Podcast appearances and mentions of mike let

Tisha Jones, Assessment as a Shared Journey: Cultivating Partnerships with Families & Caregivers ROUNDING UP: SEASON 3 | EPISODE 16 Families and caregivers play an essential role in students' success in school and in shaping their identities as learners. Therefore, establishing strong partnerships with families and caregivers is crucial for equitable teaching and learning. This episode is designed to help educators explore the importance of collaborating with families and caregivers and learn strategies for shifting to asset-based communication. BIOGRAPHY Tisha Jones is the senior manager of assessment at The Math Learning Center. Previously, Tisha taught math to elementary and middle school students as well as undergraduate and graduate math methods courses at Georgia State University. TRANSCRIPT Mike Wallus: As educators, we know that families and caregivers play an essential role in our students' success at school. With that in mind, what are some of the ways we can establish strong partnerships with caregivers and communicate about students' progress in asset-based ways? We'll explore these questions with MLC's [senior] assessment manager, Tisha Jones, on this episode of Rounding Up.  Welcome back to the podcast, Tisha. I think you are our first guest to appear three times. We're really excited to talk to you about assessment and families and caregivers.  Tisha Jones: I am always happy to talk to you, Mike, and I really love getting to share new ideas with people on your podcast.  Mike: So, we've titled this episode “Assessment as a Shared Journey with Families & Caregivers,” and I feel like that title—especially the words “shared journey”—say a lot about how you hope educators approach this part of their practice.  Tisha: Absolutely.  Mike: So, I want to start by being explicit about how we at The Math Learning Center think about the purpose of assessment because I think a lot of the ideas and the practices and the suggestions that you're about to offer flow out of that way that we think about the purpose.  Tisha: When we think about the purpose of assessment at The Math Learning Center, what sums it up best to me is that all assessment is formative, even if it's summative, which is a belief that you'll find in our Assessment Guide. And what that means is that assessment really is to drive learning. It's for the purpose of learning. So, it's not just to capture, “What did they learn?,” but it's, “What do they need?,” “How can we support kids?,” “How can we build on what they're learning?” over and over and over again. And so, there's no point where we're like, “OK, we've assessed it and now the learning of that is in the past.” We're always trying to build on what they're doing, what they've learned so far.  Mike: You know, I've also heard you talk about the importance of an asset-focused approach to assessment. So, for folks who haven't heard us talk about this in the past, what does that mean, Tisha?  Tisha: So that means starting with finding the things that the kids know how to do and what they understand instead of the alternative, which is looking for what they don't know, looking for the deficits in their thinking. We're looking at, “OK, here's the evidence for all the things that they can do,” and then we're looking to think about, “OK, what are their opportunities for growth?” Mike: That sounds subtle, but it is so profound a shift in thinking about what is happening when we're assessing and what we're seeing from students. How do you think that change in perspective shifts the work of assessing, but also the work of teaching?  Tisha: When I think about approaching assessment from an asset-based perspective—finding the things that kids know how to do, the things that kids understand—one, I am now on a mission to find their brilliance. I am just this brilliance detective. I'm always looking for, “What is that thing that this kid can shine at?” That's one, and a different way of thinking about it just to start with.  And then I think the other thing, too, is, I feel like when you find the things that they're doing, I can think about, “OK, what do I need to know? What can I do for them next to support them in that next step of growth?”  Mike: I think that sounds fairly simple, but there's something very different about thinking about building from something versus, say, looking for what's broken.  Tisha: For sure. And it also helps build relationships, right? If you approach any relationship from a deficit perspective, you're always focusing on the things that are wrong. And so, if we're talking about building stronger relationships with kids, coming from an asset-based perspective helps in that area too.  Mike: That's a great pivot point because if we take this notion that the purpose of assessment is to inform the ways that we support student learning, it really seems like that has a major set of implications for how and what and even why we would communicate with families and caregivers.  So, while I suspect there isn't a script for the type of communication, are there some essential components that you'd want to see in an asset-focused assessment conversation that an educator would have with a family or with their child's caregivers?  Tisha: Well, before thinking about a singular conversation, I want to back it up and think about—over the course of the school year. And I think that when we start the communication, it has to start before that first assessment. It has to start before we've seen a piece of kids' work. We have to start building those relationships with families and caregivers. We need to invite them into this process. We need to give them an opportunity to understand what we think about assessment. How are we approaching it? When we send things home, and they haven't heard of things like “proficiency” or “meeting current expectations”—those are common words that you'll see throughout the Bridges assessment materials—if parents haven't seen that, if families and caregivers haven't heard from you on what that means for you in your classroom at your school, then they have questions. It feels unfamiliar. It feels like, “Wait, what does this mean about how my child is doing in your class?”  And so, we want to start this conversation from the very beginning of the school year and continue it on continuously. And it should be this open invitation for them to participate in this process too, for them to share what they're seeing about their student at home, when they're talking about math or they're hearing how their student is talking about math. We want to know those things because that informs how we approach the instruction in class.  Mike: Let's talk about that because it really strikes me that what you're describing in terms of the meaning of proficiency or the meaning of meeting expectations—that language is likely fairly new to families and caregivers.  And I think the other thing that strikes me is, families and caregivers have their own lived experience with assessment from when they were children, perhaps with other children. And that's generally a mixed bag at best. Folks have this set of ideas about what it means when the teacher contacts them and what assessment means. So, I really hear what you're saying when you're talking about, there's work that educators need to do at the start of the year to set the stage for these conversations.  Let's try to get a little bit specific, though. What are some of the practices that you'd want teachers to consider when they're thinking about their communication?  Tisha: So, I think that starting at the very beginning of the year, most schools do some sort of a curriculum night. I would start by making sure that assessment is a part of that conversation and making sure that you're explaining what assessment means to you. Why are you assessing? What are the different ways that you're assessing? What are some things that [families and caregivers] might see coming home? Are they going to see feedback? Are they going to see scores from assessments? But how were you communicating progress? How do they know how their student is doing? And then also that invitation, right then and there, to be a part of this process, to hear from them, to hear their concerns or their ideas around feedback or the things that they've got questions about.  I would also suggest … really working hard to have that asset-based lens apply to parents and families and caregivers. I know that I have been that parent that was the last one to sign up for the parent teacher conferences, and I'm sending the apologetic email, and I'm begging for a special time slot. So, it didn't mean that I didn't care about my kids. It didn't mean that I didn't care about what they were doing. I was swamped. And so, I think we want to keep finding that asset-based lens for parents and caregivers in the same way that we do for the students.  And then making sure that you're giving them good news, not just bad news. And then making sure when you're sending any communication about how a student is doing, try to be concrete about what you're seeing, right? So, trying to say, “These are the things where I see your child's strengths. These are the strengths that I'm seeing from your student. And these are the areas where we're working on to grow. And this is what we're doing here at school, and this is what you can do to support them at home.” Mike: I was really struck by a piece of what you said, Tisha, when you really made the case for not assuming that the picture that you have in your mind as an educator is clear for families when it comes to assessment. So, really being transparent about how you think about assessment, why you're assessing, and the cadence of when parents or families or caregivers could expect to hear from you and what they could expect as well.  I know for a fact that if my teacher called my family when I was a kid, generally there was a look that came across their face when they answered the phone. And even if it was good news, they didn't think it was good news at the front end of that conversation.  Tisha: I've been there. I had my son's fifth grade teacher call me last year, and I was like, “Oh, what is this?” [laughs] Mike: One of the things that I want to talk about before we finish this conversation is homework. I want to talk a little bit about the purpose of homework. We're having this conversation in the context of Bridges in Mathematics, which is the curriculum that The Math Learning Center publishes. So, while we can't talk about how all folks think about homework, we can talk about the stance that we take when it comes to homework: what its purpose is, how we imagine families and caregivers can engage with their students around it.  Can you talk a little bit about our perspective on homework? How we think about its value, how we think about its purpose? And then we can dig a little bit into what it might look like at home, but let's start with purpose and intent.  Tisha: So, we definitely recognize that there are lots of different ideas about homework, and I think that shows in how we've structured homework through our Bridges units. Most of the time, it's set up so that there's a homework [assignment] that goes with every other session, but it's still optional. So, there's no formal expectation in our curriculum that homework is given on a nightly basis or even on an every-other-night basis. We really have left that up to the schools to determine what is best practice for their population. And I think that is actually what's really the most important thing is, understanding the families and caregivers and the situations that are in your building, and making determinations about homework that makes sense for the students that you're serving. And so, I think we've set homework up in a way that makes it so that it's easy for schools to make those decisions.  Mike: One of the things that I'm thinking about is that—again, I'm going to be autobiographical—when I was a kid, homework went back, it was graded, and it actually counted toward my grade at the end of the semester or the quarter or what have you. And I guess I wonder if a school or a district chose to not go about that, to not have homework necessarily be graded, I wonder if some families and caregivers might wonder, “What's the purpose?” I think we know that there can be a productive and important purpose—even if educators aren't grading homework and adding it to a percentage that is somehow determining students' grades, that it can actually still have purpose. How do you think about the purpose of homework, regardless of whether it's graded or not?  Tisha: So first off, I would just like to advocate not grading homework if I can.  Mike: You certainly can, yeah.  Tisha: [laughs] Mike: Let's talk about that.  Tisha: I think that, one, if we're talking about this idea of putting this score into an average grade or this percentage grade, I think that this is something that has so many different circumstances for kids at home. You have some students who get lots and lots of help. You get some students who do not have help available to them.  Another experience that has been very common when I was teaching was that I would get messages where it was like, “We were doing homework. The kid was in tears, I was in tears. This was just really hard.” And that's just not—I don't ever want that scenario for any student, for any family, for any caregiver, for anybody trying to support a child at home. I used to tell them, “If you are getting to the point where it's that level of frustration, please just stop and send me a message, write it on the homework. Just communicate something that [says,] ‘This was too hard' because that's information now that I can use.”  And so, for me, I think about [how] homework can be an opportunity for students to practice some skills and concepts and things that they've learned at home. It's an opportunity for parents, families, caregivers to see some of the things that the kids are working on at school.  Mike: What do you think is meaningful for homework? And I have kind of two bits to that. What do you think is meaningful for the child? And then, what do you think might be meaningful for the interaction between the child and their family or caregiver? What's the best case for homework? When you imagine a successful or a productive or a meaningful experience with homework at home between child and family and caregiver, what's that look like?  Tisha: Well, one of the things that I've heard families say is, “I don't know how to help my child with blank.” So, then I think it is, “Well, how do we support families and caregivers in knowing what [to] do with homework when we don't know how to tell them what to do?”  So, to me, it's about, how can we restructure the homework experience so that it's not this, “I have to tell you how to do it so you can get the right answer so you can get the grade.” But it's like, “How can I get at more of your thinking? How can I understand then what is happening or what you do know?” So, “We can't get to the answer. OK. So tell me about what you do know, and how can we build from there? How can we build understanding?” And that way it maybe will take some of the pressure off of families and caregivers to help their child get to the right answer.  Mike: What hits me is we've really come full circle with that last statement you made because you could conceivably have a student who really clearly understands a particular problem that might be a piece of homework, [who] might have some ideas that are on the right track, but ultimately perhaps doesn't get to a fully clear answer that is perfect. And you might have a student who at a certain point in time, maybe [for them] the context or the problem itself is profoundly challenging.  And in all of those cases, the question, “Tell me what you do know” or “Tell me what you're thinking” is still an opportunity to draw out the students' ideas and to focus on the assets. Even if the work as you described it is to get them to think about, “What are the questions that are really causing me to feel stuck?” That is a productive move for a family and a caregiver and a student to engage in, to kind of wonder about, “What's going on here that's making me feel stuck?” Because then, as you said, all assessment is formative.  Tisha: Mm-hmm. Mike: That homework that comes back is functioning as a formative assessment, and it allows you to think about your next moves, how you build on what the student knows, or even how you build on the questions that the student is bringing to you.  Tisha: And that's such a great point, too, is there's really more value in them coming back with an incomplete assignment or there's, I don't know, maybe “more value” is not the right way to say it. But there is value in kids coming back with an incomplete assignment or an attempted assignment, but they weren't sure how to get through all the problems—as opposed to a parent who has told their student what to do to get to all of the right answers. And so, now they have all these right answers, but it doesn't really give you a clear picture of what that student actually does understand.  So, I'd much rather have a student attempt the homework and stop because they got too stuck, because now I know that, than having a family [member] or a caregiver—somebody working with that student—feel like if they don't have all of the right answers, then it's a problem.  Mike: I think that's really great guidance, both for teachers as they're trying to set expectations and be transparent with families. But also I think it takes that pressure off of families or caregivers who feel like their work when homework shows up, is to get to a right answer. It just feels like a much more healthy relationship with homework and a much more healthy way to think about the value that it has.  Tisha: Well, in truth, it's a healthier relationship with math overall, right? That math is a process. It's not just—the value is not in just this one right answer or this paper of right answers, but it's really in, “How do we deepen our understanding?,” “How do we help students deepen their understanding and have this more positive relationship with math?” And I think that creating these homework struggles between families and caregivers and the children does not support that end goal of having a more positive relationship with math overall.  Mike: Which is a really important part of what we're looking for in a child's elementary experience.  Tisha: Absolutely.  Mike: I think that's a great place to stop. Tisha Jones, thank you so much for joining us. We would love to have you back at some time. It has been a pleasure talking with you.  Tisha: It's been great talking to you, too, Mike.  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. © 2025 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org  

On this weeks episode of the Slightly Messy Show Mike and Meaghan talk about the dress his daughter wants to wear to the Daddy/ Daughter Dance, the one thing that Meaghan is trying to find from her childhood and the arguments we have replayed in our lives in the shower. 

On this weeks episode of the Slightly Messy Show Mike and Meaghan talk about the dress his daughter wants to wear to the Daddy/ Daughter Dance, the one thing that Meaghan is trying to find from her childhood and the arguments we have replayed in our lives in the shower. 

Rounding Up Season 3 | Episode 3 – Choice as a Foundation for Student Engagement Guest: Drs. Zandra de Araujo and Amber Candela Mike Wallus: As an educator, I know that offering my students choice has a big impact on their engagement, their identity, and their sense of autonomy. That said, I've not always been sure how to design choice into the activities in my classroom, especially when I'm using curriculum. Today we're talking with Drs. Zandra de Araujo and Amber Candela about some of the ways educators can design choice into their students' learning experiences.  Welcome back to the podcast, Zandra and Amber. It is really exciting to have you all with us today.  Zandra de Araujo: Glad to be back.  Amber Candela: Very excited to be here. Mike: So, I've heard you both talk at length about the importance of choice in students' learning experiences, and I wonder if we can start there. Before we talk about the ways you think teachers can design choice in a learning experience, can we just talk about the “why”? How would you describe the impact that choice has on students' learning experiences? Zandra: So, if you think about your own life, how fun would it be to never have a choice in what you get to do during a day? So, you don't get to choose what chores to do, where to go, what order to do things, who to work with, who to talk to. Schools are a very low-choice environment, and those tend to be punitive when you have a low-choice environment. And so, we don't want schools to be that way. We want them to be very free and open and empowering places. Amber: And a lot of times, especially in mathematics, students don't always enjoy being in that space. So, you can get more enjoyment, engagement, and if you have choice with how to engage with the content, you'll have more opportunity to be more curious and joyful and have hopefully better experiences in math. Zandra: And if you think about being able to choose things in your day makes you better able to make choices. And so, I think we want students to be smart consumers and users and creators of mathematics. And if you're never given choice or opportunity to kind of own it, I think that you're at a deficit. Amber: Also, if we want problem-solving people engaged in mathematics, it needs to be something that you view as something you were able to do. And so often we teach math like it's this pre-packaged thing, and it's just your role to memorize this thing that I give you. You don't feel like it's yours to play with. Choice offers more of those opportunities for kids. Zandra: Yeah, it feels like you're a consumer of something that's already made rather than somebody who's empowered to create and use and drive the mathematics that you're using, which would make it a lot more fun.  Mike: Yeah. You all are hitting on something that really clicked for me as I was listening to you talk. This idea that school, as it's designed oftentimes, is low choice. But math, in particular, where historically it has really been, “Let me show you what to do. Let me have you practice the way I showed you how to do it,” rinse and repeat. It's particularly important in math, it feels like, to break out and build a sense of choice for kids. Zandra: Absolutely. Mike: Well, one of the things that I appreciate about the work that both of you do is the way that you advocate for practices that are both really, really impactful and also eminently practical. And I'm wondering if we can dive right in and have you all share some of the ways that you think about designing choice into learning experiences.  Amber: I feel like I want “eminently practical” on a sticker for my laptop. Because I find that is a very satisfying and positive way to describe the work that I do because I do want it to be practical and doable within the constraints of schooling as it currently is, not as we wish it to be. Which, we do want it to be better and more empowering for students and teachers. But also, there are a lot of constraints that we have to work within. So, I appreciate that.  Zandra: I think that choice is meant to be a way of empowering students, but the goal for the instruction should come first. So, I'm going to talk about what I would want from my students in my classroom and then how we can build choice in. Because choice is kind of like the secondary component. So, first you have your learning goals, your aims as a teacher. And then, “How do we empower students with choice in service of that goal?” So, I'll start with number sense because that's a hot topic. I'm sure you all hear a lot about it at the MLC. Mike: We absolutely do. Zandra: So, one of the things I think about when teachers say, “Hey, can you help me think about number sense?” It's like, “Yes, I absolutely can.” So, our goal is number sense. So, let's think about what that means for students and how do we build some choice and autonomy into that. So, one of my favorite things is something like, “Give me an estimate, and we can Goldilocks it,” for example. So, it could be a word problem or just a symbolic problem and say, “OK, give me something that you know is either wildly high, wildly low, kind of close, kind of almost close but not right. So, give me an estimate, and it could be a wrong estimate or a close estimate, but you have to explain why.” So, it takes a lot of number sense to be able to do that. You have infinitely many options for an answer, but you have to avoid the one correct answer. So, you have to actually think about the one correct answer to give an estimate. Or if you're trying to give a close estimate, you're kind of using a lot of number sense to estimate the relationships between the numbers ahead of time. The choice comes in because you get to choose what kind of estimate you want. It's totally up to you. You just have to rationalize your idea. Mike: That's awesome. Amber, your turn. Amber: Yep. So related to that is a lot of math goes forward. We give kids the problem, and we want them to come up with the answer. A lot of the work that we've been doing is, “OK, if I give you the answer, can you undo the problem?” I'll go multiplication. So, we do a lot with, “What's seven times eight?” And there's one answer, and then kids are done. And you look for that answer as the teacher, and once that answer has been given, you're kind of like, “OK, here. I'm done with what I'm doing.” But instead, you could say, “Find me numbers whose product is 24.” Now you've opened up what it comes to. There's more access for students. They can come up with more than one solution, but it also gets kids to realize that math doesn't just go one way. It's not, “Here's the problem, find the answer.” It's “Here's the answer, find the problem.” And that also goes to the number sense. Because if students are able to go both ways, they have a better sense in their head around what they're doing and undoing. And you can do it with a lot of different problems. Zandra: And I'll just add in that that's not specific to us. Barb Dougherty had really nice article in, I think, Teaching Children Mathematics, about reversals at some point. And other people have shown this idea as well. So, we're really taking ideas that are really high uptake, we think, and sharing them again with teachers to make sure that they've seen ways that they can do it in their own classroom. Mike: What strikes me about both of these is, the structure is really interesting. But I also think about what the output looks like when you offer these kinds of choices. You're going to have a lot of kids doing things like justifying or using language to help make sense of the “why.” “Why is this one totally wrong, and why is this one kind of right?” And “Why is this close, but maybe not exact?” And to go to the piece where you're like, “Give me some numbers that I can multiply together to get to 24.” There's more of a conversation that comes out of that. There's a back and forth that starts to develop, and you can imagine that back and forth bouncing around with different kids rather than just kind of kid says, teacher validates, and then you're done. Zandra: Yeah, I think one of the cool things about choice is giving kids choice means that there's more variety and diversity of ideas coming in. And that's way more interesting to talk about and rationalize and justify and make sense of than a single correct answer or everybody's doing the same thing. So, I think, not only does it give kids more ownership, it has more access. But also, it just gives you way more interesting math to think and talk about. Mike: Let's keep going. Zandra: Awesome. So, I think another one, a lot of my work is with multilingual students. I really want them to talk. I want everybody to talk about math. So, this goes right to what you were just saying. So, one of the ways that we can easily say, “OK, we want more talk.” So how do we build that in through choice is to say, “Let's open up what you choose to share with the class.” So, there have been lots of studies done on the types of questions that teachers ask: tend to be closed, answer-focused, like single-calculation kind of questions. So, “What is the answer? Who got this?” You know, that kind of thing? Instead, you can give students choices, and I think a lot of teachers have done something akin to this with sentence starters or things. But you can also just say, instead of a sentence starter to say what your answer is, “I agree with X because of Y.” You can also say, “You can share an incorrect answer that you know is wrong because you did it, and it did not work out. You can also share where you got stuck because that's valuable information for the class to have.” You could also say, “I don't want to really share my thinking, my solution because it's not done, but I'll show you my diagram.” And so, “Let me show you a visual.” And just plop it up on the screen. So, there are a lot of different things you could share a question that you have because you're not sure, and it's just a related question. Instead of always sharing answers, let kids open up what they may choose to share, and you'll get more kids sharing. Because answers are kind of scary because you're expecting a correct answer often. And so, when you share and open up, then it's not as scary. And everybody has something to offer because they have a choice that speaks to them. Amber: And kids don't want to be wrong. People don't want to be wrong. “I don't want to give you a wrong answer.” And we went to the University of Georgia together, but Les Steffe always would say, “No child is ever wrong. They're giving you an answer with a purpose behind what that answer is. They don't actually believe that's a wrong answer that they're giving you.” And so, if you open up the space … And teachers say, “We want spaces to be safe, we want kids to want to come in and share.” But are we actually structuring spaces in that way? And so, some of the ideas that we're trying to come up with, we're saying that “We actually do value what you're saying when you choose to give us this. It's your choice of offering it up and you can say whatever it is you want to say around that,” but it's not as evaluative or as high stakes as trying to get the right answer and just like, “Am I right? Did I get it right?” And then what the teacher might say after that. Zandra: I would add on that kids do like to give wrong answers if that's what you're asking for. They don't like to give wrong answers if you're asking for a right one and they're accidentally wrong. So, I think back to my first suggestion: If you ask for a wrong answer and they know it's wrong, they're likely to chime right in because the right answer is the wrong answer, and there are multiple, infinite numbers of them. Mike: You know, it makes me think there's this set of ideas that we need to normalize mistakes as being productive things. And I absolutely agree with that. I also think that when you're asking for the right answer, it's really hard to kind of be like, “Oh, my mistake was so productive.” On the other hand, if you ask for an error or a place where someone's stuck, that just feels different. It feels like an invitation to say, “I've actually been thinking about this. I'm not there. I may be partly there. I'm still engaged. This is where I'm struggling.” That just feels different than providing an answer where you're just like, “Ugh.” I'm really struck by that. Zandra: Yeah, and I think it's a culture thing. So, a lot of teachers say to me that “it's hard to have kids work in groups because they kind of just tell each other the answers.” But they're modeling what they experience as learners in the classroom. “I often get told the answers,” that's the discourse that we have in the classroom. So, if you open up the discourse to include these things like, “Oh, I'm stuck here. I'm not sure where to go here.” They get practice saying, “Oh, I don't know what this is. I don't know how to go from here.” Instead of just going to the answer. And I think it'll spread to the group work as well. Mike: It feels like there's value for every other student in articulating, “I'm certain that this one is wrong, and here's why I know that.” There's information in there that is important for other kids. And even the idea of “I'm stuck here,” right? That's really a great formative assessment opportunity for the teacher. And it also might validate some of the other places where kids are like, “Yeah. Me, too.” Zandra: Uh-hm. Amber: Right, absolutely. Mike: What's next, my friend? Amber: I remember very clearly listening to Zandra present about choice, her idea of choice of feedback. And this was very powerful to me. I had never thought about asking my students how they wanted to receive the feedback I'd be giving them on the problems that they solved. And this idea of students being able to turn something in and then say, “This is how I'd like to receive feedback” or “This is the feedback I'd like to receive,” becomes very powerful because now they're the ones in charge of their own learning. And so much of what we do, kids should get to say, “This is how I think that I will grow better, is if you provide this to me.” And so, having that opportunity for students to say, “This is how I'll be a better learner if you give it to me in this way. And I think if you helped me with this part that would help the whole rest of it.” Or “I don't actually want you to tell me the answer. I am stuck here. I just need a little something to get me through. But please don't tell me what the answer is because I still want to figure it out for myself.” And so, allowing kids to advocate for themselves and teaching them how to advocate for themselves to be better learners; how to advocate for themselves to learn and think about “What I need to learn this material and be a student or be a learner in society” will just ultimately help students. Zandra: Yeah, I think as a student, I don't like to be told the answers. I like to figure things out, and I will puzzle through something for a long time. But sometimes I just want a model or a hint that'll get me on the right path, and that's all I need. But I don't want you to do the problem for me or take over my thinking. If somebody asked me, “What do you want?” I might say like, “Oh, a model problem or something like that.” But I don't think we ask kids a lot. We just do whatever we think as an adult. Which is different, because we're not learning it for the first time. We already know what it is. Mike: You're making me think about the range of possibilities in a situation like that. One is I could notice a student who is working through something and just jump in and take over and do the problem for them essentially and say, “Here, this is how you do it.” Or I guess just let them go, let them continue to work through it. But potentially there could be some struggle, and there might be some frustration. I am really kind of struck by the fact that I wonder how many of us as teachers have really thought about the kinds of options that exist between those two far ends of the continuum. What are the things that we could offer to students rather than just “Let me take over” or productive struggle, but perhaps it's starting to feel unproductive? Does that make sense? Zandra: Yeah, I think it does. I mean, there are so many different ways. I would ask teachers to re-center themselves as the learner that's getting feedback. So, if you have a principal or a coach coming into your room, they've watched a lesson, sometimes you're like, “Oh, that didn't go well. I don't need feedback on that. I know it didn't go well, and I could do better.” But I wonder if you have other things that you notice just being able to take away a part that you know didn't go well. And you're like, “Yep, I know that didn't go well. I have ideas for improving it. I don't really want to focus on that. I want to focus on this other thing.” Or “I've been working really hard on discourse. I really want feedback on the student discourse when you come in.” That's really valuable to be able to steer it—not taking away the other things that you might notice, but really focusing in on something that you've been working on is pretty valuable. And I think kids often have these things that maybe they haven't really thought about a lot, but when you ask them, they might think about it. And they might grow this repertoire of things that they're kind of working on personally. Amber: Yeah, and I just think it's getting at, again, we want students to come out of situations where they can say, “This is how I learn” or “This is how I can grow,” or “This is how I can appreciate math better.” And by allowing them to say, “It'd be really helpful if you just gave me some feedback right here” or “I'm trying to make this argument, and I'm not sure it's coming across clear enough,” or “I'm trying to make this generalization, does it generalize?” We're also maybe talking about some upper-level kids, but I still think we can teach elementary students to advocate for themselves also. Like, “Hey, I try this method all the time. I really want to try this other method. How am I doing with this? I tried it. It didn't really seem to work, but where did I make a mistake? Could you help me out with that? Because I think I want to try this method instead.” And so, I think there are different ways that students can allow for that. And they can say: “I know this answer is wrong. I'm not sure how this answer is wrong. Could you please help me understand my thinking or how could I go back and think about my thinking?” Zandra: Yeah. And I think when you said upper level, you meant upper grades. Amber: Yes. Zandra: I assume.  Amber: Yes.  Zandra: OK, yeah. So, for the lower-grade-level students, too, you can still use this. They still have ideas about how they learn and what you might want to follow up on with them. “Was there an easier way to do this? I did all these hand calculations and stuff. Was there an easier way?” That's a good question to ask. Maybe they've thought about that, and they were like, “That was a lot of work. Maybe there was an easier way that I just didn't see?” That'd be pretty cool if a kid asked you that. Mike: Or even just hearing a kid say something like, “I feel really OK. I feel like I had a strategy. And then I got to this point, and I was like, ‘Something's not working.'” Just being able to say, “This particular place, can you help me think about this?” That's the kind of problem-solving behavior that we ultimately are trying to build in kids, whether it's math or just life. Amber: Right, exactly. And I need, if I want kids to be able … because people say, “I sometimes just want a kid to ask a question.” Well, we do need to give them choice of the question they ask. And that's where a lot of this comes from is, what is your goal as a teacher? What do you want kids to have choice in? If I want you to have choice of feedback, I'm going to give you ideas for what that feedback could be, so then you have something to choose from. Mike: OK, so we've unpacked quite a few ideas in the last bit. I wonder if there are any caveats or any guidance that you would offer to someone who's listening who is maybe thinking about taking up some of these practices in their classroom? Zandra: Oh, yeah. I have a lot. Kids are not necessarily used to having a lot of choice and autonomy. So, you might have to be gentle building it in because it's overwhelming. And they actually might just say, “Just tell me what to do,” because they're not used to it. It's like when you're get a new teacher and they're really into explaining your thinking, and you've never had to do that. Well, you've had 10 years of schooling or however many years of schooling that didn't involve explaining your thinking, and now, all of a sudden, “I'm supposed to explain my thinking. I don't even know what that means. What does that look like? We never had to do that before.”  So maybe start small and think about some things like, “Oh, you can choose a tool or two that helps you with this problem. So, you can use a multiplication table, or you can use a calculator or something to use. You can choose. There are all these things out. You can choose a couple of tools that might help you.” But start small. And you can give too many choices. There's like choice overload. It's like when I go on Amazon, and there are way too many reviews that I have to read for a product, and I never end up buying anything because I've read so many reviews. It's kind of like that. It could get overwhelming. So purposeful, manageable numbers of choices to start out with is a good suggestion. Amber: And also, just going back to what Zandra said in the beginning, is making sure you have a purpose for the choice. And so, if you just are like, “Oh, I'm having choice for choice's sake.” Well, what is that doing? Is that supporting the learning, the mathematics, the number sense, the conceptual understanding, and all of that? And so, have that purpose going in and making sure that the choices backtrack to that purpose. Zandra: Yeah. And you could do a little choice inventory. You could be like, “Huh, if I was a student of my own class today, what would I have gotten to choose? If anything? Did I get to choose where I sat, what utensil I used? What type of paper did I use? Which problems that I did?” Because that's a good one. All these things. And if there's no choice in there, maybe start with one. Mike: I really love that idea of a “choice inventory.” Because I think there's something about really kind of walking through a particular day or a particular lesson that you're planning or that you've enacted, and really thinking about it from that perspective. That's intriguing. Zandra: Yeah, because really, I think once you're aware of how little choice kids get in a day … As an adult learner, who has presumably a longer attention span and more tolerance and really likes math, I've spent my whole life studying it. If I got so little choice and options in what I did, I would not be a well-behaved, engaged student. And I think we need to remember that when we're talking about little children. Mike: So, last question, is there research in the field or researchers who have done work that has informed the kind of thinking that you have about choice? Zandra: Yeah, I think we're always inspired by people who come before us, so it's probably an amalgamation of different things. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I read a lot of books on behavioral economics and all kinds of different things. So, I think a lot of those ideas bleed into the work in math education. In terms of math education, in particular, there have been a lot of people who have really influenced me, like Marian Small's work with parallel tasks and things like that. I think that's a beautiful example of choice. You give multiple options for choice of challenge and see which ones the students feel like is appropriate instead of assigning them competence ahead of time. So, that kind of work has really influenced me. Amber: And then just, our team really coming together; Sam Otten and Zandra and their ideas and collaborating together. And like you mentioned earlier, that Barb Dougherty article on the different types of questions has really been impactful. More about opening up questions, but it does help you think about choice a little bit better. Mike: I think this is a great place to stop. Zandra, Amber, thank you so much for a really eye-opening conversation. Zandra: Thank you for having us.  Amber: Thanks for having us. 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

Rounding Up Season 3 | Episode 2 – Responsive Curriculum Guest: Dr. Corey Drake Mike Wallus: When it comes to curriculum, educators are often told to implement with “fidelity.” But what does fidelity mean? And where does that leave educators who want to be responsive to students in their classrooms? Today we're talking with Dr. Corey Drake about principles for responsive curriculum use that invite educators to respond to the students in their classrooms while still implementing curriculum with integrity. Mike: One of the age-old questions that educators grapple with is how to implement a curriculum in ways that are responsive to the students in their classroom. It's a question I thought a lot about during my years as a classroom teacher, and it's one that I continue to discuss with my colleague at MLC, Dr. Corey Drake. As a former classroom teacher and a former teacher educator who only recently began working for an organization that publishes curriculum, Corey and I have been trying to carve out a set of recommendations that we hope will help teachers navigate this question. Today on the podcast, we'll talk about this question of responsive curriculum use and offer some recommendations to support teachers in the field. Mike: Welcome back to the podcast, Corey. I'm excited to have you with us again. Corey Drake: It's great to be with you again. Mike: So, I've been excited about this conversation for a while because this question of, “What does it mean to be responsive to students and use a curriculum?” is something that teachers have been grappling with for so long, and you and I often hear phrases like “implementation with fidelity” used when folks are trying to describe their expectations when a curriculum's adopted. Corey: Yeah, I mean, I think this is a question teachers grapple with. It's a question I've been grappling with for my whole career, from different points of view from when I was a classroom teacher and a teacher educator and now working at The Math Learning Center. But I think this is the fundamental tension: “How do you use a set of published curriculum materials while also being responsive to your students?” And I think ideas like implementation with fidelity didn't really account for the responsive-to-your-students piece. Fidelity has often been taken up as meaning following curriculum materials, page by page, word for word, task for task. We know that's not actually possible. You have to make decisions, you have to make adaptations as you move from a written page to an enacted curriculum. But still the idea of fidelity was to be as close as possible to the written page. Whereas ideas like implementation with integrity or responsive curriculum use are starting with what's written on the page, staying consistent with the key ideas of what's on the page, but doing it in a way that's responsive to the students who are sitting in front of you. And that's really kind of the art and science of curriculum use. Mike: Yeah, I think one of the things that I used to think was that it was really a binary choice between something like fidelity, where you were following things in what I would've described as a lockstep fashion. Or the alternative, which would be, “I'm going to make everything up.” And you've helped me think, first of all, about what might be some baseline expectations from a large-scale curriculum. What are we actually expecting from curriculum around design, around the audience that it's written for? I wonder if you could share with the audience some of the things that we've talked about when it comes to the assets and also the limitations of a large-scale curriculum. Corey: Yeah, absolutely. And I will say, when you and I were first teachers probably, and definitely when we were students, the conversation was very different. We had different curriculum materials available. There was a very common idea that good teachers were teachers who made up their own curriculum materials, who developed all of their own materials. But there weren't the kinds of materials out there that we have now. And now we have materials that do provide a lot of assets, can be rich tools for teachers, particularly if we release this expectation of fidelity and instead think about integrity. So, some of the assets that a high-quality curriculum can bring are the progression of ideas, the sequence of ideas and tasks that underlies almost any set of curriculum materials; that really looks at, “How does student thinking develop across the course of a school year?” And what kinds of tasks, in what order, can support that development of that thinking. Corey: That's a really important thing that individual teachers or even teams of teachers working on their own, that would be very hard for them to put together in that kind of coherent, sequential way. So, that's really important. A lot of curriculum materials also bring in many ideas that we've learned over the last decades about how children learn mathematics: the kinds of strategies children use, the different ways of thinking that children bring. And so, there's a lot that both teachers and students can learn from using curriculum materials. At the same time, any published set of large-scale curriculum materials are, by definition, designed for a generic group of students, a generic teacher in a generic classroom, in a generic community. That's what it means to be large scale. That's what it means to be published ahead of time. So, those materials are not written for any specific student or teacher or classroom or community. Corey: And so, that's the real limitation. It doesn't mean that the materials are bad. The materials are very good. But they can't be written for those specific children in that specific classroom and community. That's where this idea that responsive curriculum use and equitable instruction always have to happen in the interactions between materials, teachers, and students. Materials by themselves cannot be responsive. Teachers by themselves cannot responsibly develop the kinds of ideas in the ways that curriculum can, the ways they can when using curriculum as a tool. And, of course, students are a key part of that interaction. And so, it's really thinking about those interactions among teachers, students, and materials and thinking about, “What are the strengths the materials bring? What are the strengths the teacher brings?” The teacher brings their knowledge of the students. The teacher brings their knowledge of the context. And the students bring, of course, their engagement and their interaction with those materials. And so, it's thinking about the strengths they each bring to that interaction, and it's in those interactions that equitable and responsive curriculum use happens. Mike: One of the things that jumps out from what you said is this notion that we're not actually attempting to fix “bad curriculum.” We're taking the position that curriculum has a set of assets, but it also has a set of limitations, and that's true regardless of the curriculum materials that you're using. Corey: Absolutely. This is not at all about curriculum being bad or not doing what it's supposed to do. This assumes that you're using a high-quality curriculum that does the things we just talked about that has that progression of learning, those sequences of tasks that brings ideas about how children learn and how we learn and teach mathematics. And then, to use that well and responsibly, the teacher then needs to work in ways, make decisions to enact that responsibly. It's not about fixing the curriculum. It's about using the curriculum in the most productive and responsive ways possible. Mike: I think that's good context, and I also think it's a good segue to talk about the three recommendations that we want educators to consider when they're thinking about, “What does it mean to be responsive when you're using curriculum?” So, just to begin with, why don't we just lay them out? Could you unpack them, Corey? Corey: Yeah, absolutely. But I will say that this is work you and I have developed together and looking at the work of others in the field. And we've really come up with, I think, three key criteria for thinking about responsive curriculum use. One is that it maintains the goals of the curriculum. So again, recognizing that one of the strengths of curriculum is that it's built on this progression of ideas and that it moves in a sequential way from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. We want teachers to be aware of, to understand what the goals are of any particular session or unit or year, and to stay true to those goals, to stay aligned with those goals. But at the same time, doing that in ways that open up opportunities for voice and choice and sensemaking for the specific students who are in front of them in that classroom. And then the last is, we're really concerned with and interested in supporting equitable practice. And so, we think about responsive curriculum use as curriculum use that reflects the equity-based practices that were developed by Julia Aguirre and her colleagues. Mike: I think for me, one of the things that hit home was thinking about this idea that there's a mathematical goal and that goal is actually part of a larger trajectory that the curriculum's designed around. And when I've thought about differentiation in the past, what I was really thinking about was replacement that fundamentally altered the instructional goal. And I think the challenge in this work is to say, “Am I clear on the instructional goal? And do the things that I'm considering actually maintain that for kids or are they really replacing them or changing them in a way that will alter or impact the trajectory?” Corey: I think that's such a critical point. And it's not easy work. It's not always clear even in materials that have a stated learning goal or learning target for a session. There's still work to do for the teacher to say, “What is the mathematical goal? Not the activity, not the task, but what is the goal? What is the understanding I'm trying to support for my students as they engage in this activity?” And so, you're right. I think the first thing is, teachers have to be super clear about that because all the rest of the decisions flow from understanding, “What is the goal of this activity, what are the understandings that I am trying to develop and support with this session? And then I can make decisions that are enhancing and providing access to that goal, but not replacing it. I'm not changing the goal for any of my students. I'm not changing the goal for my whole group of students. Instead, I'm recognizing that students will need different ways into that mathematics. Students will need different kinds of supports along the way. But all of them are reaching toward or moving toward that mathematical goal.” Mike: Yeah. When I think about some of the options, like potentially, number choice; if I'm going to try to provide different options in terms of number choice, is that actually maintaining a connection to the mathematical goal, or have I done something that altered it? Another thing that occurs to me is the resources that we share with kids for representation, be it manipulatives or paper, pencil, even having them talk about it—any of those kinds of choices. To what extent do they support the mathematical goal, or do they veer away from it? Corey: Yeah, absolutely. And there are times when different numbers or different tools or different models will alter the mathematical goal because part of the mathematical goal is to learn about a particular tool or a particular representation. And there are other times when having a different set of numbers or a different set of tools or models will only enhance students' access to that mathematical goal because maybe the goal is understanding something like two-digit addition and developing strategies for two-digit addition. Well then, students could reach that goal in a lot of different ways. And some students will be working just with decade numbers, and some students will be working with decades and ones, and some students will need number pieces, and others will do it mentally. But if the goal is developing strategies, developing your understanding of two-digit addition, then all of those choices make sense, all of those choices stay aligned with the goal. Corey: But if the goal is to understand how base ten pieces work, then providing a different model or telling students they don't need to use that model would, of course, fundamentally alter the goal. So, this is why it's so critically important that we support teachers in understanding, making sense of the goal, figuring out how do they figure that out. How do you open a set of curriculum materials, look at a particular lesson, and understand what the mathematical goal of that lesson is? And it's not as simple as just looking for the statement of the learning goal and the learning target. But it's really about, “What are the understandings that I think will develop or are intended to develop through this session?” Mike: I feel like we should talk a little bit about context, because context is such a powerful tool, right? If you alter the context, it might help kids surface some prior knowledge that they have. What I'm thinking about is this task that exists in Bridges where we're having kids look at a pet store where there are arrays of different sorts and kinds of dog foods or dog toys or cat toys. And I remember an educator saying to me, “I wonder if I could shift the context.” And the question that I asked her is, “If you look at this image that we're using to launch the task, what are the particular parts of that image that are critical to maintain if you're going to replace it with something that's more connected to your students?” Corey: Connecting to your students, using context to help students access the mathematics, is so important and such an empowering thing for teachers and students. But you're asking exactly the right question. And of course, that all relates to, “What's the mathematical goal?” Again. Because if I know that, then I can look for the features of the context that's in the textbook and see the ways in which that context was designed to support students in reaching that mathematical goal. But I can also look at a different context that might be more relevant to my students, that might provide them better access to the mathematics. And I can look at that context through the lens of that mathematical goal and see, “Does this context also present the kinds of features that will help my students understand and make sense of the mathematical goal?” And if the answer is yes, and if that context is also then more relevant to my students or more connected to their lives, then great. That's a wonderful adaptation. That's a great example of responsive curriculum use. If now I'm in a context that's distracting or leading me away from the mathematical goal, that's where we run into adaptations that are less responsive and less productive. Mike: Well, and to finish the example, the conversation that this led to with this educator was she was talking about looking for bodegas in her neighborhood that her children were familiar with, and we end up talking quite a bit about the extent to which she could find images from the local bodega that had different kinds of arrays. She was really excited. She actually did end up finding an image, and she came back, and she shared that this really had an impact on her kids. They felt connected to it, and the mathematical goal was still preserved. Corey: I love that. I think that's a great example. And I think the other thing that comes up sometimes when we present these ideas, is maybe you want to find a different context that is more relevant to your students that they know more about. Sometimes you might look at a context that's presented in the textbook and say, “I really love the mathematical features here. I really see how knowing something about this context could help my students reach the mathematical goal, but I'm going to have to do some work ahead of time to help my students understand the context, to provide them some access to that, to provide them some entry points.” So, in your example, maybe we're going to go visit a pet store. Maybe we're going to look at images from different kinds of stores and notice how things are arranged on shelves, and in arrays, and in different combinations. So, I think there are always a couple of choices. One is to change the context. One is to do some work upfront to help your students access the context so that they can then use that context to access the mathematics. But I think in both cases, it's about understanding the goal of the lesson and then understanding how the features of the context relate to that goal. Mike: Let's shift and just talk about the second notion, this idea of opening up space for students' voice or for sensemaking when you're using curriculum. For me at least, I often try to project ideas for practice into a mental movie of myself in a classroom. And I wonder if we could work to help people imagine what this idea of opening space for voice or sensemaking might look like. Corey: I think a lot of times those opportunities for opening up voice and choice and sensemaking are not in the direct, action steps or the direct instructions to teachers within the lesson, but they're kind of in the in-between. So, “I know I need to introduce this idea to my students, but how am I going to do that? What is that going to look like? What is that going to sound like? What are students going to be experiencing?” And so, asking yourself that question as the lesson plays out is, I think, where you find those opportunities to open up that space for student voice and choice. It's often about looking at that and saying, “Am I going to tell students this idea? Or am I going to ask them? Are students going to develop their strategy and share it with me or turn it in on a piece of paper? Or are they going to turn and talk to a partner? Are they going to share those ideas with a small group, with a whole group? What are they going to listen for in each other's strategies? How am I going to ask them to make connections across those strategies? What kinds of tools am I going to make available to them? What kinds of choices are they going to have throughout that process?” Corey: And so, I think it's having that mental movie play through as you read through the lesson and thinking about those questions all the way through. “Where are my students going to have voice? How are they going to have choice? How are students going to be sensemaking?” And often thinking about, “Where can I step back, as the teacher, to open up that space for student voice or student choice?” Mike: You're making me think about a couple things. The first one that really jumped out was this idea that part of voice is not necessarily always having the conversation flow from teacher to student, but having a turn and talk, or having kids listen to and engage with the ideas that their partners are sharing is a part of that idea that we're creating space for kids to share their ideas, to share their voice, to build their own confidence around the mathematics. Corey: Absolutely. I think that, to me, is the biggest difference I see when I go into different classrooms. “Whose voice am I hearing most often? And who's thinking do I know about when I've spent 20 minutes in a classroom?” And there are some classrooms where I know a lot about what the teacher's thinking. I don't know a lot about what the students are thinking. And there are other classrooms where I can tell you something about the thinking of every one of the students in that room after 10 minutes in that classroom because they're constantly turning and talking and sharing their ideas. Student voice isn't always out loud either, right? Students might be sharing their ideas in writing, they might be sharing their ideas through gestures or through manipulating models, but the ideas are communicating their mathematical thinking. Really, student communication might be an even better way to talk about that because there are so many different ways in which students can express their ideas. Mike: Part of what jumped out is this notion of, “What do you notice? What do you wonder?” Every student can notice, every student can wonder. So, if you share a context before you dive right into telling kids what's going to happen, give them some space to actually notice and wonder about what's going on, generate questions, that really feels like something that's actionable for folks. Corey: I think you could start every activity you did with a, “What do you notice? What do you wonder?” Students always have ideas. Students are always bringing resources and experiences and ideas to any context, to any task, to any situation. And so, we can always begin by accessing those ideas and then figuring out as teachers how we might build on those ideas, where we might go from there. I think even more fundamentally is just this idea that all students are sensemakers. All students bring brilliance to the classroom. And so ,what we need to do is just give them the opportunities to use those ideas to share those ideas, and then we as teachers can build on those ideas. Mike: Before we close this conversation, I want to spend time talking about responsive curriculum use being a vehicle for opening up space for equity-based practice. Personally, this is something that you've helped me find words for. There were some ideas that I had an intuitive understanding of. But I think helping people name what we mean when we're talking about opening space for equity-based practice is something that we might be able to share with folks right now. Can you share how a teacher might take up this idea of creating space for equity-based practice as they're looking at lessons or even a series of lessons? Corey: Yeah, absolutely. And I think student voice and choice are maybe outcomes of equity-based practices. And so, in a similar way, I think teachers can begin by looking at a lesson or a series of lessons and thinking about those spaces and those decisions in between the action steps. And again, asking a series of questions. The equity-based practices aren't a series of steps or rules, but really like a lens or a series of questions that as a teacher, you might ask yourself as you prepare for a lesson. So, “Who is being positioned as mathematically capable? Who's being positioned as having mathematically important ideas? Are all of my students being positioned in that way? Are some of my students being marginalized? And if some of my students are being marginalized, then what can I do about that? How could I physically move students around so that they're not marginalized? How can I call attention to or highlight a certain student's ideas without saying that those ideas are the best or only ideas? But saying, ‘Look, this student, who we might not have recognized before as mathematically capable and brilliant, has a really cool idea right now.'” Corey: You and I have both seen video from classrooms where that's done brilliantly by these small moves that teachers can make to position students as mathematically brilliant, as having important or cool or worthwhile ideas, valuable ideas to contribute. So, I think it's those kinds of decisions that make such a difference. Those decisions to affirm learners' identities. Those aren't big changes in how you teach. Those are how you approach each of those interactions minute by minute in the classroom. How do you help students recognize that they are mathematicians, that they each bring valuable ideas to the classroom? And so, it's more about those in-between moments and those moments of interaction with students where these equity-based practices come to life. Mike: You said a couple things that I'm glad that you brought out, Corey. One of them is this notion of positioning. And the other one that I think is deeply connected is this idea of challenging places where kids might be marginalized. And I think one of the things that I've been grappling with lately is that there's a set of stories or ideas and labels that often follow kids. There are labels that we affix to kids within the school system. There are stories that exist around the communities that kids come from, their families. And then there are also the stories that kids make up about one another, the ideas that carry about, “Who's good at math? Who's not? Who has ideas to share? Who might I listen to, and who might I not?” And positioning, to me, has so much opportunity as a practice to help press back against those stories that might be marginalizing kids. Corey: I think that's such an important point. And I think, along with that is the recognition that this doesn't mean that you, as the individual teacher, created those stories or believed stories or did anything to perpetuate those stories—except if you didn't act to disrupt them. Because those stories come from all around us. We hear Pam Seda and Julia Aguirre and people like that saying, “They're the air we breathe. They're the smog we live in. Those stories are everywhere. They're in our society, they're in our schools, they're in the stories students tell and make up about each other.” And so, the key to challenging marginality is not to say, “Well, I didn't tell that story, I don't believe that story. But those stories exist, and they affect the children in my classroom, so what am I going to do to disrupt them? What am I going to do? Because I know the stories that are told about certain students, even if I'm not the one telling them, I know what those stories are. So how am I going to disrupt them to show that the student who the story or the labels about that student are, that they are not as capable, or they are behind or struggling or ‘low students.' What am I going to do to disrupt that and help everyone in our classroom community see the brilliance of that child, understand that that child has as much to contribute as anybody else in the math classroom?” And that's what it means to enact equity-based practices. Mike: You're making me think about an interview we did earlier this year with Peter Liljedahl, and he talked about this idea. He was talking about it in the context of grouping, but essentially what he was saying is that kids recognize the stories that are being told in a classroom about who's competent and who's not. And so, positioning, in my mind, is really thinking about—and I've heard Julia Aguirre say it this way—“Who needs to shine? Whose ideas can we bring to the center?” Because what I've come to really have a better understanding of, is that the way I feel about myself as a mathematician and the opportunities that exist within a classroom for me to make sense of math, those are really deeply intertwined. Corey: Yes, yes, absolutely. We are not focusing on marginality or identity just because it makes people feel good, or even just because it's the right thing to do. But actually in the math classroom, your identity and the expectations and the way you're positioned in that classroom fundamentally affect what you have opportunities to learn and the kinds of math you have access to. And so, we will do this because it's the right thing to do and because it supports math learning for all students. And understanding the role of identity and marginality and positioning in student learning is critically important. Mike: You're making me think about a classroom that we visited earlier this year, and it was a really dynamic math discussion. There was a young man, I'll call him David, and he was in a multilingual classroom. And I'm thinking back on what you said. At one point you said, “I can go into a classroom, and I can have a really clear idea of what the teacher understands, and perhaps less so with the kids.” In this case, I remember leaving thinking, “I really clearly understand that David has a deep conceptual understanding of the mathematics.” And the reason for that was, he generally volunteered to answer every single question. And it was interesting. It's not because the educator in the classroom was directing all of the questions to him, but I really got the sense that the kids, when the question was answered, were to almost turn their bodies because they knew he was going to say something. And it makes me think David is a kid who, over time, not necessarily through intention, but through the way that status works in classrooms, he was positioned as someone who really had some ideas to share, and the kids were listening. The challenge was, not many of them were talking. And so, the question is, “How do we change that? Not because anyone has any ill intent toward those other children, but because we want them to see themselves as mathematicians as well.” Corey: Yeah, absolutely. And that is part of what's tricky about this is that that's so important is that I think for many years we've talked about opening up the classroom for student talk and student discourse. And we do turn and talks, and we do think pair shares. And we've seen a lot of progress, I think, in seeing those kinds of things in math classrooms. And I think the next step to that is to do those with the kind of intentionality and awareness that you were just demonstrating there; which is to say, “Well, who's talking and how often are they talking? And what sense are people making of the fact that David is talking so much? What sense are they making? What stories are they telling about who David is as a mathematician? But also who they are as mathematicians. And what does it mean to them that even though there are lots of opportunity for students talk in that classroom, it's dominated by one or maybe two students. And so, we have opened it up for student discourse, but we have more work to do. We have more work to say, “Who's talking, and what sense are they making, and what does that look like over time? And how is mathematical authority distributed? How is participation distributed across the class? And, in particular, with intentionality toward disrupting some of those narratives that have become entrenched in classrooms and schools.” Mike: I think that's a great place for us to stop. I want to thank you again for joining us, Corey. It was lovely to have you back on the podcast. Corey: Thanks. It was great to be with 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 

(10 Hours) #949 ASMR Mike - Let Me Bore You To Sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023) by Jason Newland

(10 Hours) #949 ASMR Mike - Let Me Bore You To Sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023) Deep Relaxation by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Music promoted by freemusicbg.com and www.chosic.com

(5 Hours) #949 ASMR Mike - Let Me Bore You To Sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023) Deep Relaxation Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Music promoted by https://freemusicbg.comand https://www.chosic.com

(10 Hours) #949 ASMR Mike - Let Me Bore You To Sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023) Deep Relaxation by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Music promoted by https://freemusicbg.com and https://www.chosic.com

(5 Hours) #949 ASMR Mike - Let Me Bore You To Sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023) Deep Relaxation by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Music promoted by freemusicbg.com and www.chosic.com

(5 Hours) #949 ASMR Mike - Let Me Bore You To Sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023) Deep Relaxation by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Music promoted by https://freemusicbg.com and https://www.chosic.com

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

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 7 – Making Fractions More Meaningful Guest: Dr. Susan Empson Mike Wallus: For quite a few adults, fractions were a stumbling block in their education that caused many to lose their footing and begin to doubt their ability to make sense of math. But this doesn't have to be the case for our students. Today on the podcast, we're talking with Dr. Susan Empson about big ideas and fractions and how we can make them more meaningful for our students. Welcome to the podcast. Susan. Thanks for joining us. Susan Empson: Oh, it's so great to be here. Thank you for having me. Mike: So, your book was a real turning point for me as an educator, and one of the things that it did for me at least, it exposed how little that I actually understood about the meaning of fractions. And I say this because I don't think that I'm alone in saying that my own elementary school experience was mostly procedural. So rather than attempting to move kids quickly to procedures, what types of experiences can help children build a more meaningful understanding of fractions? Susan: Great question. Before I get started, I just want to acknowledge my collaborators because I've had many people that I've worked with. There's Linda Levi, co-author of the book, and then my current research partner, Vicki Jacobs. And of course, we wouldn't know anything without many classroom teachers we've worked with in the current and past graduate students. In terms of the types of experiences that can help children build more meaningful experiences of fractions, the main thing we would say is to offer opportunities that allow children to use what they already understand about fractions to solve and discuss story problems. Children's understandings are often informal and early on, for example, may consist mainly partitioning things in half. What I mean by informal is that understandings emerge in situations out of school. So, for example, many children have siblings and have experienced situations where they have had to share, let's say three cookies or slices of pizza between two children. In these kinds of situations, children appreciate the need for equal shares, and they also develop strategies for creating them. So, as children solve and discuss story problems in school, their understandings grow. The important point is that story problems can provide a bridge between children's existing understandings and new understandings of fractions by allowing children to draw on these informal experiences. Generally, we recommend lots of experiences with story problems before moving on to symbolic work to give children plenty of opportunity to develop meaningful fractions. And we also recommend using story problems throughout fraction instruction. Teachers can use different types of story problems and adjust the numbers in those problems to address a range of fraction content. There are also ideas that we think are foundational to understanding fractions, and they're all ideas that can be elicited and developed as children engage in solving and discussing story problems.  Susan: So, one idea is that the size of a piece is determined by its relationship to the whole. What I mean is that it's not necessarily the number of pieces into which a whole is partitioned that determines the size of a piece. Instead, it's how many times the piece fits into the whole. So, in their problem-solving, children create these amounts and eventually name them and symbolize them as unit fractions. That's any fraction with 1 in the numerator. Mike: You know, one of the things that stands out for me in that initial description that you offered, is this idea of kids don't just make meaning of fractions at school, that their informal lived experiences are really an asset that we can draw on to help make sense of what a fraction is or how to think about it. Susan: That's a wonderful way to say it. And absolutely, the more teachers get to know the children in their classrooms and the kinds of experiences those children might have outside of school, the more of that can be incorporated into experiences like solving story problems in school. Mike: Well, let's dig into this a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about the kinds of story problems or the structure that actually provides an entry point and can build understanding of fractions for students. Can you talk a bit about that, Susan? Susan: Yes. So, I'll describe a couple types of story problems that we have found especially useful to elicit and develop children's fraction understandings. So first, equal sharing story problems are a powerful type of story problem that can be used at the beginning of and even throughout instruction. These problems involve sharing multiple things among multiple sharers. So, for example, four friends equally sharing 10 oranges. How much orange would each friend get? Problems like this one allow children to create fractional amounts by drawing things, partitioning those things, and then attaching fraction names and symbols. So, let's [talk] a little bit about how a child might solve the oranges problem. A child might begin by drawing four friends and then distributing whole oranges one by one until each friend has two whole oranges. Now, there are two oranges left and not enough to give each friend another whole orange. So, they have to think about how to partition the remaining oranges. Susan: They might partition each orange in half and give one more piece to each friend, or they might partition each of the remaining oranges into fourths and give two pieces to each friend. Finally, they have to think about how to describe how much each friend gets in terms of the wholes and the pieces. They might simply draw the amount, they might shade it in, or they might attach number names to it. I also want to point out that a problem about four friends equally sharing 10 oranges can be solved by children with no formal understanding of fraction names and symbols because there are no fractions in the story problem. The fractions emerge in children's strategies and are represented by the pieces in the answer. The important thing here is that children are engaged in creating pieces and considering how the pieces are related to the wholes or other pieces. The names and symbols can be attached gradually. Mike: So, the question that I wanted to ask is how to deal with this idea of how you name those fractional amounts, because the process that you described to me, what's powerful about it is that I can directly model the situation. I can make sense of partitioning. I think one of the things that I've always wondered about is, do you have a recommendation for how to navigate that naming process? I've got one of something, but it's not really one whole orange. So how do I name that? Susan: That's a great question. Children often know some of the informal names for fractions, and they might understand halves or even fourths. Initially, they may call everything a half or everything a piece or just count everything as one. And so, what teachers can do is have conversations with children about the pieces they've created and how the pieces relate to the whole. A question that we've found to be very helpful is, how many of those pieces fit into the whole? Mike: Got it. Susan: Not a question about how many pieces are there in the whole, but how many of the one piece fit into the whole. Because it then focuses children on thinking about the relationship between the piece and the whole rather than simply counting pieces. Mike: Let's talk about the other problem type that was kind of front and center in your thinking. Susan: Yes. So, another type of story problem that can be used early in fraction instruction involves what we think of as special multiplication and division story problems that have a whole number of groups and a unit fraction amount in each group. So, what do I mean by that? For example, let's say there are six friends and they each will get one-third of a sub sandwich for lunch. So, there's a whole number of groups—that's the six friends—and there's a unit fraction amount in each group that's the one-third of a sandwich that they each get. And then the question is how many sandwiches will be needed for the friends? So, a problem like this one essentially engages children in reasoning about six groups of one-third. And again, as with the equal sharing problem about oranges, they can solve it by drawing out things. They might draw each one-third of a sandwich, and then they have to consider how to combine those to make whole sandwiches. An important idea that children work on with this problem then is that three groups of one-third of a sandwich can be combined to make one whole sandwich. There are other interesting types of story problems, but teachers have found these two types, in particular, effective in developing children's understandings of some of the big ideas and fractions. Mike: I wonder if you have educators who hear you talk about the second type of problem and are a little bit surprised because they perceive it to be multiplication. Susan: Yes, it is surprising. And the key is not that you teach all of multiplying and dividing fractions before adding and subtracting fractions, but that you use these problem types with special number combinations. So, a whole number of groups, for example, the six groups unit fractions in each group—because those are the earliest fractions children understand. And I think maybe one way to think about it is that fractions come out of multiplying and dividing, kind of in the way that whole numbers come out of adding and counting. And the key is to provide situations story problems that have number combinations in them that children are able to work with. Mike: That totally makes sense. Can you say more about the importance of attending to the number combinations? Susan: Yes. Well, I think that the number combinations that you might choose would be the ones that are able to connect with the fraction understandings that children already have. So, for example, if you're working with kindergartners, they might have a sense of what one half is. So, you might choose equal sharing problems that are about sharing things among two children. So, for example, three cookies among two children. You could even, once children are able to name the halves, they create in a problem like that, you can even pose problems that are about five children who each get half of a sandwich, how many sandwiches is that? But those are all numbers that are chosen to allow children to use what they understand about fractions. And then as their understandings grow and their repertoire of fractions also grows, you can increase the difficulty of the numbers. So, at the other end, let's think about fifth grade and posing equal sharing problems. If we take that problem about four friends sharing 10 oranges, we could change the number just a little bit to make it a lot harder to, four friends sharing 10 and a half oranges, and then fifth-graders would be solving a problem that's about finding a fraction of a fraction, sharing the half orange among the four children. Mike: Let me take what you've shared and ask a follow-up question that came to me as you were talking. It strikes me that the design, the number choices that we use in problems matter, but so does the space that the teacher provides for students to develop strategies and also the way that the teacher engages with students around their strategy. Could you talk a little bit about that, Susan? Susan: Yes. We think it's important for children to have space to solve problems, fraction story problems, in ways that make sense to them and also space to share their thinking. So, just as teachers might do with whole number problem-solving in terms of teacher questioning in these spaces, the important thing is for the teacher to be aware of and to appreciate the details of children's thinking. The idea is not to fix children's thinking with questioning, but to understand it or explore it. So, one space that we have found to be rich for this kind of questioning is circulating. So, that's the time when as children solve problems, the teacher circulates and has conversations with individual children about their strategies. So, follow-up questions that focus on the details of children's strategies help children to both articulate their strategies and to reflect on them and help teachers to understand what children's strategies are. We've also found that obvious questions are sometimes underappreciated. So, for example, questions about what this child understands about what's happening in a story problem, what the child has done so far in a partial strategy, even questions about marks on a child's paper; shapes or tallies that you as a teacher may not be quite sure about, asking what they mean to the child. “What are those? Why did you make those? How did they connect with the problem?” So, in some it benefits children to have the time to articulate the details of what they've done, and it benefits the teacher because they learn about children's understandings. Mike: You're making me think about something that I don't know that I had words for before, which is I wonder if, as a field, we have made some progress about giving kids the space that you're talking about with whole number operations, especially with addition and subtraction. And you're also making me wonder if we still have a ways to go about not trying to simply funnel kids to, even if it's not algorithms, answer-getting strategies with rational numbers. I'm wondering if that strikes a chord for you or if that feels off base. Susan: It feels totally on base to me. I think that it is as beneficial, perhaps even more beneficial for children to engage in solving story problems and teachers to have these conversations with them about their strategies. I actually think that fractions provide certain challenges that whole numbers may not, and the kinds of questioning that I'm talking about really depend on the details of what children have done. And so, teachers need to be comfortable with and familiar with children's strategies and how they think about fractions as they solve these problems. And then that understanding, that familiarity, lays the groundwork for teachers to have these conversations. The questions that I'm talking about can't really be planned in advance. Teachers need to be responsive to what the child is doing and saying in the moment. And so that also just adds to the challenge. Mike: I'm wondering if you think that there are ways that educators can draw on the work that students have done composing and decomposing whole numbers to support their understanding of fractions? Susan: Yes. We see lots of parallels just as children's understandings of whole numbers develop. They're able to use these understandings to solve multi-digit operations problems by composing and decomposing numbers. So, for example, to take an easy addition, to add 37 plus eight, a child might say, “I don't know what that is, but I do know how to get from 37 to 40 with three.” So, they take three from the eight, add it to the 37 get to 40, and then once at 40 they might say, “I know that 40 plus five more is 45.” So, in other words, they decompose the eight in a way that helps them use what they understand about decade numbers. Operations with fractions work similarly, but children often do not think about the similarities because they don't understand fractions or numbers to, versus two numbers one on top of the other. Susan: If children understand that fractions can be composed and decomposed just as whole numbers can be composed and decomposed, then they can use these understandings to add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions. For example, to add one and four-fifths plus three-fifths, a child might say, “I know how to get up to two from one in four-fifths. I need one more fifth, and then I have two more fifths still to add from the three-fifths. So, it's two and two-fifths.” So, in other words, just as they decompose the eight into three and five to add eight to 37, they decompose the three-fifths into one-fifth and two-fifths to add it to one and four-fifths. Mike: I could imagine a problem like one and a half plus five-eighths. I could say, “Well, I know I need to get a half up. Five-eighths is really four-eighths and one-eighths, and four-eighths is a half.” Susan: Yep. Mike: “So, I'm actually going from one and a half plus four-eighths. OK. That gets me to two, and then I've got one more eighth left. So, it's two and an eighth.” Susan: Nice. Yeah, that's exactly the kind of reasoning this approach can encourage. Mike: Well, I have a final question for you, Susan. “Extending Children's Mathematics” came out in 2011, and I'm wondering what you've learned since the book came out. So, are there ideas that you feel like have really been affirmed or refined, and what are some of the questions about the ways that students make meaning of fractions that you're exploring right now? Susan: Well, I think, for one, I have a continued appreciation for the power of equal sharing problems. You can use them to elicit children's informal understandings of fractions early in instruction. You can use them to address a range of fraction understandings, and they can be adapted for a variety of fraction content. So, for example, building meaning for fractions, operating with fractions, concepts of equivalence. Vicki and I are currently writing up results from a big research project focused on teachers' responsiveness to children's fraction thinking during instruction. And right now, we're in the process of analyzing data on third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade children's strategies for equal sharing problems. We specifically focused on over 1,500 drawing-based strategies used by children in a written assessment at the end of the school year. We've been surprised both by the variety of details in these strategies—so, for example, how children represent items, how they decide to distribute pieces to people—and also by the percentages of children using these drawing-based strategies. For each of grades three, four, and five, over 50 percent of children use the drawing-based strategy. There are also, of course, other kinds of strategies that don't depend on drawings that children use, but by far the majority of children were using these strategies. Mike: That's interesting because I think it implies that we perhaps need to recognize that children actually benefit from time using those strategies as a starting point for making sense of the problems that they're solving. Susan: I think it speaks to the length of time and the number of experiences that children need to really build meaning for fractions that they can then use in more symbolic work. I'll mention two other things that we've learned for which we actually have articles in the NCTM publication MTLT, which is “Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching in PK–I2.” So first, we've renewed appreciation for the importance of unit fractions and story problems to elicit and develop big ideas. Another idea is that unit fractions are building blocks of other fractions. So, for example, if children solve the oranges problem by partitioning both of the extra oranges into fourths, then they have to combine the pieces in their answer. One-fourth from each of two oranges makes two-fourths of an orange. Another idea is that one whole can be seen as the same amount as a grouping of same-sized unit fractions. So, those unit fractions can all come from the same hole or different wholes, for example, to solve the problem about six friends who will each get one-third of a sub sandwich. A child has to group the one-third sandwiches to make whole sandwiches. Understanding that the same sandwich can be seen in these two ways, both as three one-third sandwiches or as one whole sandwich, provides a foundation for flexibility and reasoning. For those in the audience who are familiar with CGI, this idea is just like the IDM base ten, that 1 ten is the same amount as ten 1s, or what we describe in shorthand as 10 as a unit. And we also have an article in MTLT. It's about the use of follow-up equations to capture and focus on fraction ideas in children's thinking for their story problems. So basically, teachers listen carefully as children solve problems and explain their thinking to identify ideas that can be represented with the equations. Susan: So, for example, a child solving the sub-sandwiches problem might draw a sandwich partitioned into thirds and say they know that one sandwich can serve three friends because there are three one-thirds in the sandwich. That idea for the child might be drawn, it might be verbally stated. A follow-up equation to capture this idea might be something like one equals one-third plus one-third plus blank, with the question for the child, “Could you finish this equation or make it a true equation?” So, follow-up equation[s] often make ideas about unit fractions explicit and put them into symbolic form for children. And then at the same time, the fractions in the equations are meaningful to children because they are linked to their own meaning-making for a story problem. And so, while follow-up equations are not exactly a question, they are something that teachers can engage children with in the moment as a way to kind of put some symbols onto what they are saying, help children to reflect on what they're saying or what they've drawn, in ways that point towards the use of symbols. Mike: That really makes sense. Susan: So, they could be encouraged to shade in the piece and count the total number of pieces into which an orange is cut. However, we have found that a better question is, how many of this size piece fit into the whole? Because it focuses children on the relationship between the piece and the whole, and not on only counting pieces. Mike: Oh, that was wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us, Susan. It's really been a pleasure talking with you. Susan: Thank you. It's been my pleasure. I've really enjoyed this conversation. 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 Nightly Rant: Examining Society from a Sarcastic Point of ViewWelcome to The Nightly Rant with your hosts, Mike and Torya. In this show, we take a sarcastic look at society and dive into various topics that provoke thought and conversation. Today, we want to discuss the importance of being prepared to answer questions and engage in meaningful dialogue when expressing opinions publicly. We believe that adults should act like adults and handle disagreements in a mature manner. Let's dive into the details.The Importance of Being Prepared to Answer QuestionsMike: "People in general should not ask questions unless they're prepared to hear any answer."Torya: "I'll take what you just said a step further to also include stating your opinion publicly."Mike: "If you state your opinion publicly on something, then you need to be prepared to answer questions. Some people are going to be confused. You put your opinion out there that that is influential. It means something. I don't care who you are. Be prepared to answer questions. That's all."Torya: "Influences at least one other person in the universe."Mike: "Be prepared to answer questions. That's all I ask. Is that bad?"Torya: "Well, why are you asking the questions? What is your goal with asking people questions about their opinion?"Mike: "To understand their viewpoint on that issue."Torya: "Because to tell them how wrong they are, that they're dumb or that their opinion is factually incorrect. No."Mike: "In fact, usually these days especially, I will say your opinion is completely valid, but it isn't one that I completely connect with because I don't understand this aspect."Torya: "Can you explain?"Mike: "And I blah out whatever the question is and then they attempt to answer. And most times they don't even attempt to answer because they don't care. They just growl back at you and it's like, no, I was truly trying to understand where you were coming from."Torya: "Well, then if your intention is to just understand, then no, right, you're not doing it."Mike: "Exactly. There's nothing wrong. Then if your intention is to drag them into a trap and then pounce on them and beat them to death, yeah, that'd be pretty wrong."Torya: "Or at least mean and nasty. Sure."Mike: "Which is wrong sometimes."Torya: "It's fun."Mike: "Well, it can be. I won't lie. It can be."Torya: "Especially when somebody has a really obscure and ridiculous and factually incorrect opinion. But I digress. We don't need to go there."Mike: "Well, yeah, and why can't somebody disagree about that and not make it be such a big deal? I mean, come on, there's a specific incident in my head. And the minuteness of the topic, if you think about it, it was like less than a grain of sand in the grand scheme of everything. Right?"Torya: "We've had disagreements about things way bigger than that and laughing together about something else five minutes later."Mike: "Nothing. That's like nothing. That's what I'm trying to say. It's like fart dust is a bigger deal than that."Torya: "Fart dust pretty bad."Mike: "And yet people who are allegedly adults make it about them and, oh, we need to quit the friendship. And that's literally what people do these days. Grown ass adults. Yeah, grown ass adults just leave and don't talk to you anymore. They don't have even the balls to say I'm going to say it. They don't even have the balls to say, fuck you."Torya: "Wow."Mike: "They don't have the balls to say anything. Yes, I'm the reason never for the E. It's always all me now."Torya: "I feel like all the words are fair game, though."Mike: "But here's the thing. It's like they don't even have the guts to say goodbye. Like, I'm done. That's a woosy move. I mean, those are the kind of people that disappear from their family, too. No BS."Torya: "I had a great idea earlier, and I was thinking that it'd be great if society would just chew up these cocksucking assholes that you're describing. The people who don't function as part of society because they're just too fucking wrapped up in their own self."Mike: "Yeah, they're not adults."Torya: "Chew them up and shit them out into outer space using the Earth's giant rectum. Yeah, the Earth is going to grow a giant rectum and it needs to shit these people out because they're destroying."Mike: "The world in many senses of the word. Yes, they are."Torya: "They're the most hostile people yet. They're the people who will call everybody else hostile."Mike: "Well, and that's the thing. There's also this issue where adults can't be adults, they just can't. Like we're talking about ghosting. That's not an adult move ghosting people. That's a little baby's move ghosting."Torya: "Right?"Mike: "Oh, where's your friend Johnny? Oh, I don't talk to him anymore. It's what the little kid does. It's not what an adult does."Torya: "Right? And then there's poor Johnny crying in the corner because he doesn't know why nobody likes him. And also, Johnny will continue to be an asshole for the rest of Johnny's life because nobody has ever told him why they don't like him."Mike: "Which in my opinion, makes you the asshole for not pointing it out to."Torya: "Right?"Mike: "I mean, if you pointed it out to him and he continued down the pathway, you pointed it out to him, and he gets to continue down the pathway if he wants to."Torya: "You've got to tell people how you feel about things. You know, it's interesting. When I was in Canada, not this most recent time, but the time before, I was hanging out with Alicia, you know, how she has miniature humans. Well, the boy miniature human punched the girl miniature human. And she came screaming and crying to know kid stuff. And Alicia told her that she needed to go tell miniature boy human how it made her feel so that he would apologize to her."Torya: "And she did, and he apologized and then gave her a hug for a five year old. People. Yeah."Mike: "And, you know, the honest truth is there's no reason whatsoever for someone to act like everything's okay when there are obvious signals that everything's not okay. There's no reason for anyone to ever do that to anybody. That's why I think we talk about this all the time. Our relationship works because it takes you longer than me to get there, but we tell each other, well, that bothered me when that happened."Torya: "I know that I'm a little bit irrational. Okay, whatever. Don't even no commenting. Not allowed. I know that I'm a little bit irrational, and sometimes I don't know if I'm actually annoyed with you or if I'm being crazy, so I need to take some time to decipher if I am being crazy."Mike: "But see but that's fair, because that means instead of that even makes you even more reasonable, because instead of putting our relationship through a roller coaster of crap, you take the time to filter it yourself. Here's the thing, though. A lot of people would bitch at you for that, but I commend you for it because you still come forward with the issues to get them fixed. You do."Torya: "Think about it. You're doing something that's annoying the crap out of me. Okay? Not right now. This is a hypothetical you are doing something."Mike: "Well, it's a hypothetical reality. It happens."Torya: "Yeah. Anyway, I could say something right then when you're being annoying in my hyper irrational, super annoyed state sure. Which what would happen bad?"Mike: "Let's just say doom would ensue. Always."Torya: "Nobody needs that. Or I could stew quietly about it for a while and then come back to it the next day when I'm not crazy and decide if I was actually annoyed with you or not. And then if I was actually annoyed with you, I could be like, hey, Mike, you did this thing. Please don't do it again."Mike: "Yeah, you know what, though? I obviously am the same person as you, so I obviously approach that same issue the same way as you. And I, though, have one time only with you, followed the completely reasonable give her the benefit of the doubt approach. I've done it many times, but once and only once did I regret doing it. And you did something like you had a comeback of, like I can't even remember the comeback at this point, but it was really this really sassy."Mike: "You didn't deny that you were doing something and that it would have bothered me. You didn't deny that at all, but instead, you just sort of ignored it. And went like, what about this? And it's like, wow, man. That isn't how we're supposed to deal with each other. We're supposed to deal with each other face to face. We're not supposed to try to duck around one another. And that's how that felt, right?"Torya: "That's why everybody has to calm down."Mike: "Before issues should be correct. Exactly. And that's the thing. There's times when you do have to wait, and there's times when you should take time to think about things. And I think it's more adult like to wait rather than overreact. However, I'm going to say something different. One last thing. When someone does that to you, they overreact. It's best for you to quote overreact back and protect yourself. That's what I think."Torya: "Well, because then you're going to get the whole thing out of the way right there, instead of you stewing that I overreacted and making it a fight the next day and the next day and the next day. I agree with you. If one person has already gone off the deep end, well, you might as well just have the knockdown drag out fight right there. Just get it over with."Mike: "I think we agree with that. And it's healthy. That's the healthy way, and we act like adults about it. And that's the key thing, though. You have to be able to speak your mind without the other person getting offended. And honestly, I think a big thing that most adults just don't have any longer than they used to is the ability to separate things. Just because you're not the most empathetic person in the world doesn't mean you're stupid."Torya: "Yeah, that's what I was going to say before you had something else you had to say. If I didn't take the minute to calm myself or minute or hours or six days, whatever is necessary, all arguments I had with everybody would be like, my fight with the Sam's Club lady where I called them an idiot and."Mike: "They walked wasn't your that wasn't your proudest moment."Torya: "Or my slight disagreement with that soccer mom that one time that I won't repeat."Mike: "Well, what's funny about that? What's funny about that is both of those situations turned out okay in the end, but they had the potential not to be. But here's the thing. By us being reasonable people, 98.5% of the time, you can get away with a slip up like that. And the rest of the people are like, in particular the soccer incident, the rest of the parents, you were like, oh, I'm so sorry that I said that in front of you. And they're like, Are you kidding? I would have said worse to her."Mike: "She deserved what you said. And then everyone that was literally the opinion, they would be like, oh, I would have said worse. Oh, she deserved it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Not a single person sided with the other person. Not a single person. Now, here's the thing. We still set our apologies to everybody. To everybody."Torya: "Even though the person I exactly."Mike: "Even though they supported us, we still apologized."Torya: "Well, to be fair, I used the worst word Americans can possibly use in front of, like, twelve year old children."Mike: "Well, the twelve year old children were out on the soccer field, though Mitchell."Torya: "Said he heard it."Mike: "Well, it is what it is, man. You did apologize."Torya: "That's what I felt like I needed."Mike: "But you apologized. You did. To everybody. And yet the point is, they were supportive of us because we had always been reasonable people. We didn't yell and scream on the sidelines at our kid, at the referee. We didn't do that stuff. We sat there and we cheered."Torya: "Called the referee a sight."Mike: "We talked to each other."Torya: "Only when you were egged on by other groups of people, though, too."Mike: "We would just talk to each other and ignore everyone. I mean, that's just how we handled things. And so it's sort of annoying that people go down roads that they don't even bother to think about. Well, are they the type of people that would act that way?"Torya: "So can we officially shoot these hyper aggressive snowflake motherfuckers into space?"Mike: "Yeah, with the rectum. You said this already, and I fully agree with you."Torya: "Well, I need to know if other."Mike: "People."Torya: "We're not feeding the rectum Taco Bell."Mike: "Both of those are going to make a great audio club. That's the little shorty. Munch, munch, munch kapow. And we're not feeding in Taco Bell. Just wow. All right. Well, I think we have beaten this topic to death. I didn't even expect us to talk about it for this long. Here's what I want to kind of close up with tomorrow, which is the day after we record this, which will be weeks from the time you hear it."Mike: "We are getting involved in our very first official sporting event together. We are going to play fantasy hockey with the rest of our family. Yes, we are. And we suck at this for my ultimate failure. We're going to learn this quick. So with that, that is all I've got for you people."Torya: "Good night, everyone."Mike: "Hasta La Bye bye."Conclusion and Future OutlookIn this episode of The Nightly Rant, Mike and Torya discuss the importance of being prepared to answer questions and engage in meaningful dialogue when expressing opinions publicly. They emphasize the need for adults to act like adults and handle disagreements in a mature manner. The hosts share personal anecdotes and observations to highlight the negative consequences of ghosting and avoiding confrontation.The conversation delves into the significance of open communication and the ability to separate personal opinions from personal attacks. Mike and Torya stress the importance of understanding different viewpoints and seeking clarification rather than resorting to hostility. They also touch upon the need for self-reflection and taking the time to assess one's own emotions before engaging in discussions.The hosts conclude the episode by announcing their participation in a fantasy hockey league, highlighting the importance of learning new skills and embracing new experiences. They encourage listeners to approach disagreements with maturity and respect, fostering a culture of open dialogue and understanding.Moving forward, it is crucial for individuals to recognize the impact of their words and opinions on others. By being prepared to answer questions and engage in meaningful conversations, adults can foster a more inclusive and understanding society. The Nightly Rant serves as a reminder that communication is key, and it is essential to approach disagreements with empathy and respect.TimestampSummary0:00:15Introduction to the podcast and topic of the day0:01:34Importance of being prepared to answer questions when stating opinions0:03:34Adults making small disagreements a big deal0:05:02Criticism of people who ghost others without explanation0:06:34Society's inability to handle conflicts maturely0:08:25The importance of open communication in a relationship0:09:11The need to address issues face-to-face rather than avoiding them0:10:59Reacting to overreactions to protect oneself0:11:46Having a knockdown drag out fight to resolve conflicts0:12:22Lack of empathy and offense to criticism of empathy0:12:27Torya talks about needing time to calm herself before arguments0:12:55C mentions the soccer incident and how it turned out okay0:13:48They discuss apologizing to everyone involved in the incident0:14:11C talks about how they were always reasonable people0:14:54Torya suggests shooting hyper aggressive people into space0:15:55They mention their upcoming fantasy hockey event0:16:22Closing remarks0:31:54Mike thanks listeners and asks for a rating0:32:06End of transcript

If your ASO strategy isn't motivated by real-time data insights that dive deeper than traditional tools to provide hourly insights into hot keywords and trends, you're missing a massive opportunity. This is top-of-the-list advice from Mike Rhodes, CEO and Founder of ConsultMyApp, an app marketing agency with awards from Top CRM Consulting Company UK to Most Effective Use of Data 2022. ConsultMyApp believes in democratising ASO knowledge and that quality data “shouldn't only be available to people [able] to spend thousands of dollars a year.” That's one of the reasons Mike developed tools like APPlyzer that studios of all sizes can use to up their game and even have some fun exploring new keyword universes. Mike takes centre stage on this week's show to share how studios can combine acquisition and engagement to increase monthly organic install volumes 10-15x and reveals the four things studios need to start doing now to end Q4 with a bang.  CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Intro 01:36 - Mike's journey 05:15 - How apps across verticals can all benefit from data 08:59 - What's the next big change in games? 11:07 - A tool to democratise data 14:46 - What APPlyzer tells you that other tools can't 20:32 - Uplift expectations for devs 21:29 - How to end Q4 with a bang 35:18 - Keeping high energy and staying on top 37:39 - Favourite games Q&A with Mike * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  ** Let's Connect **

#949 ASMR Mike Let Me Bore You To Sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023) by Jason Newland

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 3 – Student Engagement Guest: Dr. Meghan Shaughnessy Mike Wallus: When we say students are engaged in a discussion or a task, what do we really mean? There are observable behaviors that we often code as engaged, but those are just the things that we can see or hear. What does engagement really mean, particularly for students who may not verbally participate on a regular basis? Today on the podcast, we're talking with Dr. Meghan Shaughnessy about the meaning of engagement and a set of strategies teachers can use to extend opportunities for participation to each and every student. Mike: Welcome to the podcast, Meghan. We are super excited to have you joining us. Meghan: I'm excited to be here. Mike: So, I want to start with a question that I think in the past I would've thought had an obvious answer. So, what does or what can participation look like? Meghan: So, I think in answering that question, I want to start with thinking about one of the ways that teachers get feedback on participation in their classroom is through administrator observation. And oftentimes those observations are focused on students making whole-group verbal contributions and discussions, particularly with a focus on students sharing their own ideas. Administrators are often looking at how quiet the space is and how engaged students appear to be, which is often determined by looking at students' body language and whether or not that language matches what is often seen as listening body language, such as having your head up, facing the speaker, et cetera. And as I say all of this, I would also say that defining participation in this way for discussions is both a limited and a problematic view of participation. I say limited in the sense that not all participation is going to be verbal, and it certainly won't always include sharing new ideas. Meghan: So, to give a concrete example, a student might participate by revoicing another student's strategy, which could be really important, providing other students a second chance to hear that strategy. A second example is that a student might create a representation of a strategy being shared verbally by a classmate. And this nonverbal move of creating a representation could be really useful for the class in developing collective understanding of the strategy. The traditional view is problematic, too, in the sense that it assumes that students are not participating when they don't display particular behaviors. To turn to a more equitable approach to conceptualizing and supporting participation, I and my colleagues would argue that this includes learning children's thinking body language, including a focus on written pair talk, and supporting contributions. In other words, moving beyond just having students share their own ideas, having students share what they learned from our classmate. Mike: Yeah. I want to dig into this a little bit more. Because this idea that my read on a child's behavior influences my understanding of what's happening, but also my practice, is really interesting to me. You've really had me thinking a lot about the way that a teacher's read on a student's engagement or participation, it has a lot to do with the cultural script for how adults and children are expected to interact, or at least what we've learned about that in our own lived experiences. I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about that.  Meghan: Yeah. One way to start answering that question might be to ask everyone to take a minute to think about how you participate in a discussion. Do you use the sort of listening behaviors that teachers are told matter? Are you always sharing new ideas when you participate in a discussion? You also might want to imagine sitting down with a group of your colleagues and asking them to think about when they engage in a discussion outside of class, what does it look and feel like? Are there lots of people talking at once or people talking one at a time? Is everyone that's participating in the discussion sharing new ideas, or are they participating in other sorts of ways? And further, you might imagine asking those colleagues about their discussions outside of class as a child. What did those discussions look and feel like? One of the challenges of being teachers is that we bring our own experiences and sometimes we don't reflect on what children are experiencing. Children's experiences don't necessarily match our own, and we need to be thinking about changing our expectations or explicitly teaching what it means to participate in particular sorts of ways. Yet another layer of challenge here is a tendency to make assumptions about how students from particular cultural groups engage in discussions. You only know what you know. And teachers need opportunities to learn from their students about how they engage in discussions inside and outside of math class, and to be able to think about the connections and disconnections and the opportunities to leverage. Mike: So, you really have me deconstructing some of the norms that were unspoken in my own childhood about being a learner, being a good student. And what you have me thinking is, some of those were voiced, some of those were unvoiced, but I'm really reflecting on how that showed up in the way that I read kids. So, I want to ask you to even go a little bit deeper. Can you share some examples of where our read on the meaning of behaviors might lead to an inaccurate understanding of students' cognitive engagement or the contributions that they might make to discourse? Meghan: Yeah. Some of it can be thinking about sort of traditional behavior reads in a traditional sense. Oftentimes, when children have their heads down or their eyes closed or they're not looking at the speaker, the child is seen as not engaging or participating. But if we think about it, people have lots of different thinking postures, and for some people having their heads down or closing their eyes is actually the way in which they're thinking deeply about the ideas that are being shared in the discussion. And so, engagement might look for them. They may be carefully tracking and thinking about the ideas, but the way that that gets expressed may not be the way that we traditionally think about what engagement should look like in classrooms. Mike: It feels like there's two pieces to this question about reading behavior and interpretation. One piece that you talked about there was just this idea that we need to have conversations with children. The other piece that I kept thinking about is, how might an educator interrogate their own cultural script around participation? Are there questions that educators could ask themselves or practices that they might engage in with colleagues that would help them take these things that are subconscious and unspoken and maybe raise them up? So, if you have an awareness of them, it's easy to recognize how that's influencing your read or your instructional moves. Meghan: Yeah, I think there are kind of two pieces to this. So, one goes back to the idea that I shared about the importance of recognizing our own experiences in school as a student and our experiences out of school, both as a child and as an adult in discussions and trying to think about what are we bringing to our work as a teacher that we might need to interrogate because it may be different than the experiences of children? And at the same time, we need to be having conversations with children about what it looks like to participate in discussions in different sorts of spaces so that we can learn more about what children's experiences are outside of school. The big idea is to recognize that children's experiences are often very different from our own, and we have to be careful at the same time not to make assumptions that all children from particular communities experience participation and discussion in the same way. This can be highly variable. Mike: I think what's really interesting about the work that you and your colleagues have done is, there's an element of it that's really about taking a step back and recognizing these ideas like cultural scripts that we have about participation and really trying to interrogate our own understandings that we've come to, and then how do we interact with kids. But on the other hand, you all have some really practical strategies and suggestions for educators on how they can use an expanded understanding of participation to create more opportunity for kids. So, I'm wondering if we can talk a little bit about some of those things. Meghan: Absolutely. So, I have a set of four different strategies that my colleagues and I have been working on over time. So, I'm going to start by talking about task selection. Sometimes students' cultural backgrounds and experiences in schools may be at odds, particularly around the work of critiquing the ideas of others. And this can in particular be a challenge when the critiquing is about critiquing the teacher's ideas. So, it leads to this question of, “How can we support students in learning to critique in ways that don't dismiss their own culture and experience?” So, our practical solution to working in this space is that we've used written critique tasks. So, when working with students, we'll show a fictitious person's response to a mathematics task and ask students to do three sorts of things. So, one is to describe the student's strategy in their own words. A second thing is to think about and write down the questions that they have about the student's strategy. And then the third piece is for students to think about and record what suggestions they have for the student and how they would convince the student to use those suggestions. Meghan: So, how does this support participation? Well, it can explicitly support the work of critiquing. It's written, and it allows students to think carefully rather than needing to think on the spot. And thirdly, the student is not a classmate, which can reduce the feeling of confrontation that some students feel when engaging in critique. So, one thing that I want to name with this particular strategy around task selection and using a written critique task, is that we've recognized that the way that critiquing is often worked on in mathematics classrooms may be at odds with some students' experiences with critique outside of school. And so, we're not trying to say that students shouldn't be supported in learning to critique mathematical ideas. That's an important part of mathematical work. But rather we're trying to design a structure that's going to not dismiss students' experiences outside of school, but at the same time give them experiences with the mathematical work of critiquing. Mike: Yeah, the questions themselves are powerful, but it seems like the choice to use a fictitious person is really critical to this task design. Meghan: Absolutely. And as a teacher, too, it really does give us a little bit more control in terms of what is the critique that's going to unfold in that particular classroom. Mike: It strikes me that they're able to engage in the task of critique without that feeling of conflict. Meghan: Absolutely. It really opens up space for students to engage in that critiquing work and takes a lot of that pressure off of them. Mike: Let's talk about the second idea. Meghan: Alright. So, the second strategy is to use a deliberate turn and talk. In discussions, some students are ready to share their ideas right away, but other students need a chance to practice verbalizing the ideas that they're about to share. Sometimes students' ideas are not completely formed, and they need to learn how others hear the ideas to refine their arguments. Further, in multilingual classrooms, sometimes students need opportunities to refine their thinking in their home language, and importantly, they also need opportunities to develop academic language in their home language. So, in a deliberate turn and talk, a teacher deliberately pairs students to share their thinking with a partner, and the partner asks clarifying questions. The pairs might be made based on knowledge of students' home language use, their mathematical understandings, or some other important thing the teacher is thinking about as they engage in that pairing. So how might using deliberately paired turn and talks broaden participation in a discussion? Meghan: Well, first, all students are being asked to participate and have the opportunity to refine their own mathematical argument and consider someone else's ideas. In a whole-class discussion, it's not the case that every student is likely to have that opportunity. So, turn and talks provide that opportunity. Second, turn and talks can support a broader range of students in feeling ready and willing to share their thinking in a whole group. Third, these pairs can also set up students who are not yet comfortable sharing their own ideas in whole group to be able to share someone else's idea. So, a way for them to still share ideas in whole group, even though it's not necessarily their own idea that's being shared. Mike: So, what I'm thinking about is, if you and I were engaged in a deliberate turn and talk, what might it look like if I'm a student, you're a student and we've engaged in the norms of the deliberate turn and talk as you described them? Let's just walk through that for a second. What would it look like? Meghan: So, in a pair turn and talk, it really has the structure of partner A, sharing their thinking, and then partner B being responsible for asking questions about the ideas that they just heard in order to further their own understanding of partner's ideas, but also to provide partner A with some feedback about the ways in which they've been expressing their ideas. So, that's pretty different than what often happens in classrooms where kids are invited to share in a discussion and they actually haven't tried verbalizing it yet, right? And they have no way of thinking about, or limited ways of thinking about, how other people might hear those ideas that they're about to share. Mike: I think the other thing that pops up to me is that another scenario that often occurs in turn and talk is it's really turn and tell. Because one person is essentially sharing their thinking and the norms aren't necessarily that they respond, it's just that they share in kind, right? So, this idea that you're actually engaging with someone's idea feels like an important piece of what it looks like to do a deliberate turn and talk versus some of the other iterations that we've just been describing. Meghan: Absolutely. Mike: Well, I'm excited to hear about the third strategy. Meghan: Alright. Our third strategy focuses on supporting participation through connection-making. So, when you think about a typical discussion in a classroom, opportunities for individual students to make explicit connections between ideas shared, are often pretty limited—or at least their opportunities to verbalize or to record in some other way. Often, only one or two students are able to share the connections. And so, a question for us has been how can we provide opportunities for students who are not yet ready to share those connections in whole group or might not have the opportunity? When you think about the fact that 28 students are not going to be able to share connections on a given day to be able to engage in the making of those connections. So, we have two different structures that we have been exploring. The first structure is really a pair share. Students are paired, if possible, with a student who used a different strategy, who has a different solution. Meghan: Each partner explains their strategy, and then together they look for connections between their thinking. So again, this moves beyond the traditional turn and talk because in addition to sharing your thinking, there's a task that the partners are doing about thinking about the connections between those two strategies. A second sort of structure is really using a stop and jot. In this instance, the teacher selects one strategy for students to be thinking about making a connection to, and then each student jots a connection between their strategy or solution and the strategy that the teacher has selected. And they do this in their notebook or in some other written form in the classroom. And so, these two different structures can support participation by having all students have an opportunity to share their own thinking, either verbally with a partner or by recording it in written form. And all students at the same time are having an opportunity to make connections in the classroom. Mike: I think what's interesting about that is to compare that one with the initial idea around critique. In this particular case, I'm going to make a guess that part of the reason that in this one you might actually use students from the classroom versus a fictitious student, is that connecting versus critiquing our two really different kind of social practices. Is that sensible? Meghan: That is sensible. And I would argue that if you're going to be engaging in critique work just to say it, that part of critiquing actually is recognizing, too, what is similar and different about strategies. Mike: Gotcha. Meghan: Right? So, there is that piece in addition to put that out there. Mike: Gotcha. Let's talk about the fourth one. Meghan: Alright. So, the fourth strategy really focuses on broadening participation in the conclusion of a discussion. So, as we all know in a discussion, students hear lots of different ideas, but they don't all get to share their thinking in a discussion, nor do they all get to share what they are thinking at the end of the discussion. But we also know that students need space to consolidate their own thinking and the questions that they have about the ideas that have been shared. At the same time, teachers need access to students' thinking to plan for the next day, particularly when a discussion is not finished at the end of a given math lesson. With all of this, the challenge is that time is often tight at the end of a discussion. So, one structure that we've used has been a note to self. And in a note to self, students write a note to themselves about how they are currently thinking about a particular sort of problem at the end of a discussion. And a note to self allows students to take stock of where they are with respect to particular ideas, similar to a stop and jot. It can create a record of thinking that can be accessed on a subsequent day by students. If those notes yourself are recorded in a notebook. Again, support students and tracking on their own questions and how their thinking is changing over time, and it can provide the teacher with a window into all students' thinking. Mike: Can you talk about the experience of watching the note to self and just seeing the impact that it had? Meghan: So, it was day one of our mathematics program, and we had done a discussion around an unequally partitioned rectangle task, and students were being asked to figure out what fraction of the hole was shaded. And there clearly wasn't enough time that day to really explore all the different sorts of ideas. And so, Darius Robinson, who was one of the co-teachers, invited students to share some of their initial ideas about the task. And the way that Darius then ended up deciding to conclude things that day was saying to students, “I think we're going to do this thing that I'm going to call a note to self.” And he invited the students to open up their notebooks and to record how they were thinking about the different ideas that had gotten shared thus far in the discussion. There was some modeling of what that might look like, something along the lines of, “I agree with … because,” but it really opened up that space then for students to begin to record how they were thinking about otherwise ideas in math class. So, how might using a note to self-broaden participation in a discussion? Well, first of all, students have the opportunity to participate. All students are being asked to write a note to themselves. It creates space for students to engage with others' ideas that doesn't necessarily require talk, right? So, this is an opportunity to privilege other ways of participating, and it also allows for thinking and processing time for all students. Mike: I think the other piece that jumps out for me is this idea that it's normal and to be expected that you're going to have some unfinished thinking or understanding at the end of a particular lesson or what have you, right? That partial understanding or growing understanding is a norm. That's the other thing that really jumps out about this practice is it allows kids to say, “This is where I am now,” with the understanding that they have room to grow or they have room to continue refining their thinking. I really love that about that. Meghan: I think it's so important, right? And oftentimes, we read curriculum materials, we read through a lesson for a particular day and get the sense that everything is going to be tied off with a bow at the end of the lesson, and that we're expecting everybody to have a particular sort of understanding at the end of Section 3.5. But as we all know, that's not the reality in classrooms, right? Sometimes discussions take longer because there are really rich ideas that are being shared, and it's just not feasible to get to a particular place of consensus on a particular day. So, it is for teachers to have access to where students are. But at the same time to feel empowered, to be able to say, “I'm going to pick this up the next day, and that doesn't need to be finished on Monday, but that these ideas that we're working on Monday can flow nicely into Tuesday. And as students, your responsibility is to think about, ‘How are you thinking about the task right now?' Jot some notes so when we come back to it tomorrow, we can pick that up together.” Mike: Well, I think that's the other lovely piece about it, too, is that they're engaging in that self-reflection, but they've got an artifact of sorts that they can come back to and say, “Oh yeah, that's where I was, or that's how I was thinking about it.” That allows for a smoother re-engagement with this or that idea. Meghan: Absolutely. And you can add on the pieces of notation that students might choose to do the next day as well, where they might choose to annotate their notes with notes that said, “Yesterday I was thinking this, but now I think this” as a way to further record the ideas that thinking changes over time. Mike: So, I think before we close this interview, I want to say to you that I watched you do your presentation in Los Angeles at NCTM, and it was really eye-opening for me, and I found myself stuck on this for some time. And I suspect that there are people who are going to listen to this podcast who are going to think the same thing. So, what I want to ask you is, if someone's a listener, and this is a new set of ideas for them, do you have any recommendations for where they might go to kind of deepen their understanding of these ideas we've been talking about? Meghan: Sure. I want to give three different sorts of suggestions. So, one suggestion is to look at the fabulous books that have been put together by Amy Lucenta and Grace Kelemanic, who are the authors of “Routines for Reasoning and Thinking for Teaching.” And I would argue that many of the routines that they have developed and that they share in those resources are ones that are really supportive of thinking about, “How do you broaden participation in mathematics discourse?” A second resource that someone might be interested in exploring is a research article that was written in 2017 by Cathy O'Connor, Sarah Michaels, Suzanne Chapin, and Alan (G.) Harbaugh that focuses on the silent and the vocal participation in learning in whole-class discussion, where they carefully looked at learning outcomes for students who were vocally expressing ideas and discussion as well as the silent participants in the discussion, and really found that there was no difference in the learning outcomes for those two groups of students. And so that's important, I think, for us to think about as teachers. At the same time, I want to be clear in acknowledging that all of what we do as teachers needs to be in relation to the learning goals that we have for students. So, sometimes our learning goals are that we want students to be able to share ideas and discussions. And if that's the case, then we actually do need to make sure that we build in opportunities for students to share their ideas verbally in addition to participating in other sorts of ways. Mike: I'm really glad you said that because what I hear you saying is, “This isn't a binary. We're not talking about … Meghan: Correct. Mike: … verbal participation and other forms of participation and saying you have to choose.” I think what I hear you saying is, “If you've only thought about participation from a verbal perspective, these are ways that you can broaden access and also access your students' thinking at the same time.” Meghan: Absolutely. The third thing to share, which has been a theme across this podcast, has really been the importance of learning from our students and talking with the children with whom we're working about their experiences, participating in discussions both in school and outside of school. Mike: Megan, thank you so much for joining us. It really was a pleasure. Meghan: Thank you, Mike, for the opportunity to really share all of these ideas that my colleagues and I have been working on. I want to acknowledge my colleagues, Nicole Garcia, Aileen Kennison, and Darius Robinson, who all played really important roles in developing the ideas that I shared with you today. Mike: Fabulous. Thank you so much. 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

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 2 – Empathy Interviews Guest: Dr. Kara Imm Mike Wallus: If there were a list of social skills we hope to foster in children, empathy is likely close to the top. Empathy matters. It helps us understand how others are feeling so we can respond appropriately, and it can help teachers understand the way their students are experiencing school. Today on a podcast, we talk with Dr. Kara Imm about a practice referred to as an empathy interview. We'll discuss the ways empathy interviews can help educators understand their students' lived experience with mathematics and make productive adaptations to instructional practice. Mike: Well, welcome to the podcast, Kara. We're excited to have you join us. Kara Imm: Thanks, Mike. Happy to be here. Mike: So, I have to confess that the language of an empathy interview was new to me when I started reading about this, and I'm wondering if you could just take a moment and unpack, what is an empathy interview, for folks who are new to the idea? Kara: Yeah, sure. I think I came to understand empathy interviews in my work with design thinking as a former teacher, classroom teacher, and now teacher-educator. I've always thought of myself as a designer. So, when I came to understand that there was this whole field around design thinking, I got very intrigued. And the central feature of design thinking is that designers, who are essentially thinking about creating new products, services, interactions, ways of being for someone else, have to start with empathy because we have to get out of our own minds and our own experiences and make sure we're not making assumptions about somebody else's lived experience. So, an empathy interview, as I know it now, is first and foremost a conversation. It's meant to be as natural a conversation as possible. When I do empathy interviews, I have a set of questions in mind, but I often abandon those questions and follow the child in front of me or the teacher, depending on who I'm interviewing. Kara: And the goal of an empathy interview is to elicit stories; really granular, important stories, the kind of stories that we tell ourselves that get reiterated and retold, and the kinds of stories that cumulatively make up our identities. So, I'm not trying to get a resumé, I'm not interested in the facts of the person, the biography of the person. I'm interested in the stories people tell about themselves. And in my context, the stories that kids tell themselves about their own learning and their own relationship to school, their classrooms, and to mathematics. I'm also trying to elicit emotions. So, designers are particularly listening for what they might call unmet needs, where as a designer we would then use the empathy interview to think about the unmet needs of this particular person and think about designing something uniquely and specifically for them—with the idea that if I designed something for them, it would probably have utility and purpose for other people who are experiencing that thing. So, what happened more recently is that I started to think, “Could empathy interviews change teachers' relationship to their students? Could it change leaders' relationships to the teachers?” And so far, we're learning that it's a different kind of conversation, and it's helping people move out of deficit thinking around children and really asking important questions about, what does it mean to be a kid in a math class? Mike: There's some language that you've used that really stands out for me. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about it. You said “the stories that we tell about ourselves”; or, maybe paraphrased, the stories that kids tell themselves. And then you had this other bit of language that I'd like to come back to: “the cumulative impact of those stories on our identity.” Can you unpack those terms of phrase you used and talk a little bit about them specifically, as you said, when it comes to children and how they think about their identity with relation to mathematics? Kara: Sure. I love that kind of phrase, “the story we tell ourselves.” That's been a pivotal phrase for me. I think stories kind of define and refine our existence. Stories capture this relationship between who we are and who we want to become. But when I'm thinking about stories in this way, I imagine as an interviewer that I'm trying to paint a portrait of a child, typically. And so, I'm trying to interact with this child in such a way that I can elicit these stories, painting a unique picture of this kid, not only as a learner but also as a human. What inevitably happens when you do these interviews is that I'm interested in their experience in math class. When I listen to kids, they have internalized, “I'm good at math, and here's why” or “I'm bad at math, and here's why. I just know it.” But when you dig a little bit deeper, the stories they tell are a little more nuanced, and they kind of live in the space of gray. And I'm interested in that space, not the space of testing and measurement that would land you in a particular identity as meant for math or not meant for math. Mike: I think what I was going to suggest is, why don't we listen to a few, because you shared a couple clips before we got ready for the interview, and I was fascinated by the approach that you had in chatting with these children and just how much information I could glean from even a minute or two of the interview slices that you shared. Why don't we start and get to know a few of these kiddos and see what we can learn together. Kara: Sounds great. Mike: We've got a clip that I'm going to invite you to set it up and give us as much context as you want to, and then we'll play the clip and then we can talk a little bit about it. I would love to start with our friend Leanna. Kara: Great. Leanna is a third-grader. She goes to an all-girls school. I've worked in Leanna's school over multiple years. I know her teacher well. I'm a part of that community. Leanna was kind of a new mathematician to me. Earlier in the day I had been in Leanna's classroom, and the interview starts with a moment that really struck me, which I won't say much more about. And I invited Leanna to join me after school so we could talk about this particular moment. And I really wanted to know how she made sense of what happened. So, I think we'll leave it at that and we'll listen to what happened. Mike: Alright, let's give it a listen. Leanna: Hi, I'm Leanna, and I'm 8 years old. Kara: Hi, Leanna. Today when I was in your class, something interesting happened where I think the kids said to me, and they said, “Do you know we have a math genius in our class?” Do you remember that moment? Leanna: Yeah. Kara: Tell me what happened in that moment. Leanna: Um, they said, “We have a math genius in our class.” And then they all started pointing at me. Kara: And what was that like for you? Leanna: It was … like, maybe, like, it was nice, but also it was kind of like, all the pressure was on me. Kara: Yeah, I was wondering about that. Why do you think the girls today—I mean, I'm a visitor, right?—why do you think they use the word “math genius”? And why did they choose you? What do you think they think of you? Leanna: A mathematician … Kara: Yeah. Leanna: … because I go to this thing every Wednesday. They ask me what I want to be when I grow up, and I always say a mathematician. So, they think that I am a math genius. Kara: Gotcha. Do you think all the girls in your class know that you want to be a mathematician when you grow up? But do they mean something else? They didn't say, “We have a mathematician in our class.” They said, “We have a math genius.” Leanna: Maybe. Kara: Are you a math genius? Do think, what does that even mean? Leanna: Like, I'm really good at math. Kara: Yeah. Do you think that's a true statement? Leanna: Yeah, a little bit. Kara: A little bit? Do you love math? Leanna: Yeah. Kara: Yeah. Have you always loved math? Leanna: Yeah. Kara: And so, it might be true that, like, is a math genius the same as a mathematician? Leanna: No. Kara: OK. Can you say how they're different? Leanna: Like, a mathematician is, like … Like, when you're a math genius, you don't always want to be a mathematician when you grow up. A math genius is when you just are really good at math, but, like, a mathematician is when you really, like, want to be when you grow up. Kara: Yeah. Mike: That was fascinating to listen to. So, my first inclination is to say, as you were making meaning of what Leanna was sharing, what were some of the things that were going on for you? Kara: Yeah, I was thinking about how math has this kind of unearned status, this measure of success in our culture that in this interview, Leanna is kind of pointing to. I was thinking about the mixed emotions she has being positioned as a math genius. It called into mind the model minority myth in which folks of Asian descent and Asian Americans are often positioned as stereotypically being good at math. And people say, “Well, this is such a lovely and respectful stereotype, who cares if it's not true?” But she later in the interview talks about the pressure of living up to this notion of math genius and what means. I think about her status in the classroom and how she has the agency to both take up this idea of math genius, and does she have the agency to also nuance it or reject it? And how that might play out in her classroom? So yeah, those are all the things that kind of come to mind as I listen to her. Mike: I think you're hitting on some of the themes that jumped out for me; this sense that kids who are participating in particular activities have been positioned, either by their participation or by their kids' perceptions of what participation means. And I thought the most interesting part was when she said, “Well, it's nice”—but there was a long pause there. And then she talked about this sense of pressure. What it's making me think about as a practitioner is that there are perhaps ways that as a teacher, if I'm aware of that, that might change something small, some things big about the way that I choose to engage with Leanna in the classroom; that I choose to help her navigate that space that she finds herself in. There's a lot for me there as a practitioner in that small clip that helps me really see her, understand her, and think about ways that I can support her. Kara: Yeah. And, like, from a design perspective, I huddled with her teacher later in the day, and we talked about this interview, and we thought about what would it mean to design or redesign a space where Leanna could feel really proud of who she was as a mathematician, but she didn't feel the kind of pressure that this math genius moniker is affording her. And so, ultimately, I want these interviews to be conducted by teachers so that, as you said, practitioners might show up differently for kids or think about what we might need to think more deeply about or design for kids like her. She's certainly not the only one. Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And I think part of what's hitting me in the face is that the term “empathy interview” really is taking on new meaning, even listening to this first one. Because feeling the feelings that she's sharing with us, feeling what it would be like to be in those shoes, I've had kiddos in my class who have been identified or whose folks have chosen to have them participate in programming. And I have to confess that I don't know that I thought as much about what that positioning meant to them or what it meant about how kids would perceive them. I was just struck by how, in so many subtle ways doing an interview like this, might really shift the way that I showed up for a child. Kara: Yeah, I think so. Mike: Well, let's listen to another one. Kara: OK. Maybe Matthew, should we meet Matthew? Mike: I think we should meet Matthew. Kara: Yeah. Mike: Do you want to set up Matthew and give us a sense of what we might need to know about the context? Kara: Absolutely. Matthew is a fifth-grader who describes, in my conversation with him, several years of what he calls “not good” years in math. And he doesn't enjoy mathematics. He doesn't think he's good at it. He has internalized, he's really blamed himself and taken most of the responsibility for those “bad“ years of learning. When I meet him, he's a fifth-grader, and he has written a mathography at the invitation of his classroom teacher. This is a practice that's part of this school. And in his mathography as a fifth-grader, he uses the word “evolving,” and he tells the story of how he's evolving as a mathematician. That alone is pretty profound and beautiful that he has the kind of insight to describe this kind of journey with mathematics. And he really just describes a fourth-grade teacher who fundamentally changed his relationship to mathematics, his sense of himself, and how he thinks about learning. Mike: Let's give it a listen. Kara: Maybe we'll end, Matthew, with: If people were thinking about you as—and maybe there's other Matthews in their class, right—what kinds of things would've helped you back in kindergarten, first and second grade to just feel like math was for you? It took you until fourth grade, right … Matthew: Yeah. Kara: … until you really had any positive emotions about math? I'm wondering what could we have done for younger Matthew? Matthew: Probably, I think I should have paid a lot more attention. Kara: But what if it wasn't about you? What if it's the room and the materials and the teacher and the class? Matthew: I think it was mostly just me, except for some years it was really, really confusing. Kara: OK. Matthew: And when … you didn't really want in third grade or second grade, you didn't want to be the kid that's always, like, “Hey, can you help me with this?” or something. So that would be embarrassing for some people. Kara: OK. You just made air quotes right, when you did embarrassing? Matthew: Yeah. Kara: Was it embarrassing to ask for help? Matthew: It wasn't embarrassing to ask for help, and now I know that. But I would always not ask for help, and I think that's a big reason why I wasn't that good at math. Kara: Got it. So, you knew in some of these math lessons that it was not making sense? Matthew: It made no sense. Kara: It made no sense. Matthew: And then I was, like, so I was in my head, “I think I should ask, but I also don't want to embarrass myself.” Kara: Hmm. Matthew: But also, it's really not that embarrassing. Kara: OK, but you didn't know that at the time. At the time it was like, “Ooh, we don't ask for help.” Matthew: Yeah. Kara: OK. And did that include asking another kid for help? You didn't ask anybody for help? Matthew: Um, only one of my friends that I knew for a really long time … Kara: Hmm. Matthew: He helped me. So, I kind of got past the first stage, but then if he was absent on those days or something, then I'd kind of just be sitting at my desk with a blank sheet. Kara: Wow, so it sounds like you didn't even know how to get started some days. Matthew: Yeah, some days I was kind of just, like, “I'm not even going to try.” Kara: “I'm not” … OK. Matthew: But now I'm, like, “It's not that big of a deal if I get an answer wrong.” Kara: Yeah, that's true. Right? Matthew: “I have a blank sheet. That is a big deal. That's a problem.” Kara: So having a blank sheet, nothing written down, that is a bigger problem for you than, like, “Oh, whoops, I got the answer wrong. No big deal.” Matthew: I'd rather just get the answer wrong because handing in a blank sheet would be, that would probably be more embarrassing. Mike: Oh, my goodness. There is a lot in a little bit of space of time. Kara: Yeah. These interviews, Mike, are so rich, and I offer them to this space and to teachers with such care and with such a deep sense of responsibility 'cause I feel like these stories are so personal. So, I'm really mindful of, can I use this story in the space of Matthew for a greater purpose? Here, I feel like Matthew is speaking to all the kind of socio-mathematical norms in classrooms. And I didn't know Matthew until this year, but I would guess that a kid like Matthew, who is so quiet and so polite and so respectful, might've flown under the radar for many years. He wasn't asking for help, but he was also not making trouble. It makes me wonder, “How would we redesign a class so that he could know earlier on that asking for help—and that this notion that in this class, mathematics—is meant to make sense, and when it doesn't make sense, we owe it to ourselves and each other to help it make sense?” I think it's an invitation to all of us to think about, “What does it mean to ask for help?” And how he wants deep down mathematics to make sense. And I agree with him, that should be just a norm for all of us. Mike: I go back to the language that you used at the beginning, particularly listening to Matthew talk, “the stories that we tell ourselves.” The story that he had told himself about what it meant to ask for help or what that meant about him as a person or as a mathematician. Kara: Yeah. I mean, I am trained as a kind of qualitative researcher. So as part of my dissertation work, I did all kinds of gathering data through interviews and then analyzing them. And one of the ways that is important to me is thinking about kind of narrative analysis. So, when Matthew tells us the things that were in his head, he tells you the voice that his head is saying back to him. Kids will do that. Similarly, later in the interview I said, “What would you say to those kids, those kids who might find it?” And what I was interested in is getting him to articulate in his own voice what he might say to those children. So, when I think about stories, I think about when do we speak in a first person? When do we describe the voices that are in our heads? When do we quote our teachers and our mothers and our cousins? And how that's a powerful form of storytelling, those voices. Mike: Well, I want to listen to one more, and I'm particularly excited about this one. This is Nia. I want to listen to Nia and have you set her up. And then I think what I want to do after this is talk about impact and how these empathy interviews have the potential to shift practice for educators or even school for that matter. So, let's talk about Nia and then let's talk about that. Kara: You got it. Nia is in this really giant classroom of almost 40 kids, fifth-graders, and it's co-taught. It's purposely designed as this really collaborative space, and she uses the word “collaboration,” but she also describes how that's a really noisy environment. On occasion, there's a teacher who she describes pulling her into a quieter space so that she can concentrate. And so, I think that's an important backstory for her just in terms of her as a learner. I ask her a lot of questions about how she thinks about herself as a mathematician, and I think that's the clip we're going to listen to. Mike: Alright, let's listen in. Nia: No, I haven't heard it, but … Kara: OK. I wonder what people mean by that, “I'm not a math person.” Nia: I'm guessing, “I don't do math for fun.” Kara: “I don't do math for fun.” Do you do math for fun? Nia: Yes. Kara: You do? Like, what's your for-fun math? Nia: Me and my grandma, when we were in the car, we were writing in the car. We had this pink notebook, and we get pen or a pencil, and she writes down equations for me in the backseat, and I do them and she times me, and we see how many questions I could get right in, like, 50 seconds. Kara: Oh, my gosh. What's an example of a question your grandma would give you? Nia: Like, they were just practice questions, like, three times five, five times eight. Well, I don't really do fives because I already know them. Mike: So, we only played a real tiny snippet of Nia. But I think one of the things that's really sticking out is just how dense these interviews are with information about how kids think or the stories that they've told themselves. What strikes you about what we heard or what struck you as you were having this conversation with Nia at that particular point in time? Kara: For me, these interviews are about both storytelling and about identity building. And there's that dangerous thinking about two types of people, math people and non-math people. I encounter adults and children who have heard of that phrase. And so, I sometimes offer it in the interview to find out what sense do kids make of that? Kids have told me, “That doesn't make sense.” And other kids have said, “No, no, my mom says that. My mom says she's not a math person.” So, she, I'm playing into it to see what she says. And I love her interpretation that a math person is someone who does math for fun. And truthfully, Mike, I don't know a lot of kids who describe doing math for fun. And so, what I loved about that she, A: She a described a math person's probably a person who, gosh, enjoys it, gets some joy or pleasure from doing mathematics. Kara: But then the granularity of the story she offers, which is the specific pink notebook that she and her grandmother are passing back and forth in the backseat of the car, tell you about mathematics as a thing that she shares a way of relating to her grandmother. It's been ritualized, and really all they're doing if you listen to it is, her grandmother's kind of quizzing her on multiplication facts. But it's such a different relationship to multiplication facts because she's in relationship to her grandmother. They have this beautiful ongoing ritual. And quite honestly, she's using it as an example to tell us that's the fun part for her. So, she just reminds us that mathematics is this human endeavor, and for her, this one ritual is a way in which she relates and connects to her grandmother, which is pretty cool. Mike: So, I want to shift a little bit and talk about a couple of different things: the types of questions that you ask, some of the norms that you have in mind when you're going through the process, and then what struck me about listening to these is you're not trying to convince the kids who you're interviewing of anything about their current thinking or their feelings or trying to shift their perspective on their experience. And I'm just wondering if you can think about how you would describe the role you're playing when you're conducting the interview. 'Cause it seems that that's pretty important. Kara: Yeah. I think the role I'm playing is a deep listener. And I'm trying to create space. And I'm trying to make a very, very, very safe environment for kids to feel like it's OK to tell me a variety of stories about who they are. That's my role. I am not their classroom teacher in these interviews. And so, these interviews probably look and sound differently when the relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee is about teachers and students and/or has a different kind of power differential. I get to be this frequent visitor to their classroom, and so I just get to listen deeply. The tone that I want to convey, the tone that I want teachers to take up is just this fascination with who they are and a deep curiosity about their experience. And I'm positioned in these interviews as not knowing a lot about these children. Kara: And so, I'm actually beautifully positioned to do what I want teachers to do, which is imagine you didn't know so much. Imagine you didn't have the child's cumulative file. Imagine you didn't know what they were like last year. Imagine you didn't know all that, and you had to ask. And so, when I enter these interviews, I just imagine, “I don't know.” And when I'm not sure, I ask another smaller question. So I'll say, “Can you say more about that?” or “I'm not sure if you and I share the same meaning.” The kinds of questions I ask kids—and I think because I've been doing this work for a while, I have a couple questions that I start with and after that I trust myself to follow the lead of the children in front of me—I often say to kids, “Thank you for sitting down and having a conversation with me today. I'm interested in hearing kids' stories about math and their math journey, and somebody in your life told me you have a particularly interesting story.” And then I'll say to kids sometimes, “Where do you want to start in the story?” And I'll try to give kids agency to say, “Oh, well, we have to go back to kindergarten” or “I guess we should start now in high school” or kids will direct me where they think are the salient moments in their own mathematical journey. Mike: And when they're sharing that story, what are the types of questions that you might ask along the way to try to get to clarity or to understanding? Kara: Great question. I'm trying to elicit deep emotion. I'm trying to have kids explain why they're telling me particular stories, like, what was significant about that. Kids are interesting. Some kids in these interviews just talk a lot. And other kids, I've had to really pepper them with questions and that has felt a little kind of invasive, like, this isn't actually the kind of natural conversation that I was hoping for. Sometimes I'll ask, “What is it like for you or how do you think about a particular thing?” I ask about things like math community, I ask about math partners. I ask about, “How do you know you're good at math and do you trust those ways of knowing?” I kind of create spaces where we could have alternative narratives. Although you're absolutely right, that I'm not trying to lead children to a particular point of view. I'm kind of interested in how they make sense. Mike: One of the things that, you used a line earlier where you said something about humanizing mathematics, and I think what's striking me is that statement you made: “What if you didn't have their cumulative report card?” You didn't have the data that tells one story, but not necessarily their story. And that really is hitting me, and I'm even feeling a little bit autobiographical. I was a kid who was a lot like Matthew, who, at a certain point, I just stopped raising my hand because I thought it meant something about me, and I didn't want people to see that. And I'm just struck by the impact of one, having someone ask you about that story as the learner, but also how much an educator could take from that and bring to the relationship they had with that child while they were working on mathematics together. Kara: You said a lot there, and you actually connect to how I think about empathy interviews in my practice now. I got to work with Rochelle Gutiérrez this summer, and that's where I learned deeply about her framework, rehumanizing mathematics. When I do these empathy interviews, I'm living in this part of her framework that's about the body and emotions. Sometimes kids in the empathy interview, their body will communicate one thing and their language will communicate something else. And so, that's an interesting moment for me to notice how body and motions even are associated with the doing of mathematics. And the other place where empathy interviews live for me is in the work of “Street Data,” Jamila Dugan and Shane Safir's book, that really call into question this idea that what is measurable and what is quantifiable is really all that matters, and they invite us to flip the data dashboard. Kara: In mathematics, this is so important 'cause we have all these standardized tests that tell children about who they are mathematically and who they're about to become. And they're so limiting, and they don't tell the full story. So, when they talk about “Street Data,” they actually write about empathy interviews as a way in which to be humanizing. Data can be liberatory, data can be healing. I feel that when I'm doing these interviews, I have this very tangible example of what they mean because it is often the case that at the end of the interview—and I think you might've had this experience just listening to the interview—there's something really beautiful about having a person be that interested in your story and how that might be restorative and might make you feel like, “There's still possibility for me. This isn't the last story.” Mike: Absolutely. I think you named it for me, which is, the act of telling the story to a person, particularly someone who, like a teacher, might be able to support me being seen in that moment, actually might restore my capacity to feel like, “I could do this” or “My fate as a mathematician is not sealed.” Or I think what I'm taking away from this is, empathy interviews are powerful tools for educators in the sense that we can understand our students at a much deeper level, but it's not just that. It's the experience of being seen through an empathy interview that can also have a profound impact on a child. Kara: Yes, absolutely. I'm part of a collaboration out of University of California where we have thought about the intersection of disability and mathematics, and really thinking about how using the tools of design thinking, particularly the empathy interview can be really transformative. And what the teachers in our studies have told us is that just doing these empathy interviews—and we're not talking about interviewing all the kids that you teach. We're talking about interviewing a select group of kids with real intention about, “Who's a kid who has been marginalized?” And/or “Who's a kid who I don't really know that much about and/or I don't really have a relationship with?” Or “Who's a kid who I suspect doesn't feel seen by me or doesn't feel, like, a deep sense of belonging in our work together?” Teachers report that just doing a few of these interviews starts to change their relationship to those kids. Kara: Not a huge surprise. It helped them to name some of the assumptions they made about kids, and it helped them to be in a space of not knowing around kids. I think the other thing it does for teachers that we know is that they describe to do an empathy interview well requires a lot of restraint, restraint in a couple of ways. One, I'm not fixing, I'm not offering advice. I'm also not getting feedback on my teaching. And I also think it's hard for teachers not to insert themselves into the interview with our own narratives. I really try to make sure I'm listening deeply and I'm painting a portrait of this kid, and I'm empathetic in the sense I care deeply and I'm deeply listening, which I think is a sign of respect, but the kids don't need to know about my experience in the interview. That's not the purpose. Mike: We could keep going for quite a long time. I'm going to make a guess that this podcast is going to have a pretty strong on a lot of folks who are out in the field listening. Kara: Hmm. Mike: If someone was interested in learning more about empathy interviews and wanted to explore or understand more about them, do you have any particular recommendations for where someone might go to continue learning? Kara: Yes, and I wish I had more, but I will take that as an invitation that maybe I need to do a little bit more writing about this work. I think the “Street Data” is an interesting place where the co-authors do reference empathy interviews, and I do think that they have a few videos online that you could see. I think Jamila Dugan has an empathy interview that you could watch and study. People can write me and/or follow me. I'm working on an article right now. My colleagues in California and I have a blog called “Designing4Inclusion,” “4” being the number four, and we've started to document the work of empathy and how it shows up in teachers' practice there. Mike: Well, I want to thank you so much for joining us, Kara. It has really been a pleasure talking with you. Kara: Thank you, Mike. I was really happy to be invited. 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

Mike Levine, founder and CEO of Mystic Moose, an indie game studio and publisher, joins us on the PG.biz Podcast to discuss Mystic Moose's newest game, Mojo Melee — a cross-platform, multiplayer PVP auto chess game — that weaves together a strong narrative and player choice. In the episode, Mike describes how Mystic Moose paves the way for players to personalize and own digital collectibles -- on their terms. This smart approach bypasses the Web 3 backlash and, more importantly, employs a “choose your own adventure” approach to user education. “We believe in the power of Web3 to empower players,” says Mike. “But it's [just] a feature for those who wanna take advantage of it in our game.” CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Peggy and Brian: Back in the studio! 02:00 - What makes Mojo Melee magic?  06:40 - Plant-based creatures, clans, and scouts 08:59 - Finding your niche in Web3 12:59 - Designing digital collectibles differently  15:12 - Cross-platform creativity 21:27 - Advice for indie startups 23:14 - Is it time for AR in gaming?  25:42 - Choose your own adventure user education  29:33 - Q&A with Mike * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  ** Let's Connect **

Rounding Up Season 1 | Episode 19 – Building a Broader Definition of Participation Guest: Juanita Silva Mike Wallus: Participation is an important part of learning to make sense of mathematics. But stop and ask yourself, “What counts as participation?” In this episode, we'll talk with Dr. Juanita Silva from Texas State University about an expanded definition of participation and what it might mean for how we engage with and value our students' thinking.  Mike: Welcome, Juanita. Thanks for joining us on the podcast. Juanita Silva: Hi. Thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to talk about this topic. Mike: I think I'd like to start by asking you to just talk about the meaning of participation. What is it and what forms can participation take in an elementary math classroom? Juanita: Well, there's a mixture of nonverbal and verbal communication. And you can add in there gestures [as a] form of communication, not just in an interconnected space, but also thinking about students' respect. And it's not just bidirectional, but there's a lot of things that are kind of added in that space. Mike: So, it strikes me that when I was a classroom teacher, when I look back, I probably overemphasized verbal communication when I was assessing my students' understanding of math concepts. And I have a feeling that I'm not alone in that. And I'm wondering if you could talk about the way that we've traditionally thought about participation and how that might have impacted student learning? Juanita: Yes, this is a great question. In thinking about, “What does this look like, how to participate in the classroom?” Mostly teachers think about this as whole group discussions or in small group discussions. And I emphasize the word “their” discussions, where students can share verbally how they thought about the problem. So, for example, if a student is solving a fraction word problem, the teacher may ask, “OK, so how did you solve this problem? Can you share your strategy with the class? What does that look like?” And so, the student sometimes will say, “If I'm solving a fraction word problem about four parts or four chocolate bars, then I can cut those leftovers into four parts.” So that's usually what we think of, as in our teaching and practice in elementary schooling. We think of that as verbal communication and verbal participation, but there are others. ( laughs ) Mike: Let's talk about that. I think part of what you have pushed me to think about is that a student's verbal communication of their thinking, it really only offers a partial window into their actual thinking. What I'd like to do is just talk about what it might look like to consciously value participation that's nonverbal in an elementary classroom. Like, what are the norms and the routines that a teacher could use to value nonverbal communication, maybe in a one-to-one conversation in a small group or even in a whole group discussion? Juanita: Yes. So, I can share a little bit for each one of those. For example, in a one-to-one environment, the teacher and student can more effectively actually communicate ideas if the teacher attends to that child's thinking in nonverbal ways as well. So, for instance, I've had a student before in the past where he would love to explain his thinking using unifix cubes and to share his thinking on a multiplication problem that was about three sets of cookies. And those sets were in groups of seven. So, there were seven cookies in each bag. And I asked him, “Well, how would you share? Could you explain your thinking to me?” And so, he showed me three sets of seven unifix cubes, and he pointed to each of the seven linking cubes and then wrote on his paper, the number sentence, “seven plus seven plus seven is 21.” And when I asked him if the seven represented the cookies, he simply nodded yes and pointed to his paper, saying and writing the words “21 total.” Juanita: So, I didn't ask him to further explain anything else to me verbally because I had completely understood how he thought of the problem. And in this example, I'm showing that a student's gestures and a student's explanation on a piece of paper should be valued enough. And we don't necessarily need to engage in a verbal communication of mathematical ideas because this honors his ways of thinking. But at the same time, I could clearly understand how this child thought of the problem. So, I think that's one way to think about how we can privilege a nonverbal communication in a one-to-one setting. Mike: That's really helpful. I think that part of the example that you shared that jumps out for me is attending to the ways that a child might be using manipulative tools as well, right?  Juanita: Correct.  Mike: So, it was kind of this interaction of the student's written work, their manipulative tools, the way that they gestured to indicate their thinking … that gave you a picture of how this child was thinking. And you didn't really need to go further than that. You had an understanding as an educator that would help you think about what you might do next with that child. Juanita: Absolutely. And that is one of the tools that I find to be super useful, is to not just have students explain their thinking, but also just listen to their nonverbal cues. And so, paying attention to those and also valuing those is extremely important in our practice. I can share one of my favorites, which is a small group example. And this one is kind of foundational to think of the practice when we're teaching in our elementary math classrooms. It's not just that interactions between student and teacher, but the interactions between students and students can be very powerful. So, that's why this is one of my favorite examples. I had two students at one point in my practice. And this was Marco and José, and they were in fourth grade. They were having a hard time communicating verbally with one another, and José was trying to convince Marco of his strategy to split the leftovers of an equal-sharing problem into three parts instead of halves. Juanita: But his verbal communication of these ideas were not clear to Marco. And José explains to Marco, “You have to cut it into halves.” And Marco would say, “Yes, that is what I did.” Like, frustrated, as if, like, “You have to cut this into halves.” And José would say, and Marco was like, “Yes, that's exactly what I did.” So, this exchange of verbal communication was not really helping both of them showcase how they were trying to communicate. So, then José started to insist, and he said, “No, look.” And then he showed Marco his strategy on his paper. And in his paper, he had split the bar into three parts. And then Marco looked at José and said, “Ah, OK.” Had José not shown this strategy on his paper, then Marco would have never really understood what he meant by “You have to cut it into halves.” And so, I share this example because it really showcases that sometimes what we're trying to say and communicate might come across differently verbally, but we mean something else when we showcase it nonverbally. So, in this instance, José was trying to explain that, but he couldn't figure out how to tell that to Marco. And so, in this instance, I feel like it really showcases the power of the nonverbal communication among students. Mike: I think what's fascinating about that is, conceptually the strategy was right there. It was kind of like, “I'm going to equally partition into three parts.” The issue at hand was the language choice. I'm essentially referring to this equal partition as a half, this second equal partition as a half, and this third equal partition as a half. That's a question of helping figure out what is the language that we might use to describe those partitions. But if we step back and say, “Mathematically, does the child actually understand the idea of equal partitioning?” Yes. And then it seems as though it becomes a second question about how do you work with children to actually say what we call this, or the way that we name fractions is—that's a different question, as opposed to, “Do you understand equal partitioning, conceptually?” Juanita: Yeah. So, you're pointing at something that I've found in my research in the past. Oftentimes students will use the word half. And verbally explaining, use the word to mean that they're trying to equally partition a piece of a bar. They'll say, “Well, I cut it into halves.” And then when we look at the document, they're pointing to the lines, the partition lines, that are within the bar. And that's what they're referring to. So, we know that they don't necessarily mean that the part itself is a half, but that the partition is what they're indicating. It means that it's a half. And it's this idea that it's behind … languages really attained to this development over time, where students really think about their prior experiences, as in, “I've cut items before. And those cuts before have been halves.” And so, that particular prior knowledge can transfer into new knowledge. And so, there's this disjuncture, or there's this complexity, within the language communication and those actions. And that's why it's important not just to value the verbal communication—but also nonverbals—because they might mean something else. Mike: Well, part of what you're making me think about, too, is in practice, particularly the way that you described that, Juanita, was this idea that my prior knowledge, my lived experience led me to call the partitions “half.” And the mathematical piece of that is, like, “I understand equal partitioning. The language that I use to describe partitioning is the language of half.” So, my wondering for you is, what would it look like to value the child's partitioning and value the fact that they used this idea of partitioning when they were thinking about halves—and then also build on that to help them have the language of, “We call this type of a partition a third or a fourth,” or what have you. Juanita: So, this is one of those conundrums that I've talked to and discussed with other colleagues, and we talk about how sometimes they're just not ready for it. And so, when we are trying, and that's the other thing, right? Honoring what they say and taking it as they're saying it. And sometimes it's OK not to correct that. So, because we as the teachers have that, you know, we're honoring their thinking as it is, and eventually that language will develop. It eventually will become where they're no longer calling the partitions halves, and they're calling them appropriately, and they're using the part instead. So, it takes time for the student to really understand that connection. So, if we just say it and we tell them, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to transfer and that they're going to pick up on that. So, I often try not to tell them, and I just let them explain how they're thinking and how they're saying. Juanita: And if I honor their nonverbal ways, then I definitely can see what they mean by halves, that they're not necessarily thinking of the part, they're thinking of the partition itself. And so, that is a very important, nuanced, mathematical evolution in their knowledge. And that sometimes, we as teachers try and say, “Oh, well, we should just tell him how it is.” Or how we should develop the appropriate language. And in some instances, it might be OK. But I think most often I would defer not to do something like that because like I said, I still can access their mathematical thinking even if they don't have that language yet. ( chuckles ) Mike: That's super helpful. I think we could probably do a podcast … Juanita: On that alone? ( laughs ) Mike: The nuances of thinking about that decision. But I want to ask you before we close about whole group. Let's talk a little bit about whole group and what it looks like to value nonverbal communication in a whole group setting. Tell me your thinking. Juanita: Yeah, so this one is a fascinating one that I've recently come across in my own work. And I have to say, it takes a lot of effort on the part of the teacher to enact these things in the classroom, but it is possible. And so, I'll share an example of what I came across in my practice. So, if this was a bilingual classroom, and the teacher was asking students to participate silently and in written form to attend to each other's mathematical ideas, and they had examples. They had to solve a multiplication area problem individually, and then the teacher would post the student's solutions on a large poster paper and then ask all of the students to go around the room with a sticky note offering comments to each of their peer solutions. And so, what we found was just fascinating because the students were able to really dive deep into the students' solutions. Juanita: So, they were more deeply involved in those mathematical ideas with … when you took out the verbal communication. We had an instance where a student was like, “Well, you solved it this way, and I noticed that you had these little pencil marks on each of those squares.” And the student was saying, “Did you count 25 or did you count 26? I think you missed one.” And so, the gestures and the marks, the pencil marks on the piece of paper, that's how detailed the students were kind of attending to each other's thinking. So, they were students that were offering ideas to other students' solutions. So, they were saying, “Well, what if you thought about it this way?” And they would write their explanation of that strategy of how they would solve it instead of how the student actually did it. And so, it was just fantastical. We were just amazed by how much richness there was to their explanations. Had the teacher done this particular activity verbally, then I wonder how many students would have actually participated. Right? So that was one of our bigger or larger questions, was noticing how many students participated in the level and the depth of their justifications for each other, versus had the teacher done this verbally with the students and had them communicate in a whole group discussion. How many students would've been able to do this? So, it is just fascinating. ( chuckles ) Mike: You touched on some of the things that were coming to mind as I heard you describe this practice, and I'd love your take on it. One of the things that strikes me about this strategy of posting solutions and then asking kids to use Post-it Notes to capture the comments or capture the noticings: Does it have the potential to break down some of the status dynamics that might show up in a classroom if you're having this conversation verbally? What I mean by that is, kids recognize that when someone speaks who they've perceived as, like, “Well, that person understands it, so I'm going to privilege their ideas.” That kind of goes away, or at least it's minimized, in the structure that you described. Juanita: That is correct. So, I do a lot of writing on also thinking about culturally sustaining pedagogies in our teaching of practice of math. And some of the things that we find, is that a lot of the students that do participate verbally tend to be white monolinguals. And that oftentimes the teacher or other students privilege their knowledge over the student of color. And so being able to participate in nonverbal ways in this manner really showcases that everybody's knowledge can be privileged. And so, those kind of dynamics within the classroom go away. And so, it really highlights that everybody is valued equally, and that everybody can contribute to these ideas, and that everybody has a voice. That's one of the reasons why this particular piece is just dear to my heart, is because it really showcases to teachers that this can be done in the classroom. Mike: Yeah, I've said this oftentimes on the podcast. I find myself wanting to step back into my classroom role and try this protocol out. It just feels really powerful. Let me go back to something that I wanted to clarify. So, as we've talked about practices that value nonverbal communication, a question that I've been forming and that I suspect other people might be wondering about is, I don't think you're saying that teachers have to either choose to value verbal or nonverbal communication. Juanita: Yes, that is correct. So, I often do both. ( laughs ) It's a mixture of both. Students will communicate verbally to some extent in the same strategy and nonverbally at the same time. And valuing all forms of communication is most important. In my practice as a bilingual teacher and teaching bilingual students, I've also understood that language can't be the sole focus. And the nonverbal cues also highlighted in that communication are just as important as the language, as the bilingualism, when we're communicating ideas. And so, as teachers, there's a law that we also have to pay attention to. So, it's not just that it's nonverbal or verbal communication, but it's also how we approach the teaching, right? Because we as teachers can definitely take over students' thinking and not necessarily pay attention to what they're actually saying. So, only valuing verbal communication would be detrimental to the student. Juanita: So, it has to be a little bit of both and a mixture of everything. I've had students [who] have tried to show me in gestures alone with no written comments on a piece of paper, and that sometimes can work. I've had instances where students can gesture with their hands and say they're pointing, and they're using both hands as, “This is how many I mean, and this is how I'm partitioning with my fingers. I'm doing three partitions, and I'm using three fingers, and I'm showing you three iterations of that with closing and opening my fists.” And so, there's just so much that kids can do with their body. And they're communicating ideas not just in a formal written format, but also using gestures. So, there's lots of ways that students can communicate, and I think teachers should pay attention to all of those ways. Mike: Yeah. The connection that I'm making is, we've done several podcasts, and I've been thinking a lot about this idea of strengths-based, or asset-based, instruction. And I think what you're saying really connects to that because my interpretation is, gestures, nonverbal communication, using manipulative tools, things that kids have either written or drawn, those are all assets that I need to pay attention to in addition to the things that they might use language to describe. Juanita: That's right. That's right. So, everything. ( laughs ) The whole student. ( laughs ) Mike: Well, I suspect you've given our listeners a lot to think about. For folks who want to keep learning about the practices that value nonverbal communication, what research or resources would you suggest? Juanita: Yeah, so I have two articles, one that's particular to bilingual pre-service teachers, and another one that I just explained within a whole group discussion. That's an article, titled, “Attending to others' mathematical ideas: a semiotic alternative to logocentrism in bilingual classrooms.” So, I can give you both links and you can share those along with the podcast. Mike: That sounds fantastic. We'll put a link to that up when we publish the podcast. I just want to thank you, Juanita. It was lovely to have you with us. I've learned a lot, and I sure appreciate you joining us. Juanita: Thank you. Well, 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

Rounding Up Season 1 | Episode 10: Asset-Based Learning Environments Guest: Dr. Jessica Hunt Mike Wallus: Take a moment to think about the students in your most recent class. What assets do each of them bring to your classroom and how might those assets provide a foundation for their learning? Today we're talking with Dr. Jessica Hunt about asset-based learning environments. We'll talk about how educators can build an asset-based learning environment in their classrooms, schools, and school districts. Welcome to the podcast, Jessica. Thanks for joining us. Jessica Hunt: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here today. Mike: Well, I would love to start our conversation asking you to help define some language that we're going to use throughout the course of the podcast.  Jessica: Sure.  Mike: I'm wondering if you can just describe the difference between an asset-based and a deficitfocused learning environment. Jessica: I think historically what we see a lot of is deficit-based thinking. And deficit-based thinking focuses on perceived weaknesses of students—or even a group of students. And it focuses on students as the problem. And as a result, we tend to use instruction in an attempt to fix students or to fix their thinking. So, an asset-based learning environment means focusing on and beginning with strengths as opposed to what we think kids need or how to fix them. So, this means viewing kids as able and recognizing that the diversity of their thoughts, their culture, their experiences—all of these things are valuable and can actually strengthen and add meaning to classrooms and to instruction. I think assetbased learning environments involve a shift in our own mindset as teachers. And, of course, what we hope results from that is a shift in our practice. We talk a lot about growth mindsets for kids. I think I am referring to growth mindsets that teachers have about kids. We can ask, ‘What do students know and how can I use that? Or how can I build upon that through my teaching?' I've never met a kid that didn't bring something to instruction. Every student that I've met [has] had strengths that they bring to mathematics classrooms and to communities to expand their thinking and also that of their peers. Mike: It's fascinating listening to your description. I find myself thinking about how deficit-based many of the systems and structures … Jessica: Yeah. Mike: … and practices are, even though we do these things with positive intent.  Jessica: Yeah.  Mike: Can you just say more about that? How do you see deficit thinking filtering into some of the systems and then impacting the learning environments in our kids? Jessica: Sure. I think two ways that I see deficit thinking filtering into driving—and driving systems in classrooms—involve things like time and priorities. Time and how it's used in classrooms and schools is one area that deficit thinking can impact in a big way. How are systems recommending that teachers actually spend their time with students in the context of a particular day or a week or even a unit of instruction? And I ask that question because I think that it's one thing to state that we have asset-based approach. Yet it's quite another to consider the need to develop meaningful habits within classroom spaces that can really promote student strengths. Mike: So, one of the things that you just said really struck me, which is this idea of habits in the classroom. I'm excited to hear what you're going to say about that. Jessica: I think one of the key habits that we have in asset-based learning environments is this idea of listening to kids. I've never met a student that didn't have viable and valuable ideas about mathematics. The key for me is having the time and space to uncover and understand what those are. So, we've got to have a way to listen to students' thinking. When we do that, when we understand the reasoning and the strengths that they're bringing, that supports us in selecting instructional tools and strategies that leverage both their individual strengths and those that they bring to the group in order to promote learning. Mike: Let's pick up on that a little bit. This idea of listening to kids and understanding their thinking and understanding of what it means about the assets that they bring. For a person who might be listening, help them form an image of what that might look like in an elementary classroom. Talk to me a little bit about on a day-to-day basis, how might this idea of listening to kids or attending to kids' thinking—and really considering the assets—how might that show up? Jessica: One way it shows up is this focus on learning. And before I go on with that, I want to talk a little bit about how learning and a focus on it is a little different than focusing on performance. So, focusing on performance as opposed to learning, risks looking at change as something that's fast and quick as opposed to something that grows and endures. So, part of focusing on learning means that we're looking more at the process as opposed to only examining quick outcomes or products of what students are experiencing in classrooms. It's actually interesting to think about that in terms of educational equity because there's some research that actually suggests that performance gains don't necessarily equate to learning gains. Mike: I think that's fascinating. You're making me think of two things. One, and I'm going to reference this for people who are listening, is ‘Taking Action,' which is NCTM's work. Really trying to say what do some of the really critical principles of high-quality education look like in grades pre-K through 5? And they have a really specific focus on attending to what do we want kids to learn versus simply what's the performance. Jessica: Yes, absolutely. Mike: I also just wanted to key in on something you said, which is that performance can be short-lived, but learning endures. Jessica: It sure does. If we want to focus on learning, it means that we have to be intentional in our classroom practices. And I also think that links to a lot of things. Like you brought up NCTM, and a lot of the things that they advocate for. I think there are some natural linkages there as well. So, for me, being intentional, one key part of that is ensuring that students are doing the thinking so that teachers can listen to and promote that thinking. So, we want the placement of the learning and the thinking on the students for a good percentage of the instructional time. We want to ensure that we're immersing students in content rather than simply presenting it all the time. And I think another part of that listening involves positioning students and the ideas that they're bringing forward as competent. So, I think, together, what all of this means is that we're supporting students to make meaning for themselves, yet definitely not by themselves. Jessica: Teachers have an intentional, key role. And part of that intentionality involves things like slowing down and thinking carefully about how to structure learning experiences. And taking more time and planning and ensuring that students have access to multiple ways to engage in and represent and express their thinking with respect to those tasks and activities that they're using and drawing upon to learn. And I think that asset-based learning environments allow for that intentionality. It allows for that time and space and planning. And in teaching, it allows for that immersion and thinking and listening and positioning of students as the sense-makers, as the doers and thinkers of mathematics. Mike: I think the connection that I'm making is this idea that there are some shifts that have to happen in order to enable asset-based listening and intentionality. One of the things that comes to mind is it really starts with even how you structure or imagine the task itself. If you're posing a problem, that problem isn't accompanied by a ‘Let me show you how to find the answer.' That actually allows kids to think about it. And there might be some divergent thinking, and that's actually a good thing. We want to understand how kids are thinking so we can respond to their thinking. Jessica Absolutely. Mike: That's a big contrast to saying, ‘Let me show you a task, let me show you how to do the task.' It's pretty difficult to imagine listening in that kind of context because really what you're asking them to do isn't thinking about how to solve it. Does that make sense? Jessica: It sure does. And I think for me, or a hunch that I would have, is that that also goes back to this whole idea of teaching and listening and maybe even assessing, if you will, for what we think kids need versus what they're bringing us versus their strengths. I see some connections there in what you're seeing. Mike: Let's talk about that a little bit.  Jessica: Sure.  Mike: Particularly assessment, I think when I was getting ready for this episode, that was the first thing that came to mind. I found myself thinking about previous PLC meetings or data meetings that I've had where even if we were looking at student work, I have to confess that I found myself thinking about the fact that we were looking at what kids didn't understand versus what they did understand. And I tried to kind of imagine how those conversations would've looked from an asset perspective. What would it look like to look at student work and to compare student work and think about assets versus thinking about what do I need to remediate in the type of thinking that I'm seeing?  Jessica: Uh-hm. I hear you there. I think it speaks to something that if we really want to build assetbased learning environments, we need to make some shifts. And I think one of those shifts is how we look at and use data and assessment. Primarily, I think we need to assess strengths and not needs. I heard that a lot as you were talking. How can we focus on assessing strengths and not needs? I say that to a lot of people and they're like, ‘What's the difference?' ( laughs ) Or, ‘That seems so small.' (laughs) But I think it winds up being a really big deal. If you think about it, trying to uncover needs perpetuates this idea that we should focus on what we see as the problem, which as I mentioned earlier, usually becomes the students or particular group of students. And I think it's very problematic because it sets us up as teachers to keep viewing students and their ideas as something that needs to be fixed as opposed to assets that we can build from or learn from in the classroom. Mike: Yeah. One of the other ideas that we've talked about on this podcast in different episodes is the idea of relevancy and engagement. And it strikes me that these ideas about listening to kids for assets are pretty connected to those ideas about relevancy and engagement. Jessica: Yeah, most definitely. I think, again, figuring out, we sometimes call this prior knowledge, but I look at it as when kids come to school, they bring with them their entire experience. So, what are those experiences and what from their eyes are things that are relevant and engaging and things in which they are passionate about themselves? And what do they know about those things? And how might they connect to what others in the classroom know about those things? And how can we, to borrow a term, how can we ‘mathematize' those things ( laughs ) in ways that are beneficial for individual kids and for the community of learners in our classroom? Like, how can we make those connections? I don't think we can answer those types of questions when we use assessment from this place of, ‘What don't students know?' Or ‘How can I get them to this particular place?' If that makes sense.  Mike: It does.  Jessica: I think we can ask those questions from a strengths-based lens that is curious about and passionate about really getting at, again, this whole experience that kids are bringing with them to school. And how we can use that to not only better students learning, but better the classroom community and maybe even better the mathematics that kids are learning in that community. Mike: Absolutely. Jessica: That's, that's interesting to think about. Mike: So, you started to address one of the questions that I was going to ask, which is, I'm imagining that there are folks who are listening to the podcast and they're just starting to think about what are some of the small steps or the small moves that I might make? What small steps would you advise folks to think about if they're trying to cultivate an asset-focused learning environment? Jessica: It's an interesting question, and I would suggest putting into practice some of the bigger ideas that we're getting at in asset-based learning environments themselves. And the first is, look at your own strengths. And when I say who I'm referencing there, it can be a teacher, it can be a school, it can be a district. If you look at your own strengths first, look at how your practices, your structures, your priorities are uncovering and using strengths. And if they're not, why not? Kind of looking at what's there, what capacities do we currently have that we can build on toward asset-based learning environments? And I think I would pair that with just a commitment to, to action, if you will. You know, start small, but start now. If you're a classroom teacher for instance—I tend to go to that ( laughs ), that grade size a lot ‘cause I still very much, uh, identify as a teacher—start with one task or one day, or part of a day, where you can slow down and use your instructional time to listen for kids' strength. Jessica: What brilliance and valuable ways of reasoning are they sharing with you? And what kinds of activity or task or environment did you need to put in place to uncover that? What did you learn about it? What did you learn about yourself in this process? So, we learn about kids and then we learn about ourselves. It becomes sort of this beautiful back and forth between students and teachers where we're all learning about ourselves and about each other. And I think that learning piece is the third thing that I would suggest. Again, going back to let's focus on learning. Let's celebrate our own learning as teachers and schools and districts and et cetera. Reframing your practices and structures will take time. That's OK. But learn to celebrate the steps that you and your communities are taking toward this asset-based model of instruction. And know that, again, you know, when we work to do that, we enable kids as mathematical thinkers and doers. So, we take that problem off kids, and we place it as a challenge in our instructional design, in our experiences and our interactions between teachers and students. So, I think for me, I would really invite folks to take those small steps, uncover your own strengths, learn to listen, and celebrate your own learning. Mike: Before we conclude the episode, I'm wondering if you can recommend any resources for someone who wants to continue learning about an asset-based approach to elementary mathematics? Jessica: Yeah. There [are] so many good examples of this. I think about my own learning as a teacher and a teacher of teachers, ( laughs ) and a researcher. And I think about things like cognitively guided instruction or the work of the The Dream Project in early childhood or even TODOS, where I know they provide a lot of wonderful examples of asset-oriented resources. I'll also do a shameless plug ( laughs ) for my, for my own book, you know, myself … Mike: Plug away!  Jessica: … ( laughs ) and Jenny Ainslie put together, called, ‘Designing Effective Math Interventions: An Educator's Guide to Learner-Driven Instruction.' And that book came off of a project that I did with, uh, National Science Foundation support, where we looked at kids' thinking over time and designed some tasks and activities to support conceptual understanding of fractions. But there are those. Alnd, and so, so many more. But those are the ones that come to mind immediately. Mike: That's fantastic. And we'll share links to those things with the podcast.  Jessica: Great. Mike: I want to thank you so much for joining us, Jessica, it's really been a pleasure talking to you. Jessica: Oh, thank you. It's been an immense pleasure talking with you as well. And thank you for inviting me. I really appreciate it. 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

(5 hours) #949 "ASMR mike" Let me bore you to sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023)

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(music) #949 "ASMR mike" Let me bore you to sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023)

#949 "ASMR mike" Let me bore you to sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023)

(music) #949 "ASMR mike" Let me bore you to sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023)

#949 "ASMR mike" Let me bore you to sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023)

(music) #949 "ASMR mike" Let me bore you to sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023)

#949 "ASMR mike" Let me bore you to sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023)

#949 "ASMR mike" Let me bore you to sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023)

(music) #949 "ASMR mike" Let me bore you to sleep (Jason Newland) (6th January 2023)

This week we're exploring the fascinating and controversial topic of flat earth theory....again. This ancient belief, once relegated to the fringes of society, has seen a resurgence in recent years thanks to the power of the internet and social media. On this episode, we'll take a deep dive into the history of the flat earth movement and examine the arguments made by its supporters.  We'll explore the evidence (or lack thereof) supporting the idea that the earth is not a globe, but rather a flat, disc-shaped plane. Whether you're a believer or a skeptic, you won't want to miss this revisit. Join us as we challenge our assumptions about the world around us and explore the flat earth phenomenon. Did we change our minds? *Intro sound clip features comedian Dan Cummins If you have any questions or topics you'd like to see the society cover, please reach out at Contact@hushhushsociety.com   You can find all our audio, blogs and drop sweet ratings at www.hushhushsociety.com Find our Video Content on our Rokfin Leave us a review on Apple, our website, Podchaser or GoodPods You can grab Hush Hush merch and help support the show on Patreon Link up with the society on social media:   Facebook   Instagram   Twitter    Join our Discord and chat with us   TRANSCRIPT Flat Earth 2   [00:01:00]  Dave: Greetings, Hushlings. Welcome back to the Hush Hush Society Conspiracy Hour. Mike: Where we journey into the world of conspiratorial mysteries and dark truths Dave: I'm Declassified Dave Mike: and I'm Mystery Mike and as though is we're joined by our fellow globetard Slick Fronk Sanders. Fronk: The Earth is probably round how you doing? Dave: it's going. Are things going around today? Mike: Quick question flat Earthers. How do boomerangs work on your flat plane? Fronk: Boomerangs are flat.  Dave: that got him. If you didn't notice today, we returned to the great debate in this episode. Is the Earth round? Is the Earth flat? Fronk: Hushling's, uh, in case you weren't [00:02:00] aware, we visited this topic in season three and completely shat all over the flat plane and we believe we should revisit this mother of all modern conspiracies, seeing as though it's such a big part of conspiracy culture. Dave: it's getting even bigger, even though you guys probably most definitely are gonna take a second dumping in this one. Mike: not as bad as the first. Dave: Not  Fronk: Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. Mike: we've discussed how there are different phases to being a flat earther. I'm guess I'm still in stage zero and we were in stage one in May of 2021. let's go up around to stage two But before we search for the horizon and fall off the flat plane and search for God in the sky under the spotlight sun, you can always find us on our social medias, Facebook, [00:03:00] Instagram, and Twitter Dave: You can also find everything hush hush society on our website, www.hushhushsociety.com. From episodes to links to merchandise, and the ability to drop a review or leave us a voicemail. We hope we get some after this episode. Mike: Hmm. Please do. Dave: Yeah. Fronk: And we keep mentioning that we are now also a video podcast. You can not only. To us, but you can watch us, you can see our faces. You can get that expressional action that you might not get from just an audio recording. And to find those episodes, you just gotta go to Rock Fin. It's, it's very simple. Rock fin.com. There's even an app. And in the search bar you just put in Hush Hush Society. You'll find us nice and easy. And there you can find all of our videos. you hit the notification button. You get notifications when our videos come out. Check it out. Mike: And just one last thing before we move on to the flat plane, we just [00:04:00] want to give a quick shout out to our newest patron, Gabrielle May. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. Fronk: Just in case you're new to this, we're gonna do a quick little recap for you on what Flat Earth theory is, and essentially, in a nutshell, the earth is flat rather than round. Pretty self explanatory, although it's made its appearance throughout history. The theory gained popularity around 2009 and has continued to grow ever since. Dave: It is regarded as one of the most controversial conspiracy theories in existence. Why claim that our earth is flat and not a globe easy? That's because it looks flat and feels flat and is surrounded by 200 feet of ice blocking us from traversing across an infinite plane or falling off the edge. Sounds correct, right? Fronk: I mean, yeah, that's what I've been made to believe. That's that's what it seems like Mike: Yeah. Riding on the back of a turtle through the cosmos, but the cosmos [00:05:00] doesn't exist, so where's the turtle going? Anyways,  according to believers, NASA and the ruling elite protect the ice walls from people attempting to climb over and fall from the disc. Can't make it up. They also believe that earth's gravity is an illusion, and that objects are driven up by a mysterious force called dark energy, rather than spinning and being stuck to a surface, Fronk: But on the other hand, there are countless photographs, videos, and images from astronauts and the International Space Station that kind of seem like evidence to show that the Earth is round. But these are not considered real evidence and are allegedly faked by the government or the ruling elites Dave: Now before we move on, flat, earthers already pissed off at our description in the beginning, Fronk: probably. Dave: we wanted to pull you in, but we'll make it as [00:06:00] fair as possible with some of the talking points that we're going to go over.  Now, Hushlings, there is the flat Earth Society as well as thousands of others from around the globe in groups. In addition to independent researchers, even though there is evidence to contradict some of these arguments, they are dismissed as fabrications of around earth conspiracy, along with stars, planets, galaxies, space, and gravity, all being a part of the facade of where we live. Mike: That is my biggest thing when it comes down to a debate between a flat earth and someone who believes that we live on a globe, is that it always results. In a flat earth are saying, well, that's what you've been told. You've been lied to. You're believing a lie that's being told to you, which is the old faithful of all conspiracy theorists, is that you're being lied to. That's all well and good, but at what point do you turn around and say, the [00:07:00] science is being lied to you. Nasa, we know lies to us. We know they fabricate images. We know what they do. But again, that's more of an argument that NASA is filled with bunch of liars. But at what point do you look at it maybe there is evidence that it's a globe or maybe there is evidence that it's a flat plane. There has to be a certain cutoff point where you stop saying, well, you're being lied to. That's what they want you to believe. That's what they're fabricating the science. They're fabricating this. They're fabricating that. How, and this has always been my issue, how do you talk to a flat earth and say, what piece of evidence would it take for you to say that it's a globe Dave: Pictures. Mike: pictures? , but then you show them a picture of this is what our earth looks like. It's a globe. Or you show them video or you show them anything. Well, that's been fabricated. It's always like this deniability to go against what they believe in. Like you, you have to deny [00:08:00] it. You have to deny it because it shakes the entire foundation of what their belief system is, especially when it comes to a flat earth. But then they always revert back to, that's what the Bible says. That's what the Bible says. I'm sorry, we, we've been over the Bible many times. We all know that it's been changed a thousand times and it's a book.  Fronk: not only that, but that's what they're making the Bible say. That's what certain people are interpreting the bible to say, and you can make the Bible say a lot of different things depending on how you decide to interpret it as a person. And if you're interpreting it as, they're telling me about the flat earth and so be it, Dave: This episode is gonna focus a little bit more heavily on some of the things that Mike and Fronk just mentioned, talking about NASA and the why would they lie and why would they fake and indoctrinated us as kids to believe that it's a ball. , and these are major [00:09:00] talking points that I've learned over the last year and a half since we've done this, other than just the physical evidence. We have the physical evidence if you're going to go by the, mainstream. we'll go through a bunch of stuff. I think we'll talk about religion too. So Mike, save those nails, buddy. Mike: We'll look into some of what we just listed and more throughout this episode, and it strongly suggested you listen to our first crack at this crust to understand where some of the historical beliefs come from and a lot of other things about this theory, mainly the science. But let's give this another oscillation, shall we? We're gonna literally hit some of the proposed theories and then firmly spit some facts. be prepared to, uh, confirm or deny your belief. Fronk: Before we completely dive into the flat plane, we're gonna talk about the planet as we've been taught in a traditional sense. Our Native [00:10:00] Earth is a terrestrial rocky planet, correct? Yes or no? I mean, whether it's flat around truth,  It has a dynamic and active surface with mountains, valley, canyons, you name it. All the different geographical structures and a variety of other features. It has water covering 70% of its surface, as well as harboring thousands of life forms, and it has a unique orbiting satellite arm. Dave: it has a circumference. Remember this number Hushlings 24,901 miles. And it shares our solar system with eight, sorry, Pluto, eight other planets and is rotating at around thousand miles an hour while orbiting our home star. Now this is where flat Earthers start to deny our existence on a spinning ball. we're orbiting around our sun at 67,000 miles an hour, all while zipping around the center of the Milky Way, roughly at [00:11:00] around 490,000 miles an hour. And the biggest claim, you can't feel it.   Mike: Well, that's just what we're taught in school. Unfortunately, most of us didn't escape the clutches of the Rockefeller Education System. There's that name again. Yep. He created the General Education Board in 1902 at the cost of 129 million. It's a lot of money back in 1902. It's a lot of money today and provided major funding for schools across the nation and was very influential in shaping the school system. Also, he's quoted as saying, I don't want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers. Sounds like my pause. Fronk: And that speaks some deep truth because school does indoctrinate the nation into the trap of society. Once you hit like 10th grade, you're already filling out college applications, colleges that you're gonna be in debt to for the rest of your life, that you're gonna have to work for the majority of [00:12:00] your life to pay off for that job that you'll be working for the rest of your life. And it's this endless cycle. So that's definitely perpetuated by some global elitist. I get that to an extent, maybe the indoctrination portion of it. Dave: Well, from the beginning. Which classroom have you ever been in that didn't have a globe?    Fronk: In 1928, John D Rockefeller Jr. Financed an expedition to the South Pole as a British secret service. Agent Rockefeller knew perfectly that no South Pole existed, but people were curious about the true shape of the world. From 1956 onward, Antarctica was completely controlled by the Pentagon. Hence the Antarctic Treaty. And anybody visiting this chunk of land without permission was shot on site. Admiral by who we've talked about extensively, died mysteriously in 1957 and perhaps had a timely demise before he could tell the truth about what the South Pole. Mike: When it comes to the[00:13:00] Antarctic treaty and being shot on sight, who is shooting these people on sight? Fronk: Snow snipers. Those drones from Star Wars that landed on Hoth Mike: , that's a lot of land to patrol in order to watch for people.  Dave: remember. Antarctica is 5.2 million square miles as well. Mike: That's what doesn't make sense to me. You're gonna be shot on sight and that's another part of the Antarctic treaty that I also don't understand. Who is physically stopping you from going there? The only thing that's physically stopping you from going to Antarctica is it costs a lot of money. To either charter a boat that would go there. most people don't go there. Most charter boats don't go there. You could do a flyover, but that's only partial. Who is physically stopping you besides your bank account? Dave: I did see a video recently of some guys on a boat that were stopped. I think they were stopped by the New Zealand Navy [00:14:00] or the Australian Navy, and they were turning him around and you can see like. Ice in the distance or something like that. And I don't know if there was just like an iceberg that was out there that they were near, but the allegations on TikTok was got turned around at the bottom of the world, cause I believe it's, there's some degree, and I'm gonna sound uneducated saying this, but I don't know the degree, I think, but there's some degree at the bottom of the world. That you can't go. But the Antarctic treaty, it contradicts itself because the Antarctic treaty was supposed to be a demilitarized zone. No military stuff. No commercial, nothing. It was supposed to be strictly for research. Fronk: So why is the Navy there? Of who? New Zealand? Dave: It was either New Zealand or Australia Fronk: So what is the New Zealand or Australian Navy doing there? Dave: Well, they're close to Antarctica Fronk: Yeah, but isn't a non-military zone. Dave: But there's only military scientists maybe not all military scientists. You got like, Noah [00:15:00] scientists and stuff, and I'm sure NASA is down there, the Nazis, they're all down there. You know, you  got everybody. Antarctica looks like a continent to me, and there's a lot of pictures of it. And are they fake? I am. I'm not on the plane, so I don't know. . Why would it matter and why would they lie? The largest argument of why these elites would lie to us is most likely there's more land, more resources, maybe even unlimited resource. And lands beyond the ice shelf or walls, as well as the suppression of how powerful of beings we are, which can kind of be a different argument that has nothing to do with flat earth as well. thoughts on that? Fronk: I could get behind both of those points to an extent in the shoes of a flat Earth, for example. Yes. If you told me that there was unlimited resources, we're talking oil, we're talking the purest water in the world. We're talking minerals that are used to power the world's [00:16:00] electronics, whatever, energy generating methods that we might have unlimited supply of that which would completely destroy not only the US dollar, but the world economy, which is what the alleged elites thrive off of. And if it's not money that they thrive off of it is leaching our fucking energy. And we've talked about that a lot. And if we were to unlock some sort of crazy. Secret about ourselves or humanity as a whole. That might be incredibly enlightening to a lot of people or disturbing. I could see it going either way, but if, if a bunch of people woke up and they were incredibly enlightened, that could be bad for the reptilian negative energy blood suckers. Dave: I don't think it would go well for anybody. I think we always do ask this question a lot when we talk about this as is, would it change our everyday lives? And we usually say no, but it would, because we [00:17:00] probably have a massive economic shutdown. religions would collapse. There'd probably be some type of total anarchy that would happen and then we'd have our own epiphanies of being like, not really upset that I was wrong, but shit I was lied to as well, part of the Doy group. And that would be a shitty day. would it end everything for me? No, it would change everything for sure. But I think the unlimited resources part, I could see somebody hiding that, , we did talk about Admiral Byrd and Admiral Byrd went through, supposedly into the hollow earth, could he have misinterpreted and gone through a crack and found more land. Who knows? In the writing The Iron Republic, written by EW Barrington and published also in 1902, another one of that year with the education system. It was published in Florida Magazine, and it said that an explorer went through a crack in the ice walls and found an advanced civilization after being lost for over a month at sea. So that [00:18:00] means he went through the ice walls and there was more ocean,  Mike: Have there ever been any, any pictures or video of the ice wall or beyond it? Fronk: Uh, people take pictures of. Ice shelves and try to say that they're the ice walls, but at the same time, those could very well just be ice shelves or very large icebergs Mike: Makes sense. Makes sense.  Dave: I wanna see a flight going around the whole whatever, 76,000 miles it's supposed to actually be. Just banking around the whole rim. But you can't go there because the military will shoot you down in a de militarized. Mike: I still think that there's plenty of ways to get there. And we talked, who do we talk with? That had went to Antarctica? Was it Mark Fronk: on a cruise with like their father. Yeah. Mark O'Connell. Yeah. Dave: Yep. Mike: O'Connell said that , he went to Antarctica with his family. Dave: San Diego Padre's pitcher's there right now.  Fronk: Yeah, but he, he also mentioned that it was like the only [00:19:00] part of Antarctica that they'll let a civilian on and it's like this tiny little peninsula and they've got the little, novelty pole.  Like you could go up and touch it and take a picture with it. Yeah. And they got little stuff, penguins and shit. Dave: could it just be a simple explanation why we don't bring people there? One, you'll die  Fronk: , yes, it's very extreme terrain, there's tons of extreme terrain that we're allowed to go to that you would probably die in if you weren't very well equipped. Mike: Yeah, it makes sense that the only reason that they would be stopping people from going there, besides the massive, endless amounts of resources that they're hoarding from us, would be that they just don't want people going out there and fucking dying.  This brings up another allegation that even the word extraterrestrial means extra terra or more land. Trying to hold some weight to the notion this has been taught to us. We see in the film The Next Level by David Weiss. [00:20:00] He meets with an older woman named Ruth. She's 102, God bless her, from Connecticut, who was in tears claiming that she was taught flat Earth in school, in Hamden, Connecticut, and now feels vindicated and better because of his truths. Dave: she was like, lost it. Mike: like real, real emotional about it. Dave: Yeah. Really emotional about it Mike: Okay. We just mentioned the Rockefeller education system and him saying that he doesn't want a nation of thinkers. He wants a nation of workers. , in the 1920s, if she was taught that the earth was flat, She would've been learning from that education system. Dave: True. Yeah, but I don't think that there's actually, I've looked and looked and looked and couldn't find any definitive evidence that was saying that they actually taught that in schools. Because even in 2022 curriculums across the country are not the same, even across the [00:21:00] same states, depending on the size of your state, they're not the same, especially when you get to advanced levels like college professors are teaching what they want within that curriculum, How in 1920 were they all taught the same thing when there was still tons and tons and tons, tons of schools. , that's the thing that gets me,  she's 102. Could she have just been like, yeah, I saw that once and she saw it on a cartoon in the seventies while she was in her sixties,  Fronk: nonetheless, I do find it difficult to wrap my head around because it was David Weiss who did that interview or whatever, and he brings up a lot of stuff about flat Earth. I listen to a bunch of his talks and shows that he went on to and whatnot, and he brings up all of these points and , he tells people to just, look into it. You gotta look into it yourself. You gotta do your research. , you go to do this research and obviously if you're looking into stuff like this, you're not going to [00:22:00] Google. You're not using Bing, like the go to search engine for anything that you can't find is duck, duck go. And he's been saying that Duck, duck go is starting to censor things of this nature. So, like Dave, I went looking for what the global education was like in the 1910s, the 1920s, and. Again, like you said, no definitive proof. Is it a censorship thing or is it the fact that it was just not taught as flat in the 1920s? Dave: There's also allegations that say that, it was the thirties and even in the sixties through certain education systems. , I almost bought David Weiss's app now. David had contacted us and let us know how he thought about us. I think in the next level, , it almost looks like somebody's trying to sell something and maybe this woman really did feel vindicated Ruth if she's still alive or not. but I don't know, check out the next level. It's an interesting take on flat earth and [00:23:00] there's a bunch of other proponents that I'd never even heard of that have some interesting talking points. Mike: my beef when it comes to David is he did reach out to us. He reached out to us a couple times, especially after our flat Earth episode. And essentially just berated us through email it's the usual argument that I, especially for some odd reason am on the receiving end of arguments with flat earthers is just yelling and anger and just being pissed off consistently. and he was not too happy, as Dave said with how we covered it in our talking points. He said, oh, it's the same talking points. Well, it's the same talking points with flat Earthers too. you talk about the Bible, you talk about nasa, you talk about, it's like, it's, it's the same talking points because we're talking about the same fucking topic.  Of course we're gonna have our sides to it and of, and flat earthers are gonna have their sides to it. It's just the way that it is. That's how you have constructive. [00:24:00] Conversations that go back and forth with conflicting beliefs. Dave: I feel like it's a lot of frustration that , you're just not getting it. Fronk: I feel like he rails Coke and like smashes Globes in his free time, like buys globes from Goodwill and just fucking destroys them in the parking lot and then drives home  Dave: beats them with Louisville slugs. Just smack. Smack.  Mike: I can't wait for our next email correspondence after this one. Fronk: dude. It's not gonna be an email. It's gonna be a voice message and he is gonna be all fucking jacked up out of his mind.    Dave: Before we move on to like the major talking points we gotta talk about what Mike mentioned earlier where a lot of the stuff that is talked about goes back to biblical cosmology and creationism.  Mike: Yeah. And that's always been my biggest talking point with discussions with flat Earthers is explain it to me I will give you my counterpoints and you'll give me your points and we can go [00:25:00] back and forth, but complete your, persuasion of trying to make me see that it's a flat plane. Complete your argument without using the Bible. Every single fucking time. Every single time it ends in, well, it says this in the Bible and it says this, it always ends up being that let's put it this way. I've never met a flat earth that wasn't also at the same time a Bible thumper. Dave: I've met two types. I feel like there are conflicting points to, flat earthers even they step on each other's toes a little bit. They might not, not get along, but I think there are some folks that definitely don't believe in the biblical cosmology and it's just a physical thing. But every time you go back to, if it's a physical thing, that's a structure that's not a planet. It brings me to the question, even a non-religious person. It brings me to the question, well then we're talking about who created it, [00:26:00] not just the science of planets and, gas and particles coming together for, from a accretion. We're talking a whole different thing. Now. We're talking about, well, if it's a structure , and this is not what we think it is and this is not what I think it is, then it had to have been manufactured structure. We build structures. using that type of verbiage, brings even me to being like, , now we're in the religious realm or the faith realm. Fronk: You want me to blow your mind right now? you know what's easier than creating a whole universe writing fucking lines of code. Bam, bam.  Mike: Yeah, there it is. There it is. We should just bring all arguments of flat earth back to simulation theory. Fronk: That's where I, that, yeah. Prove to me that it's even physical and then maybe I'll consider whether, the shape is round or flat. Dave: Let's talk about curves. Fronk: Right. All right. Let's talk about the voluminous crevices and curves that our mother Earth provides. Right. The idea of a flat [00:27:00] earth stems from a number of viewpoints, and the most fundamental is to rely on one's own sense, to determine the true nature of one's surroundings. The world appears flat. Clouds, bottoms look like they're flat. Water looks like it's flat, and the sun moves. The stars are always the same positioned exactly how they always were, and all of these sensory cues indicate that we do, in fact, live on a flat. Dave: I'm not an astrophysicist and I'm not a  Fronk: Are you  sure?  Dave: Maybe, maybe, maybe in my other existence, the 500 of 'em. I'm a failed astrophysicist, but I do have a telescope and I've had it for quite some time and I'm pretty good with it. And it's Fronk: the fuck? Dave: eh, the stars not moving. I know that there's a difference between absolute, uh, motion. A difference between [00:28:00] relative motion, and I'm pretty sure that the way that the stars move, but their whole argument is, is that since everything's spinning at astronomical speeds every night, we would see different stars because we're just whipping around and seeing different things. So why are the stars the same? And it does get you thinking, well, why are the stars the same? Well, I'm not a professional astronomer, so I can't really explain that. But I would say it has something to do with relative motion where everything's moving in conjunction instead of just this vortex of insane speeds..  Fronk: In my peanut globetard brain, I'm more so thinking the speed of light and how long it actually takes for the light from the stars that we're seeing to travel here. I mean, yeah, we've been seeing the same stars for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, but at what point were those stars emitting that light? How long have those stars been dead for, and how long is it gonna take for us to see new stars again? [00:29:00] I can't answer any of those questions for you, but I'm pretty sure that's. Dave: Valid point. Mike: Also in the grand scheme of time, humanity has been around a fucking blink in universal time. again to Fronk's point here, we're seeing the same stars because we're living 80 years and that's it. As opposed to the billions and billions and billions of years that the universe has existed and that that light has traveled and those stars have either been born, exploded, died, and disappeared. , we're seeing nothing, nothing. Dave: Well, that goes back to you being an insignificant being and that being suppressed. There's that argument. We'll have that later. We'll fight about it. Mike: there, there won't be an argument. We are insignificant beings.  Even if you took it back to a creationist argument, we are fucking insignificant. We are insignificant, we're [00:30:00] nothing. If we were something we would still commune with Gods, we would still commune with universal spirits. We would be. Something more than fucking meat sacks traveling through the world going, oh, I wonder what job I'm gonna have next, that I'm gonna work fucking 40 hours a week at and pull in a menial salary and take care of my 5.2 fucking kids, and then eventually retire at the ripe old age of 70 years old. And that's my life. How special am I Dave: Well, that's the system that you're locked in. Mike: system or not? Even if I had no job, even if I was just wandering, enjoying my life, going to these wonderful, exotic places, just doing everything that I wanted to do. At the end of it all 70 to 80 years, that's what I get. That's fucking it. in those 70 to 80 years, when am I seeing God? When am I [00:31:00] seeing a hint of any extraterrestrial, any, any extra dimensional, any religious, fucking spiritual guide? Anything. Anything.  when I'm not, fucked up on drugs, Dave: psychedelics. Fronk: God tier moment. Mike goes, have you ever given an ant food? Throw that bitch in there.  Dave: A lot of people see that as negative, and I don't really see it as negative that we're that insignificant. It's kind of the same argument that I make about the flight paths, which we'll quickly touch on is, well, the, the plane has to keep dipping down to keep going. Have you seen how small a plane is to how big the earth is? Mike: That's one thing that they don't understand is fucking perspective. You don't understand  perspective.  Dave: I'm glad you brought that up because what Frankie said a couple minutes ago about viewpoints perspective, seeing, if the clouds appear flat, water is flat, that's called using an empirical approach or an approach that relies on information [00:32:00] on your senses.  What's your feeble little human garbage eyes can see? And if you can't see the curve, then it doesn't exist. They use mathematics. I am. Stupid with math. The math is if the earth is round, there should be a degree of curvature, eight inches per mile squared. one mile would be eight inches, two miles, 32 inches, three miles, 72 inches, four miles, 128, and so on.  128 inches is about 10 feet of curvature. So that would be, four miles away now? 10 feet. A considerable amount when you're looking at a boat on. Water the water line to the top, say, let's say an aircraft carrier is probably 60 to 90 feet. You'd have to be at least around 20 miles to not just see the flight deck of that ship going over the horizon.  Then you got the whole, you got the bridge, you got everything else. You got all the radar you're probably looking at 120 feet at least to the top of, all of the structures on that ship. How many miles is that? . That's the thing. Another thing with the insignificance is [00:33:00] that we're tiny as fuck. Like how can we see anything? If you're five foot 10 and you're looking at something how far are you actually gonna see Mike: but what about the Zoom, Dave? What about the Zoom? Some of those cameras, they can zoom way, way, way, way in. They take those cameras and they zoom, zoom, zoom, and they go, well, that city is 150 miles away. There's no way that I should see it because of this curvature. And this camera is picking it up perfectly. So how do they work? Dave: I think they use the Chicago skyline for example. And I didn't do the experiment and look on Google Maps , and see the different distances, but you gotta remember the Sears Tower, whatever the fuck it's called now, it's like well over a thousand feet tall. and they're like, well, you can see the whole thing you. In those pictures that are shown as examples, you cannot see the entire Sears Tower. There is hundreds of feet of displacement in Chicago. Like New York has a [00:34:00] very tall fucking skyline. But you could still see those buildings and they're there, and on top of it, you're getting atmospheric disturbance. You're getting a layer of almost a mirage layer.  Mike: Dave was just going over the math of the entire situation, it's 67 feet per 10 miles. Now, before we move on, we have to mention that there are ball earthers or globes or globe tards that do argue that this equation is misused by flat earthers. And is the equation of calculating a parabola, not a full sphere. Dave: The guy who said that this is Misused was something that was found on the Michael Stata podcast and apparently himself and another guy that were on there, one was like an F 18 pilot, and then he's got certain hundreds and hundreds amount of hours as being a pilot. he had mentioned that the equation was misused and used the parabola as an example, that you're talking [00:35:00] about something like this instead of something that's a full circle even if you're talking about it on the curve, , it's still a parabola, even on that surface. Even though the equations are right and the math is right to calculate the curvature of the earth with its circumference that's known.  Might not be accurate. And uh, who did that? Aristophenes did that. And I know Flat Earthers is gonna say that guy didn't even fucking exist. which maybe he did, maybe he didn't. That was 2000 years ago. Who knows? Fronk: just to be fair to the flat earthers, right? We can't nitpick what false history we believe and don't, we do tend to say that history could have been falsified many times. If history has been erased at any point in time there is the possibility that this dude was made. Mike: using this model, a person standing on a spherical surface with eyes five feet, 11 inches above the ground, can [00:36:00] hypothetically see the ground up to about three miles away, but a person at the top of the Eiffel Tower at 896 feet can see the ground up to 36.6 miles away. Dave: Well, they're higher in altitude, Mike: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.  Dave: but the argument is that you can't see using the calculation, you wouldn't be able to see because it's dipping. I think the argument is wrong, and I'm not a mathematician and I'm not good at math, but from what my I see is that almost like some of these people are seeing it smaller than what it is. I don't think they're really getting how big this thing is and how small we are. So even at a 900 feet, Yes, you can see almost 10 times as much in distance, but you're also almost a thousand feet in the air,  Mike: Again,  perspective.   Fronk: If the degree of the [00:37:00] curvature is found to be the same everywhere on earth's surface, and the surface is in fact large enough, the constant curvature demonstrates that the earth is a. Now what about water? James Underdown, executive Director for the Center for Inquiry, Los Angeles worked with the Independent Investigations Group, a nonprofit dedicated to investigating exceptional claims using scientific methods. A boat based target with horizontal stripes was used in one of these tests. Dave: He's quoted as saying we sent a boat out on the water, and the farther it goes, the more the stripes disappear. That was supposed to demonstrate the curvature of the planet, but most flat earthers disagreed generating considerable debate. The biggest reason for these arguments with flat earth, obviously it comes from flat Earth, Dave(David Weiss), and it's all about perspective, as we said. The ground would never obscure distant objects on a flat earth. It should be possible to see all the way to the edge of the [00:38:00] world, right? That is the question that we would be asking. The answer we get is the atmosphere is opaque. Now, using the vernacular atmosphere is almost a conundrum in itself, and you ask, well, why did you use that? Well, we don't have another word for it.  Mike: Why not just make up a word like you fucking make up your own beliefs?  Just fucking do it. Just do it. . Make up a new word. It's very easy. It's done every day.   [00:39:00] Ad break [00:40:00]    Mike: Let's move on to another major fight in this, the position of the sun, sunrise and sunset. In case you were wondering, the sun is always above the Earth's surface in both models, Yet in the flat model, it travels in circles around the Earth's north pole, which is also, its. The seasons are caused by the expansion [00:41:00] and contraction of these circles. What about latitude?  Dave: What about latitude? I mean,  that would  Mike: about latitude  Dave: right? Mike: Hmm. Dave: The largest circumference of latitude on this planet would be the equator. Correct?  Mike: Yep. Dave: And then you have the tropic cancer and the tropic of Capricorn. The midpoints. I don't know that seems pretty, easy to explain. Maybe I'm just stupid. Could  be,  Mike: Globetard Dave: yeah. Fronk: Fucking idiot. Do some research Mike: Look into it. Fronk: where, show me where, show me where I could read about this that isn't on the app.  Mike: In the Bible, Fronk: Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Here we go with the fucking Bible again. Mike: and books from the  17 hundreds  Fronk: They considered the sun to be much closer than 93 million miles and possibly even as far as 3000 miles or as close as 300 miles and moves in a circle or a helix pattern because the earth is supposedly accelerating upward, obviously toward the sun [00:42:00] at 9.8 meters per second because they don't believe in gravity, and that explains gravity away. with that being said, the sun must also be accelerating in the same direction as this hypothetical earth vortex. Make sense? You guys got that? Dave: instead of us spinning with things spinning around us and us spinning around something else and then that spinning around something else, which is relative there's a really big graphic that's always shown on every documentary, every video, and it's like the sun being shot out of a. With everything else just like around it, it looks like a DNA strand, most globe tards, know that that's not how motion works with celestial bodies. that one got me and always gets me, is every time that's shown. I'm like, oh God.  Fronk: other astronomical bodies moving in such a pattern? We have like really high powered telescopes Mike: Because space is not real.  Fronk: [00:43:00] Oh, shit. I forgot. I'm, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You got me.  Okay. All right. All right. Right. All right. Dave: no space. No space. We have to remember that throughout this whole episode, there's no space. Fronk: Yes. Yes. Mike: if you take space out of the equation, introduce God in the Bible, and just ignore all known fucking science for the past like 300 years, you can be a flat earther. Fronk: wait is it no space or it's just the sun and the moon and the earth, or , is it None of that and it's just plain earth with our spinning moon, sun clock sort of thing happening, Which one is it? Do flat earthers believe either the barrel bore theory or the plate theory? Dave: Everything's contained in a system. Fronk: It's one in the same Dave: and everything above us is, I guess, the abyss, because there's a lot of arguments that, like with this Artemis program, whether it's fake or not, we'll talk about NASA in a little bit, but whether it's fake or not, Rockets [00:44:00] don't work in a vacuum apparently. but they're actually using, their own inertia to move in a vacuum. But I guess things don't work that way according to some. That brings us to sunrise and sunset. I don't want to get too far into this cuz this can take hours and hours and hours to argue about, let's talk about sunrise and sunset real quick.  Fronk: Unlike a bunch of these other points, the day and night cycles are actually kind of easily explained on a flat plane. The sun theoretically would move in circles above the North Pole. Or around the North Pole, and when it's over your head, it's day, and when it's not, it's nighttime. The light of the sun is then confined to a limited area on the earth, right? Because it's right above you. This claim never held any weight for me in particular because it can be debunked with science.  On top of this, all of the planets and stars aren't actually what they appear to be like [00:45:00] big rock balls in space or giant balls of gas, but they're actually luminaries. Yet. We also hear a lot of people say, well, we don't know what they. Dave: Stars and planets are one of the biggest things that cannot be explained yet. We can explain them with telescopes. We've been talking a lot about movement. We have to talk about heliocentric model, which is the one that we supposedly live in and not the geocentric model, which is the one that flat earthers live in. When we are confronted with the question of how the earth is able to orbit the sun, and it's not a sphere it's pretty simple. The earth actually doesn't orbit the sun, as we've been saying. This is so, because instead of the sun being the center of our solar system, our planet is actually the center of our solar system or controlled environment. Mike: In reality, we have Helio Centrism, also known as the Heliocentric Model. It's the astronomical model in which the earth and planets revolve around the sun at the center historically, [00:46:00] Helio Centrism was opposed to geo centrism, which placed the earth at the center. now we've hit the firmament. Fronk: In the cosmology of the flat earth. The disc shaped planet is covered by a dome whose edges stopped just beyond the roughly 145 foot high ice wall of Antarctica. And these stars are fixed on this dome while the sun and moon, which are only about 31 miles in diameter, revolve about a 3,100 miles above the earth. Dave: Now, as we said before in biblical cosmology, the firmament is a vast, solid dome or semi solid dome created by God during his creation in the first six days To divide the primal sea into upper and lower portions so that the dry land could appear, which surrounds the earth or frozen water, I've heard this a lot with the biblical cosmology stuff, is that it's explained during day one, day two, day three, and they even say in the Bible, God created the firmament. I [00:47:00] believe it's on ver bran's headstone, as we've mentioned previously. I think it's a lot of wordplay and interpretation,  Mike: We also mentioned back in Hollow Moon, if you've listened to that episode about the Zulu tribe, where the firmament or atmosphere rained down to earth.  Our flat earthers saying that the sky is liquid possibly. Clearly, we know that the Earth's atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon and 0.1% of other gases. Dave: Now, quickly, recently, I've heard a lot of arguments in quite a few different shows and videos not just one proponent, but multiple proponents on this theory. And a lot of 'em will say, well, the atmosphere itself is just a different version of water as it is up in space, a whole different version of water. Because they use the example of if you go to the deep oceans or certain lakes, there's different [00:48:00] salinities of water. You'll have heavier water on the bottom, different pockets of water. the atmosphere works the same way and they say, because it has the same elements in it. Now, if our atmosphere is made up of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, yes, there's hydrogen in that, because if we need water, we need H two O, which does happen in the atmosphere, Fronk: shit. That's why they sent U-boats to space it's water. Dave: oh. Fronk: Oh, Dave: That's it.  You got me.  Mike: done. We're done.    Final thoughts, boys? Fronk: Thank you Hushlings. Dave: Yeah, that's it. Mike: Okay, so we're talking about the firmament currently. Now I just want everyone to know the actual definition of a firmament. So the firmament is the vault or arch of the sky. The firmament isn't necessarily something that is physical. It is something that is viewed. the [00:49:00] arch from one horizon to the other is the sky. That is the firmament. So when everybody's saying, oh, firmament, they're talking about the firmament, they're talking about something that's physically there. No, that's a viewpoint. The firmament refers to horizon. To horizon. The arch of the sky as you see it from one end of your viewpoint to the other Dave: Makes sense. There's a lot of that too, where it said that you're, uh, you have a personal viewing bubble and I think that's misinterpreted as what you're actually, what you can see you go up a 1500 foot mountain, you look around, you can see 360 degrees.  Mike: that's your firmament. Dave: that's your firmament. Fronk: One bar from Suicide Boy's last album. One of them goes Dome. So good. I think she think the earth is flat mouth like the fucking firmament. She got my eyes rolling back. There you go.  Mike: it says it all. Fronk: [00:50:00] It says it all, it says it all your, your mouth has a firmament. Mike: Show me what that firmament do. Fronk: land ho. We have hit the ice walls and the absence of the poles along the edge of our local area exists a massive 150 foot ice wall. This ice wall is on the coast of Antarctica, and The wall is absolutely gargantuan, made up of solid water, ice that surrounds our world and holds our world's oceans in.   And the South Pole does not exist, whereas the North Pole is just a giant mountain called a hyperly that you can't visit. Dave: The ice walls were discovered by Sir James Clark, who was a British naval officer and polar explorer who was amongst the first adventure to Antarctica in an attempt to determine the position of the south magnetic pole between 1768 and 1779. [00:51:00] Upon confronting the massive vertical front of ice heat famously remarked. Mike: "It was an obstruction of such character as to leave no doubt in my mind as to our future proceedings for we might as well sail through the Cliffs of Dover as to penetrate such a mass. That's what she said. It would be impossible to conceive a more solid looking mass of ice. Not the smallest appearance of any rent or fisher. Could we discover throughout the whole of its extent and the intensely bright sky beyond it, but too plainly indicated. The great distance to which it wreaths, southward " Dave: apparently it took him three years or so to do one of the journeys and he circumnavigated the globe at 77,000 miles. what if he did it three times and did [00:52:00] 77,000 miles? That's the one thing that I've always thought is that, was it one trip  Fronk: And he just didn't know Mike: But again, in the 18 hundreds, let's say that this guy goes and he encounters an ice shelf, would he not think that was an ice wall? Dave: yeah, Fronk: like, oh shit. Well this is the edge of the world I suppose. Mike: there's no going past this. My ship can't go through that. Dave: I mean, yeah, that would be logical. Mike: I think this is what we said in the first one, a lot of these arguments for a flat earth revert back to like this 18 hundreds knowledge. Let's look at this book from the 18 hundreds. Look, they mentioned the firmament. Let's look at this. they talk about ice stones and blah, blah, blah. Fronk: The future is a lie. . The truth lies in the 18 hundreds. Reject modernity, Now all of this would of course, imply that Antarctica isn't at all what they say. And we've [00:53:00] mentioned this quite a bit about the Antarctic treaty already and the Antarctic bases and all of the secrets that they hide and you can't go there. You're not allowed There. Only scientists. Yeah. That's where they're hiding the edge of the.  Dave: Let's board a plane real quick and try to go to Antarctica. I know we say we can get there by ship, but two major arguments about airplanes with the flat earth theory is one, there's no round trip flights to Antarctica. And I think we covered this briefly in our first one where we had said, Antarctica fucking sucks. And that's probably why there's no round trip flights and how a lot of the Southern Hemisphere flights cannot be explained. And I believe we went over that a lot in our first episode. And I still stick by all of what I thought about that. Now, the other question that comes up with this theory  one, can you see curve in a commercial aircraft? And two, the aircraft always has to be pitching nose down after a [00:54:00] certain amount of time. Those two arguments come up major in this theory. So I wanna get your thoughts on do planes always have to tip downward as you're flying? Cuz you've all been on flights before, Fronk: No, the plane isn't nose diving or it doesn't feel like it anyway. It doesn't seem like it's nose diving by any means. Dave: but you would feel it. You can feel drop in altitude when you're starting to descend and you feel that, whew, almost that weird weightlessness when they drop a couple hundred feet or a thousand feet pretty quickly. You can feel turbulence, obviously. , I don't think that it necessarily pitches downward after a certain distance because I think, like I said earlier, planes are tiny and the earth is huge. So I don't think there's that much effect of a plane having to move when it's floating on top of a surface of air. Fronk: If a plane pitched downwards while at like max [00:55:00] altitude, wouldn't it just start losing altitude? Wouldn't you just be going towards the ground or am I being peanut brained? Dave: If planes were going in the straight path following the Earth's curve, then they would fly off into space. That's what they say. And I think it's simpler than that. Planes fly in a certain area from 35,000 to 50,000 feet, especially commercial aircraft in a certain layer of air that's thinnest. Which is why they can move as fast as they can, but I don't believe that they're pitching because they're so tiny that everything is going to appear flat at 35,000 feet cuz the earth is so big. Mike: , they're maintaining a certain altitude from the ground, so they're not pitching anything. They're just going with the natural atmosphere of the earth. Dave: Gravity.  Mike: Yeah.    Dave: The plane thing never, never made too much sense to me, especially with the flying off into space. If you didn't compensate for curvature, it's because the Plains Center [00:56:00] mass is always perpendicular with the ground and the plane is so insignificantly small. That you will not notice those changes. You notice left and right banks on planes, , you take a direction moving towards another city, you see it, you feel the whole plane go and you're looking towards the ground. If you're ascending, you feel that inertia you're getting pulled up into the air, especially on takeoffs. Or if you're descending, you feel that, oh, the pilot goes, we're gonna be descending in a couple minutes, and all of a sudden you feel that that drop, you feel that motion left, right, and vertical but you don't feel those nudges that they say that they're doing. So I don't think that that happens. I just think the center mass of that plane is fighting against gravity to keep it up. It's a boat in the sky. Mike: even if they did, that's a continuous compensation. So it's not like they're flying a certain distance and then going, oh, well I'm eight inches above where I was before. I need to adjust. Even if that was the truth, they would just make manual [00:57:00] adjustments as they went. So over that period of time, a half inch, a quarter inch, whatever you wouldn't even be able to tell in the first place if that was the case. Fronk: And that would only be if you were flying like across the world. I'm sure it's even less so if you're flying from somewhere on the east coast down to like Minnesota or something, it's gonna be even less noticeable if you're traveling somewhere that local. Dave: You're only traveling a couple hundred miles. Fronk: Yeah, exactly. Mike: I'm sure the figures are out there, but how many flat earthers are from America versus from the rest of the world? Dave: Good question. Mike: just wondering. Dave: I don't know the answer to that. I would say there's a lot in America. America is a very conspiracy driven country at the moment, and flat earth boils down to every other conspiracy. If you believe wholeheartedly in this, you believe everything else, the lies, everything is fake. Your entire [00:58:00] existence is fake. that's from what I get Fronk: That sucks. And then, and then from that point where do they go with that? They yell at other people about it or We're gonna briefly go over the eclipse aspect of flat earth theory. Now, we all obviously know what eclipses are. That's when the moon aligns with the sun and the earth and blocks out the sun. You know the deal. and remember that the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun. It's also about 400 times closer to the earth than the sun is. Is that coincidence that this astronomical phenomenon happens? Uh, Dave: Well, I can tell you from the flat earth side that that is almost impossible.  Mike: It's pretty impossible either way. Like it's pretty coincidental. I will give it to them that when you're talking about the sun and the moon being these like perfect distances and these perfect sizes and these per that's intriguing to say the least. I will give them. Dave: Which we did go over[00:59:00] Hollow moon theory if the moon was placed here, it was placed here on purpose, but then that would give weight to some type of, maybe not creationism, but some type of external control or external observation, which I think all of us are on the fence with that.  That could be, it could not be, Mike: Again, prove to me that any of this is real Dave: So there's two types of eclipses. There's solar and lunar eclipses. Now, the way solar eclipses work is that the moon orbits in between the sun and the earth. And when that occurs, obviously the moon blocks out the sunlight. You see the corona bought a bing. You have a solar eclipse, and the moon also casts a shadow on the earth. Now, a lot of the times it's told that the moon can't cast this little tiny pin prick shadow that goes across the earth. But if the moon is relatively 200,000 miles away, why couldn't it?  Mike: According to flat Earth theorists, this astronomical phenomenon is [01:00:00] actually a glimpse of a mysterious shadow object that orbits the sun and occasionally passes in front of the moon. From our point of view, could it be planet X Nibiru? No. This object is known as the anti moon. That's new Dave: another random object in our solar system. We could go on and on about eclipses, but we have to talk about one of the biggest fallacies of our education system. Gravity, Mike: not real. Dave: not real. Now, one of the most well agreed upon theories is general relativity. And it is the theory of gravitation developed by our boy Albert Einstein, who was apparently a conman according to flat earthers. And between 1907 and 1915, he figured all this out. The theory of general relativity says that an observe gravitational effect between masses results from their warping of space time. Gravity is still just a theory to us. I guess we can all be on the fence [01:01:00] on it cause we really don't get it. And I think scientists have , admitted that they don't get it,  Mike: Well, didn't recently they say that they had to like rework that entire thought process for some discovery that they had found that the theory of relativity had to be, had to be rethought or it was not necessarily wrong entirely, but partially, I guess., it had to do with the way that a black hole was working, where for the first time they saw a star coming out of a black hole. Fronk: Yeah, I saw that it was being regurgitated. They saw light coming out of a black hole. That's right. Mike: Things are happening, man. Whether you believe in space or not, it's. Pretty wild. Fronk: Newton's love gravitation states every point Mass attracts every single other point mass by a force acting along the line intersecting both points. I don't know what that means. The force is proportional to the product of the two [01:02:00] masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Exactly. That's what I've been saying this whole Mike: Sounds about right. Thanks boys. Well, what is gravity? According to this theory, it's stated that the earth isn't pulled into a sphere because the force known as gravity exists in a greatly diminished form compared to what is commonly taught, which is that we're being pulled down to the center of the earth while. The flat Earth is constantly accelerating up at a rate of 32 feet per second squared or 9.8 meters per second squared. As we had previously mentioned, this constant acceleration causes what you think of as gravity, but it's actually caused by a universal accelerator known as dark energy or Etheric wind. Never heard of Etheric wind. That's interesting, Fronk: time's that post Taco Bell shit's my etheric wind. Dave: [01:03:00] Furthermore with this we hear words like density and buoyancy a lot in these theories arguments, which is why things fall to the ground that are heavier and explains rockets, which are thought to actually be filled with helium and have a pyrotechnic show. that proves that all things fall at 9.8 meters squared.   Dave: All right boys, we're getting towards the end of our flat earth expedition here. But we have to go back in the sky. That brings us to rockets and satellites. As we just mentioned. Proponents of flat earth theory believe that satellites totally exist, but cannot be seen from the ground and are actually held in the atmosphere by helium balloons. Hence why NASA is the largest consumer of helium and they sometimes crash into the planet, which we call them weather balloons. And I guess that would explain the weather balloon phenomenon.  Fronk: Satellites in low earth orbit are constantly fighting gravity. According to science, some are geographically fixed and keep their [01:04:00] orbit by balancing two factors, their velocity, which is the speed required to travel in a straight line and their gravitational pull to the earth. To resist the stronger gravitational pole, a satellite orbiting closer to the earth requires more velocity. And of course, we're not going to get out of this debriefing without a little bit of NASA sprinkled in that bitch. Mike: Yes, good old nasa, our friends over there, professional cgi. It's widely assumed that humans have never left the Earth's atmosphere. In fact, we've never left earth and entered space because we lack the ability to do so in the first place unless you're a Nazi and a U-boat. Most of what society has been taught about space is completely made up or greatly exaggerated. By the government and or the elites. There's also the claim that humans have never landed on the moon. I'm with that, and that the infamous moon landings witnessed by the entire world in [01:05:00] 1969 were a sham. Fronk: Okay. I'll give them that. A major claim is that any pictures from the Apollo 11 mission that show that our planet as a sphere in the distance were fabricated by the government and nasa and NASA's mission is not to hide the shape of the earth or trick people into thinking it's round or anything else of the sort. Dave: Well, that's what NASA says, right?  We obviously know that there's some type of space travel conspiracy, whether it's more advanced or it doesn't exist. Possibly Nasa's mission is to create the illusion of space travel in order to, cover for the military, and their dominance in space. One thing we forgot to mention that I thought of real quick when you guys were talking is the quick notion on gravity. There's a lot of flat earthers that will say, well, can you jump, when you jump off the earth, you a hundred, 200 pound person jumping off the earth. Do you come back [01:06:00] down? And was it easy to jump? Then why is gravity so strong? Fronk: that's the whole argument of like, why does Gravity hold our planet's, oceans On  Dave: Yeah. Yeah. If it can  hold all this water and all this mass,  why can you jump off your roof and hit the ground? Mike: Because there is a different pull depending on the mass of the object.  Dave: Mike wins a gold star Fronk: gold sticker for you. Mike: boys, let's get into our final thoughts. Everything that was on Reddit, we've been through, we've done this whole thing. I wanna know the final thoughts as we get into stage two of becoming a flat earth. are we now believing that gravity is not real? The sun is a, lamp and uh, and we live on a flat plain, surrounded by an ice wall. Dave, are you a flat earther? Dave: No. sadly, I am not a flat earther. I think it's an [01:07:00] interesting theory that opens up a lot of more conspiracies and there are some valid questions, but I think a lot of it has to do with our lack of actually being able to see things because we are restricted beings. Uh, the one thing about flat earth theory that I find really fascinating is the suppression of information, the hidden things. And I think that's the conspiratorial part that really pulls me, believing that it is a different shape or an infinite plane or a snow globe, or, flatterers is gonna get so mad at me for saying that because we don't believe it's a snow globe. It doesn't look like a pancake. They all have different theories and a lot of it goes back to religion. A lot of it goes to creationism. A lot of it goes back to every other conspiracy you've ever heard of. So for me, still, I still think we live on a planet. the definition of planet is what we live on. Is it a perfect sphere? I think that's proven that it's not a perfect sphere.[01:08:00] I'm not a scientist, but I've done research and research and research and supposedly it takes up to two weeks or so to become a flat earth. I've been doing this research since like the end of July, and I'm still not convinced. wanted to give it a fair shake. Didn't wanna be a douche bag. Would invite any flat earth to come on and talk to us. We'd love to have you on, but You didn't get me yet. Mike: I will take my final thoughts, a complete left turn here. I don't care. I don't care whether it's a giant paella pan or if we live on a dodge ball. I, I don't care. I don't care. Maybe it's the blue pilled part of my brain that still exists. I don't give a shit. It doesn't change anything. I'm still gonna wake up in the morning and have to go to work, have to pay my taxes, and eventually I'm gonna fucking die. That's just the way that it is. I don't care if we live on a flat plane, I don't care if we live on a globe. It's just the way that [01:09:00] it is. but I don't think that we live on a fly plane. I'm just gonna say that I don't think that I, I do think that there is a lot of cover up of our former history. That much I believe is true. I do believe that NASA is filled with a bunch of liars and they do fabricate things including, setting up these videos where they're watching astronauts float around, but the water stays in a cup. That's an interesting one. , I do think that they do composite images together and they are a bunch of liars that I completely agree with. . I love you whether you're a flat earth or not, but no, it's a no for me. Fran, give us your final thoughts. Did you become a flat earther in this episode?   Fronk: No, I didn't. , I'm not gonna go off on a limb and say that I tried to give flat earth theory, the benefit of [01:10:00] the doubt, but I tried to stay open-ended, especially towards like the beginning of the episode. I was just trying to like see it from both sides and I still do to an extent. And you're right in saying that their best argument is the space shit and nasa, but, that can't be all you're going off of here, because that, lends to so much other shit besides just the shape of the planet.  And not only that, if you're like sold on the shape of the planet, then you've been deceived. You know what, I'm gonna pull a flirter and tell you what you've been taught on. The internet is wrong, and it's all code. You've been tricked into thinking that what we live on is physical and that it has shape. There is no shape. I've never even been out of the country. You can't even convince me that Australia's real, let alone the, the, the fucking shape of the  Mike: you're partial flat earther because they don't believe that Australia is real either. Fronk: [01:11:00] Oh, no. Australia's not real Mike: listen, if you're in Australia and you, uh, you live there full time, reach out to us. Send us an email. Even better a voicemail, because I just want to hear the accent. Send us a voicemail and say, Hey, yeah, I exist. I'm here. This is a real place. Dave: Clearly they exist. They're number three on our Spotify Mike: That's right. Thanks Australia. Fronk: No, I, I never tried to doubt Australia. It was a metaphor, but Dave: Our Hustralians down under, Mike: That's hilarious. Dave: , if we offended you we're sorry. Well, I partially am. Mike: I, I, listen, I tried this episode. I think that I was better than the first episode. I didn't sit there and say anybody was an idiot or any of that stuff. like I said, you believe what you wanna believe, but on, at the end of the day, I don't think that it really matters. Fronk: And if it makes you feel [01:12:00] special, by all means,

「芳茲滴雞精」年節推出「日月養生雞魚饗宴禮盒」。除了超人氣「日月養生滴雞精」還有百位護理師推薦「日月養生滴魚精」。香醇無腥味！禮盒內附匠人手作「天目釉品茗杯」，下單滿額再抽黃金999金條，詳情請點擊鏈結：https://go.fstry.me/3S2ZQrx —— 以上為播客煮與 Firstory Podcast 廣告 —— 「不好吧～我今天穿得很隨便耶」 英文怎麼說？ 朋友突然揪你下班出去，可是今天真的隨便抓個衣服就穿出門了耶 XD “我穿得很邋遢”、“我昨天沒洗頭”、“我今天素顏” 的英文怎麼說呢？ 這一集的文化閒聊，Duncan 跟我們分享， Duncan 約會的時候會特別精心打扮嗎？會穿什麼樣的風格呢？ 快來聽這一集內容，聽聽看我今天穿得很隨便的英文怎麼說。 Duncan 的線上課程「英語腦進化論」， 現在正在火熱預購中（歡呼～～）： https://lihi1.com/6xs97 我們的聽眾結帳前輸入 duncan300，優惠價格再扣 300 元喔！ 我們跟 MixerBox 合作，推出「這句英文怎麼說」專屬的贊助方案囉！ 有每個禮拜會寄給你一次 podcast 電子報 ＆ 幕後花絮腳本的輕鬆學習方案， 也有來跟我們一起錄音的互動方案，和用 8 折優惠購買我們的線上課程方案喔。 歡迎點進我們的贊助方案看看有沒有你喜歡的內容喔： https://pse.is/3zu4hx 快速幫你複習一下這集的主題句 ＆ 單字： 不好吧～我今天穿得很隨便耶 Sorry, I'm not dressed to go out. I'm dressed too casually. I'm not dressed for company. 補充學習 我穿得很邋遢 （drab / shabby） I'm dressed poorly. I look awful. 我昨天沒洗頭 I didn't wash my hair yesterday. 我今天素顏 I'm not wearing makeup. 情境對話 Duncan：Hey, tonight I'll see Tina, the girl I want you to meet. Are you free? Mike：Ah, sorry, I'm not dressed to go out. Duncan：Why? You look about the same as usual. Mike：Let's do a different day. Next time, give me some advance notice, so I can prepare. 學英文吧網站https://ivybar.com.tw/?c=3 或追蹤 iVY BAR 學英文吧的 IG，上面圖文版 podcast 複習也很棒喔！https://pse.is/39vede 現在我們也有影音版的 Podcast 實境秀喔https://pse.is/3ahupl Powered by Firstory Hosting

Rounding Up  Season 1 | Episode 2 – Posing Purposeful Questions  Guest: Dr. DeAnn Huinker  Mike Wallus: Educational theorist Charles De Garmo once said, ‘To question well is to teach well. In the skillful use of the question, more than anything else, lies the fine art of teaching.' Our guest today, DeAnn Huinker, is one of the co-authors of ‘Taking Action: Implementing Effective Mathematics Teaching Practices in Grades K–5.' We'll talk with DeAnn about the art and the science of questioning and the ways that teachers can maximize the impact of their questions on student learning. DeAnn, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you.  DeAnn Huinker: I'm happy to be here, Mike. I'm looking forward to our conversation today.  Mike: So, I'd like to start by noting that NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) has identified posing purposeful questions as a high-leverage practice in ‘Principles to Actions,' and then again in 2017 with the publication of ‘Taking Action.' And I'm wondering if you can make the case for why educators should see purposeful questions as a critical part of this practice.     DeAnn: Yeah, certainly. Let's just jump right in here. As we think about purposeful questions and why we as teachers need to be more intentional and strategic in the questions we use … I was honored to be a member of the writing team for ‘Principals to Actions.' And in writing that document, we were really tasked with identifying a set of high-leverage teaching practices for mathematics. We reviewed the research from the previous 25 years ( chuckles ), and it was really clear: There's been a lot of research on teacher questioning. And what are the characteristics of effective questioning. So, as I think about making this case for purposeful questions, a couple things come to mind. First of all, researchers have estimated that teachers ask up to 400 questions each day in the classroom. I mean, that's more than one question every minute for the entire school day.  Mike: That's incredible ( sniffs ).  DeAnn: ( chuckles ) I know. That's a lot of questions. Also, if we think about it, it's not just how many questions we ask, but what questions. Because that depth of student learning is really dependent on the questions we ask them because our questions prompt them to consider and engage with the specific mathematical ideas that we're helping them to learn. The other thing I'd like to add to this, is that our questions also set the tone for what it means to learn and do mathematics.  Mike: Hmm. DeAnn: Are we asking questions about getting answers or are we asking questions that let students know we value and respect their inquiries into mathematical ideas into problem-solving, and that we really are about helping them make sense of mathematics? I think it's essential that we critically examine the types of questions we ask and how we can use them to best serve our students.  Mike: That's a really interesting way to think about it. That the questions we ask are really signaling to kids, ‘What is mathematics?' In some ways we're informing their definition of mathematics via the questions that we ask.  DeAnn: Yeah, I absolutely agree with you.  Mike: Well, I think one of the most eye-opening things for me to think about lately has been just learning more about the different categories of questions and the different purposes that they can serve. So, I'm wondering if you can briefly sketch out some of the types of questions teachers could put to use in their classrooms.  DeAnn: So, in ‘Principals to Actions,' we really looked at a lot of different frameworks that people have established over the years for questioning. And we kind of boiled it down to four specific types that are particularly important for mathematics teaching. One is to gather information. For example, can students remember the names for different types of triangles? Another is to probe student thinking. This is when we want them to further explain, elaborate or clarify their thinking. Uh, third type—which is my favorite category—are questions that make the mathematics visible. In other words, these are questions that prompt students to consider and explicitly discuss the underlying math concepts. Or that we want them to make connections among math ideas and relationships. Let me give you an example. If I were going to ask students to explain how to represent 3 × 5 with an array, they would have to consider more deeply the meaning of each of those numbers and that expression, and how that would connect to the representation. So, we're really getting at the mathematics there, not perhaps the problem or tasks that cause them to think about 3 × 5.  Mike: I see. I see.  DeAnn: Fourth category [is] questions that encourage students to reflect and justify. And I think of these as the why questions. Why does it work to solve 4 × 6 by adding 12 + 12? So, those are the four categories that we identified in ‘Principles to Actions.' But since that time, in the ‘Taking Action' book at the elementary level, my co-author and I decided to add a fifth category, because these questions really are emerging in classrooms often. So that fifth category is asking questions that encourage students to engage with the reasoning of other students. Many people refer to these as talk moves. For example, if we think about these talk moves that teachers use in their classrooms or that we need to use more often in our classrooms, an example would be, ‘Who could add on to what Mateo just said?' Or another example would be, ‘Could someone describe or put into their own words the strategy that Jasmine was just telling us about?' Those talk moves are the ones that really get students to listen to and start to have conversations with each other.  Mike: It's interesting because what comes to mind is, there are multiple reasons why that's such an important thing to do in the classroom. In addition to engaging with the reasoning, what it makes me think is it also gives the teacher the opportunity to position a child who may potentially have been marginalized as someone who has math knowledge or whose ideas are valuable.  DeAnn: As I was thinking about talking with you today, Mike, I got thinking about that same idea, which is how do we use questions to position students as capable and as having mathematical authority? And I think this is actually a new area in mathematics education that we need to explore in research further. Just by saying, ‘Can you repeat what Jasmine just said?' I'm actually marking her idea as probably something we should all listen to and consider more deeply.  Mike: Absolutely.  DeAnn: I definitely agree that we can use questions to position students as capable in math classrooms, which is something that's greatly needed these days. And that also helps students develop a more positive math identity in themselves and even fosters their math agency and capability in the classroom.  Mike: So, for me at least, personally, my perspective on questions really changed after I read the ‘5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions' that was written by Margaret Smith and Mary Kay Stein. And after I read that, I really found myself investing a lot more time in preplanning my questions. So, what are your thoughts about whether or how teachers should approach preplanning questions?  DeAnn: In the five practices model, the first practice is to anticipate. This involves anticipating student responses to the kind of key math task of the lesson, and also planning questions so that you, as the teacher, are ready to respond to your students.  Mike: Uh-hm.  DeAnn: Practice of anticipating is preplanning. And I would strongly suggest having those questions written down on a piece of paper so that we are ready to refer to them during the lesson, because it's going to keep us on track, and it's going to give us those tools to help press students to talk more about the mathematical ideas that we want to surface.  Mike: I think part of what really is illuminating for me is, we're anticipating how students might think, and then really, we're digging into what's a response that can help advance their thinking regardless of the angle that they're coming at the task from. So, it's, in some ways, what we're talking about preplanning questions, is really kind of a differentiation strategy to some degree. DeAnn: Perhaps we want to talk a little bit more about the use of the math teaching practice talks about asking both assessing questions and advancing questions?  Mike: Yeah.  DeAnn: So, let's dig into that a little bit.  Mike: Yeah.  DeAnn: The teaching practice from NCTM says we should be using purposeful questions to both assess and advanced students' reasoning and their sense-making about important math ideas and relationships. So, assessing questions are those that really draw out students' current understanding and strategies. And then advancing questions are those that really move students forward in their thinking and understanding—and pushes or presses them or pulls them along towards those learning goals for the lesson. So, that has probably been one of the main things that has really evolved in my thinking in working on ‘Principles to Actions,' is thinking more deeply about these assessing questions and the advancing questions that we need to be posing in our classrooms.  Mike: It strikes me that of the two—they're both important. But it may be that planning advancing questions is the more challenging task for an educator. Talk to me a little bit about preplanning or thinking in advance about advancing questions.  DeAnn: Certainly. So, first as we think about assessing questions, those tend to be more the recalling information, probing student thinking.  Mike: Uh-hm.  DeAnn: As teachers, I think we're pretty good at that. We can all say, ‘Well, how did you think about that? How did you figure that out?' But the advancing questions are much more difficult because that means we, as teachers, have to know: Where are we going with this task and what's the math we want? So, in thinking about this … Or, for example, I was recently working with a group of teachers. And what they did is they worked in grade-level groups and even preplanned the questions they were going to use in an upcoming lesson. And it was really true that yes, assessing questions they had. But we took a lot of time to kind of unpack and think about these advancing lessons. So, I'm going to kind of share, like, three steps here to think about this.  DeAnn: One, you really need to know the math learning goals for the lesson because the advancing questions need to be about the mathematics students are learning. Two, it's helpful to work through the math task that the students are going to be doing in the lesson cause that's going to help you anticipate and approach the task and think about, ‘OK, what might be happening in their work?' And then third, we can preplan those questions that should be specific to the task, to the anticipated student work, and most importantly to the mathematics.  Mike: Uh-hm.  DeAnn: If you can do that with someone, it's so invaluable to brainstorm and bounce ideas off each other.  Mike: I was thinking about what you were saying. And it's striking the difference between an advancing question that's, as you said, about the mathematics that we're trying to advance, versus a question that might move a child toward mimicking a strategy for a right answer right now, but that isn't actually in the long-term advancing the mathematics that we want. That really, for me, is jumping out as something that … it's a line that we want to help people see the difference between those two things, particularly in the moment. And I think that's why, as you were talking, DeAnn, the idea of, let's write some of these things down so that we have them on hand. Because in the moment it's often difficult to make those kinds of judgements when you're in a public space with a whole bunch of children in front of you. That's a superhuman task at some times ( chuckles ). So, there's certainly no stigma to writing it down. In fact, it's a strategy that makes a ton of sense for teachers.  DeAnn: Yeah, definitely agree. There's nothing wrong with having those questions on a piece of paper, on a clipboard, carrying that with you, pausing, taking a moment. ‘What might be some questions I want to ask here?' I mean, asking questions is really a skill we develop as teachers, and we need to use tools and resources to, kind of, help us.  Mike: Well, I was going to say, the other thing that's really hitting me, DeAnn, is the connection between the learning goal and the question; how clearly we see the learning goal and the different levels of progression that kids will make as they're approaching the learning goal. And advancing means recognizing the meaning of a child's thinking at a given time and thinking about what's the next move, regardless of where they're at. Move children toward that deeper understanding.  DeAnn: Yeah. Perhaps it would be helpful if we share some examples.  Mike: Let's do that.  DeAnn: All right. So, assessing questions—as we were talking, it's like, ‘Tell me about your thinking? Can you explain your picture to me? Can you tell me about the tape diagram you drew and used to solve this problem?' Just getting into that kid's thinking and where they're currently at. But then the advancing questions really move students' thinking forward. As you were saying, kind of along this continuum. So, we have to be ready to guide them, kind of step by step, to kind of scaffold that thinking, right? So, I might ask a question, ‘What equation could you write for that problem?' Maybe they got the answer, but what would be an equation they could write? Because perhaps my learning goal is to help them make a connection between those different representations, the context and the equation. I might see that a child has written an equation, but then I might say, ‘Could you label what each of those numbers means in your equation?' Because I really want to make sure they understand the mathematical meaning of each of those numbers.  Mike: Absolutely.  DeAnn: Just asking kids questions, like ‘How are your strategies similar or different?' That's also going to make them think a little more [deeply]. So, all of these advancing questions, really the goal is sense-making and more depth of understanding.  Mike: That totally makes sense. I'm wondering if we can pivot a little bit and talk about the types of teacher moves that might accompany an assessing or an advancing question? What might I do after I ask an assessing question, as opposed to say, asking an advancing question?  DeAnn: So, with assessing questions, the goal of them is really to understand where the student is currently at. So, I would ask an assessing question, and as the teacher I would stay and listen. So, we could assume students are working individually or small groups.  Mike: OK.  DeAnn: So, I might ask an assessing question of a child or a small group and stay and listen because I'm trying to figure out, really to understand, what they did ( chuckles ) and why they did that. Whereas an advancing question, I would be more likely to pose the question to the individual child or small group and then walk away and say, ‘I'll be back in a minute or two to see what you've done or what you're thinking about.' So, it's kind of like giving them time to pause and ponder and consider that question. Mike: This is fascinating because I wonder if for a lot of people that might feel counterintuitive, that you would pose the advancing question and walk away. Tell us a little bit more about the why behind that choice.  DeAnn: Our goal really is to help students become independent math learners in the classroom. By asking the question and then saying, ‘I'll be back in a couple minutes; think about that or show me what you've done,' we want them to be able to figure out how to proceed with a task on their own so that they don't become dependent upon us as teachers. But they really develop that agency in themselves to try things out, whether they're right or wrong, but at least that they're making some progress in the task.  Mike: You know what it makes me think, DeAnn, is that asking an advancing question and walking away might feel foreign to the educator, and it might at least initially feel kind of foreign to the child as well. But over time, it will start to feel like the culture of the classroom, and the child will actually get to a point where it's like, ‘Oh, my teacher believes that I have the ability to think about this and come up with an idea.' And that's a real gift to a child. It does what you were talking about earlier, which is: Question sets the culture and helps children think about what is it to be learning about math.  DeAnn: Yeah. We've also talked about that other type of question to encourage students, to engage with the reasoning of each other. That also really helps with those advancing questions and that tone in the classroom. Cause you could ask a question as a teacher and then say, ‘Why don't you talk with each other for a while about this?' Or ask one student to explain to another student some of their ideas. So, we can, again, use those talk moves when students are working in partners in small groups to learn from each other.  Mike: I'm struck by the idea that this conversation we're having about questioning is also really pretty tightly connected to, how do we support children when they need to engage with productive struggle? And I'm wondering if you could talk about the connection between high-quality advancing or assessing questions, and helping kids manage and engage in productive struggle at the end.  DeAnn: Thinking back to ‘Principles to Actions,' we identified eight high-leverage teaching practices for mathematics. And one of them is using purposeful questions. But another one is supporting productive struggle. So, the connection I think you're kind of alluding to here, Mike, really is they go hand in hand. We can use our questioning to encourage students to persevere in the mathematics that they're doing. But those questions, again, [mean] we are, first of all, trying to understand where the student is at by asking those assessing questions. And then we can encourage them to kind of, like, this bridge, right? With those advancing questions we're trying to get them to consider some of the mathematical ideas that might actually not even be on their horizon for them right now. So, if we say, ‘How could you put this fraction on a number line?' Or ‘How do you know this fraction is greater than or less than one?' We're asking a question to really make that math idea visible and to get them to consider it. And then we're pausing and giving them time and space to consider it and figure out how to proceed on their own. If I, as a teacher, tell them what to do next, that means I'm owning the math, I'm being the authority, and I'm not valuing struggle as part of the learning process.  Mike: Mm, yes. Yes, absolutely. Well, before we close, I want to dig into one more question type. And this is the one that I think really is just kind of transcendent. It transcends the task at hands and digs into students' understanding of big ideas. And it's the one that you would describe as making mathematics visible. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of these types of questions and perhaps some examples that would help people kind of envision what they look like in an elementary classroom?  DeAnn: So, you asked about these questions [that are] really making the math visible. As I think about that, what comes right to mind is a fascinating study conducted by Michelle Perry and her colleagues. They actually looked at the questions and examined very closely the questions teachers ask in a first-grade classroom for mathematics. And they compared the questioning of teachers in Japan, Taiwan, in the United States. Well, unfortunately they found that teachers in the U.S. ask significantly [fewer] questions that require high-level thinking than in Japan and Taiwan. In fact, teachers in those countries tend to ask questions that transcend the problem at hand. I love that phrase. The question goes beyond the surface of the task to really transcend that problem at hand, to get at the underlying math ideas, math concepts, and connections that we want students to make. And they found that teachers in Japan and Taiwan went beyond the surface to really make the math visible for students to consider. And really kept students engaged at higher cognitive levels of thinking.  Mike: That is fascinating. What it reminds me of is, I think it was Jim [James] Hiebert and [James] Stigler wrote about the idea of the mathematics classroom as a cultural activity, in that there's this kind of underlying script of what it means to be a student or a teacher in a mathematics classroom. And I think what we're really talking about in some ways is the role of questioning in building a different vision of what a mathematics classroom is or what it means to be an educator of mathematics.  DeAnn: Yeah. I think that ties right back to our earlier sharing about productive struggle. We think if students don't know the answer quickly that it's our job to step in and tell them how to do it.  Mike: Uh-hm. We're almost coming full circle though, in the sense that I think the promise of high-quality questioning—be it assessing or advancing—is that we're really, by considering the ways that students might think about a task and then considering the ways that you can assess that and advance their thinking from wherever they may be, we really are helping teachers see a different way. And I think that's the power of what you're describing when you talk about strong questioning, DeAnn.  DeAnn: Yeah.  Mike: So, we talked a little bit about what to do next. But I would love for you to take a moment to weigh in on the question of wait time. What are your thoughts about wait time and its value and how that can work in a classroom to support children?  DeAnn: So far today, we've been talking a lot about like the types of questions that teachers ask. But the implementation of those questions is also something we need to think a little bit more about. So, [there are] two types of wait time. Wait time is when I ask a question as a teacher, and how long do I wait until I call on a student? The research on wait time really shows that as teachers, we tend to wait less than a second.  Mike: That's incredible.  DeAnn: Yeah. We provide no processing time to our young learners to really formulate those ideas in their head and then be able to share back. So, just by reminding ourselves to pause for 3 seconds makes a huge difference in the learning that goes on in a classroom. Those 3 seconds, what happens is we find out that more students will respond to our questions. The length of students' responses increases. And those questions or those responses from students where they say, ‘Oh, I don't know,' decrease. So merely waiting 3 seconds makes a huge difference. And as teachers, we just don't deal well with silence, and thinking time, and processing time. So, I think it's always a good reminder to just monitor the amount of time we give students to process ideas after we ask a question.  Mike: You know, as a person who works in math education, when I'm at a dinner party or in mixed company with people, and I ask them, ‘Tell me about your memories of elementary school mathematics.' There are a few common things that always come up. One is typically, as I'm sure won't surprise you, the idea of memorizing my facts. And the other theme that kind of goes along with that is this sense that I wasn't good at math because I didn't know the answer right away. And the connection I'm making is, maybe that's because we didn't give you enough time to actually process and think. If we simply expand our time and give kids 3 seconds or 4 or 5, rather than 1, how different would that experience of mathematics be for children? How many folks would actually feel differently about mathematics and maybe, perhaps, not associate mathematics with just being the first and being the fastest to find the answer.  DeAnn: So, again, we're talking about using our questioning to kind of establish that tone and the expectations in the classroom about what it means to learn and do mathematics. And we shouldn't be in such a hurry ( chuckles ) for students to respond. We as adults need our processing time. Our young learners, [who] are first encountering many of these new ideas in mathematics, we need to give them time to think and to process and make connections before we expect them to respond to any of our questions.  Mike: The piece about 1 second is just so striking. It's odd because I suspect people imagine that by coming back that quickly, they're actually supporting the child. But you're actually doing the opposite ( chuckles ). You're teaching them: One, if you haven't had it in a second, what's wrong with you? And then two: You're also fostering dependency. It's fascinating how, what I think comes from a desire to help, is actually debilitating. DeAnn: It really speaks to the need to reestablish not only norms for students in our classrooms, but really for ourselves as teachers.  Mike: Definitely. Well, I just wanted to say thank you so much for this conversation. It's really been a pleasure to have you join us and hopefully we'll have you back at some time in the future.  DeAnn: And thank you, Mike. I've really enjoyed talking about the importance of purposeful questions for teachers to consider more deeply in their classroom practice.  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

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]

Somewhere in Washington, in a parked car. Ike: It's a dumpster fire.Mike: They'll bound back.Ike: Didn't Elon Musk invent some kind of brain enhancement thing? Is it too soon to get that for Biden? Is it only chimps?Mike: What?Ike: Nutrisystem … Nutra grain … Mike: Nuralink! Ike: Is it too late to join human clinical trials?Mike: Don't be an ass. Everybody gets old. Ike: Most people don't get that old. Mike: The boomers. They built it all. Now, they're destroying it all. Everything is coming apart. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer - how did it all go so wrong?Ike: Seriously, calm down. It's not that bad. He can bounce back. If he passes those bills the press will be giving him slobbery blow—you know. Mike: Please don't say it. Ike: He's putting on the heat with Manchin, the press keeps bullying Sinema - how long can she possibly hold out? Although her fashion sense tells me she doesn't exactly want to blend in. Got Obama out in Virginia to drag MacAuliffe over the finish line. They have Americans whipped up into unmanageable panic and fear with January 6th. They'll do as they're told. Polls will rise because that is the story we're going to tell. Reality is less of an issue than what we say the reality is. Reality isn't what you think it is. Reality is just a matter of opinion. If we say everything is going fine, then everything is going fine.Mike: What?Ike: They'll bounce back. He's too big to fail. They are too big to fail. The press, the blue checks - they will not let him fail. They put him in power and they don't want to look like fools. We got this.Mike: It's more than the polls. There is a disconnect between reality and fantasy. The people who are dictating what the Democrats do are themselves completely out of touch with at least half of the American people. What the Right thinks about the Left is closer to reality than what the Left has decided the Right is. The Democrats only have one option to win elections: To scare voters. Rolling Stone comes out with a January 6 piece just before a big election. But what no one ever says is that there were two separate events that day. One was legal and one wasn't. They're treating the whole thing, all of the people who were there to protest lawfully and rightfully into insurrectionists. They weren't. And yet. If they can keep the people scared they can maintain some power. Once that fear goes away, though, they are sunk. But they need fear and fear is destroying the country. Democrats really think that this is the way forward. It is a way forward. To war. Ike: You're overthinking it. I'm telling you, the kind of power backing the Democrats right now is insurmountable. We just need to spitball a few ideas to throw out into the public to let them know the Biden administration is on their side. Maybe stop testing baby puppy beagles. Just a thought.Mike: Oh you mean like removing Thomas Jefferson from City Hall? Pronouns Day by the State Department? This was not supposed to be America's second revolution. You start taking down the statues of confederates, that's one thing. Teddy Roosevelt - now it's getting weird. You take down Jefferson, that's the end of the American experiment. Ike: Okay, so those didn't work as well. We have to think outside the box here. Ice cream, bike rides, that disastrous Town Hall with Anderson Cooper…not working. So what about, you know, maybe a kind of casual fun thing. Slow jam the news?Mike: BIDEN IS NOT OBAMA! He doesn't have that kind of charisma. No one wants to see him on TV. The country is falling apart. Ike: Do you want me to give you a “yeah but” or are you past the point of no return.Mike: We just dig around in our pockets and find that one shiny penny that gets us off the hook. Yes it was a global pandemic, yes we were so freaked out we were wearing face shields and lining up outside of Costco but when hundreds of thousands hit the streets it was yeah but they're wearing masks. Yeah but they're outside. In May. Of 2020. I know what your “yeah but” is going to be. You'll say yeah but Thomas Jefferson isn't being taken down, he's just being moved. But yes moved after being called an offensive racist! THOMAS JEFFERSON!Ike: Yeah … but …what do you me to say? Mike: I want you to say Biden will start facing reality. He'll start being the guy who would never go for removing Thomas Jefferson from City Hall. It's not that hard. It's the least you'd expect from a president. The very least. Ike: Those who voted on it don't represent the Democratic Party or Biden. Mike: Yeah but. Yeah but. Yeah BUT!Ike: Why are you generalizing? Okay, so we all know what Thomas Jefferson did with Sally Hemmings and all that, what this whole country did building itself up to be the greatest country in the world, wasn't exactly pretty. Do you think the elite class who own million-dollar homes are really going to give them back to the indigenous people they claim to care about? Like Gwyneth Paltrow and Laura Dern? No. Are they going to give away all their money to families living in poverty? Not a chance. Taking away the Jefferson statue allows them to feel as though the right people, long since dead, aren't around to defend themselves or make excuses or virtue signals on Instagram, are the ones paying the price for progress. That is enough. Take down the statue and they can keep their stuff. Mike: What we need is someone with courage. Wisdom. Someone to stand up to Twitter. Teddy Roosevelt took a bullet to the chest and still went on to give a speech. He could handle Twitter.Ike: Biden is just trying to get through the day. And I don't know if TR could handle Twitter. Public humiliation is a crippling fear.Mike: They voted for the guy in the middle. The moderate. If you could sum up what they voted for it would be: Not Bernie Sanders. Not Elizabeth Warren. Ike: They didn't vote FOR anything. They voted against something. Or someone. The American people don't know what they want. We tell them what they want. Mike: What if America is being sabotaged. What if there is an entire army of spies infiltrating all of our institutions and slowly weakening them. Ike: I think those are just Berkeley graduates. Mike: It's all starting to make sense now. What if you were smart enough to destroy a country not with bombs but with ideas. Idea pathogens. What if you could weaken their education system, weaken their military, weaken their scientific research by figuring out how to knock out those who are genuinely the best at what they do but because they might not meet the DEI requirements they have to go work at Costco just to find employment.Ike: I'm sorry, you lost me, man. Get a grip. It's not that big of a deal.Mike: Not that big of a deal? The whole plane has crashed into the whole mountain.Mike: Think about it: you have no choice but to hop aboard the Woke Express, destination: Utopia. And if you have no choice that means your military has no choice, your teachers have no choice, your media has no choice, your entertainment has no choice. How can a country function when it is at war with its own foundational principles? Think of how easy it would be to get on Twitter and call everything racist. The Chinese totally have our number on that. They laugh at us because of it. They know they just have to press that button and our entire system goes into DEFCON 1. Think of how easy it is to throw us off our game, to scare us into distraction and panic.Ike: You've been watching too much Tucker Carlson. Mike: Me and everyone else in America. It used to be easier to pivot when no one did. Ike: But now they do.Mike: Now they do.Ike: Even Jake Tapper. Mike: Even Jake Tapper.Ike: Even Rachel Maddow. Especially Rachel Maddow. Mike: I think people are watching because they're angry. Ike: Trump is gone. They have nothing to be angry about.Mike: Except Trump isn't gone, is he. They booted him off social media just to prove the half the country that votes for him that they are elites who are above even the President. Now he's got some social media thing that is worth twice what the New York Times is worth. He is headed towards running a business worth 20 billion. Ike: He'll screw it up. Mike: Doesn't matter. This is only moving in one direction. It means the left is collapsing. You get that, right? Once they start firing editors at the New York Times for words they said on a field trip, it's over, man. Thomas Jefferson - it's over. Ike: Come on, we have a whole army on Twitter. The blue checks! Mike: What, that's like 3,000 people max. Ike: We have Zuckabucks. Mike: America is an idea. An idea that is crumbling and being replaced by ideas that have already proven themselves failures. Even Vladimir Putin knows this. Even Xi Jinping knows this. They see what America is becoming. They also seem almost sad to watch its decline. I always used to go to sleep at night thinking I lived in the best country in the world and that every other country envied our scrappy tale. But look at us now. Ike: Look, man, it's really not that bad. Mike: It is that bad. Ike: White men have ruled this country since its founding. So they're taking a well-deserved hit. Let's recenter the narrative for a change. Mike: Oh, yeah, no big deal, like every person who built this country, drove scientific achievements, made the best movies, wrote the best books. We're just gonna pretend they're expendable?Ike: By stomping on and exploiting marginalized people. Mike: Oh b******t. Right, like Einstein? Ike: Pretending is not so bad. This whole country was founded on pretending. Jack Dorsey and Jeff Bezos and Joe Biden are the perfect patriarchs America wants. What you can see is fully compliant, what you can't see still holds all of the power. Take away a Jefferson statue here, implement DEI mandates there, vote for Kamala Harris. We are all playing a game that all of a sudden we've solved the problem of inequity. But it's all a game, man. It always has been. So let's just pretend a little longer. That is what we're paid to do so shut up and dance. Mike: So what's next?Ike: We're primates. We probably need an alpha male to take us out of chaos in the final analysis. Round and round and round in the circle game. No one on the left has that kind of courage right now so you do the math. Mike: So after that all that, we're primates, that's it? Ike: Well if I had to guess, yes. Of course if I said that out loud I'd be fired. Mike: So in other words, Trump 2024. Ike: Your words, not mine. Mike: We are seriously going to run a candidate who couldn't even beat competitors on her own side against Trump? Ike: Do we have a choice? Mike: Why don't we have a choice? Ike: Because if you critcize her or seek a replacement you will be called a racist, just as you would have in 2020 if you suggested she wasn't the best choice for Veep. How else are we going to get an overeducated group of social justice Zoomers to turn out? Mike: Let's go, Brandon.Ike: Yeah but. Mike: Yeah. Get full access to Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone at sashastone.substack.com/subscribe

Mike Isaacson: I'm sorry, but there's really no comparison between Irish indentured servitude and African chattel slavery. [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: Thanks for joining us for episode six of The Nazi Lies Podcast. We've talked about Hitler survival rumors, neo-Nazis denialism, the Jewish Talmud, critical race theory and even lizard people. Today we are going to tackle the myth of Irish slavery. We are joined by Miki Garcia, author of The Caribbean Irish: How the Slave Myth Was Made. Garcia is a 20-year veteran in the media and consulting industry. She has a master's in journalism from the City University of London and is currently working on her PhD at the University of Westminster. Thanks for joining us, Miki. Miki: Thank you for having me. Mike: Before we get into the Irish slavery myth, I want to talk to you about how you came to this research. What sparked your interest in the transatlantic trade of Irish indentured servants? Miki: When I was a student in the 1990s, I did some volunteer work for street workers in the Kings Cross area. It was a rundown area of London in those days and all the people sleeping rough in the 1990s in this specific area were Irish. It was the time when the IRA were bombing across England and the British media was very biased and had a hostile attitude towards Irish people. We didn't have a St. Patrick's Day festival in London. It's hard to believe, but Irish history is not in the school curriculum in England or continental European countries either. So, I asked around, but no one knew what was going on. To clear so many why, I immersed myself in Irish history and language and I play the Irish music instruments as well, and turned out those homeless people were the 1950s immigrant workers. So the decade was the height of Irish immigration. During the post war years, Britain used a substantial number of immigrant workers and many of them were youngsters, teenagers, and I got to know them personally. It was heartbreaking. When Irish people left home, they took a boat and they arrived at Holyhead which is in Wales and they took the train to come to London and the last stop in London was called Euston. And Kings Cross and Euston are basically side by side so there were so many Irish people there newly arrived and settled and so many Irish businesses like Irish pubs, restaurants, hostels, Catholic funeral parlors, barbers and so on. It was a very, very Irish area. I'm basically interested in the Irish diaspora, how the Irish people were influenced by the British policies. There are quite a few people who are interested in their status within the British system. For example, Marx and Engels, German immigrants in England, they were very interested in the Irish people as workers, and they wrote a lot about them. Irish history is most part a history of struggle against England and British imperialism since 1169, the Anglo-Norman invasion. So it's been going on for such a long time, more than 800 years. 852 years. The Irish in the Caribbean have been at the back of my mind for a while and this topic contains so many issues and it's also contentious. I wanted to write about them, but I didn't know where to start. It was the Black Lives Matter movement a few years ago. I saw many discussions on the internet, and there are so many innocent questions like, were Irish people slaves or Black? Or to more aggressive ones like “get over it” and so on. I've written some books on the Irish diaspora before so I wanted to write something very easy, simple, and informative. I think a myth is created because quite often people don't know the facts or the truth, so this is how it started. Mike: Let's start by discussing what Irish indentured servitude was not namely chattel slavery. What were the major differences in how Irish indentured servants and enslaved Africans were treated and dealt with? Miki: By definition, slaves are for life, so they were basically property, and they were owned, no human rights or civil rights. But indentured servants, they work for a time for a few years and they will be free, so they had human rights and civil rights in theory. But the Irish people were not homogenous. The majority of them who went to the Caribbean were forced, but many were born into service. Some of them were colonizers. They were colonial officers, administrators, traders, merchants, skilled workers, soldiers, sailors, and so on. But during the 17th century, forced people didn't exchange a legal contract. There are many types of indentured servants as well, and many wanted to go there. At the end of the servitude, they received land or sugar or whatever raw materials. They bought property, land and they settled just like mainland America, Virginia, Georgia, and so on. So that was their purpose. In the Caribbean, quite a few Irish people went there to have a better life. But it was after Cromwell's invasion, England captured too many people so they didn't know what to do with them, the local prisons were packed so that's why a large-scale systematic transportation policy was set. This produced many forced indentured servants. They were basically so-called political prisoners and criminals, wandering women, spirited children, and orphans, and so on. But within the context of the Caribbean, they were independent Irish settlers. For example, St. Christopher (St. Kitts) became the first English colony in the Caribbean in 1623 and then Barbados, Nevis, Montserrat, Antigua, and Jamaica and so on. So, African people and Irish people are very, very different, legally different as well. Mike: I want to get into the Cromwell stuff. Cromwell, basically, effectively made it illegal to be Irish in the UK. Am I correct in saying that? That's what I got from reading the book. Miki: Yeah. Because basically what England wanted to do is to wipe out the whole population. They wanted to control the whole island. So yeah, that's what's been happening all those years, centuries. Mike: Yeah, because thinking about reading the book, one of the things that you mentioned was that there were technically people that went voluntarily into indentured servitude, but it seemed like their choices were basically either go into indentured servitude to avoid being arrested for vagrancy or get arrested for vagrancy and go into indentured servitude anyway. Miki: Right after Cromwell's invasion, there were a lot of people who were shipped basically, transported. They had no choice. But at the same time, they are always volunteer settlers as well because they had no choice, you know? England sent a lot of soldiers, so they didn't have a life. They wanted to have a better life in general. But majority of them right after Cromwell's invasion, they were basically transported. They didn't have a choice. Mike: Okay. So, now getting back to the neo-Nazis, particularly those of Irish descent, they've drawn parallels between Irish indentured servitude and African slavery usually to downplay the latter while bemoaning the former. You'd think it would be to motivate them, to show solidarity with people of African descent, but they're Nazis, so.. Every myth starts off as a misinterpreted fact as you kind of said, and there were parallels between these two instances of forced labor mainly because they were both industrial processes of the British Empire. What were the similarities between Irish indentured servitude and African slavery? Miki: Irish people were basically the major workforce before Africans were transported. So at the beginning, they were growing tobacco, indigo, cotton and provisions and these can be grown in a relatively small space and sugarcane. The sugarcane production was extremely labor and capital intensive, so it needed unskilled workers. This speeded up with the arrival of Africans. But it's not very simple to pinpoint servants working and living conditions as each locality or planter was different. Some planters were very nice, sympathetic, but some were not so. But generally speaking, Irish servants received better foods and clothing and better living and working conditions than African workers. But in some plantations, because they worked only for a few years, they were treated like temporary slaves, in some cases worse than the slave workers. One of the unique aspects is that some forced indentured servants in the Caribbean, they did very well later in life. Irish workers finished their indenture and left the region or stayed as wage workers, became overseers, foremen, plantation slave owners, traders and so on. Basically, they moved up the social ladder. I saw many documents at the local archives. It is hard to find the information when they arrived, but their wills and inventory of death are easier to find. So this indicates that they have become wealthy plantation owners and more British by the time they died. But this was the purpose of the English. They wanted to make them English. And servants and slaves, they didn't mingle too much when they worked together in the same plantation because they had different tasks and responsibilities, but they cooperated on many occasions. For example, servants joined with slaves in plots of revolts and sea escapes. And these are very well documented in Barbados. When they were caught, slaves got heavier punishment and often tortured and executed. But servants, they were typically sent to other places, for example, from Barbados to Jamaica. Jamaica is huge, so it needed to be settled. And another example is in Jamaica, runaway slaves and servants went to the mountains and they formed independent communities on the mountains and they were called the Maroons. In the early 19th century, the movement for Catholic emancipation in Ireland and Britain and African slave emancipation developed at the same time. In the 1960s, it was the decade of the civil rights movement. There is the similarity of the civil rights struggle in Northern Ireland and with the struggle of the African-American civil rights movement. In the modern-day context, the status of Irish and African people as a major labor force at the bottom of the hierarchy is so visible because they belong to the most powerful nations, Britain and the US. So there are some similarities because they're both a part of American and British imperialism. Mike: Right. And one thing that you didn't mention just now was also the mortality rate, it seemed like there was a pretty high mortality rate not only in the trip over to the Caribbean but also during one's time as an indentured servant. Miki: Yes, because Irish people were not used to the climate, hot and humid climate, so it took time for them to get used to that climate. And also, they were not immune to tropical diseases. There were so many insects because of the climate. But African people were quicker to adjust with the local climate. That's why the Irish people the scorching sun burned their legs so they were called redlegs, and so they really struggled with the climate and tropical diseases as well. And also some early planters were very brutal as well, and they really couldn't survive. Mike: Okay. Now in the book, you talk a bit about the various attitudes and actions that the Caribbean Irish and Irish people in general took towards enslavement of the Africans and those of African descent. Can you talk a bit about that? Miki: The relationship between the colonizer and the colonized can be viewed a bit as like between the superior and inferior group. Thel colonizers, all colonizers, British or European colonizers, they typically felt superior to the colonized. So within the context of the British Empire in the Caribbean, I think Irish and African because they both belong to the working class at the bottom of the hierarchy. So basically, they were treated as second class citizens. And so, Ireland is basically England's oldest colony, the last colony, the southern part is independent, but the north eastern part is not. This means Britain have not been trading Irish people with respect for such a long time. And I think discrimination, prejudice, or stereotypes don't go away immediately because it's in their culture, language, and society, everyday life accumulated over the years, centuries in fact, and I think Irish and British children they know these facts long before they start reading history books. There was a survey in early 1980s in Nottingham, England, primary school children were asked which group was least favorable, Irish, Germans, West Indians, and Asians. Asians means Commonwealth immigrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. They answered Irish. I don't know which area of Nottingham the survey was conducted, but they probably have never really interacted or talked to new immigrants. But the issue is quite deep rooted because they didn't probably know what to think of new immigrants. And Irish children also they know what England did to their country and to them long before they start going to school. So the issue is quite deep rooted. For example, in England, our grandfathers' and fathers' generation fought against the Germans, so they still have bitter feelings so you've got to be careful when you mention the G-word. But the children and grandchildren, they are not angry at the Germans because this was a one-time event in history. So Irish and Africans, they have been within the British or American system for such a long time, so the issue is so deep rooted. What I think is that the things we do, say or feel every day are habitual, so our habitual thinking patterns are passed down through generations. I think you've got to be aware of your stereotypical views or negative thinking patterns too and reframe them with historical facts or healthier views on a conscious level, otherwise it's hard to break the cycle. But I think younger generations, especially the generation Y and Z, because of the internet they are more global and borderless, and they're more relaxed and less competitive. Yeah, I think they are more educated. I think. I don't know, but that's the impression I've got. Mike: One of the things that I was thinking about was towards the end of the book you talk about the Irish that got involved in the abolition movement. Could you talk a bit about that? Miki: There are a lot of people who are against the slavery, but before Atlantic slavery trade started, Irish people have been really oppressed by England. Daniel O'Connell and all the rest, there are quite a few people who are against the oppressive regime, England or wherever. These two, Catholic emancipation and African slave emancipation, they went hand in hand. The argument they were making were basically the same. It started at the end of the 18th century and at the beginning of 19th century. They acquired Catholic emancipation first and then African slave emancipation, but England couldn't really give up the Atlantic slave trade because it was just too lucrative. And so they created this new system called apprentice system. It didn't end immediately but gradually, it wasn't very lucrative anymore because it was highly dangerous and morally wrong as well. So yeah, gradually, things developed and ended. Mike: Could you talk a bit about the apprentice system real quick? Miki: Apprentice system, it was basically English people trying to justify themselves. African slave workers, they are not used to being independent because when they were working, religion was banned, religion was highly dangerous. That's what they thought. Education, religion, and none of those empowering activities were possible, so they believed that African people need to go through stages to be independent. So basically, it's more like indentured servitude. They sort of changed the title apprentice, but what they did exactly was exactly the same. They just changed the title. But it was a gradual development. Mike: And there were Irish people at the time that came out against the apprentice system too, right? Miki: Some people, yeah, but not all of them. As I said earlier, Irish people are not homogenous. And a lot of people who are still in the Caribbean in the late 17th and early 18th century,and became quite wealthy as well. Yeah, a lot of people were against. But in reality, it was very difficult to have an opposing opinion because it was also very dangerous because a lot of people are very, very directly, indirectly involved with the business. It was all over, not just the Caribbean. They were in America as well that they are established trades, you know? There were so many people benefiting from the trade in not just the Caribbean but in mainland America and British Isles as well. So a lot of people were pretty much part of the British Empire in those days. Mike: Okay. So next, I want to talk about sources, which is my favorite thing to talk about with historians and journalists. What sources were you using to tell the story of the Caribbean Irish and how did you navigate the bias of these authors? Miki: I think there are quite a few history books out there and probably more academic than general books. This is another reason why I wanted to write something broad and sort of an overview of the Irish people who went there. I've read a lot, but I've visited local archives throughout the Caribbean and London of course and the Netherlands and Portugal as well. I used primary sources, witness accounts and diaries when I could to navigate the biases, especially when you are writing something Irish history, Irish affairs, I think you need to read widely from different sources, writers. Catholic and Protestant writers, for example, have their own perspective to explain the same historical events. The books written by revisionists, historians and third-party writers are also very important to us. So just read as much as I can and that's what I do so that you can form your own opinion writing voice, I think. Mike: Yeah, your use of sources really comes through in the book. Just the amount of names that you have in the book to start with. It's incredible how many people's stories you're able to tell. Miki: Yeah, it's interesting, you know? The local archives were absolutely brilliant because imagine it's so humid and hot, and you get to see century old documents, papers. It's just amazing. A lot of them are so unreadable, and paper changes color but still, it's just so amazing they still survive those heat and humidity. Yeah, I was amazed. Mike: It's my firm conviction that the purpose of studying history is to provide instructive lessons for the present. What historical lessons does the story of the Caribbean Irish have to teach us? Miki: Some people think this event occurred in a faraway land many, many years ago, but I think we are all connected. I'm not going into an esoteric spiritual argument here, but we can learn a lot from the Irish diaspora because the Irish diaspora is so unique because it was not a one-time event in history, but it occurred across centuries and continents involving diverse individuals, so that's why it's used as a screening device or a massive database. You can integrate a wide range of subjects such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, and social inequality and all the rest of it. For example, I visited Bucharest, the capital of Romania, and Sofia, Bulgaria a few years ago. These countries are the weakest economies within the EU, and what I noticed first was that these countries have few youngsters as many of them are gone to Germany or France, the UK where they can make more money, so it's kind of normal. But at the same time, I spotted cracks on the streets, derelict buildings in the city centers and graffiti on the wall, but no workers are left in the countries to fix those infrastructure and buildings, and the crime rate is getting higher. My initial thought was that this was a bit like Dublin in the 1950s when the Irish government wants to build their country and infrastructure. All their capable workers were in England. In the late 1950s, the Irish government had to ask the workers to come home, officially ask them to come home. They said that the economy is better. It was getting better, but not significantly. It was more like a gradual improvement. But anyway, the EU definitely needs to reform. They were talking about it because of Brexit but the COVID pandemic disrupted. So anyway, as long as these European countries belong to bigger and powerful economies, there'll be not only economic but also cultural and social consequences as well. There is a case study. We can learn a lot from the Irish experience. Mike: So, you're currently enrolled in a PhD program. What research are you working on now? Miki: I'm looking at the Irish diaspora newspaper, Irish immigrant newspaper in London that functioned as the voice of the working-class movement in England during the mid-20th century. The purpose of this newspaper was to unite two Irelands and protect Irish people's rights in Britain. What they did was they tried to bring the Irish question and working-class people together. The working-class movement means they operated with the general left wing and anti-fascist movement, Rhodes' base. They worked with left wing organs, trade unions, communist parties, labor parties, mainly with the London headquarters but in the three jurisdictions, London, Belfast, and Dublin. So this newspaper was basically a political campaign tool. This newspaper's office was also in the Kings Cross area. Right after the war, first war years, this was the only support system for Irish people in England so they helped a lot of Irish immigrants as well. Yeah, so it's a very exciting project. Mike: Miki Garcia, thank you so much for coming on The Nazi Lies Podcast to talk about the Irish slavery myth. The book again is The Caribbean Irish: How the Slavery Myth Was Made out from Chronos Books, which provides a great introductory account of Irish indentured servitude. She also has two other books on the Irish diaspora, Rebuilding London Irish migrants in Post-War Britain and The Irish Diaspora in a Nutshell both out from The History Press. You can follow Miki Garcia on twitter @mikigarcia. Thanks once again for coming on the podcast. Miki: Thank you! Mike: If you enjoyed what you heard and want to support The Nazi Lies Podcast, consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a one-time donation via Cash App or PayPal, both username Nazi Lies. [Theme song]

Mike C-Roc Ciorrocco is the CEO of People Building, Inc., and the powerhouse behind the "What Are You Made Of?" movement. He is a performance coach, author, dynamic public speaker, visionary, and thought leader. He has been featured by Yahoo! Finance as one of the Top Business Leaders to Follow in 2020 and is on a mission to build people. He is driven to inspire others and he measures his success on how he is able to help others achieve greatness. C-Roc had a fire lit in him at an early age. That fire has ignited him with a fierce desire to compel people to see the greatness inside themselves using past life events to fuel their fire. Past hardships can be a powerful gravitational force that keeps you down and forces you to think small. To get out of orbit you need Rocket Fuel. Mike "C-Roc" Ciorrocco shows you how to convert past adversity into ROCKET FUEL to break free from the negative pull of pain and despair. In his new book, C-Roc offers life-changing lessons in personal transformation by asking yourself What Are You Made Of? This powerful question will ignite within you a thrust to greatness! Learn how to overcome painful past obstacles and achieve a fulfilling life where you're in command of your future. If you're ready to shoot for the stars, C-Roc says, "Thrust is a must!" Strap in and get ready for the ride of your life. Mike's latest book: https://amzn.to/3wwkTX5 CEO - People Building, Inc. 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The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Ok, welcome, everybody. Today, my guest is Mike "C-Roc" Ciorrocco. I'm really excited to have this talk with him and I know you're going to enjoy this. Mike, thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate it. Mike: Thank you, Joe. I'd like to start every interview that I go on with gratitude and just really express that to you for allowing me to come on and share with you. And thank you to your audience for listening and showing up. Joe: Absolutely, man, I love that gratitudes a huge thing in my life, so I'm right there with you. I appreciate it. I think it's important that everyone has their back story makes up sort of what they've become in life. You know, it doesn't define who they become. But there is something about what has happened throughout your life leading up to where you are now that has molded this person that you've become. And I Mike: Right. Joe: Am interested in that. And and I always start with this, just like you always start. What is it? What are you made of? Right. That's what you Mike: They Joe: Start Mike: Had to turn your head sideways, I love Joe: perfect! Mike: It, you know, now, you know, I came from a broken home. I don't remember my parents together, Joe. I grew up around a lot of broken people, alcoholics, drug addicts, people suffering from anxiety, depression. My grandmother committed suicide after taking too much anti anxiety or depression medication. You know, a lot of things I went through as a kid just watching just destruction. And, you know, I think that decisions we make and Focus's that we have either go towards living and surviving or destruction. And I was seeing the destruction part and I wasn't OK with that. And I didn't want to accept that. So I would always try to help people switch around even from a young age. I was just not OK with what I was seeing. And, you know, my mom when I was three or four years old, I just remember her always telling me that I inspired her and I was going to be a leader. And I think subconsciously, subconsciously, she was doing that because she knew what was going on in the family and knew that I was gonna have to deal with some things. And so I had that programmed into me. So I was always just looking for people to help, looking for people to show them a better way and not buying into what they were telling themselves. And so, you know, that's just something I experienced at a young age. And really when it came down, what lit my fire and what I made of, I would say, is rocket fuel. Because when I was eight, my mom was moving on to her third marriage and I wasn't really up for going into another man's house and learned another man's rules Joe: Hmm. Mike: And but decided to give my dad a try who was moving on to his second marriage. And at that time, you know. I broke my mom's heart by doing that. I didn't know that at the time, but she told me later on that, you know, she cried herself to sleep at night when I left and I was our first child, you know, and when I moved to my dad's, everything seemed fine at first. But after three years, you know, during that three years, there was a lot of conflict. You know, there's a when you had step parents into the mix, any time that stuff happens. The kid is the only link between the past relationship and so a lot gets taken out on the children and anybody that's been in a broken home that dealt with child support, custody battles every other weekend, things that parents jealous, things like just everybody that's been through that knows what I'm talking about. And so a lot of that time they're in from eight to 11 hours, experience a lot of emotional, psychological abuse threats, things like that that were really probably not directed towards me, but came my way. And at nine years old, I would sleep with my baseball bat a lot of nights Joe: Wow. Mike: Because I was scared. And no kid should have to go through that, through that, of course. But that's what went into making me look. I went through these things. I went through court, child psychologists, to see if I was mature enough that at a young age to figure out who I wanted to live with, like all that kind of stuff Joe: Make Mike: And. Joe: Your own decisions, all of that, that crazy. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Yeah, yeah, Mike: Yeah, Joe: Yeah, Mike: And seeing parents fight Joe: Yeah. Mike: And, you know, just just not not happy environment, and so that's what went into me. But the thing is, is that I was always on the right side of the track. Thank God. I was always looking at how can I be better not being accepting of it. Let me look at the bright side of things. Let me look at, OK, what is this doing and how can I take advantage of using this to a better life? So one weekend I was coming home from my mom's house Joe: And Mike: And Joe: So Mike: I Joe: I don't mean to interrupt. Was this Mike: Noticed Joe: All Mike: For. Joe: In Maryland or all back on the East Coast or. Mike: This is in Pennsylvania, outside of Philly. Joe: Ok, cool. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Ok. Mike: So so my mom was living in Maryland, and you know what, I got to about 10, some 10 years old, give or take. I was coming home from my mom's house one day, one weekend after being there and my stomach was in knots. I was anxious. I don't want to go back. And my mom was saying something was wrong. She questioned me and I told her, you know, when you go through abuse, anybody that's been through abuse, you can probably relate to this. That one you don't just like to share because you're afraid that people won't believe you, too. You kind of you're so accustomed to going through it, you're not sure how bad it really is. Somebody on the outside would be like, holy cow, you're dealing with that really. Joe: Yeah. Mike: But as you're going through it, you just think it's ordinary. Another thing, maybe you're embarrassed that you let it go on for that long. And then the weirdest thing is that you're actually concerned with your abuser. You're like, what will happen if I share this to them? Joe: At. Mike: You know, just a weird thing. So I finally came came to the realization that I need to share that my mom said, you know, I'm going to get you out of there. I'm going to file court papers. You don't need to be going through that. That's not ordinary. You need to, you know, in a better situation, she said. But if you do if I do this, you need to stick to your guns. You've got to be like really, really firm because they're going to try to talk you out of it. And in life, when you believe in something, you've got to stick to your guns, man, because people will have agendas and they're going to try to talk you out of it, move one way or the other. And at the end of the day. If you do that, you're not going to live the life you want to live, so she reminded me that, you know, 10 years old, you know, filling my head with great stuff, you know, and I went back home that day and waited and waited weeks went by and waited for those court papers to be delivered. You know, I just knew it was going to happen. And I didn't tell my dad about it, of course. And then finally, one day I come home from school and the tension in the house, you could feel it like it was something was up. And I knew what the deal Joe: Mm Mike: Was. Joe: Hmm. Mike: I had to feel the first. I thought I did something wrong. You know, I'm looking around like, what did I do today? He had his papers in his hand. My dad did. And I knew, like, oh, here we go. And he told me to go to my room. Now, my dad was my hero. He had a successful masonry business, very hard worker, big forearms, rough hands. Joe: Yeah. Mike: You know, you tell he's a hard worker and he always cared a wad of hundred dollar bills in his pocket. And I thought that was the coolest thing and had a rubber band around Joe: So Mike: It Joe: Did Mike: And. Joe: My partner, it's so buddy. Mike: Yeah, yeah, it must be the last thing Joe: Yeah, and. Mike: He would always show me the money, and I thought it was a cool hundred dollar bills, Joe: Yeah. Mike: You know, so he came back in front of me and I didn't get into the discussion with him because my mom said, stick to your guns. So he proceeded to tell me how my mom would have guys coming in and out. Why would you want to go there? You have it made here. You have everything you need. They're poor. They don't have anything. You know, my mom was I mean, we look at the houses. Twenty five, thirty thousand. Our house broken down cars in the driveway. You know, we went on vacation to the Jersey Shore. Joe: Yeah. Mike: But we stayed in a rundown motel, one room for kids, two adults, and we were I just remember just the other day, we were actually able to bring some friends with us sometimes, which just makes it like just I don't even remember how that worked. And we would take black trash bags as a suitcase. So, you know, share my story. By the way, back in the day, I was kind of embarrassed by that. I just didn't like to share that, you know. Joe: Yep. Mike: But I started to realize that the more you share your story, the more impact you can have and the more people that can relate to it and maybe change your life for two Joe: Yep, Mike: Or millions, Joe: Yep. Mike: You know. So I started sharing that. But just to wrap it up real quick, so when I did confirm that my dad took that wad of hundred dollar bills out of his pocket, peeled one off, crumpled it up and threw it at me and said, if that's the case and you want to move there, you're going to need this when you're living on the street with your mother one day. And I remember that 30 some years I lived off that spark that was lit right there because I'm stubborn, my shirt that I think is, say, Joe: And. Mike: Stubborn, perversely unyielding, it's a good thing when it's on the right thing. But, you know, I was like, I'm not going to let that happen. And so 30 some years, I was driving off that spark until two years ago. I really subconsciously I was doing that. I really realized two years ago, wait a minute here, there's something magical that's going on. My life keeps going on its upward trajectory. No matter what happens, no matter screw ups, let downs, disappointments, what is happening here and what I found, which I wrote in my book that's coming out Monday, May 3rd on Amazon Rocket Fuel, I was taken everything that would stop normal human beings or slow them down, store it in my fuel tank instead of my truck, would weigh you down and converted it into rocket fuel for my future to become unstoppable. And I found that and I realized, wait a minute, this is not just a concept. This is an this is a law. If you do this, you really are unstoppable to live in the life of your dreams until you're plucked from this planet. So that's why I decided to write this book that Grant Carter wrote the foreword because it was so powerful. I got to get this message out to people. So that's a little bit about the story. There's you know, that's the short version, actually. Joe: No, that's all good. That's exactly what I wanted, the only piece that I still need to figure out is what did you do? How did you figure out what you wanted to do in life in that middle section of where people go to college or they get a job? Or what Mike: Yeah. Joe: Did you do during that time? Mike: Well, I played football and I didn't drink any alcohol or party all through high school, I played football, baseball wrestled, but football was my love Joe: Mm hmm. Mike: And I just I always thought about I want to go to Ohio State, play football, because I just love their team. I watched them play Michigan all the time growing up. And I never grew tall enough, never grew fast enough Joe: I feel your pain. Mike: That. Yeah. So five, six and three quarters, you got to be really, really fast if you're five, six Joe: Yeah. Mike: And three quarters. So I decided to go to Division three. I played football in college study business. But when I got to college, Joe, I lost my focus and I started chasing girls and party in which I never did before. And it was like Disney World first, you Joe: Yeah, Mike: Know what I mean? Joe: Yeah. Mike: And I just lost, man, I four, five, six, seven years in that range. I was just it's all I cared about was parties where the girls at and I need to be around people. And so that's that's the lead up to that. And then eventually I met my wife, who just the commitment to my wife straighten me up. And I was off to the races. I think that my thing with my wife right now, I joke with her all the time, is I have to outsource. I have to earn her spending on Amazon and deliveries to the house. So it's constantly like this. The other day she's like, I look I go up in the kitchen and there's a piece of decking, like the composite decking. Joe: Oh, you know Mike: We Joe: That Mike: Have Joe: That's Mike: A wood Joe: Going Mike: Deck. Joe: To be redone. Mike: And I'm like, I already told you, oh, not right now. It seems like I already had somebody come over measured Joe: Oh, Mike: On my car and drive back down into the cave. Joe: That's Mike: I call this my studio, my cave. I got to go make some money now. Joe: That's so Mike: A Joe: Funny. Mike: Great motivator. Joe: That is awesome. All right. Well, that's where and was college. Mike: Salisbury University in Maryland. Joe: Ok, and then ever since you've stayed in Maryland, Mike: Yeah, Joe: But Mike: I Joe: Now Mike: Moved Joe: You're Mike: To Joe: In Mike: Connecticut Joe: Ocean City, Mike: For a period of time, Joe: Yep, Mike: But we moved to Ocean City Joe: Yep. Mike: Now. Yep. Joe: Which is beautiful. I love it there. OK, cool. Yeah. And I'm Mike: Thank Joe: On the East Mike: You. Joe: Coast. I'm originally from New Mike: A Joe: York. Mike: Cool, Joe: So. Mike: Cool. Joe: So this leads right into the question that since you're going to do the decking, are you still doing. Are you still in the mortgage business because that's your. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Yeah, Mike: Yeah, Joe: Ok. OK. Mike: Yeah, we have a have a division that I run with three best friends, they take care of the day to day operations Joe: Yep. Mike: And it's a large division under our nation's lending. And we run it like our own business. And it's great people, great culture. It's just phenomenal. Joe: And Mike: So. Joe: You've been doing that quite a long time, right? I've saw Mike: Yet. Joe: You've gotten rated as number number one in Yahoo! Finance are right. I mean, you have. Mike: Yeah, so 2006, I got into it and started as a loan officer and just went from two employees and started a branch and vision and two employees up to 40. Joe: Wow, that's incredible. OK, cool. So when did you make this shift of and you talk about this in one of your videos about sharing your story and you share. You also mentioned it when you were giving your story, how important that is. And when did you make this when did you allow yourself to say, OK, I have this business and I have great partners and people to run this business? When did you decide to at least start your company now with what you're doing with your podcast, in your book and everything? What was the trigger for that? Mike: Yes, so early, twenty, nineteen, my stepfather, George, she took over from my dad when I was 11. He was a great guy and he passed away in twenty eighteen and a heart attack suddenly. And I wrote about this in the book, the story about how he found out and everything. It's it's you know, but but at the end of the day, he had a passion when he was passionate about something like football, baseball, hunting, fishing. He would get up and just go nuts, like deep voice, like everybody couldn't, like, really understand him. He was like so passionate, like they would be taken aback by him. And when he passed away, you know, a couple of weeks after he passed away, I had this passion or energy, something spirit come inside of me. Like, I just felt different. And I realized that I wasn't playing a big enough game in life. You know, I was doing well in the business and the mortgages and all that. But it just that's not the game that I was designed for. I was playing small and I started to realize, wait a minute, I need to open myself up to other opportunities, because if I just focus here, this is where I'm going to stay. And I was having truths that I was telling myself and beliefs that I was telling myself is that this is it for me. This is I'm stuck, you know, Joe: Mm Mike: And Joe: Hmm. Mike: I don't necessarily love the mortgage business. It's great and all that. But the end of the day, I just had a bigger, bigger calling. And so I started trying to figure out, OK, how can I get known in this calling of building people? Because that's what I actually do at the mortgage business. It wasn't the mortgage business. It was I was building people. I was helping develop people. And so I said, how can I get known more in a bigger, bigger scale mystate instead of just my town? Then I was like, that's not big enough. I'll come up short. How about the country and then the globe? And then I was like, you know, what? If I start really expanding my mind, I'm like, if there's aliens, which I've never seen one, but if there is, let me see if I can get aliens to know who I am and really go for that and then come up a little short and I'll be all right. And that's the way I started thinking about things and started trying to impact and share my story with tens of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people. How can I do that? And I started to obsess about that. And that's when the podcast came. The book idea came and and I just started networking like an animal and going on. You know, I've done three hundred interviews in the last year. Joe: Oh, that's crazy. Mike: So just really lean into it and that's how it all started, and then now I'm into tech, into the tech world where I'm developing a tech product. I co-founded the company. And also we have other we're creating a tech portfolio of other co-founders, non tech entrepreneurs that have ideas that think that they can never do it. They usually go to the grave with those Joe: Mm Mike: Things. Joe: Hmm. Mike: We're bringing them into the world and giving them the resources they need to actually co-found their companies and creating unstoppable people. Because my mission, Joe, is all people are unstoppable to live in the life of their dreams. And so everything I do, I filter through that mission. Joe: It's so cool, man, and it's so funny because you hit it right on the head with with the same thing with me, it's like you don't have a successful business. But I know it's not my calling. It's not what I was put here to do. And and everything that I do should be so much more impactful and so much bigger. And I've had this I had the conversation with David Meltzer. And at the same Mike: Yeah. Joe: Time, he brings you back in focus and he's like, yeah, but you should know that you you have everything you need. You just got to get out of your own way. It's not a matter that you should focus on wanting more. You have it all. You're just Mike: Yep. Joe: You're literally getting in your own way of getting it done. Mike: Yeah, and that's the thing, it's the truths that we tell ourselves we're living an illusion, we let the illusions that we have based on our beliefs and past experiences, and we let that affect us and limit us and block us. And really, at the end of the day, you know, we'd rather explain our life instead of actually intervening in it. We'd like to explain with excuses, you know, and justify things and, you know, at the end of the day, man, we just tell ourselves what we can tell ourselves that helps us survive. And to me, that's not good enough, because you're going to always come up a little short, so why not thrive and really go after it? And, you know, there's not everybody that's going to be able to do what we do. So why don't we take it up a notch and get get really abundance, like go after abundance so that we can help other people and distribute this information to other people. So that's the kind of things that I started thinking. I started hanging around people that coach and mentor me the right way, thinking big, you know, also, you know, still like Dave Meltzer talks about, you've got to be happy now. It's not like later, Joe: Yeah, Mike: So. Joe: Yeah, so I don't want to go down the current path, I follow him, I love the stuff that he does. I know that it fits the mold for a lot of people that are in the real estate world. And but Mike: Yeah. Joe: I also know that he's doing a lot of other things. But how he wrote the foreword to your book, which is amazing, how how much did he influence you making this jump to doing what you're doing now? Mike: So when George died, my stepfather, my brother was read in the next room and he said, Mike, you've got to read this book, this guy sounds just like you. I'll take a look at it. I started I saw Grant before and like pictures, but I thought he was like a real estate. Joe: Yep, Mike: I thought he trained realtors, Joe: Yep, Mike: I wasn't even sure, Joe: Yep. Mike: Right, so I read the book and I'm like, holy cow, this guy speaking to me, he's going through similar situations that I've been Joe: Yeah. Mike: Through. Like, I can totally relate. And I but but the big thing was about it was I've always had this big think, but I got cocooned for a while by people that I surround myself with that were broken thinkers, broken mindset, people, people that didn't fit my culture, but they produce. So I kept them around and people that quit on me. And I let that affect me personally. And I got into this situation where I was invalidated, me myself. I felt invalidated on being the animal that I actually am. And so when I was reading that book, I'm like, wait a minute, this this shows me something. I'm not the crazy one. Those people are the crazy ones. I have an animal. So I did unleash it. So I was able to unleash the beast and that's what it did for me. And then I just immersed myself in this content, hung around with all these people, build relationships inside his company, because I just want to be around those types of people. Joe: Yep. Mike: Great, great friendships. Like I said, Jerry Glantz, a friend of mine, I just you know, I'm proud to have them in my in my circle. And so when when I wrote the book, the book actually came from an idea that I got while I was interviewing grad on my podcast about I asked him the question, what would it take to get into outer space? Not like literally, but figuratively speaking, getting away from all the gravity and negative suppressors of people and things that can mess with you. When can you get that amount of money or that amount of whatever it is? And he said people aren't ready for that discussion. He said that's just something the answer doesn't people don't like the answer to that question and I'm like, well, what would it take? You know? And I started thinking about rocket fuel. Rocket fuel is what it would take. Take it all that stuff, converting it and fuel your way up there. And then once you do that, you remove all that stuff out of your way. There's nothing to stop you and you become unstoppable and indestructible. And that's the thought that started going through my head and I started obsessing about it. I'm like, I got to write this. So when I did that, I'm like the only person that would make sense to be writing the forward for this book is Grant. I don't know if he does afterwards. I don't know if he charged me. I don't know anything. I'm going to make it happen, though. And that's what I started thinking all the time. I just dwelled on it, wrote it down and. Book is almost done, and I made a phone call and there are some details that went into doing that and I just got done and his name is on the cover of the book is for Written Joe: Yeah, Mike: By Grant. Joe: Yeah. Mike: So that adds to credibility that I may not have had before, but the content in the book is just so powerful, man. It's just I actually can be honest with you about something like like I'm always honest, but like just totally transparent. I read that book over and over again during the editing process. Right. And I got so sick of it and because I've read it so much, but then I haven't read it in a while and I went back and my team, we go through in the morning and we'll pick a passage to read out of it just to see what what we come upon. And I don't even remember writing some of the stuff. I'm just like, wow, this is like this is really good stuff. Joe: That's cool, Mike: So it's a weird Joe: Yeah. Mike: It's a weird mind game when you're writing a book and then to see the actual finished product. It's a good time. Joe: That's really cool, yeah, I look forward to reading it, I it's, you know, just talking with you, I can tell we're in sync on a lot of this stuff. You're ahead of me because you wrote a book and I haven't done it yet, but I know that it's a good process to go through. Where did you figure out where you wanted to start in the book in regards to your life? Mike: So, you know, I started share my story that I share with you and I have other parts of my life in there, too, that are just crazy, blew people's minds. But I really what I did was I started writing in my phone while I was on airplanes and I would just write ideas in my phone and and I would write stories that happen in my life. And then my podcast, we transcribe the podcast episodes, the first few that were a monologue style, and we just created a framework. And then it doesn't look anything like it started. That's how I got started with it and just started, you know, what kind of what went into me, what am I made of? And I just went into that and started sharing it. And then the lessons that broke off from each of those things, because, you know, a lot of people have been through there's people that have been through a lot more than I have. But my story is pretty crazy. Like there's some stuff that happened to me that nobody could imagine going through. But I'm still here, brother, and I'm still going hard. Joe: I hear you. I see that and you brought up a good point and one of the videos that I watch where you said people discount their story, right? They don't think, why would anybody care? It's not that Mike: Yeah. Joe: Special. Well, when were you able to actually take your own thoughts as part of your own story and make that switch where you said, wait a second, you know, what I've gone through is important. If it can help one person in the world, that's value enough. I mean, when did you or did you not ever doubt that your story was powerful? Mike: No, so I would I never shared it and I saw Pete Vargas share his story on the 10x growth conference stage in twenty nineteen, I'm sitting there watching and this is the first big stage, I think, that Pete was on. He was nervous and scared and his face, you could tell, is sweating and he would tell you this. I'm friends with Joe: Mm Mike: Him, so Joe: Hmm. Mike: It's not something I'm talking about. Joe: Yeah, no, no. Mike: But I thought to myself, I'm watching that. I don't know who he was at that time, but he was telling a story about his father and he was like really connecting with me and the relationship and how he grew up in a rough spot. And then they came back together and how it all worked out. And I'm like, wow, this is just like powerful. I felt like everybody else disappeared in the place and it was just him talking to me. And I'm like, I need to learn how to do that. And if he can do it, I know I could do it. That's what went through my head. And I told the guys I was with when we got in the car afterwards, I'm like, I'm going to be on that stage. I'm going to share my story one day and I know I can do it. And so then I started sharing the story of one person, two people, five people. And they were like, that's all. I really can relate to that. Then I said, Well, shit, I need to go to ten million people Joe: Mm hmm. Mike: If I could do it and how can I do that? And that's when I started obsessing about getting known and sharing that story. And, you know, I was able to talk to Pete after that and actually learn from him how to share your story. And but I shared that that that story about seeing him in the audience and how everybody just disappeared and how he connected with me. And so it's pretty powerful stuff, Joe: Yeah, Mike: Man. Joe: That's really powerful, but that's got to be a little eerie to just be sitting there Mike: The. Joe: And all of a sudden it's just like a movie where everything around you blurs out and it's just Mike: Yeah. Joe: The two of you. Yeah, Mike: Yeah. Joe: That's incredible. Something real light like question I have for you. The logo is it is a logo. And I'm going to take a guess and I'm probably going to be wrong. And you're going to say, well, nice try, Joe, but does it have anything to do with the Lynch? Mike: So the sirocco, the blue. Joe: Yeah. Mike: Yeah, so it's just upside down, see, and in two hours that are, you know, for Cerak and then it just has a little dude in there holding up the world, if you can see him. That's what it has now. It doesn't. I Joe: Ok, Mike: Didn't see that. So linchpin, Joe: Only because Mike: Huh? Joe: When I read some stuff from you talking about, you know, in some of the verbiage that I read about you and on your website, you mention Mike: Yeah. Joe: The word linchpin. I can't remember the context, but it was. Mike: Yeah, no, you know what, I. Joe: And then when I looked at a picture of a lynchpin, I was like, wait, it is Mike: I Joe: Round. Mike: Got to Joe: And Mike: See what a picture of a linchpin Joe: You Mike: Looks like Joe: See Mike: Because Joe: Now Mike: Because, Joe: I have Mike: You know, Joe: You thinking. Mike: Like that's. Yeah, I got to look at this because maybe maybe, yeah, maybe it does, Joe: The. Mike: So I didn't design the logo myself I had professionally done, and maybe he had that in mind as well. Joe: Only because it's mean you could kind of say it a little bit. I don't know. Mike: Yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying, Joe: Right, Mike: Yeah, Joe: It's Mike: No, Joe: Round Mike: I didn't Joe: With Mike: Have Joe: The Mike: That. Joe: With the thing through it, and I'm thinking, OK, well, maybe it's kind Mike: Yeah. Joe: Of hinting towards it and and I Mike: Now, Joe: Said, Mike: It was really just the sea Joe: Yeah. Mike: And the two hour and holding up the world and helping lift up the Joe: That's Mike: World, Joe: Cool, Mike: That's what Joe: That's even cooler, so you can Mike: The. Joe: Throw my idea right out the window, Mike: Now, Joe: But Mike: I Joe: I Mike: Like that, I like that. Joe: Do I do some upfront investigation of the person I'm talking to in the life and all of that stuff. And I saw that, you know, because you're doing your mortgages. And I saw that Jennifer is in real estate and I don't Mike: Yeah. Joe: Know if she still is, but. Mike: Yes, yes. Joe: So that's a really cool synergy between the two of you, first of all, I think that probably works really well. But just for the people in the audience who had a great relationship with their significant other, how important has that been in the balance of your life, especially what you went through as a young, you know, a young man being able to have that support in and you found the love of your life and it's you know, there's that whole synergy there between you. Mike: Yeah, I mean, it's it's everything, I mean, like I said, I made a joke about trying to earn her spending with that, but then on the day she does a great job, she did she was a stay at home mom for a while until our youngest was in school. And then I said, you know what? I'm going to try to you know, we've got to figure out something because I'm giving deals away Joe: Uh huh, Mike: To people. Joe: Yep. Mike: And, you know, it would be great if you get a license and she ended up doing it. And she's just the type that if she gets into something, she goes hard with it. And she did great the first two years, just fantastic. I didn't even realize how much money she made last year until I saw ten ninety nine. I'm like, wow, you did great. But she's just phenomenal and aligns well with our business. Obviously I don't do mortgages much anymore. Joe: Yeah. Mike: I don't do it all. I just I work on the business maybe an hour a day. My team runs the day to day. They do a fantastic job. And so but it aligns well, obviously in a lot of our people, their spouse got their real estate license, too, because it aligns so well. Joe: Mm hmm. Yeah. Mike: So, yeah, but but at the end of the day, we are you know, I'm very clear with what I'm trying to do, my dreams. And she is clear on the fact of her dreams and the fact that she's willing to support me and run through fire for me. And Joe: Yeah. Mike: It's just a great feeling because I can't do it without her, obviously. Joe: Yep, yep, I just wanted to sort of bring that up, because I think it's important I have the same sort of relationship with Joel Mike: And Joe: And Mike: It's Joe: My significant Mike: Awesome. Joe: Other. So it's Mike: Yeah. Joe: To me, it's super important. And with what happened with covid, you know, a lot of things just stopped. Right. And Mike: Mm hmm. Joe: Changes were made. And so she got furloughed from doing her day to day job and has not been brought back. But she's always had this dream of doing photography. And so now I basically have said to her, you are not going back and you are going to from this point forward until whenever the world ends for you, you're going to follow your dream. So I Mike: Awesome. Joe: Think it's important. Right. And to Mike: Yeah. Joe: Support each other and it's nice to see that you have that same relationship. Mike: Yeah, so, so, so important that it aligns I mean, so much conflict comes from just not being aligned with the mission, Joe: Yep, Mike: You know, Joe: Yep. Mike: And I think that people need to realize that their personal dream, their mission, I call it their purpose, their mission. It's it's more important than anything when it comes down to it really is. Joe: Yeah. Mike: And that's why it's so important to share that with your partner, to make sure that they're on the same page with you. Joe: So let's talk about that. I'm sure I'm probably older than you at this point, but we're Mike: Yeah, Joe: At Mike: Definitely, definitely. Now Joe: The. Mike: I'm 40, I'm 40 for some, I'm Joe: Oh, Mike: A Joe: My gosh, I'm so Mike: Young Joe: Old, Mike: Pup, Joe: I can't. Mike: But I am going on 18 years of marriage. This May so. Joe: Congratulations, that's awesome, yeah, Mike: Thank Joe: Joel Mike: You. Joe: And Mike: Thank Joe: I Mike: You. Joe: Are 20, I think, at this point. Mike: Ok, cool, congrats. Joe: Yeah, I turned fifty nine this past February, so, Mike: Oh, man, I Joe: You know. Mike: Can't tell. I really can't Joe: Yeah, Mike: Tell. Joe: Well thank Mike: Maybe Joe: You. Mike: That's why that's why you shave your head, because that way you can't see any Joe: That's Mike: Gray hairs. Joe: Exactly, exactly right. They got my eyebrows Mike: Hey, Joe: Are still dark, Mike: Look, I'm with you the way the. Joe: So do you ever look at where you are now and you look back and go? I mean, and I think we've talked about this with some of the great people, like, you know, we can bring up David Meltzer again because he's just he's like one of my mentors. I love the guy at the Mike: Is Joe: Death. Mike: Awesome. Joe: You know, what is what's the saying? Something like the the teacher. The teacher appears when the student is ready, Mike: Yeah. Joe: Right? Mike: Yeah, yeah, yeah, teachers. Joe: Yep. Mike: Yep, exactly. Joe: And it's the same thing with life. Like things come when the time is right. And some people would argue against that. Some people would say whatever. But you just started on this path now, right. Something flipped when you're 40, when your stepfather passed away, it said there's you know, and you might have felt that your whole life because you people like you and I always were pulled towards something. Right. We're entrepreneurs. We've always worked towards a greater goal of whatever. Do you ever look back and go, God, I wish I had started this sooner? Or is it like, no, it's this is the time. This is the right time. It's happening now. You know, I'm interested in what your thought process is on that. Mike: Well, I'm curious, asking the question, you must have felt some kind of feeling about that in the past, maybe. Joe: I constantly go like I had, I chased another dream up until this point, and that Mike: Yeah. Joe: Dream didn't happen for me and I openly admit all the time that I didn't put in the work to make that dream happen. I'm Mike: The. Joe: I'm a trained you know, I went to college for music. So my whole life has been surrounded by music. And one day I was going to tour the world and be this famous drummer for and I always use the example because I love his music. John Mayer. Mike: Yeah. Joe: That never happened for me because I know now I can look myself in the mirror and go, You didn't put in the work. You didn't put in the Mike: Yeah, Joe: Tent. Mike: The commitment, Joe: Yeah. You Mike: Yeah. Joe: Didn't do the ten thousand hours. You Mike: Yeah. Joe: You would rather had gone down to the college campus bar and had a bunch of beers and chicken wings with your buddies Mike: Yep. Joe: Instead of going back into the practice room and spending another four hours at night. So I am fine with I get it now, but now Mike: Yeah. Joe: I'm trying to take like the rest of my life and make it amazing and live much Mike: Yeah. Joe: Bigger. And so I am at the stage right now doing that change, shifting Mike: Mm hmm. Joe: My my frame of mind. I know the world is abundant. I know that everything you know, I just have to look towards the good of everything. And the more I focus on the good and the abundance and the gratitude, more of it just keeps coming in. In the last two months, it's been incredible for me. And so and it's I always was the oh, woe is me. Like I work my ass off. Why am I not getting that? Why am I not Mike: Yep, Joe: Doing that? So Mike: Yeah. Joe: That's why I asked you this question Mike: Yeah, Joe: When that, Mike: Yeah. Joe: You know, was the shift with your with Mike: Yeah. Joe: Your father, your stepfather passing away and you just saying when you said you felt it in your heart, you were like, I need to do something bigger. Was that the pivotal point for this? Mike: Yes, it was, and I did look back and be like, man, I cannot believe when I started finding out things and becoming aware of things, I cannot believe I didn't start this sooner. I didn't know that. Like, I just felt like I had wasted I went through a period of time where I felt like I wasted time and time is so valuable. And I said, you know what? I don't know how much longer I have on this planet, but you know what, at this point, the window keeps shrinking. I got to pick up my urgency. I got to move faster. I got to demand more and be louder and be more impactful and be just more intense than I would have had to if I started a long time ago, that's all. And so at first I did look back and with some regret. But then I quickly got out of that and said, OK, what have we got to do to get this done in the window that I do have left? So, yeah, I definitely and that was the pivotal, pivotal point, of course, working towards it my whole life, not knowing it. Joe: Yeah. Mike: You know, there's a story in the Bible and they made a movie about it with Steve Carell about Noah's Ark. You know, it was told over some years he took to build this big arc and he didn't really know why he was doing it, he was just being told to do it by God. If you believe in God, Joe: Hmm. Mike: Which I do, or if it's intuition or whatever. And he got these animals and people were laughing at him and discouraging them and he just kept doing it anyway and building a ship in a place where there's never rain. Joe: All right. Mike: And did it make sense, it didn't seem to make sense at the moment, but he kept doing it and he kept being committed and doing it and doing it and doing it before you know it. The rain came, washed everybody away, and he survived with all the animals that he had and his family. And so I look at that lesson and I started to see this now. I started to see that the things when I'm committed and obeyed to my purpose, my mission, and I filter things through that, whether it's the people I hang out with, my actions, my words, my thoughts, my environment, when I start to filter through that mission. I'm obeying what I'm supposed to be doing and things just magically work out and I start to see opportunities everywhere, but when I don't do that, they're missing. And so you don't need to know what the end game is necessarily. You should be shooting for something, but just be looking for the opportunities. As long as you're obeying your mission and filtering everything through your purpose or mission or whatever you want to call it. Joe: Yeah. All right, well, that makes me feel good that I'm not the only one that had some regrets, so thank Mike: The. Joe: You for being vulnerable and saying that because I definitely have gone through it and I have like I said, I'm older than you. So I think, you know, think, Mike: None of us are alone, Joe. None of us are, you Joe: Ok. Mike: Know, I've anything that you go through, there's somebody else out there experiencing it for sure. Joe: Right, and I think that's what you're a lot of what you talk about is it's so important to share your story because it literally could help one person, which would be a huge help. You never know where they are in their state of mind. And if it lifts them, that's awesome. But imagine being able to help tens of thousands of millions of billions of people. Right. So I understand that's what the goal is for people like us who want to do that. So I I wish you the best of luck in doing that. And and same Mike: Thanks. Joe: With myself. Mike: Yeah, Joe: They've Mike: You, Joe: Got Mike: Too. Joe: To get it done. Mike: That's right, Joe: Ok, Mike: That's right. Joe: So you said something earlier about the book, which is the name of the book is Rocket Fuel. And you said it's May, May 3rd. Mike: Yeah, May 3rd, Monday, May 3rd, it's coming out on Amazon, and, you know, it should be a best seller based on we have we presold it. So I'm thinking that it's not going to have a problem being a best seller, number one best seller. Joe: Yep. Mike: What we shall see. But I'm going to do a bunch of lives that day, Instagram and Facebook lives, and just have some fun with it Joe: Cool. Mike: And celebrate. Joe: Ok, cool, so let's talk about it a little bit. Mike: Sure. Joe: You said something earlier that I thought was really cool, which was taking you said something about taking whatever comes in and not putting in it in the trunk, but putting it in the fuel tank and making rocket fuel. So explain Mike: Yep, Joe: That again Mike: Very Joe: To me, because Mike: Good. Joe: I I loved Mike: Yeah. Joe: It when you said I was like and I didn't even write it down. Mike: Yeah. Joe: I was like, no, that's got to go up here in my brain. So I would love to Mike: Well, Joe: Hear that again. Mike: Well, when you want something in life and things come your way to stop it or slow you down, if you remove a one thing, obviously that's going to help. But removing is not good enough for me. So I take all that stuff. Haters, people that discourage me laughed at me. What I'm trying to do, screw ups of my own people trying to screw me, all that stuff I just stored in my fuel tank. And usually people put it in their trunk and that weighs them down. You know, most people quit on their dreams because other people are talking Joe: Mm hmm. Mike: About them and saying, no, you're not the same. Why are you doing that? In all kinds of different things? I take all that and say, you know what, like here's an example, by the way, I stored in my tank, my fuel tank, to convert it into rocket fuel rather than my trunk, where it weighs me down. And some of the people closest to me, you know, like some of my business partners and friends and they know who they are. I talk to them about it. And I said, you know what? You keep saying the stuff like, hey, why don't you go do your podcast? Hey, you know, just this stupid digs like that, right? At the end of the day, they're trying to get at me, but they're really just talking about themselves, reflecting upon themselves and the fact that they should be doing that and they're not. And so I know that. And I tell people, you know, you want to say that, great, you're not going to achieve what you think you're going to achieve because all you're doing is giving me more fuel and I'm going to push it even harder. So when somebody says that to me, I'll do it on purpose, where I'll push harder and then I'll show it up in their face a little bit more to about. They're seeing so many posts on Instagram, I'll make sure I send it to them in a direct message, because that way it shuts them Joe: Yeah, Mike: Up Joe: Yeah, Mike: For Joe: It's weird, I don't Mike: Not Joe: Understand, Mike: Being. Joe: I don't understand, like people want to bring you down to their level, right? We deal with that all the time. And and social media has done so much to expose those people. And I just don't understand why they can't be happy for you. But they. Mike: Well, they can't because so I've already realized this in my mind now I know this, it's not them personally, it's their mind. And what it's happening is they just the subconscious mind just justifies where you are. It's trying to justify the truths that you told yourself and when something comes in to threaten that. You have to basically there there things fire off to protect their subconscious beliefs, and so it's not really them personally that's doing it and that's why you can't take it personal. You need to understand it. And then when they're doing it, you need to lay it out to them and let them know, hey, listen, I know what's going on here. I get it. You're where you are and you're trying to justify where you are. And you're saying this stuff to me. I don't take it personal, by the way. I use it as fuel. So thank you. And if you want to say more, continue to give me fuel. Great. But I would rather be able to help you. On break the like, just open up your truths and change them, change your beliefs. And expand your mind and see what you can achieve instead of worrying about what I'm doing and that's the way I handle it, I don't really get fired up or angry or take it personal. It's just a situation where they're going through it. And I think we've all been through it Zoom. I think I'm more understanding of it, Joe: Yeah. Mike: But I will not. But if they don't listen to me when I talk about that, I will not spend time with them because I'm not going to spend time with people that don't align with the mission. Joe: Totally agree. So the book Rocket Fuel coming out May 3rd on Amazon, who is this book for? Mike: Specifically, this is for people that have gone through things in life. And they feel like they keep getting held back or slowed down by things are stopped and they're just they're just done with it. They're they're at the point right now where they've had enough. They're getting sick of where they are and they want to do something about it. And they are looking for that breakthrough that that that superpower, because really it is it's like John Maxwell, House leadership, because this thing is so powerful. And I validated it so, so thoroughly that it's a law, it's the Rockefeller law. And so it's for people that are just sick and tired of being where they are. And they want to advance. They want to have a better life, life of their dreams. And I believe, like I said, my mission is all people are unstoppable to live in a life of their dreams. And so that's what's for. Joe: Yeah, and I saw that it seems like part of the focus is about past pains and obstacles and how you you basically help with the book to to change, take people and turn it around and say, you know, like you're saying, use those things as rocket fuel to get you to the next level. So don't lean on them. Don't have them in the trunk, don't have them as baggage, but instead take what you've learned, take what has happened and convert it to rocket fuel by doing whatever you talk about in the book. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Right. Mike: Yeah, the magic, the magic, here's the magic, right? The magic is when you have something happen and you get that feeling in your chest, that's where it hits me, by the way, like something Joe: Hmm. Mike: Bad happens and like this speed to which you can recognize that and convert it and look for opportunity. That's when you master the Rockefeller law. That's what it's all about, the longer time it takes, the more doubt creeps in, Joe: Yeah. Mike: A more negative energy creeps in, the more victimhood creeps in. And the missed opportunities happened during that period. So you want to shrink that window to as little as short as possible because we all feel it. We're all going to still feel it when something bad happens at first, but recognize it as fast as possible and start to look for the opportunity, not play the victim role, take responsibility for everything. Joe: Yeah, that's great. OK, I want to honor the time we have that we so we're going to do an hour or so. I want to just go through this real quick. So you have your own podcast, which is what are you made of? Which is on the wall behind you, where you interview. I assume, you know, other entrepreneurs and people that have amazing stories to tell and share. You release one week, twice a week with a human. Mike: Well, it started out once a week and then I had so many that I was doing, I had to do two weeks. Right now we're on a two week schedule. Joe: Ok. Mike: So, yeah, I just load up. I go hard, man. Like, if I see somebody I want to show, I go after him like an animal. I get them on the show and I don't care how many I've already had in the can. I just still just keep loading them up Joe: That's awesome. Mike: And uh. Yeah. So. Joe: Ok, cool. Besides that, you are you do some performance coaching, correct? You do some coaching in general, you Mike: Yeah. Joe: Are doing some speaking. You're going to continue to to build that Mike: Yeah. Joe: That part of your career. You're going to be on stage with Grant one of these days. Mike: Well, yeah, but so the coaching part, I want to do, the coaching part of switching that into, you know, I still have a couple of clients, but really focusing on the tech side of things and developing these entrepreneurs and young entrepreneurs into this tech world and using my specialty performance and business coaching and what have you into that, not getting paid directly for it. But but from the companies that I'm developing, Joe: Yeah. Mike: I'm really focused on that. And then I was on a 10x growth stage this past March. Joe: Oh, congratulations. Mike: Let me tell you, it took me two years to step on that stage. Joe: Hey, Mike: Thank you. Joe: That's awesome. The tech thing is it is there more that you can tell us about it or a way that people can find out about it or a. Mike: Yes, so the best thing to do, really, I mean, if you if you message me and follow me on Instagram, you're going to see all kinds of stuff coming out here very shortly on it. But I have a tech product called Blueprinted. It's being printed. This is my the one I co-founded. And this product basically, I looked at digital training and video training and I saw, like, how ineffective Joe: Mm Mike: It was Joe: Hmm. Mike: And the fact that only 20 percent of people actually complete the courses. So that means the people that are marketing these courses that are good at marketing are making money without concern for the Joe: Correct, Mike: Success Joe: Yeah. Mike: Of their student, their clients. And I thought that was an ethical problem. And I looked at why people get bored. They don't finish it, they get distracted, they don't retain the information. Or when they get done, they're like, what's the next step? Like, what am I supposed to do? Where do I put that Joe: Mm Mike: And Joe: Hmm. Mike: Where where do I take that and how long do I do that? And so I thought to myself, what if there's a way to have a project management based software technology that has a marketplace where people that have had success can come in and algorithmically step by step, put the success steps to what they've done, whatever vertical, Joe: Mm Mike: And Joe: Hmm. Mike: Build that blueprint in our platform and then sell it on the marketplace to to people that want to know how to be successful in that area. So it could be anything from a business to a podcast to digital marketing agency, whatever it is. Because if you look if you're going to build a house, you wouldn't want to watch a YouTube video. And on building that house, Joe: All Mike: You'd want the blueprints. Joe: Right. Mike: So this is a market disrupter, industry disrupter. And I can also see another industry being created from this, like there's web designers when websites came out. Well, there's going to be a lot of people that don't want to build their own blueprints. They want to take the content and give it to somebody and have them do the blueprint for Joe: Mm Mike: Them. Joe: Hmm. Mike: So there's going to be a whole industry just on blueprints. And so, yeah, this is a phenomenal thing. And it's coming out hopefully in the next 60 days, give or take. And I'm just fired up to get it in people's hands, man. Joe: That's great, man. You got a lot of irons in the fire. I like Mike: Yeah, Joe: It. Mike: But Joe: That's Mike: Thank Joe: Awesome. Mike: You. Joe: All right. So I want everybody to go and check out your podcast. The book is released on May 3rd called Rocket Fuel. Get in touch with you on on any of the social media. What's the best way to get in touch with you Mike: Instagram, Joe: On. Mike: Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, either one, but Instagram, it's Michy Cerak. Joe: Like you see rock on Instagram. Mike: Yep. Joe: Perfect. All right, man, this is a pleasure for me. I love talking Mike: Metohija. Joe: To another person Mike: Yeah, buddy. Joe: And it was great. And I really wish you a ton of luck with the book. I'll make sure when this episode gets released, I'll have a cover of the book. This will also go like you do on your podcast, will go to the YouTube channel so people will Mike: Thank you Joe: Be able to Mike: To. Joe: See it. I'll put the link to the Amazon in there. Anything else I can do to help? Let me know. But it was a real pleasure to speak with you. I appreciate Mike: Well, Joe: Your time Mike: Thank Joe: And. Mike: You. Thank you, Joe, I appreciate it was a great interview. Great questions and I really enjoyed it. Joe: Thank you, ma'am. You take care. Good luck with the book. Good luck with the podcast. Good luck with the tech software and Mike: Thank Joe: Everything Mike: You. Joe: Else. And just have an amazing year. Mike: Thank you, you, too, bye. Joe: Thank you.

Mike: I assure you there are fascists in the US. [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOs Lizards wearing human clothes Hinduism's secret codes These are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genes Warfare keeps the nation clean Whiteness is an AIDS vaccine These are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocide Muslim's rampant femicide Shooting suspects named Sam Hyde Hiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the cops Secret service, special ops They protect us, not sweatshops These are nazi lies Mike: One of the more pernicious lies I hear about US fascism is that it doesn't exist, particularly in the present day. So I'm here today with journalist and sociologist Dr. Spencer Sunshine, PhD from CUNY's Grad School. Spencer has written for Colorlines, Truthout, and The Daily Beast and has an organizing guide out through PopMob called 40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Street-Legal Tactics for Community Activists. Thanks for coming on the pod. Spencer Sunshine: Thanks for having me on the show, Mike. Mike: Of course! So Spencer's here to talk about the American Nazi Party; its successor, the National Socialist White People's Party; and its remnants today. So let's start with a brief history of US fascism before the American Nazi Party. Spencer: Sure, so fascism as an actual political current is about 100 years old in the United States. The first Nazi group, or Nazi cell, in the United States formed in 1922 by German expats in the Bronx. And there were probably earlier groups that were Italian Fascist groups. Like many radical political traditions that started in Europe, in the United States these were first brought to the country by immigrants from Europe. If we look further than that, if we use fascism as a broader term involving any organized white supremacist groups, of course we'd easily go back to the 1860s and the Ku Klux Klan and similarly styled far right groups go back in the United States well before that. So fascism is a longstanding political tradition in our country. It's a century old. The fact that people can't acknowledge this shows something interesting about the psyche of the United States where people just can't admit that there are radical political movements here, or that such a noxious political movement such as fascism could take fairly, what looks like permanent roots in our country. Mike: Okay, so let's talk about the American Nazi Party itself. How was it founded? What did it do? Spencer: So before the war there were two groups that were pro-Nazi. There was the German American Bund, who were tied to the Nazi Party in various ways; and an American group called the Silver Shirts. As you may imagine, during the war, nazism became taboo in the country. A lot of the leaders were arrested. After the war it took quite a while for, what then became neo-nazism, neo-nazi groups to establish themselves. There was a group called the National States Rights Party who mostly recruited from Klan members and were the core organizers for nazis, but they did not say on the– On the outside of the package it did not say that; although on the inside it was. So the American Nazi Party was sort of special because it was the first group to openly declare itself a nazi group and to, the phrase they used was, “raise the swastika,” to actually appear in public. You know, at the time they used the old stormtrooper uniforms, these brown uniforms with a swastika armband. You rarely see it these days, but this was pretty common through the early 90s for nazi groups to do this. So the American Nazi Party was founded in 1959. There was a precursor group in 1958 by George Lincoln Rockwell. He had done advertising; was very good. And came from a vaudeville family. This is a really crazy story, but Bob Hope was actually at his christening. He used these advertising techniques to form this group. It was designed to get media attention, and the idea was for him that conservatives could never become radical enough and could never really attract the people they needed. So by using this imagery, he could attract the kinds of people that he wanted, and he could use the presence of nazis– He used to say, “No one can ignore nazis marching in the streets.” –use this public image to gain media attention which he could then use as a recruiting tool. The party was never very big. It continued through the 60s. They did a lot of– It was almost an agitprop kind of project. The kind of murders that we associate with the nazi movement these days– They had punch ups at rallies and stuff. But the kind of violence and murders that we associate with neo-nazism these days did not come until later, which is an interesting thing. He was assassinated by a fellow party member in 1967. Right before then he had changed his organizing strategy. He had a very successful rally in Marquette Park, Chicago, which was actually against Martin Luther King's plan to desegregate. It was some of his late marches doing housing desegregation in Chicago. It was in an Eastern European neighborhood, a lot of Eastern European immigrants who were resisting Black Chicagoans from moving into their neighborhood. Thousands of people came to this rally. He then changed his tack a bit. He renamed the party the National Socialist White People's Party which is a mouthful, and we'll call it the NSWPP from now on. And he renamed the party newspaper to White Power which is the slogan we know today that he coined. So it was a move from being an antisemitic nazi party to kind of being an aggressive white nationalist party because it was the first time that he had drawn a lot of grassroots support. He was assassinated. He was replaced by his subordinate Matt Koehl. At first it was three people. It was Robert Lloyd, Koehl, and William Pierce (Who's important. He later formed his own party called the National Alliance. Mike: We'll talk about them in a bit. Spencer: And he wrote a very influential book called The Turner Diaries. These three that ran the party for a while, and then, what's a nazi party without a führer? Or tin pot führer at least? Kicks the other two out. And runs the party until his death a few years ago. In 1983 the party became called New Order and actually degenerated into a Hitler-worshipping, almost private Hitler-worshipping cult. It still exists. Koehl died a few years ago and was replaced by his subordinate Martin Kerr. Mike: So before we talk about the remnants today, I want to talk about some of the splinter groups that formed in the 70s. I'm thinking the second NSLF, the National Alliance that you mentioned, the NSPA, the NSWWP. Spencer: A mouthful of alphabet soup. Mike: Yes. Spencer: So the importance of Koehl taking control is that Rockwell was a very charismatic guy. A lot of his followers really adored him. They ended up fetishizing him almost as a god-like figure. The way they had– Some of them, you know, praised him the way they had Adolf Hitler before him. In the post-war period, people had started almost worshipping and sometimes literally worshipping Hitler and made altars to him and treated him as a kind of demigod. So Koehl did not have charisma and acted in ways that alienated most of his party membership. Over the years, especially between 1973 and 1974, a lot of the party members left; the active units, they called them units the chapters, left and formed their own groups. And this became very important because this is what laid the groundwork for there to be a decentralized neo-nazi movement in the United States, the kind of which we see today. So it laid the epistemological foundation for it because before there had been a single party, a single organization with chapters. Now there were all these separate groups that had different relationships with them and that could pursue different strategies. And they did pursue different strategies. So the first big split was in 1970 when William Pierce is kicked out. This takes a little while for the real splintering to happen. So the first group I'll talk about is the National Socialist Liberation Front because their influence can be felt today on the alt-right, on the terrorist wing of the neo-nazis today. It was originally the name was used in the late 60s as a college student group that William Pierce actually ran that was associated with the party. They were trying to take off the energy of the New Left. You know, there were a lot of liberation fronts was a popular name for armed new left groups. This was an attempt to recruit college students. It only got one good organizer which we can talk about later which was David Duke. It was never an independent entity. The name was revived in 1974 when, probably the best organizer in the United States, Joseph Tommasi, who was based in Los Angeles, was suspended by the party, and he founded his own group. They used the NSLF name. Mike: Can you talk about why he was suspended? Spencer: He was– There's a lot of discussion about this. Accusations that he was– Some of it was cultural clashes within the nazis. He was pulling off the counterculture. He had long hair. They didn't like to dress in uniform. They wore like fatigues and stuff. He was accused of bringing his girlfriends over to the party headquarters. Koehl was making all of the party members (They had bought their own headquarters. This was a time they still had physical headquarters was an emphasis.) sell their headquarters. They made all the chapters sell their headquarters buildings and give the proceeds to Koehl which angered a lot of people and caused a lot of these splits because the people themselves had bought them, and they just thought he was trying to enrich himself which he probably was. He was basically shutting the party down and making a cult around himself and taking all the money. But there was a very interesting– What probably really prompted it is– It's attached to the Watergate scandal. Someone in the C.R.E.E.P. (The group, the Nixon support group that got involved in Watergate, it was an acronym for them.) hired Tommasi's nazis to help get another far right, a little more moderate, party on the ballot in California to pull votes away from Republicans. This was the American Independent Party. It has a funny history. It comes out of the George Wallace campaigns earlier. Then later, I think Cliven Bundy from the Bundy ranch actually joined. Remnants of the party exist today and have attracted people from the militia movement. [Spencer's correction to this story: https://twitter.com/transform6789/status/1388206831630180362?s=19] Anyway, these nazis were hired by Republicans to get another far right party on the ballot to pull votes away in a certain election. I forget the details now. I'm sorry. The party– Koehl was angry that he had made this deal. This made the newspapers. It made the New York Times and stuff. This angered the party that he had done this without their permission. And they took money from it. So that may have been– A lot of more serious people think that was the actual reason for the initial suspension. And then there was a break when Tommasi formed his own group. The NSLF was important because they openly advocated armed resistance and bombings and such and did do a few of these, although rather moderate in Los Angeles. This was a break from the parent party which always stressed legality. While there had been violent currents in it, they were really kept kind of under the rug, and it was just a sort of wing of the party of certain people including William Pierce. And then Tommasi didn't last long, though. He was killed in a scuffle with members of the former party at his former headquarters. He accosted one and the guy had this kid, an 18-year-old, and he shot him. Tommasi again, another charismatic organizer, founded this group, but didn't last long. That group however did continue it had four different leaders and continued until 1986. James Mason, who we'll talk about later, joined that group after Tommasi's passing. Mike: Okay so that's the NSLF. What about the National Alliance? Spencer: The National Alliance is a group founded by William Pierce after he got kicked out of the NSWPP. He was flirting with Willis Carto, another major nazi leader who became, amongst other things, the main popularizer of Holocaust denial in America. They had a falling out. Carto had a falling out with everyone. Pierce founded– The group was originally the National Youth Alliance, then became the National Alliance. It was a membership based group. They tried to recruit professionals. Pierce had been an engineering professor out in Oregon before he joined the party. He was very articulate. He did not have the sort of crass approach, you know. He produced more sophisticated propaganda as well as sort of more interesting theoretical documents. So they continued. The remnants of the group exists today. They had up to a thousand members. They ended up having a huge group property out in West Virginia. It was the headquarters building. He lived there. He wrote a book in the 70s called The Turner Diaries which is a really badly written book. It's a fantasy novel about how some white supremacists will form a terrorist movement, and they will help promote a race war, through terrorism will promote a race war in America. And you know this will end up in the Day of the Rope where the white supremacists kill people of color and Jews and create a white ethnostate. It's a tremendously popular book around the world. It's sold up to a half a million copies. You can still get it today. It still inspires people today. So Pierce's group, they didn't do a lot of public actions especially till later in life.  Although, their probably biggest rally was in 2002. It was a supposedly pro-Palestine rally in Washington, D.C., that blamed Israel for 9/11, and hundreds of people came to it. They tended to shy away from this stuff. But it was the biggest group, and the most serious group, in the United States for many years. After Pierce died, of course they tried to continue the group and everyone broke up into squabbling. One of the main organizers who's come out of it who's still active today is Billy Roper who's part of the Shield Wall project in Arkansas. I think there's one chapter left. The headquarters of the party still exists. There's been a bunch of legal fights with everyone engaged in lawsuits and various other physical conflicts with each other, and the group has sort of degenerated. So that's the second one, that's the National Alliance. Mike: Okay, so let's talk about–you actually mentioned this on Twitter kind of the other day–the NSPA. Spencer: The NSPA actually was another one of the early splinters that left in 1970. Led by a fellow named Michael Collin. [The name is actually Frank Collin -Mike] They were based in Chicago. They had seen or taken part in Rockwell's popular organizing in Marquette Park in the 60s, and they didn't understand why the party wouldn't follow up with that. And that's what they wanted to do. Again, there was a fighting over the headquarters building. They split off formed their own group. A very small group until they started having rallies in Marquette Park that were still resisting desegregation and attracted community support. Basically, no one wanted to side with this white community that did not want Black people to move in, and they became their champions. And part of the– The thing here is that people in the neighborhood, there were a lot of like Ukrainian immigrants, people who had been from countries that were occupied by the Nazis, who were pro-Nazi. A lot of the areas the Nazis occupied people, you know what I mean, supported them. There were a lot of people, basically, with collaborationist backgrounds, and they didn't have a problem with this. And the nazis championed their cause. And they would hold large rallies in Marquette Park. Some of them attracted thousands of people. They became most famous for the Skokie incident which apparently is being forgotten today by younger people. but was known to everybody in the United States of a certain age. The Chicago city tried to stop them from having their Marquette rallies by putting a bunch of legal barriers. They had to have a huge insurance– Had to take insurance out to do it that was unaffordable. So to get around this they threatened a march in Skokie, Illinois, which was a largely Jewish suburb, wealthy suburb. A lot of Holocaust survivors lived there. Skokie resisted them through legal means. Eventually the case went to the Supreme Court. It was in the national news for like a year or so. It started in 1977. Went to the Supreme Court. The ACLU championed it. The ACLU had been defending nazis before this but this became what they're famous for. Their most famous case. The Supreme Court upheld that local cities could not put unreasonable blocks such as insurance requirements on political groups from marching including nazis. They couldn't stop them from using particular symbols or something. They attempted to ban that. So everyone knew there were neo-nazis in America. It also made the NSPA briefly the most important nazi group, neo-nazi group in America, because at this point there was all these splinter factions from the NSWPP and were all vying to be the most important group or to set up, or attract other groups to them, or to lead coalitions of them. There were different formulations of this. They all had, you know, weird relationships with each other as they were doing this. So the NSPA, because of this lawsuit and the attention it got, became the most popular of these groups, and certainly the most well known of these groups briefly. It eclipsed even the parent party for a while. So that was probably the high point of attention of neo-nazism in America in the 70s. Although, throughout the decade, nazis would consistently make the newspapers. They were a very small movement; had maybe a thousand people in the movement in the US. It became, unlike in the 60s, newspapers, the media started to really love them. So there's tons of coverage of various nazi splinter groups in the various cities for all of their actions. There's a documentary film called California Reich. You can watch it on YouTube. We'll talk about it in a minute. It's about a group in California and such. There was lots of stuff like that. These two things weren't outliers. Mike: Okay, so– Spencer: So Collin– Oh there's a funny ending to it. Collin and his people, they started running for alderman and like city council in Chicago. Some of them did quite well, got like 16% of the vote. But quickly the party started to wane in popularity. Collin's subordinates wanted to get rid of him, so they rifled through his desk and found child porn of him with young teenage boys. They turn him in to the police. He was arrested for child molestation. It also came out his father was a Jewish man who had been in a concentration camp. So there was some real deep stuff going on here. Even though he was a successful organizer, right, against the odds. He went to jail. He was replaced by Harold Covington. We can talk about Covington if we want. He's important in the Greensboro Massacre and then died only a few years ago. Remained an organizer. And then Covington was replaced by someone else and the party frittered away. But yeah, there was a real plot twist in that one after Skokie. Mike: Okay, do you want to talk about the NSWWP? Spencer: Sure, so this was a group– This was the California leader Allen Vincent. He, like everyone else, broke off of the parent party. Founded– He was important cause he was– He wasn't a charismatic organizer, but he could attract followers, and he really liked to get in street fights just as a person. He was a good, stable organizer unlike a lot of these people. Did a lot of crazy rallies in San Francisco. So of course there were fights at his events. At one point he opened a bookstore I believe in the Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco on the same block as a synagogue that a bunch of survivors went to. His bookstore was quickly burned down. He worked with James Mason. Worked with him for a while between 1978 and 1980. Was the editor of his paper The Stormer. Briefly, after the NSPA star faded, his group became a national group. This lasted a few years and it faded away like many of these other groups. So he was well known for the documentary California Reich was filmed about his group while it was still a chapter of the NSWPP before he broke away and became the NSWWP, just to totally confuse anybody about these acronyms. Mike: The National Socialist White– Spencer: White Workers Party. The original group is the National Socialist White People's Party. His group is the National Socialist White Workers Party. Although you might think they're more of an anticapitalist group from the parent party that wasn't true. He lived quite a while through the late 90s. He popped back up in the late 90s, met Jeff Shoep who at the time was running the National Socialist Movement, and became his mentor for a brief period of time. Then he passed away. Mike: Now let's talk about the groups that exist today or the various remnants of it today. So I was going to start with Don Black and Stormfront. Spencer: So Don Black was originally in the National Socialist Youth Movement. It was sort of part of the parent party for people who were under eighteen. There were all these names of these other groups, so people didn't– Their membership card didn't say American Nazi Party or NSWPP. You know he left like many other people. Many neo-nazis, almost all neo-nazis from the 70s were in the party at least at first. That was everybody's entre into this world. So he had been involved in the Dominica debacle. This was in 1981. A group of white supremacists were hired to invade the Caribbean island of Dominica and overthrow the government. They'd made a deal with the– The leader had been deposed and they were going to allow the white supremacists to keep a base there. They were turned in, of course, by somebody, and they all went to jail including Don Black. Later however, he founded Stormfront. It was an early– It wasn't the first at all, but it became the first very popular neo-nazi website. The important thing, it had all these forums where people could have discussions. And it was publicly available, so it was easy for reporters, especially, to go look at the discussions and be able to quote from them which became very important for its visibility. And this was the biggest neo-nazi or white nationalist website really until The Daily Stormer I believe in 2016-2017. So now it's a bit– If you look at it, it's clearly a web 1.0 website and looks a little old school. But it's still the main popular site throughout the 90s and the 00s. And it's still I think for people who are probably gen X and older who are white supremacists, it's still the place that they hang out at. So it had a very important place in the– You know, nazis and other white nationalists have always had a hard time because they were locked out–especially before social media in the last few years even–they were locked out of mainstream platforms. And they need to have alternative platforms. Nazis are actually early adopters to the bbs. The first Nazi or white supremacist bbs opened in 1983. It was actually founded by a former member of Hitler Youth that moved to the United States. And so they were very early adapters to this technology because it was a way for them to get around the media block out. I mean even if they printed newspapers, they couldn't sell them at newsstands. You know even these weird tankie communist sects could sell their newspapers at least some newsstands. Mike: Right. Okay so next up, I guess his story intersects with Don Black's story. We'll talk about occasional political candidate, former Klan leader, former NSLF member David Duke. Spencer: So Duke was a member of the original college student NSLF. He essentially took it over. He was at a party conference in the early 70s, and at this conference, they said NSLF will be– The group itself is changing its name to the White Student Alliance and Duke will be the leader. And this is interesting because it shows Duke's evolution from an outright neo-nazi– He went to school in Louisiana and would go do these free speech– There was a free speech zone, and he would go sell the NSLF newspaper and give neo-nazi speeches. It was a big– You know, he was very well known on campus for this and attracted a lot of attention. There's pictures of him in a Nazi uniform demonstrating against one of the lefty Jewish lawyers Kunstler who had gone to speak at his school. He had a sign that said “Gas the Chicago Seven” who was this left leaning, it was this left leaning political trial in the late 60s. So he took over this new group, and the group kept evolving. So it's originally the National Socialist Liberation Front; then it's the White Student Alliance; then it's the White Youth Alliance; and then it's the Nationalist Party. And then he forms a Ku Klux Klan group or joins one, it's a little vague, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. And this is important because it shows his evolution from a nazi to a kind of white nationalist youth organizer– to a white nationalist student organizer to a white nationalist youth organizer to just a white nationalist organizer. So each time the pool is rippling out, and he's trying to find the right formula that attracts the most people, from very niche to much broader. He becomes– So he forms this newfangled Klan group that doesn't wear hoods, and he's very good with media. This was sort of a new thing to have somebody appear in media who was dressed nice and could talk well, wasn't trying to– You know, Rockwell had waved swastikas in people's faces and was trying to infuriate them, and Duke was doing exactly the opposite. Became very successful. Was very young. He was still in his twenties. He was running one of the more successful Klan groups. One of the things he's remembered for today, he started a Klan Border Watch on the California border to attempt to patrol for illegal immigrants. There he was working with Tom Metzger who later became popular for other things as well as Louis Beam. These were two white supremacist leaders in the 80's who promoted armed struggle. Were the most militant leaders. Started out in Duke's Klan. And as well as Don Black. And I believe Duke married Black's ex-wife. They were all entangled in these ways. So after the Klan stuff he starts running for office in Louisiana and does quite well. And at one point is elected state representative in Louisiana in 1989. This is sort of the high point of the wave of conservatism that goes along with Reagan's reign of power from 1980 to 88, which continues with Bush I to 92. There becomes a revival of popular mainstream American racism. And sort of white flight that had started is very ensconced. There's all these racial conflicts in the late 80s and early 90s like Howard Beach and the Hasidic Jewish and Black riots in Crown Heights. So there's an incredible amount of violent racial tension in the country at the time, and so he's sort of taking advantage of this. He runs for other offices, does quite well, but can't get elected again. And then he's mostly well known for this, and it's the slow burn for the next few decades. He was at Charlottesville which was an interesting moment. To me, this was a sort of handing of the torch from from him to Richard Spencer as the mainstream white nationalist leader. That's how I saw what went on. Although, you know, they didn't actually rally at Charlottesville. The rally itself was dispersed by the police before it began. There was no speeches or ceremony which he could do this, although there was some speeches in a park later. Mike: Let's talk about the National Socialist Movement. Spencer: Yes. The NSM was yet another splinter party. It was formed in 1975 by people who again had come out of the NSWPP. Robert Brannan was its leader. They were sort of going in different directions at the same time. Some of the elements, which included James Mason as well as a guy named Greg Hurls, wanted a more pro-armed struggle line. They were very close to the NSLF. Brannan wanted a more sort of traditional thing, what was called the “uniform and demonstrate” which meant that they would get people in nazi uniforms and hold a rally in public and attract a lot of media attention. People would come and protest and that would just spur that. One of the things they did–they were based in Ohio, southern Ohio–they used to hold a “Free Rudolph Hess” rally I think for over a dozen years in Cincinnati. He was a Nazi leader. He had parachuted to Britain with the intent of creating a peace deal with the British in the early 40s I believe, and then remained imprisoned until his death. I think he committed suicide in the– I think he died in the late 80s early 90s. He lived a long time in Spandau Prison. So this group had some popularity in the early-mid 70s. There was of course splintering of this as Mason left it and went to work with Allen Vincent's group.  And it remained a tiny group with one or two units until the 90s when the then-leader, second leader Clifford Harrington, recruited a teenager named Jeff Shoep. Harrington wasn't a great organizer, but he did, unlike some people, understood there was a revival in neo-nazism in the 80s and 90s through the skinhead thing and wanted to recruit nazi skinheads. Got Shoep to take the party over for him, and then Shoep grew it into the leading neo-nazi party in the United States. It had dozens of chapters in the 00s in particular. I think around 2006 was its height which is a very unusual time for it to be successful. Partly they were pulling from the rest of the movement. The National Alliance collapsed, and other groups in the movement collapsed and they were able to sort of steal their local units and absorb them. But that group still exists today. They were at Charlottesville. They make the news. They just were in the news. There was a rally in Arizona. They're the main group, if you want a nazi group that's going to go and march in uniforms or use nazi symbols–instead of the old brownshirt uniforms, they use black uniforms–and put swastikas on a flag to get attention, that's the group that will do that. So they are on their fourth leader now, Burt Colucci I believe, who like many of them just got arrested. A number of the members have murdered people over the years. A lot of people who– They're sort of the least together group. Yeah they're the kind of group that if you have some sort of countercultural affiliation, if you're not interested in being a professional organizer that you might want to join, if you're a biker, if you're like a skinhead, and if its important for you to have a card saying you belong to a nazi party and you want to yell at people in public that you're a nazi and beat your chest about that and talk about how much you love Adolf Hitler, this is the group for you. It's not a sophisticated organizing project. Mike: Alright, so you have a book in the works about this next one. Let's talk about James Mason, Universal Order, and Siege. Spencer: So I've been working on this book for a while. One day it will be done. James Mason was a teenage member of the American Nazi Party in the 1960s although he never met Rockwell. His mentor in the party was William Pierce. So he met Pierce when he was I believe sixteen years old. Pierce let Mason, who was having a hard time at home, run away from home and stay with him at the party headquarters. Taught him how to– Or got him to learn how to use a printing press which was important before computers. A lot of groups would physically produce their own newspapers themselves with their own printing presses. This helped him out since it was very difficult for nazis to find a printer that would print their publications. So he was in the American Nazi Party. He was in it as it became the NSWPP. He hung around for a while and didn't leave until later. But then he ended up starting to join these other splinter groups while staying in the party. He left in 76. By that time he had already helped form the NSM, and he had also joined secretly the NSLF. This was after Tommasi died, so under the second leader. And he was a supporter of the National Alliance. So at one point, he's a super insider who's like a member of four different neo-nazi parties. And he's always wrangling in the mid 70s as the different groups try to create– try to become the lead group or create an alliance of different groups to overtake the NSWPP. What unites them is that they all hate Koehl who's that leader. They can't do it, as I said before. The NSPA become the leader for a moment because of the Skokie incident. Mason fought with everyone. He did this thing you see from some activists who are sort of sectarian, is they get more and more theoretically specific and crankier and crankier; they fall out with more and more people until they run a project that's really just them and whoever is helping them directly. So he has a falling out with the NSM, and he joins Allen Vincent's group. Runs his newspaper, but he doesn't really like Vincent because he's not radical enough. Mason is deciding more and more that it's hopeless to do public organizing. He comes up with some very strange ideas, not just that nazis should engage in guerilla warfare, but at the time there starts to be these nazi serial killers. Nazis start doing these multiple murders, like Joseph Paul Franklin are serial killers. He killed up to 22 people. He was another former NSWPP member. Roved around he country as a sniper killing mixed race and other couples– Mixed race couples and others, Black people, Jews. And other people just start butchering people, either just doing these random murders or doing workplace massacres. One of the first of them was in New Rochelle by Fred Cowan in New Rochelle, New York. It's just north of New York City in 1977. And there's a lot of serial killers at this time. It's the height for serial killers in America. And so Mason comes up with this theory that not just is guerilla warfare good but these racially based murders are good by nazis and by others. And that the nazis can use them as an attempt to destabilize the system–he starts calling it the system–because nazis can never work through legal means to build a party that will be able to take over the system. He's like every time we try to do this, we get shut down. We either get shut down in the streets, or the courts shut us down, or just shut out of the media. That had been Rockwell's strategy was to attract media attention and build an organization. He's like, “We can't do any of that. We really don't need organization. We need mass chaos to disrupt the system, and only after the system is disrupted will nazis have a chance to take power. He eventually later on starts to praise armed radical left and Black nationalist groups who are coming into conflict with the system, which he doesn't in the 70s but he starts doing it in the 80s. So he has a falling out with Vincent. The NSLF, this is revived under its third leader in 1980, becomes public again. It had actually been absorbed into Allen Vincent's group and then it comes back out as a separate group. He restarts Siege. It's originally the NSLF newspaper. It's sort of their theoretical paper. But it's just him running it, and he's developing these ideas about how murder can be used to forward the nazi cause. Then he comes into contact with Charles Manson. Starts to promote that Manson should be the new nazi guru, just like George Lincoln Rockwell had been, just like Adolf Hitler had been. Portrays him as this spiritual racist figure. Manson had carved a swastika in his head in prison and was sympathetic. He mentions– A lot of people don't know he was extremely racist and antisemitic. This creates yet another tiff between James Mason and the people he's working with. The leader of the party at that point, the fourth leader Karl Hand, who by the way is a big fan of yours. Can I tell a story on your podcast? Mike: Yeah. Spencer: So do you know about the interest of Karl Hand in you? Mike: No. Spencer: Oh you don't? So I actually wrote– As part of this book, I'm writing people who were involved in this movement. And Karl Hand lives upstate, runs a party called the Racial Nationalist Party of America, and he was based for a long time in upstate New York. He is obsessed with you, Mike. After your appearance on Tucker Carlson, he wanted to have a fight with you. Like some sort of, go into a boxing ring, and have a fight. He's an older man now, he's in his 70s. And so I wrote him, and he sent back a whole packet of literature and it included a flier about you with a description of his attempts to contact you and arrange a fist fight with you. Mike: Huh… Spencer:  So you have a fan. You have a fan. I think he said he wrote to the school you were teaching at. Anyways you have a fan in this generation of neo-nazis. And so, anyway, Hand and Mason had a falling out. In what must have been unique in the anals of– the annals? I don't know. You can see I read a lot and don't know how to say certain words. In the history of American neo-nazism, they had an amicable split. Hand actually gave Mason some money to continue Siege. So after 1982 until 1986 Siege is just run by James Mason. It's a very small. It's like a newsletter. He printed it himself. It was six pages long. There was almost no graphics in it. It had a sort of red– It doesn't– Although Mason was a talented graphic designer, I think, it was very plain. It was mostly text. It had a red banner that was it. He ran it off on his own mimeograph machine. Made like 75 copies of it. So this small newsletter that was running 75 copies will become quite influential in retrospect. He ran this till 1986. After the split with the NSLF in 1982, Mason started saying it was published by the Universal Order which directly said that Charles Manson was their spiritual leader. Although, he didn't talk about Manson that much. He never describes what Manson's supposed to do other than, they're not just a neo-nazi group. It's neo-nazism and more. It was a kind of really spiritual national socialism. Although, he's never specific about what that means. But he clearly has been enchanted by Charles Manson and essentially become a follower of him. So this sort of peters out. He becomes more and more cynical. He even gives up that these random murders are going to do anything. He doesn't think that the system will be able to be destabilized, but he does advocate–and this is what's influential today– He says, “Either you can drop out and wait through the apocalypse,” you know that's coming. He becomes convinced that the whole system is going to crumble. And this sort of pessimism is very popular in the 80s across the political spectrum. Partly driven by the Cold War and the survivalist movement. But he says, “You can hide out and wait for the end to come, and then live through it, and we'll have our chance. Or if you're going to go be a terrorist, do it with style. Do it in a way– Don't just kill somebody and be killed. Do it in a way that has panache, and that will inspire people, and that's done well. Plan it well. Don't just freak out and shoot somebody and be killed by the police.” And this philosophy is what becomes popular with Atomwaffen remnants and others today. Like these are your two options. I think it was called “Total attack or total drop out.” By 1986, he's pretty burned out, and that's the end of it. Basically in short order, his book becomes– His newsletters become found by people in the industrial music scene, by Boyd Rice, who's this industrial musician, who's still alive today, and that denies all of this stuff that happened. He recruits several other people. He's in contact with Adam Parfrey, who founded Feral House Press which is still around today; [Michael] Moynihan, who was an industrial and then neo-folk musician; and Nicholas Schreck, a Satanist who's married to Anton LaVey's daughter Zeena. They all work to promote James Mason. They start publishing him in various things. Moynihan takes the newsletters and turns them into a book.which he publishes. It's an anthology of the newsletters. He publishes them himself called Siege in 1993. It becomes a cult classic. It's promoted by this network of people. Basically it's part of the punk rock and assorted underground music and cultural scene, there was a real right wing edge to it, part of which is a predecessor to the alt-right. People like Jim Goad who was the direct inspiration for people like Gavin McInnes of the Proud Boys. There's a lot of nazi imagery circulating, so actual nazis can function in the scene, and it's never clear who's using nazi imagery ironically, or with some interest in nazism but they're not an actual nazi, and who's an actual nazi. It's very unclear, and in this confusion, they can hide, circulate their things, and get some attention. And they do get attention with this book. It gets– There are interviews and it's covered in the alternative weekly newspapers, which were very popular at the time since the internet wasn't what it is now, many which had circulation in tens of thousands in different cities. So they were able to use this network to popularize James Mason's ideas. The book goes out of print. Gets reprinted in 2003 by a fellow in Montana. And he keeps it in circulation, and then it gets picked up with the alt-right, with the Iron March platform which is a discussion board that all these contemporary terrorists, alt-right terrorist groups, neo-nazi terrorist groups come out of, Atomwaffen and others come out of. And they reprint the book yet again. It continues to be circulated as a pro-terrorism cult classic. Mike: So do you think there are any other individuals or groups worth mentioning? Spencer: There are like scattered ones. There's a guy named Rocky Suhayda, I believe is his name who runs a group called the American Nazi Party. It used to get a lot of attention because he was good at using social media and various internet media. So people could always quote him and say the American Nazi Party says X or Y. Although, he was just a random NSWPP member. Art Jones came out of the party while he was in Chicago, and he's a sort of perennial candidate there. But in 2016, the Republicans failed to run someone against him in the primary. It was in a heavily Democratic district. And so in lieu of that he became the Republican candidate for– I forget what it was, US rep or something. And he's a nazi, a Holocaust denier. And so this was all in the news, you know “How is a Holocaust denier the Republican candidate?” This had been– This was a strategy that Nazis developed in the 70s. They would run for offices. Until the late 70s, it was a much more kind of benign movement in a way, not ideologically, but in their tactics, they had not moved into this murderous terrorism phase until a little later on. And so he continues that kind of– It's actually a toolbox of tactics that go back into the 60s: doing things that are kind of publicity stunts to get attention, one of which is running for office. So briefly Jones got in the press. He was in the press again. He tried to run again in 2020, but the Republicans finally like, they put somebody up. I mean, this is the problem, parties have limited resources. If you're putting someone up just to defeat somebody else in the primary even though you know you won't win in the general, that's a waste of your resources. It shows how nazis and other white supremacists can sort of drain resources from the mainstream in an attempt to just not let them get a foothold in the various places that they're trying to– In the various little cracks they're trying to stick their fingers in. Mike: And you mentioned Harold Covington. Do you want to talk about him too? Spencer: Sure. Covington died a couple years ago but had some influence even on the alt-right. He was again a member of the NSWPP. He had taken over the NSPA from Collin after he'd gotten Collin arrested for being a child molester and exposed him as of Jewish descent. Ran that party for a bit. He was also– Some members of his party–he was in North Carolina–took part in the Greensboro massacre in 1979 where a joint group of nazis and Klansmen had killed communists who unwisely held a “Death to the Klan” march but were not prepared for what they had prodded. He ran for attorney general around the same time in North Carolina, state attorney general, and got 40% of the vote. There are a few other instances like this where neo-nazis were able to get a huge amount of votes around this time period. This is around the period where Duke's– Well Duke's elected later, I guess. So he goes to this– He does all this crazy stuff. He goes to Africa to fight in Rhodesia. He was this contentious fellow. Had falling outs with everyone. Moves to the Pacific Northwest, and becomes the last of this old guard of people who are advocating the states in the Pacific Northwest, which are overwhelmingly white, break off from the rest of the country and form a white ethnostate. His last group was called the Northwest Front which I believe still exists today. And they would both advocate this idea, try to get involved in the various– There's a regionalist/independence movement called Cascadia that wants to break some of that area off, but it wants a kind of lefty leaning, ecological state or regionalist entity, and so he tried to give that a specifically racist cast. So this created, again, a lot of these groups in the Cascadian movement, whatever you think about it (There's a lot of kooks.) they had to move and take their resources just to fight the white nationalists within their ranks, to make sure the white na– Because it was popular. You go to Portland; you see people with Cascadian flags on their porches and stuff. There's a sort of intuitive popularity for it there. So they then had to redirect resources to fight against these people, to show that they weren't racist. It might have been good in a way because it forces groups to commit to an anti-racist stance. The presence of white nationalists sometimes does shape up these majority groups to affirm anti-racism. So maybe there is a silver lining to that. Mike: Dr. Sunshine, thank you again for coming on The Nazi Lies Podcast. You can keep up to date with Dr. Sunshine's writings through his newsletter the Sonnenschein Update which you can find on his website. And you can donate to his Patreon. It's also on his website, spencersunshine.com. This has been real fun. Hope we can have you back again for a book release. Spencer: Yeah, it was great chatting with you as always, Mike. [Theme song]

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

This week Kyle and Matthew welcome Mike Bockoven, Alysia Homminga, and Michelle Ianiro to the show to discuss their online theatrical mini series adaptation of Mike's book “Fantasticland” Michelle adapted the play and brought everybody together and Alysia is directing and editing the project. They discuss the origins of this project, the process of collaborating remotely, and creative problem solving in the age of Covid. Kyle has a role in the series and asks the trio what their experience was like working on the show. Plus, Matt finally gets to ask what the hell this show is. See below for info about how to see the show. (Also, Kyle has some stand up shows this week and there are links below to tickets for those as well!)   Weekly Rads: Kyle – The Before Trilogy (movies) Matthew – Barb and Star go to Vista del Mar (movie) Mike – Let's Go Play at the Adams (book) Aly – Okay Human by Weezer (album) Michelle – The Hunt (movie)     Fantasticland series info: Instagram: @thtfantasticland www.townhalltheater.com Ticket Link: [inset when link available]     Kyle's Shows this week:   Weds 2/24/21 Flappers Wednesday Virtual Yoo Hoo Room Show http://flc.cc/G3JE811 (worth clicking the link just to see the terrible headshot flappers uses from when somebody hacked their system years ago...)   Sunday 2/28/21 Full Circle Comedy watch live on facebook! facebook.com/fullcirclebrewingco or watch on zoom meeting ID: 9104467350 Passcode: beerisgood   Go to www.Patreon.com/thisisrad and subscribe to send in questions for our Listener Questions episodes, to get exclusive bonus episodes, extra content, and access to the This Is Rad Discord server!   Check out our merch! https://www.teepublic.com/stores/this-is-rad  Also! Check out merch for Kyle's record label Radland Records https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/4109261-radland-logo  Also! Laura started an online store for her art! Go buy all of her stuff!!!https://www.teepublic.com/stores/lmknight?utm_campaign=8178&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=lmknight   Follow us on social media or whatever! Twitter: @ThisIsRadPod @kyleclarkisrad @MatthewBurnside @LMKnightArt Instagram: @thisisradpodcast Tumblr: thisisradpod.tumblr.com http://www.thisisradpodcast.com

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Ana: I heard that South Africa is famous for its wild animals.Mike: That's true. We have many different kinds of animals in South Africa. Have you heard of the big five?Ana: I think so but I don't remember what it is.Mike: So the big five are the animals that foreign tourists like to come and see in South Africa. And there are safaris and trips you can go on to wildlife reserves to see these animals.Ana: So what are they?Mike: So would you like to guess?Ana: I guess lions.Mike: Yes, that's one of them.Ana: And elephants.Mike: Yes.Ana: And giraffes.Mike: No. The giraffe is definitely a big animal but it's not one of the big five. The other three are rhinoceros, the – is it the water buffalo, I think. And the final one is – what is the final one?Ana: Is it the cheetah?Mike: Yes, the cheetah. Yes. The cheetah can run very, very fast.Ana: Okay, and have you seen all of these animals?Mike: Let me think. It's been a while since I visited a wildlife reserve but I've seen elephants before. And let's see; I've seen a lion. I don't think I've ever seen a cheetah. I've seen a rhinoceros from far away.Ana: I've heard they're quite dangerous.Mike: I don't think that there are not many of them in the wild. I don't know if there are any in the wild. They're all in wildlife enclosures so that actually I don't think many people are injured or killed by rhinoceroses. But actually, do you know what the most dangerous animal is in Africa?Ana: Is it the lion?Mike: No, it's not. It's the hippopotamus.Ana: Really?Mike: I think they killed more people every year in the world than any other animal.Ana: Wow, that's very surprising.Mike: Maybe mosquitoes kill more with malaria but in terms of big animals, it's definitely the hippopotamus.Ana: Wow.Mike: They have very long teeth as well.Ana: That's scary.Mike: Yeah. It is pretty scary. You don't want to be – you know, they can swim as well. So they would – and if you go out on the river in a little bit on a dam and there's a hippopotamus, he can tip your boat over and bite you in half.Ana: All right. So you should definitely look out for hippos when you go to South Africa.Mike: Yeah. You should be careful. Crocodiles can also be nasty.Ana: Okay.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Ana: I heard that South Africa is famous for its wild animals.Mike: That's true. We have many different kinds of animals in South Africa. Have you heard of the big five?Ana: I think so but I don't remember what it is.Mike: So the big five are the animals that foreign tourists like to come and see in South Africa. And there are safaris and trips you can go on to wildlife reserves to see these animals.Ana: So what are they?Mike: So would you like to guess?Ana: I guess lions.Mike: Yes, that's one of them.Ana: And elephants.Mike: Yes.Ana: And giraffes.Mike: No. The giraffe is definitely a big animal but it's not one of the big five. The other three are rhinoceros, the – is it the water buffalo, I think. And the final one is – what is the final one?Ana: Is it the cheetah?Mike: Yes, the cheetah. Yes. The cheetah can run very, very fast.Ana: Okay, and have you seen all of these animals?Mike: Let me think. It's been a while since I visited a wildlife reserve but I've seen elephants before. And let's see; I've seen a lion. I don't think I've ever seen a cheetah. I've seen a rhinoceros from far away.Ana: I've heard they're quite dangerous.Mike: I don't think that there are not many of them in the wild. I don't know if there are any in the wild. They're all in wildlife enclosures so that actually I don't think many people are injured or killed by rhinoceroses. But actually, do you know what the most dangerous animal is in Africa?Ana: Is it the lion?Mike: No, it's not. It's the hippopotamus.Ana: Really?Mike: I think they killed more people every year in the world than any other animal.Ana: Wow, that's very surprising.Mike: Maybe mosquitoes kill more with malaria but in terms of big animals, it's definitely the hippopotamus.Ana: Wow.Mike: They have very long teeth as well.Ana: That's scary.Mike: Yeah. It is pretty scary. You don't want to be – you know, they can swim as well. So they would – and if you go out on the river in a little bit on a dam and there's a hippopotamus, he can tip your boat over and bite you in half.Ana: All right. So you should definitely look out for hippos when you go to South Africa.Mike: Yeah. You should be careful. Crocodiles can also be nasty.Ana: Okay.

Minute with Dr. Mike Let's talk about the "F" word Let’s talk about the good “F” word! In This Podcast: 00:18 – What is the “F” word? 00:37 – Keep the faith! 01:36 – Write down your goals.

Join the Freelance Sales Talent Marketplace or visit www.SalesCulture.work to stay connected. Enjoy today's conversation the CEO of OrthoLive Dr. Mike Let's Connect InstaGram: https://www.instagram.com/joealexlemon/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joealexlemon/SC LinkedIn Sales Culture Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sales-cultureWebsite: JoeAlexLemon.work

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.

In the second installment of our Incredible Exits series, we welcome Mike Jackness back to the podcast. Mike, one of our favorite guests, is here discussing the recent sale of his online business, ColorIt. Mike is a lifelong entrepreneur and hosts a podcast with a 30k listener following. On his show, he talks all things about e-commerce, email marketing, and Amazon. Mike's decision to sell this particular business was based not on struggling to grow it, but simply on the the need to offload something from his plate. He was well aware of what he'd done to grow it, and the potential for its future growth, he simply knew it was time to hand over the reins. We wanted to have Mike on to tell us firsthand how that process went, the challenges he faced, and how he eventually reached multiple offers. He shares some of the key things he did to get the business sold at 96% of the list price. We discuss how some acquisitions don't go as smoothly as others, even for someone who seems to have a great grip on how to grow and eventually sell an online business. Ths episode chronicles the sale and buying process: what Mike has done right and what he would change if he could. Episode Highlights: We hear about Mike's journey as an entrepreneur and what led him to start the Ecomcrew podcast. The factors that led him to sell one of his e-commerce businesses. Mike talks us through the 10 risk factors to take into account for e-commerce success. How Amazon can be the judge and jury when it comes to keeping your e-commerce business alive. The one thing he would go back and do differently in the transaction. The importance of planning in advance for an easier buyer transition. Why some entrepreneurs get caught up in the squirrel syndrome and often find that as they take on too much they run into trouble. Mike takes us through the launch process and how we got to the multiple with the right buyer. The importance of instilling confidence in the buyer. The inventory issue specific to this brand and how that affected the sale. Why one can't plan the perfect inventory in e-commerce business. How to find middle ground on the inventory excess in the sale and acquiescing when necessary. Why the seller makes all the difference in the sellability of the business. The way a seller should act under any circumstances.   Transcription: Mark: Joe you got to have one of our favorite podcast guests on; Mike Jackness. And Mike actually retained you or hired you to help sell one of his properties. And we get to do another episode … is this part of our Amazing Acquisitions? I don't know … our Amazing Exits I'm sorry. Joe: Incredible Exits, come on Mark get it right. Mark: My goodness, I made it up. It's a good— Joe: I don't even know what it's called. Somebody's going to tell me there's a certain term for things that flow off the tongue very well … incredible. Mark: It's almost as if I'm not paying attention to what you're doing at all. You got to have him on the podcast about selling his business. Joe: Indeed. Mark: I'd like to know about it. Joe: You know he's just an awesome human being and that made selling his business and the person buying it that more excited about it. Look, Mike is an influencer. He has a podcast where he's got 30,000 people listening to him every month and he talks about e-commerce and email marketing and Amazon. We had challenges because people are like well if Mike Jackness isn't killing it with this I don't know if I can do any better. But the reality was Mike was just simply chasing too many rabbits as he says. He had four brands inside of one seller account. He has the podcast and he has other projects going on. So he wasn't giving his full attention to this. So really the reason I wanted to have him on was to have people hear from him some of his … well-known and an influencer much larger audience in his podcast than we have what he was doing wrong. If he could go back and do it all over again how he would have changed things so that it would have been an easier process for him and we would have had … we had multiple offers but would have had a much easier process in reaching those multiple offers. And some of the key differences that he did to seal the deal. He didn't do it to seal the deal, he was just doing it anyway and it is what sealed the deal and got us under LOI at 96% of the list price. Mark: Yeah you know one of the most popular articles that I wrote on our blog back when I was doing all the blogging on Quiet Light Brokerage was the story of my own process of buying a business and in my own estimation failing at it. And frankly, as the founder of Quiet Light, it's kind of humbling to go out there and say yup I made an acquisition I completely failed but here is why. And I got so much good feedback from that saying this is great thank you for sharing these details because it really helps. So hearing from someone like Mike Jackness and his episode that you did with him is probably my favorite episode that we have that I've listened to. I don't listen to my own episodes which is why they aren't like [inaudible 00:03:51.2]. That episode from Mike Jackness in all seriousness he talks about email marketing and how he does email marketing. That's fantastic so if you haven't listened to it, go back and listen to it. It would be interesting to hear what he had as far as his own self-assessment when it comes to selling his business and some of the struggles that he had as well. And I think it might be encouraging for those of us that are out there like how are these guys doing all of it because we only hear about the successes, right? Joe: Yeah. There are challenges in here and I was … my initial plan was to do a two part series but we managed to get it all in. It's a little long folks. It's about 45 minutes or so and then the plan is to do a follow up episode about due diligence, closing, transition, and training. We may even have the buyer on and have all three of us on the podcast. Mark: It's 45 minutes? Joe: Yes. Mark: Well, I should shut up. We should get to it. Joe: Let's go to it. Joe: Hey, folks Joe Valley here from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got somebody that's been on before; Michael Jackness from EcomCrew. Welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. Mike: Welcome back. Joe: Welcome back is right. You actually inspired this type of episode as I said before we recorded. Folks Mike has … when he was on before he shared his expertise on email marketing and the use of Klaviyo. Today he's actually going to be our first exit entrepreneur or Incredible Exits guest. Mike decided to list his business for sale last December. We talked about it. We got it listed. And now we're under Letter Of Intent. We're recording this on February 12th and we wanted to share Mike's direct experience so that you hear it … hear about the process, and what you should do right, what you've done right and what you do wrong, and hear from somebody other than me. Mike has been through it. He's got an audience of 30,000 that listens on a monthly basis at EcomCrew. If you're not listening to EcomCrew … I know I'm promoting another podcast but it's one of the absolute best out there. Go to EcomCrew.com they're always helping entrepreneurs in the e-commerce space. So Michael Jackness, 30 seconds just tell some folks who you are again for those that didn't listen to the first episode that we did together. Mike: I'm basically a serial entrepreneur. I started my first business when I was a kid. I did have a stint for seven years in corporate life. One of my clients did hire me but for the last 15 years, I've been doing my own thing either in affiliate marketing or e-commerce lest the 5 plus years. And when I got on e-commerce I realized that we were coming at things a little bit differently. We kind of got at it as a tech company rather than a product company. And we realized we had a lot to share. So the entire process pretty much; as you mentioned EcomCrew, even blogging, and podcasting, and telling the world about what we've been doing. But one of the things that make us unique is we also talk about all the negatives not just the positive sunshine blue smoke up your ass crap. In fact we go out of our way to talk about some of the hardships of running a business and specifically e-commerce. So yeah that's a 10,000 foot view. Joe: And in just about 30 seconds; so thanks. Yeah, I get it, I can't emphasize enough. If you are a current e-commerce owner you should listen EcomCrew as well especially the Under the Hood series that I enjoy so much and inspired the Incredible Exit series here at Quiet Light. All right Mike at one point, you came to me. You reached out I think probably around Thanksgiving or so and said you wanted to exit. Did you plan that well in advance or did you just find yourself tired and ready to move on? Mike: Yeah, there were a ton of factors that went into that initial conversation. We had a different plan. I can tell you what. We'll talk a little bit about that but the plan was to do this a little bit longer. But I actually just did a podcast about risk factors in e-commerce and we don't have 30 minutes to go over the entire episode but there were 10 risk factors that I called out. Which basically were like the amount of inventory that you have, tariffs, taxes … just kind of like a risk to reward type of thing, competition, Amazon getting involved in brands, Amazon shutting your account down, getting unbalanced to be more Amazon than not off Amazon things of this nature. And for me what I realized … I started waking up one day realizing that for us this stuff they've kind of gone a little bit out of balance. We're at a point right now as we're doing this podcast because I haven't quite done the exit yet where we have $1.3 million in inventory total company wide as we've been growing. As you know in e-commerce it's hard to get any money out of your business because we are growing it 100% per year and it's a situation where money just keeps on piling back in the business. You have a tax bill every year and without the money to even pay for that because you're plowing everything back in the inventory for growth. And we have been running at that speed for almost four years. And because of some of those other risk factors, the kind of leverage is changing a little bit. I felt like it was time that we needed to take some chips off the table. And combining that with just honestly being a little burned out; running at that speed is definitely exhausting. I found myself either dreaming about Amazon shutting my account down or waking up every morning first thing and checking my inbox and seeing if they had been shut down. Not because we do anything black hat at all but because I see things that happen out there because of EcomCrew and also [inaudible 00:09:05.1]. You hear stories of people that legitimately didn't do anything wrong but it doesn't matter because Amazon can be the judge and jury and executioner all in one. And factoring all these different things in it just … it felt like it was time. And we didn't know it when I had that initial conversation with you. I didn't know exactly what that was going to look like. At one time we had talked about selling everything. I was kind of like just in a bit of bad mood that day and then we kind of start walking through some more realistic and better options to kind of end up [inaudible 00:09:35.9]. Joe: Yeah, let's talk about that the realistic option of selling everything I have things or setup because I really want people to learn from this process and what your goals were and the challenges that we've had and some of the amazing things that you have done throughout the process as well. So the first thing we looked at was selling all four of the brands that you have. You have it under one LLC and two of the brands are doing very, very well. And two of the brands are start up brands where they're really working at a loss because you have a tendency to just focus on organic traffic and brand recognition for a series of months to a year and don't mind operating at a lost. First and foremost Mark had a podcast with somebody from a PE firm that painted this picture. He said the thing about private equity investors is … well, think about it when you were a kid. And he says you get a bag of marbles from and you try to negotiate a deal with your buddy for the bag of marbles. The first thing you want to do is reach into that bag of marbles and take out all the chipped ones. You don't want to buy the chipped marbles. And then you want to focus on the best marbles. And so when looking at your four brands, two of them were really operating at a loss so my advice right away was let's take those out of the picture. Because when you're selling a business let's say at a three time multiple and you have two brands in the bag and they're both operating at let's say negative $10,000 in discretionary earnings; that's $20,000 times three that's $60,000 off the list price of your business if you go with the multiple of discretionary earnings valuation model which is what we do in marketplace valuations. So we had to pull those two out. And then we looked at what at the time was one of the larger brands of the two. We've got ColorIt that we've talked about. We've talked about it openly and you've done presentations all over the world on your email marketing campaigns with Klaviyo and ColorIt. But the other one, different space, and we had a challenge. See one of the things that we talk about all the time are the 4 pillars of sellable businesses; age, documentation, growth, transferability. And the big thing that we had a problem there was the transferability of that particular brand. Two of the SKUs that you had which were not the largest used by any stretch, you were reselling those, right? And you reached out to your vendor to confirm that you could transfer those and what did they say? Mike: They said no. Joe: Simple as that. So that takes away one of the pillars. It makes it more complicated. But again as you said you were in a bad mood that day that we talked. A lot of emotions in selling your business and as you say in the introduction that we did for ColorIt, you've been chasing too many rabbits. When you're doing that you're getting tired, exhausted, and pulled into many different directions and often going nowhere. So we ended up setting that one aside as well and focused only on ColorIt and went with that to launch. Before we get into the initial launch multiple and things that we found that were really amazing about it we found one more challenge or maybe two. You have one LLC with all four brands under one LLC and all four brands in one seller account. What have you done since our initial conversations back in late November early December to rectify that? Mike: Let me kind of set the stage just real quick of why we got there as well because it's interesting in business. There's two phenomena that is existing, first of all, I've been in business for 15 years so I kind of knew some of the hiccups and roadblocks we might get into down the road. But I had run multiple businesses in the past. So whenever you do something and you don't like it you tend to correct for that in another way in a future endeavor whether it's a business or in personal life. And the thought of like having … we actually have more than four things going through this LLC, there are other non e-commerce stuff and some other things as well. And the thought of having six or seven different tax returns and credit cards for each business and trying to figure out how we're going to separate employees or like the lease or back in software like Skubana or you know a UPS count; all these different things like having to have them all segmented out just was not appealing to me in any way shape or form. And I was more concerned about today than tomorrow as far as operating the business. And I also had this thought process of when I'm ready to get out of e-commerce I'm going to get rid of all of it once. I'm a pretty binary kind of guy like I'm either all in or not doing it. And I thought the day that … when it came that we would get out of e-commerce we would just sell that conglomerate. But life happens and business happens and like I said some of these risk factors changed and the reality was that we wanted to pivot and change our philosophy and our business plan pretty quickly. I equate this also to like when you want to pay taxes you want to have your business show the lowest amount of money. You're trying to figure out any expense you can have. That's really good for a tax but when you go to apply for a loan it better be showing lots of income. So it's like … it's a similar kind of phenomenon where like in one part it makes sense to do one thing but in another … on the other side, it makes sense to do another. So we were kind of at that spot where it was obvious that this was going to be a problem because the things that came up in the calls over and over again were really two things. Number one shared resources of employees or other resources which I understand the challenge there. And also the fact that everything's in this one Amazon account. And let me tell you man if there was anything I can go back and do differently it would be having multiple Amazon accounts at a much earlier stage. The challenge is Amazon doesn't make this easy. They won't allow you to just create multiple accounts first of all without getting permission. And in order to get permission, you have to have a separate company. You have to have a separate … either separate ownership structure, separate EIN, separate checking account, separate credit card. All this stuff has to be 100% separated out in order for them to grant you permission to create another Amazon account. So we are going through that now and I mean what a disaster. Like we're having to … we're trying to close within about six weeks of recording this. And to hand over the account at closing we have to have just Brand A which is going to be ColorIt and the Amazon account and Brand C or B, C, D have to be out of the Amazon account and in a new account and it has to happen as seamlessly as possible which is impossible because we're … we only have inventory in Amazon. All of our inventory is on Amazon. So we're having to recall some of it and relabel it, get it into the other account. And we keep a relatively [inaudible 00:16:34.1] amount of stuff in Amazon so it's not … looking on a SKU by SKU basis it isn't that big of a deal but because we're a high seven figure seller total we're recalling truckloads with the goods from Amazon. It's not going to be cheap and when you recall stuff it gets damaged a lot of times. The stuff shows up and looks used by the time that … you're shipping it in and it's getting … someone's handling it and putting it on the shelf and they got to go take it off the shelf put it in another box and crate and when you recall stuff it doesn't come back in the best of shape. So yeah I mean it's kind of a disaster all around but this is what we've had to do to get to where we are. And moving forward they all are all going to be in separate companies. So at any point when the time comes to put Business B up for sale, we'll have it all in one clear concise company; one account and we'll just pull the trigger and be done. Joe: You know I think you had said at one point you knew what to do and you had one plan and it was to sell the entity and all the brands within it at one time. And then we found three stumbling blocks. Two of them were operating at a loss because you are focused on organic traffic and brand building. And one where two of the vendors said: “yeah no, we like you, Mike, we don't know anybody else we're not going to do this deal with anyone else”. So you ran into challenges there. And you also said if you have to make those changes someday you'll do that. And all of a sudden you woke up and someday was here and we had an action that we wanted to take right away whereas the idea of I always say don't decide to sell which is eventually you do decide to sell but plan to sell. So my little slogan there doesn't actually work all that well. But seriously though I think the thing to do is to plan it out in advance as much as possible to make it strangely enough as easy and seamless as possible for the buyer. For that person that is going to put a million dollars of their life savings on the line or two or three or 100,000. The amount doesn't matter. It's a lot of money for the person that stroking the check or sending the wire. So that's the key thing. Mike: Can I just … I want to mention one other thing if you don't mind? [inaudible 00:18:48.4] this thing. Joe: Yeah. Mike: You're asking just kind of like some of the other things that kind went wrong and we could've done better. This is stuff that's often not talked about again in entrepreneurship but the reality is is that it would have been better just to have one brand and focus on it or maybe two rather than trying to do too many things at once which is a trap that a lot of entrepreneurs get caught in. Something I tell myself all the time, I even had it in writing on a blog post like eight years ago like I won't do that again; get into too many things. Entrepreneurs are different … there are different classes of entrepreneurs but the kind of entrepreneur that I am it's the squirrel syndrome. It's always exciting to do something new rather than what you're working on. I get bored really easily. To me, the business aspects are way less about the money than the personal enjoyment and excitement part of it. And oftentimes you end up with this … you chase rabbits both will get away saying that I use all the time. But I give that advice and don't follow it as well as I should. So that's another thing that you could really take away from this if your … the existing business you have is probably the best one that you have, the same type of thing with a car like the cheapest car that you'll ever have is the one that you own right now. You are then going on and buying a new one. Or any of these types of things can be applied to other aspects of your life as well. But if you are focused on one company like you typically have all your T's crossed and I's dotted and that's how I like to run my companies because I am a bit of a perfectionist. But as you spread your resources across multiple businesses things like to fall through the cracks that make things less attractive to a buyer. And the reality is is it's not as easy as it should be to just cookie cutter your business into another one. We had a really great podcast about this a year and a half ago. It was actually something we recorded live at E-commerce Fuel Live last year back in Gohana. So I just want to throw those things out as well as just other things that to be thinking about. As you're planning your exit you should be a lot of times it's … well, I want to get in this other thing or as you're growing it's really exciting and it's infectious and you want to keep on that path because it's fun to tell everybody how fast you're growing. And everyone pats you in the back and society makes things even worse because they're always like yeah man good job and everybody is like oh good job you only grew by 5% last year because that's just how we're all wired. Which the reality is that as Dave my partner always says is that revenues are vanity and profits are sanity. Joe: Yeah. Now I love that again this is … I want people to hear from you more than me. I say his stuff all the time and you're someone that's going through it right now and coaches thousands of people on a regular basis to improve their businesses and Dave as well. The other thing that is separating out the brands and separating out the LLC does for you the seller and the potential buyer is it casts a broader net of potential buyers. And the broader the net the more interest level there is going to be in the business. And the more interest level the more likely you're going to get an offer at or close to list price. And in this case we did not say SBA prequalified, technically you can take a business like yours and go through the process and have your accountant separate all those things out and certify it. It's not a full audit and you could try to go through the process and make it SBA prequalified. But in the time frame that you and I were trying to do this, you wanted to be under Letter Of Intent by January 31st. It didn't happen. We came close but we couldn't have gone through that process because that process would have taken six to eight weeks for your attorney to do it. And given the time of year, it might have taken longer because he's in full on tax preparation now. So that's the other thing that separating out your LLC's by brand will do for you is that when you wake up one day and you want to exit it's clean, it's simple and you can do that with a lot less work. And that work Mike we … it was a lot of work in preparing the listing for sale. In the Profit & Loss statements and then in that client interview everybody's heard about it … I told my wife when I sold my business I felt like I was working harder preparing the business for sale and going through the process of getting it sold than I was actually running it. And when I was running my own I was working about 20 hours a week running the business so that tells you what that workload is like. In terms of what we did, I want to talk a little bit about the launch process and talk about the multiples and some of the things we did but you did it just absolutely right spot on. We did go out a little early the right? We talked in late November early, early December and you had a goal and I wanted to help you achieve that goal. I'm human and I think that what I probably should have done in hindsight is said no, this is probably not the best approach. We went out in I think around the 10th of December, listed the business at a pretty strong multiple. It was at a four time multiple. And went out and said Look December is going to be great. Trust us these numbers will drop to a 3.5 once the December numbers are read. And the ultimate answer we got was cool, I think I'll just wait to see if that's true. So we've got a … I think we had a phone call, maybe we had one buyer seller conference call in the month of December and then you're a man of your word and you like to under promise and over deliver. And when December numbers came in they were up 80% year over year. Mike: Yeah. Joe: I've used this analogy with a lot of folks before and they've heard me say this again you can list something at a four time multiple and if it's growing 25% year over year consistently the buyer earns their money back in 2.7 years. I did not do the math on 80% and I won't but that really got people off the fence a little bit. We updated the P&L's, got the December P&L's and then we're relaunching I think on January 8th, 9th, or 10th, in and around there. And we actually dropped the price by $75,000 too. So the multiple didn't drop to just a 3.5 it dropped to a 3.2 multiple and we relaunched. And I think we had three or four phone calls out of the gate. The goal is to have three to five in the first 30 to 45 days and one acceptable offer. We did have just two offers in this case and one was just not there. We had two or three phone calls with them. One was interesting, right? I was traveling to Dallas so I'm on a conference call with Mike and the buyer and I'm actually going through TSA security on the conference call. And thankfully Mike can talk folks. So he was talking as I put my headset down and went through security. I picked it up on the other end and you were still talking. And you had a terrible cold. Mike: Yeah, that was a pretty embarrassing call. Joe: It was great though and the thing that you do so incredibly well is you instill confidence in the buyers. You're honest. People trust you. And it made them … anybody that had the opportunity to talk with you I think wanted to make an offer if they could pull it together. But we couldn't do an SBA buyer because of that commingling issue so we were focused primarily on cash buyers. Keep in mind though that not all SBA buyers don't have the cash. Many of them do they just prefer to make their money go further with an SBA loan. So I think we were both at ECF, that's E-commerce Fuel, at the event down in New Orleans and I drove you nuts a few times saying I think I may have an offer right? Did I—? Mike: It was so funny, you texted me at the opening party I think I have an offer and then you went to bed. I think like you didn't actually have the offer yet I just think I read the text a little long but … so I was like walking around the entire thing looking like anybody know where Joe Valley is? Like I want to know where Joe Valley is. Joe: Yeah, I think I heard somebody say Joe likes to go to bed early. He doesn't stay up late at these events. He's probably in bed. And that … I felt a little embarrassed there. I'm like okay I'm getting a reputation for going bed by nine. But we ended up not going under LOI— Mike: [inaudible 00:27:07.7] morning than I did. Joe: I think I probably did. I was really hopeful that we could go under LOI while at E-commerce Fuel because that would be a great feather in your cap and mine. We would be able to have a drink there and celebrate. But it didn't quite work. It took an extra … probably four or five days. But we had some challenges with the business. We ended up getting fairly close and I'll do the math as you answer this next question in terms of that asking price; that 3.2 multiple. But we had some challenges and the big challenge was something you talked about earlier. One of these big issues that you've got is you're taking all the profits from the business and putting it back into inventory. And when you have a business that's growing at the rate that yours was that's a lot of inventory. Can you talk about that a little bit in terms of the challenges that we had there? Mike: With inventory specifically in terms with ColorIt? Joe: Yes. Mike: Yeah. And this is something that we have worked really hard on in our business and we're very [inaudible 00:28:06.7] which is that you basically want as little inventory as humanly possible at all times. I mean you don't … there's a lot of reasons for this. If you have too much inventory when something goes wrong like you're stuck with a hot potato. That always sucks but probably more importantly especially when you're in this growth phase is cash flow is the most important thing. There's this saying that's been around forever which is cash is king and there's a reason for this; for every dollar that you have an excess inventory that's a dollar that you don't have in some new product … some new product launch or some other thing that can make you more money. And every inventory business is going to go through this. There is no inventory business I think on earth that … especially when it's newer and growing at this speed that can plan inventory perfectly all the time. Either you're going to err on the side of caution of not having too much inventory and be willing to run out of SKUs because of that. Or you're going to err on the side of caution of having too much inventory and err on the side of caution of never running out of a SKU. And for me, we went with the latter because in the early days of selling on Amazon we realize that when you run out of stuff it can be really detrimental. We had one SKU that we still are trying to recover from. It's a part of this issue here with this business sale we're now we have too much inventory because we could never get it to recover back to the point where it was before. So we try to in our inventory business turn our inventory three to four times a year which means that you should have no more than three to four months of inventory at any one time. And with ColorIt that was definitely not the case. So it was not the case. I mean there's a bunch of different exceptions that put things way further out than that but there was an old legacy book manufacturer that we work with that had very high MOQ's. So if we wanted to even sell the item we had to order a year worth of it at one time. And that was a decision that we made in Q2. We had a newer product that we just started selling and it was selling really well so we've ordered more of it and again at their MOQ so we have more than 4 months of inventory there. And so the bottom line was that of the 300 … actually it was $400,000 in total inventory that we have for ColorIt both from stuff that's in stock and things that we had already placed orders for that haven't shown up yet. There was about 100 … I don't have the numbers in front of me but $100,000-ish I think of inventory that that would take longer than 12 months to sell. And so for me because I've been on both sides of the fence as both a buyer and seller of businesses and I really believe living life like don't ask others or don't do what you want to do yourself, I realize that before we even start talking to the buyer that we probably have to make some sort of concession on the inventory. It just would be unrealistic to just be like no you're going to the inventory and too bad because I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that myself. The other thing that I don't like doing is like having someone pay me with my money. So that one thing I was steadfast about was that we're not going to take financing or delay the purchase price. I want an all cash offer for the for the purchase price but the inventory component I thought the right thing to do was to pretty quickly acquiesce and come into a middle ground with a buyer. So what we had agreed to do was, first of all, there was one SKU that I admit that just doesn't sell well. It was a bad buy on us. We just rid it off 100%. It's about $8,000 dollars. They can either … they were in a trash can if they want to transfer or they can keep it and do whatever they want with. There were a couple of SKUs that I kind of conceded to that were slower movers that I felt like was going to be kind of detrimental to their business to buy at with 24 months with the inventory at face value. So what we agreed to was we'll sell you anything that we think is going take longer than 12 months within that inventory at a 50% haircut. We'll just write off half of it and you can buy it for 50% off. So now you … yes, you carrying more inventory but you're buying it at a price that makes sense to carry it. And then the third group of SKUs were things that were basically like in this 12 to 18 month window, they weren't really that low for stock, and the biggest culprit of that was this new item that we're trending higher on. So I think ultimately and I convinced the buyer ultimately especially once the Christmas season comes they aren't going to have … they aren't going to actually have more than 12 months with the inventory. So we agreed that even though our forecast shows it's going to take more than 12 months to sell it's because we were using like a January sales number for that we weren't including sales growth in that forecast and we also weren't including what I believe that was going to happen in December which is December is about 3X any other month in our business. So ultimately we wrote off $40,000 with the inventory and agree to give them 12 months financing on the inventory at 5% interest which basically I think helps normalize that situation for them. And it's also something that I can tolerate as well. Joe: Yeah, and it happened and then we succeeded with it A. because of you; the likability and trust factor. But you have something that I preach again and that's when you've got an inventory based business you should have inventory aging reports. Sophisticated buyers are going to ask for them and they're going to want to see the inventory by SKU when you bought the inventory and how old it is, how many months you've got. As Mike said you want to turn your inventory every three to four months if you can but in his situation, it was 9, 12, 18 months in some rare instances. And so on that inventory report one of the key things that your buyer Matt said that made a difference for him in sealing the steel and getting it done was the inventory aging report and the notes that you put by each SKU and right there in one of them you said this is all inventory and it's not going to sell so we'll write this off. You just acquiesced on that 8,000. He didn't ask for it. You just put it in there because you knew it was the right thing to do. And then you went line by line on every other SKU and justified the 100% value or where you needed to discount. And let me just say for everybody listening, it is rare to need to take a note on inventory. It's rare to have to discount it. But when you've got that much you've got to do the right thing. What I don't want to happen here is for buyers to go “oh well hey Jackness took a note, I'm always going to ask for a note” because that's really, really the exception rather— Mike: Like I wouldn't do that with IceWraps for instance because there's … if we were to sell that we have four months with inventory. It's really clean and smooth. It's a more established business with fewer SKUs. It doesn't have a lot of the other things that cause us to have extra inventory. And like you said I mean just doing the right thing and being realistic of both sides. I mean this is what happens … like a lot of people when they're sellers they want to be way up here when they're buyers they want to be way now here and they're just like … they have this gap in which I think that just makes them not the best of human beings right? I mean you've got to be like more in the middle and realize the person that's buying and what they're thinking and what their [inaudible 00:35:24.6] is. And conversely when you're in the sell side be thinking about as well. It's not always just about you. There is another side of the coin. And I wish our politicians are covering this a little bit as well but it's just good business it's being a good human being. It's what makes deals get done. It's just doing the right thing and being fair about it; being equitable about it. I could … I just … I would feel like a dirty shyster if I have that guy by that one SKU that I know … like he doesn't know the business as well as I do. I know that one SKU [inaudible 00:36:00.9] it's been around here for two years. No matter how hard we try to sell it, we threw it at a 50% off sale or we even did a 75% off sale around Christmas to try to get rid of some of them. People just don't like that title. It was the one title that we made out of 25, it's a pretty good track record but one title out of 25 that was just this complete failure. I'm like how could you have someone take that? That's just basically like I'm stealing from them or trying to pull the rug over their head. And you know when they discover that later which they probably will in due diligence they're not going to trust you. Joe: Yeah, exactly I was just going to say that. They are going to discover in due diligence. And I'll tell you what for folks listening, we're going to run a little bit long on this episode. I'm going to lock this all up in one episode instead of doing two series here. The due diligence process would reveal anything like that so you need to get ahead of it. You have to be a good human being. This is a transaction that has to end with two satisfied individuals or entities at the closing table; that's the buyer and the seller. It's not winner takes all because the buyer is putting their life savings on the line again and they can walk away at any time. If you fake it, lie, cheat, or steal, it is going to be discovered in due diligence. More and more folks are hiring Centurica, your buyer is. That's Chris Yates' team. Chris owns the company called Centurica. C-E-N-T-U-R-I-C-A, they do due diligence for buyers. And honestly, as a broker, I love it when they join the team because they're working for the buyer. And I have yet to see a deal go sideways on any of the listings that we've put out. What they do more than anything else is they reinstill confidence that the numbers are right, that the seller presented information, and they create a roadmap to growth. They can point out certain things where there are flaws and sometimes it's a little scary but the buyer goes oh okay that's a flaw, I can fix that. I can make this better. And it's a path growth that we aren't able to do on the client interview which is great. One other thing I just want to say that we won't get into in great detail but without a question when you plan to sell instead of decide to sell, one of the things that you should always do, your partner Dave did it, is to take a look at your cost of goods sold. And if there's a possibility that you can renegotiate your cost of goods sold 12 months out in advance and reduce that cost of goods sold, for every $10,000.00 you save you're going to wind up with at least 2 ½ to 3 ½ times that depending upon your business and the trends and whatnot. Mike, you did it but you were able to renegotiate the cost of goods sold on just one of your SKU's and you placed an order for it so was locked in and loaded and the future sales would all be locked in at that lower cost of goods sold. And you sold through all of the other stuff at a higher price. So we were able to increase your seller's discretionary earnings by a total of $43,000 on that overall. And it was just because of that one SKU where you were able to renegotiate the cost of goods sold. In hindsight Mike do you wish you had done it on all of the other SKUs as well? Mike: Yeah I mean I don't think this is necessarily a selling your business thing more than this is just good business at that time. Joe: Yeah. Mike: What I've realized again after four plus years of importing stuff from China is that I wasn't as good of a negotiator as I thought I was. And I've always thought of myself as a really good negotiator in all aspects of anything that I do in business. And we had negotiated down from the original price they gave us but it still wasn't like the Chinese price. And when you get like a really good sourcing agent or you have someone that's more in tune with the local business and customs there they'll probably get a better price. And that's what happened for us. We met somebody … and these contacts are hard to find in business. We were out there doing it all ourselves like going to the Canton Fair, walking the floor finding manufacturers, and we did that because we're never really able to really find a good sourcing agent and didn't really know any other way to go about it. But because … mostly because of EcomCrew which is one of these things where the more you get back in life a lot of times the more you get rewarded. A lot of things we do in EcomCrew we don't get anything direct for our time for what we do. Like most of the stuff is just giving people free information and giving back to the community but what I found that happens in these types of situations is that makes relationships with people and the people you meet they know people that makes relationships with other people and eventually that path led to us finding this amazing sourcing agent that not only is he helping with ColorIt but everything else that we're doing now. And he was in our office here one day and we were actually sourcing something else for our tactical brand. I wasn't even looking to resource price I was looking to source new stuff. We were just chit chatting and we have this display up on our wall of all of our products and he is like what if I try to go source this for you? What do you pay for it if I can do better when you buy it from me? And I was like well man I'm also like not just about money. I'm really about relationships. I really like the factory I work with. We've been working with them for a while. It had to be like one hell of a cost savings for me. Like if it was I'm going to save you know a couple $1,000 here and there it's not worth it for me to blow that up. But he came back and was able to reduce the price of that particular thing from … well, he reduced it by 16% is what it was; which is massive. It's like this ridiculous cost savings. And at the same time the other factory as much as I … it's so funny like I'm really big on relationships and I was really concerned about them they actually copied our product during this process and even used our [inaudible 00:41:30.2] that we had paid for and everything and released our product to someone else. Sold our product to someone else. Which we then have to go spend money on a lawsuit to fight them which we got them to stop but … so between those two things we switched. Now the switch engine is going out and repricing our stuff and that's going to end up benefiting the buyer way more than it is for us on ColorIt which is fine. But I guess the end result is you should always be looking at price. Even when you think you have the best price you probably don't. There was a great … a presentation at ECF about this as well when it came to shipping rates. I don't know if you saw Craig Gentry's presentation on FedEx and UPS when he was just like if you think you have great rates you don't. Like there's … you can still do better because there's still another … they make you feel like you're getting the best deal ever because they're really good at negotiating. And it was similar with our products and we realize that we could be saving quite a bit. I mean 16% percent is a huge difference on COGS … I mean it ends up in your net profit. It's way more than 16% percent increase rate because it's going to be SKUed. It makes you … you could just throw money around the bottom line. So yeah I mean it was massive and the timing was great because we did get some benefit. But yes I wish that we had time to go through and renegotiate all those SKUs for sure. Joe: Yeah and I think you said it best. It's just good business. It makes smart business sense. Not necessarily sorry for the exit planning and the eventual exit and sale of your business. Can you say one more time what Dave always says it's not profit it's—? Mike: Yes. Revenues are vanity and profits are sanity. Joe: Perfect. Mike: I'm sorry I'm going to go off on a tangent; another tangent. [Inaudible 00:43:05.7] I got you and just like people are like counting their chest. Like I'm a seven figure seller and well I'm an eight figure seller and I sold this stuff … no one ever goes around saying well I sold 10 million dollars of stuff last year but I actually lost money. I mean there are plenty of businesses out there that are like that. It's very easy to get in that trap because it's actually pretty easy to sell stuff online. You can just spend way too much money on advertising and you can sell stuff but the profit is what really actually matters. Joe: Absolutely and that's where these marketplace valuations are. It's on the profits so discretionary earnings. All right so look I want to read one more thing and I'm going to wrap it up. I've said that you the seller, in this case, you Mike makes a huge difference in the saleability if that's a word, of your business. How you act prior to selling the business, how you manage your business, and how you represent yourself all throughout makes an enormous difference. And the way that you handled yourself on the client interview, on the recorded interview that we did as part of the package, on the conference calls with buyers, in the inventory challenges that we had, in writing those notes there, and just acquiescing on that $8,000 of inventory that you knew was no good; it all made the difference and it's why we're under Letter Of Intent. I did the math. We're actually under Letter Of Intent at 96% of the list price of the business. Again the inventory we're doing on a note which we don't love but sometimes you have to do that. I want to just read an e-mail that you sent to Matt, your buyer within a couple of hours of when we were under Letter Of Intent to just reemphasize what's important and the way that a buyer should treat their sellers … or seller should treat their buyer. So here we go. I feel like I'm in second grade standing up and reading this— Mike: I was not planning on this being read but it's okay read it. Go on. Joe: It says, Matt … his first name is Matt we're not going to say what his last name is. I just received the signed LOI from you and wanted to take a minute to thank you for putting your faith in me and my love child ColorIt. It's been one heck of a ride but I'm ready to pass off the baton and experience a year or two of not having too much on my plate. Of course, I realize there is still a lot to accomplish to get to the finish line but I wanted to say cheers. With the growth rate of ColorIt along with some of the other fundamentals, I'm convinced this will be your best purchase to date. My goal is to make sure that it becomes a reality for you as we progress through the transition. I look forward to working with you in that regard over the next few months. Mike. Guys, that is the way to transact business. It's just the right thing to do and it feels good. And I can tell you [inaudible 00:45:45.4] 80% year over year growth in December and didn't even mention it 74% year over year growth in January. It made a huge difference and Matt making an offer at 96% of the list price. But this kind of thing, the way Mike handled himself as a professional, as a good human being in this entire process sealed the deal ultimately. So Mike, thank you. I appreciate the way that it's gone so far. I think what we'll do is have a follow up episode to talk about due diligence and the training and transition and how the transaction wound up at the end of the process with this closing that we've got if you wanted to come back on. Mike: Yeah. Can I say one thing about the letter that I wrote? Joe: Of course. Mike: Since you took the time to read it I just … I got to preach because I've been on both sides of these deals. There have been times where I've been the buyer and at that moment that you sign the LOI there's always this anxiety, right? Where you like man I'm about to jump into this thing and you don't necessarily know what you're getting … everything that you're getting yourself into. And I just wanted to let the guy know that first of all I appreciate him again like it was sincere like I appreciate him … this was like now the sales person parts over like I'm not trying to sell him anything. It's always awkward when you're saying stuff in the call part of it. It almost sounds manufactured even though I don't do that but I'm sure to them it comes off as like this guy is probably just saying this to get me to write a check. But it's done. The finish line is there from that perspective I just … and I do want it to be a success story. I want the guy to buy it and look back at these years later and feel like he made the right decision. And yeah that was really all; just kind of being sincere about it. And I think all too often again people are more way about themselves they'd be all high fiving everybody and saying that we got an LOI and celebrating their success more than thinking about what this guy's about to endeavor in. And I think that's important. Joe: I appreciate that and the last thing I'll say is what I said to everyone which is we're under Letter Of Intent. There's no guarantee. Mike: You're right; the money is not in the bank yet for sure. Joe: It's not on the bank yet. So let's have another killer month in February. We'll get through all of this. Due diligence is very detailed but again they've got Centurica doing it for them. We've got to do a lot of work but we know it would be done right. And that emotion will be left out of it as much as possible and it'd be math and logic and we'll get through it. And then we'll have you back on the podcast to maybe high five. And maybe we'll get the buyer Matt on it as well. Mike: Yeah, I think it'll be cool to have him and come join us and talk about both sides. Joe: Alright, I'm looking forward to it Mike. You're a good man I'm glad to do business with you. I look forward to hearing you back on the podcast. Mike: Thanks, Joe.   Links and Resources: ColorIt.com Mike's Podcast Email Mike Call Mike 703-216-3225      

Pastor Mike of The Rock Church in Castle Rock Colorado teaches a Christmas themed message entitled, "Let Our Light Shine".

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.

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.

The USMNT finished their pre-World Cup friendlies against a solid UEFA opponent in Ireland and a World Cup favorite in France. Oddly, they lose to Ireland 2-1 and draw France 1-1 The hosts break down the goals and the line-ups, and discuss the future of the USMNT players and coaches. Wil Trapp captained the team amid speculation of a move from Columbus to Europe. Bill Hamid and Zack Steffen started in goal, and the hosts discuss how Steffen and Alex Bono are the keepers of the future. Also, the United Bid of Canada, USA, and Mexico won the right to host World Cup 2026. The news came the morning after our recording, and we at Sons of a Pitch are very excited to watch the greatest players in the world in our backyard (albeit in 8yrs or so). What are your thoughts on the USMNT roster and coaching candidates? Are you done seeing Jozy Altidore and Bobby Wood, like Nick? Do you want a European style coach, like Mike? Let us know in the comments below.

Iight, so boom...after a week in detention, they're finally back, and a week off just means there's a lot to discuss! Justen and :T are joined by the now staple Dolo to discuss what they think about the plethora of music scheduled to drop this year. Coachella? B'chella? Same difference right? When its performance time, are you taking Queen B or Mike? Let's just say the playoffs have had shockers. Who will make it out the East and West now? These "lil" teams are here to play. Has anybody seen Daquan.....

Eric Luning of Colorado Politics discusses the gauntlet laid down by Mike Coffman challenging Tom Tancredo to a debate.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mike admits to never seeing most of Disney's animated classics. Can we fix this? Plus, more political views on this snack free show!

Welcome to the latest instalment of the Sunday Soulful House Sessions. This episode is an extra special one that features house music maestro Aaron Ross. I spoke to him to see what he has been up to and he treats us to a guest mix. Wrapped around this is my selection of the finest Soulful house currently in my bag.If you enjoy the show please share, comment or like - thanks again! Tracklisting: S.Chu - Closure (Defected)Andy Compton, Rowan - Touch (Peng)DJ Exte C, Feat, Fifi - Make One In My Dreams (Kings of Groove)Hallex M, DJeff, Miss Patty - Let’s Get It (United Music Records)Tony Lionni, Maria Marcial – Do You Believe (MadHouse Records)Kings of Groove ft Jessi Colasante – Now That You’re Gone (Kings of Groove)Neil Pierce, Vanessa Freeman – Ready For Your Love (Quantize Recordings) ** Aaron Ross Interview **Tune playing in the background: Aaron Ross, Sterling Ensemble - Talia (Restless Soul)  Aaron Ross Guest Mix Tracklisting:Billon Ft. Yasmin - Thinking About YouMr Mike- Let’s Do It Again (DJ Spen & Soulful Edge Remix)Kenny Bobien - With All My Might (Sean & Albert’s Organ Jam)Synth Tigers - Move Me (Aaron Ross Tribute Mix)Louie Vega & Duane Harden - Never Stop (Vega Bar Dub)Zo! , Erro, Phonte - We Are On The Move (Joey Negro Revival Mix)sanXero Ft. Alex Mills - White Flag Sasha Keable - Tempting As You Are (Aaron Ross Remix)Nathan Dalton ft. Laura Reed (Undivided)Ends.  John Legend - All Of Me (T’s Box)Rhemi, Nicole Mitchell - Tired (Rhemi Music)Kenny Dope, Raheem DeVaughn, Rhymefest - Final Call (Kay-Dee)Dajae - Don’t You Want My Love (Groove Odyssey)The Layabouts, Shea Soul - Perfectly (Reel People Music)   All music available from Traxsource - please support the artists:http://www.traxsource.com

Matt, Mike and Tiny introduce a new concept to the show: The Obsessive Viewer Podcast's Vault. In the vault, we place our most beloved movies, those we feel are in a class by themselves. Each season of the show, we plan on inducting a new movie into the Vault. This season's offerings are The Godfather, Pulp Fiction and Back to the Future. Also discussed are HBO's upcoming crime series True Detective, the latest season of The Walking Dead and the long awaited adaptation to Ender's Game. Timestamps Skip Intro – 1:44 The Godfather – 9:19 Pulp Fiction – 24:04 Back to the Future – 39:10 Vault Induction Ceremony – 56:11 OV Potpourri – 1:03:18 (True Detective, The Walking Dead & Ender's Game) Links Have they remade Back to the Future yet? “Adaptations & Remakes: Ender's Game” Review written by Mike Let us know what you think! Like us on Facebook: The Obsessive Viewer Tweet us: @ObsessiveViewer, @ObsessiveTiny, @IAmMikeWhite Email us: OVPodcast gmail dot com Check out the blog: ObsessiveViewer.com Find past episodes of the podcast: OVPodcast.com Subscribe to us on iTunes and leave us a review.