mike: Sure.

arizona state university chance encounter student union tempe arizona mike it mike yeah mike how mike there mike oh mike is todd yeah todd so todd right

SFR 228: Leveraging A FunnelHub...

Sales Funnel Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 26, 2019 29:44

FunnelHub is kind of a new term, and it’s something that Mike and AJ Rivera are experts in. A funnel is not a website… but sometimes people still get confused... About a year ago, somebody reached out to me, and said, “Hey would you please take a look at our funnel it's not converting very well?” They hired me to come in workout what was going on. I went to look at their funnel… I opened up all their URLs, and I immediately, off the bat, I could tell: This is NOT a funnel. This is a website. When I told them they were like, “No no, no, no, no, no. This is one hundred percent a funnel.” I said: “No, one hundred percent, without a doubt, I swear on my life, this is NOT a funnel... because for starters, you’ve got exits all over the page.” A funnel is a funnel because there's only one way to progress. You either have to purchase or opt-in. If you can exit in any other way, besides the one way forward, that's NOT a funnel. That by definition is a website. They had exits in their headers all over the place. Exits the middle. You had to scroll down to the bottom to even opt into anything and move forward in the funnel they'd created. I was like, “Guys!” So we switched a few things up to make it a legitimate funnel, and just that one switch alone, BOOM! WHAT THE FUNNELHUB??? This is the 228th episode of Sales Funnel Radio, and it's funny to me that a lot of people still have no idea about EVERYTHING that I offer… And I get it… It's for a lot of reasons: I've focused on building a lot of stuff and linking it together. There have been little launch campaigns together to get noise around them. I've been working on fulfillment and systems for fulfillment. I've quietly launched some stuff to hyper-users just to see what would happen. Other stuff has made loud entrances with big old launch campaigns behind them. … there's a lot of moving pieces. However, there's gotta be a way to help everybody understand what it is you're selling at all times… And that’s what I'm excited about what I’m gonna share with you next. I have two very special guests today and they’ve created what they call a FunnelHub. It's NOT a website. It's almost like a directory. A FunneHub looks very similar to a website but it has a different intent. This is the official launch of my FunnelHub. The old Steve J Larsen site is completely gone and SteveJLarsen.com has been TOTALLY REDESIGNED. It's very exciting! So now you're going to read an interview I did with my AMAZING FUNNELHUB creators so you can learn MORE about FunnelHubs and why your business needs one. So let me introduce, Mike Schmidt and AJ Rivera... WEBSITES ARE DEAD…? Mike and AJ are members of the Inner Circle and they own an agency called they’re from AnchorWave… Mike: Awesome, thanks so much Stephen for having us. AJ: Super stoked, man. Steve: Oh it's gonna be awesome. You guys approached me... when was this? It was a while ago. Mike: It was in October, we were at the Traffic Seekers Events in Scottsdale. Steve: That's right, yeah, yeah. And basically, they came to me and said something that would be very dumb for me to say no to: “Stephen can we build you something for free?” I said, sure! … and as kind of a case study, we want to walk through what they built. because I believe that what they've got will revolutionize websites. A lot of us make fun of websites. I make fun of websites. We all know that Russell in ClickFunnels' world definitely makes fun of websites. Mike: Totally. Steve: But you haven't built a website, you’ve built what you call a FunnelHub. We're definitely gonna get into that... but beforehand, we'd like to know about you guys. What do you guys do? Mike: So we have a web design digital marketing agency based in Tucson, Arizona. We have about a team of 20 people here. We started in 2003, so celebrated 16 years in business this year. We've built A LOT of websites. More than 1300 by our closest count at this point. Steve: Oh my gosh. Mike: What's funny is we heard Russell recently renew his efforts around the death of a website. Steve: He did. Mike: And for those of you guys who were at Funnel Hacking Live, he enrolled us in the promotion of that message. I had to turn to Anthony here and say: “I don't think that we can share that video for Russell, given what our company does.” We have a lot of experience helping a lot of different types of clients build websites in order to build credibility and help them serve a local market. We joined Russell's inner circle about four and a half, five years ago, before it was cool to be in the Inner Circle. It was just a bunch of nerds in a room giving Russell a lot of money to geek out on stuff. And now, thanks to what he's done, and what you've done, it’s kind of elevated that status quite a bit… but originally, we joined in order to start our expert business. Given our experience of running a sizable team, building websites, and doing digital marketing for a local type client, we just kind of understood inherently that there was something we needed to get out there and teach to: Our marketplace WordPress developers Digital marketers So about three years ago, we started something we call Agency Mastermind - which is a group that's all about teaching the things that have helped us be successful in our world, to people out there. We've just crossed the threshold, at the end of last year, to achieve our Two Comma Club Award. Steve: Whoo! Nice! Mike: We got to officially hang that on the wall not too long ago. So it's cool. HOW TO INCREASE SALES We live in a world where we are: An agency of the traditional sort. A funnel business. An expert business. So things started to kind of collide for us, and especially with our proximity to a lot the people who are just doing some really, really amazing things with funnels, (yourself being one of them)... We started to see this picture of how we could really redefine and bring our 16 years and 1300 websites of experience to something that Russell's currently saying is totally dead. Steve: If Russell sees this, we still love ya. “Viva la funnels!” Mike: Totally, and we get where that's coming from. There's parts of our bodies that feel that websites are dead for certain things and where the funnel makes more sense... and there's a lot of places it does. It’s the most amazing tool we've ever implemented for our expert business. Steve: That's awesome, that's awesome. So, obviously, we throw so many rocks at websites from a direct response marketers viewpoint. I was looking at some stats just off Shopify; with like a single product on there, or multiple products... I mean they don't convert except for like maybe one to three percent (if you're good), you know. From that standpoint, I can certainly see why Russell throws rocks at websites. Mike: Totally. Steve: But you guys, I mean, you're like scrapping that whole thing, and while it kind of looks like a website, you're calling this thing a FunnelHub... Could you talk about that a little bit? Mike: Yeah. AJ: Yeah, so sure… VIVA LA FUNNELHUB The idea behind the FunnelHub is really that, you know... Russell's right; the funnel's where the sales are going to happen. We know that there's a lot of hot buyers that go through that process. When you're driving paid traffic, you're going to get them to a landing page, you're going to end up getting them to a webinar, or sell them something. All your hot buyers are going to raise their hand and give you money. But what happens to everybody else that isn't in that bucket? They're gonna go, typically, and research your brand. They're gonna do a search for you just to see if you're legit and they end up in the middle of nowhere. They're not sure what the message is. Once you reach a certain level of status in doing this, (like yourself), a lot of people are coming to you and searching for your name because they have heard you on a podcast… Or because someone told them, “Hey you gotta check out Stephen Larsen.” So, of course, they're gonna Google that, and now they're kind of lost. They didn't see your ad. They didn't get to your landing page. They didn’t see your videos that kind of explain everything. ...they're having to piece all this together on their own. So the FunnelHub is a spot where we can still guide them through that process. We can still let them know everything that Stephen's about... and then get them right back into the sales funnel where we know that conversions are gonna happen. That's the goal. We want to communicate the movement, communicate the message, and then get them right back to where we know they're gonna actually give you some money. Mike: Yeah, I think what's important… If you figure that we're all high-fiving and celebrating the fact that we got three or five percent of the people that made it into our funnel to hand over cash... Or three or five percent of the people who made it to a webinar to sign up for a course… We're all really excited about that three-five percent who convert... but what about that other 95 percent? What do they do? There's kind of a thought process that goes: Those 95 percent of people, they're gonna buy sometime between three months and three years of interacting with you. The question is, are they going to buy from you? Or are they going to buy from somebody else? CATCHING THE 95 PERCENT The FunnelHub is about making sure there is a safe landing for that 95 percent of people, (by the way you probably paid for or earned them through your efforts)... Giving them a place to get back into those funnels and really even cross-pollinate into things that they may not be ready for. Steve: It's almost like a way to kind of turn them from warm and cold traffic to a little more hot before they re-enter your funnel. Mike: And to think of it from a strategy that a lot of us look at in terms of our emails… We hear about soap opera and Seinfeld emails that go out. For a lot of people, these may be the only other way that they're nurturing somebody along to build that relationship. The FunnelHub is the only other platform, aside from email, that you can truly own. At the end of the day, you're renting space on Facebook, you're renting time on YouTube. Instagram is making it, (at the current moment), pretty easy for you to reach out to people... but those things change. … but what won't change is: You're going to own your customer database, and you're going to own your FunnelHub. And those are the two places that you can truly use in order to really nurture that 95 percent along. Steve: Totally, and you know what's funny, everyone watching and listening to this, the thing that has made it so starkly real for me that I need this, is I actually have a lot of products that I sell… But I know the majority of my audience has no idea what it is that I actually sell because they came in on one thing that was attractive to them…but I've been testing products and processes and things like that. So, there isn't anything that's pushing them to the next thing... or saying, “By the way, I also have *these* things.” Mike: Right. Steve: So when you guys first started talking about this, I was like: “Oh my gosh, yes, it is the death of a website... but the birth of a FunnelHub.” THE BIRTH OF A FUNNELHUB When should somebody start looking to build a FunnelHub? Mike: What we look at is if you're currently running a successful funnel that's getting you leads and sales every day, that means that you are building a mass of people who are going to be looking for you and going to be needing something like this. So it's a wide spectrum because you could have just one funnel doing that, but many of us have built several funnels that are producing leads and opportunities. Signs that I look for: Are people confused about what you offer? They might think of you as the Sales Funnel Radio guy, but do they know that you have an event? Do they know about these other things? If you get the same questions over and over again, (especially easy ones like support questions). That's a key indicator. If there are things that you're trying to communicate to people that you just can't seem to get them to understand. If you feel like you're kind of shouting at a wall as a producer of this content. How you organize that in a FunnelHub is a really, really key place for that. AJ: - Yeah, I think I'd add to that: If you're spending a lot of time getting some earned traffic, (appearing in a lot of podcasts, different publications or articles online where people are just being introduced to you)... ...those are other indicators that you probably got the shadow traffic that's looking for your brand online. Mike: And tell me if you think this sounds familiar? You get introduced to someone, maybe through a Facebook ad or some kind of social post, and maybe you follow them a bit. Maybe you opt into their funnel… And then, one day you decide to look up something you saw them advertise…. you do a search for their name and their product… And what comes up is their 25,000 dollar high ticket coaching application. You're kind of brand new into this world, yet the thing they're leading with, (or Google's helping them lead with), is the funnel that's NOT appropriate for you at that point in time. Steve: Straight to the 25 grand market. Mike: If we could get those all day long without anything else Steve: No one would build anything else! Mike: Totally, but I think we can all relate to that scenario where it's like, this person has this really deep thing, but all I'm looking for is that thing, lead magnet, this thing they promised they could help me do… ... and I can't find it anywhere! Right? I'm ready to start dipping my toe in the water with you... and work my way towards that one-on-one 25,000 dollar Hawaiian vacation that we're gonna go on. That's a scenario that I think a lot of us can relate to… Where the FunnelHub comes in play to make sure it's very clear how your world and business works. I think we see that happening more and more with a lot of people in this space. PUBLISH YOUR VALUE LADDER Russell, being a trailblazer that he is, at Funnel Hacking Live, what did he do? He did two things: #1: He published his value ladder. First time ever. Being in the inner circle, he had shared with us a number of months back… About a year ago, he's like, “Guys, I'm working on my value ladder. I've promised the team that I will never change it for the foreseeable future.” ...'Cause he's one of those guys, (just like a lot of us), that has a lot of good ideas... and he's constantly reorganizing what this means and looks like. Steve: It took him like four months to get serious on that value ladder too. He changed it a million times. Mike: Totally. AJ:- All of us do, right? Mike: It's a living breathing thing and that's a totally natural thing. So the lesson isn't that you gotta lock it in place, but you do need to publish it... and you do need to help your people understand how they can move through your world. They wanna know, they wanna buy, they want an offer, so making that clear is really key. So we saw him put it on the screens and he published it. He printed 5000 plus versions of this thing, then distributed that to all of us so we could understand: How to live in his world. How to buy from him. How to associate ourselves with what he has to offer. ...and that's really important for a lot of funnel hackers to pay attention to. If you're not clearly communicating how to buy, people are going to make up their own story about what it is you do. CLARITY EQUAL CASH So the FunnelHub steps in place to really clarify what that is for people. So that way, they know how to move through your world. Steve: Definitely! You know, there's a podcast episode I did a little while called Branding Comes Second. And I think when I said that, people heard, branding doesn't matter. I was like, no, that's not what I said. It comes second. It comes way down the road… In fact, there's a great book called Niche Down... Once you have something that sells, once you have an amazing thing, you really should start looking at branding things. I'm not throwing branding to the wind and saying it doesn't matter. I'm saying it's NOT what makes the sale… But after the sale, it starts to matter for second and third sales. One of the things that Russell taught me was that when people start saying cool things about you on Facebook or other places, start screenshotting it and keep a folder for it. Start collecting those kinds of things for in the future, so you can go back and already have assets ready for essentially a FunnelHub. What assets should somebody start collecting if they're not quite ready FunnelHub yet? What should people be collecting along the way that makes it attractive and easy to build one? Mike: Well the cool thing is that Russell's kind of outlined a lot of that in Expert Secrets. AJ: Yeah, absolutely, that plan's already out there about establishing the attractive character, about creating the future-based cause, about creating new opportunities. So what we find is a lot of people are aware of that, (and they might be communicating a lot that through their funnels), but for somebody that comes to their website... they're not seeing any of that. They don't get that full picture. So this is also helping people just do what Russell says and making sure that all of that stuff that they've worked hard on is put in a spot where people can actually see it, feel something for that movement... feel like they're part of that movement... and want to be part of it. Mike: As you're working through those things and coming up with your: Future-based cause Manifesto Value ladder False beliefs … these are ALL the pieces that need to be represented there. That's why this isn't just some fancy, “Oh, Russell killed websites, so let's call it something else,” type move. Steve: No not at all. Mike: This is very much about how do you align the important lessons from what we've learned in Expert Secrets and what we do as building an expert business and having that place where all this belongs. This isn't just for the people who might land on that page and your audience. It's for you as the expert to really have something to point at. I know that there have been times where I've written my manifesto and re-wrote it. And I’d have like four or eight versions of it in my Google Drive… Which one of them is the right one? Being able to point to my FunnelHub and say: This is the right one This is what I'm standing for This is who I'm throwing rocks at … that's what takes that nebulous thing and really solidifies it … for not just the audience, but for the expert too. Steve: Totally! So you're collecting those things along the way. Again, a value ladder is a marketing idea and there are different products that represent that idea along this FunnelHub... The FunnelHub is a representation of all the marketing idea that you have that's not just a value ladder... it's a manifesto and the title of liberty that you hold up and wave the flag around with. It's really such an awesome platform to do that on. This is the unveiling of SteveJLarsen.com! STEVE J LARSEN: THE ORIGIN STORY The guy who owned SteveLarsen.com wanted like 30 grand, or whatever... and I was like, ‘There's no way!” So Stephen Joseph Larsen was available, so I bought it and I built it … and it was terrible! It's always poorly represented of what I do, and now it’s rebuilt. So do you want to walk us through it? Mike: Yeah, we'd love to. AJ: We're super proud of this, man. Steve: It's incredible! I think I ran around the house a few times when I saw it the first time. Look at that! Mike: Here we go. First things first, is I think we're going to have to get a picture of you with a proper beard here now. AJ: Photoshop that in or something. Steve: Yeah. Mike: This FunnelHub is really designed to help guide people through the journey that they have with you. A big part of that is helping them understand the programs and offerings that you have and really providing that piece. So we've obviously got the events… These are the things that people want to know about you: They want to know who you are and what you stand for, and that's like one of the reasons we the manifesto that you've adopted here letting people know what you stand for. In programs, we've published your value ladder with this cool little graphic to help people see what steps someone can move through… being able to click on these things. Steve: I'm so excited for people to see this. I guarantee most of them don't even know half that exists. Mike: How many people listening to this knew you had, how many people knew about FunnelStache? They may have come in another funnel… Obviously, a hundred percent of the people reading this right now know about Sales Funnel Radio, but there is an opportunity to ascend those people through the other things that you offer. If you didn't know, Stephen is the offer creation king. Clarify in your mind that he's the category king of helping someone clarify and launch an offer to the world…. And that's what this FunnelHub is really driving at. As cool and as amazing as the podcast is, (and the stories that are told), at the end of the day, they're all in service to really building Stephen as the king of the offer creation. It's NOT about funnels. We use funnels, yes, but it's about, “How do we leverage the offer?” And that's really what this is doing. AJ: Yeah, one thing I'd mention on this page is that this is a living breathing thing. I feel like a lot of people feel like they can't get started with this unless they've got this all planned out and they know everything about their value ladder… But this can change… This is electronic. Unlike Russell printed 5,000 copies of his value ladder... this is just a graphic that we can update. So if you have a smaller value ladder right now, and you know it's going to get bigger, give us what you've got and we can communicate that, and as it grows we can continue to add that later as well. Steve: Yeah I'll say the thing that I was really kind of relieving to me was when you guys said that it could change. When we first started working together, I was feelin’ I can't ever change it! It's permanent. It's like a book, it will be printed... it cannot stop ever. AJ: It's NOT a tattoo. Mike: Absolutely, so one thing that we haven't touched much on is the media and speaking opportunities… DO YOU HAVE A BLOG? One thing that I keep on hearing people say as it relates to their own website is they just call it a blog. A blog is one component of a FunnelHub. It's one piece of that. And so when you just reduce your web presence to just, “Hey it's where I publish my blog,” ...there's so much more that should be there. We're not putting that there just for the just for fun, it's actually to help people understand: What you do What you stand for So our mission here with the FunnelHub is to help people understand that it's much more... A FunnelHub is much more than a blog. It's much more than a website. It's really helping to help paint that entire picture that needs to be shown. It’s even a big part of a traffic strategy and it's a big part of a Dream 100 Strategy. That it's NOT something that just kind of gets left off to the side. AJ: - Yeah, I have an example of somebody in the Inner Circle, I'm not gonna mention her name, but she had an opportunity to appear on a pretty big podcast... and they went and searched for her name online, and they didn't like what came up. So they pulled that opportunity away from her. So if she’d have had a FunnelHub that clearly outlined her movement, who she was, had all the credibility indicators that they were looking for to feel comfortable to welcome her on their show... then she would've been able to take advantage of the earned traffic there. Steve: So awesome. I love that you guys asked me, “What are all the questions that people ask you over and over and over again?” You put that in there… There's a FAQ…it's awesome. It helps support everything that I'm doing. Anyway, I'm excited. Everything is going to have Steve J Larsen in it. Mike: And kind of like to bring it full circle, what's cool about helping this audience, and coming from the point of view where we have our own expert business, is that we get that the experts are really busy and have a lot on their plate…. The fact that we got Stephen J. Larsen to dedicate some time to work on this project among all the other things you do, is amazing... But really, what we asked you to do is pretty minimal. Steve: Oh, that's what was shocking to me. There's people who have asked stuff like that, and I'm like, “Ahhhh!” I was excited to do this, but I think we had like three meetings and you just caught the vision and went and did it. It's rare. Everybody listening and watching... it's rare to have somebody who clearly understands like FunnelHub/ websites, but then, also funnels and the funnel world and the roles between the two. That’s rare. I don't see that often. So it was neat. You guys just took it and ran. It was really cool. Mike: That's something we see as a unique aspect we provide: Being in the Inner Circle Building our own funnels Having an agency that's done this for 16 years. It's kind of an “Ah-ha,” and I almost feel guilty... or dumb, for not really thinking of this sooner. They say there's a reason for everything... you know, some kids take the slow path through school, and that would be me. Being in the inner circle as long as we have, the timing was just right around this. AJ: For a long time, we never even talked about that side of the business. We just went to the inner circle asking for advice on our expert business and getting a lot of tips with that. They didn't even know we had this agency. So this is like a coming out for us, not only in the inner circle but everybody else in the Funnel Hacking community... like, “Hey, we've got an agency that can help you with all this stuff.” Steve: Totally awesome. Where can people get information? I know about half of my audience is already killin' it... and this actually would very much apply to them. The other half, they're kind of brand new, which is great and “Welcomed,” just know this is also what's in store. ...where should people reach out? Mike: Absolutely, so the best place to connect with us regarding this is FunnelHub.xyz. Yes, you can get an XYZ domain name! Steve: I didn't know that. Mike: And now we know that too… But on that page, you'll find a lot of information about what we're talking about here today, also a little bit of video preview of Stephen's website. You guys who are not watching the video, just head over to FunnelHub.xyz ...and you can kind of get the whole story there, as well. Steve: Yeah, it's cool too, because they took the reins, they went and built it all out, and then I just did a critique... like, “Hey change this vernacular or whatever.” They're always there, even on a monthly basis, for when I reach back out and say, “Hey, my product's changed... this has changed,” so nothing is cemented. That very much was like, “Ahh…” That helped me a lot. Mike: As much as I would love to credit for the design or putting this whole thing together, it was absolutely our team here that helped out with that. Jill one of our project coordinators played a major role in jockeying that. So, what's cool is, even though we're busy running our own expert business, you have access to the team that can make that happen. Steve: You have a pretty big team too. Mike: We have a team of 20 people here in Tucson, Arizona. So right outside this door right here, Jill's office is right there. We've got the team that shows up to work every day to do this kind of stuff. That's something we're really proud of that and really proud of our team. I hope that you guys can see the labor of love through the FunnelHub that was created for Stephen. Steve: Totally! You all know that we focus heavily on hiring the who that knows the how. Entrepreneurship is NOT about you learning how to play EVERY instrument in the orchestra. It's about you being the orchestrator. You're the conductor. I want you to understand clearly that the who to FunnelHubs is definitely Mike and AJ. Go to FunnelHub.xyz and check them out. They are the experts, they birthed a lot of this concept. You're getting it right from the horse's mouth. Guys, thanks so much for being on with this. This was awesome. BOOM! If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good. But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right? That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula. So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it. Wanna come? There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days. You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com. Again, that's OfferMind.com.

Captain Marvel, Apollo 11, How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Aint Them Bodies Saints

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2019 77:20

In this episode, Justin, Chris and Mike discuss "What's On Our Mind" this week before moving into a review for the newest installment in the MCU, Captain Marvel! RUNDOWN - - Intro (00:00:00 - 00:04:09) - Intro - Reel Outreach Promo - What's On Our Minds (00:04:09 - 00:33:50) - Mike - How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World - Chris - Apollo 11 - Justin - Ain't Them Bodies Saints - Captain Marvel (00:33:50 - 01:17:19) - Spoilers start at (00:53:20) - Outro (01:15:42 - 01:17:19) Visit www.reeloutreach.com and donate to help underprivileged kids get to the theaters to see Captain Marvel! Follow us on: Twitter Facebook Instagram Email us at: casualcinemedia@gmail.com Talk Criterion Collection, film, tv and other stuff with us in our Facebook group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/casualcinecast/ Intro/Outro Music courtesy of Jake Wagner-Russell at www.soundcloud.com/bopscotch

Third Party Candidates, Immigration, Howard Schultz, and Trump with Matt Plautz

Liberty Revealed

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 18, 2019 32:22

Mike: Hey, welcome back to another episode of Liberty Revealed. I'm Mike Mahony, your host, and today I have a guest with me. His name is Matt Plautz. He's the 17-year-old host of Unfazed with Matt Plautz. His podcast focuses on current events comedy, philosophy and various subjects that guests bring in. So please welcome to the show, Matt. Hey Matt Matt: Yeah thanks so much for having me, Mike. Mike: How are you doing today? Matt: I'm doing great. Just excited to get going and talk a little bit about what we were talking about with Howard Schultz and everything like that. Talk about some independent candidates in just 2020 in general. Mike: Sure well before we jump into that, you know since it is Super Bowl Sunday when we're recording…Patriots or Rams? Matt: I'm Patriots. I got a patriots jersey in my closet right now. I am a Bears fan, but they never make the Super Bowl so I usually root for the Pats and I've got Pats by seven. Mike: Alright, awesome. Yeah, I think it's gonna be a good game, that's for sure. So, we'll see. So, so yeah, you mentioned Howard Schultz and I mean, that's been the the big uproar in the media. You know, everyone's afraid that Howard Schultz is going to run as an independent and taking votes away from the democrats, that he will help re-elect Donald Trump. So what are your thoughts about that? Matt: Well, first of all, I mean, I think it's a little ridiculous that everyone's attacking him for running as an independent when he is an independent. Like, what else would he be running as? He was a former Democrat, obviously, but he no longer aligns with the Democratic Party in terms of, you know, free college for all he doesn't agree with, as far as I'm aware, free health care just doesn't think it's affordable. So when your party has shifted, people leave the party. It's just like, you know, you wouldn't expect someone to continue to vote for the Democratic Party if their opinion has changed on it. So I mean on that side of things, I just think it's a little unfair for everyone to be so accusatory towards him when really, it's just, he's still very against Trump. Whether you like Trump or hate Trump, you can't say that Howard Schultz is trying to help out Trump in any way. And I don't think there's any guarantee that it really would help Trump because personally, I've worked on the Republican side for a couple years now, and I know a lot of Republicans who are agitated with Trump and I know a lot of Democrats that love him. So there really is no way and that just as you saw with 2016, deep diving and analytics doesn't really work anymore because people are extremely unpredictable with how divided our nation is right now. So I don't know I think they're being a little bit unfair. What about you? Mike: Yeah I completely agree with you. I think that third party candidates in general get bagged on and you hear how if you're voting for a third party candidate, and you tell somebody if they're Republican, they claim you're going to help get the democrats elected. And if you're if you're a Democrat, they claim you're going to help get the republican elected. And like in the last election in 2016, I personally voted for Gary Johnson and I was told by both sides, you know, you're going to help the other side get elected, you're going to take votes away. And I asked them well, you know, you like a Democrat, you're assuming I would have voted for Hillary Clinton. I'm gonna tell you something. If I was forced to vote for either I wouldn't have voted. So you know, there's no you can't use this, oh, you'd hurt my side, because both sides think that and there and they're both wrong. I mean, the most third party candidates, and that's what I find really interesting about Schultz is he saying he's not just saying he's going to run as an independent he's going to run as a centrist independent, which is, if you're, you're too young to remember this guy. But you probably heard the name Ross Perot Matt: Did it didn't he didn't Ross end up getting about like 15% in some states? Matt:Yeah Mike: He definitely affected that election. But it was because he ran more on as a conservative independent and so he, you know he made that, he created, you know, a situation that they're claiming Schultz is going to create. I don't think he will. I think if he runs with a position in the center he's going to have a good chance of getting a lot of votes but he's going to pull them from both parties. That's the key thing that I think they miss. Matt: Yeah. Did it didn't he, didn't Ross end up getting about like 15% in some states? Mike: Yes, yes I mean, he did quite well but of course, Matt: Yeah. Mike: You know, a similar situation to Schultz, he was a CEO of a major tech company. He had a lot of money to burn and I mean, that's, you know, money and politics is another topic for another day. And maybe you can come on another time and we can talk about that, but for now, I mean, I think. Matt: For sure. Mike: It's known that one of the weird things about our country is, you know, I think it was Thomas Jefferson that said, you know, we should avoid political parties and you know, I think he was right. I think political parties…what it does is you get some people who are automatically against Donald Trump because they're democrat and then you get some people who support anything he says, because they’re republican rather than, you know, I've gone through the last two years as a libertarian. I've gone through the last two years going well, okay, I like that idea. Oh, I hate that idea. I can't believe you said that. I'm all over the place with it, because he's all over the place. And that's how it should be. But then you get the people that are like, in lockstep and I know they're intelligent people because I know some of them personally and you just say how is it that you miss like, like, how do you feel about this wall that he wants to build? Matt: The wall well, yeah, just before I talked about that a little bit, I 100% agree.What I always say is that you get entrenched with a two-party system you're forced to check a box that you stand slightly closer to and then everyone gets mad at you if you check that box was oh you agree with this that he said. No, I don't! I was forced to choose one of them because there isn't a viable third party and, so yeah, that I totally agree that it's a broken system I don't know that parties are unnecessarily the problem, maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but I think the lack of choices it's just not representative to the population, you know? You have people that couldn't check republican or democrat and that's why there should be four to five parties maybe even more maybe less. But and with the wall, it is it's a hot button issue and I can go either way on it. I understand both sides because you on the Democrat side of things, their reasoning for not wanting the wall is mostly financial saying that it's not worth the dollars spent..And then there are also those further to the left that just think that it's inhumane. Um, I think there's definitely an argument to be made if it's worth the money or not if it would actually be effective and depending on what side you are, they're going to say one thing or say the other, but I think it's a little ridiculous, the inhumane part, because in my opinion, it just…it's not inhumane to keep people out of your country when they can come here legally whether or not the system's broken,you know I don't actually know too much about that because everything every information you're getting they're trying to nudge you one way or the other so it's really hard to truly know how broken the system is, but to say that it's inhumane to try and keep border security, you know, talk to the people that are that are being raped, and being murdered and stuff by people that we didn't get a chance to vette and I don't think that all illegal immigrants by any means. I don't even think the majority of them I think most of them are coming here because they want abrighter future, but you know, they can come here legally. And the argument I've always had is because I'm actually I leaned away and the wall that's one of the things I do like about Trump, because he's so adamant about border security. I always say, you know, regarding illegal immigration, it's just like, for me, you know, it's, it's way easier for me to just hop on the highway and never take driver's education never have to go get my license at the DMV, because God knows no one wants to go to the DMV, you know, it'd be way easier to do that. But in a society, there are laws that may inconvenience you just for the sake of the general population safety and if we need to vet people, we need to vet people if you have a problem with that, you know, I think that maybe you should look at going somewhere else. That's just my personal opinion. What about you? Mike; Well I mean I kind of have a kind of a hybrid libertarian view on this issue i think that you know first of all, let me tell you, my wife is from Canada and we've been going through the immigration process herself. And the first thing I'll tell you is it's extremely inefficient Matt: Yeah Mike: .We've been in the process for quite a while now. And we still don't have it. We we've been told there's an interview date been picked and that it's being sent to us. But you're talking over two weeks ago, why does it take two weeks to process a letter that goes, you know, from maybe I think it's coming from Chicago to Orange County. Matt: sounds like getting approved by iTunes Mike: right? It's exactly like why Why does it take so long and And not only that, I mean, we spent over $5,000 on the process. And I mean, imagine if, you know, I'm lucky enough to I'm running multiple businesses and making good money. Imagine if I was making $10 an hour How do I afford the 1400 dollar filing fee to get her here? And so I think that what we need to do is we need to be Matt: Yeah Mike: Give people a pathway that if they want to come here and work that they can do that with a work visa, where we vet them, like you said, and we also make sure then that they're paying their income taxes because you know what, they don't pay their income taxes, we can revoke their visa and have them sent out of here. But I also think that it comes down to this there if there's going to be an immigration system at the federal level. And I don't think we're ever going to see that go away. And if that's where it's going to be, then they need to have it so that the pathway to being a legal immigrant is affordable and something you can have helped doing if you don't if you know, that's one of the things that's lacking. Like if you don't have you don't understand something you call the immigration people and they'll mostly tell you, well, you're supposed to check this box and you're supposed to make sure that this is filled out, but they can't really give you advice should you fill out this form or this form and there needs to be someplace ever I mean, I don't know how it is in every state, but I know in a few states I've been in the court systems have helped centers that people are there volunteering their time to help you so that you are able to avail yourself of your rights and of course as a libertarian personal freedom and liberty it's huge for me. So I think if they could they could fix that. Then we get to the point where and this is where I think I part ways with libertarians because I feel Remember I said if they don't pay their taxes we can revoke their reason and get them out of the country. I think we need if once we've had an affordable system that makes sense the people can understand and actually have a legal path to work here. Then we need to be like Australia where you don't you overstay your visa they send somebody out to find you and support you and attach a penalty to it you're banned for three years you can apply again for three years I think what would fast happen is we would be would make a lot more revenue in the immigration system because you know, it's it's a volume thing more people going to going to apply legally and you're going to you're going to make that that money but also you're going to have higher tax revenues because you're you're getting people in this country who really want to work and they want to take these jobs and I don't know they it seems like we should allow them to do that that's just the where I where I go with it and i think you know as far as I my stance on the wall is i think it's it's it's extremely expensive and I think they need to use a system like we have on the Canadian border on the Canadian border we have technology there's electronics that if you walk across the border it goes off and they and it'll trigger infrared cameras that'll turn on I mean they can find you if you're you know trying to tempt into the country illegally the wall I mean they're going to go around it they're going to go under it. They're going to go I mean right away. The joke was if it's a 50-foot wall, someone's gonna make a 51-foot tall ladder. I don't necessarily think they'll climb the ladder to go over it but you know they're gonna they're gonna find their ways yeah you know they're gonna they're gonna find their ways and I think we it may just be too much money especially since there are areas of the border where the terrain it won't allow someone to cross so don't have a wall there..Yeah, you only have two choices. Matt: Yeah. And so. So when I say that I'm I'm pro wall. I think it's just because I'm forced to. Like I said, that's the problem with the two party system, you have two choices. And the Democrats, they want to say that they have no word for border security. They're not really doing a whole lot about border security and they don't want to and that's very clear for risk because because they receive a primary amount of the votes that come from that, but that's a discussion for another day, but it's um, it's a little unfortunate that you're forced to check one of the two boxes, which is almost no border security or border security that I don't think is the most effective and I've always agreed with the argument that well, the wall isn't the most cost-effective option on the wall isn't X, Y, or Z, that those are legitimate arguments. What I have a problem with is when people come in, and you know, they, they try and instead of doing a logical appeal, they use an emotional appeal. And that's my problem is because I've never really been a recipient of emotional appeal because, you know, it's not the best way to do things. You know, if you make a decision based on an emotional reaction, it's usually not the best result. And so I think the discussion that should be had is not and I understand Trump's angle Trump wants to build a wall because it's it'd be very hard for the Democrats to undo that to justify undoing it because once the money is spent, that's what we have, you know, taking the wall down wouldn't make sense it'd be very hard to justify so I get that angle of it. But at the same time, it's you really have to think about is technology a better solution? You know we have drones we have all kinds of technology we could be using to our advantage we just need to figure out how to make that a permanent solution and also how to fix the system it's similar to taxes you know you should tax people when we tax the rich far too much they just load all their money the Bahamas you have to find the right percentage where people will actually be willing to get taxed. So we need to fix the immigration system like we try to fix the tax system is where people it's easy enough for people to come. But we also can at least attempt to filter out the bad ones, you know that we have to find some type of a sweet sweet spot where it's effective. But also like you said, I didn't know that type of angle from the Canadian perspective. And I'm similar. I'm sure it's similar to Mexico because one of my friends had an immigration problem as well. They had to move back to Mexico for like a year to resolve it. So it is it is a broken system.we do need to figure out how do we fix it as opposed to just not doing anything so like like I said it's that's what's important about a third fourth fifth and party is so that we can have other ideas then just build a wall or do nothing it's a two extremities is what it is MIke: Yeah I agree with you and I think like how do you think someone like let's say Schultz were to run and by some miracle he were to win. So now you have, you know, probably a democrat-controlled house or a Republican-controlled Senate, and you have an independent president in the middle. How much do you think that would affect the outcome of issues like this? Matt: I think the the opinion that Schultz is a true centrist is I think it's a little bit skewed because if you look, you know, he's a lifelong Democrat I think it would be similar to like having a 2000 democrat or 2004 Democrat in presidency..He would probably lean towards democratic issues but the the more radical progressive you know Alexandria, Kazuo Cortez Bernie Sanders type of thing I don't think those would be I don't think he would fight for those but the more moderate type of you know Nancy Pelosi would do very well I think if that makes any sense in a Schultz presidency she tries to be progressive but we all know that she was a moderate and she's just switching with the times to keep on staying relevant I think it would lean democratic to be completely honest and then everyone's know on maybe tax issues he'd lean a little more conservative from what I've been able to understand he he's not a huge fan of taxes but he thinks Trump's tax cuts were a little extreme you know top heavy whereas they should have been towards the middle class which I honestly agree with you know if I could have chosen one or the other I as a libertarian with some conservative beliefs as well not a big fan of taxes i live in Illinois one of the most tax states in the nation and I can tell you people are fleeing out of here so we have to find like I said a sweet spot with taxes as well where people are not you know loading out there money to the Cayman Islands to the Bahamas. We need to find something that people are actually willing to pay and it's it's a truly fair and balanced tax, but that's difficult. Mike: But ok so like one of the things I read is the you know, they actually think was Fortune magazine said well you know maybe he can maybe he could help fix this country because you know he's a corporate he's been a corporate executive he's run a large corporation Starbucks of course but then isn't that what they said about Trump? Matt: yes and no, um, I think the fact that Schultz wouldn't carry in very many. You know, opinions. He's not the most he's more of an open minded whereas Trump it's kind of my way or the highway. And some people love that. Some people hate it. I'm not trying to reprimand or trying to praise him for that. But I think that's pretty obvious that people love Trump because he's so close minded and the people hate him for that reason so but I think Schultz is that the type of person that will listen to both sides I almost think that he would be easily influenced for bad and for good just because he he is so open minded but he is a smart guy at the end of the day obviously you can't be where he is today but I think it's kind of interesting that the the democrats primarily are attacking him so much for his success when he came from almost nothing he's he's quite honestly living the democrat you know, the dream of coming from nothing and becoming something but it's a he's being attached..That and I think that's why the democrats are almost losing their mold if that makes any sense. Mike: Well, I think like I was you were saying that I was thinking about how if you are a third party candidate so you know, of course of the major third parties that makes sense and have a big, big enough numbers to make a dent in a run for president, you're talking about either green party or Libertarian Party and the problems that they have getting elected is people say, Well, okay, if I had voted Gary Johnson and is the president he goes into office with no allies on either side. I disagree with that, by the way, he goes in there with no allies. I think that's too simplistic of a concept. Matt: Yeah. Mike: I think that he would definitely have allies because I think what it would do is it would force Congress and Senate to start thinking long term and start thinking about the best interests of the people they represent. Rather than their party line because they're going to have a president who's going to say, Well, okay, the Republicans, you're thinking about the solution this way yours is a democrats your solution is be but like my solution is see kind of a hybrid of a and b. So now what are you going to do? And I think what will happen is for the first time in a long time, you would see kind of that bill clinton cooperation where, you know, Clinton I you know, despite his moral issues, I think he was a pretty darn good president and he he managed to speak to both sides of the aisle and convince one there was an important issue and he needed some support on the on the left, he would go after it when he needed support on the right he would go after and I think that's what you would get with more of a third party slash independent president is someone who would pull support from both sides so that what passes would be something that the majority of our country would buy into. Matt: Do you think people want that though? Like, I mean, I want something similar to that, that I feel if you go on Facebook or Twitter, which obviously isn't necessarily representative to the the small towns and all that. But if you go on Facebook and Twitter that doesn't seem like something that people actually want, they like to pretend like that's what they truly want. But is America in a situation where we truly want cooperation or or do we just want my way or the highway and let's switch for years of being selfish and crying when we don't get what we want. Mike: Well, yeah, you make a great point because I'm very active in the California Libertarian Party. And as a side note of that there's a person that I've met here locally who runs a… well he calls it a Liberty club but it's essentially a chapter of the libertarian party at a city level and he there's a city here in Huntington Beach California you know the Beach Boys made it favorite famous and it's his club meets there and we just had a meeting this past week and they're sitting there talking about how a lot of them were saying hey you know what, you know I wasn't really I'm not a big fan of Trump's tax cuts but it was a step in the right direction and they say that but what I've said and even have an episode out of liberty revealed I think that the libertarians and I do think pretty much every party is like this they're more of a political cult than anything else they they have an ideology and that's what they want and I always tell them like okay guys I understand what you're looking for you're looking for the utopian libertarian society but the reality is you're never going to get that ever it's not going to happen so you need to do is you need to get yourself elected using reasonable ideas. And then once you're elected, show people how you can govern. Like, for instance, I ran for Orange County Supervisor this past election cycle. And one of the things that I told they kept saying, Well, how are you as a libertarian going to make a difference in the county? I said, Well, the first thing I would do, I've reviewed the staff numbers, and they have like, 25 staff members, and they're spending $4 million a year each office that's $20 million on five districts offices a year that, hey, I could probably cut that down to five people per office. So I would reduce the size of my staff and they said, Well, what does that show it? What if it works? Well, if it works, it means we can also reduce the size of government because we just proven that we can do the same job just as efficiently with less people, which thereby saves a lot of money which means that money is available for either cutting taxes or using the money for something like homeless people.It's think that you have to be more pragmatic in your approach and that's the problem you know if you're a republican your your problem I mean, of course we're speaking in absolutes here and absolutes are never you know realistic in society but you're right i think if you were to do a poll I would say more than 80% of Republicans fall in line with the Republican platform and more than 80% of the democrats fall in line with a democrat platform and even I'm going to say 80% of libertarians 80% of Green Party members I think the majority fall in line with the platform and the don't bother to think about the real world implications of the decisions they're trying to force on society and with libertarians it's kind of ironic because I'm not sure if you're aware of this but like when you become a a dues paying member of the Libertarian Party. One of the things that you initial says you will not use us or support any idea that imposes its will by force on anyone So you know you have a non aggression principle and it's great it really is but at the same time they're trying to force their ideology on everybody by saying we're there's one guy I met at convention last year who's running for president and his he says that he'll be the shortest term president ever because he's going to get into the office and then he's going to eliminate the federal government ask yourself you really think the republicans and democrats and house and senate are going to say oh yeah sure let's just eliminate the government we don't need the government anymore and and and that's where it comes down to being more like a cult because they're they're only thinking about their ways the best way I mean if you've ever I don't know if you're religious at all but like religious cults they all say the same thing our way is the way and and so that's what it is you know political party Our way is tthe way and I think really That way is a mixture of all of the ideologies Matt: Yeah, it's actually really interesting how the Foundation of America was, you know, the, the popular phrase is a melting pot. But the thing about a melting pot and I said this on my podcast, too, I'm in a melting pot. Nothing can just remain solid. You can't, you can't entirely remain solid and everything else melts. No, I'm gonna keep my beliefs everyone else you all be open. I mean, you'll be open minded to me. But I'm not going to be open minded to you. I'm not going to understand your opinions you know we all have to mount and I don't think that was necessarily talking about race. I think that was talking a lot about ideology, and in the the foreshadow of this type of thing, I think they knew that something like this will eventually happen and… Mike: So I've really enjoyed this conversation. I think. I think we're in agreement actually more than I thought we would be. So why don't you tell people where, where and how they can find you. Matt: Yes. So I'm on almost every platform, iTunes, Stitcher. Google podcast will be on YouTube next episode and you'll just look up, Unfazed with Matt Plautz. I've got an Instagram at unfazed.podcasts and I'll talk a little bit about politics current events, I'm going to be having guests such as you know as well.Mike said I'm going to be having I'm going to be doing the cardinal sin of having a pastor on that I also want to have a lot of other religions on and just talk a little bit about philosophy and how they look at other religions I think would be interesting and also might be able to get some state representatives possibly even a congressman on so it's gonna be a lot of a lot of everything almost I don't have a set theme you know I'll talk about politics one episode then maybe comedy one episode it's just really whatever is going on and yeah Mike thanks so much for having me Mike: Do you have a website? Matt: we don't have a website yet I host on PodBean right now Mike: I'll put that in the show. I'll put that in the show notes and I encourage my listeners to go listen to and subscribe to your podcast. unfazed and definitely follow you on social media and I I've got your social media links I'll put those in the show notes as well and again it's been a pleasure having you on and I'm sure we'll follow up and have you on again in the near future Matt: Yeah thank you so much Mike: Alright well this has been another episode of liberty revealed If you or a friend or family member wants to find out a little bit more about liberty just go to https://YogisPodcastNetwork.com/libertyrevealed it's all there for you and we appreciate you listening.

SLS131 Mike Morrison of the Membership Guys, Six Figure Success Stories with Jessica Lorimer

Smart Leaders Sell Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2018 41:55

Mike Morrison is one half of the amazing Membership Guys! He slated me at Youpreneur for being a Sunderland fan, but we’ll forgive him because he’s fantastic! Mike, along with his “better half” teach people how to plan, build, grow and run membership sites. They also have podcasts, blogs, speak and run events as well! They know membership business models inside and out, and can help dispel some of the myths, and confirm some of the great things that surround the idea of membership sites. I’m really excited to have this conversation because, as most of you know by now, I run a membership for my amazing Dotties, and I’m always looking for ways to improve their experience, and get them to their sales goals as quickly and effectively as I can, so I’ll be learning a lot from this one as well. In This Episode The anti membership site bandwagon isn’t very original anymore How memberships are better than other models if done properly A tell-tale sign that your membership is doing well What happens when someone doesn’t have faith in the model they are selling The money is literally in the membership “The problem isn’t the model, the problem is the people who jump on it as the flavour of the month” - Mike “The online business community, we love to hate stuff” - Jess “Recurring revenue is awesome, it really really is” - Mike “You know that your membership is doing well, when your members start to sell it for you” - Jess “It’s about having that passion for something and looking at ‘what’s the best way we can deliver that?’” - Jess “We knew we wanted to do a big conference from day 1, we just knew we wouldn’t be able to do it on day 1” - Jess “The money is actually in the membership” - Mike “How else can I help them get the results that they want quicker?” - Mike “We’re all in the same business and that’s the business of solving problems” - Mike More Mike! https://www.themembershipguys.com More Jess! https://smartleaderssell.com/the-dotties/ http://bit.ly/SLSGroup https://jessicalorimer.com/supersize-your-sales https://jessicalorimer.com/list-building-legend Content DisclaimerThe information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article, video or audio are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article, video or audio. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article, video or audio. Jessica Lorimer disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article, video or audio.Disclaimer: Some of these links are for products and services offered by the podcast creator

professional success stories sunderland six figure youpreneur mike morrison mike you membership guys jessica lorimer mike how

004 Love Ohio Living talk with Mike Wall

Houston Inside Out

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 6, 2018 27:00

In this episode of the Houston Home Talk, Mike Wall of Love Ohio Living and James talk about the detailed roadmap for changing business over to EXP, consistency, and branding.Quotes : " If we do get somebody to say yes, then we got a shot at a six-figure income."" You'll get what you want if you can help other people get what they want. "Mentions:Website: http://loveohioliving.comShownotes: 1:04: Response from other people to the interviews2:07 Mike started real state business04:45 Mike talking about consistency08:45 - Mike talks about branding 19:24 - Team Structure 20: 48 - Mike's favorite books and podcasts.Full Transcript:[00:03] INTRO: Welcome to Houston home talk featuring all things real estate in the Houston area. We'll interview real estate professionals, local business owners, and special guests from right here in the Houston community. This is where you get the inside scoop about what's new in real estate, new community openings and business openings and much more. The Houston Home Talk Show starts right now.[00:32] JAMES: All right guys welcome. What's up? This is James J. Welcome to Houston Home Talk. I am excited today to have my man Mike Wall from Dayton, Ohio. What's up Mike? How are you today?[00:43] MIKE: Yes sir. Baby, I'm so happy to be here, man. I'm so happy to help. We'll be able to drop some value on your audience today, brother.[00:50] JAMES: Yeah. Listen, I have been watching you now for several months as you have been doing a lot of interviews with a lot of the new people that have been moving over to EXP Realty. I want to say thank you because a lot of the content that you've been providing, I know I've used, I forwarded it to people and I know that the value that you're providing is helpful to a lot of people. You and I met in New Orleans last month. I've been watching you for several months. As soon as we met, there was several people that came up to you and said, hey, thanks Mike. I know you're reaching people. [01:21] MIKE: Yeah.[01:22] JAMES: You're helping people because a lot of people can't do what you're doing in the way that you do it so thank you for that. I wanted to ask you so I want to just start, so you've been doing a lot of these interviews, a lot of Facebook Live interviews. I want to get people introduced you. I want to ask you real quick, what's been the response from other people to the interviews that you've been doing with the new people that have joining EXP?[01:42] MIKE: Yeah. No, it's a great question man. It's really been overwhelming more than I even thought and really the whole reason if I back up and just telling you the reason why I started doing the podcast… [01:52] JAMES: Right.[01:53] MIKE:…is because I knew that we were building something special. I also knew that changes is big. Change is big for everybody involved and especially the for those people who are team leaders in running a business. I wanted to give those people a platform to be able to share their unique story with the world and in hopes that somebody out there might identify with them and be able to make an intelligent decision about where their business went and then also providing a detailed roadmap for change if they decided to move their business over to EXP. Then also kind of lastly is just to provide insight on people curious about learning more about EXP.[02:34] JAMES: Right? Yeah. Let's get to know a little bit about you because I know you have been in the business. You've been licensed for about 16 years or so. You started full time…was it 2014 when you were officially started full time? [02:45] MIKE: I did it. I got a unique story. I've had my license since 2002. I actually got into the business just as a buyer specialist for one of the top agents here in our marketplace. A guy named Phil Herman who worked for Remax is a big deal man. The guy was selling like 300 properties back like when nobody knew about teams. When I got into the business I just thought, man, I don't want to try to learn all this on my own. What I'll do is I'll take a little bit less of a commission split to go under somebody who actually has all the knowledge for what I want to do, right? I worked with Phil 2002 to 2009 and we all know what happened in 2008-2009. The market just completely crashed.I actually got out of real estate. I kept my license but I went to work back in corporate America and I did that for five years. I was working for a company that was based out of Blue Ash, which is a suburb of Cincinnati and I was selling copiers, man. It is a grind doing that. I did that for five years. I knew I wouldn't do that long term and I knew I would get into real estate. [03:43] JAMES: Right. [03:44] MIKE: In 2013 in about October, I started calling the expires in 2013. In 2014 May I had 44 listings and I went to my wife and I said, honey, it's costing me more to be at my corporate job than it is to be here in real estate. She said, you know what? She said, do your thing man. That first year went out and sold 57 houses. Second year in the business, sold 104 houses, third year sold 187 houses and then fourth year I sold 309 houses. I just haven't looked back, man. There's so much obviously that goes in between there because now you know, I'm operating as a team. I've got some great team members. I got a great business partner now. We've opened up a whole world with investing and so forth.[04:30] JAMES: Now let me touch on this because it seems pretty simple. One of the things that I love about you is the consistency. I know you've been doing a lot of live coaching calls. Obviously you've been doing this for several years, calling the expires. [04:41] MIKE: Yup.[04:43] JAMES: One of the things that I tell a lot of new agents is what you think, because everybody just assumes everybody's calling the expires. I've heard you mentioned this in the video, a lot of people will stop calling after the fourth time or even a third time in a lot of cases. Obviously you were consistent. What made you focus on the expires? Because as a new agent, that's one of the things that I always tell people to do. Focus on expires. You can get that information and just keep consistent, stay consistent with it. What made you start? What was the thing that kind of got you to focus on the expires when you first started?[05:17] MIKE: Yeah. No man. That's a legitimate question because if you think about it, I mean everybody's good at something, right? Everybody can always make up the excuse that I'm not good at something and typically it's because they either don't have the experience or they're just not willing to try. For me, when I moved here, I went to high school and was raised mostly in to Dallas, Fort Worth area. I moved to Ohio and went to college at Ohio State. Go Bucks. I met my wife there and my wife was from this small town, which is a Northern Cincinnati, Southern Dayton suburb called Springboro. I didn't have a personal network. I didn't have a lot of people that I could tap into. I just thought, well, what is the next best thing? I knew I could grind it out on the phones because I had done in B to B sales selling copiers, right?[06:03] JAMES: Right. [06:05] MIKE: There's no science behind it, man. I just did it. You talked about consistency and that's, that's really what it was. It's just doing it. It's repetitions in the gym, right? It's like every day you show up. You put in your reps. You work hard, and then the magic starts to happen, man.[06:20] JAMES: Right. Yeah. That consistency thing is very difficult, especially for us because there's no one to tell us to do anything.[06:27] MIKE: Right.[06:29] JAMES: Everyone wants to get in the business, but then lacking the discipline to do what you did for three years and still continue to do to this day with the Expires. It's something tells you is you have a schedule and you got to work. It's hard to do. It is hard because stuff comes up. It's hard to stay consistent. If you really want to make it and you're a prime example, everybody that's calling these Expires, they're not doing it consistently. They just don't. I know it. In Houston, it's the same thing. We've got 30,000 agents here. We've got a lot of expires but of that 30,000 there's only a handful of people that are actually consistent with it. As a matter of fact you knew that and you stuck with it and clearly it works.[07:09] MIKE: I want your audience to understand something too James is that the great thing about calling the Expires is not everyone's is going to say yes, right? We are fortunate enough to work in an industry where the margins, if you do get a yes, are very large, and I always tell my team this, right? We live in a market in southwest Ohio here where the average price point is not really high, right? Our team average sale price is $178,000. Our market. Average sale price is $130,000 but you can still make a six figure income here if you just get one yes, every week because our agents average commission check is 25.50 and if you take 25.50 and divide that out over 50 weeks, you've got a nice income, right?[07:48] JAMES: Absolutely, yeah.[07:50] MIKE: Really we just focus…we have our team focus on that one yes per week, right? We understand when we pick up the phone that the odds are against us, right? We understand that most people are not going to answer the phone and if they answer, most people are not going to set an appointment. We understand also that if we do get somebody to answer it, if we do get somebody to say yes, then we got a shot at a six figure income.[08:10] JAMES: Absolutely. Yeah, and you know there's a couple of books I've got but the go for no is one. Darren Hardy, I love Darren Hardy. December is going to be here tomorrow and I bring this up because his book talks about the format. There's this habit, habit, habit, habit and what he used to do when he was in real estate back in the day, he would just look for no's. The more no's you get, you're just closer to that yes. At some point somebody is going to say yes and I'm a huge Darren…the compound effect. That's what that's saying in the book, compound effect. I love that book. Usually we'll bring it up every single year around this time of year and I go through it and I'll operates during the year because it's a great book about the discipline of habits. In this business. it is key to everything is self-discipline to be able to, to continue to do that. Props to you on that. Now I wanted to ask you, so I heard in the interview that you had mentioned that you had back when you started full time back '04, 2014-2015. I guess a couple of years into it. You switch from the wall group over to love Ohio living, LOL team.[09:05] MIKE: I did. I did.[09:07] JAMES: Explain why did you did that? I think I know the answer. I wanted my audience to understand why did you do that? Why did you think that was important to get your name off the brand and brand it to level high live in which you did.[09:18] MIKE: Yeah. No, that's a great question. There's arguments for both sides.For me personally, I thought it was more sustainable to build a business that didn't have my name on it. I didn't think people would sustainably work to build my business. I thought that together, if we formed something that we could all believe in and all row the same direction, that didn't have my name on it. In another words, it's like a football team, right? If you think of the Dallas cowboys, right? Who did beat the Saints last night which…[09:50] JAMES: Yes, they did. Yeah.[09:51] MIKE: if you think of the Dallas Cowboys, they're not called the Jerry Jones, right? They're called the Dallas Cowboys. Jerry Jones owns the cowboys, but everybody has their respective position for the Dallas cowboys. When they come together, they make a team, right? I wanted to do is I wanted to take the level how living team and I wanted to galvanize everybody around that.What that stood for was elite level agents being able to plug their businesses in to our tool systems and resources to go out and sell as many houses as they want. Not, they plugged into Mike Wall and just took every, all my leftovers, right? Because there is a team model that works that way and I just don't believe it's sustainable. The statistics show, I mean, the shelf life on those type of a team, the shelf life of the agent is much lower, right? Because what happens is they come in, in most cases and they build them up and then those agents, they want to go do the same thing whereas now we have an agent on our team. It's like Natalie Rose, right? Is an agent on our team? It's Natalie Rose with the level higher living team at a power broker by EXP Realty, right? Her name goes on the sign. We just have our LOL logo. Frankly, it's not that I would ever sell my business, but if you think of it like this, James who's going to buy Mike Wall real estate without Mike Wall.[11:09] JAMES: Yeah. [11:10] MIKE: You know what I mean? [11:11] JAMES: Now you're, you're right on. That's a key when we talk about marketing branding because I f struggled with that as well earlier and having my name. I agree with you completely. I think the buy in from your team is much more when you have LOL Level Higher Living. I love that you did that. That's a key. That's a nugget for people to really look at that because like you say there's arguments both ways. I'm actually on board with you as far as the branding and not having your name attached to it for the long term, long term that's a great idea. Good information there. Let me ask you, so from all the interviews that you've been doing with a lot of the EXP Agents that have been mourning, it's been absolutely crazy the growth that we've had. You joined back, was it February of this year is when you guys moved over? [11:55] MIKE: Yes sir, it'd be a year. [11:58] JAMES: Montel Williams, you moved over. What's been the best or the most surprising thing, specifically from the people that you have interviewed? Because I don't know if you've got to off the top of your head how many people you've interviewed since you started the show.[12:10] MIKE: Probably around 20, 25 at this point.[12:13] JAMES: Okay. Okay. What's been maybe one of the biggest surprises or maybe common similarities? Because everybody's story's a little different. I probably have watched virtually every video interview that you've done. Everybody's story just a little bit different. What have you found that maybe something that's maybe been similar from a lot of the people that you've spoken to? [12:30] MIKE: Yeah. I have them. Something instantly pops to mind and because it really not only has it surprised me that this is what I've learned from them. It is something that we never expected when we came over. I'm learning now when I talked to people in those interviews is that it's the same thing for them, right? What I'm learning is that the community. It's the community that we've created. It's the people that now we're able to tap into, right? Because like Jay Kinder and Mike Reese, the NEA group, right? They used to run this mastermind that was like a $25,000 buy in, right? Now they're doing that mastermind for free. [13:09] JAMES: Yeah. [13:10] MIKE: Right? We're talking about Kinder was the number one, number two guy for COA banker in the world at one time, right? He's one of the smartest guys in real estate. When you're able to plug in to those guys like I could shoot him a text right now and get a response from him, right? The same thing with Kyle Whistle, the same thing with Dan Beer. I mean we're talking about some of the biggest real estate teams and smartest real estate minds in the business.For me that was the biggest surprise man, is the fact that now we've created this fantastic community of learning and sharing and just growth and excitement, man. That's an easy answer for me. [13:50] JAMES: Yeah, you and I, we've got a lot of similar circles as far as NEA. I've been with NEA probably since 2011. Actually, back then it was just Kinder-Reese. I've been following Jay for years. He's one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. Yes, I also coached with them him well. You're right. When now you've gotten to exponential growth summit back in the day. [14:06] MIKE: I never did go to that believe it or not. Yeah, I never went.[14:12] JAMES: Okay.[14:13] MIKE: I coached with NEA. I didn't exponential growth. [14:17] JAMES: Right. The funny thing now is that with EXP, with all these big name ages moving over, and you're right, the community and the collaboration. I know we keep using these words over. It's true. When you're in it and you and I were here where we both are at EXPN. We've been able to see it. The fact that you're right that I could call Jay right now. I've paid thousands and thousands of dollars to Jay to coach me. Now that same information, I could still get it and get access to him with literally just picking up the phone right now. That's been one of the biggest, pleasant things that I've seen as well. For a lot of people that are not, or maybe looking at the opportunity right now other than the collaboration, what else is maybe been one of the things that's been a plus for you? [15:03] MIKE: What I want to add to that real quick is that I don't want people to take that for granted because a lot of people I think represent EXP the wrong way. You're trying to get people, you're calling people that you don't know and you're trying to get them to move for revenue share or stock. That's not enough to get people to move. It's like you need to figure out what if we understand at the end of the day, right? That map is more valuable than the treasure. Then you understand that that knowledge that you can get through collaboration, that's where the treasure is, right?That's the map to the treasure. To be able to collaborate with those guys in a mastermind group. These guys are doing stuff at a level that we just haven't thought of or haven't gotten to in our businesses yet. For that person out there who's doing $10 million or $20 million a year that wants to get to 20 million or 40 million or a 100 million, right. The difference between them, where they're at right now and where they want to be is that roadmap, right? When you join EXP, you're able to tap into that right away, right, through the collaboration and relationships that you'll build here. I wanted to make sure that your audience was crystal clear on that because although revenue share is fantastic and the opportunity to be an owner through stock is fantastic. It's not the only reason you should join EXP, right?[16:28] JAMES: Yeah. No question about it. Yeah. I think the excitement around it is just because it hasn't been done this way before. [16:33] MIKE: Yeah. [16:37] JAMES: You start looking at the opportunity down the road. I could not agree with you more, Mike. That component of EXP has gotten a lot of publicity. I think as far as representing EXP, a lot of people would probably get a little turned off because everybody's talking about the revenue shift. You are right. That's not really for me the number one reason. It is the fact that you get to collaborate. You and I would not be talking right now. We aren't talking right now if it wasn’t for EXP. I wouldn't be able to call collar or anybody for that matter. It's genuine. When we went to the EXP con last month it's genuine. People are just really willing to help you with whatever because it does benefit us all when we all succeed. Where it used to be you have freinemies and you interviewed with Tammy yesterday?[17:25] MIKE: Tammy was day before. You're talking about Mary Simons Malone. I love them so much. Yes, she was frienemies with Kyle Whistle, right? They worked at competing brokerages in San Diego. She talked about that too with the collaboration now with Dan and Kyle who were formerly her biggest competition, right?[17:44] JAMES: Yeah, Yeah. Huge, huge, huge, huge. That's awesome. Couple more questions for you Mike, before I let you get on out of here. Again, you said the response from people because I saw people coming up to you and we're at the EXP last month which is pretty cool. As we were in the middle of talking,[17:59] MIKE: Let me one more thing James before because I know you asked me and I'll try not to be too long winded here. I want to make sure that people understand the value of what the model at EXP has to offer no matter where you're at in your business because you asked also what was another thing that I had learned or what was another reason that we moved and what we learned through our move, and I'm hearing back from obviously a lot of these team leaders in our interviews is the fact that I had a decision to make personally when I moved. We were opening up our own market center. We had approval through KWRI. We were opening. In fact, that market center has now opened without me. Right? [18:34] JAMES: Okay. [18:35] MIKE: Some other person or group came in and took my place. I was supposed to be an owner at that market center and EXP was put into my lap, right? We had a decision to make right away and that decision was, do I move forward with my plans with Keller Williams to open this market center, right? Or do I move my team to EXP? I'll tell you what it came down to. It came down to what was better for my team, right? Ultimately the reason why EXP want one out is because the move to Keller Williams would have been a lateral move. Actually it would have been a worst move for them because the CAP was going up at the new office. It would have only been a win for me, right? I could have been an owner at that office and that would have been great, right? Our Ego loves that, right? I'm an owner. Ultimately if I knew I wanted it to be successful through my team. That's what I want and ultimately to be able to provide them the best platform for success, right? I knew that I had to make the decision to move to EXP because now I can offer them things that I never could before. That is through revenue share and that is through who stocks, right? Now, they can become owners. They have a vested interest after three years. They have two exceptional wealth building tools that they never had access to before.[19:46] JAMES: Absolutely, yeah. That same message as I go around talking with agents in my market, same message. My team is definitely not structured because your team structure right now is, consists of what? How is your team set up right now?[19:57] MIKE: We serve two markets. We serve Dayton-Ohio market and also the Cincinnati-Ohio market. [20:02] JAMES: Okay. [20:03] MIKE: We have 25 agents. We also have a listing manager and a contract manager and then an office manager as well. [20:10] JAMES: Right. [20:11] MIKE: I have Director of operations/ co-owner and a guy named Jump Welski.[20:16] JAMES: Yeah. You've got a pretty big a machine going up there and a lot of people being affected by your decision, all tweets and make that move over to the EXP, which is not something to be taken lightly by any means. I've spoken to a lot of other agents. I don't know. I've watched a lot of your interviews with people. It's a tough decision because it's not just you that you're affecting here. It's a ton of people that are affected by your decision, good or bad one way or the other. I don't think there's really any downside to EXP. I'm going to be a little biased, but the other revenue models or other revenue streams that we have available is great. The fact that we can collaborate with people all over the country at this point and soon it'd be international, 2019-2020 which is a pretty exciting where the company's. I compare what we're doing now with EXP and how Glenn has set this up and the fact that you are not going to have a conversation. You and I could talk to each day. Three quick questions I want to ask you. First question is what are you reading right now? I know you're always seeking knowledge. I know. Are you reading anything right now that…[21:20] MIKE: Let me make it up for you man. I'll tell you right now. I usually have a couple of different books going on. I do love to read and I do love to listen to podcasts. I'm listening to… this is not a business book but its called sleep smart. I don't do fitness coaching, but I have a fitness coach too. He sends me books. I'm also listening to the Perfect Day Formula and that's by Craig Valentine. I'm listening to it another book called The Swerve. That's a good book. It's funny man, because if you do a lot of reading or if you listen to podcasts, you always get ideas about books from other people, right? It seems like one book leads to another write. One book mentions another and then you pop that in audible and you read that. I think one really good nugget and you and your audience should write this down if you haven't heard it already is listen to that recent, the most recent Maxout podcast with Ed Mylett, where he talks to you. UOP baseball team. That is so good, man. It is so powerful. I've shared that with my entire team. I listened to it probably every other morning because it just so resonates with me, especially as you transitioned into 2019. If you need something to get you up and light a fire under your butt and it is great, great material, man. [22:26] JAMES: Yeah, I have my last. He's awesome. He is awesome. That's the beauty of a podcast is or an audio book for that matter just to be able to listen to it at any point of your day, at any time. It really doesn't matter where you're at nowadays. You can just pop that in and listen to us. I have not heard that one. I will make sure that I listened to it. I'm actually post the links so people can get just click where and go right into it. [22:46] MIKE: Awesome. [22:47] JAMES: I'm an avid, avid reader as well. There's always something that I pick up. The knowledge that it's that compound effect. One compounds on top of you, the next thing. Another last, last two questions here. What's your favorite quote? Favorite quote.[23:02] MIKE: Man, that's a good one. I think it's probably changed throughout time. I think my favorite quote is probably really cliché at this point, but it just so resonates with me is the old Zig Ziglar quote is that "you'll get what you want. If you can help enough other people get what they want." That has not always been true for me. I've grown in my business, I've learned that my success will ultimately be a product of the success that I help others have.[23:28] JAMES: Yeah, no, that's awesome. Zig Ziglar Fan, goodness gracious as well. I one that was one of my favorite of course. The other one is then you're going to be a meaningful specific or a wandering generality. It's huge and especially for realtors because most realtors are not meaningful specifics.[23:45] MIKE: Right. Right. We know that.[23:46] JAMES: Great, great quote there. The last thing I want to ask you, so what's something that you want to do in 2019 that you've never done before? Whether it be business related obviously EXP is an explosion in growth mode right now. What's something that maybe you've got want to do a 2019 that you've never done before?[24:04] MIKE: That question comes at a really opportune time for me because we're actually in the middle of opening up our own mortgage company, the P and L model. I'm actually really excited to play around with that a little bit. I think there's a huge opportunity, not only to add more money to the bottom line but to also provide a level of service that most of the real estate agents can't provide because this is going to be set ups just so especially at first just so this person is servicing our team.[24:29] JAMES: That's great. I've had a sin as a, as a loan officer. There's no better mortgage advisor like yourself because you are on that side and you speak to what your clients are really wanting and really be able to direct if it's going to be your mortgage company or whoever you're working or partnering with on the mortgage side to really provide a really, really good value for people because I know you've experienced it. I've experienced it with a mortgage companies that it amazes me that some of these mortgage companies exist or lenders should I say. I've had people just completely disappear during the process. This is amazing to me. It's amazing. That's a great opportunity and I think with your background there's no way that you would not be successful with that or anything else that you do. [25:19] MIKE: Thank you sir.[25:20] JAMES: That'd be great. Again, I am a huge fan. I admire everything you've been doing. You're one of those people when you meet him, you just like of like literally I met you. We shook hands on. My God, I just liked this guy. [25:29] MIKE: Likewise my man, likewise.[25:34] JAMES: I've got to get up to and actually one more thing we got to talk about real quick, the most important thing will Ohio State be in the playoffs or not.[25:42] MIKE: Man, at this point, does it even matter? It's whoever's going to play Bama and lose, right?[25:45] JAMES: Right. Right. That’s true. [25:50] MIKE: I love my Buck guys I'm also a realist man. [25:52] JAMES: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's got to be quiet if you you say well. Anyway, when I appreciate your time, Mike. Thank you so much man. Thank you. Thank you. Keep doing what you're doing. I will continue to promote you as much as I can. If there's anything I can help you with, let me know and appreciate your time, man. You have a great one and we'll catch up. [26:07] MIKE: Likewise and if anybody's interested in that free coaching that you mentioned they could go to liverealestatecoaching.com and sign up there. I'd be happy to take on anybody for 30 to 40 minutes and just really dive deep into any area of your business you're looking to improve. [26:24] JAMES: I will post the link on the podcast. Actually let me put it on here so people can get that link and access what you're offering there. Yeah, can't go wrong. Free strategy call with Mike, reach out to them. He's an awesome agent, great example a lot of consistency and professionalism. I really appreciate what you do on Mike, We'll catch up soon brother. You take care.[26:43] MIKE: All right man. Thanks so much, James. I appreciate it. [26:46] JAMES: Okay. All right, bye-bye.[26:47] MIKE: Good luck.If you like this episode of the Houston Home Talk podcast, please don't forget to like, share, and comment! We appreciate your support and feedback! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Ep. 135- From Taco Shop to Taco Empire with Mike Mohammed and Randy Wyner, CEO and Founder of Chronic Tacos

My Food Job Rocks!

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 27, 2018 56:11

16 years ago, Chronic Tacos started out as this little taco shop, but with time and patcience, exploded into a Taco Empire. Randy started the shop because he missed Tacos and hired on a Mexican family to produce their tacos in his store. Mike took it a step further and put systems in place to grown Chronic Tacos to an empire, with over 50 locations all over the United States, and Canada and even Japan. We go through many things in this interviews such as tough beginnings, to what it really takes to pass on information from one franchise to another. You’ll also learn what makes Chrnoic Tacos a fun, authentic brand and how the team innovates faster and faster every day. Sponsor - BAKERpedia This episode is brought to you by BAKERpedia – your one-stop, resource that answers all your questions on industry trends, ingredient information, food safety and more. It’s shared knowledge, freely available, always. BAKERpedia.com – we do all the thinking so you can focus on your business. *NEW* Patreon Due to our ad cycle being over, we’re trying a different model for My Food Job Rocks. We have opened up a Patreon page! Now you can support My Food Job Rocks if you want to and the reward tiers go from a complementary career advice book to ad placement and more. We’d love for you to be part of the process. Visit Patreon.com/myfoodjobrocks Shownotes Why the name Chronic Tacos?: Chronic means the best. Chronic means high quality As owners, what do you guys do?: We wear many hats What makes this job exciting?: Mike – you never know what will pop up. You meet some really cool people. Randy – I love feeding people and making people happy How Randy started Chronic Tacos: I missed authentic tacos in Orange, LA. I found a small store that needed a taco shop and I bought it. We then hired the Bonia Family – 3rd generation Mexican restaurant family. Chronic tacos got media attention and that caused it to explode. Soon, a lot of people wanted to franchize Chronic Tacos. Randy met Mike, who is from Vancouver. Mike brought infrastructure to Chronic Tacos. Took the time to really build its future So far, we have 54 locations and over 80 in the pipeline. We are opening 15 this year. More locations in Canada and Japan What was the hardest part of making a restaurant?: construction. Plumbers, electricians, plans, drawings, permits. The Daily Pilot – Orange County Register With the newspaper, we got a ton of new demographics Mike – How did you make Chronic Tacos scaleable?: Chronic Tacos was really good at making restaurants but they were not good at recording the things they were good at, down. Each Chronic Tacos Restaurant has a design book that incorporates the color, texture, and ambiance. The biggest art asset is the Day of the Dead Artist Choozer (Day of the dead Artist) How can I become a franchize owner for Chronic Taco?: All starts with a phone call with Randy. We look for a type of “authentic life” through Chronic Tacos. Who creates the building with Chronic Tacos?: We work together with the franchise. From location to design. Chronic Taco’s in San Luis Obispo Philosophy in food: Fresh, authentic, made how you like it. It’s all about flavor. We want to experience something different than your average taco shop. We’re always staying on top of it. For example, Chronic Fries We cook our carnitas 3 hours daily. We use Mahi Mahi, Shrimp, breakfast, etc Where do you get your new menu items?: Feedback from our customers. However, our menu doesn’t change that much. We are rooted in tradition Chronic Tacos does events Gringo Bandito Gringo Bandito Chronic Taco challenge: Big concert, 12000 people at the Sabrosos. We have it all over the country. For example, we brought Kobayashi, ate 152 tacos in 10 minutes. This is a big, competitive eating contest What’s the difference between having a Chronic Tacos in Japan than the US?: Portion size. Also, seeing Japanese eat Tacos with Nachos. People love the California culture. Monster Burritos Small Burritos What are your favorite trends and technologies?: Mike – I really love how people are becoming more knowledgeable about their food and this is great for businesses like ours. Randy – Where the food come from. We talk with the Avacado farms and the tomato farms and where the meat’s getting processed. How do you convey to your customers your transparency?: Our customers ask all the time where our ingredients come from and we answer truthfully, which spreads Doordash Grubhub Uber Eats What is the biggest challenge in delivering?: Consistent service. The biggest challenge in the food industry: Food industries and labor costs rising. Starbucks raising their coffee 10 cents What makes Chronic Tacos a good place to work with?: There are opportunities for growth. What’s one thing you’d like to know more about?: Randy: I’d like to know how supply chain works. Who inspired you to get into food?: Mike – Randy Weiner convinced me to get into food. For Randy – I ended up hanging out with the kitchen staff and loved hanging out with this family serving this cruise ship. As a child, I served all the kids in my neighborhood and spent all my mom’s groceries. Favorite Quote, book or kitchen item?: Greatness is a lot of things done well What should someone get the first time in Chronic Tacos?: Randy - Beer Battered Fish Tacos Mike – Our Surf and Turf Bowl Do you have any advice for someone wanting to start a restaurant: Mike - Love food, have patience. Randy – Surround yourself with other entrepreneurs in this business. Surround yourself with a good team What are the common problems other restaurant entrepreneurs have?: Real Estate, Design, Food and where the food’s coming from SiteZeus – ways to search up real estate Where can we find you for advice?: eatchronictacos.com, there’s a franchise section, all inquiries go directly to Randy.

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13 - Armed to the teeth riding a four wheeler and getting it served with some help from the local wildlife, Alaska Luke tells his story!

Process Server Daily

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2018 17:28

Mike: Welcome back, server nation, to Process Server Daily, the number-one podcast for legal support professionals. I am your host, Mighty Mike, the podcast server. I'm excited about today's episode, and I look forward to knocking your socks off. Let's get right to it. Mike: Welcome back to the show, server nation. We are joined by the owner of Alaska Investigation Agency, located in Palmer, Alaska. He started out his career in the Army Reserves and transitioned into private investigation in 2001. Since then, he has owned and operated numerous investigative agencies across the country. Luke Smith, welcome to the show. Luke: Thank you, Michael. Glad to be here. Mike: Thanks. So Luke, tell us a little bit about how you got started in the industry. Luke: About 15 years ago, 16, 17 years ago, a friend of mine was a police officer in Mississippi. He invited me to go do some surveillance with him on some private cases that he was doing, and I fell in love with it. The investigations morphed into process serving, and so now I do both. Mike: That's excellent. Do you remember your first job, your first investigation job? Luke: My first investigation job, I remember it very well. It was a cheating spouse, and I lost the husband in, like, the first block of trying to follow him. Mike: But you've learned a lot since then, right? Luke: I have learned so much since then. I haven't been burned in quite a while. Knock on wood. And I like to think that I'm pretty good at what I do now. Mike: That's awesome. So we don't like to focus on the negative stuff. As humans, we get a lot out of the negative and rising out of the negative and going into the positive, like finding your path in life. And so my first question always starts out with, tell us about your worst experience working in the field. Luke: My absolute worst experience, I was working a child custody case one time, and I was part of the team that located a mother, and I helped the troopers physically take the child away from the mom. Although it was what was best for the child, it absolutely broke my heart, and I realized then that child custody was not for me. Mike: How do you deal with that, Luke? Luke: You go home, and you hug your kids a little bit tighter and a little bit longer, and you move forward. I know it was what was best for the child, but it still was just heartbreaking, and I even tear up now sometimes when I think back to that child screaming and yelling and wanting his mommy. Mike: Yeah, as a parent we always relate it to our own relationships, and you want to be able to help them. But like you said, it was probably what was best. If the mom spends a few weeks without her kid, a few months without her kid, she might turn things around. You know? Luke: Absolutely. Mike: Luke, what do you want server nation to take from your story? Luke: What I want server nation to take from that particular story is just do right by your kids. Yeah, just be good parents. Mike: That's awesome. Yeah, being good parents is a great thing, and so you can ... Being in this job, one of the beautiful things about this job is you get to see the worst of the worst and you know where things could go. I don't know. In some respects, it makes you happier. You know? Luke: It does. Mike: Let's go to the positive now, Luke. Tell me about your greatest experience working in the field. Luke: I tell you what. I did a job a couple of weeks ago, and I followed a gentleman to a restaurant, and I sat down at the bar two people away from him, and I videoed him eating lunch. And then I followed him to his hotel. Six hours later, I followed him to another restaurant, where I sat right next to him at the bar, and we had dinner together. Mike: Wow. Luke: And then I followed him back to the hotel, and I rode up the elevator with him to find out which room he was in in the hotel. In that particular job, I think I pushed it to the limits just to see how far I could go, and it was such a satisfying feeling because he never had a clue I was even there watching him. Mike: So I'm going to sound like a total new, but did you feel like a CIA agent or something? Luke: Every day. Mike: Oh, that's awesome. Luke: No, I feel that way every day. Mike: What I take most from your story is enjoy what you're doing and go after it. What do you want server nation to take from your greatest experience? Luke: Take a few risks, ask that person that you're following to hold the elevator for you, and if you're trying to find someone and serve someone, ask questions. People love to talk, and they will give you just about all the information you need if you sound like you are supposed to have that information. Mike: Interesting. So I've heard it said before that you ask a question, not a direct question, but a related question that some stranger might actually ask. Luke: Absolutely. Mike: That's a pretty cool ... Do you guys still call that sub rosa? Luke: Yes. Mike: Okay, cool. Look at me knowing all the terms. Okay. So Luke, tell me what you're working on right now that you're most excited about. Luke: I guess probably one thing that I love that I have coming up is I'm adding a canine unit to my business. Mike: That's definitely something worth being excited about. Are you getting German shepherds or ... Luke: I'm getting Belgian Malinois. And actually, I have the opportunity to hire a handler that already has two Mals that are already trained. Mike: Wow. Luke: So I'm super excited about that. Mike: So Luke, tell me, why would you need a canine unit? And I think I know the answer, but could you just tell the audience, as a private investigator, what would you use a canine unit for? Luke: There's so many different uses for a canine. Here recently, Alaska has become one of the states that marijuana is now legal. However, you have a lot of corporations up here that it's still against company policy. So we can run the dogs through the companies to ensure that the employees are not breaking policy. There's no law enforcement side to it, but we are not law enforcement officers, so that's okay. The other area is we found that there are a lot of real estate agents that will have us run the dog through a house to make sure that there's no drugs in the house or there was no meth lab in the house or anything like that, just to limit their liability. Mike: Oh, I never thought about that perspective. Just the civil service. Luke: Sure, yeah, absolutely. So we're really excited to get that up and running. We've already nailed down a few contracts, and so we're really excited about that being a part of our business. Mike: Well, that's definitely worth being excited about. I am excited to hear about how you go and serve people on a snowmobile. How does that happen? Luke: Yeah. So Alaska offers unique challenges to the lower 48. Where are you from, Michael? Mike: I'm from New Mexico, but I'm based in Chico right now, in Chico, California. Luke: We're the largest ... obviously, the largest state in the United States. Here's a good comparison. Denver, Colorado, has one and a half million people. Alaska, there's 700,000 people. So we're the largest state in America, but we have the fewest people per acre or per square mile even of any other state. And so of course, if you call me and say, "Hey, what counties do you serve?" we don't have counties. We have boroughs. And we're statewide, but let's say, for instance, I serve the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough is the size of West Virginia, so we have maybe 300,000 people that live in the borough. And so if you could imagine West Virginia and 300,000 people, they're pretty spread out. Mike: Wow. Luke: So there are tons, I mean, hundreds of villages across Alaska that are only accessible in the summertime via plane or boat or a four-wheeler. In the wintertime, you either take a plane or a dog sled or a snow machine. I mean, that's just part of what we do, and we have planes and snow machines and four-wheelers all at our disposal for serving papers and working cases. Mike: That's why you feel like a CIA agent when you're out there because you're in planes and ... You ever jump out of a plane to go serve someone? Luke: No. Mike: Come on! Luke: No. I did jump off of a four-wheeler once. Mike: Wow! And then I heard something about a moose chasing you. Luke: We have wildlife scattered across Alaska. And inside the city of Anchorage, there's a very large population of moose. I've been chased by moose. I've turned corners and been staring a moose face to face, and you just slowly back away. You don't need that 1,800-pound animal trying to trample you. We have bears that you have to deal with sometimes. Luke: So obviously, everywhere we go, we're armed to the teeth, ready for really the wildlife, not the people. But yeah, I've been chased by moose. I've never been chased by wolves, but I've felt them kind of breathing down my neck, if you will. That one was interesting, a little bit scary. The moose aren't really scary. You just know what to expect from them, and you respect them. This was their land first, so we're just visitors on their land anyway, and they believe that. Mike: It's the truth. Luke: Yes. I have video of moose walking down the street in Anchorage in the middle of traffic, and they just do not care. Mike: That is awesome. Server nation, Luke has been dropping some major value bombs on us today, telling us all about Alaska and the crazy private investigation stuff that he's got going on, from the canines to the planes and the quads, you name it. But prepare yourself, because we're headed into the rapid-fire round right after a word from our sponsors. Recording: Server nation, I know you're with the times, and you want to do whatever you can to have all of the resources for your client. That is why I created 123efile.com. As a process server, attorney, or even an [inaudible 00:10:59], you can visit the website and file your documents in any of the Tyler courts in California. With its easy-to-use, one-page operation, you can have your e-filing done in a matter of minutes and get back to what really matters. If your time is important to you, visit 123efile.com. Mike: Okay. Welcome back to the show. Luke, are you ready for the rapid-fire round? Luke: I am, Michael. Mike: What is your favorite skip-trace tactic? I imagine it's got to be a little bit different in Alaska. Luke: My favorite skip-trace tactic is going and asking the wildlife if they've seen my skip. Mike: You said asking the wildlife? I had to think about that for a minute. I was like, did you just say ask the wildlife? Luke: All right. You know, my favorite skip-trace tactic, I think, pretending to be a guide because there's so many fishing and hunting guides in Alaska that you can call just about anyone up and say, "Hey, I'm a guide, and I'm looking for this person. They booked a thing with me, and I'm just trying to confirm," and they will tell you where they're at, where their mom and dad are at, how to get in touch with them, what they drive, when they come home. They'll give you everything because, up here, hunting and fishing is a big business, and it's a big deal. Mike: So who do you call for that? Luke: The skip that I'm looking for. Mike: Oh, you call the person. Oh, wow! Luke: Or their family members. Mike: Oh, wow! So they're like, "Yeah. Oh, you're a guide. Yeah, let me get him over here." What's the incentive for them to help you, though? They're like ... because it's their friend or family, and they want to connect them to the guide? Luke: So many people up here need to hunt and fish just to feed their family. It's the sustenance thing. So maybe this isn't the best wording, but I prey on that a little bit, if you will. Mike: No, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, we manipulate things all the time. People say, "Hey, what are you doing stalking that girl?" I go, "Oh, that's my job. That's what I do." What is your favorite tool for defense? I know you said you're armed to the teeth. What does that entail? Luke: You know, my favorite tool for defense depends really on where I'm going and what I'm doing. I always carry a firearm everywhere I go. I am a certified firearms instructor. But if I'm going out to some of the remote locations, I'll carry a shotgun along with my sidearm. I do carry concealed when I'm in most areas because I don't want to approach people looking like law enforcement. Mike: Yeah. Luke: And in Alaska, everybody carries a gun. It's legal to carry a gun here concealed or otherwise, and so everybody has one. So even people walking around showing their sidearms, it's not really that big of a deal. My personal preference is to keep it concealed, though. But if I'm going, like I say, out to remote locations, I'll carry a shotgun mainly for bear protection. Mike: Well, that's awesome. That's some cool defense. What kind of pistol do you carry? Luke: I carry a Glock 19-9 millimeter. Mike: Luke, what book would you recommend? Luke: What book would I recommend? Mike: From guns to books. Luke: I know a couple of different people that have written books, and one is a skip-trace queen. Her name is Valerie. She wrote a book, "Skip Trace Secrets." That's a very, very good book. And then also another friend of mine, Kimberly, wrote a book about process serving and mayhem, and she's got tons of funny stories in those. I can't remember the exact name of that book, though. Mike: That's okay. I'll look them up, and I'll link them in the show notes. Anybody who's interested can go to processserverdaily.com/Luke, and they'll see all the show notes word for word and the links and everything. Luke: Perfect. Mike: Luke, what is the greatest advice you've ever received? Luke: I think the greatest advice that I ever received was be professional, be respectful, and be ready to take care of business regardless of what that is. Mike: To close this awesome episode, can you tell me what parting piece of advice would you give the servers out there that are ... Maybe they're struggling. Maybe they're new. Maybe their business is circling the drain, and they don't know what they're doing wrong. What advice would you give them? Luke: My advice to all the servers out there across the board is be professional, do not be judgmental. We don't know what people's stories are. Do what you say you're going to do in a timely fashion, and hang in there and just keep pounding the pavement. Mike: That's awesome. So if you had to start your business over again, Luke, how would you ... What would be the first thing you would do? Luke: I would go get a job somewhere. Mike: So you would work for another company? Luke: If I had to start my business all over again, I think I would probably have made a lot of contacts prior to opening my business because, in this business, that's what is very, very important, is your contacts. Mike: That's perfect. They say your net worth is your network. Build your network, and you'll grow your business. Luke: Absolutely. Mike: Luke, what is the best way that we can connect with you? And then we can say good-bye. Luke: You can connect with me through Facebook or my website, alaskaaia.com. Mike: So Luke, I want to personally thank you for coming on this show, man. This has been really cool. I'm excited to share it with the world. Luke: Thanks for having me, Michael. Mike: Well, I'm going to have to come visit one day. Luke: You do that, buddy. Mike: All right, partner. Well, until next time, server nation, you've been served up some awesomeness by Alaska Luke and Mighty Mike, the podcast server. Server nation, I want to personally thank you for listening to today's episode and ask you a question. Do you or your staff need additional training? Can you handle more clients, but you're not sure where to get them? I've developed a solution. Psduniversity.com offers a step-by-step online training by the top legal support professionals in the industry. Visit psduniversity.com.

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My April 2018 trip report – PREP171

WDW Prep To Go - a Disney World planning podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2018 58:00

Hear the daily updates I recorded during my April 2018 Disney World trip that included a stay in the new Pop Century rooms. I also have a quick tip to share to help you save time in line on popular rides. These are notes from this episode. There's much more info included in the audio so be sure to listen to the episode for a better explanation. Become a WDW Prep To Go Patron WDW Prep To Go Patrons pay a little to unlock even more content than what’s on the main podcast feed, such as a private FB Group and exclusive audio that’s released on a private podcast feed. Become a Patron Now Leave me a message Want to be considered for a trip report? Please leave me a SpeakPipe message with your name, trip dates, resort, and who is in your group. You can do that using your computer or phone at https://www.speakpipe.com/WDWPrepToGo. Links/notes mentioned in this episode Pop Century Orlando Transportation by Mike How to get groceries at Disney World Free Dining 2018 details Quick tip of the day To save time in standby lines, consider getting into line during nighttime shows or just before official park closing. Subscribe to get new episodes There are a few ways to get new episodes of WDW Prep To Go (if you're used to listening on the website, subscribe so you can take new episodes with you on your phone) Subscribe in iTunes (and please leave a review!) Subscribe in Google Play Subscribe to the feed Listen on Stitcher

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.012 #AskPJBraun // Cialis as a Pre-Workout?

Ask PJ Braun

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 16, 2018 56:12

In this Episode of the #AskPJBraun Podcast, PJ and Josh start the show with a story about Blackstone and SARMs, then they get into questions regarding integrating OTC supplements with HRT, Keto, and more. Towards the end there's some information about ISO-CREAM and new apparel. Submit your questions to askpjbraun@blackstonelabs.com Subscribe on iTunes, Soundcloud, Google Play, Stitcher, and more! 10:07 - Phillip - Any advice for training shoulders while avoiding long-term injury? 11:20 - Jasmine - Is it possible to maintain a Keto diet as a long distance runner? 14:20 - Jonathan - As someone just starting out, do you have any advice on what will/wont work for me in the gym? What supplements should I take? 17:46 - Tyler - Just like you I'm a UCONN Alumni. How did it affect your training and nutrition? Did you have any mentors at UCONN? 21:26 - Sway - Lost 10lbs during BeatPJ, looking to drop another 5lbs before clean bulking. How should I adjust my training/diet? 22:34 - James - Can/should I take Cialis and Citrulline in combination as a PWO? 23:59 - Ruben - One of your previous diets had you doing 300g of carbs in one day, then cutting down to 25g/day for a week while pulling all the fats. Can you go into more detail on this diet? Also, Should I incorporate creatine or recomp into the BeatPJ Fat Loss diet? 26:49 - Beau - Trying out Anavar for the first time. Can you give me advice on dosage and timing? 28:19 - Mike - How much would you charge for an outline for someone looking to drop 20-25lbs while on deployment in PR for disaster relief? 30:56 - Martin - Would I benefit from adding Chosen1 to an HRT protocol? 33:08 - Dragon Izumi - I'm on the Elite DHEA stack and I know I can get better results from double/triple dosing, but I have a question about AIs. I know Eradicate and Metha-Quad both contain Arimistane. Is it necessary to take both since they have a similar dosage? 43:12 - News and Announcements (ISO-CREAM, New Apparel News)

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N.O.G.A.S Podcast: (01-21-2017) Ep.016

N.O.G.A.S. Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 24, 2018 67:31

Miami & New Jersey connect on this one! NJ Club Envy bottle girl Kayla, and Kamera Kat sits with us as we interview viral hood star Mike Ruga, to talk about his social media climb, Shaq reposting him, his extensive robe collection, battle rap talk & everything New Jersey! Follow us, subscribe & like/comment below! 'No One Gives a Shit'! but you should and you will! Stay tuned for 'Skit of the Week' at end of show!! @nogas_podcast - IG/T/SC @MikeRuga - IG /SC @Kaylagaga7123 - IG TOPICS TIMELINE: 00:00-00:46- Mike Ruga Skit intro 00:46-01:28- The table intro 01:28-02:20- Fredo Santana Dead 02:20-04:03-NJ BottleGyrl Kayla intro 04:04-06:06- Kayla serving rappers stories (Yo Gotti & ABoogie) 06:07-07:29- Thristy club goers 07:30-08:28- Fresh off the boat hustlers 08:29-08:56- Jersey ppl description 08:57-11:19- Real silicone sex dolls 11:19-13:16- Mike Ruga skype interview begins 13:18-13:35- Mike: Remy boy Monty promo skit 13:36-14:32- Mike: Skit preparation 14:33-15:02- Mike: Biggest Video so far 15:03-16:02- Mike:New Jersey, no fist pump 16:03-18:33- Mike: Robe collection 18:34-19:31- Mike: Who is Mike Ruga? 19:32-21:28- Mike: Spanish Roots / North Eastern Stigma 21:29-22:54- Mike: How you get 25k followers 22:55-23:41- Mike: Shaq repost story 23:42-24:52- Mike: NJ club 4 life dance origin 24:53-25:52- Mike: SM game level up 25:53-27:11- Mike: Drake lurking story 27:12-28:52- Mike: "Washed or Litt" bit origin / Itzbizkit 28:53-35:44- Mike: Battle rap talk/ Fav battle rappers 35:45-37:47- Mike:Battle Rapper 'Washed or Litt' bit/ K-shine story 37:47-40:36- Mike: Open to acting? 40:38-43:32- Mike: Other IG stars fake? 43:33-46:03- Mike: NJ 2 Mia connect / Stand up comedy show story 46:04-47:48- Mike: Interview Wrap up 47:49-49:40- Interview Recap 49:41-57:26- Kodak Black Back in Jail 57:27-59:26- Monique boycotts Netflix (Yay or nay) 59:27-1:01- Versace FX show review 1:01:01-1:03:14- Cranberries lead singer Dead 1:03:14-1:04:37- Dedication show 1:04:38-1:06:43- Plug / Wrap up 1:06:44- END - SKIT OF THE WEEK ! Thanks for watching!

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079: Web Security and Keeping Developers on the Cutting Edge via Trainings and Workshops with Mike North

The Frontside Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 10, 2017 41:29

Mike North: @michaellnorth | mike.works Show Notes: 00:51 - Transitioning from CTO to Independent Trainer 03:37 - Customizing Content and Developing Curriculum 06:37 - Bringing a Developer Into the JavaScript Ecosystem 12:47 - Training Developers with Non-Traditional Backgrounds 16:56 - Keeping Up with “Fifth Gear” 19:27 - Developing Frontend Masters Courses 22:40 - “Progressive Web Apps” 34:37 - Web Security Resources: LinkedIn's REACH Program IndexedDB Transcript: CHARLES: Hello, everybody and welcome to The Frontside Podcast, Episode 79. My name is Charles Lowell, a developer at the Frontside and your podcast host-in-training. With me today is Elrick, also at the Frontside. Hello, Elrick. ELRICK: Hey, what's going on? CHARLES: Today, we are going to be talking with Mike North, who is doing all kinds of interesting stuff as per the usual so we'll jump right in. Hey, Mike. MIKE: How is it going? I'm glad to be here. CHARLES: Last time that I saw you, I think it was about a year ago at the Wicked Good Ember Conf and we were standing on the beach, drinking scotch and talking about Fastboot but you were doing something completely and totally different then than you are now so I was wondering, we were talking the conversation before we started rolling, that your role nowadays is independent consultant and personal dev trainer. I was wondering if you talk a little bit about that move from the CTO role that you're playing at your old company to kind of moving into that independent trainer, like why and how. MIKE: Yeah, I do remember talking about Fastboot at Wicked Good Ember. It feels like things have moved quite a bit since then. I have always loved teaching developers. When I've been a team lead, it's the favorite part of my job just because I get profound satisfaction out of helping people get over these hurdles that most of the time took me a much longer time with blog posts and podcasts and incomplete examples and libraries that were out of date and Stack Overflow with half answers. I've decided to dedicate myself to trying to make it easier for people in an increasingly complex web development world to wrap their head around everything. While I was a tech lead or a CTO, I always had to split my focus between helping developers grow and something else. Oftentimes, that something else was where the deadlines were and the time pressure was. It felt a little bit like I was driving a car that only had first and fifth gear where you're like on the bleeding edge of open source and what was the latest commit to master and [inaudible]. Then like, "Oh, let's be extremely patient with this person. They've never seen promises before because they came from another programming language. Let's help them digest this at their own pace." It's this slow and patient process of building up from the fundamentals and then the bleeding edge is like, "Let's use Babel Stage 0." It was very hard for those two aspects to exist at the same time in myself so I decided I'm just going for the training side. That's really all I do these days. CHARLES: It was so, but now would you qualify that as the first gear or the fifth gear? MIKE: That's the first gear. It gets you off the ground. It takes you from stop and gets you moving and then you have to develop your own expertise beyond that. But I like to think I'm developing a really, really excellent first gear. Today for example, I'm converting a bunch of Python developers at LinkedIn who are basically the ops team. I'm teaching them Ember and JavaScript at the same time through a series of about 20 exercises over three days. That process is many weeks long without assistance so this is like, "Let's get rolling much more efficiently and quickly," than via DIY approach. CHARLES: Now, do you find you have to custom-tailor for the environment or the developers moving from like someone coming from, say C# would have a different experience than someone coming from Python? MIKE: Absolutely. When I have my material, I have sections that I can drop. If you are a C# developer, I do not have to explain conceptually what 'async' and 'await' mean. You've been working with that for a while. I probably throw up a little example in C# and then the equivalent in JavaScript to sort of create a bridge from your existing expertise into the JavaScript world. Another one -- this is very true -- is teaching Ruby developers how to use Elixir. You don't have to say, "This is a router. We have controllers. There are actions and controllers." There are so many parallels that really it's more useful to help, rather than teach things from scratch to create connections back to the expertise they already have so they're not starting from zero and they can say like, "In the Ruby world, I would think of doing XYZ." Now, I have a map in between that and this new thing. CHARLES: Obviously, there's a lot, a lot, a lot of languages and environments that you could transition to, probably more than matches your own personal experience, in doing that frontline development. What kind of research do you have to do to develop a curriculum for, say someone coming from Clojure or someone coming from Scala or something like that? Maybe that never happens. MIKE: I have a pretty, pretty broad background. My entry into programming was a subset of C and then I graduated to C++ and Java and Ruby and I used to do ASP stuff. I've written iOS apps. I feel like I have enough of a foothold into various areas like I know one JVM language. That is usually enough. If you're running a lot of Clojure, I can at least speak Java to you because odds are, you're working with that and you're seeing that and you know it. Oftentimes, I have what I need. There are situations where I can borrow something in a very cursory level. Not to rip on Scala but I have not found it valuable to make connections to that particular language for clarity and [inaudible] but I have used Haskell before and I'm not a Haskell developer but it is a pure functional language. When trying to help people understand how is this different, then the JavaScript got them running where the Ruby ends up running. It's useful to use something like that. It's a very small language, very simple and you can wrap your head around the basics. ELRICK: What are some of the particular challenges that you face when bringing in a developer outside of the JavaScript ecosystem into JavaScript since JavaScript is kind of the Wild West that you can do everything in JavaScript? What are some of the challenges you face in bringing in a new developer from Python or C or whatever that may be? MIKE: You put it very well. It is definitely the Wild West. You can do anything if you have enough [inaudible] yourself and enough power to get serious stuff done. Really, it's like the explosion in number of choices and tools, the explosion of complexity. I learned JavaScript when it was something that you sprinkle on top of your Rails app for a little interactivity, a little animation on a screen or something like that. I was lucky to learn it at that point in time when that was the norm because I've been able to gradually accumulate for more than ten years now. The tooling like using Grunt, using Golf, using Brunch and then stepping up to other more sophisticated build tools. I learned those one by one in the context of real projects. Now, it's like the mountain is so high, people don't know where to start so that's a big challenge for developers. To throw them into a meaningful project like if you asked a mean JavaScript developer, not angry but the average JavaScript developer, they're like maybe -- CHARLES: I should dare to say that the average JavaScript developer is mean. MIKE: A little bit and probably maybe [inaudible] with me as well, depending on [inaudible]. But they're going to spin up some project with webpack and Babel and all of these tools. If that's your first exposure to the language and to working with the language, you're operating in an environment that you don't understand. Research shows that is the less effective option there to slowly building things up over time. I spend a lot of time going back to the basics and making sure we're not working with promises until we've explicitly focused on them, chained a couple together, managed errors and then now, we can work with Fetch. We're not going to jump into that and throw ourselves into this deep end of the pool. We want to incrementally build up skills. It takes a little bit longer but when you have that understanding as you're learning, you get a lot more out of it because anything that you can't get a grip on to as you learn it, it sort of just evaporates into thin air and don't retain that, even if you kind of fill in those holes later. CHARLES: Yeah, it could be so hard too. Actually, this has been an experience that I've been having, I would say almost for the past two years, as the tools advance, not only you are starting from a place of not understanding but the tools themselves do not teach you. I've had two moments where I got really mad. One actually was on an Ember project and one was a project using webpack but it was the same fundamental problem where in one I was actually working with someone who was very new to JavaScript and an error happens and the stack trace was some just big bundled garbage that gave no insight at all. MIKE: In vendor.js. CHARLES: Yes, in vendor.js or in bundle JS. It was like, "How is anyone supposed to learn?" The most fundamental thing about working with Ruby or working with Node or working with anything is you get a stack trace. MIKE: Debugging is really hard. I think it just takes a little time reaching out to people who are experiencing the Stockholm Syndrome like most of the time, JavaScript developer. We all are working with Ember CLI and webpack. I'm not ripping on these tools but we're used to that complexity in our lives. When we see that stack trace, we're like, "Oh, well. I probably need a source map. I'll make sure that that's there. It's natural that I'm debugging a file that the browser is not really seeing like it mapped back to my source code debugging." This is natural to us. But if you put that in front of a developer who hasn't been living under those circumstances, the number of times they raised their hand is like, "What the hell is this?" It is just amazing and it really helps. I've reset my expectations to what a normal programming experience should be and JavaScript does not provide that today. That is really challenging to keep someone in the midst of all that. CHARLES: I feel like it's hard and do you think we'll ever achieve that? Or is it just going to be a constant hamster wheel of progress versus the tooling to educate what progress has been made or to communicate what progress has been made? MIKE: I think the tooling is fine but it's just that we have a gap in terms of learning experience. We just need really -- I'm not voluntary here because I've got a ridiculous backlog -- a couple long tail horses working with vanilla JavaScript, rendering some stuff on the screen, maybe a course of React but no JSX yet, just create component. A couple of things to fill in a gap between where maybe code school leaves off and where you are expected to be by the time you start interviewing for a spot as frontend developer on a team but there's a huge chasm right now. There's the intro guides and then there's professional life and trying to bridge the gap between those is ridiculously a challenge right now due to the huge ramp up of complexity from like, "Let's do some stuff in the console," to, "Running transpile JSX code with async [inaudible]. We've got regenerator in there to polyfill generator functions." There's so much in your average JavaScript at these days. CHARLES: Your work that you're doing at LinkedIn, part of it is trying to bring and train developers who come from more nontraditional backgrounds, including a lot of things like boot camps. What is your experience of their experience coming in? Are boot camps doing the right thing? Are they teaching the right things? Are they trying to kind of parachute them on top of that mountain? Or do you find that they're just at the base camp, so to speak? Because it sounds like your approach is like you've got to really start from fundamentals so that you can understand the layers of complexity if you're going to, someday stand on them. MIKE: I think a lot of the boot camps are doing an excellent job. These days, the employees we have at LinkedIn who come from boot camps, I would bet on them against your average MIT grad every time, just because their education is so practical. It's amazing that in the world of computer science, the stuff that you're taught in school is a little bit farther removed than one would expect, compared to the stuff that we do every day in our jobs -- building real apps. I do not need to know in my day-to-day work at LinkedIn how an operating system works or how to build a device driver. This is a little bit too fundamental. It's the wrong abstraction for practical everyday work for most people. Where in these boot camps, they focus completely on the practical. In fact, I've been fortunate enough to get involved with the REACH program here at LinkedIn, where we hire explicitly people from nontraditional backgrounds like boot camps. They're not all from boot camps but many of them are. We just hired 30 of them in March. The pilot program, I think we've hired two or three in our New York office and it just went really well. It started like, "Let's double down and double down again and double that again." This time, we're doing 30 and I expect there will be a new round next year where we poll even more. The idea is we take these REACH candidates and pair them with a mentor engineer for six months. At the end of that six months, we had to make a decision as to like this person at the level we expect of an entry level software engineering hire. From what I've seen, we're doing really well at preparing these folks and they're unbelievably valuable to the teams that they've been placed in. ELRICK: That's amazing. That's very interesting. Is there a standardized curriculum thing that each mentor will follow to get this person after they entered his REACH program and then ramp them up or is it like each person just goes and looks at what the person knows and then ramps them up accordingly. MIKE: I'd say, it's a mix of both. We have a set of technical trainings for them or we'll have a testing expert from within the company and teach a little testing seminar to them. There's that standardized curriculum there. But the nature of being taught by boot camp or teaching yourself is that you're going to have holes in your knowledge and it's not often predictable where those holes will be. That's why we make sure we do this mentorship very explicitly and over a long period of time so that if it turns out that you never learned about how to work with tree-data structures. That was not part of the go-no/go decision that brought you on but we should probably, at least get you there. At least to the point where if you're traversing a down tree and you're like parent and child, what is this, what do you mean by leaf-level node. This is stuff that is actually meaningful for web developer in some cases. CHARLES: In the context of the work that you're doing with the REACH program but also touching on something that we talked about at the beginning about the first gear and the fifth gear, part of generating a curriculum is still being in contact with what's up in the fifth gear right because ultimately, what you're trying to do is you're working with people who are in first gear or looking to get a smooth transition in the first gear but at the same time, you want to set them up and you want to be in contact for what's in fifth gear now is going to be first gear in five years. How do you feed that in? MIKE: I'm fortunate to have a great team that I work with here. This group that I roll up to in LinkedIn, they're experts and you probably know of like Chris Epstein and Tom Dale and Steph Petter. A 15-minute coffee break with one of these people is enough to keep [inaudible]. Sometimes, it's a little bit like drinking from a fire hose because it's like I spend an hour with a student trying to help them understand like, "This is why a Promise is useful. Here is the callback equivalent," and then now, "Let's dive in to Glimmer. Why this track annotation is the right way to go for automatic updating." It sends me for little bit of a loop sometimes but it is definitely keeping me up to date. The other factor, of course is when you've been doing this for a while. History sort of repeats itself so a lot of the patterns that we're seeing today, I've seen somewhere else. I was working with code splitting when I was writing Dojo JavaScript code years and years ago. I was defining my module layers in a very explicit way. I had to do that. I didn't have done a webpack that would figure out, put these splits are. But I have that experience to look back to and for that reason, it is not often that an entirely new concept comes along. Oftentimes, they're like amazing refinements on things that how to smell like stuff that we've used before in the software engineering world. CHARLES: Yeah or here's something that has never been used, is very prevalent in these other context which we're going to apply here. MIKE: Exactly. CHARLES: And like, "Oh, my goodness. It's a perfect solution." In addition to the work that you're doing with LinkedIn and developing those training curricula and stuff, you're also doing some work for Frontend Masters in an area that's very exciting, I think to me. I'm sure it's exciting to you because you decided to throw a whole lot of time into developing a course for it. That's in the development of progressive web apps, which for me has been like this thing that I'm so curious about but I'm like a kitten playing with a little yarn ball. I want to dive in but I'm just going to tap it with my paws right now. MIKE: Yeah, it's a really interesting area and I think that even if you're not using progressive web technologies today, it's one of these things that sort of reinvigorates your energy for JavaScript's future and what may be possible soon. Steve and I have put together this amazing progressive web app course, which has I think like 18 short examples of iteratively building up a grocery shopping app. If you've used InstaCard or something like that, we start out with app already built and it's like a single-page app as doing everything that you would expect. After a few of the exercises, it works offline. After a few more, you can add stuff to the card and background sync, push it to the API when you come back online. We get deep, deep, deep into service workers. That's one of the areas that my work at LinkedIn and my teaching with Frontend Masters overlaps really well because I've been heavily involved in creating our service worker for LinkedIn.com. I may be able to take some of what we've learned here and disseminate it a little bit so that, hopefully fewer people have to learn the hard way. It's best to keep things simple at first and add on functionality. I'm about to cross like the [inaudible]. This is my favorite just because the example turned out to fit so well and in particular, on Frontend Masters, I think Steve and I have had contrasting teaching styles but they complement each other so well because I'm like the 'melt people's brains' instructor. I love to throw people exercises that are like 120% of what they can do and it's going to hurt, just like when you're lifting weights at the gym, like you're going to beg for mercy but we're going to make you strong. Then Steve, just listening to him, even with I am in the classroom and he is teaching me Electron. He's so energizing and he's really funny too but not in an overtly cracking jokes kind of way. He's just so fun when he teaches. I think it is a really good combination just because things lined up just by luck and through hard work and just the right way out of a couple of important areas. CHARLES: Now, just for people who might not be familiar with the term progressive web apps, what does it encompass? Do people actually call them PWAs? MIKE: No. I'm going to start, though. I like that. That carries very well over a video chat or something. Nobody knows how to spell that: P-U-A? P-W-U-A? It is a rejection of the old idea that in order to take advantage of some web technology, it has to be supported in all of the browsers that we need to support. The idea here is to hold as a core tenet of our design practices, the idea of progressive enhancement, meaning we serve up a basic experience and where we can take on these superhero features, like the ability to work offline, the ability to receive push notifications, we go ahead and do so. If your browser doesn't support this, that's unfortunate. No big deal. You still get a good experience. But if you're using a very recent version of Chrome or Safari or you have a new Android device, these browsers can take advantage of sophisticated metadata or sped up a background process that can serve up data to your app and your app doesn't even know that there's something between it and the API. That is the idea of progressive web apps -- apps that become superheroes where possible and they still work and provide a great basic experience for antiquated browsers like IE8 and Safari. CHARLES: The idea theoretically, you could work without any JavaScript or whatsoever. What's the ground floor there? MIKE: That is ideal. I think server-side rendering, which is what you're talking about there, even if JavaScript is not working, just HTML and CSS will provide a basic experience. That's great but that's not a modern browser technology thing. If you have JavaScript turned off in today's Chrome, like Chrome 60, versus IE9, both of them working with them without JavaScript. What we're really talking about here is app-like characteristics, where we are pushing web technology to the point where you will swear that this came from an App Store. It's on your home screen. It's running in the full screen. You're getting push notifications. It works offline and you can store a large amount of structured data locally on the device. All of the stuff sounds like the list of reasons to reach for native mobile technology because the mobile web is not good enough. But in fact, it has a feature set of this family of progressive web technologies. It's really like a web app that is so good and so modern that it feels and looks just like a native mobile app. CHARLES: That sounds so hard to do right. MIKE: Well, it is now, just because what we have to work with can be thought of it like a basket of ingredients, rather than a solution that we drop in. But over time, as more people start working with these ingredients, I think we're going to see a lot of consensus around the best patterns to use and boilerplate code will fall away as we can identify that the set is in fact commonly needed and not a beautiful and unique snowflake. CHARLES: Because it seems like the thing that I always struggle with is not wanting to put the critical eggs in the basket of a superhero feature or have you being able to provide an alternative if the superhero feature doesn't exist. Some features, if you just don't have it, that's fine. You can turn it on if the capabilities available but certain features are very critical to the functioning of your application. I'm casting about for an example and I'm not finding one immediately but -- MIKE: Offline is a great one. That fits pretty neatly. If you're using an older browser or if you're using Safari, which by the way, I should stop ripping on Safari. For the listeners out there, we saw a commit lend in webkit, where service for APIs are beginning to be stubbed out. No longer do we have to look at length. Service worker, enthusiasm and Safari has got it in the five-year plan. There was motion last week. We haven't seen motion in ages so thank you Safari Team. Thank you. Keep up the good work. CHARLES: Is there a discipline of Safari-ologists who monitor the movement of Safari to bring this news? MIKE: Of course, we monitor it because right now, Chrome and Firefox, they are pretty much hopeful in terms of supporting this modern stuff. Opera supports this modern stuff. Samsung's fork of Chromes support this modern stuff. Especially when we think about the mobile web, you got to worry about Android and you got to worry about iOS Safari and right now, like we've talked about these progressive web apps, you don't get that superhero experience on an iPhone or an iPad. Once we crossed that threshold, this is going to have a breakaway level of adoption because there are no more excuses. Essentially, for a mobile web experience, you can send push notifications to the user. That is huge. That is probably at the top of the list for why some people use native apps, instead of mobile web. The more we can do that, the more we can make it so that a great LinkedIn experience can be delivered to your phone without having to install a binary. I just have to update Facebook the other day and it was over 100 megabytes. Why do we need to do that? You should be able to make it work with less. I'm sure that there's some great stuff in there. Apparently, Snapchat filters are popular but I don't need this. Can we code split that away or something because I don't want to have to download that? I can't even download it on the cell network because it's over 100 megabytes. It's really exciting to see the web start to compete with this heavy mobile experience because now I think is ready. CHARLES: Now, when you talk about push notifications, you're talking about being able to send things to my lock screen. MIKE: To your lock screen while the browser is not on the foreground, while the app is not open. Essentially, you're installing a lightweight process that runs in the background. It receives events that originate from your server and the user can tap on them and then your little lightweight worker process in the background decides what to do when that tap happens, like open up the app, take them to this URL or something like that. That is a game changer. That's huge. Or background sync like the user added some items to their cart and then they lock their phone and now, their plane has landed. That's why they were offline and they get back on the internet and without them having to touch their phone, now we can push that data to the server and everything's in sync, rather than like, "Please revisit your app. We need to run some JavaScript code to flush IndexedDB or API." It still feels like a hack at that point. This is a fluid experience. ELRICK: Wow. This is exciting for me as I don't have any more space on my cellphone, thanks to all the apps that I have to install to do various things on the web. MIKE: You're not alone. CHARLES: Yeah, it's crazy and just the amount of code sharing that you can have, I guess that doesn't happen much these days on the web where you've got these popular libraries out on CDNs so that the chances are that you've got jQuery 1.2.1 on your cache, you've got 16 versions of jQuery so most of your web applications don't have to do that. I guess we kind of do the equivalent of statically linking everything. MIKE: There is a benefit near that where we have imperative code managing our cache, instead of just relying on the HTTP cache or app cache, if you have a vendor.js file that is not changing over six months, there is no reason you should be re-downloading that every time you deploy your app or letting the browser evict that, just because memory pressure is high from Google image search results or something like that. We really don't have much control over it. But with a service worker, we can say, "Hold on to this," or maybe like prefetch the next version of the app so that we're going to show you the old version now but the next time you refresh, here's the new version available instantly. It's downloaded in the background and it's like click to update your version, like it's already here waiting for you. That's huge. That's amazing. CHARLES: That is amazing. Although the complexity skeptic in me is thinking, "Oh, my goodness. Now, we've got all this state that we're storing on the server. We have to have data migrations." We need some sort of migration mechanism for our clients-side state and perhaps some transaction and rollback in case you're not able to successfully migrate your data. It sounds like a lot of fun but I'm just imagining we really are getting started here. Has there been any work on that aspect? MIKE: If you've ever worked with IndexedDB, it does have a concept of migrations. Basically, the data you store on a device has a version and when you read in what's called a file but it's a database, when you read that in, the first thing you do is you basically bring it up to date incrementally. You'll bring it in, you're looking for version nine like your code wants version nine. What you see is version two because your user hasn't been at your site for six months and you're going to take it from two to three to four to five to six. Each of those, essentially constitutes a migration. We just have to apply the same principles of forward-compatible changes. The escape hatch here is remember it's progressive enhancement so if we had to destroy everything, fall back to a basic experience and start from scratch, like discard all of our data, it's really being held there as an optimization. Some people use this immutable caching strategy or basically, like rolling out a new service worker version constitutes for the most part. Any data that wasn't created by a user you're going to discard that and you're going to fetch it new. You don't have to worry about like, "Crap. This six month-old thing is still plaguing half our users and we can't get rid of it," like you can have [inaudible]. But you should really check out this course. It is simpler than you think and what we demonstrate is not a trivial like hello service worker. It is taking in a classic single page app, making it completely offline, having it exist on the home screen and I think the service worker ends up being no more than 100 lines of code. It's not too bad. ELRICK: I'm definitely going to check that out because my progressive web app journey is still on just service workers. MIKE: That's very [inaudible], though. ELRICK: Yeah. I'm definitely checking it out. Sounds like a really fantastic course. MIKE: I've been focusing a lot on this area and another one is security. The reason I picked these two is because developers are not really going to learn about these on the critical path to [inaudible] plus they learn about them the wrong way. As the JavaScript world is becoming radically more complex with each passing year, I've tried to target some of my efforts towards areas where they are not getting as much attention as I'd like to see, just because we have to focus somewhere. Obviously, getting the app out and figuring out how to make the build tools work for us. Without that, we can't do anything at all. One of the courses that's coming in September for Frontend Masters is a one-day web security workshop or we'll do with like cross-site scripting, how to work with certificates because if you start playing with HTTP/2 -- the next generation of HTTP -- you will need to generate some certificates for development at least today you need to. I've seen some amazingly smart developers get this dangerously wrong to the point where they compromise their own machine and anything that's on that machine, just by trying to set up dev environment. Typically, I'm an optimist but when it comes to this PWA stuff and security, I am paranoid. I feel like, we as a community need to get together and have the discipline to brush up in these areas so that as we introduce all of this new stuff, we don't end up opening a bunch of holes. Nowhere near the same rigor as put into frontend compared to backend and now, the line is blurred. Right now, we're server-side rendering so our code is running on the backend somewhere so injecting something can really mess things up in a bigger way. ELRICK: Yeah, I think that's a fundamental characteristic of someone does going to be involved in security paranoia. You have to be paranoid about everything. MIKE: Yep. I don't trust anything. CHARLES: It's important to make those things easy because I'm definitely fall more into the hippie camp like, "Everything is going to be fine. Let's trust everybody," which is I know is totally unrealistic. But then you get into these secure technologies and you learned enough of it just to get the task that you're going to do and then you forget. SSL is a great example. Over the course of my career, I've learned how SSL certs have worked probably, at least 10 times. ELRICK: Right, [inaudible] you had to set it up in production. CHARLES: Yes, exactly and then I promptly forget about it, never worry about it again and then the next time I'm like, "How did that work? What's this trust chain? What?" ELRICK: Exactly. I read a study from Carnegie Mellon a couple of years ago that showed developers observe security best practices dramatically less than the general public and the general public is not good. Do you know what I'm talking about when I say a certificate warning and a browser, there's big scary red screen saying like something is wrong here? Before the Chrome team put some effort into improving that, 70% of people would click through those and proceed anyway. After their improvements, over a third of people still clicked through and that number when you just look at Canary versions of browsers, that number is actually considerably higher close to 50% of our developers. We're trained by every broken certificate system that exists on the internet like the legitimate ones or maybe some things just expired. They're training people to just click straight through these things and as a result, it is terrifyingly easy to mess with people. We have to remember as developers, our machines, those have the private deploy keys and those have the SSH keys to commit code to GitHub, we have to treat that like it's a private data. It's really, really important that we make it easy and that we make sure that that easy path is also very safe. CHARLES: Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you so much Mike for coming by and talking with us. We touched on a lot of subjects but I feel like I certainly learned a lot. MIKE: Yeah, thanks. It's been so much fun talking with you this morning. CHARLES: Anybody who wants to go and check out those courses, they're on Frontend Masters. Now correct me if I'm wrong, you've obviously got the one on progressive web apps or PWAs. If it doesn't work offline, it's faux-PWA. MIKE: Yes, I like that. That's going to become a t-shirt sometime soon. CHARLES: The fundamentals of progressive web app development, which is now released if I understand correctly. MIKE: Members have access to everything, you can watch the raw video now. The edited course will be available later this year. CHARLES: Okay, and that's with Steve Kenny. I am very much looking forward to looking at that and learning more about it. Then you've also got ones coming up in September on TypeScript web security in Visual Studio Code. MIKE: Yep and members can watch that as a live-streamed event. Frontend Masters even ask people to watch the comment stream so you'll have a proxy question asker or hand raiser in the room. It's really a great experience to be part of a live thing. CHARLES: Oh, man. That sounds awesome. Then if you are obviously doing your independent consulting and if people want to get in contact, how would they do that? MIKE: You can find me on Twitter, @MichaelLNorth or you can visit my website, Mike.Works and I have all of the courses I teach and outlines and I can just open up a little chat bubble on the lower right, ask me any questions that you have. I am really passionate about teaching people. If you like that's useful for your team, please reach out and I'd love to talk. CHARLES: Fantastic. Thanks, Mike and thanks everybody for listening to us. If you want to get in touch with us, you can always do that. We're on Twitter at @TheFrontside and email, Contact@Frontside.io. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Elrick and I will see you all later. MIKE: Thank you so much. ELRICK: Bye.

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Episode 251, "Stop draggin' my Ashbringer around"

World of Warcast: A World of Warcraft Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2017 52:19

Ren: Life invasions > demon invasions WoW - still plugging away at exalted - finished Armies of Legionfall Diablo III -- Season 11 started 8 PM EST on July 20, running a necro - When I checked at 20 hours in, the highest season necro was level 70 and running level 86 greater rifts (GR 60= T13). I was level 8 and grateful for pants. - Necro is level 70 running T4 (GR 17) Mike: How to report a bot Related: Vial of the Sands no longer crowded on the AH This Week: - World Quest Bonus Event - rep gained with all Legion factions increased by 50% - World Awaits quest - 5k order resources for completing 20 world quests - Kirin Tor Tavern Crawl (July 31st) - find Tipsi Wobblerune outside your faction's inn in Dalaran - she will go to diffferent inns every few minutes (pay attention to chat) - each tavern will have Tavern Enthusiasts, new drinks and food - some short term items such as Tavern Finery (a hat), food or drink that changes your appearance - Hozen Pool Party on the Veiled Stair NEWS Changes to world bosses - bosses like Withered Jim - rotation is currently random but will be changed to a fixed rotation Raiding with Leashes V - The Cuteaclysm - Collect in Bastion of Twilight (3 pets), Blackwing Descent (3 pets), Throne of the Four Winds (2 pets), Firelands (4 pets), and Dragon Soul (3 pets). - 8 of the 15 pets are elemental pets. There are also 2 magic, 2 dragonkin, and 1 each of mechanical, undead, and beast. - Achievement reward is the Amalgam of Destruction, an elemental pet. - Christie Golden writing another novel. No idea what it’s about yet. - ToS Wing 3 on the PTR - No more XP or Vista support come October, except Overwatch - Russell Brower leaving Blizzard after 12 years. Aker sends us a lot of information about what it's like to be in Method.

method destruction twilight throne achievements legion blizzard vista sands xp armies bastion amalgam four winds necro aker christie golden dalaran mike how firelands draggin' dragon soul ashbringer

World Of Warcast Episode 251, "Stop draggin' my Ashbringer around"

Team Banzai Studios Master Feed

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2017 52:19

method destruction twilight throne achievements legion blizzard vista sands xp armies bastion amalgam four winds necro aker christie golden warcast dalaran mike how firelands draggin' dragon soul ashbringer

20 Author Bill DeSimone - Congruent Exercise

The InForm Fitness Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2017 85:11

Adam Zickerman and Mike Rogers interview author, weight lifter, and personal trainer Bill DeSimone. Bill penned the book Congruent Exercise: How To Make Weight Training Easier On Your Joints Bill is well known for his approach to weight lifting which, focuses on correct biomechanics to build strength without undue collateral damage to connective tissue and the rest of the body.So, whether you are an aspiring trainer, serious weight lifter, or even an Inform Fitness client who invests just 20-30 minutes a week at one of their seven locations this episode is chock full of valuable information regarding safety in your high-intensity strength training. A paramount platform of which the Power of Ten resides at all InForm Fitness locations across the country.To find an Inform Fitness location nearest you visit www.InformFitness.comIf you'd like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10. Send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. Join Inform Nation and call the show with a comment or question. The number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. To purchase Adam Zickerman's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution click this link to visit Amazon:http://bit.ly/ThePowerofTenTo purchase Bill DeSimone's book Congruent Exercise: How To Make Weight Training Easier On Your Joints click this link to visit Amazon:http://bit.ly/CongruentExerciseIf you would like to produce a podcast of your own just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at tim@InBoundPodcasting.comBelow is the transcription for Episode 20 - Author Bill DeSimone - Congruent Exercise20 Author Bill DeSimone - Congruent ExerciseAdam: So there's not a day that goes by that I don't think by the way that I don't think of something Bill has said to me when I'm training people. Bill is basically my reference guide, he's my Grey's Anatomy. When I try an exercise with somebody, I often find myself asking myself, what would Bill do and I take it from there. Without further ado, this is Bill, and we're going to talk about all good stuff. Joint friendly exercises, what Bill calls it now, you started out with congruent exercises, technical manual for joint friendly exercise, and now you're rephrasing it.Bill: Well actually the first thing I did was [Inaudible: 00:00:43] exercise, but the thing is I didn't write [Inaudible: 00:00:45] exercise with the idea that anybody other than me was going to read it. I was just getting my own ideas down, taking my own notes, and just to flesh it out and tie it up in a nice package, I actually wrote it and had it bound it up and sent it off to Greg Anderson and McGuff and a couple others, and it hit a wave of interest.Adam: A wave, they were probably blown away.Bill: Yeah well, a lot of those guys went out of their way to call me to say boy, a lot of what I suspected, you explained here. But when I read it now, it's pretty technical, it's a challenge.Mike: There's a lot of, I think, common sense with an experienced trainer when you think about levers in general, and I think what you did in that manual was make it very succinct and very clear. I think it's something that maybe we didn't have the full story on, but I think we had some — if you have some experience and you care about safety as a trainer, I think you are kind of looking at it and you saw it observationally, and then I think when we read this we were like ah, finally, this has crystalized what I think some of us were thinking.Adam: Exactly. You know what I just realized, let's explain, first and foremost. You wrote something called Moment Arm Exercise, so the name itself shows you have technical — that it probably is inside, right? So moment arm is a very technical term, a very specific term in physics, but now you're calling it joint friendly exercise, and you called it also congruent exercise at one point. All synonymous with each other, so please explain, what is joint friendly exercise or fitness?Bill: It's based more on anatomy and biomechanics than sports performance. So unlike a lot of the fitness fads that the attitude and the verbiage comes out of say football practice or a competitive sport, what I'm doing is I'm filtering all my exercise instruction through the anatomy and biomechanics books, to try to avoid the vulnerable — putting your joints in vulnerable positions, and that's so complicated which is why I struggled with so much to make it clearer. So I started with moment arm exercise, and then I wrote Congruent Exercise, which is a little broader but obviously the title still requires some explanation. And then — how it happened, as for my personal training in the studio, I would use all this stuff but I wouldn't explain it because I was only dealing with clients, I wasn't dealing with peers. Since it's a private studio and not a big gym, I don't have to explain the difference between what I'm doing and what somebody else is doing, but in effect, I've been doing this every day for fifteen years.Adam: I have to say, when you say that, that you didn't explain it to clients, I actually use this information as a selling point. I actually explain to my clients why we're doing it this way, as opposed to the conventional way, because this is joint friendly. I don't get too technical necessarily, but I let them know that there is a difference of why we're doing it this way, versus the conventional way. So they understand that we are actually a cut above everybody else in how we apply exercise, so they feel very secure in the fact that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, but I digress.Bill: Generally what I do is any signage I have, a business card, website, Facebook presence, all lays out joint friendly and defines it and kind of explains itself. I would say most of the clients I have aren't coming from being heavily engaged in another form of fitness. They're people who start and drop out programs or they join a health club in January and drop out. It's not like I'm getting somebody who is really intensely into Crossfit, or intensely into Zumba or bodybuilding, and now they're banged up and need to do something different. The joint friendly phrasing is what connects me with people that need that, I just find that they don't need the technical explanation as to why we're not over stretching the joint capsule in the shoulder. Why we're not getting that extra range of motion on the bench press, because again, they haven't seen anybody doing otherwise, so I don't have to explain why I'm doing it this way.Adam: Yeah but they might have had experience doing it themselves. Let's take an overhead press for example, having your arms externally rotating and abducted, versus having them in front of you. There's an easy explanation to a client why we won't do one versus the other.Bill: But I have to say I do not get people who do not even know what a behind the neck press is. Now in Manhattan is a little bit different, more denser.Adam: So for this conversation, let's assume some people know, or understand in a way what the conventional is, but we can kind of get into it. What is conventional and what's not conventional. So it's joint friendly, how is it joint friendly, what are you actually doing to make it joint friendly?Bill: Well the short answer is that I use a lot less range of motion than we've got accustomed to, when we used to use an extreme range of motion. If bodybuilders in the 60s were doing pumping motions, and then you wanted to expand that range of motion, for good reason, and then that gets bastardized and we take more of a range of motion and turn it into an extreme range of motion — just because going from partial motions to a normal range of motion was good, doesn't make a normal range of motion to an extreme range of motion better. And in fact —Adam: What's wrong with extreme range of motion?Bill: Well because —Adam: Don't say that you want to improve flexibility.Bill: Well the HIIT guys who would say that you're going to improve flexibility by using —Adam: HIIT guys means the high intensity training sect of our business.Bill: So the line about, you're going to use the extreme range of motion with a weight training exercise to increase flexibility. First of all, either flexibility is important or it's not, and that's one of those things where HIIT has a little bit of an inconsistency, and they'll argue that it's not important, but then they'll say that you can get it with the weights. That's number one. Number two, a lot of the joint positions that machines and free weight exercises put us in, or can put us in, are very vulnerable to the joints, and if you go to an anatomy and biomechanics textbook, that is painfully obvious what those vulnerable positions are. Just because we walk into a gym or a studio and call it exercise instead of manual labor or instead of — instead of calling it submission wrestling and putting our joints or opponents' joints in an externally rotated abduct and extended position, we call it a pec fly, it's still the same shoulder. It's still a vulnerable position whether it's a pec fly stretching you back there, or a jiujitsu guy putting you in a paintbrush, but I don't know, for most of the pop fitness books though, if anybody else is really looking at this. Maybe not in pop fitness, maybe Tom Pervis —Adam: What's pop fitness?Bill: If you walk into a bookstore and look in the fitness section for instance, any of those types. No offense, but celebrity books, glossy celebrity fitness books, but I don't know that anybody — and the feedback that I've gotten from experienced guys like [Inaudible: 00:08:26] or the guys we know personally, is — even McGuff said yeah, I never associated the joint stuff with the exercise stuff.Adam: Let's talk about these vulnerabilities that you're talking about and extreme ranges of motion. So we have to understand a little bit about muscle anatomy to understand what we mean by the dangers of these extreme ranges of motion. So muscles are weaker in certain positions and they're stronger in other positions. Maybe talk about that, because that's where you start getting into why we do what we do, like understanding that muscles don't generate the same amount of force through a range of motion. They have different torque potentials.Mike: And is there a very clear and concise way of communicating that to a lay person too, like we have practice at it, but in here, we're over the radio or over the podcast, so it's like describing pictures with words.Bill: The easiest way to show it to a client who may not understand what muscle torque is, is to have them lock out in an exercise. Take a safe exercise, the barbell curl, where clearly if you allow your elbows to come forward and be vertically under the weight, at the top of the repetition, clearly all of a sudden the effort's gone. There's no resistance, but if you let your elbows drop back to rib height, if you pin your elbows to the sides through the whole curl, now all of a sudden your effort feels even. Instead of feeling like — instead of having effort and then a lockout, or having a sticky point and then a lockout, now it just feels like effort.Adam: Or a chest press where your elbows are straight and the weights are sitting on those elbows, you're not really working too hard there either.Bill: Same thing. If you have a lockout — what's easy to demonstrate is when the resistance torque that the machine or exercise provides doesn't match your muscle torque. So if your muscle torque pattern changes in the course of a movement, if you feel a lockout or a sticking point, then it's not a line. If all you feel is effort, now it matches pretty evenly. Now here's the thing, all that really means, and part of what I got away for a moment on — all that really means is that that set is going to be very efficient. Like for instance, the whole length of the reputation you're working. It's not like you work and lockout and rest, all that means is that it's going to be a very efficient set. You can't change a muscle torque curve, so if you were just to do some kind of weird angled exercise, you wouldn't get stronger in that angle. All you would do is use a relatively lower weight. Nobody does like a scott bench curl, nobody curls more than a standing curl. You can't change the muscle torque curve, you might change the angle, which means the amount of weight that your hand has change, to accommodate the different torque at that joint angle, but you're not changing where you're strongest. If you could, you would never know you had a bad [Inaudible: 00:11:36], because if the pattern — if the muscle torque pattern could change with a good [Inaudible: 00:11:44], it would also change with a bad [Inaudible: 00:11:47], and then you would never know. Take a dumbbell side raise, everybody on the planet knows it's hardest when your arms are horizontal. Your muscle torque curve can never change to accommodate what the resistance is asking. Now if you go from a machine side raise, which has more even — like where those two curves match, that set feels harder because you don't have to break. You do a set of side raises with dumbbells to failure, if it feels — if it's a difficulty level of ten, of force out of ten, and then you go to a machine side raise and go to failure, it's like a ten, because you didn't have that break built into the actual rep. So the moment arms, knowing how to match the resistance required by the exercise and the muscle torque expressed by your limbs, that makes for a more efficient exercise. In terms of safety, it's all about knowing what the vulnerable positions of the joints are and cutting the exercise short, so that you're not loading the joint into an impingement, or into like an overstretched position.Mike: How different are these…. like thinking about limitation and range of motion on them, we mentioned that before and I think it's kind of adjacent to what you're talking about is — we also want to help people understand that if they're on their own exercising or there are other trainers who want to help their clients, and for our trainers to help our clients… troubleshooting, we know generally how the joints work, where the strength curves exist, but how to discern where those limitations are. Like you said before, that one of the things you do is you limit range of motion and get much more stimulus and muscle.Bill: I'm saying limit range of motion because that might be the verbiage that we understand and maybe listeners would understand, but it's really a lot more complicated than just saying, use this range of motion. So for instance, in a lower back exercise, say a stiff leg or dead lift, which, when I used to misinterpret that by using a full range of motion, I'd be standing on a bench with a barbell, and the barbell would be at shoe level. My knees would be locked, my lower back would be rounded, my shoulders would be up my ears as I'm trying to get the bar off the ground, and so yes, I was using a full range of motion.Adam: That's for sure.Mike: That can be painted for that description.Bill: It's also pretty much a disaster on your lower back waiting to happen, at least on your lower back.Adam: I've got to go to a chiropractor just listening to that.Bill: Exactly, but you still see it all the time. You see it all the time on people using kettle bells, you see that exact posture. The kettle bell is between their legs, their knees are locked, their lower back is rounded, and now they're doing a speed lift. At least I was doing them slow, they're doing speed dead lifts, so if I was going to do an exercise like that, it wouldn't be an extreme range of motion, I'd be looking to use a correct range of motion. So for instance, I wouldn't lock the knees, and I would only lower the person's torso so that they could keep the curve in the lower back. Which might require a rep or two to see where that is, but once you see where that is, that's what I would limit them to.Mike: Do you do it at first with no weight with the client?Bill: That'd be one way of lining it up.Mike: Just sort of seeing what they can just do, make sure they understand the position and stuff.Bill: So for instance, the chest press machine I have in the studio is a Nitro —Adam: [Inaudible: 00:15:37] Nitro.Bill: And it doesn't — the seat doesn't adjust enough for my preference, so the person's elbows come too far back. So for instance, to get the first rep off the ground, the person's elbows have to come way behind the plane of their back, which —Adam: So you've come to weigh stack themBill: Weigh stack, right.Mike: It's like our pull over, you know how we had to pull it over at one point?Bill: So what I'll do is I'll help the person out of the first repetition, help them out of the bottom, and then I'll have my hand to the clipboard where I want their elbow to stop. So as soon as they touch my hand with their elbow, they start to go the other way.Adam: So they're not stretching their pecs too far.Bill: Well more specifically, they're not rotating their shoulder capsule. So that's another thing we tend to do, we tend to think of everything in terms of the big, superficial muscles — right, those are the ones that don't get hurt, it's the joints that [do]. That was one thing of all the stuff I read, whether it was CSCS or Darton's stuff or Jones' stuff, there was always a little murkiness between what was the joint and what was the muscle. That stuff was always written from the point of view of the muscle.Adam: What's a joint capsule, for those that don't know what a joint capsule is. A shoulder capsule.Bill: It's part of the structure of what holds your shoulder together, and so if the old [Inaudible: 00:17:06] machines, 1980 vintage, that bragged about getting such an extreme range of motion, some of them… it really took your shoulder to the limit of where it could go to start the exercise, and we were encouraged to go that far.Adam: And what would happen?Bill: Eventually it just adds to the wear and tear that you were going to have in your shoulder anyway. And that's if people stayed with it, I think a lot of people ended up dropping out.Mike: Often times exacerbating what was going on.Bill: You rarely see, it's occasional that we have that sort of catastrophic event in the gym, it's occasional —Mike: Almost never happens.Bill: A lot of the grief that I take for my material is well, that never happens, people do this exercise all the time, people never explode their spine. Well a) that's not true, they do, just not in that persons' awareness, and b) but the real problem is unnecessarily adding to life's wear and tear on your joints. So it's not just what we do in the gym that counts, if somebody plays tennis or somebody has a desk job or manual labor job — let's say a plumber or some other manual labor guy has to go over his head with his arms a lot, that wear and tear on his shoulder counts, and just because they walk into your gym, and you ask them about their health history, do you have any orthopedic problems and they say no, yes. I'm on the verge of an orthopedic problem that I don't know about, and I've worn this joint out because of work, but no I have no orthopedic problems at the moment. So my thing is, the exercise I'm prescribing isn't going to make that worse.Adam: Well you don't want to make it worse, and that's why you're limiting range of motion, that's why you're matching the strength curve of the muscle with the resistance curve of the tool you're using, whether it's free weight or machine or the cam.Bill: Yeah, we're supposed to be doing this for the benefits of exercise. I do not — I truly do not understand crippling yourself over the magical benefit of exercise. I mean there's no — in 2014, there was a lot of negative publicity with Crossfit, with some of the really catastrophic injuries coming about. There's no magic benefits just because you risk your life, you either benefit from exercise or you don't, but you don't get extra magic benefit because you pushed something to the brink of cracking your spine or tearing your shoulder apart.Adam: Well they talk about them being functional or natural movements, that they do encourage these full ranges of motion because that's what you do in life.Bill: Where? Mike: Well I mean like in sports for example, you're extending your body into a range of motion — and also there are things in life, like for example, like I was saying to Adam, for example, sometimes you have to lift something that's heavy and you have to reach over a boundary in front of you to do so.Bill: Like… putting in the trunk of a car, for example.Mike: Things like that, or even —Adam: So shouldn't you exercise that way if that's what you're doing in every day life?Mike: If your daily life does involve occasional extreme ranges of motion, which that's the reason why your joints of kind of wearing and tearing anyway, is there something you can do to assist in training that without hurting it? Or exacerbating it?Bill: You know it's interesting, 25 years ago, there was a movement in physical therapy and they would have back schools, and they would — it was sort of like an occupational oriented thing, where they would teach you how to lift, and at the time, I thought that was so frivolous. I just thought, get stronger, but lifting it right in the first place is really the first step to not getting injured. Mike: Don't life that into the trunk unless —Bill: Well unless you have to, right? For instance, practicing bad movements doesn't make you invulnerable to the bad movements, you're just wearing out your free passes. Now sport is a different animal, yes you're going to be — again, I don't think anyone is doing this, but there's enough wear and tear just in your sport, whether it's football, martial arts, running, why add more wear and tear from your workout that's there to support the sport. The original [Inaudible: 00:21:52] marketing pitch was look how efficient we made weight training, you can spend more time practicing. You don't have to spend four hours a day in the gym, you can spend a half hour twice a week or three times a week in the gym, and get back to practicing.Adam: I remember Greg [Inaudible: 22:06] said to a basketball coach that if his team is in his gym more than 20 minutes or so a week, that he's turning them into weight lifters and not basketball players.Bill: Well there you go. Now —Mike: The thing is the training and the performance goals in getting people stronger, faster, all that kind of stuff, is like unbelievable now a days, but I've never seen more injuries in sports in my entire life than right now.Bill: It's unbelievably bogus though is what it is. You see a lot of pec tears in NFL training rooms. Adam: So why aren't they learning? Why is it so hard to get across then?Bill: Well for starters, you're going to churn out — first of all you're dealing with twenty year olds. Adam: So what, what are you saying about twenty year olds?Bill: I was a lot more invincible at twenty than I am at sixty.Mike: Physically and psychologically.Bill: The other thing for instance. Let's say you've got a college level, this is not my experience, I'm repeating this, but if you have a weight room that's empty, or, and you're the strength and conditioning coach, because you're intensely working people out, briefly, every day. Versus the time they're idle, they're off doing their own thing. Or, every day the administrators and the coaches see people running hoops and doing drills, running parachutes and every day there is an activity going. What looks better? What is more job security for that strength and conditioning coach? Adam: Wait a second. What is Jim the strength training coach doing? He's working one day a week and what's he doing the rest of the week?Mike: And what's the team doing the rest of the week?Bill: But again, don't forget, if you're talking about twenty something year old athletes, who knows what that's going to bring on later.Adam: You are seeing more injuries though.Bill: Right. A couple of years ago, ESPN had a story on a guy. He had gotten injured doing a barbell step up, so a barbell step up, you put a barbell on your back, you step onto a bench, bring the other foot up. Step back off the bench, four repetitions. Classic sports conditioning exercise, in this guys case either he stepped back and twisted his ankle and fell with the bar on his back, or when he went to turn to put the bar back on the rack, when he turned, it spun on him and he damaged his back that way. Either way, he put his ability to walk at risk, so the ESPN story was, oh look how great that is he's back to playing. Yes, but he put his ability to walk at risk, to do an exercise that is really not significantly — it's more dangerous than other ways of working your legs, but it's not better.Adam: The coaches here, the physical trainers, they don't have evidence that doing step ups is any more effective in the performance of their sport, or even just pure strength gains. Then lets say doing a safe version of a leg press or even squats for that matter.Bill: And even if you wanted to go for a more endurance thing, running stadium steps was a classic exercise, but stadium steps are what, three or four inches, they made them very flat. Even that's safer because there's no bar on your back. So on the barbell step up, which I think is still currently in the NSCA textbooks, the bar is on your back. If the bench is too high, you have to bend over in order to get your center of gravity over the bench, otherwise you can't get off the floor. So now you're bent over with one foot in front of you, so now you don't even have two feet under you like in a barbell squat to be more stable. You have your feet in line, with the weight extending sideways, and now you do your twenty repetitions or whatever and you're on top of the bench, and your legs are burning and you're breathing heavy, and now you've got to get off. How do you get off that bench when your legs are gassed, you're going to break and lock your knee, and the floor is going to come up — nobody steps forward, they all step backwards where you can't see. Mike: Even after doing an exercise, let's say you did it okay or whatever and whether it was congruent or not congruent, sometimes, if it's a free weight type of thing, just getting the weight back on the floor or on the rack. After you've gone to muscle failure or close to muscle failure —Adam: So are these things common now, like still in the NFL they're doing these types of training techniques? Bill: I don't really know what's happening in the NFL or the college level, because frankly I stopped my NSCA membership because I couldn't use any material with my population anyway. So I don't really know what they are — I do know that that was a classic one, and as recently as 2014 — in fact one other athlete actually did lose his ability to walk getting injured in that exercise. Adam: It's cost benefit, like how much more benefit are you getting —Bill: It's cost. My point is that the benefit is — it's either or.Mike: That's the thing, people don't know it though, they think the benefit is there. That's the problem.Bill: They think that for double the risk, you're going to get quadruple the benefit. What, what benefit? What magic benefit comes out of putting your ability to walk at risk?Mike: One of my clients has a daughter who was recruited to row at Lehigh which is a really good school for that, and she, in the training program, she was recruited to go. She was a great student but she was recruited to row, and in the training program, she hurt her back in the weight room in the fall, and never, ever was with the team. This was a very, very good program — Bill: Very good program, so it's rowing, so a) it's rough on your lower back period, and b) I'm completely guessing here, but at one time they used to have their athletes doing [Inaudible: 00:28:22] and other things —Adam: Explain what a clean is —Bill: Barbells on the floor and you either pull it straight up and squat under the bar, which would be like an olympic clean, or you're a little more upright and you just sort of drag the bar up to your collarbones, and get your elbows underneath it. Either way it's hard on the back, but at one time, rowing conditioning featured a lot of exercises like that to get their back stronger, that they're already wearing out in the boat. They didn't ask me, but if I was coaching them, I would not train their lower backs in the off season. I would let the rowing take care of that, I would train everything around their back, and give their back a break, but they didn't ask.Adam: I don't know why they didn't ask you, didn't they know that you're a congruent exerciser?Bill: You've got to go to a receptive audience.Mike: I think because there are things we do in our lives that are outside, occasionally outside our range of motion or outside — that are just incongruent or not joint friendly, whether it's in sports or not. The thing is, I'm wondering are there exercises that go like — say for example you have to go — your sport asks for range of motion from one to ten, and you need to be prepared to do that, if you want to do that, the person desires to do that. Are there exercises where you go — can you be more prepared for that movement if you are doing it with a load or just a body weight load, whatever, up to say level four. Are there situations where it's okay to do that, where you're going a slight increase into that range where it's not comprising joint safety, and it's getting you a little bit more prepared to handle something that is going on.Adam: So for example, for a golf swing, when you do a golf swing, you're targeting the back probably more than you should in a safe range of motion in an exercise. I would never [Inaudible: 00:30:32] somebody's back in the exercise room to the level that you have to [Inaudible: 00:30:34] your back to play golf. So I guess what Mike is asking is is there an exercise that would be safe to [Inaudible: 00:30:41] the back, almost as much as you would have to in golf.Bill: I would say no. I would say, and golf is a good example. Now if you notice, nobody has their feet planted and tries to swing with their upper body.Mike: A lot of people do, that's how you hurt yourself.Bill: But any sport, tennis, throwing a baseball, throwing a punch. Get your hips into it, it's like standard coaching cliche, get your hips into it. What that does is it keeps you from twisting your back too much. In golf, even Tiger who was in shape for quite a while couldn't help but over twist and then he's out for quite a while with back problems.Mike: Yeah, his story is really interesting and complicated. He did get into kind of navy seal training and also you should see the ESPN article on that which really — after I read that I thought that was the big thing with his problems. Going with what you just said about putting your hips into it, I'm a golfer, I try to play golf, and I did the TPI certification. Are you familiar with that? I thought it was really wonderful, I thought I learned a lot. I wasn't like the gospel according to the world of biomechanics, but I felt like it was a big step in the right direction with helping with sports performance and understanding strength and mobility. One of the bases of, the foundation of it, they — the computer analysis over the body and the best golfers, the ones that do it very very efficiently, powerfully and consistently, and they showed what they called a [Inaudible: 00:32:38] sequence, and it's actually very similar, as you said, in all sports. Tennis, golf, throwing a punch, there's a sequence where they see that the people who do it really, really well, and in a panfry way, it goes hip first, then torso, then arm, then club. In a very measured sequence, despite a lot of people who have different looking golf swings, like Jim [Inaudible: 00:32:52], Tiger Woods, John Daley, completely different body types, completely different golf swings, but they all have the — if you look at them on the screen in slow motion with all the sensors all over their body, their [Inaudible: 00:33:04] sequence is identical. It leads to a very powerful and consistent and efficient swing, but if you say like if you have limitations in you mobility between your hips and your lumbar spine, or your lumbar spine and your torso, and it's all kind of going together. It throws timing off, and if you don't have those types of things, very slowly, or quickly, you're going to get to an injury, quicker than another person would get to an injury. The thing is, at the same time, you don't want to stop someone who really wants to be a good golfer. We have to give the information and this is a — people have to learn the biomechanics and the basic swing mechanics of a golf swing, and then there's a fitness element to it all. Are you strong enough, do you have the range of motion, is there a proper mobility between the segments of your body in order to do this without hurting yourself over time, and if there isn't, golf professionals and fitness professionals are struggling. How do I teach you how to do this, even though it's probably going to lead you to an injury down the line anyway. It's a puzzle but the final question is, what — I'm trying to safely help people who have goals with sports performance and without hurting them.Bill: First of all, any time you go from exercise in air quotes to sports, with sports, there's almost an assumption of risk. The person playing golf assumes they're going to hurt a rotator cuff or a back, or they at least know it's a possibility. It's just part of the game. Football player knows they could have a knee injury, maybe now they know they could have a concussion, but they just accept it by accepting it on the court or the turf. They walk into our studio, I don't think that expectation — they may expect it also, but I don't think it really belongs there. I don't think you're doing something to prepare for the risky thing. The thing you're doing to prepare for the risky thing shouldn't also be risky, and besides, let them get hurt on that guy's time, not on your time. I'm being a little facetious there, I don't buy the macho bullshit attitude that in order to challenge myself physically, I have to do something so reckless I could get hurt. That's just simply not necessary. If somebody says I want to be an Olympic weightlifter, I want to be a power lifter, just like if they want to be a mixed martial artist, well then you're accepting the fact that that activity is your priority. Not your joint health, not your safety. That activity is your priority, and again, nobody in professional sports is asking me, but I would so make the exercise as safe as possible. As safe as possible at first, then as vigorous as possible, and then let them take that conditioning and apply it to their sport.Adam: If a sport requires that scapulary traction at a certain time in a swing or whatever they're asking for, I don't really think that there's a way in the exercise room of working on just that. Scapular traction, and even if you can, it doesn't mean it's going to translate to the biomechanics and the neuro conditioning and the motor skill conditioning to put it all together. Bill: You can't think that much —Adam: I'm just thinking once and for all, if strong hips are what's important for this sport, a strong neck is what's important for this. If being able to rotate the spine is important and you need your rotation muscles for the spine, work your spine rotationally but in a very safe range of motion. Tax those muscles, let them recover and get strong so when you do go play your sport, lets say a golf swing, it's watching the videos and perfecting your biomechanics, but there's nothing I think you can do in the gym that is going to help you really coordinate all those skills, because you're trying to isolate the hip abductor or a shoulder retractor. Mike: Well I was going to say, I think isolating the muscles in the gym is fine, because it allows you to control what happens, you don't have too many moving parts, and this is kind of leading up to the conversational on functional training.Adam: Which is good even if you can do that. You might notice there's a weakness —Mike: Yeah but if you're going to punch, you don't think okay flex the shoulder, extend at the — Adam: There are a lot of boxers that didn't make it because they were called arm punchers. Bill: So at some point you can't train it. You need to realize gee that guy has good hip movement, let me direct him to this sport.Adam: So I think what Mike's asking is is there some kind of exercise you can do to turn an arm puncher, let's use this as an example, turn an arm puncher into a hip puncher? If you can maybe do something —Bill: I think it's practice though. Mike: I think there's a practice part of it. Going back to the golf swing, one of the things that they were making a big deal out of is, and it goes back to what we mentioned before, sitting at a desk and what's going on with our bodies. Our backs, our hips, our hamstrings. As a result of the amount of time that most of us in our lives have, and we're trainers, we're up on our feet all day, but a lot of people are in a seated position all the time. Adam: Hunched over, going forward.Mike: Their lower back is —Bill: Hamstrings are shortened, yeah.Mike: What is going on in the body if your body is — if you're under those conditions, eight to ten hours a day, five days a week. Not to mention every time you sit down in your car, on the train, have a meal, if you're in a fetal position. My point is, they made a big thing at TPI about how we spend 18-20 hours a day in hip flexion, and what's going on. How does that affect your gluten if you're in hip flexion 20 hours a day. They were discussing the term called reciprocal inhibition, which is — you know what I mean by that?Bill: The muscle that's contracting, the opposite muscle has to relax.Mike: Exactly, so if the hip is flexed, so as the antagonist muscle of the glue which is being shut off, and therefore —Bill: Then when you go to hip henge, your glutes aren't strong enough to do the hip henge so you're going to get into a bad thing.Mike: Exactly, and the thing as I said before —Adam: What are they recommending you do though?Mike: Well the thing is they're saying do several different exercises to activate the gluten specifically and —Adam: How is that different than just doing a leg press that will activate them?Mike: Adam, that's a good question and the thing is it comes back to some of the testimonials. When you deal with clients, often times if you put them on a leg press, they'll say I'm not feeling it in my glutes, I'm only feeling it in my quads, and other people will say, I'm feeling it a lot in my glutes and my hamstrings, and a little bit in my quads.Adam: But if they don't feel it in their glutes, it doesn't mean that their glutes aren't activated, for sure.Mike: Bill, what do you think about that?Bill: I think feel is very overrated in our line of work. I can get you to feel something but it's not — you can do a concentration curl, tricep kickback, or donkey kicks with a cuff, and you'll feel something because you're not — you're making the muscle about to cramp, but that's not necessarily a positive. As far as activating the glutes go, if they don't feel it on the leg press, I would go to the abductor machine. Mike: I mean okay, whether it's feel it's overrated, that's the thing that as a trainer, I really want the client to actually really make the connection with the muscle part.Bill: Well yeah, you have to steer it though. For instance, if you put somebody on the abductor machine and they feel the sides of their glutes burn, in that case, the feel matches what you're trying to do. If you have somebody doing these glute bridging exercises where their shoulders are on a chair and their hips are on the ground, knees are bent, and they're kind of just driving their hips up. You feel that but it's irrelevant, you're feeling it because you're trying to get the glutes to contract at the end of where — away from their strongest point. You're not taxing the glutes, you're getting a feeling, but it's not really challenging the strength of the glutes. So I think what happens with a lot of the approaches like you're describing, where they have half a dozen exercises to wake up the glutes, or engage them or whatever the phrase is.Mike: Activate, yeah.Bill: There's kind of a continuity there, so it should be more of a progression rather than all of these exercises are valid. If you've got a hip abductor machine, the progression is there already.Mike: The thing is, it's also a big emphasis, it's going back to TPI and golf and stuff, is the mobility factor. So I think that's the — the strength is there often times, but there's a mobility issue every once in a while, and I think that is — if something is, like for example if you're very, very tight and if your glutes are supposed to go first, so says TPI through their [Inaudible: 00:42:57] sequence, but because you're so tight that it's going together, and therefore it's causing a whole mess of other things which might make your club hit the ground first, and then tension in the arms, tension in the back, and all sorts of things. I'm thinking maybe there are other points, maybe the mobility thing has to be addressed in relation to a golf swing, more so than are the glutes actually working or not.Bill: Well the answer is it all could be. So getting back to a broader point, the way we train people takes half an hour, twice a week maybe. That leaves plenty of time for this person to do mobility work or flexibility work, if they have a specific activity that they think they need the work in.Mike: Or golf practice.Bill: Well that's what I'm saying, even if it's golf and even if — if you're training for strength once or twice a week, that leaves a lot of time that you can do some of these mobility things, if the person needs them. That type of program, NASM has a very elaborate personal trainer program, but they tend to equally weight every possible — some people work at a desk and they're not — their posture is fine. Maybe they just intuitively stretch during the day, so I think a lot of those programs try to give you a recipe for every possible eventuality, and then there's a continuum within that recipe. First we're going to do one leg bridges, then we're going to do two leg bridges, now we're going to do two leg bridges on a ball, now we're going to do leg bridges with an extra weight, now we're going to do two leg bridges with an elastic band. Some of those things are just progressions, there's no magic to any one of those exercises, but I think that's on a case by case basis. If the person says I'm having trouble doing the swing the way the instructor is teaching me, then you can pick it apart, but the answer is not necessarily weight training.Mike: The limitation could be weakness but it could be a mobility thing, it could be a whole bunch of things, it could be just that their mechanics are off.Bill: And it could just be that it's a bad sport for them. The other thing with postural issues, is if you get them when a person's young, you might be able to correct them. You get a person 60, 70, it may have settled into the actual joints. The joints have may have changed shape.Adam: We've got people with kyphosis all the time. We're going to not reverse that kyphosis. You have these women, I find it a lot with tall women. They grow up taller than everyone else in their class and they're shy so they end up being kyphotic because they're shy to stand up tall. You can prevent further degeneration and further kyphosis.Bill: Maybe at 20 or 25, if you catch that, maybe they can train out of it, but if you get it when it's already locked in, all you can do is not do more damage.Adam: So a lot of people feel and argue that machines are great if you want to just do really high intensity, get really deep and go to failure, but if you want to really learn how to use your body in space, then free weights and body weight movements need to be incorporated, and both are important. Going to failure with machines in a safe manner, that might be cammed properly, but that in and of itself is not enough. That a lot of people for full fitness or conditioning if you will, you need to use free weights or body weight movements —Mike: Some people even think that machines are bad and only body weights should be done.Adam: Do you have an opinion about if one is better than the other, or they both serve different purposes and they're both important, or if you just use either one of them correctly, you're good.Bill: Let's talk about the idea that free weights are more functional than machines. I personally think it's what you do with your body that makes it functional or not, and by functional, that's —Adam: Let's talk about that, let's talk about functional training.Bill: I'm half mocking that phrase.Adam: So before you even go into the question I just asked, maybe we can talk about this idea, because people are throwing around the expression functional training nowadays. So Crossfit is apparently functional training, so what exactly was functional training and what has it become?Bill: I don't know what they're talking about, because frankly if I've got to move a tire from point A to point B, I'm rolling it, I'm not flipping it. Adam: That would be more functional, wouldn't it.Bill: If I have to lift something, if I have a child or a bag of groceries that I have to lift, I'm not going to lift a kettle bell or dumbbell awkwardly to prepare for that awkward lift. In other words, I would rather train my muscles safely and then if I have to do something awkward, hopefully I'm strong enough to get through it, to withstand it. My thought was, when I started in 1982 or so, 84, 83, somewhere in the early 80s I started to train, most of us at the time were very influenced by the muscle magazines. So it was either muscle magazines, or the [Inaudible: 00:48:24] one set to failure type training, but the people that we were training in the early 80s, especially in Manhattan, they weren't body builders and they weren't necessarily athletes. So to train business people and celebrities and actors etc, like you would train an athlete seemed like a bad idea. Plus how many times did I hear, oh I don't want to get big, or I'm not going out for the Olympics. Okay fine, but then getting to what Mike said before, if someone has a hunched over shoulder or whatever, now you're tailoring the training to what the person is in front of you, to what is relevant to their life. 20 inch arms didn't fascinate them, why are you training them to get 20 inch arms? Maybe a trimmer waist was more their priority, so to my eye, functional training and personal training, back in the 80s, was synonymous. Somewhere since the 80s, functional training turned into this anti machine approach and functional training for sport was [Inaudible: 00:49:32] by a guy named Mike Boyle. His main point in there is, and I'm paraphrasing so if I get it wrong, don't blame him, but his point was as an athlete, you don't necessarily need to bench heavy or squat heavy or deadlift heavy, although it might be helpful, but you do need the muscles that hold your joints together to be in better shape. So all of his exercises were designed around rotator cuff, around the muscles around the spine, the muscles around the hips, the muscles around the ankles. So in his eye it was functional for sport, he was training people, doing exercises, so they would hold their posture together so that that wouldn't cause a problem on the field. That material was pretty good, went a little overboard I think in some ways, but generally it was pretty good, but then it kind of got bastardized as it got caught into the commercial fitness industry, and it just became an excuse for sequencing like a lunge with a curl with a row with a pushup, to another lunge, to a squat. It just became sort of a random collection of movements, justified as being functional, functional for what? At least Boyle was functional for sport, his point was to cut injuries down in sport. Where is the function in stringing together, again, a curl, to a press, to a pushup, to a squat, back to the curl, like one rep of each, those are more like stunts or feats of strength than they are, to me, exercise, Adam: So when you're talking about the muscles around the spine or the rotator cuffs, they're commonly known as stabilizer muscles, and when we talk about free weights versus machines, a lot of times we'll say something like, well if you want to work your stabilizer muscles, you need to use free weights, because that's how you work the stabilizer muscles. What would you say to that?Bill: I would say that if they're stabilizing while they're using the free weights, then they're using the stabilizer muscles, right?Adam: And if they're stabilizing while using a machine?Bill: They're using their stabilizer muscles.Adam: Could you work out those stabilizer muscles of the shoulder on a machine chest press, the same way you can use strength in stabilizer muscles of the shoulder on a free weight bench press?Bill: Yes, it's what your body is doing that counts, not the tool. So if someone is on a free weight…Mike: Is it the same though, is it doing it the same way? So you can do it both ways, but is it the same?Bill: If you want to — skill is very specific, so if you want to barbell bench press, you have to barbell bench press.Adam: Is there an advantage to your stabilizer muscles to do it with a free weight bench press, as opposed to a machine?Bill: I don't see it, other than to help the ability to free weight bench press, but if that's not why the person is training, if the person is just training for the health benefits of exercise to use it broadly, I don't think it matters — if you're on a machine chest press and you're keeping your shoulder blades down and back, and you're not buckling your elbows, you're voluntarily controlling the range of the motion. I don't see how that stabilization is different than if you're on a barbell bench press, and you have to do it the same way. Adam: You're balancing, because both arms have to work independently in a way.Bill: To me that just makes it risky, that doesn't add a benefit.Mike: What about in contrast to lets say, a pushup. A bodyweight pushup, obviously there's a lot more going on because you're holding into a plank position which incorporates so many more muscles of your entire body, but like Adam and I were talking the other day about the feeling — if you're not used to doing pushups regularly, which Adam is all about machines and stuff like that, I do a little bit of everything, but slow protocol. It's different, one of our clients is unbelievably strong on all of the machines, we're talking like top 10% in weight on everything. Hip abduction, leg press, chest press, pull downs, everything, and this guy could barely do 8 limited range of motion squats with his body weight, and he struggles with slow pushups, like doing 5 or 6 pushups. 5 seconds down, 5 seconds up, to 90 degrees at the elbow, he's not even going past — my point is that he's working exponentially harder despite that he's only dealing with his body weight, then he is on the machines, in all categories.Bill: So here's the thing though. Unless that's a thing with them, that I have to be able to do 100 pushups or whatever, what's the difference?Mike: The difference is —Adam: The question is why though. Why could he lift 400, 500 pounds on Medex chest press, he could hardly do a few pushups, and should he be doing pushups now because have we discovered some kind of weakness? That he needs to work on pushups?Bill: Yes, but it's not in his pecs and his shoulders.Mike: I'm going to agree, exactly.Bill: The weakness is probably in his trunk, I don't know what the guy is built like. The weakness is in his trunk because in a pushup, you're suspending yourself between your toes and your arms.Adam: So somebody should probably be doing ab work and lower back extensions?Bill: No he should be doing pushups. He should be practicing pushups, but practicing them in a way that's right. Not doing the pushup and hyper extending his back, doing a pushup with his butt in the air. Do a perfect pushup and then if your form breaks, stop, recover. Do another perfect pushup, because we're getting back into things that are very, very specific. So for instance, if you tell me that he was strong on every machine, and he comes back every week and he's constantly pulling things in his back, then I would say yes, you have to address it.Mike: This is my observations that are more or less about — I think it's something to do with his coordination, and he's not comfortable in his own body. For example, his hips turn out significantly, like he can't put his feet parallel on the leg press for example. So if I ever have him do a limited range of motion lunge, his feet go into very awkward positions. I can tell he struggles with balance, he's an aspiring golfer as well. His coordination is — his swing is really, I hope he never listens to this, it's horrible. Adam: We're not giving his name out.Bill: Here's the thing now. You as a trainer have to decide, am I going to reconfigure what he's doing, at the risk of making him feel very incompetent and get him very discouraged, or do I just want to, instead of doing a machine chest press, say we'll work on pushups. Do you just want to introduce some of these new things that he's not good at, dribble it out to him a little bit at a time so it gives him like a new challenge for him, or is that going to demoralize him?Mike: He's not demoralized at all, that is not even on the table. I understand what you're saying, I think there are other people who would look at it that way. I think he looks at it as a new challenge, I think he knows — like we've discussed this very, very openly. He definitely — it feels like he doesn't have control over his body in a way. Despite his strength, I feel that — my instincts as a trainer, I want to see this guy be able to feel like he's strong doing something that is a little bit more — incorporates his body more in space than just being on a machine. If I'm measuring his strength based on what he can do by pressing forward or pulling back or squatting down, he's passed the test with As and great form. He does all the other exercises with pretty good form, but he's struggling with them. He has to work a lot harder in order to do it, and to be it's an interesting thing to see someone who lifts very heavy weights on the chest press and can barely do 4 slow pushups.Bill: Let's look at the pushups from a different angle. Take someone who could do pushups, who can do pushups adequately, strictly and all. Have another adult sit on their butt, all of a sudden those perfect pushups, even though probably raw strength could bench press an extra person, say, you can't do it, because someone who is thicker in the hips, has more weight around the hips, represented by the person sitting on their back, their dimensions are such that their hips are always going to be weighing them down. So that person's core — like a person with broader hips, in order to do a pushup, their core has to be much stronger than somebody with very narrow hips, because they have less weight in the middle of their body. So some of these things are a function of proportion.Adam: You can't train for it, in other words you can't improve it.Mike: Women in general have their center of gravity in their hips, and that's why pushups are very, very hard.Adam: I have an extremely strong individual, a perfect example of what you're talking about right now. I know people that are extremely, extremely strong, but some of these very, very strong individuals can do a lot of weight on a pullover machine, they can do a lot of weight on a pulldown machine, but as soon as you put them on the chin-up bar, they can't do it. Does that mean they're not strong, does that mean that they can't do chin-ups, that they should be working on chin-ups because we discovered a weakness? No, there's people for example who might have shitty tendon insertions, like you said about body weight and center of gravity, if they have really thick lower body. I notice that people who have really big, thick lower bodies, really strong people — or if they have really long arms, the leverage is different. So it begs the question, lets start doing chin-ups, yeah but you'll never proportionally get better at chin-ups, given your proportions, given your tendon insertions, given your length of your arms. So maybe Mike, this person is just not built to do push-ups and you're essentially just giving him another chest and body exercise that is not necessarily going to improve or help anything, because it's a proportional thing, it's a leverage thing. It's not a strength thing, especially if you're telling me he's so strong and everything else.Bill: The only way you'll know is to try.Mike: Well that's the thing, and that's what I've been doing. We just started it, maybe in the last month, and frankly both of us are excited by it. He's been here for a few years, and he is also I think starving to do something a little new. I think that's a piece of the puzzle as well, because even if you're coming once a week and you get results, it gets a little stale, and that's why I've tried to make an effort of making all the exercises we're doing congruent. Joint friendly, very limited range of motion, and the thing is, he's embracing the challenge, and he's feeling it too. I know the deal with soreness and stuff like that, new stimulus.Bill: In that case, the feeling counts, right? It doesn't always mean something good, it doesn't always mean something bad.Mike: Right, it is a little bit of a marketing thing. Adam: It's a motivator. It's nothing to be ashamed of for motivation. If pushups is motivating this guy, then do pushups, they're a great exercise regardless.Bill: Getting back to your general question about whether free weights lends itself to stabilizing the core better or not, if that's what the person is doing on the exercise, then it is. If the person is doing the pushup and is very tight, yes, he's exercising his core. If the person is doing the pushup and it's sloppy, one shoulder is rising up, one elbow to the side, it doesn't matter that it's a pushup —Adam: He's still not doing it right and he's still not working his core.Bill: Right, so it's really how the person is using their body that determines whether they're training their core appropriately, not the source of the resistance.Adam: I'm sorry, I've done compound rows with free weights in all kinds of ways over the years, and now I'm doing compound row with a retrofitted Medex machine, with a CAM that really represents pretty good CAM design and I challenge anyone to think that they're not working everything they need to work on that machine, because you've still got to keep your shoulders down. You've still got to keep your chest up, you still have to not hunch over your shoulders when you're lowering a weight. I mean there's a lot of things you've got to do right on a compound machine, just like if you're using free weights. I don't personally, I've never noticed that much of a benefit, and how do you measure that benefit anyway? How would you be able to prove that free weights is helping in one way that a machine is not, how do you actually prove something like that? I hear it all the time, you need to do it because you need to be able to —Mike: There's one measuring thing actually, but Bill —Bill: I was going to say, a lot of claims of exercise, a lot of the chain of thought goes like this. You make the claim, the result, and there's this big black box in the middle that — there's no explanation of why doing this leads to this. Mike: If you made the claim and the result turns out, then yes it's correlated and therefore —Bill: I was going to say getting to Crossfit and bootcamp type things, and even following along with a DVD program, whatever brand name you choose. The problem I have with that from a joint friendly perspective is you have too many moving parts for you to be managing your posture and taking care of your joints. Especially if you're trying to keep up with the kettle bell class. I imagine it's possible that you can do certain kettle bell exercises to protect your lower back and protect your shoulders. It's possible, but what the user has to decide is how likely is it? So I know for me personally, I can be as meticulous as I want with a kettle bell or with a barbell deadlift, and at some point, I'm going to hurt myself. Not from being over ambitious, not from sloppy form, something is going to go wrong. Somebody else might look at those two exercises and say no, I'm very confident I can get this. You pay your money, you take your chance.Mike: As a measuring tool, sometimes you never know if one is better or worse but sometimes — every once in a while, even when we have clients come into our gym and you have been doing everything very carefully with them, very, very modest weight, and sometimes people say, you know Mike, I've never had any knee problems and my knees are bothering me a little bit. I think it's the leg press that's been doing it, ever since we started doing that, I'm feeling like a little bit of a tweak in my knee, I'm feeling it when I go up stairs. Something like that, and then one of the first things I'll do is like when did it start, interview them, try to draw some lines or some hypotheses as to what's going on. Obviously there might be some wear and tear in their life, almost definitely was, and maybe something about their alignment on the leg press is not right. Maybe they're right, maybe they're completely wrong, but one of the things I'll do first is say okay, we still want to work your legs. We still want to work your quads, your hamstrings, your glutes, let's try doing some limited range of motions squats against the wall or with the TRX or something like that, and then like hey, how are your knees feeling over the past couple weeks? Actually you know, much much better, ever since we stopped doing the leg press.Bill: Sometimes some movements just don't agree with some joints.Adam: There's a [Inaudible: 01:05:32] tricep machine that I used to use, and it was like kind of like —Bill: The one up here? Yeah.Adam: You karate chop right, and your elbows are stabilized on the pad, you karate chop down. It was an old, [Inaudible: 01:05:45] machine, and I got these sharp pains on my elbows. Nobody else that I trained on that machine ever had that sharp pain in their elbows, but it bothered the hell out of my elbows. So I would do other tricep extensions and they weren't ever a problem, so does that make that a bad exercise? For me it did.Bill: For you it did, but if you notice, certain machine designs have disappeared. There's a reason why those machine designs disappeared, so there's a reason why, I think in the Nitro line, I know what machine you're talking about. They used to call it multi tricep, right, okay, and your upper arms were held basically parallel, and you had to kind of karate chop down.Adam: It wasn't accounting for the carrying angle.Bill: I'll get to that. So your elbows were slightly above your shoulders, and you had to move your elbows into a parallel. Later designs, they moved it out here. They gave them independent axises, that's not an accident. A certain amount of ligament binding happens, and then —Adam: So my ligaments just were not coping with that very well.Bill: That's right. So for instance, exactly what joint angle your ligaments bind at is individual, but if you're going in this direction, there is a point where the shoulder ligaments bind and you have to do this. Well that machine forced us in the bound position, so when movement has to happen, it can't happen at the shoulder because you're pinned in the seat. It was happening in your elbow. It might not be the same with everybody, but that is how the model works.Adam: So getting back to your client on the leg press, like for instance — you can play with different positions too.Mike: Well the thing is, I'm trying to decipher some of — trying to find where the issues may be. A lot of times I think that the client probably just — maybe there's some alignment issues, IT bands are tight or something like that, or maybe there's a weak — there can be a lot of different little things, but the machines are perfect and symmetrical, but you aren't. You're trying to put your body that's not through a pattern, a movement pattern that has to be fixed in this plane, when your body kind of wants to go a little to the right, a little to the left, or something like that. It just wants to do that even though you're still extending and flexing. In my mind and

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Episode 36: Q&A on Meet Day Nutrition, Warming Up, Sleep, and the YouTube Strength Standard.

The Absolute Strength Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 17, 2017 88:47

In this episode, I answer questions submitted from my newsletter group. Sign up for the newsletter here: http://www.kylehuntfitness.com/flexibledietingmanual/ Questions from the show: 1 Alain: What are your thoughts on the highly popularized YouTube strength standards (bench 225, squat 315, and deadlift 405 -all for reps)? Realistic? 2 Nick: (1) You're thoughts on expos like the Arnold? And would you ever have a booth or complete there? (2) Dumbbells vs barbells, should you do both? (3) How important is stretching and warming up? Specially to prevent injury or to improve your lifts? (4) What is the top necessary equipment you need to bring to the gym? 3 Mike: How important is sleep for training? 4 Ian and Don: Would love some advice/guidance on nutrition and eating on a day of a powerlifting meet. (24 hour vs 2 hour) 5 A Few People: How to decide what weight class to compete in? 6 John: Hey Kyle my question is about social media. I am designing a trading card game similar to yugioh or Pokémon if you have ever played those and I'm trying to get a bigger following what is the best way to do that? Second question is that I'm designing a bodybuilding card game where you collect meals sleep and workouts to get your "gainz" lol do you ever play board games and would you play one about bodybuilding? 7 Kurt: How often do you feel DOMS after your workouts? 8 Victor: What is your take on Christian McCafferys 10 reps on the bench press portion of the NFL combine? Does it accurately depict his future at the running back position? 9 Mitch: I had the question about why powerlifters, bodybuilders, etc. don't incorporate wild game into their diet? Lower fat content and organic. 10 A few people asked: I do powerlifting programs but I wanna grow my arms. How would you go about combining the two? 11 Issac: Thanks for answering my previous question! I would like to ask what to do when I get buried by linear progression, should I move on to periodization? For a little bit of context my lifts are definitely what most people would call novice, but I am a small guy (48kg). 12 Ethan: What was your motivation when you started cross fit and would you ever consider going back to it? Connect With Kyle: Instagram: @HuntFitness YouTube: HuntFitnessTV Get Strong Now: http://www.kylehuntfitness.com/absolute-strength/

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Video Delivery and MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) [26:30]

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 15, 2008 26:29

Intro: The Moving Picture Experts Group or MPEG, is a working group of ISO/IEC charged with the development of video and audio encoding standards. In this podcast we look at the MPEG standards and video delivery systems. Mike: Gordon, what sources are we referring to here?Wikipedia and white paper from the MPEG Industry Forum at www.m4if.org/public/documents/vault/m4-out-20027.pdf. we've also got a couple of diagrams from the Verizon website. Mike: What's the history of MPEG? Mike: Are these open standards? Mike: What's the history? Can you tell us about MPEG-1? Mike: How about MPEG-2? Mike: We don't hear much about MPEG-3 - what's up with that? Mike: Let's talk about MPEG-4 now. Mike: What are some of the advantages of MPEG-4? Mike: Let's switch gears and talk about carried video delivery systems - specifically the telcos and cable companies. How is this technology used?It's different for broadcast and video on demand (VOD) content. Let's discuss broadcast systems and look at how Verizon (as an example) is setup. Two National Super Head Ends (SHE) - one in Tampa and the other in Bloomington, IL: - Diversely located - Satellites collect video feeds - Video is converted to digital MPEG-2 and packaged in a 10-GigE payload - SHE servers “pitch” data to the Video Hub Office (VHO) - Three OC-192 SONET (long haul) rings that drop and continue GigE to VHOs Mike: What is OC-192? Mike: OK, these video hub offices are distributed over Verizon's footprint - what happens when they get the video? Video Hub Office (VHO) ex. Burlington MA Combines: - National Channels - VOD Servers “catch” data from the SHE servers - Off-Air, program guide, public, education, and government (PEG) channels, and local ads are injected - Encrypts all content - Content sent over several 1-GigE links to local Video Serving Offices (VSO, ex. CO) over SONET (medium haul) - VSO then sends it to the OLT and then to the PON network for delivery to customer. Mike: Broadcast is still done using traditional RF modulation methods - correct? Yes - that will change - rumor has it Verizon will be trialing IP Broadcasting this summer in Pennsylvania - just a rumor! Mike: Now - Video on Demand (VOD) does things a little differently - correct? Yes - VOD delivers IP content to the customer - it is not in RF format: - Content is requested by user via the IP network (private subnet) - Content is then streamed from the video pumps to the Video Distribution Routers (VDR) in the VHO (ex. Burlington) - VDR then sends 10-GigE links to a Video Aggregation Router (VAR) - The Video Aggregation Router (VAR) then sends it to the Gateway Router (GWR) in the VSO (ex. CO) - GWR then sends it to the OLT and then to the PON network Mike: So - Verizon is combining Voice, Video and Data services on the same fiber? Yes - Here's another nice diagram from the Verizon website:

voice video data pennsylvania picture tampa wikipedia ip motion delivery expert oc satellites verizon vod fiber carrier bloomington optics rf compression pon optical moving pictures off air mpeg vso mike gordon iso iec gige olt sonet mike how mike let wdm demand vod mpeg2 mike ok

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) Details Podcast [32:30]

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 3, 2008 32:30

Intro: Two weeks ago we gave an overview of IPv6. This week we take a look at some of the technical details for this protocol. Mike: Gordon, a couple of weeks ago we discussed Ipv6 - can you give us a quick review - what's the difference between IPv4 and IPv6? The most obvious distinguishing feature of IPv6 is its use of much larger addresses. The size of an address in IPv6 is 128 bits, which is four times the larger than an IPv4 address. A 32-bit address space allows for 232 or 4,294,967,296 possible addresses. A 128-bit address space allows for 2 28 or 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 (or 3.4x1038) possible addresses. In the late 1970s when the IPv4 address space was designed, it was unimaginable that it could be exhausted. However, due to changes in technology and an allocation practice that did not anticipate the recent explosion of hosts on the Internet, the IPv4 address space was consumed to the point that by 1992 it was clear a replacement would be necessary. With IPv6, it is even harder to conceive that the IPv6 address space will be consumed. Mike: It's not just to have more addresses though, is it? It is important to remember that the decision to make the IPv6 address 128 bits in length was not so that every square inch of the Earth could have 4.3x1020 addresses. Rather, the relatively large size of the IPv6 address is designed to be subdivided into hierarchical routing domains that reflect the topology of the modern-day Internet. The use of 128 bits allows for multiple levels of hierarchy and flexibility in designing hierarchical addressing and routing that is currently lacking on the IPv4-based Internet. Mike: Is there a specific RFC for IPv6? The IPv6 addressing architecture is described in RFC 2373. Mike: I know there is some basic terminology associated with IPv6. Can you describe Nodes and Interfaces as they apply to IPv6? A node is any device that implements IPv6. It can be a router, which is a device that forwards packets that aren't directed specifically to it, or a host, which is a node that doesn't forward packets. An interface is the connection to a transmission medium through which IPv6 packets are sent. Mike: How about some more IPv6 terminology - can you discuss Links, Neighbors, Link MTUs, and Link Layer Addresses? A link is the medium over which IPv6 is carried. Neighbors are nodes that are connected to the same link. A link maximum transmission unit (MTU) is the maximum packet size that can be carried over a given link medium, and is expressed in octets. A Link Layer address is the "physical" address of an interface, such as media access control (MAC) addresses for Ethernet links. Mike: Can you give a brief ouline in address syntax? IPv4 addresses are represented in dotted-decimal format. This 32-bit address is divided along 8-bit boundaries. Each set of 8 bits is converted to its decimal equivalent and separated by periods. For IPv6, the 128-bit address is divided along 16-bit boundaries, and each 16-bit block is converted to a 4-digit hexadecimal number and separated by colons. The resulting representation is called colon-hexadecimal. The following is an IPv6 address in binary form: 00100001110110100000000011010011000000000000000000101111001110110000001010101010000000001111111111111110001010001001110001011010 The 128-bit address is divided along 16-bit boundaries: 0010000111011010 0000000011010011 0000000000000000 0010111100111011 0000001010101010 0000000011111111 1111111000101000 1001110001011010 Each 16-bit block is converted to hexadecimal and delimited with colons. The result is: 21DA:00D3:0000:2F3B:02AA:00FF:FE28:9C5A IPv6 representation can be further simplified by removing the leading zeros within each 16-bit block. However, each block must have at least a single digit. With leading zero suppression, the address representation becomes: 21DA:D3:0:2F3B:2AA:FF:FE28:9C5A Mike: I know there are lost of zeros in IPv6 addresses - can you discribe zero compression notation? Some types of addresses contain long sequences of zeros. To further simplify the representation of IPv6 addresses, a contiguous sequence of 16-bit blocks set to 0 in the colon hexadecimal format can be compressed to “::?, known as double-colon. For example, the link-local address of FE80:0:0:0:2AA:FF:FE9A:4CA2 can be compressed to FE80::2AA:FF:FE9A:4CA2. The multicast address FF02:0:0:0:0:0:0:2 can be compressed to FF02::2. Zero compression can only be used to compress a single contiguous series of 16-bit blocks expressed in colon hexadecimal notation. You cannot use zero compression to include part of a 16-bit block. For example, you cannot express FF02:30:0:0:0:0:0:5 as FF02:3::5. The correct representation is FF02:30::5. To determine how many 0 bits are represented by the “::?, you can count the number of blocks in the compressed address, subtract this number from 8, and then multiply the result by 16. For example, in the address FF02::2, there are two blocks (the “FF02? block and the “2? block.) The number of bits expressed by the “::? is 96 (96 = (8 – 2)(16). Zero compression can only be used once in a given address. Otherwise, you could not determine the number of 0 bits represented by each instance of “::?. Mike: IPv4 addresses use subnet masks - do IPv6 addresses? No - a subnet mask is not used for IPv6. Something called prefix length notation is supported. The prefix is the part of the address that indicates the bits that have fixed values or are the bits of the network identifier. Prefixes for IPv6 subnet identifiers, routes, and address ranges are expressed in the same way as Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation for IPv4. An IPv6 prefix is written in address/prefix-length notation. For example, 21DA:D3::/48 is a route prefix and 21DA:D3:0:2F3B::/64 is a subnet prefix. Mike: I know there are three basic types of IPv6 addresses - can you give a brief description of each? 1. Unicast – packet sent to a particular interface A unicast address identifies a single interface within the scope of the type of unicast address. With the appropriate unicast routing topology, packets addressed to a unicast address are delivered to a single interface. To accommodate load-balancing systems, RFC 2373 allows for multiple interfaces to use the same address as long as they appear as a single interface to the IPv6 implementation on the host. 2. Multicast - packet sent to a set of interfaces, typically encompassing multiple nodes A multicast address identifies multiple interfaces. With the appropriate multicast routing topology, packets addressed to a multicast address are delivered to all interfaces that are identified by the address. 3. Anycast – while identifying multiple interfaces (and typically multiple nodes) is sent only to the interface that is determined to be “nearest? to the sender. An anycast address identifies multiple interfaces. With the appropriate routing topology, packets addressed to an anycast address are delivered to a single interface, the nearest interface that is identified by the address. The “nearest? interface is defined as being closest in terms of routing distance. A multicast address is used for one-to-many communication, with delivery to multiple interfaces. An anycast address is used for one-to-one-of-many communication, with delivery to a single interface. In all cases, IPv6 addresses identify interfaces, not nodes. A node is identified by any unicast address assigned to one of its interfaces. Mike: What about broadcasting? RFC 2373 does not define a broadcast address. All types of IPv4 broadcast addressing are performed in IPv6 using multicast addresses. For example, the subnet and limited broadcast addresses from IPv4 are replaced with the link-local scope all-nodes multicast address of FF02::1. Mike: What about special addresses? The following are special IPv6 addresses: Unspecified Address The unspecified address (0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 or ::) is only used to indicate the absence of an address. It is equivalent to the IPv4 unspecified address of 0.0.0.0. The unspecified address is typically used as a source address for packets attempting to verify the uniqueness of a tentative address. The unspecified address is never assigned to an interface or used as a destination address. Loopback Address The loopback address (0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 or ::1) is used to identify a loopback interface, enabling a node to send packets to itself. It is equivalent to the IPv4 loopback address of 127.0.0.1. Packets addressed to the loopback address must never be sent on a link or forwarded by an IPv6 router. Mike: How is DNS handled? Enhancements to the Domain Name System (DNS) for IPv6 are described in RFC 1886 and consist of the following new elements: Host address (AAAA) resource record IP6.ARPA domain for reverse queries Note: According to RFC 3152, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) consensus has been reached that the IP6.ARPA domain be used, instead of IP6.INT as defined in RFC 1886. The IP6.ARPA domain is the domain used by IPv6 for Windows Server 2003. The Host Address (AAAA) Resource Record: A new DNS resource record type, AAAA (called “quad A?), is used for resolving a fully qualified domain name to an IPv6 address. It is comparable to the host address (A) resource record used with IPv4. The resource record type is named AAAA (Type value of 28) because 128-bit IPv6 addresses are four times as large as 32-bit IPv4 addresses. The following is an example of a AAAA resource record: host1.microsoft.com IN AAAA FEC0::2AA:FF:FE3F:2A1C A host must specify either a AAAA query or a general query for a specific host name in order to receive IPv6 address resolution data in the DNS query answer sections. The IP6.ARPA Domain The IP6.ARPA domain has been created for IPv6 reverse queries. Also called pointer queries, reverse queries determine a host name based on the IP address. To create the namespace for reverse queries, each hexadecimal digit in the fully expressed 32-digit IPv6 address becomes a separate level in inverse order in the reverse domain hierarchy. For example, the reverse lookup domain name for the address FEC0::2AA:FF:FE3F:2A1C (fully expressed as FEC0:0000:0000:0000:02AA: 00FF:FE3F:2A1C) is: C.1.A.2.F.3.E.F.F.F.0.0.A.A.2.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.C.E.F.IP6.ARPA. The DNS support described in RFC 1886 represents a simple way to both map host names to IPv6 addresses and provide reverse name resolution. Mike: Can you discuss transition from IPv4 to IPv6? Mechanisms for transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6 are defined in RFC 1933. The primary goal in the transition process is a successful coexistence of the two protocol versions until such time as IPv4 can be retired if, indeed, it's ever completely decommissioned. Transition plans fall into two primary categories: dual-stack implementation, and IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling. More Info Mechanisms for transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6 are defined in RFC 1933. There are two primary methods. Dual Stack Implementation The simplest method for providing IPv6 functionality allows the two IP versions to be implemented as a dual stack on each node. Nodes using the dual stack can communicate via either stack. While dual-stack nodes can use IPv6 and IPv4 addresses that are related to each other, this isn't a requirement of the implementation, so the two addresses can be totally disparate. These nodes also can perform tunneling of IPv6 over IPv4. Because each stack is fully functional, the nodes can configure their IPv6 addresses via stateless autoconfiguration or DHCP for IPv6, while configuring their IPv4 addresses via any of the current configuration methods. IPv6 Over IPv4 Tunneling The second method for implementing IPv6 in an IPv4 environment is by tunneling IPv6 packets within IPv4 packets. These nodes can map an IPv4 address into an IPv4-compatible IPv6 address, preceding the IPv4 address with a 96-bit "0:0:0:0:0:0" prefix. Routers on a network don't need to immediately be IPv6-enabled if this approach is used, but Domain Name System (DNS) servers on a mixed-version network must be capable of supporting both versions of the protocol. To help achieve this goal, a new record type, "AAAA," has been defined for IPv6 addresses. Because Windows 2000 DNS servers implement this record type as well as the IPv4 "A" record, IPv6 can be easily implemented in a Windows 2000 environment. Mike: we've only touched on some of the IPv6 details - where can people get more information? I'm hoping to run a session at our summer conference July 28 - 31 in Austin, TX - we've currently got faculty fellowships available to cover the cost of the conference. See www.nctt.org for details. References - Content for this academic podcast from Microsoft sources: All Linked Documents at Microsoft Internet Protocol Version 6 (note: excellent and free online resources): http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/bb530961.aspx Understanding IPv6, Joseph Davies, Microsoft Press, 2002 ISBN: 0-7356-1245-5 Sample Chapter at: http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/sampchap/4883.asp#SampleChapter

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The FCC 700 MHz Auction Results [17:10]

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 23, 2008 17:10

Intro: On March 18, FCC Auction 73 bidding round 261 ended and, after 38 days and $19.592 billion in bids (almost double the $10 billion the FCC had hoped for), the FCC closed out the auction. In this podcast we review and discuss the auction results.Mike: Gordon, can you give us an overview of the auction results?Sure Mike - this comes from the FCC auction website linked up in the shownotes. Rounds: 261 (started on 1/24 and ended on 3/18) Bidding Days: 38 Qualified Bidders: 214 Winning Bidders: 101 Bidders won 1090 Licenses *Auction 73 concluded with 1090 provisionally winning bids covering 1091 licenses and totaling $19,592,420,000, as shown in the Integrated Spectrum Auction System. The provisionally winning bids for the A, B, C, and E Block licenses exceeded the aggregate reserve prices for those blocks. The provisionally winning bid for the D Block license, however, did not meet the applicable reserve price and thus did not become a winning bid. Accordingly, Auction 73 raised a total of $19,120,378,000 in winning bids and $18,957,582,150 in net winning bids (reflecting bidders' claimed bidding credit eligibility), as shown above. Mike: Before we get into the auction results, can you give us an overview of the different spectrum blocks? I know we've done this before but - how about a quick refresher?Sure Mike - this comes from a blog I wrote back on January 14.Back in 2005 Congress passed a law that requires all U.S. TV stations to convert to all digital broadcasts and give up analog spectrum in the 700 MHz frequency band. This law will free up 62 MHz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band and effectively eliminate channels between 52 and 69. This conversion, which has a deadline of February 18, 2009, has freed up spectrum that is being split up by the FCC into five blocks: A-Block - 12 MHz, split up into 176 smaller economic areasB-Block - 12 MHz, split up into 734 cellular market areasC-Block - 22 MHz, up into 12 regional licensesD-Block - 10MHz, combined with approximately 10MHz allocated for public safety, a single national license.E-Block - 6 MHz, split up into 176 smaller economic areas So in summary, each spectrum block in the 700 MHz auction, except for the national public safely D-Block, has been assigned an area designation by the FCC. All FCC areas, along with names, county lists, maps and map info data can be found on the Commission's website linked here.Mike: How about a quick review of the D-Block again?Sure Mike, this also comes from that January 14 blog:The D-Block lately has been most interesting to watch. Early on it appeared Frontline Wireless would be one of the biggest bidders for D-Block spectrum - the company was setup for D-Block and had worked closely with the FCC on putting together specifications for the spectrum. Frontline built a formidable team including Vice Chairman Reed Hundt, who served as Chairman of the FCC between 1993 and 1997. The business plan, the organization, the technology seemed to all be in place........ On January 12 the company placed the following statement on their website: Frontline Wireless is closed for business at this time. We have no further comment. Another company, Cyren Call also looked like they were planning to bid on the D-Block Auction but did not. What happen? Rumor has it Frontline could not attract enough funders - it seemed like a good investment - or at least you may think so up front. Many are now asking if the FCC's approach to solving the public safety inter-operability problem is in trouble. Mike: OK, how about the results?Here's a summary from the Wall Street Journal:Verizon and AT&T accounted for 80% of the nearly $20 billion AT&T agreed to pay $6.6 billion for 227 spectrum licenses in markets covering much of the country. Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC, won 109 licenses for $9.4 billion. Dish Network Corp., which bid for spectrum through Frontier Wireless LLC, did acquire a significant footprint, winning 168 licenses throughout the country for $712 million. Satellite-TV providers are looking for a way into the high-speed Internet business to better compete with cable and phone companies. But Credit Suisse analyst Chris Larsen said in a research note that the particular segment of spectrum Dish acquired would make it difficult for the company to offer interactive wireless broadband service. He said the company could use the spectrum to broadcast data or for on-demand video. Google had indicated interest in a nationwide package of licenses before the auction, but it bid just high enough to trigger rules that will force winners of one segment of spectrum, known as the C-block, to allow any mobile devices and applications on their networks. Verizon won the lion's share of spectrum in this segment. Google had pushed for the regulation since its efforts to sell some mobile services had been stymied by major carriers, which traditionally have strictly limited the kinds of devices that consumers could use on their networks. Even before the auction had wrapped up, Google scored a victory as Verizon voluntarily agreed to open its network to devices it doesn't sell through its own retail network. Verizon released details of its new policy on Wednesday. Mike: Were there any licenses that dod not get any bids?There were 1,099 licenses auctioned and only eight did not receive any bids: A-Block: Lubbock, TexasWheeling, W.Va. B-Block: Bismarck, N.D.Fargo, N.D.Grand Forks, N.D. Lee, Va. Yancey, N.C. Clarendon, S.C.Mike: So, what will happen to these?These licenses will need to be re-auctioned by the FCC. I'm guessing they were over priced, the FCC will end up dropping the re-auction minimum bid and they will end up going quickly.Mike: What's going to happen with D-Block? The Public Safety D-Block did not meet the minimum bid and the FCC will have to decide what to do. It looks like the FCC could go one of two directions for the re-auction - drop the price or change the requirements. From the start, the public safety D-Block auction was seen as one of the biggest auction challenges...... I've expressed my opinion on the D-Block in the past........ the FCC still has some major work ahead before they can close this one out. This comes from InfoWorld: On Thursday, the FCC voted to de-link the so-called D block from the rest of the auction results. The D block was a 10MHz block that was to be paired with another 10MHz controlled by public safety agencies, and the winning bidder would have been required to build a nationwide voice and data network to serve both public safety and commercial needs. But the FCC failed to receive its $1.33 billion minimum bid for the D block, with the lone $472 million bid coming from Qualcomm. The FCC has no plans to immediately reauction the D block, a spokeswoman said. Instead, the agency "will consider its options for how to license this spectrum in the future," the FCC said in a news release. Mike: So, it looks like the big carriers won?For the most part, yes. Kevin Martin had an interesting quote in an EFluxMedia piece though:"A bidder other than a nationwide incumbent won a license in every market," FCC chairman Kevin Martin said hinting that it’s possible for a "wireless third-pipe" competitor to emerge in every market across the U.S. This would increase the competition and the first one to benefit from it will be the consumer.Things still could get interesting!

The Next-Generation Internet: IPv6 Overview [33:00]

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 16, 2008 33:00

Intro: The world has changed significantly since the Internet was first created. IPv6 gives over 4.3x1020 unique addresses for every square inch on the planet, and is going to allow us to do things we've only dreamed of in the past. In this podcast we give an overview of IPv6. Mike: Gordon, before we get into the technology, can you give us an update on IPv6 history in the United States? Sure Mike, this comes from a 1-minute history of the Internet by Federal Computer week at FCW.COM Mike: So, the federal government has ordered its agencies to become IPv6- capable by June of 2008 and this is going to happen in June on our federal government networks - how about businesses? It's happening with business too Mike. Let's take Verizon as an example as quoted in a Light Reading post from last September. Verizon Business, which began its first phase of deploying IPv6 on the public IP network in 2004, will complete the North America region in 2008 and move into the Asia-Pacific and European regions from late 2008 to 2009. The company will operate both IPv6 and IPv4, in what is known as a "dual stack" arrangement, on its multi protocol label switching (MPLS) network core. The company also has deployed IPv6 throughout its network access points (peering facilities) where Internet service providers exchange traffic. Mike: So, what's the problem with IPv4? It's a combination of a lot of things - Microsoft has a nice set of resources on IPv4 and IPv6 - let's use that as a guide: The current version of IP (known as Version 4 or IPv4) has not been substantially changed since RFC 791 was published in 1981. IPv4 has proven to be robust, easily implemented and interoperable, and has stood the test of scaling an internetwork to a global utility the size of today’s Internet. This is a tribute to its initial design. However, the initial design did not anticipate the following: The recent exponential growth of the Internet and the impending exhaustion of the IPv4 address space. IPv4 addresses have become relatively scarce, forcing some organizations to use a Network Address Translator (NAT) to map multiple private addresses to a single public IP address. While NATs promote reuse of the private address space, they do not support standards-based network layer security or the correct mapping of all higher layer protocols and can create problems when connecting two organizations that use the private address space. Additionally, the rising prominence of Internet-connected devices and appliances ensures that the public IPv4 address space will eventually be depleted. The growth of the Internet and the ability of Internet backbone routers to maintain large routing tables. Because of the way that IPv4 network IDs have been and are currently allocated, there are routinely over 85,000 routes in the routing tables of Internet backbone routers. The current IPv4 Internet routing infrastructure is a combination of both flat and hierarchical routing. The need for simpler configuration. Most current IPv4 implementations must be either manually configured or use a stateful address configuration protocol such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). With more computers and devices using IP, there is a need for a simpler and more automatic configuration of addresses and other configuration settings that do not rely on the administration of a DHCP infrastructure. The requirement for security at the IP level. Private communication over a public medium like the Internet requires encryption services that protect the data being sent from being viewed or modified in transit. Although a standard now exists for providing security for IPv4 packets (known as Internet Protocol security or IPSec), this standard is optional and proprietary solutions are prevalent. The need for better support for real-time delivery of data—also called quality of service (QoS). While standards for QoS exist for IPv4, real-time traffic support relies on the IPv4 Type of Service (TOS) field and the identification of the payload, typically using a UDP or TCP port. Unfortunately, the IPv4 TOS field has limited functionality and over time there were various local interpretations. In addition, payload identification using a TCP and UDP port is not possible when the IPv4 packet payload is encrypted. To address these and other concerns, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has developed a suite of protocols and standards known as IP version 6 (IPv6). This new version, previously called IP-The Next Generation (IPng), incorporates the concepts of many proposed methods for updating the IPv4 protocol. The design of IPv6 is intentionally targeted for minimal impact on upper and lower layer protocols by avoiding the random addition of new features. Mike: OK - can you list the primary features of IPv6? What makes it different? Sure Mike - this list also comes from Microsoft's website. The following are the features of the IPv6 protocol: New header format Large address space Efficient and hierarchical addressing and routing infrastructure Stateless and stateful address configuration Built-in security Better support for QoS New protocol for neighboring node interaction Extensibility Mike: Let's go through the list with a brief summary of each. Your first item on the list was the new header format. What's different? Mike: How about number 2, large address space?Mike: Number 3 was efficient and hierarchical addressing and routing infrastructure - can you describe?Mike: How about number 4, stateless and stateful address configuration?Mike: Number 5 was built-in security.Mike: How about number 6, better support for QoS? Mike: And number 7, new protocol for neighboring node interaction? Mike: And finally, number 8, extensibility.Mike: Are there any other things you want to add to the list?Mike: Are we ready?I always look at the end devices (even though there is so much more) and, if we just look at desktops, you have to look at Microsoft.Microsoft started with the following implementations of IPv6, all subsequent versions/products continue to support IPv6:The IPv6 protocol for the Windows Server 2003 and later families.The IPv6 protocol for Windows XP (Service Pack 1 [SP1] and later).The IPv6 protocol for Windows CE .NET version 4.1 and laterThe capture and parsing of IPv6 traffic is supported by Microsoft Network Monitor, supplied with Microsoft Server 2003 and later products. Mike: This is a good overview - next week we'll get into some details on the IPv6 protocol!

FCC 700 MHz Spectrum Auction Update: D-Block [19:10]

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 24, 2008 19:10

Intro: In this podcast we continue discussion on the in-progress FCC 700 MHz spectrum auction, with a focus on the D-Block public safety piece. Mike: Gordon, can you give us a little background on the auction? Back in 2005 Congress passed a law that requires all U.S. TV stations to convert to all digital broadcasts and give up analog spectrum in the 700 MHz frequency band. This law will free up 62 MHz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band and effectively eliminate channels between 52 and 69. This conversion, which has a deadline of February 18, 2009, has freed up spectrum that is being split up by the FCC into five blocks: A-Block - 12 MHz, split up into 176 smaller economic areasB-Block - 12 MHz, split up into 734 cellular market areasC-Block - 22 MHz, up into 12 regional licensesD-Block - 10MHz, combined with approximately 10MHz allocated for public safety, a single national license.E-Block - 6 MHz, split up into 176 smaller economic areas Each Block has a reserve price set by FCC and if a reserve price is not met in the auction, the FCC will end up re-auctioning that piece of spectrum.Mike: I know we discussed the auction a few weeks ago and not much has changed. Can you give us an update on where the auction is today? Bidding round 102 came to a close yesterday afternoon with $19,524,595,900 (last week the auction finished at $19,450,389,100 - it is slowing) in total provisionally winning bids. Things have slowed considerably with only 40 new bids placed in round 102. For reference, on Thursday, each round averaged about 50 new bids.Most active in the final round yesterday were E-Block licenses in the Bismark, North Dakota and Rapid City, South Dakota areas along with B-Block licenses in the southeastern United States.The public safety D-Block still has not had a bid since the first round and will end up being re-auctioned by the FCC.This may end up being the last week (an FCC decision but I'm thinking so). After the auction is closed the FCC will announce the winners. Mike: Let's talk specifically about D-Block, the public safety piece. What's happened - why are we not seeing any new bids? I think you have to go back and look at the history of D-Block. Early on it appeared Frontline Wireless would be one of the biggest bidders for D-Block spectrum - the company was setup for D-Block and had worked closely with the FCC on putting together specifications for the spectrum. Frontline built a formidable team including Vice Chairman Reed Hundt, who served as Chairman of the FCC between 1993 and 1997. The business plan, the organization, the technology seemed to all be in place........ On January 12 the company placed the following statement on their website: Frontline Wireless is closed for business at this time. We have no further comment. Another company, Cyren Call also looked like they were planning to bid on the D-Block Auction but did not. Mike: So what happened? Rumor has it Frontline could not attract enough funders - it seemed like a good investment - or at least you may think so up front. Many are now asking if the FCC's approach to solving the public safety inter-operability problem is in trouble. At the same time many are also asking "Is there a better way?" I've always liked the idea of public-private partnerships and we've seen them work in times of disaster - last August I wrote here about the Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapse tragedy and how within minutes USI Wireless opened their subscription-based Wi-Fi service so anyone could use it for free. US Wireless didn't just stop there - because the network had only been built around part of the disaster, the company installed additional Wi-Fi radios in areas surrounding the catastrophe to blanket it with signals, providing an additional 12 megabits per second of capacity to the area around the bridge collapse. A national network built from scratch may be too big of a bite though. Mike: So what are we looking at for a solution? Last month I had an interesting conversation with Rivada Networks’ Senior Vice President for External Affairs John Kneuer about emergency responder communications and the FCC Spectrum Auction.. Rivada uses existing cellular networks and commercial off-the-shelf technology to deliver high-speed voice and data services over a network that can survive natural or man-made disasters. I like the idea of using the existing commercial infrastructure for public safety for lots of reasons. State homeland security officials have struggled for years with the inability of local emergency responders to communicate with each other and their federal counterparts during disasters. This inter-operability problem is so serious it has been identified as the number one concern of state homeland security officials in the National Governors Association 2007 State Homeland Security Directors Survey. Here's a quote from the report: Public safety interoperable communications once again topped the list of homeland security advisors’ concerns in 2007 as states continue to work to ensure that first responders from various agencies, jurisdictions, and levels of government can speak to each other during emergencies or at the scene of a disaster. Increasingly, the campaign for interoperability has expanded beyond voice communications to encompass data and video interoperability as well. Mike: How does this system work?Rivada uses existing cellular networks and commercial off-the-shelf technology to deliver high-speed voice and data services over a network that can survive natural or man-made disasters. Right now Rivada is working with National Guard units in 11 states (Alabama, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, and Washington). These units are installing new communications systems for voice and data services over a network that uses existing commercial infrastructure. Not relying on a single network makes a lot of sense when you consider communications survival during natural or man-made disasters.According to a Rivada press release, the Louisiana Army National Guard decided last year to adopt their interoperable public safety communications system for the following reasons:Is available today,Does not require new spectrum allocation or depend on federal spectrum auctions or mandates, andOffers far greater range and capability at a fraction of the cost of other existing or planned technologies. Rivada also supplements existing technology and infrastructure as needed by:Building new towers in areas without sufficient commercial infrastructure;Employing Rivada Interoperable Communications Extension Systems (ICES) – “fly-in? units capable of being deployed within hours – where existing infrastructure has been degraded or destroyed;Using proprietary backwards-compatible technology to provide full interoperability between cell phones, PDAs, laptops, landlines and traditional ‘walkie talkie’-type Land Mobile Radio (LMR) systems; andCombining all of these elements into an efficient network architecture. Mike: Who would these leasing agreements be with?Right now Rivada is not saying who they are making leasing agreements with but it seems like a safe bet to assume Verizon, Sprint and AT&T will be involved - it would be good revenue along with PR and advertising for the companies. In terms of the public safety personnel it makes a whole lot of sense because they would be able to use their day-to-day wireless devices in emergency situations.The providers would build out, maintain and update the infrastructure....... I'm liking this kind of solution.

The FCC 700 MHz Spectrum Auction [28:48]

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2008 28:48

The FCC 700 MHz Spectrum AuctionIntro: In this podcast we discuss the in-progress FCC 700 MHz spectrum auction.Gordon: Mike, you are the reigning Global Wireless Education Consortium Educator of the year so you know about this stuff - what exactly is this spectrum the FCC is auctioning and where did it come from?Back in 2005 Congress passed a law that requires all U.S. TV stations to convert to all digital broadcasts and give up analog spectrum in the 700 MHz frequency band. This law will free up 62 MHz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band and effectively eliminate channels between 52 and 69. This conversion, which has a deadline of February 18, 2009, has freed up spectrum that is being split up by the FCC into five blocks.Gordon: What so interesting about this block of spectrum?Cell coverage, required cell-site density and cost (total network cost and cost per customer).I understand each spectrum block in the 700 MHz auction, except for the national public safely D-Block, has been assigned an area designation by the FCC. Could you describe those areas included in the 700 MHz auction using FCC definitions.Economic AreasBoth the A-Block (12 MHz) and the E-Block (6 MHz) are being auctioned using the Economic Area (BEA) service areas established by the Regional Economic Analysis Division, Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce. Included are Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Gulf of Mexico. There are a total of 176 Economic Area service areas designated by the FCC.BEA services include General Wireless Communications Service (GWCS), Specialized Mobile Radio (SMR) and Location and Monitoring Service (LMS). Cellular Market AreasThe B-Block (12 MHz) is being auctioned using the Cellular Market Area (CMA) service areas. The 734 CMAs are broken down as follows: Areas 1-305: Created from the Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) defined by the Office of Management and Budget (1-305) Area 306: The Gulf of MexicoAreas 307-734: Rural Service Areas (RSAs) established by the FCC which do not cross state borders including parts of Puerto Rico not already in an MSA (723-729), U.S. Virgin Islands (730-731), Guam (732), American Samoa (733), and Northern Mariana Islands (734).CMA Services include Cellular Radiotelephone Service and Interactive Video and Data Service (IVDS) Regional Economic Areas The C-Block (22 MHz) is being auctioned using the 12 Regional Economic Areas (REAs) created by the FCC. The REAs are an aggregation of the 52 Major Economic Areas (MEAs) defined by the FCC. REA Services include Wireless Communications Service (WCS)All FCC areas, along with names, county lists, maps and map info data can be found on the Commission's website linked here. Mike: How is the auction being conducted? On their website, the Federal Communications Commission has a public notice titled Auction of 700 MHZ Band Licenses. This document describes the bidding procedure for the 214 companies that have qualified for the auction, which will be handled by the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (WTB). The WTB is one of seven FCC Bureaus and is responsible for all FCC domestic wireless telecommunications programs and policies.Here's a summary outline of the procedure pulled from the 12 page FCC document: Bidding in Auction 73 started on Thursday, January 24, 2008.Each qualified bidder received prior to January 24: At least two RSA SecurID tokens An Integrated Spectrum Auction System (ISAS) Bidder’s Guide A FCC Auction Bidder Line phone number The FCC will conduct the auction over the Internet and telephonic bidding will also be available. In either case, each authorized bidder must have his or her own SecurID token. There will be a minimum opening bid amount for each license and package and the minimum opening bid amount is subject to reduction at the discretion of the WTB. The WTB will not entertain requests to lower minimum opening bid amounts. The WTB has established the following block-specific aggregate reserve prices for Auction 73: Block A, $1.807380 billion;Block B, $1.374426 billion;Block C, $4.637854 billion;Block D, $1.330000 billion;Block E, $0.903690 billion. Mike: It's interesting the range of reserve prices - is it safe to say that these correlate to the "value" the FCC sees with each?If, at the close of bidding in Auction 73, the aggregate reserve price for the A, B, C and/or E Blocks has not been met, the WTB will issue an announcement that bidding in Auction 73 is closed and set a date for commencement of Auction 76. Round results will be available approximately 10 minutes after the close of each round. and two types of reports will be available to bidders: (a) publicly available information, and (b) bidder-specific information available only to that bidder when logged in to the FCC Auction System. Each qualified bidder will have a default watchlist that contains every license and packages of licenses selected on the bidder’s short-form application. Qualified bidders may also create custom watchlists. On Tuesday, January 22, the WTB conducted a mock auction, which will allow qualified bidders to familiarize themselves with the FCC Auction System. Only qualified bidders will be permitted to participate in the mock auction. Once winning bids are announced (either after Auction 73 or Auction 76) and winning bidders are announced, winning bidders will have 10 business days to file a long-form application (FCC Form 601) and make down payments for all of the licenses it won. Mike: Who are some of the major bidders? USA Today has published an interesting article titled Google could cause a stir in FCC's airwaves auction and, in the article, some of the leading bidders and their likely strategies are listed.Let's take a quick look at some of the major bidders (in alphabetical order) and their expected bidding strategies. For additional detail be sure to read the USA Today Article.AT&T AT&T already has more spectrum than any other carrier so bidding on the 700 MHz band will be used for further build-out. Many experts are speculating AT&T will focus primarily on the D-Block public-safety spectrum.Mike: Why is AT&T going after public-safety spectrum? Am I missing something?Cablevision, Cox, Advance/Newhouse, BresnanThese cable companies are interested in spectrum to provide wireless services and compete with the large providers. Most experts believe they will be bidding on A-Block regional licenses in their service areas.EchoStarEchoStar is a satellite TV provider that is interested in using spectrum to provide wireless broadband access to its customers. Most experts do not feel EchoStar has the money to compete with companies like Google, At&T and Verizon in the auction.GoogleGoogle is the heavyweight here. The company wants to further expand into the cellular smartphone market and has the money to compete with the big providers. The company is expected to bid the $4.6 Billion minimum for the C-Block spectrum.Mike: Is this National Spectrum? As opposed to regional?Leap, MetroPCS,, AlltelLike the cable companies (Cablevision, Cox, etc), these regional wireless companies will likely be bidding on A-Block regional licenses in their service areas. Experts also are speculating Alltel will bid on the public safety D-Block spectrum.Paul Allen and VulcanPaul Allen's (co-founder of Microsoft with Bill Gates) investment company, Vulcan, already owns spectrum in Washington and Oregon.Vulcan may be bidding on some of the C-Block regional licenses or smaller A or B-Block regional licenses.QualcommThe California based wireless manufacturer is looking for spectrum for its MediaFlo smartphone video service. Qualcomm will likely be bidding on E-Block regional licenses.VerizonVerizon will likely be bidding big on C-Block spectrum with plans to open their network to any (hardware and software) devices.Mike: Can you give us some background on the auction to date?The 26th round finished yesterday (Friday - Feb. 1, 2008) afternoon - here's a quick update from the FCC auction site: Bidding Rounds to Date: 26Bid totals to Date: $18,554,080,600The A and B-Blocks have been getting most of the attention lately:The Los Angeles A-Block leads the A's with a current bid of $580,268,000.The Chicago B-Block leads the B's with a current bid of $892,400,000. There has not been a C-Block bid since it passed the FCC reserve price on Thursday. The current C-Block bid is $4,713,823,000.The public safety D-Block has not had a bid in 25 consecutive rounds and is stuck at $472,042,000, well below the $1.3 Billion reserve price set by the FCC.E-Block bidding has been slow with the New York City E-Block leading at $178,897,000.23 licenses had not registered a bid at the end of round 26, 19 of these 23 are in the E-Block. Mike: Any personal observations and opinions on the auction?It looks (to me anyways) like the C-Block bidding may be done. Since the FCC reserve price of $4.6 Billion has been passed, the open-access that Google wanted is assured. We won't know who the winning bidders are until after the auctions have closed but I'd say Google is the current leading C-Block bidder.Right now it does not look like the D-Block will meet the $1.3 Billion reserve price and will end up being re-auctioned by the FCC.A number of E-Block licenses will not meet minimum bids and will also be re-auctioned.The FCC had set an original goal of $10 Billion for the auction. With current bids totaling over $18 Billion, it appears the auction (from the FCC's perspective) will be a success. Bidding is closed for the weekend with round 27 starting Monday (Feb. 4, 2008) morning.Mike: What's the best way to stay updated?If you want to stay updated - the FCC Auction 73: 700 MHz Auction Summary page lists, among other things, results of the auction after each round. You can also watch my blog!Mike: When will we know the winners?The auction will likely last a couple of months so we won't know the winners until then. We should start to see products from the winning bidders that use the spectrum sometime next year.

Broadband the AT&T and Qwest Way [26:40]

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 22, 2007 26:40

Mike Intro: December 19. 2007: Broadband the AT&T and Qwest WayIn this podcast we discuss AT&T and Qwests Fiber to the Node projects. Mike: Gordon, can you give us a little background on what AT&T is doing?Project Lightspeed was announced as a 6 billion dollar project by AT&T in June 2004 and involves running optical fiber out to a remote terminal, or node and providing the last portion of the connection over copper wire. The project was ambitious from the start with initial plans to reach close to 19 million homes by the end of 2008. AT&T has given the product the name U-verse and at the TelcoTV conference last October, VP of converged services at AT&T Labs Research Peter Hill gave the keynote address featuring the product. Here's a few quotes from an October 26 CED Magazine post: AT&T’s roll out of its IPTV video services has been slower than it originally anticipated, but with more than 126,000 current subscribers, the company feels as though it’s on the right track. AT&T started the year with 3,000 video subscribers, then grew that base to 16,000 and 60,000, respectively, in the first and second quarters. “We’re past the point of last year where the question was, ‘Will IPTV scale?’,? said Peter Hill, VP of converged services at AT&T Labs Research, during the first keynote address Wednesday morning at TelcoTV. “You can’t get to that number (126,000 subscribers) without significant flow through and automation. We do have a competitive service and we can do it to scale.? Mike: There's always been concerns about bandwidth, especially when compated to products like the Verizon Fiber to the Home, or FiOS project. How is AT&T doing with U-verse?Bandwidth has been a major concern, with Hill commenting on the H.264 compression standard:“The encoding rates for H.264 have come down faster than we projected,? Hill said. “We’ll be able to do more channels in the same amount of bandwidth.?Mike: What other services will be available?Hill says the company will be adding home DVRs that allow satellite set-top boxes to show video downloaded to the DVR box. Hill also said the company will be adding to the current 30 high-definition channels next year along with photo-sharing and a Voice over IP (VoIP) service. Here's more interesting quotes from the CED Magazine piece:While cable executives have said there is no compelling reason to move to an IP infrastructure to deliver video services, Hill contends that IPTV is “very different from cable and satellite? because the nature of IP allows for easier integration among services while also allowing it to take advantage of Internet partners such as Amazon....... One of those features is “Cinema Center? that allows movies to be purchased from Amazon with one click. The movie portal content would be dynamic and would allow subscribers to view trailers prior to making their purchases. “We don’t have to create this stuff in IP because it reaches out to Web devices and incorporates them into IPTV,? Hill said. Hill demonstrated how an iPhone could be used to remotely program a home TV and how multiple cameras at live events could be selected by the viewer. He also demonstrated a feature that used an i-Phone to remotely configure channel favorites on a home TV. The application would give four different i-Phone users the ability to program their favorite shows on their household TVs. Also discussed was a Web cam feature that would let viewers in different locations view a live performance of a sporting event or dance concert based on IP technology that uses switched digital video. Mike: I know they had problems with the original set top box - any updates? Also, according to CED Magazine: During the question-and-answer segment, Hill said AT&T would continue to rely on the Motorola set-top box with the Sigma Designs processor as its main workhorse, although it’s also working with Scientific Atlanta on a box with the same signature. Hill expected new set-top boxes with second-generation chipsets from Sigma and Broadcom to be available in 2009. Mike: How is it selling?The U-verse product website lists:Subscribers: 126,000 U-verse TV and Internet subscribers in service (as of end of 3Q07) Homes Passed: Approximately 5.5 million living units (as of end of 3Q07) Deployment: Plans to pass approximately 8 million living units by the end of 2007Another interesting roll out to watch in 2008. Schedule: AT&T expects to reach nearly 18 million households as part of its initial deployment by the end of 2008. Mike: Speaking about FTTN - I know you recently blogged on Qwest and FTTN effort. Can you give us an update?Qwest is based in Denver and provides services to 14 states in the western part of the U.S.Earlier this week, Broadband Reports posted an interesting summary of a conference call with new (he started in August) Qwest CEO Ed Mueller. Here's a summary from the Broadband Reports post:Qwest will spend $300 million over the next two years to bring 20Mbps VDSL to around 1.5 million customers.- $70-100 million will be spent on FTTN this year and another $200 million next year. Qwest hopes to see a FTTN/VDSL penetration rate of 40% by 2010. Upgrades are going to cost the company around $175 per home. Qwest will focus on portions of around twenty un-mentioned markets.The Denver Post also published an article yesterday outlining the call and indicated the company will not focus on IP video delivery, stating "the $300 million fiber-to-the-node project is not intended as a deployment of IPTV." Qwest currently has a video agreement with DirectTV and it looks like that agreement will stay in place.The Post article gave a little more detail on deployment, stating the rollout "will focus on 20 markets with the project, 10 of its largest and 10 others." Also according to the article, Qwest has started to upgrade their network in Denver and Colorado Springs.Second generation VDSL (Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Line), referred to as VDSL2, provides up to 100Mbps over standard copper telephone wires.These will be exciting products to watch in 2008.

Fiber To The Home (FTTH) Technology Update [23:20]

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 9, 2007 23:20

Mike Intro: Earlier this fall we discussed DOCSIS 3.0 and how the cable companies will use this technology to deliver high bandwidth services to consumers. In this podcast we discuss the implementation and technologies the traditional telephone companies are using to deliver-high bandwidth voice, video and data services. Mike: Gordon, I know you are very familiar with Verizon and the companies FiOS fiber to the home ((FTTH) product. How is the project coming along? FiOS is Verizon's Fiber to the Home (FTTH), also know as Fiber to the Premise (FTTP) product offering. The service provides high-bandwidth data, voice and video services. The company has posted some interesting data on their policy blog for the third quarter of 2007. Here's a summary: Fiber Implementation: Source: http://www.verizon.com/fiberoptics FiOS is currently available in parts of 16 states: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia and Washington. At the end of September 2007, Verizon had passed about 8.5 million homes and businesses – installing more than 457 million feet of fiber in parts of 16 states. Verizon expects to continue passing some 3 million premises annually through 2010, when the company expects to have passed about 18 million homes, or over half the homes it serves. Verizon will begin boosting speeds and capabilities on its all-fiber network when it begins deploying advanced G-PON electronics in 2007. This technology can increase downstream broadband speeds by up to four times, and upstream speeds by eight times. Verizon is investing nearly $23 billion in the FiOS project, between 2004 and 2010. Mike: How about broadband products? Broadband Products: Source: http://www22.verizon.com/Content/ConsumerFiOS/ Mike: What about video? Video: Source: http://www.verizonfios.com/tv Mike: What's happening with bandwidth over fiber?On November 19, Verizon announced they have completed a 100 Gbps optical communications test between Tampa and Miami, FL. The two cities are 312 miles apart. Here's a couple of quotes from the press release: Verizon has successfully concluded the industry's first field test of 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) optical transmission, on a live, in-service 312-mile (504 kilometer) network route between Tampa, Fla., and Miami. The test, which utilized a live video feed from Verizon's national FiOS TV network as the "payload," was successfully completed Friday (Nov. 16). The 100 Gbps transmission was conducted on a Verizon Business ultra long-haul optical system carrying other live traffic at 10 Gbps. The test demonstrated that by deploying advanced electronics, an existing network system can easily and quickly be upgraded to 100Gbps. The test was done using existing fiber that had been installed for 10 Gbps service. Here's a couple more quotes from the press release: Unlike other trials that used 10 separate 10 Gbps wavelengths to carry 100 Gbps, the Verizon test utilized a 100 Gbps signal on a single wavelength, demonstrating Verizon's drive to promote "true" 100 Gbps in a serial fashion on just one transmission wavelength.Like the equipment in the company's 40 Gbps trial in June 2004, the 100 Gbps equipment used in the field trial was implemented with a "plug and play" approach. This is a key objective for future commercial implementation, and means the technology was used without any changes to the fiber, amplifiers and other embedded equipment. Amazing bandwidth obtained using existing fiber - the trial only swapped electronics using, according to the press release, Alcatel-Lucent's 1625 LambdaXtreme Transport system.Mike: Will companies continue to deliver assymetrical services?On October 22, Verizon announced 20 Mbps symmetrical FIOs service in parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut for as low as $64.99 a month. There are two things that I find exciting about this offering. First - it's great to see the bandwidths continue to go up. I feel this is just the start and we'll see bandwidths of over 100 Mbps within the next two years in selected areas as the telcos, like Verizon, go head-to-head with the cable companies like Comcast. If you are lucky enough to live in an area where FIOS is available you re in for a real treat regarding bandwidth.The second exciting thing I see here is a shift to symmetrical services. Mike: Could you explain what a symmetrical service is and how it differ from what we're used to?Broadband products to date, including FIOS, ADSL and cable modem, have always been asymmetrical - the "A" in ADSL is even short for asymmetrical! Asymmetrical services provide more downstream bandwidth than upstream bandwidth. It's been a way for the providers to "cheat" a bit based on traditional Internet usage. Consider the way you traditionally surf the web - you enter a small amount of information in the address bar and hit enter. The address you type ends up going to a DNS (Domain Name Service) server and is looked up. The DNS server sends back the IP address of the site you want and your browser is directed to that site location. The site server then sends your browser the site contents you want to see.Think about it - in the traditional model - a little information gets sent upstream and lots of information comes back downstream. Recognizing these patterns the providers have designed their networks to provide a little upstream bandwidth and lots of downstream bandwidth. Well...... all this has changed with this new FIOS offering from Verizon. Here's a quote from a Verizon press release: "Verizon's new symmetric service is a smart response to the changing usage patterns of high-speed Internet subscribers," said Vince Vittore, senior analyst with Yankee Group. "We believe that as user-generated content continues to expand and telecommuting increases in popularity, upstream speed will become just as important as downstream for all users."Mike: Thanks Gordon. We'll take a look at Fiber To The Node (FTTN) technologies next week.

The Next Generation Cable Network: DOCSIS 3.0 [34:20]

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 29, 2007 34:20

Title: The Next Generation Cable Network: DOCSIS 3.0 Intro: The first DOCSIS standard, short for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specifications, standard was released by the company Cable Labs in 1997. In this podcast we take a look at the history of these standards and discuss DOCSIS 3.0 – the emerging standard in the cable industry. Mike: Gordon, can you give us a brief history of the first DOCSIS standards? Gordon – just covers up to 2.0 Mike: What are “tiered services?? Tiered services is business jargon for providing a service (such as telecom connectivity or cable channel service) according to separate, incrementally distinct quality and pay levels, or "tiers." We’re seeing this term used a lot recently in political debate regarding “net neutrality?. Mike: Can you tell us a little more about DOCSIS 3.0? Sure – in a nutshell it’s bigger, better, faster… It’s a needed response to products from competitors like Verizon with FIOs FTTH product and AT&T with the FTTN Lightspeed product. It’s triple play broadband – voice video and data. DOCSIS 3.0: - Much higher bandwidth through channel bonding - Starts at 160 Mbps Downstream, 60 Mbps Upstream and goes up from there - TI just rolled out their Puma 5 chip set a couple of weeks ago for cable modems. The chipset supports new DOCSIS 3.0 features, such as channel bonding, enable ultra high downstream bandwidth rates of at least 160 Mbps in the residential data and voice services configuration and 320 Mbps in video and business services configuration. In addition Puma 5 also supports greater quality of service with IPv6 and security with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). - Multiple 6 MHz (or 8 MHz) channels are bound, treating them logically as one Channel bonding in both upstream and downstream - IPv6 for advanced networking capabilities - Expanded address space (2128 or 3.4 dodecillion) Improved operational capabilities Mike: How will IPv6 be rolled out? There’s a lot of speculation now but it looks like it will be in to phases. John T. Chapman and Shalabh Goel from Cisco Systems have an interesting piece we’ve got linked in the shownotes (http://www.cable360.net/ct/sections/features/20942.html ) “The initial deployment phase allows the cable operator to set up an IPv6 control and management plane for managing the cable modems, set-top boxes, and multimedia terminal adapters (MTAs) with a cost-effective upgrade. In a subsequent deployment phase, cable operators can offer IPv6 directly to the home network. Many new devices are already IPv6 capable, and cable operators could soon be running the largest IPV6 networks in the world.? Mike: What are some other key features of DOCSIS 3.0? Other key related DOCSIS 3.0 features, which may be migrated over time, include: • Enhanced security, including advanced encryption standard (AES), security provisioning and theft of service features; • An upstream frequency range extension to 85 MHz and a downstream frequency extension to 1 GHz that allows an operator to add existing capacity with plant upgrades at a later date; • Enhanced plant diagnostic features, including a cable modem diagnostic log, enhanced signal quality monitoring, extension of IP data record (IPDR) usage and capacity management. Mike: How about the commercial services? (from: http://www.cable360.net/ct/sections/features/20942.html) DOCSIS 3.0 specifications define two technologies for business services over DOCSIS: layer 2 virtual private networks (VPNs) and T-1 circuit emulation. Business users will be able to videoconference from their PCs and PDAs and tap into corporate networks through VPNs; residential customers will subscribe to video-on-demand (VOD) and IP telephony services with low latency and minimum packet loss; and users everywhere will be able to upload and download files at much greater broadband speeds. Mike: When will it be available? Comcast demo’ed 150 Mbps at the May 14, 2007 Cable Show in Las Vegas. “The Associated Press described a demo in which a 30-second, 300MB television commercial was downloaded in a few seconds, while a standard cable modem took 16 minutes?. “Also downloaded, in less than four minutes, was the full 32-volume Encyclopedia Britannica 2007 and Merriam-Webster’s visual dictionary. With a standard cable modem, that download would have taken three hours and 12 minutes (dialup would have taken 2 weeks)?. “Comcast is currently trialing this in the Boston area. In one trial, the cable operator will set up an IP video headend to experiment with carrying voice, video and data over a single IP connection?. According to FierceIPTV (http://www.fierceiptv.com/story/comcast-to-trial-docsis-3.0-iptv/2007-05-08 ): “Comcast's planned converged-services trial will take place in a system that serves 50,000 homes, and will include an IP-video headend and DOCSIS 3.0 STBs, as well as the Slingbox from Sling Media, dual mode WiFi-cellular handsets and mobile phones capable of playing video.? According to Chapman and Goel: The industry consensus is that fully compliant DOCSIS 3.0 CMTS* implementations will be available in 2008 to 2009. Many cable operators will require the most critical DOCSIS 3.0 features, such as downstream channel bonding and IPv6, far earlier. To meet this demand, many vendors’ CMTS products now include early implementations of such a subset of DOCSIS 3.0 features. * CMTS: A cable modem termination system or CMTS is equipment typically found in a cable company's headend, or at cable company hubsite and is used to provide high speed data services, such as cable internet or Voice over IP, to cable subscribers. In order to provide these high speed data services, a cable company will connect its headend to the Internet via very high capacity data links, also known as a circuit (canonical form of telecommunication circuit), to a network service provider. On the subscriber side of the headend, the CMTS enables the communication with subscribers' cable modems. Different CMTSs are capable of serving different cable modem population sizes - ranging from 4,000 cable modems to 150,000 or more. A given headend may have between half a dozen to a dozen or more CMTSs to service the cable modem population served by that headend. One way to think of a CMTS is to imagine a router with Ethernet interfaces (connections) on one side and coax RF interfaces on the other side. The RF/coax interfaces carry RF signals to and from the subscriber's cable modem. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMTS )

internet technology las vegas voice network starts next generation ip att networks chapman verizon cable puma expanded pcs vod ict telecommunications merriam webster rf vpns cisco systems aes modem mhz dsl ipv6 ghz mbps pdas mike gordon slingbox mike how docsis mtas stbs john t chapman

Micro-blogging [26:40]

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2007 26:40

Title: Sept 16, 2007 - Micro-bloggingIntro: You may be thinking about starting a blog but feel you don't have the time or maybe won't know what to write about. You may already have a blog and are looking for ways to provide interesting content in real time. Micro-blogging may be a great solution. In this session we discuss micro-blogging and take a look at a few of the many free micro-blogging applications.Mike: Gordon, I know you've really got into micro-blogging recently - could you describe what it is?Wikipedia defines micro-blogging as:"a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web."Gordon: I think we've both developed a recent addiction to micro-blogging. Your recently wrote a blog describing Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce. Many are calling these social networks, or micro-blogs. Can you describe what this means?In Twitter and Jaiku you provide information about your thoughts, activities and/or whereabouts. Some users update so often, that it's almost like real-time updates. Pownce works similarly, but allows users to easily share links, files and events. Twitter is still the most popular of the three, but Pownce - by invitation only - seems to be gaining quickly. I'm not sure I understand the attraction of these sites - maybe it's generational, but they're very popular and seem to be addictive.Gordon: You wrote about a real-world use of Twitter by the Los Angeles Fire Department. Can you tell us about that?Members of the fire department provide real-time updates (known as tweets) of LAFD activities and operations. Anyone interested can subscribe or follow this Twitter. Imagine the uses at a college or university - we could provide updates on availability of writing or math labs or even our testing center. We could also provide registration information in real-time, such as number of seats, new sections, cancellations etc. To think of it, you could also use these tools to manage your office hours - in real-time!Mike: You've been tweeting on Twitter frequently. What kind of content are you posting?I find myself doing a lot of web surfing and I like to tweet the links I'm reading for future reference. I had been tagging using digg (I still do) but have found Twitter to be a little easier to use. I've also got my Twitter micro-blog displayed on my full blog page. I like tagging using Twitter because my tags are easier for others to find. If you watch what I tag - I'm frequently tagging something one day and then writing a full blog on it the next. I find this a very easy method.Mike: How are you posting to twitter? Are you using any browser plugins or add-ons?I've been using a Firefox add-on called Twitterbar. It's linked on the mozilla site - here's the download link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4664 It's from Tony Farndon (tones) at http://spatialviews.comFrom mozilla: The twitterbar extension allows you to post to twitter from the firefox addressbar. A small unobtrusive grey icon sits to the right of your addressbar, clicking on it will post your tweet, mouseover will tell you how many characters you have left. You can also post by typing ' --post' or hit the grey arrow when visiting a webpage to carry out a URL tweet (i.e it adds 'Currently Browsing: ' in front of the url). Options for the extension include safe/secure mode, open twitter in new tab after posting and the ability to change the URL tweet 'Currently browsing' text.There are a number of other plugins/add-ons. Mashable.com has a great post titled 8 Awesome Firefox Plugins for TwitterMike: Have you started posting using your cell phone yet? Not yet. You can receive updates from those you're following (or just some people) on your phone and you can send updates using text messaging. Twitter doesn't charge anything for this, but you want to make sure you have a text messaging plan with your cellular carrier. You can shut text messages from Twitter off at anytime by replying with "off" (and back on by sending "on"). And you can even specify that it turn off automatically at night.In addition you can tweet from you instant messenger client. Right now Twitter supports AIM, GTalk, Jabber, .Mac and LiveJournal.Gordon: Mike - how about some of the others. You sent me an invite for Pownce which I signed up for but have not spent a lot of time with. How does that work?Pownce was co-founded by Kevin Rose - the 30-year old brains behind hugely successful news/social networking site digg.com. Digg allows user to post links to interesting news or websites and other users to either "digg" or "bury" the article. Stories with the most diggs rise to the top, while others disappear - it's a great way to let the community filter news.From NY Times article linkd in my blog: With Pownce You can send text messages to individual friends or groups of friends on Pownce as well as post microblogs, or short announcements, to the larger Pownce community. This function is very similar to messaging services like Twitter or Jaiku, and is found on social networks like Facebook and MySpace (although Pownce’s messages cannot, at least for now, be sent to mobile phones). You can also send your friends links, invitations to events, or files like photos, music or videos. Of course, you can already do that on a multitude of file-sharing Web sites. It is the combination of private messaging and file-sharing that makes Pownce so novel.Gordon: Jaiku - can you tell us about that?From Wikipedia: Jaiku.com is a social networking and micro-blogging service comparable to Twitter[1]. Jaiku was founded in July, 2006 by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen from Finland.Mike: Are there any others?Sure. Read/WriteWeb.com recently published a piece called 10 Micro-Blogging Tools ComparedLet's run down the list as quoted in the Read/WriteWeb piece.****Tumblr is a very clean, slick micro-blogging platform. Its focus is on simplicity and elegance. Similar to Pownce, users can share a variety of things, including text, photos, quotes, links, chats, or even videos.MySay is what it says. Instead of text updates, users call MySay and say how they are doing today. Then, friends or family can listen via phone, e-mail, or the web.Hictu is a service for video microbloggers. A webcam and a mouse-click are all that is needed to create a videopost. This streamlined solution saves time and effort for traditional vloggers.Moodmill is a way to express your mood or current state of being. A sliding scale facilitates this process, while a quick text update completes the personalized service.Frazr is also very similar to Twitter. The main difference is one of language. Frazr is focused primarily on the French and German markets.IRateMyDay allows you the ability to (yes, you guessed it) rate your day on a scale of 'Worst' to 'Great'. Users can also provide a short text update to accompany the rating. Emotionr is a way to gauge your happiness on a scale of 1-10 (decimals included). As the name touts, it is a way to express and share your emotions and feelings with those around you.****Completely off topic - rumor has it Google Presently will be coming out this week!Also discuss the gPhone and Robert Cringley's blog on Google.

Niche Search [20:52]

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2007 21:00

Intro: You may think Google and Yahoo have a lock on search but it may be time to starting thinking a little differently. In this podcast we take a look at some niche search sites. Mike: Gordon, we love Google products and services - is there a the problem? It may be Google does too good of a job! Have you ever tried Google searching on a persons name? A simple Google search on my first and last name gives over 1.9 million results! Today, three companies control almost 90% of online search: - over 50% of all searches are done using Google - over 25% on Yahoo - and over 13% using Microsoft There are some problems though – these search engines primarily give results based on the number of sites linking to a page and the prominence of search terms on a page. Because they work this way there is room for niche. Mike: With this kind of lock on search it would be almost impossible for a startup to launch a successful general search product - right? Yes - it would be almost impossible but we are seeing some acrivirt in the niche areas. Areas like travel and finance are niches that have already been filled but today there seems to be some room in the people search area. Mike: Are there companies in this market we should be looking at? One of the startups to watch is Spock at www.spock.com. Spock is scheduled for their public launch the first week of August. Among other places on the web, Spock scans social networking websites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Search results give summary information (age, address, etc) about the person along with a list of website links that refer to the person. According to Spock 30% of the 7 billion searches done on the web every month are related to individuals. Spock says about half of those searches concern celebrities with the other half including business and personal lookups. According to Spock, a common problem that we face is that there are many people with the same name. Given that, how do we distinguish a document about Michael Jackson the singer from Michael Jackson the football player? With billions of documents and people on the web, we need to identify and cluster web documents accurately to the people they are related to. Mapping these named entities from documents to the correct person is what Spock is all about and they’re coming at the problem in an interesting way. Mike: I've looked at Spock - what is the Spock Challenge? They’ve launched what they call the Spock Challenge – more formally referred to as the SPOCK Entity Resolution Problem linked here: http://challenge.spock.com/pages/learn_more If you go to the site you can download a couple of data sets – one called a training set (approx 25,000 documents) and the other called a test set (approx 75,000 documents). Along with the document sets they include a set of target names. You assume that each document contains only one of the target names (even though most documents contain many names). The challenge is to partition all the documents relevant to a target name by their referent. Mike: When does the contest begin and end? It has already begun on 4/16/07. It will end on 11/16/07. On 11/16/07, Spock will run the final round of the competition and announce the winner.Here are the dates off the website: 4/16 Registration started 5/1- 8/15 Proposal submissions accepted 7/1 Leader board live 11/1 Finalists announced 11/16 Final round at Spock, winner announced Mike: What languages and tools be used?You can use any language and any non-commercial libraries, tools and data to develop the solution. There is one catch - the winner grants Spock non-exclusive right to use the software and data. As an FYI, much of Google is actualy written in Python with the Search Engine Core written in C++. Python provied scripting support for the search engine. and some apps like google code are done in pythonMike: Can you give us and example of how this works?From their website: Consider the following two documents with the target name "Michael Jackson": Michael Jackson - The King of Pop or Wacko Jacko? Michael Jackson statistics - pro-football-reference.com The referents of these articles are the pop star and football player, respectively. They’ve also included the ground truth for the training set so you have something to compare against. Once you're done training, you can run your algorithm on the test set and submit your results on this site. Spock will provide instant feedback in the form of a percentage rank score. This way you can see how you stack up against the other teams. So they provide you with a lot of well constructed data, and the ground truth about that data. “Ground truth? data is real results and you use this information to validate your search algorithm results. This data is documents about people, and the challenge is to determine all the unique people described in the data set. This data can be your training set. Once you have got your basic algorithm working against the training set, they let you further tune your code by running it against a second test data set and give you instant accuracy feedback in the form of a score. The score depends on how many correct unique people you can identify in the data. This way you can continue to refine your work, and see how you are doing, and how well others are doing. This looks like a great academic challenge. At the end of the contest time, you submit your code, a 3 page description of your approach, pre-built binary executables that can run in isolation on Spock servers, and your results (the “Software Entry?). Spock will select the finalists based upon submissions, and fly the finalists to visit the judges. The winner will win $50,000, 2nd place wins $5000 and 3rd place wins $2000. Mike: How doe people enter?You may enter the Contest by registering online at www.spock.com/contestregistration . You may register as an individual or as a team. During the registration process, you must provide your name, your age, your email address, and the country you are from. If you are entering on behalf of an organization, a school or a company, you must identify its name. If you are registering as a team, you must provide the same information for each member of your team as well as the identity of a team leader. You will also provide a name for your team or for yourself by which you or your team will be known to other participants in the Contest. Spock may change the name if it feels the name you select is not appropriate for any reason. Mike: What are the differences between the Spock Challenge and the Netflix Challenge? From Netflix website: The Netflix Prize (http://www.netflixprize.com ) seeks to substantially improve the accuracy of predictions about how much someone is going to love a movie based on their movie preferences. Improve it enough and you win one (or more) Prizes. Winning the Netflix Prize improves Netflix ability to connect people to the movies they love. Netflix provides you with a lot of anonymous rating data, and a prediction accuracy bar that is 10% better than what Cinematch can do on the same training data set. (Accuracy is a measurement of how closely predicted ratings of movies match subsequent actual ratings.) If you develop a system that Netflix judges beats that bar on the qualifying test set they provide, you get serious money and the bragging rights. But (and you knew there would be a catch, right?) only if you share your method with Netflix and describe to the world how you did it and why it works. In addition to the Grand Prize, we’re also offering a $50,000 Progress Prize each year the contest runs. It goes to the team whose system we judge shows the most improvement over the previous year’s best accuracy bar on the same qualifying test set. No improvement, no prize. And like the Grand Prize, to win you’ll need to share your method with us and describe it for the world. The Netflix contest started October 2, 2006 and continues through at least October 2, 2011.So..... back to your question - The Netflix Challenge will run another 4 years; Spock Challenge has every intention to give out the grand prize to a team with a reasonable solution at the end of the 6 months. Netflix Chellenge sets an absolute standard for winning the grand prize; Spock Challenge intends to award to the best reasonable solution. Mike: How about some other companies? Wink – www.wink.com Similar to Spock – launched a few months ago. Claim that Wink People Search now searches over two hundred million people profiles. Searches people across numerous social networks including MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster, Bebo, Live Spaces, Yahoo!360, Xanga, Twitter and more. Also included in the results are Web sources such as Wikipedia and IMDB with more coming all the time. Zoominfo – www.zoominfo.com Specializes in executive searches. Claim 37,131,140 People and 3,518,329 Companies indexed. You can currently search on three categories – people, jobs and companies. Searchwikia - http://search.wikia.com Jimmy Wales and his open-source search protocol and human collaboration project. From Press release: "Last week Wikia acquired Grub, the original visionary distributed search project, from LookSmart and released it under an open source license for the first time in four years. Grub operates under a model of users donating their personal computing resources towards a common goal, and is available today for download and testing at: http://www.grub.org/ . Grub, now open source, is designed with modularity so that developers can quickly and easily extend and add functionality, improving the quality and performance of the entire system. By combining Grub, which is building a massive, distributed user-contributed processing network, with the power of a wiki to form social consensus, the open source Search Wikia project has taken the next major step towards a future where search is open and transparent".

10 Questions with Karl Kapp [38:40]

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 7, 2007 38:40

Intro: Karl Kapp, a scholar, writer and expert on the convergence of learning, technology and business operations, holds a Doctorate of Education in Instructional Design at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a full professor of Instructional Technology at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, PA and Assistant Director of the UniversityÃ¢ï¿½ï¿½s acclaimed Institute for Interactive Technologies (IIT). Recently, Karl was selected as one of 2007's Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals by TrainingIndustry, Inc, joining a pretty diverse group in the Top 20.One of the areas Karl has been very active in is advocating for gaming in learning, particularly with the release of his new book Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning: Tools for Transferring Know-How from the Boomers to the Gamers. We'll learn more about the book from Karl. .Visit his Web site at www.karlkapp.com, his blog at http://karlkapp.blogspot.com and the book's web site at www.gadgetsgamesandgizmos.com.Mike: Karl, you're an associate director of Bloomsburg University's Institute for Interactive Technologies (IIT) - could you tell us a little bit about how this institute was formed, it's mission and what it does. The Institute for Interactive Technologies is affiliated with the Department of Instructional Technology at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, PA. Bloomsburg University is one of Pennsylvania's 14 state universities. The department of Instructional Technology is a Master's level course that teaches students how to design, develop and deliver online instruction or e-learning. Our program is a year long with 33 credits. We have a face-to-face option for the program as well as an online option. You can learn more about our program at http://iit.bloomu.edu. The IIT was formed in 1985 to serve as a place where students could get "real world" experience working on projects involving instructional technologies. Prior to that, they had always had a solid technical background but some times lacked an understanding of how to apply what they were learning in the classroom to actual projects. We create the IIT to solve that problem and to help generate monies to pay for the latest and greatest technologies. We call the IIT the "commercial arm" of our academic program. The IIT partners with organizations like L'OREAL, Black and Decker, Toys R Us and others to help them create online learning. We include graduate students in all of our projects so they get the experience working with actual clients, the faculty stay up-to-date on the trends in industry and the clients get a quality e-learning product for a reasonable expense. The IIT also conducts workshops and seminars to help organizations develop the internal capability of delivering e-learning as well. Our mission is to educate corporations on the value of creating quality e-learning. It's a win, win, win for everyone. The student gain practical experience, the company gains a useful, affordable product and the faculty remain up-to-date on what is happening in industry. Gordon: Your new book is Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning: Tools for Transferring Know-How from the Boomers to the Gamers - could you tell us the premise of the book? Certainly, the book is built upon two simple ideas. One is that the baby boomers are retiring from the workforce and academic institutions in growing numbers and taking with them a large amount of knowledge. They aren't walking out the door, they are running. Second, the incoming generation of workers who are supposed to replace these baby boomers have very different learning styles and expectations than the boomers because they have grown up in an age dominated by video games and electronic gadgets. Kids born in the early 1990's have always had the Internet, cell phones and video games. In the book I classify four types of these kids...who I call "gamers." Considering these two ideas means that we need new methods of conveying the boomer knowledge to these "gamers." The old ways of placing learners in a classroom and lecturing to them will not and are not effective. So the book spends a lot of time discussing methods of conveying knowledge such as the use of instructionally sound games to transfer knowledge, the use of MP3 players like iPods, the use of blogs, wikis, podcasts and even RFID tags. The book provides examples of methods that worked and proven effective in many organizations. In what I think is a fun and engaging manner. Given the content, I wanted to have some fun with the writing. Mike: How did you become interested in this approach to teaching and learning?My two boys are definitely gamers and their joy at playing games got me interested in the topic. They would bring home a new video game and I couldn't get them away from it. Meanwhile, my consulting clients and fellow faculty members kept complaining about boring e-learning, irrelevant training programs, archaic teaching styles and the increasing pressure to transfer knowledge to this "new generation." But what really made the lightbulb go off in my head was a comment an announcer made one night as I was watching poker on television. Through half-open eyes one morning, I notice 21 year olds playing against 55 year olds - the grand masters of poker - and winning. How can that be? Why are these young guys - kids really - winning? How can they hold their own against such experienced and knowledgeable players? Then the announcer, as if reading my mind, provided the answer. One of the reasons relatively unknown poker players can defeat 30 year poker veterans is because of online poker. I thought to myself? Did I hear him correctly, online poker? What do you mean? How is that like real poker? The announcer explained that online poker allows a gambler to play as many as eight hands at once against unseen but real opponents. The experience of playing so many hands over and over again while receiving almost instant feedback on good or bad bluffs allows 21 year olds to gain as much experience in two years as someone who has been playing poker all his life. So, at that moment it hit me. Maybe this generation of kids, my kids - my gamer kids, have a different expectation for learning, an expectation built on a framework of video games providing instant feedback and constant interaction. A framework augmented by constant access to gadgets and a comfort level with technology that boomers and Generation X'ers can only imagine. So that experience really got me into the topic and I started to figure out how to transfer knowledge and saw that is was already being done in a bunch of non-traditional methods and the book outlines those methods. Gordon: What one thing do you hope people will take away from reading the book? First, I hope they think it was a "fun read." I have read many books on the topic that are too academic and not practical, I really wanted to bring it to a level that everyone could relate. I tried to add some fun stories and interesting examples to keep it lively. At the same time it is well researched and based on what organizations are actually doing. I even had one of our alumni add some cartoon images to illustrate some points, they look awesome. From a content perspective, the "take-away" is that transferring knowledge needs to be done in a manner consistent with how this generation learns. We can't keep using the old methods to transfer knowledge to a generation that is already learning differently because of video games and electronic gadgets. Mike: Your doctorate is in Instructional Design, you department is Instructional Technology, yet the institute you run focuses on Interactive Technologies - why the distinction? Wow, that's a great question. I've never even thought about that before. I'd like to give you some incredibly profound answer but I think it just happened. However, real learning occurs through interactivity and the focus on the institute is to leverage technologies to create interactive learning experiences. Instructional design is about creating those interactive learning experiences so the two work hand-in-hand. Gordon: Is old style learning passive? I don't think "old style" learning has to be passive. Small group exercises, discussion, manipulatives are all active. Unfortunately, many schools have adopted a pure-lecture mode and that is passive. Then, with a lot of online learning, the passive model was made electronic. So in many online, self-paced learning courses you have page-of-text, page-of-text,page-of-text and then a multiple choice question. Passive, a generation that has grown up interacting with content via goals, receiving immediate feedback with video games and using gadgets to stay connected to peers needs an active learning environment. We can't tell a student who has text-messaged his buddy all the way to school while listening to an iPod on which he downloaded his favorite music to put away all electronic gadgets because it is "time to learn." We need to incorporate technology into the classroom as much as possible. Mike: We've talked a lot about active or interactive learning versus passive - as we move toward these new forms of learning how will this impact how we evaluate and assess our students? I think schools currently are focused too much on individual assessment and memorized content which I view as passive. When a person graduates from school, he or she will be working on some type of team. In today's world, teamwork, collaboration and working with others is essential. This is an interactive exchange of ideas, comments and content. Interaction spurs more learning. Yet, students are taught that individual accomplishment are what is valued. We need to adopt group assessments, it is not easy and it is fraught with complications but group evaluation is necessary. Also, we need to focus curriculum on problem-solving by utilizing various resources. I read an article about schools banning iPods because students were using them for cheating. The article stated that, in one instance, students were using the old "School House Rock" songs on their iPod to cheat on a test. In my blog, I wrote "the kid who is clever enough to understand the value of the information contained in the School House Rock songs, download them from the Internet and put them on an iPod for a test is EXACTLY the person I want on my development team. Someone who can think outside of the box, maximize resources and who understands how to utilize technology to get the job done. " He was problem-solving with available technologies. However, I am not sure this view is shared among all my fellow educators. In fact, I received a rather passionate response indicated how off-base I really was in advocating technologies like a cell phone or iPod in the schools. There is a big learning curve for the boomer generation in terms of technology and, again, I address a lot of that in my book. So to wind up a rather long answer, technology impacts assessments in that they should be more focused on group problem-solving with technology as an enabler. Gordon: If you were to look to the future, which technology do you think will have the greatest impact on education in the next 12-18 months? 3 years? 5 years? I think it will be the technologies that allow the learners to create their own knowledge. Schools need to create the parameters in which learning occurs but you can't teach anybody anything, they need to learn it themselves. When you allow a student to create a podcast on a certain topic, you are empowering her to discover how to learn, how to communicate, how to structure knowledge and how to contribute to the collective wisdom. Technologies allow for the easy creation of knowledge and then for the portability of that created knowledge. So things like podcasting, YouTube, and shared social networks will propel knowledge to new levels. Mike: As a professor of instructional technology and design what's the most important lesson you try to impart to your students? Always be learning. The field of instructional technology does not stand still. Students, anyone, must commit to life long learning. Gordon: Now a quick take on some current technologies (maybe quick ratings like [love it, hate it, can't do without it, never heard of it, etc]) - powerpoint (love it/hate it this tool has the potential to do so much good but is often poorly used - Karl you've in fact developed a great resource - a ten-minute video http://breeze.bloomu.edu/powerpointtips/ that explains how to transform poorly designed powerpoint slides into more engaging and effective slides - Avoiding Death by Powerpoint, I think you called it) - email (can't live without it, prefer it over the phone) - IM (like it) - SecondLife (love it, in fact I am teaching a course this summer in it called "Learning in 3D" focused on the educational aspects of the software) - Youtube (like it, great potential for short educational clips) - Blogs (I love my blog, it really clarifies my thinking and is a great online "memory box" for me) - Wikis (Love it, great tool for collaboration) - MySpace/Facebook etc (I use LinkedIn but my social networking skills could be honed more finely) Anything else we missed? How about iPod...love it, And Google Documents...awesome. Anything from the 2007 Horizon Report? - Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less - Online Collaboration: Easy, Accessible, and Virtually Free - User Content: It's All about the Audience - Social Networking: The Reason They Log On. - Can You Hear Me Now? The Resurgence of Audio - Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years - Your Phone: The Gateway to Your Digital Life - The New Video is Smaller than You Think - Virtual Worlds, Real Opportunity - Mapping Goes Mainstream: It's Not What You Know, It's Where You Know - Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years - The New Scholarship and Emerging Forms of Publication - Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming - Personal Learning Environments - Internet-Wide User-Centric Identity Systems To learn more about Karl please visit his Web site at www.karlkapp.com, his blog at http://karlkapp.blogspot.com and the book's web site at www.gadgetsgamesandgizmos.com.

MATEC NETWORKS Executive Director Kim Grady Interview [17:42]

Play Episode Listen Later May 24, 2007 17:42

Short introduction: Today we’re here with Kim Grady. Kim is the Founding Director and PI for the NetWorks, an NSF online digital resource center. MATEC NETWORKS is one of 3 ATE manufacturing and engineering technology centers that offer a collection of resources online. NETEC, MERC Online, are the other centers. MATEC NETWORKS is part of MATEC and located in Tempe, Arizona.Gordon: Kim, what exactly is a digital library?Well, our digital library is a convenient and easy way to locate valuable resources for teaching and learning. It's also a way to share self-created and favorite classroom ready resources.Mike: Why another digital library, what is the need and mission and vision?Believe me, being an advocate of not reinventing the wheel, I asked myself that question many times. What I have come to realize is that NetWorks and the other online resource centers that are part of the NSF ATE program are working together to "Beat Google." We are aggregators of resources in our technology areas. Not only that we have criteria for the resources that make it into our collections. How many times have you been disappointed in search results on the WWW? Either there is just too many to sift through or they are not the quality or type that you need. With NetWorks you get the resources you need for instruction. That's why we think we can be a time-saving tool.Gordon: What types of material do you collect?Well, we focus on material in the Semiconductors, Automated Manufacturing, and Electronics technology area so you will see resources that relate to the science of semiconductor processing, instrumentation and controllers used in automation environments, and tons of electronics and electricity resources. You heard me use the term, classroom ready earlier. Classroom ready means it is easily implementable into a class or training room. You won't find a lot of research papers for example on our site. We search for and create material that can be used in an engaging presentation, a lab write up, or a student activity. We also believe that material that help faculty learn fits our definition of classroom ready so you will also see things like reports on emerging technology and tutorials on hot topics such as rapid prototyping.Mike: How do you build your collection, what programs do you have in place and what results have you seen so far?Our NetWork and relationships, NetWorks staff of industry and marketing professionals seek out resources using tools of their trade.Our National Externship Program allows faculty to gain knowledge and skills in emerging technology areas that can be brought back in to the classroom and disseminated through NetWorks. To learn more about the National Externship Program, log on to matecnetworks.org

Flat World Strategies: Google Docs, Spreadsheets, the Zune, PS3 and the Wii [20:39]