Podcast appearances and mentions of mike one

William Zahner, Understanding the Role of Language in Math Classrooms ROUNDING UP: SEASON 3 | EPISODE 17 How can educators understand the relationship between language and the mathematical concepts and skills students engage with in their classrooms? And how might educators think about the mathematical demands and the language demands of tasks when planning their instruction?  In this episode, we discuss these questions with Bill Zahner, director of the Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education at San Diego State University. BIOGRAPHY Bill Zahner is a professor in the mathematics department at San Diego State University and the director of the Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education. Zahner's research is focused on improving mathematics learning for all students, especially multilingual students who are classified as English Learners and students from historically marginalized communities that are underrepresented in STEM fields. RESOURCES Teaching Math to Multilingual Learners, Grades K–8 by Kathryn B. Chval, Erin Smith, Lina Trigos-Carrillo, and Rachel J. Pinnow National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK– 12 English Learners Success Forum SDSU-ELSF Video Cases for Professional Development The Math Learning Center materials Bridges in Mathematics curriculum Bridges in Mathematics Teachers Guides [BES login required] TRANSCRIPT Mike Wallus: How can educators understand the way that language interacts with the mathematical concepts and skills their students are learning? And how can educators focus on the mathematics of a task without losing sight of its language demands as their planning for instruction? We'll examine these topics with our guest, Bill Zahner, director of the Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education at San Diego State University.  Welcome to the podcast, Bill. Thank you for joining us today. Bill Zahner: Oh, thanks. I'm glad to be here. Mike: So, I'd like to start by asking you to address a few ideas that often surface in conversations around multilingual learners and mathematics. The first is the notion that math is universal, and it's detached from language. What, if anything, is wrong with this idea and what impact might an idea like that have on the ways that we try to support multilingual learners? Bill: Yeah, thanks for that. That's a great question because I think we have a common-sense and strongly held idea that math is math no matter where you are and who you are. And of course, the example that's always given is something like 2 plus 2 equals 4, no matter who you are or where you are. And that is true, I guess [in] the sense that 2 plus 2 is 4, unless you're in base 3 or something. But that is not necessarily what mathematics in its fullness is. And when we think about what mathematics broadly is, mathematics is a way of thinking and a way of reasoning and a way of using various tools to make sense of the world or to engage with those tools [in] their own right. And oftentimes, that is deeply embedded with language.  Probably the most straightforward example is anytime I ask someone to justify or explain what they're thinking in mathematics. I'm immediately bringing in language into that case. And we all know the old funny examples where a kid is asked to show their thinking and they draw a diagram of themselves with a thought bubble on a math problem. And that's a really good case where I think a teacher can say, “OK, clearly that was not what I had in mind when I said, ‘Show your thinking.'”  And instead, the demand or the request was for a student to show their reasoning or their thought process, typically in words or in a combination of words and pictures and equations. And so, there's where I see this idea that math is detached from language is something of a myth; that there's actually a lot of [language in] mathematics. And the interesting part of mathematics is often deeply entwined with language. So, that's my first response and thought about that.  And if you look at our Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, especially those standards for mathematical practice, you see all sorts of connections to communication and to language interspersed throughout those standards. So, “create viable arguments,” that's a language practice. And even “attend to precision,” which most of us tend to think of as, “round appropriately.” But when you actually read the standard itself, it's really about mathematical communication and definitions and using those definitions with precision. So again, that's an example, bringing it right back into the school mathematics domain where language and mathematics are somewhat inseparable from my perspective here. Mike: That's really helpful. So, the second idea that I often hear is, “The best way to support multilingual learners is by focusing on facts or procedures,” and that language comes later, for lack of a better way of saying it. And it seems like this is connected to that first notion, but I wanted to ask the question again: What, if anything, is wrong with this idea that a focus on facts or procedures with language coming after the fact? What impact do you suspect that that would have on the way that we support multilingual learners? Bill: So, that's a great question, too, because there's a grain of truth, right? Both of these questions have simultaneously a grain of truth and simultaneously a fundamental problem in them. So, the grain of truth—and an experience that I've heard from many folks who learned mathematics in a second language—was that they felt more competent in mathematics than they did in say, a literature class, where the only activity was engaging with texts or engaging with words because there was a connection to the numbers and to symbols that were familiar. So, on one level, I think that this idea of focusing on facts or procedures comes out of this observation that sometimes an emergent multilingual student feels most comfortable in that context, in that setting.  But then the second part of the answer goes back to this first idea that really what we're trying to teach students in school mathematics now is not simply, or only, how to apply procedures to really big numbers or to know your times tables fast. I think we have a much more ambitious goal when it comes to teaching and learning mathematics. That includes explaining, justifying, modeling, using mathematics to analyze the world and so on. And so, those practices are deeply tied with language and deeply tied with using communication. And so, if we want to develop those, well, the best way to do that is to develop them, to think about, “What are the scaffolds? What are the supports that we need to integrate into our lessons or into our designs to make that possible?”  And so, that might be the takeaway there, is that if you simply look at mathematics as calculations, then this could be true. But I think our vision of mathematics is much broader than that, and that's where I see this potential. Mike: That's really clarifying. I think the way that you unpack that is if you view mathematics as simply a set of procedures or calculations, maybe? But I would agree with you. What we want for students is actually so much more than that.  One of the things that I heard you say when we were preparing for this interview is that at the elementary level, learning mathematics is a deeply social endeavor. Tell us a little bit about what you mean by that, Bill. Bill: Sure. So, mathematics itself, maybe as a premise, is a social activity. It's created by humans as a way of engaging with the world and a way of reasoning. So, the learning of mathematics is also social in the sense that we're giving students an introduction to this way of engaging in the world. Using numbers and quantities and shapes in order to make sense of our environment.  And when I think about learning mathematics, I think that we are not simply downloading knowledge and sticking it into our heads. And in the modern day where artificial intelligence and computers can do almost every calculation that we can imagine—although your AI may do it incorrectly, just as a fair warning [laughs]—but in the modern day, the actual answer is not what we're so focused on. It's actually the process and the reasoning and the modeling and justification of those choices. And so, when I think about learning mathematics as learning to use these language tools, learning to use these ways of communication, how do we learn to communicate? We learn to communicate by engaging with other people, by engaging with the ideas and the minds and the feelings and so on of the folks around us, whether it's the teacher and the student, the student and the student, the whole class and the teacher. That's where I really see the power. And most of us who have learned, I think can attest to the fact that even when we're engaging with a text, really fundamentally we're engaging with something that was created by somebody else. So, fundamentally, even when you're sitting by yourself doing a math word problem or doing calculations, someone has given that to you and you think that that's important enough to do, right?  So, from that stance, I see all of teaching and learning mathematics is social. And maybe one of our goals in mathematics classrooms, beyond memorizing the times tables, is learning to communicate with other people, learning to be participants in this activity with other folks. Mike: One of the things that strikes me about what you were saying, Bill, is there's this kind of virtuous cycle, right? That by engaging with language and having the social aspect of it, you're actually also deepening the opportunity for students to make sense of the math. You're building the scaffolds that help kids communicate their ideas as opposed to removing or stripping out the language. That's the context in some ways that helps them filter and make sense. You could either be in a vicious cycle, which comes from removing the language, or a virtuous cycle. And it seems a little counterintuitive because I think people perceive language as the thing that is holding kids back as opposed to the thing that might actually help them move forward and make sense. Bill: Yeah. And actually that's one of the really interesting pieces that we've looked at in my research and the broader research is this question of, “What makes mathematics linguistically complex?” is a complicated question. And so sometimes we think of things like looking at the word count as a way to say, “If there are fewer words, it's less complex, and if there are more words, it's more complex.” But that's not totally true. And similarly, “If there's no context, it's easier or more accessible, and if there is a context, then it's less accessible.”  And I don't see these as binary choices. I see these as happening on a somewhat complicated terrain where we want to think about, “How do these words or these contexts add to student understanding or potentially impede [it]?” And that's where I think this social aspect of learning mathematics—as you described, it could be a virtuous cycle so that we can use language in order to engage in the process of learning language. Or, the vicious cycle is, you withhold all language and then get frustrated when students can't apply their mathematics. That's maybe the most stereotypical answer: “My kids can do this, but as soon as they get a word problem, they can't do it.” And it's like, “Well, did you give them opportunities to learn how to do this? [laughs] Or is this the first time?” Because that would explain a lot. Mike: Well, it's an interesting question, too, because I think what sits behind that in some ways is the idea that you're kind of going to reach a point, or students might reach a point, where they're “ready” for word problems.  Bill: Right. Mike: And I think what we're really saying is it's actually through engaging with word problems that you build your proficiency, your skillset that actually allows you to become a stronger mathematician. Bill: Mm-hmm. Right. Exactly. And it's a daily practice, right? It's not something that you just hold off to the end of the unit, and then you have the word problems, but it's part of the process of learning. And thinking about how you integrate and support that. That's the key question that I really wrestle with. Not trivial, but I think that's the key and the most important part of this. Mike: Well, I think that's actually a really good segue because I wanted to shift and talk about some of the concrete or productive ways that educators can support multilingual learners. And in preparing for this conversation, one of the things that I've heard you stress is this notion of a consistent context. So, can you just talk a little bit more about what you mean by that and how educators can use that when they're looking at their lessons or when they're writing lessons or looking at the curriculum that they're using? Bill: Absolutely. So, in our past work, we engaged in some cycles of design research with teachers looking at their mathematics curriculum and opportunities to engage multilingual learners in communication and reasoning in the classroom. And one of the surprising things that we found—just by looking at a couple of standard textbooks—was a surprising number of contexts were introduced that are all related to the same concept. So, the concept would be something like rate of change or ratio, and then the contexts, there would be a half dozen of them in the same section of the book. Now, this was, I should say, at a secondary level, so not quite where most of the Bridges work is happening. But I think it's an interesting lesson for us that we took away from this. Actually, at the elementary level, Kathryn Chval has made the same observation.  What we realized was that contexts are not good or bad by themselves. In fact, they can be highly supportive of student reasoning or they can get in the way. And it's how they are used and introduced. And so, the other way we thought about this was: When you introduce a context, you want to make sure that that context is one that you give sufficient time for the students to understand and to engage with; that is relatable, that everyone has access to it; not something that's just completely unrelated to students' experiences. And then you can really leverage that relatable, understandable context for multiple problems and iterations and opportunities to go deeper and deeper.  To give a concrete example of that, when we were looking at this ratio and rate of change, we went all the way back to one of the fundamental contexts that's been studied for a long time, which is motion and speed and distance and time. And that seemed like a really important topic because we know that that starts all the way back in elementary school and continues through college-level physics and beyond. So, it was a rich context. It was also something that was accessible in the sense that we could do things like act out story problems or reenact a race that's described in a story problem. And so, the students themselves had access to the context in a deep way.  And then, last, that context was one that we could come back to again and again, so we could do variations [of] that context on that story. And I think there's lots of examples of materials out there that start off with a core context and build it out. I'm thinking of some of the Bridges materials, even on the counting and the multiplication. I think there's stories of the insects and their legs and wings and counting and multiplying. And that's a really nice example of—it's accessible, you can go find insects almost anywhere you are. Kids like it. [Laughs] They enjoy thinking about insects and other icky, creepy-crawly things. And then you can take that and run with it in lots of different ways, right? Counting, multiplication, division ratio, and so on. Mike: This last bit of our conversation has me thinking about what it might look like to plan a lesson for a class or a group of multilingual learners. And I know that it's important that I think about mathematical demands as well as the language demands of a given task. Can you unpack why it's important to set math and language development learning goals for a task, or a set of tasks, and what are the opportunities that come along with that, if I'm thinking about both of those things during my planning? Bill: Yeah, that's a great question. And I want to mark the shift, right? We've gone from thinking about the demands to thinking about the goals, and where we're going to go next.  And so, when I think about integrating mathematical goals—mathematical learning goals and language learning goals—I often go back to these ideas that we call the practices, or these standards that are about how you engage in mathematics. And then I think about linking those back to the content itself. And so, there's kind of a two-piece element to that. And so, when we're setting our goals and lesson planning, at least here in the great state of California, sometimes we'll have these templates that have, “What standard are you addressing?,” [Laughs] “What language standard are you addressing?,” “What ELD standard are you addressing?,” “What SEL standard are you addressing?” And I've seen sometimes teachers approach that as a checkbox, right? Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. But I see that as a missed opportunity—if you just look at this like you're plugging things in—because as we started with talking about how learning mathematics is deeply social and integrated with language, that we can integrate the mathematical goals and the language goals in a lesson. And I think really good materials should be suggesting that to the teacher. You shouldn't be doing this yourself every day from scratch. But I think really high-quality materials will say, “Here's the mathematical goal, and here's an associated language goal,” whether it's productive or receptive functions of language. “And here's how the language goal connects the mathematical goal.”  Now, just to get really concrete, if we're talking about an example of reasoning with ratios—so I was going back to that—then it might be generalized, the relationship between distance and time. And that the ratio of distance and time gives you this quantity called speed, and that different combinations of distance and time can lead to the same speed. And so, explain and justify and show using words, pictures, diagrams. So, that would be a language goal, but it's also very much a mathematical goal.  And I guess I see the mathematical content, the practices, and the language really braided together in these goals. And that I think is the ideal, and at least from our work, has been most powerful and productive for students. Mike: This is off script, but I'm going to ask it, and you can pass if you want to.  Bill: Mm-hmm. Mike: I wonder if you could just share a little bit about what the impact of those [kinds] of practices that you described [have been]—have you seen what that impact looks like? Either for an educator who has made the step and is doing that integration or for students who are in a classroom where an educator is purposely thinking about that level of integration? Bill: Yeah, I can talk a little bit about that. In our research, we have tried to measure the effects of some of these efforts. It is a difficult thing to measure because it's not just a simple true-false test question type of thing that you can give a multiple-choice test for.  But one of the ways that we've looked for the impact [of] these types of intentional designs is by looking at patterns of student participation in classroom discussions and seeing who is accessing the floor of the discussion and how. And then looking at other results, like giving an assessment, but deeper than looking at the outcome, the binary correct versus incorrect. Also looking at the quality of the explanation that's provided. So, how [do] you justify an answer? Does the student provide a deeper or a more mathematically complete explanation?  That is an area where I think more investigation is needed, and it's also very hard to vary systematically. So, from a research perspective—you may not want to put this into the final version [laughs]—but from a research perspective, it's very hard to fix and isolate these things because they are integrated. Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Bill: Because language and mathematics are so deeply integrated that trying to fix everything and do this—“What caused this water to taste like water? Was it the hydrogen or the oxygen?”—well, [laughs] you can't really pull those apart, right? The water molecule is hydrogen and oxygen together. Mike: I think that's a lovely analogy for what we were talking about with mathematical goals and language goals. That, I think, is really a helpful way to think about the extent to which they're intertwined with one another. Bill: Yeah, I need to give full credit to Vygotsky, I think, who said that. Mike: You're— Bill: Something. Might be Vygotsky. I'll need to check my notes. Mike: I think you're in good company if you're quoting Vygotsky.  Before we close, I'd love to just ask you a bit about resources. I say this often on the podcast. We have 20 to 25 minutes to dig deeply into an idea, and I know people who are listening often think about, “Where do I go from here?” Are there any particular resources that you would suggest for someone who wanted to continue learning about what it is to support multilingual learners in a math classroom? Bill: Sure. Happy to share that.  So, I think on the individual and collective level—so, say, a group of teachers—there's a beautiful book by Kathryn Chval and her colleagues [Teaching Math to Multilingual Learners, Grades K–8] about supporting multilingual learners and mathematics. And I really see that as a valuable resource. I've used that in reading groups with teachers and used that in book studies, and it's been very productive and powerful for us. Beyond that, of course, I think the NCTM [National Council of Teachers of Mathematics] provides a number of really useful resources. And there are articles, for example, in the [NCTM journal] Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK– 12 that could make for a really wonderful study or opportunity to engage more deeply.  And then I would say on a broader perspective, I've worked with organizations like the English Learners Success Forum and others. We've done some case studies and little classroom studies that are accessible on my website [SDSU-ELSF Video Cases for Professional Development], so you can go to that. But there's also from that organization some really valuable insights, if you're looking at adopting new materials or evaluating things, that gives you a principled set of guidelines to follow. And I think that's really helpful for educators because we don't have to do this all on our own. This is not a “reinvent the wheel at every single site” kind of situation. And so, I always encourage people to look for those resources.  And of course, I will say that the MLC materials, the Bridges in Mathematics [curriculum], I think have been really beautifully designed with a lot of these principles right behind them. So, for example, if you look through the Teachers Guides on the Bridges in Mathematics [BES login required], those integrated math and language and practice goals are a part of the design. Mike: Well, I think that's a great place to stop. Thank you so much for joining us, Bill. This has been insightful, and it's really been a pleasure talking with you. Bill: Oh, well, thank you. I appreciate it. Mike: And that's a wrap for Season 3 of Rounding Up. I want to thank all of our guests and the MLC staff who make these podcasts possible, as well as all of our listeners for tuning in. Have a great summer, and we'll be back in September for Season 4.  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  

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  

Ryan Flessner, What If I Don't Understand Their Thinking? ROUNDING UP: SEASON 3 | EPISODE 15 “What do I do if I don't understand my student's strategy?” This is a question teachers grapple with constantly, particularly when conferring with students during class. How educators respond in moments like these can have a profound impact on students' learning and their mathematical identities. In this episode, we talk with Ryan Flessner from Butler University about what educators can say or do when faced with this situation. BIOGRAPHY Ryan Flessner is a professor of teacher education in the College of Education at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. He holds a PhD in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis in teacher education from the University of Wisconsin–Madison; a master of arts in curriculum and teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University; and a bachelor of science in elementary education from Butler University. Prior to his time at the university level, he taught grades 3–7 in Indianapolis; New York City; and Madison, Wisconsin. RESOURCES Nearpod Pear Deck GeoGebra  Magma Math TRANSCRIPT Mike Wallus: “What do I do if I don't understand my student's strategy?” This is a question teachers grapple with constantly, particularly when conferring with students during class. How we respond in moments like these can have a profound impact on our students' learning and their mathematical identities. Today we'll talk with Ryan Flessner from Butler University about what educators can say or do when faced with this very common situation.  Welcome to the podcast, Ryan. Really excited to talk to you today. Ryan Flessner: Thanks, Mike. I'm flattered to be here. Thank you so much for the invitation. Mike: So, this experience of working with a student and not being able to make sense of their solution feels like something that almost every teacher has had. And I'll speak for myself and say that when it happens to me, I feel a lot of anxiety. And I just want to start by asking, what would you say to educators who are feeling apprehensive or unsure about what to do when they encounter a situation like this? Ryan: Yeah, so I think that everybody has that experience. I think the problem that we have is that teachers often feel the need to have all of the answers and to know everything and to be the expert in the room. But as an educator, I learned really quickly that I didn't have all the answers. And to pretend like I did put a lot of pressure on me and made me feel a lot of stress and would leave me answering children by saying, “Let me get back to you on that.” And then I would scurry and try and find all the answers so I could come back with a knowledgeable idea. And it was just so much more work than to just simply say, “I don't know. Let's investigate that together.” Or to ask kids, “That's something interesting that I'm seeing you do. I've never seen a student do that before. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?” And just having that ability to free myself from having to have all the answers and using that Reggio-inspired practice—for those who know early childhood education—to follow the child, to listen to what he or she or they say to us and try to see. I can usually keep up with a 7- or an 8-year-old as they're explaining math to me. I just may never have seen them notate something the way they did. So, trying to ask that question about, “Show me what you know. Teach me something new.” The idea that a teacher could be a learner at the same time I think is novel to kids, and I think they respond really well to that idea. Mike: So, before we dig in a little bit more deeply about how teachers respond to student strategies if they don't understand, I just want to linger and think about the assumptions that many educators, myself included, might bring to this situation. Assumptions about their role, assumptions about what it would mean for a student if they don't know the answer right away. How do you think about some of the assumptions that are causing some of that anxiety for us? Ryan: Yeah. When the new generation of standards came out, especially in the field of math, teachers were all of a sudden asked to teach in a way that they themselves didn't learn. And so, if you have that idea that you have to have all the answers and you have to know everything, that puts you in a really vulnerable spot because how are we supposed to just magically teach things we've never learned ourselves? And so, trying to figure out ways that we can back up and try and make sense of the work that we're doing with kids, for me that was really helpful in understanding what I wanted from my students. I wanted them to make sense of the learning. So, if I hadn't made sense of it yet, how in the world could I teach them to make sense of it? And so we have to have that humility to say, “I don't know how to do this. I need to continue my learning trajectory and to keep going and trying to do a little bit better than the day that I did before.” I think that teachers are uniquely self-critical and they're always trying to do better, but I don't know if we necessarily are taught how to learn once we become teachers. Like, “We've already learned everything we have to do. Now we just have to learn how to teach it to other people.” But I don't think we have learned everything that we have to learn. There's a lot of stuff in the math world that I don't think we actually learned. We just memorized steps and kind of regurgitated them to get our A+ on a test or whatever we did.  So, I think having the ability to stop and say, “I don't know how to do this, and so I'm going to keep working at it, and when I start to learn it, I'm going to be able to ask myself questions that I should be asking my students.” And just being really thoughtful about, “Why is the child saying the thing that she is?,” “Why is she doing it the way that she's doing it?,” “Why is she writing it the way that she's writing it?” And if I can't figure it out, the expert on that piece of paper is the child [herself], so why wouldn't I go and say, “Talk to me about this.”? I don't have to have all the answers right off the cuff. Mike: In some ways, what you were describing just there is a real nice segue because I've heard you say that our minds and our students' minds often work faster than we can write, or even in some cases faster than we can speak. I'm wondering if you can unpack that. Why do you think this matters, particularly in the situation that we're talking about? Ryan: Yeah, I think a lot of us, especially in math, have been conditioned to get an answer. And nobody's really asked us “Why?” in the past. And so, we've done all of the thinking, we give the answer, and then we think the job is done. But with a lot of the new standards, we have to explain why we think that way. And so, all those ideas that just flurried through our head, we have to now articulate those either in writing on paper or in speech, trying to figure out how we can communicate the mathematics behind the answer.  And so, a lot of times I'll be in a classroom, and I'll ask a student for an answer, and I'll say, “How'd you get that?” And the first inclination that a lot of kids have is, “Oh, I must be wrong if a teacher is asking me why.” So, they think they're wrong. And so I say, “No, no, no. It's not that you're wrong. I'm just curious. You came to that answer, you stopped and you looked up at the ceiling for a while and then you came to me and you said the answer is 68. How did you do that?” A child will say something like, “Well, I just thought about it in my head.” And I say, “Well, what did you think about in your head?” “Well, my brain just told me the answer was 68.”  And we have to actually talk to kids. And we have to teach them how to talk to us—that we're not quizzing them or saying that they're wrong or they didn't do something well enough—that we just want them to communicate with us how they're going about finding these things, what the strategies are. Because if they can communicate with us in writing, if they can communicate on paper, if they can use gestures to explain what they're thinking about, all of those tell us strengths that they bring to the table. And if I can figure out the strengths that you have, then I can leverage those strengths as I address needs that arise in my classroom. And so, I really want to create this bank of information about individual students that will help me be the best teacher that I can be for them. And if I can't ask those questions and they can't answer those questions for me, how am I going to individualize my instruction in meaningful ways for kids? Mike: We've been talking a little bit about the teacher experience in this moment, and we've been talking about some of the things that a person might say.  One of the things that I'm thinking about before we dig in a little bit deeper is, just, what is my role? How do you think about the role of a teacher in the moment when they encounter thinking from a student that they don't quite understand […] yet? Part of what I'm after is, how can a teacher think about what they're trying to accomplish in that moment for themselves as a learner and also for the learner in front of them? How would you answer that question? Ryan: When I think about an interaction with a kid in a moment like that, I try to figure out, as the teacher, my goal is to try and figure out what this child knows so that I can continue their journey in a forward trajectory. Instead of thinking about, “They need to go to page 34 because we're on page 33,” just thinking about, “What does this kid need next from me as the teacher?”  What I want them to get out of the situation is I want them to understand that they are powerful individuals, that they have something to offer the conversation and not just to prove it to the adult in the room. But if I can hear them talk about these ideas, sometimes the kids in the classroom can answer each other's questions. And so, if I can ask these things aloud and other kids are listening in, maybe because we're in close proximity or because we're in a small-group setting, if I can get the kids to verbalize those ideas sometimes one kid talking strikes an idea in another kid. Or another kid will say, “I didn't know how to answer Ryan when he asked me that question before, but now that I hear what it sounds like to answer that type of a question, now I get it, and I know how I would say it if it were my turn.”  So, we have to actually offer kids the opportunity to learn how to engage in those moments and how to share their expertise so others can benefit from their expertise and use that in a way that's helpful in the mathematical process. Mike: One of the most practical—and, I have to say, freeing—things that I've heard you recommend when a teacher encounters student work and they're still trying to make sense of it, is to just go ahead and name it. What are some of the things you imagine that a teacher might say that just straight out name the fact that they're still trying to understand a student's thinking? Tell me a little bit about that. Ryan: Well, I think the first thing is that we just have to normalize the question “Why?” or “Tell me how you know that.” If we normalize those things—a lot of times kids get asked that question when they're wrong, and so it's an [immediate] tip of the hat that “You're wrong, now go back and fix it. There's something wrong with you. You haven't tried hard enough.” Kids get these messages even if we don't intend for them to get them. So, if we can normalize the question “Tell me why you think that” or “Explain that to me”—if we can just get them to see that every time you give me an answer whether it's right or wrong, I'm just going to ask you to talk to me about it, that takes care of half of the problem.  But I think sometimes teachers get stuck because—and myself being one of them—we get stuck because we'll look at what a student is doing and they do something that we don't anticipate. Or we say, “I've shown you three different ways to get at this problem, different strategies you can use, and you're not using any of them.” And so, instead of getting frustrated that they're not listening to us, how do we use that moment to inquire into the things that we said obviously aren't useful, so what is useful to this kid? How is he attacking this on his paper?  So, I often like to say to a kid, “Huh, I noticed that you're doing something that isn't up on our anchor chart. Tell me about this. I haven't seen this before. How can you help me understand what you're doing?” And sometimes it's the exact same thinking as other strategies that kids are using. So, I can pair kids together and say, “Huh, you're both talking about it in the same way, but you're writing it differently on paper.” And so, I think about how I can get kids just to talk to me and tell me what's happening so that I can help give them a notation that might be more acceptable to other mathematicians or to just honor the fact that they have something novel and interesting to share with other kids. Other questions I talk about are, I will say, “I don't understand what's happening here, and that's not your fault, that's my fault. I just need you to keep explaining it to me until you say something that strikes a chord.” Or sometimes I'll bring another kid in, and I'll have the kids listen together, and I'll say, “I think this is interesting, but I don't understand what's going on. Can you say it to her? And then maybe she'll say it in a way that will make more sense to me.” Or I'll say, “Can you show me on your paper—you just said that—can you show me on your paper where that idea is?” Because a lot of times kids will think things in their head, but they don't translate it all onto the paper. And so, on the paper, it's missing a step that isn't obvious to the viewer of the paper. And so, we'll say, “Oh, I see how you do that. Maybe you could label your table so that we know exactly what you're talking about when you do this. Or maybe you could show us how you got to 56 by writing 8 times 7 in the margin or something.”  Just getting them to clarify and try to help us understand all of the amazing things that are in their head. I will often tell them too, “I love what you're saying. I don't see it on your paper, so I just want you to say it again. And I'm going to write it down on a piece of paper that makes sense to me so that I don't forget all of the cool things that you said.” And I'll just write it using more of a standard notation, whether that's a ratio table or a standard US algorithm or something. I'll write it to show the kid that thing that you're doing, there's a way that people write that down. And so, then we can compare our notations and try and figure out “What's the thing that you did?,” “How does that compare to the thing that I did?,” “Do I understand you clearly now?” to make sure that the kid has the right to say the thing she wants to say in the way that she wants to say it, and then I can still make sense of it in my own way. It's not a problem for me to write it differently as long as we're speaking the same language. Mike: I want to mark something really important, and I don't want it to get lost for folks. One of the things that jumped out is the moves that you were describing. You could potentially take up those moves if you really were unsure of how a student were thinking, if you had a general notion but you had some questions, or if you totally already understood what the student was doing. Those are questions that aren't just reserved for the point in time when you don't understand—they're actually good questions regardless of whether you fully understand it or don't understand it at all. Did I get that right? Ryan: Yes. I think that's exactly the point. One thing that I am careful of is, sometimes kids will ask me a question that I know the answer to, and there's this thing that we do as teachers where we're like, “I'm not sure. Why don't you help me figure that out?”—when the kid knows full well that you know the answer.  And so, trying not to patronize kids with those questions, but to really show that I'm asking you these questions, not because I'm patronizing you. I'm asking these questions because I am truly curious about what you're thinking inside and all of the ideas that surround the things that you've written on your paper, or the things that you've said to your partner, to truly honor that the more I know about you, the better teacher I can be for you. Mike: So, in addition to naming the situation, one of the things that jumped out for me—particularly as you were talking about the students—is, what do you think the impact is on a student's thinking? But also their mathematical identity, or even the set of classroom norms, when they experience this type of questioning or these [types] of questions? Ryan: So, I think I talked a little bit about normalizing the [questions] “Why?” or “How do you know that?” And so, just letting that become a classroom norm I think is a sea-changing moment for a lot of classrooms—that the conversation is just different if the kids know they have to justify their thinking whether they're right or wrong. Half the time, if they are incorrect, they'll be able to correct themselves as they're talking it through with you. So, kids can be freed up when they're allowed to use their expertise in ways that allow them to understand that the point of math is to truly make sense of it so that when you go out into the world, you understand the situation, and you have different tools to attack it.  So, what's the way that we can create an environment that allows them to truly see themselves as mathematical thinkers? And to let them know that “Your grades in other classes don't tell me much about you as a mathematician. I want to learn what really works for you, and I want to try and figure out where you struggle. And both of those things are important to me because we can use them in concert with each other. So, if I know the things you do well, I can use those to help me build a plan of instruction that will take you further in your understandings.”  I think that one of the things that is really important is for kids to understand that we don't do math because we want a good grade. I think a lot of people think that the point of math is to get a good grade or to pass a test or to get into the college that you want to get into, or because sixth grade teachers want you to know this. I really want kids to understand that math is a fantastic language to use out in the world, and there are ways that we can interpret things around us if we understand some pretty basic math. And so how do we get them to stop thinking that math is about right answers and next year and to get the job I want? Well, those things may be true, but that's not the real meaning of math. Math is a way that we can live life. And so, if we don't help them understand the connections between the things that they're doing on a worksheet or in a workbook page, if we don't connect those things to the real world, what's the meaning? What's the point for them? And how do we keep them engaged in wanting to know more mathematics?  So, really getting kids to think about who they are as people and how math can help them live the life that they want to live. Creating classroom environments that have routines in place that support kids in thinking in ways that will move them forward in their mathematical understanding. Trying to help them see that there's no such thing as “a math person” or “not a math person.” That everybody has to do math. You do math all the time. You just might not even know that you're doing math. So, I think all of those ideas are really important. And the more curious I can be about students, maybe the more curious they'll be about the math. Mike: You're making me think that this experience of making sense of someone else's reasoning has a lot of value for students. And I'm wondering how you've seen educators have students engage and make sense of their peer strategies. Ryan: Yeah. One of the things that I love to see teachers doing is using students' work as the conversation starter. I often, in my classroom, when I started doing this work, I would bring children up to the overhead projector or the document camera. And they would kind of do a show and tell and just say, “I did this and then I did this, and then I did this thing next.” And I would say, “That's really great, thank you.” And I'd bring up the next student. And it kind of became a show-and-tell-type situation. And I would look at the faces of the other kids in the room, and they would kind of just either be completely checked out or sitting there like raising their hand excitedly—“I want to share mine, I want to share mine.” And what I realized was, that there was really only one person who was engaged in that show-and-tell manner, and that was the person who was sharing their work. And so, I thought, “How can I change that?” So, I saw a lot of really amazing teachers across my career. And the thing that I saw that I appreciated the most is that when a piece of student work is shared, the person who really shouldn't talk is the person who created the work because they already know the work. What we need to do as a group is we need to investigate, “What happened here on this paper?” “Why do you think they made the moves that they made? And how could that help us understand math, our own math, in a different way?” And so, getting kids to look in at other kids' work, and not just saying, “Oh, Mike, how do you understand Ryan's work?” It's “Mike, can you get us started?” And then you say the first thing, and then I say, “OK, let's stop. Let's make sure that we've got this right.” And then we go to the kid whose work it is and say, “Are we on the right track? Are we understanding what you're …?” So, we're always checking with that expert. We're making sure they have the last word, because It's not my strategy. I didn't create it. Just because I'm the teacher doesn't mean you should come and ask me about this because this is Mike's strategy. So go and ask the person who created that.  So, trying to get them to understand that we all need to engage in each other's work. We all need to see the connections. We can learn from each other. And there's an expectation that everyone shares, right? So, it's not just the first kid who raises his hand. It's “All of you are going to get a chance to share.” And I think the really powerful thing is I've done this work even with in-service teachers. And so, when we look at samples of student work, what's fascinating is it just happens naturally because the kid's not in the room. We can't have that kid do a show and tell. We have to interpret their work. And so, trying to look at the kid's work and imagine, “What are the types of things we think this child is doing?,” “What do we think the strengths are on this paper?,” “What questions would you ask?,” “What would you do next?,” is such an interesting thing to do when the child isn't in the room. But when I'm with students, it's just fascinating to watch the kid whose work is on display just shine, even though they're not saying a word, because they just say, “Huh.” They get it. They understand what I did and why I did it.  I think that it's really important for us not just to have kids walk up to the board and do board work and just solve a problem using the steps that they've memorized or just go up and do a show and tell, [but] to really engage everyone in that process so that we're all learning. We're not just kind of checking out or waiting for our turn to talk. Mike: OK, you were talking about the ways that an educator can see how a student was thinking or the ways that an educator could place student work in front of other students and have them try to make sense of it. I wonder if there are any educational technology tools that you've seen that might help an educator who's trying to either understand their students' thinking or put it out for their students to understand one another's thinking. Ryan: Yeah, there's so many different pieces of technology and things out there. It's kind of overwhelming to try and figure out which one is which. So, I mean, I've seen people use things like Nearpod or Pear Deck—some of those kind of common technologies that you'll see when people do an educational technology class or a workshop at a conference or something. I've seen a lot of people lately using GeoGebra to create applets that they can use with their kids. One that I've started using a lot recently is Magma Math. Magma Math is great. I've used this with teachers and professional development situations to look at samples of student work because the thing that Magma has that I haven't seen in a lot of other technologies is there's a playback function. So, I can look at a static piece of finished work, but I can also rewind, and as the child works in this program, it records it. So, I can watch in real time what the child does. And so, if I can't understand the work because things are kind of sporadically all over the page, I can just rewatch the order that the child put something onto the page. And I think that's a really great feature.  There's just all these technologies that offer us opportunities to do things that I couldn't do at the beginning of my career or I didn't know how to do. And the technology facilitates that. And it's not just putting kids on an iPad so they can shoot lasers at the alien that's invading by saying, “8 times 5 is 40,” and the alien magically blows up. How does that teach us anything? But some of these technologies really allow us to dig deeply into a sample of work that students have finished or inquire into, “How did that happen and why did that happen?” And the technologies are just getting smarter and smarter, and they're listening to teachers saying, “It would be really helpful if we could do this or if we could do that.” And so, I think there are a lot of resources out there—sometimes too many, almost an embarrassment of riches. So, trying to figure out which ones are the ones that are actually worth our time, and how do we fund that in a school district or in a school so that teachers aren't paying for these pieces out of their pocket. Mike: You know what? I think that's a great place to stop. Ryan, thank you so much for joining us. It has been an absolute pleasure talking with you. Ryan: It's always great to talk to you, Mike. Thanks for all you do. 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  

Rounding Up Season 3 | Episode 6 – Argumentation, Justification & Conjecture Guests: Jody Guarino and Chepina Rumsey Mike Wallus: Argumentation, justification, conjecture. All of these are practices we hope to cultivate, but they may not be practices we associate with kindergarten, first-, and second-graders. What would it look like to encourage these practices with our youngest learners? Today we'll talk about this question with Jody Guarino and Chepina Rumsey, authors of the book Nurturing Math Curiosity with Learners in Grades K–2. Welcome to the podcast, Chepina and Jody. Thank you so much for joining us today. Jody Guarino: Thank you for having us. Chepina Rumsey: Yeah, thank you. Mike: So, I'm wondering if we can start by talking about the genesis of your work, particularly for students in grades K–2. Jody: Sure. Chepina had written a paper about argumentation, and her paper was situated in a fourth-grade class. At the time, I read the article and was so inspired, and I wanted it to use it in an upcoming professional learning that I was going to be doing. And I got some pushback with people saying, “Well, how is this relevant to K–2 teachers?” And it really hit me that there was this belief that K–2 students couldn't engage in argumentation. Like, “OK, this paper's great for older kids, but we're not really sure about the young students.” And at the time, there wasn't a lot written on argumentation in primary grades. So, we thought, “Well, let's try some things and really think about, ‘What does it look like in primary grades?' And let's find some people to learn with.” So, I approached some of my recent graduates from my teacher ed program who were working in primary classrooms and a principal that employed quite a few of them with this idea of, “Could we learn some things together? Could we come and work with your teachers and work with you and just kind of get a sense of what could students do in kindergarten to second grade?” So, we worked with three amazing teachers, Bethany, Rachael, and Christina—in their first years of teaching—and we worked with them monthly for two years. We wanted to learn, “What does it look like in K–2 classrooms?” And each time we met with them, we would learn more and get more and more excited. Little kids are brilliant, but also their teachers were brilliant, taking risks and trying things. I met with one of the teachers last week, and the original students that were part of the book that we've written now are actually in high school. So, it was just such a great learning opportunity for us. Mike: Well, I'll say this, there are many things that I appreciated about the book, about Nurturing Math Curiosity with Learners in Grades K–2, and I think one of the first things was the word “with” that was found in the title. So why “with” learners? What were y'all trying to communicate? Chepina: I'm so glad you asked that, Mike, because that was something really important to us when we were coming up with the title and the theme of the book, the message. So, we think it's really important to nurture curiosity with our students, meaning we can't expect to grow it in them if we're not also growing it in ourselves. So, we see that children are naturally curious and bring these ideas to the classroom. So, the word “with” was important because we want everyone in the classroom to grow more curious together. So, teachers nurturing their own math curiosity along with their students is important to us. One unique opportunity we tried to include in the book is for teachers who are reading it to have opportunities to think about the math and have spaces in the book where they can write their own responses and think deeply along with the vignettes to show them that this is something they can carry to their classroom. Mike: I love that. I wonder if we could talk a little bit about the meaning and the importance of argumentation? In the book, you describe four layers: noticing and wondering, conjecture, justification, and extending ideas. Could you share a brief explanation of those layers? Jody: Absolutely. So, as we started working with teachers, we'd noticed these themes or trends across, or within, all of the classrooms. So, we think about noticing and wondering as a space for students to make observations and ask curious questions. So, as teachers would do whatever activity or do games, they would always ask kids, “What are you noticing?” So, it really gave kids opportunities to just pause and observe things, which then led to questions as well. And when we think about students conjecturing, we think about when they make general statements about observations. So, an example of this could be a child who notices that 3 plus 7 is 10 and 7 plus 3 is 10. So, the child might think, “Oh wait, the order of the addends doesn't matter when adding. And maybe that would even work with other numbers.” So, forming a conjecture like this is, “What I believe to be true.” The next phase is justification, where a student can explain either verbally or with writing or with tools to prove the conjecture. So, in the case of the example that I brought up, 3 plus 7 and 7 plus 3, maybe a student even uses their fingers, where they're saying, “Oh, I have these 3 fingers and these 7 fingers and whichever fingers I look at first, or whichever number I start with, it doesn't matter. The sum is going to be the same.” So, they would justify in ways like that. I've seen students use counters, just explaining it. Oftentimes, they use language and hand motions and all kinds of things to try to prove what they're saying works. Or sometimes they'll find, just really look for, “Can I find an example where that doesn't work?” So, just testing their conjecture would be justifying. And then the final stage, extending ideas, could be extending that idea to all numbers. So, in the idea of addition in the commutative property, and they come to discover that they might realize, “Wait a minute, it also works for 1 plus 9 and 9 plus 1.” They could also think, “Does it work for other operations? So, not just with addition, but maybe I can subtract like that, too. Does that make a difference if I'm subtracting 5, takeaway 2 versus 2 takeaway 5. So, just this idea of, “Now I've made sense of something, what else does it work with or how can I extend that thinking?” Mike: So, the question that I was wondering about as you were talking is, “How do you think about the relationship between a conjecture and students' justification?” Jody: I've seen a lot of kids … so, sometimes they make conjectures that they don't even realize are conjectures, and they're like, “Oh, wait a minute, this pattern's happening, and I think I see something.” And so often they're like, “OK, I think that every time you add two numbers together, the sum is greater than the two numbers.” And so, then this whole idea of justifying … we often ask them, “How could you convince someone that that's true?” Or, “Is that always true?” And now they actually having to take and study it and think about, “Is it true? Does it always work?” Which, Mike, in your question, often leads back to another conjecture or refining their conjecture. It's kind of this cyclical process. Mike: That totally makes sense. I was going to use the words virtuous cycle, but that absolutely helps me understand that. I wonder if we can go back to the language of conjecture, because that feels really important to get clear on and to both understand and start to build a picture of. So, I wonder if you could offer a definition of conjecture for someone who's unfamiliar with the term or talk about how students understand conjecture. Chepina: Yeah. So, a conjecture is based on our exploration with the patterns and observations. So, through that exploration, we might have an idea that we believe to be true. We are starting to notice things and some language that students start to use. Things like, “Oh, that's always going to work” or “Sometimes we can do that.” So, there starts to be this shift toward an idea that they believe is going to be true. It's often a work in progress, so it needs to be explored more in order to have evidence to justify why that's going to be true. And through that process, we can modify our conjecture. Or we might have an idea, like this working idea of a conjecture, that then when we go to justify it, we realize, “Oh, it's not always true the way we thought. So, we have to make a change.” So, the conjecture is something that we believe to be true, and then we try to convince other people. So, once we introduce that with young mathematicians, they tend to latch on to that idea that it's this really neat thing to come up with a conjecture. And so, then they often start to come up with them even when we're not asking and get excited about, “Wait, I have a conjecture about the numbers and story problems,” where that wasn't actually where the lesson was going, but then they get excited about it. And that idea that we can take our patterns and observations, create a conjecture, and have this cyclical thing that happens. We had a second-grade student make what she called a “conjecture cycle.” So, she drew a circle with arrows and showed, “We can have an idea, we can test it, we can revise it, and we can keep going to create new information.” So, those are some examples of where we've seen conjectures and kids using them and getting excited and what they mean. And yeah, it's been really exciting. Mike: What is hitting me is that this idea of introducing conjectures and making them, it really has the potential to change the way that children understand mathematics. It has the potential to change from, “I'm seeking a particular answer” or “I'm memorizing a procedure” or “I'm doing a thing at a discreet point in time to get a discreet answer.” It feels culturally very different. It changes what we're talking about or what we're thinking about. Does that make sense to the two of you? Chepina: Yeah, it does. And I think it changes how they view themselves. They're mathematicians who are creating knowledge and seeking knowledge rather than memorizing facts. Part of it is we do want them to know their facts—but understand them in this deep way with the structure behind it. And so, they're creating knowledge, not just taking it in from someone else. Mike: I love that. Jody: Yeah, I think that they feel really empowered. Mike: That's a great pivot point. I wonder if the two of you would be willing to share a story from a K–2 classroom that could bring some of the ideas we've been talking about to life for people who are listening. Jody: Sure, I would love to. I got to spend a lot of time in these teachers' classrooms, and one of the days I spent in a first grade, the teacher was Rachael Gildea, and she had led a choral count with her first-graders. And they were counting by 10 but starting with 8. So, like, “Eight, 18, 28, 38, 48 … .” And as the kids were counting, Rachael was charting. And she was charting it vertically. So, below 8 was written 18, and then 28. And she wrote it as they counted. And one of her students paused and said, “Oh, they're all going to end with 8.” And Rachael took that student's conjecture. So, a lot of other conjectures or a lot of other ideas were shared. Students were sharing things they noticed. “Oh, looking at the tens place, it's counting 1, 2, 3,” and all sorts of things. But this one, particular student, who said they're all going to end in 8, Rachel took that student's—the actual wording—the language that the student had used, and she turned it into the task that the whole class then engaged in. Like, “Oh, this student thought or thinks it's always going to end in 8. That's her conjecture, how can we prove it?” And I happened to be in her classroom the day that they tested it. And it was just a wild scene. So, students were everywhere: at tables, laying down on the carpet, standing in front of the chart, they were examining it or something kind of standing with clipboards. And there was all kinds of buzz in the classroom. And Rachael was down on the carpet with the students listening to them. And there was this group of girls, I think three of them, that sort of screamed out, “We got it!” And Rachel walked over to the girls, and I followed her, and they were using base 10 blocks. And they showed her, they had 8 ones, little units, and then they had the 10 sticks. And so, one girl would say, they'd say, “Eight, 18, 28,” and one of the girls was adding the 10 sticks and almost had this excitement, like she discovered, I don't know, a new universe. It was so exciting. And she was like, “Well, look, you don't ever change them. You don't change the ones, you just keep adding tens.” And it was so magical because Rachael went over there and then right after that she paused the class and she's like, “Come here everyone, let's listen to these girls share what they discovered.” And all of the kids were sort of huddled around, and it was just magical. And they had used manipulatives, the base 10 blocks, to make sense of the conjecture that came from the coral count. And I thought it was beautiful. And so, I did coral counts in my classroom and never really thought about, “OK, what's that next step beyond, like, ‘Oh, this is exciting. Great things happen with numbers.'” Mike: What's hitting me is that there's probably a lot of value in being able to use students' conjectures as reference points for potential future lessons. I wonder if you have some ideas or if you've seen educators create something like a public space for conjectures in their classroom. Chepina: We've seen amazing work around conjectures with young mathematicians. In that story that Jody was telling us about Rachael, she used that conjecture in the next lesson to bring it together. It fits so perfectly with the storyline for that unit, and the lesson, and where it was going to go next. But sometimes ideas can be really great, but they don't quite fit where the storyline is going. So, we've encouraged teachers and seen this happen in the classrooms we've worked in, where they have a conjecture wall in their classroom, where ideas can be added with Post-it notes have a station where there are Post-it notes and pencil right there. And students can go and write their idea, put their name on it, stick it to the wall. And so, conjectures that are used in the lesson can be put up there, but ones that aren't used yet could be put up there. And so, if there was a lesson where a great idea emerges in the middle, and it doesn't quite fit in, the teacher could say, “That's a great idea. I want to make sure we come back to it. Could you add it to the conjecture wall?” And it gives that validation that their idea is important, and we're going to come back to it instead of just shutting it down and not acknowledging it at all. So, we have them put their names on to share. It's their expertise. They have value in our classroom. They add something to our community. Everyone has something important to share. So, that public space, I think, is really important to nurture that community where everyone has something to share. And we're all learning together. We're all exploring, conjecturing. Jody: And I've been to in those classrooms, that Chepina is referring to with conjecture walls, and kids actually will come in, they'll be doing math, and they'll go to recess or lunch and come back in and ask for a Post-it to add a conjecture like this … I don't know, one of my colleagues uses the word “mathematical residue.” They continue thinking about this, and their thoughts are acknowledged. And there's a space for them. Mike: So, as a former kindergarten, first-grade teacher, I'm seeing a picture in my head. And I'm wondering if you could talk about setting the stage for this type of experience, particularly the types of questions that can draw out conjectures and encourage justification? Jody: Yeah. So, as we worked with teachers, we found so many rich opportunities. And now looking back, those opportunities are probably in all classrooms all the time. But I hadn't realized in my experience that I'm one step away from this ( chuckles ). So, as teachers engaged in instructional routines, like the example of coral counting I shared from Rachael's classroom, they often ask questions like: “What do you notice? Why do you think that's happening? Will that always happen? How do you know? How can you prove it will always work? How can you convince a friend?” And those questions nudge children naturally to go to that next step when we're pushing, asking an advancing question in response to something that a student said. Mike: You know, one of the things that occurs to me is that those questions are a little bit different even than the kinds of questions we would ask if we were trying to elicit a student's strategy or their conceptual understanding, right? In that case, it seems like we want to understand the ideas that were kind of animating a student's strategy or the ideas that they were using or even how they saw a mental model unfolding in their head. But the questions that you just described, they really do go back to this idea of generalizing, right? Is there a pattern that we can recognize that is consistently the same or that doesn't change. And it's pressing them to think about that in a way that's different even than conceptual-based questions. Does that make sense? Jody: It does, and it makes me think about … I believe it's Vicki Jacobs and Joan Case, who do a lot of work with questioning. They ask this question, too: “As a teacher, what did that child say that gave you permission to ask that question?” Where often, I want to take my question somewhere else, but really all of these questions are nudging kids in their own thinking. So, when they're sharing something, it's like, “Well, do you think that will always work?” It's still grounded in what their ideas were but sort of taking them to that next place. Mike: So, one of the things that I'm also wondering about is a scaffold called “language frames.” How do students or a teacher use language frames to support argumentation? Chepina: Yeah, I think that communication is such a big part of argumentation. And we found language frames can help support students to share their ideas by having this common language that might be different than the way they talk about other things with their friends or in other subjects. So, using the language frames as a scaffold that supports students in communicating by offering them a model for that discussion. When I've been teaching lessons, I will have the language written out in a space where everyone can see, and I'll use it to model my discussion. And then students will use it as they're sharing their ideas. And that's been really helpful to get language at all grade levels. Mike: Can you share one or two examples of a language frame? That's something you would use in say, a K, 1, or a 2 classroom, Chepina? Chepina: Yeah. We've had something like, we'll put, “I notice” and then a blank line. (“I notice ______.) And so, we'll have them say, “I notice,” and then they'll fill it in. Or “I wonder” or “I have a different idea.” So, helping to model, “How do you talk in a community of learners when you're sharing ideas? Or if you have a different idea and you're disagreeing.” So, we'll have that actually written out, and we can use it ourselves or help students to restate what they've said using that model so that then they can pick up that language. Mike: One of the things that stands out for me is that these experiences with argumentation and conjecture, they obviously have benefits for individual student's conceptual understanding and for their communication. But I suspect that they also have a real benefit for the class as a collective. Can you talk about the impact that you've seen in K–2 classrooms that are thinking about argumentation and putting some of these practices into place? Jody: Sure. I've been really fortunate to get to spend so much time in classrooms really learning from the teachers that we worked with. And one of the things I noticed about the classrooms is the ongoing curiosity and wonder. Students were always making sense of things and investigating ideas. And the other thing that I really picked up on was how they listened to each other, which, coming from a primary background, is challenging for kids to listen to each other. But they were really attentive and attuned, and they saw themselves as problem-solvers, and they thought their role was to things out. That's just what they do at school. But they thought about other kids in those ways, too. “Well, let me see what other people think” or “Let me hear Chepina's idea because maybe there's something that's useful for me.” So, they really engaged in learning, not as an isolated, sort of, “Myself as a learner,” but as part of a community. The classrooms were also buzzing all the time. There was noise and movement. And the kids, the word I would say is “intellectually engaged.” So, not just engaged, like busy doing things, but really deeply thinking. Chepina: The other thing we've seen that has been also really exciting is the impact on the teachers as they become more curious along with the students. So, in our first group, we had the teachers, the K–2 teachers, and we saw that they started to say things when we would meet because we would meet monthly. And they would start to say things like, “I noticed this, and I wonder if this is what my student was thinking?” So, when they were talking about their own students and their own lessons and the mathematics behind the problems, we saw teachers start to use that language and become more curious, too. So, it's been really exciting to see that aspect as we work with teachers. Mike: So, I suspect that we have many listeners who are making sense of the ideas that you're sharing and are going to want to continue learning about argumentation and conjecture. Are there particular resources that you would recommend that might help an educator continue down this path? Chepina: Yeah. We are both so excited that our first book just came out in May, and we took all the things that we had learned in this project, exploring alongside teachers, and we have more examples. There are strategies, there's examples of the routines that we think it's often we stop too soon. Like, “Here are some ideas of how to keep going with these instructional routines,” and we have templates to support teachers as they take those common routines further. So, we also have some links of our recent articles, and we have some social media pages. We can share those. Mike: That's fabulous. We will post all of those links and also a link to the book that you all have written. I think this is probably a great place to stop. Chepina and Jody, I want to thank you both so much for joining us. It's really been a pleasure talking with you. Jody: Thank you for the opportunity. It's been great to share some of the work that we've learned from classrooms, from students and teachers. Chepina: Yeah. Thank you, Mike. It's been so fun to talk to 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 

Rounding Up Season 3 | Episode 05 - Building Asset-Focused Professional Learning Communities Guests: Summer Pettigrew and Megan Williams Mike Wallus: Professional learning communities have been around for a long time and in many different iterations. But what does it look like to schedule and structure professional learning communities that actually help educators understand and respond to their students' thinking in meaningful ways? Today we're talking with Summer Pettigrew and Megan Williams from the Charleston Public Schools about building asset-focused professional learning communities.  Hello, Summer and Megan. Welcome to the podcast. I am excited to be talking with you all today about PLCs. Megan Williams: Hi! Summer Pettigrew: Thanks for having us. We're excited to be here. Mike: I'd like to start this conversation in a very practical place, scheduling. So, Megan, I wonder if you could talk just a bit about when and how you schedule PLCs at your building. Megan: Sure. I think it's a great place to start, too, because I think without the structure of PLCs in place, you can't really have fabulous PLC meetings. And so, we used to do our PLC meetings once a week during teacher planning periods, and the teachers were having to give up their planning period during the day to come to the PLC meeting. And so, we created a master schedule that gives an hour for PLC each morning. So, we meet with one grade level a day, and then the teachers still have their regular planning period throughout the day. So, we were able to do that by building a time for clubs in the schedule. So, first thing in the morning, depending on your day, so if it's Monday and that's third grade, then the related arts teachers—and that for us is art, music, P.E., guidance, our special areas—they go to the third-grade teachers' classrooms. The teachers are released to go to PLC, and then the students choose a club. And so, those range from basketball to gardening to fashion to STEMs. We've had Spanish club before. So, they participate with the related arts teacher in their chosen club, and then the teachers go to their PLC meeting. And then once that hour is up, then the teachers come back to class. The related arts teachers are released to go get ready for their day. So, everybody still has their planning period, per se, throughout the day. Mike: I think that feels really important, and I just want to linger a little bit longer on it. One of the things that stands out is that you're preserving the planning time on a regular basis. They have that, and they have PLC time in addition to it. Summer: Uh-hm. Megan: Correct. And that I think is key because planning time in the middle of the day is critical for making copies, calling parents, calling your doctor to schedule an appointment, using the restroom … those kind of things that people have to do throughout the day. And so, when you have PLC during their planning time, one or the other is not occurring. Either a teacher is not taking care of those things that need to be taken care of on the planning period. Or they're not engaged in the PLC because they're worried about something else that they've got to do. So, building that time in, it's just like a game-changer. Mike: Summer, as a person who's playing the role of an instructional coach, what impact do you think this way of scheduling has had on educators who are participating in the PLCs that you're facilitating? Summer: Well, it's huge. I have experienced going to A PLC on our planning and just not being a hundred percent engaged. And so, I think having the opportunity to provide the time and the space for that during the school day allows the teachers to be more present. And I think that the rate at which we're growing as a staff is expedited because we're able to drill into what we need to drill into without worrying about all the other things that need to happen. So, I think that the scheduling piece has been one of the biggest reasons we've been so successful with our PLCs. Mike: Yeah, I can totally relate to that experience of feeling like I want to be here, present in this moment, and I have 15 things that I need to do to get ready for the next chunk of my day. So, taking away that “if, then,” and instead having an “and” when it comes to PLCs, really just feels like a game-changer. Megan: And we were worried at first about the instructional time that was going to be lost from the classroom doing the PLC like this. We really were, because we needed to make sure instructional time was maximized and we weren't losing any time. And so, this really was about an hour a week where the teachers aren't directly instructing the kids. But it has not been anything negative at all. Our scores have gone up, our teachers have grown. They love the kids, love going to their clubs. I mean, even the attendance on the grade-level club day is so much better because they love coming in. And they start the day really getting that SEL instruction. I mean, that's really a lot of what they're getting in clubs. They're hanging out with each other. They're doing something they love. Mike: Maybe this is a good place to shift and talk a little bit about the structure of the PLCs that are happening. So, I've heard you say that PLCs, as they're designed and functioning right now, they're not for planning. They're instead for teacher collaboration. So, what does that mean? Megan: Well, there's a significant amount of planning that does happen in PLC, but it's not a teacher writing his or her lesson plans for the upcoming week. So, there's planning, but not necessarily specific lesson planning: like on Monday I'm doing this, on Tuesday I'm doing this. It's more looking at the standards, looking at the important skills that are being taught, discussing with each other ways that you do this. “How can I help kids that are struggling? How can I push kids that are higher?” So, teachers are collaborating and planning, but they're not really producing written lesson plans. Mike: Yeah. One of the pieces that you all talked about when we were getting ready for this interview, was this idea that you always start your PLCs with a recognition of the celebrations that are happening in classrooms. I'm wondering if you can talk about what that looks like and the impact it has on the PLCs and the educators who are a part of them. Summer: Yeah. I think our teachers are doing some great things in their classrooms, and I think having the time to share those great things with their colleagues is really important. Just starting the meeting on that positive note tends to lead us in a more productive direction. Mike: You two have also talked to me about the impact of having an opportunity for educators to engage in the math that their students will be doing or looking at common examples of student work and how it shows up in the classroom. I wonder if you could talk about what you see in classrooms and how you think that loops back into the experiences that are happening in PLCs. Summer: Yeah. One of the things that we start off with in our PLCs is looking at student work. And so, teachers are bringing common work examples to the table, and we're looking to see, “What are our students coming with? What's a good starting point for us to build skills, to develop these skills a little bit further to help them be more successful?” And I think a huge part of that is actually doing the work that our students are doing. And so, prior to giving a task to a student, we all saw that together in a couple of different ways. And that's going to give us that opportunity to think about what misconceptions might show up, what questions we might want to ask if we want to push students further, reign them back in a little bit. Just that pre-planning piece with the student math, I think has been very important for us. And so, when we go into classrooms, I'll smile because they kind of look like little miniature PLCs going on. The teacher's facilitating, the students are looking at strategies of their classmates and having conversations about what's similar, what's different. I think the teachers are modeling with their students that productive practice of looking at the evidence and the student work and talking about how we go about thinking through these problems. Mike: I think the more that I hear you talk about that, I flashback to what Megan, what you said earlier about, there is planning that's happening, and there's collaboration. They're planning the questions that they might ask. They're anticipating the things that might come from students. So, while it's not, “I'm writing my lesson for Tuesday,” there is a lot of planning that's coming. It's just perhaps not as specific as, “This is what we'll do on this particular day.” Am I getting that right? Megan: Yes. You're getting that a hundred percent right. Summer has teachers sometimes taken the assessment at the beginning of a unit. We'll go ahead and take the end-of-unit assessment and the information that you gain from that. Just with having the teachers take it and knowing how the kids are going to be assessed, then just in turn makes them better planners for the unit. And there's a lot of good conversation that comes from that. Mike: I mean, in some ways, your PLC design, the word that pops into my head is almost like a “rehearsal” of sorts. Does that analogy seem right? Summer: It seems right. And just to add on to that, I think, too, again, providing that time within the school day for them to look at the math, to do the math, to think about what they want to ask, is like a mini-rehearsal. Because typically, when teachers are planning outside of school hours, it's by themselves in a silo. But this just gives that opportunity to talk about all the possibilities together, run through the math together, ask questions if they have them. So, I think that's a decent analogy, yeah. Mike: Yeah. Well, you know what it makes me think about is competitive sports like basketball. As a person who played quite a lot, there are points in time when you start to learn the game that everything feels so fast. And then there are points in time when you've had some experience when you know how to anticipate, where things seem to slow down a little bit. And the analogy is that if you can kind of anticipate what might happen or the meaning of the math that kids are showing you, it gives you a little bit more space in the moment to really think about what you want to do versus just feeling like you have to react. Summer: And I think, too, it keeps you focused on the math at hand. You're constantly thinking about your next teacher move. And so, if you've got that math in your mind and you do get thrown off, you've had an opportunity, like you said, to have a little informal rehearsal with it, and maybe you're not thrown off as badly. (  laughs ) Mike: Well, one of the things that you've both mentioned when we've talked about PLCs is the impact of a program called OGAP. I'm wondering if you can talk about what OGAP is, what it brought to your educators, and how it impacted what's been happening in PLCs. Megan: I'll start in terms … OGAP stands for ongoing assessment project. Summer can talk about the specifics, but we rolled it out as a whole school. And I think there was power in that. Everybody in your school taking the same professional development at the same time, speaking the same language, hearing the same things. And for us, it was just a game-changer. Summer: Yeah, I taught elementary math for 12 years before I knew anything about OGAP, and I had no idea what I was doing until OGAP came into my life. All of the light bulbs that went off with this very complex elementary math that I had no idea was a thing, it was just incredible. And so, I think the way that OGAP plays a role in PLCs is that we're constantly using the evidence in our student work to make decisions about what we do next. We're not just plowing through a curriculum, we're looking at the visual models and strategies that Bridges expects of us in that unit. We're coupling it with the content knowledge that we get from OGAP and how students should and could move along this progression. And we're planning really carefully around that; thinking about, “If we give this task and some of our students are still at a less sophisticated strategy and some of our students are at a more sophisticated strategy, how can we use those two examples to bridge that gap for more kids?” And we're really learning from each other's work. It's not the teacher up there saying, “This is how you'd solve this problem.” But it's a really deep dive into the content. And I think the level of confidence that OGAP has brought our teachers as they've learned to teach Bridges has been like a powerhouse for us. Mike: Talk a little bit about the confidence that you see from your teachers who have had an OGAP experience and who are now using a curriculum and implementing it. Can you say more about that? Summer: Yeah. I mean, I think about our PLCs, the collaborative part of it, we're having truly professional conversations. It's centered around the math, truly, and how students think about the math. And so again, not to diminish the need to strategically lesson plan and come up with activities and things, but we're talking really complex stuff in PLCs. And so, when we look at student work and we that work on the OGAP progression, depending on what skill we're teaching that week, we're able to really look at, “Gosh, the kid is, he's doing this, but I'm not sure why.” And then we can talk a little bit about, “Well, maybe he's thinking about this strategy, and he got confused with that part of it.” So, it really, again, is just centered around the student thinking. The evidence is in front of us, and we use that to plan accordingly. And I think it just one-ups a typical PLC because our teachers know what they're talking about. There's no question in, “Why am I teaching how to add on an open number line?” We know the reasoning behind it. We know what comes before that. We know what comes after that, and we know the importance of why we're doing it right now. Mike: Megan, I wanted to ask you one more question. You are the instructional leader for the building, the position you hold is principal. I know that Summer is a person who does facilitation of the PLCs. What role do you play or what role do you try to play in PLCs as well? Megan: I try to be present at every single PLC meeting and an active participant. I do all the assessments. I get excited when Summer says we're taking a test. I mean, I do everything that the teachers do. I offer suggestions if I think that I have something valuable to bring to the table. I look at student work. I just do everything with everybody because I like being part of that team. Mike: What impact do you think that that has on the educators who are in the PLC? Megan: I mean, I think it makes teachers feel that their time is valuable. We're valuing their time. It's helpful for me, too, when I go into classrooms. I know what I'm looking for. I know which kids I want to work with. Sometimes I'm like, “Ooh, I want to come in and see you do that. That's exciting.” It helps me plan my day, and it helps me know what's going on in the school. And I think it also is just a non-judgmental, non-confrontational time for people to ask me questions. I mean, it's part of me trying to be accessible as well. Mike: Summer, as the person who's the facilitator, how do you think about preparing for the kind of PLCs that you've described? What are some of the things that are important to know as a facilitator or to do in preparation? Summer: So, I typically sort of rehearse myself, if you will, before the PLC kicks off. I will take assessments, I will take screeners. I'll look at screener implementation guides and think about the pieces of that that would be useful for our teachers if they needed to pull some small groups and re-engage those kids prior to a unit. What I really think is important though, is that vertical alignment. So, looking at the standards that are coming up in a module, thinking about what came before it: “What does that standard look like in second grade?” If I'm doing a third grade PLC: “What does that standard look like in fourth grade?” Because teachers don't have time to do that on their own. And I think it's really important for that collective efficacy, like, “We're all doing this together. What you did last year matters. What you're doing next year matters, and this is how they tie together.” I kind of started that actually this year, wanting to know more myself about how these standards align to each other and how we can think about Bridges as a ladder among grade levels. Because we were going into classrooms, and teachers were seeing older grade levels doing something that they developed, and that was super exciting for them. And so, having an understanding of how our state standards align in that way just helps them to understand the importance of what they're doing and bring about that efficacy that we all really just need our teachers to own. It's so huge. And just making sure that our students are going to the next grade prepared. Mike: One of the things that I was thinking about as I was listening to you two describe the different facets of this system that you've put together is, how to get started. Everything from scheduling to structure to professional learning. There's a lot that goes into making what you all have built successful. I think my question to you all would be, “If someone were listening to this, and they were thinking to themselves, ‘Wow, that's fascinating!' What are some of the things that you might encourage them to do if they wanted to start to take up some of the ideas that you shared?” Megan: It's very easy to crash and burn by trying to take on too much. And so, I think if you have a long-range plan and an end goal, you need to try to break it into chunks. Just making small changes and doing those small changes consistently. And once they become routine practices, then taking on something new. Mike: Summer, how about you? Summer: Yeah, I think as an instructional coach, one of the things that I learned through OGAP is that our student work is personal. And if we're looking at student work without the mindset of, “We're learning together,” sometimes we can feel a little bit attacked. And so, one of the first things that we did when we were rolling this out and learning how to analyze student work is, we looked at student work that wasn't necessarily from our class. We asked teachers to save student work samples. I have folders in my office of different student work samples that we can practice sorting and have conversations about. And that's sort of where we started with it. Looking at work that wasn't necessarily our students gave us an opportunity to be a little bit more open about what we wanted to say about it, how we wanted to talk about it. And it really does take some practice to dig into student thinking and figure out, “Where do I need to go from here?” And I think that allowed us to play with it in a way that wasn't threatening necessarily. Mike: I think that's a great place to stop, Megan and Summer. I want to thank you so much for joining us. It's really been a pleasure talking to both of you. Megan: Well, thank you for having us.  Summer: Yeah, thanks a lot 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 

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Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 17 – Spatial Reasoning Guest: Dr. Robyn Pinilla Mike Wallus: Spatial reasoning can be a nebulous concept, and it's often hard for many educators to define. In this episode, we're talking about spatial reasoning with Dr. Robyn Pinilla from the University of Texas, El Paso. We'll examine the connections between spatial reasoning and other mathematical concepts and explore different ways that educators can cultivate this type of reasoning with their students. Mike: Welcome to the podcast, Robyn. I'm really excited to be talking with you about spatial reasoning. Robyn Pinilla: And I am excited to be here. Mike: Well, let me start with a basic question. So, when we're talking about spatial reasoning, is that just another way of saying that we're going to be talking about ideas that are associated with geometry? Or are we talking about something bigger? Robyn: It's funny that you say it in that way, Mike, because geometry is definitely the closest mathematical content that we see in curricula, but it is something much bigger. So, I started with the misconception and then I used my own experiences to support that idea that this was just geometry because it was my favorite math course in high school because I could see the concepts modeled and I could make things more tangible. Drawing helped me to visualize some of those concepts that I was learning instead of just using a formula that I didn't necessarily understand. So, at that time, direct instruction really ruled, and I'm unsure what the conceptual understandings of my teachers even were because what I recall is doing numbers 3 through 47 odds in the back of the book and just plugging through these formulas. But spatial reasoning allows us to develop our concepts in a way that lead to deeper conceptual understanding. I liked geometry, and it gave me this vehicle for mathematizing the world. But geometry is really only one strand of spatial reasoning. Mike: So, you're already kind of poking around the question that I was going to ask next, which is the elevator description of, “What do we mean when we talk about spatial reasoning and why does it matter? Why is it a big deal for students?” Robyn: So, spatial reasoning is a notoriously hard to define construct that deals with how things move in space. It's individually how they move in space, in relation to one another. A lot of my ideas come from a network analysis that [Cathy] Bruce and colleagues did back in 2017 that looked at the historical framing of what spatial reasoning is and how we talk about it in different fields. Because psychologists look at spatial reasoning. Mathematics educators look at spatial reasoning. There [are] also connections into philosophy, the arts. But when we start moving toward mathematics more specifically, it does deal with how things move in space individually and in relation to one another. So, with geometry, whether the objects are sliding and transforming or we're composing and decomposing to create new shapes, those are the skills in two-dimensional geometry that we do often see in curricula. But the underlying skills are also critical to everyday life, and they can be taught as well. Robyn: And when we're thinking about the everyday constructs that are being built through our interactions with the world, I like to think about the GPS on our car. So, spatial reasoning has a lot of spatial temporal processes that are going on. It's not just thinking about the ways that things move in relation to one another or the connections to mathematics, but also the way that we move through this world, the way that we navigate through it. So, I'll give a little example. Spatial temporal processes have to do with us running errands, perhaps. How long does it take you to get from work to the store to home? And how many things can you purchase in the store knowing how full your fridge currently is? What pots and pans are you going to use to cook the food that you purchase, and what volume of that food are you and your family going to consume? So, all those daily tasks involve conceptions of how much space things take. And we could call it capacity, which situates nicely within the measurement domain of mathematics education. But it's also spatial reasoning, and it extends further than that. Mike: That is helpful. I think you opened up my understanding of what we're actually talking about, and I think the piece that was really interesting is how in that example of “I'm going to the grocery store, how long will it take? How full is my fridge? What are the different tools that I'll use to prepare? What capacity do they have?” I think that really helped me broaden out my own thinking about what spatial reasoning actually is. I wonder if we could shift a bit and you could help unpack for educators who are listening, a few examples of tasks that kids might encounter that could support the development of spatial reasoning. Robyn: Sure. My research and work [are] primarily focused on early childhood and elementary. So, I'm going to focus there but then kind of expand up. Number one, let's play. That's the first thing that I want to walk into a classroom and see: I want to see the kids engaging with blocks, LEGOS, DUPLOS, and building with and without specific intentions. Not everything has to have a preconceived lesson. So, one of the activities I've been doing actually with teachers and professional development sessions lately is a presentation called “Whosits and Whatsits.” I have the teachers create whatsits that do thatsits; meaning, they create something that does something. I don't give them a prompt of what problem they're going to be solving or anything specific for them to build, but rather say, “Here are materials.” We give them large DUPLO blocks, magnet tiles and Magformers, different types of wooden, cardboard and foam blocks, PVC pipes, which are really interesting in the ways that teachers use them. And have them start thinking as though they're the children in the class, and they're trying to build something that takes space and can be used in different ways. Robyn: So, the session we did a couple of weeks ago, some teachers came up with … first, there was a swing that they had put a little frog in that they controlled with magnets. So, they had used the PVC pipe at the top that part of the swing connected over, and then were using the magnets to guide it back and forth without ever having to touch the swing. And I just thought, that was the coolest way for them to be using these materials in really playful, creative ways that could also engender them taking those lessons back into their classroom. I have also recently been reminded of the importance of modeling with fractions. So, are you familiar with the “Which One Doesn't Belong?” tasks? Mike: Absolutely love them. Robyn: Yes. There's also a website for fraction talks that children can look at visual representations of fractions and determine which one doesn't belong for some reason. That helps us to see the ways that children are thinking about the fractional spaces and then justifying their reason around them. With that, we can talk about the spatial positioning of the fractional pieces that are colored in. Or the ways that they're separated if those colored pieces are in different places on the figure that's being shown. They open up some nice spaces for us to talk about different concepts and use that language of spatial reasoning that is critical for teachers to engage in to show the ways that students can think about those things. Mike: So, I want to go back to this notion of play, and what I'm curious about is, why is situating this in play going to help these ideas around spatial reasoning come out as opposed to say, situating it in a more controlled structure? Robyn: Well, I think by situating spatial reasoning within play, we do allow teachers to respond in the moment rather than having these lesson plans that they are required to plan out from the beginning. A lot of the ideas within spatial reasoning, because it's a nebulous construct and it's learned through our everyday experiences and interactions with the world, they are harder to plan. And so, when children are engaged in play in the classroom, teachers can respond very naturally so that they're incorporating the mathematizing of the world into what the students are already doing. So, if you take, for example, one of my old teachers used to do a treasure hunt—great way to incorporate spatial reasoning with early childhood elementary classrooms—where she would set up a mapping task, is really what it was. But it was introducing the children to the school itself and navigating that environment, which is critical for spatial reasoning skills. Robyn: And they would play this gingerbread man-type game of, she would read the book and then everybody would be involved with this treasure hunt where the kiddos would start out in the classroom, and they would get a clue to help them navigate toward the cafeteria. When they got to the cafeteria, the gingerbread man would already be gone. He would've already run off. So, they would get their next clue to help them navigate to the playground, so on and so forth. They would go to the nurse's office, the principal, the library, all of the critical places that they would be going through on a daily basis or when they needed to within the school. And it reminds me that there was also a teacher I once interviewed who used orienteering skills with her students. Have you ever heard of orienteering? Mike: The connection I'm making is to something like geocaching, but I think you should help me understand it. Robyn: Yeah, that's really similar. So, it's this idea that children would find their way places. Path finding and way finding are also spatial reasoning skills that are applied within our real world. And so, while it may not be as scientific or sophisticated as doing geocaching, it has children with the idea of navigating in our real world, helps them start to learn cardinality and the different ways of thinking about traversing to a different location, which … these are all things that might better relate to social studies or technology, other STEM domains specifically, but that are undergirded by the spatial reasoning, which does have those mathematics connections. Mike: I think the first thing that occurred is, all of the directional language that could emerge from something like trying to find the gingerbread boy. And then the other piece that you made me think about just now is this opportunity to quantify distance in different ways. And I'm sure there are other things that you could draw out, especially in a play setting where the structure is a little bit looser and it gives you a little bit more space, as you said, to respond to kids rather than feeling like you have to impose the structure. Robyn: Yeah, absolutely. There's an ability when teachers are engaging in authentic ways with the students, that they're able to support language development, support ideation and creation, without necessarily having kids sit down and fill out a worksheet that says, “Where is the ball? The ball is sitting on top of the shelf.” Instead, we can be on the floor working with students and providing those directions of, “Oh, hey, I need you to get me those materials from the shelf on the other side of the room,” but thinking about, “How can I say that in a way that better supports children understanding the spatial reasoning that's occurring in our room?” So maybe it's, “Find the pencil inside the blue cup on top of the shelf that's behind the pencil sharpener,” getting really specific in the ways that we talk about things so that we're ingraining those ideas in such a way that it becomes part of the way that the kids communicate as well. Mike: You have me thinking that there's an intentionality in language choice that can create that, but then I would imagine as a teacher I could also revoice what students are saying and perhaps introduce language in that way as well. Robyn: Yeah, and now you have me thinking about a really fun routine number talks, of course. And if we do the idea of a dot talk instead of a number talk, thinking about the spatial structuring of the dots that we're seeing and the different ways that you can see those arrangements and describe the quantification of the arrangement. It's a nice way to introduce educators to spatial reasoning because it might be something that they're already doing in the classroom while also providing an avenue for children to see spatial structuring in a way that they're already accustomed to as well, based on the routines that they're receiving from the teacher.  Mike: I think what's really exciting about this, Robyn, is the more that we talk, the more two things jump out. I think one is, my language choices allow me to introduce these ideas in a way that I don't know that I'd thought about as a practitioner. Part two is that we can't really necessarily draw a distinction between work we're doing around numbers and quantity and spatial reasoning; that there are opportunities within our work around number quantity and within math content to inject the language of spatial reasoning and have it become a part of the experience for students. Robyn: Yeah, and that's important that I have conveyed that without explicitly saying it because that's the very work that I'm doing with teachers in their classrooms at this time. One, as you're talking about language, and I hate to do this, but I'm going to take us a little bit off topic for a moment. I keep seeing this idea on Twitter or whatever we call it at this point, that some people actually don't hear music in their heads. This idea is wild to me because I have songs playing in my head all the time. But at the same time, what if we think about the idea that some people don't also visualize things, they don't imagine those movements continuously that I just see. And so, as teachers, we really need to focus on that same idea that children need opportunities to practice what we think they should be able to hear but also practice what we think they should be able to see.  Robyn: I'm not a cognitive scientist. I can't see inside someone's head. But I am a teacher by trade, so I want to emphasize that teachers can do what's within their locus of control so that children can have opportunities to talk about those tasks. One that I recently saw was a lesson on clocks. So, while I was sitting there watching her teach, she was using a Judy Clock. She was having fun games with the kids to do a little competition where they could read the clock and tell her what time it was. But I was just starting to think about all of the ways that we could talk about the shorter and longer hands, the minute and hour hands, the ways that we could talk about them rotating around that center point. What shape does the hand make as it goes around that center point and what happens if it doesn't rotate fully? Now I'm going back to those fractional ideas from earlier with the “Which One Doesn't Belong?” tasks of having full shapes versus half shapes, and how we see those shapes in our real lives that we can then relate with visualized shapes that some children may or may not be able to see. Mike: You have me thinking about something. First of all, I'm so glad that you mentioned the role of visualization.  Robyn: Yeah. Mike: You had me thinking about a conversation I was having with a colleague a while ago, and we had read a text that we were discussing, and the point of conversation came up. I read this and there's a certain image that popped into my head. Robyn: Uh-hm. Mike: And the joke we were making is, “I'm pretty certain that the image that I saw in my head having read this text is not the same as what you saw.” What you said that really struck home for me is, I might be making some real assumptions about the pictures that kids see in their head and helping build those internal images, those mental movies. That's a part of our work as well. Robyn: Absolutely. Because I'm thinking about the way that we have prototypical shapes. So, a few years ago I was working with some assessments, and the children were supposed to be able to recognize an equilateral triangle—whether it was gravity-based or facing another orientation—and there were some children who automatically could see that the triangle was a triangle no matter which direction it was “pointing.” Whereas others only recognize it if a triangle, if it were gravity-based. And so, we need to be teaching the properties of the shapes beyond just that image recognition that oftentimes our younger students come out with. I tend to think of visualization and language as supporting one another with the idea that when we are talking, we're also writing a descriptive essay. Our words are what create the intended picture—can't say that it's always the picture that comes out. But the intended picture for the audience. What we're hopeful for in classrooms is that because we're sharing physical spaces and tangible experiences, that the language used around those experiences could create shared meaning. That's one of the most difficult pieces in talking about spatial reason or quite frankly, anything else, is that oftentimes our words may have different meanings depending on who the speaker and who the listener are. And so, navigating what those differences are can be quite challenging, which is why spatial reasoning is still so hard to define. Mike: Absolutely. My other follow-up is, if you were to offer people a way to get started, particularly on visualization, is there a kind of task that you imagine might move them along that pathway? Robyn: I think the first thing to do is really grasp an approximation. I'm not going to say figure out what spatial reasoning is, but just an approximation or a couple of the skills therein that you feel comfortable with. So, spatial reasoning is really the set of skills that undergirds almost all of our daily actions, but it also can be inserted into the lessons that teachers are already teaching. I think that we do have to acknowledge that spatial reasoning is hard to define, but the good news is that we do reason spatially all day every day. If I am in a classroom, I want to look first at the teaching that's happening, the routines that are already there, and see where some spatial reasoning might actually fit in. With our young classes, I like to think about calendar math. Every single kindergarten, first-grade classroom that you walk into, they're going to have that calendar on the wall. So how can you work into the routines that are occurring, that spatial language to describe the different components of the routine? Robyn: So, as a kiddo is counting on that hundreds chart, talking about the ways in which they're moving the pointer along the numbers … when they're counting by 10s, talk about the ways that they're moving down. When they're finding the patterns that are on the calendar, because all of those little calendar numbers for the day, they wind up having a pattern within them in most of the curricular kits. So, thinking about just the ways that we can use language therein. Now with older students, I think that offering that variety of models or manipulatives for them to use and then encourage them to translate from having a concrete manipulative into those more representational ideas, is great regardless of age or grade. So, students benefit from the modeling when they do diagramming of their models; that is, translating the 3-D model to 2-D, which is another component of spatial reasoning. And that gets me to this sticky point of, I'm not arguing against automaticity or being able to solve equations without physical or visual models. But I'm just acknowledging this idea that offering alternative ways for students to engage with content is really critical because we're no longer at a phase that we need our children to become computers. We have programs for that. We need children who are able to think and solve problems in novel ways because that's the direction that we're moving in problem-solving. Mike: That's fantastic. My final question before we close things up. If you were to make a recommendation for someone who's listening and they're intrigued and they want to keep learning, are there any particular resources that you'd offer people that they might be able to go to? Robyn: Yeah, absolutely. So, the first one that I like is the Learning Trajectories website. It's, uh, learning trajectories.org. It's produced by Doug Clements and Julie Sarama. There are wonderful tasks that are associated with spatial reasoning skills from very young children in the infants and toddler stages all the way up until 7 or 8 years old. So, that's a great place to go that will allow you to see how children are performing in different areas of spatial reasoning. There is also a book called “Taking Shape” by Cathy Bruce and colleagues that I believe was produced in 2016. And the grade levels might be a little bit different because it is on the Canadian school system, but it's for K–2 students, and that offers both the tasks and the spatial reasoning skills that are associated with them. For more of the research side, there's a book by Brent Davis and the Spatial Reasoning Study Group called “Spatial Reasoning in the Early Years,” and that volume has been one of my go-tos in understanding both the history of spatial reasoning in our schools and also ways to start thinking about spatializing school mathematics. Mike: One of the things that I really appreciate about this conversation is you've helped me make a lot more sense of spatial reasoning. But the other thing that you've done for me, at least, is see that there are ways that I can make choices with my planning, with my language … that I could pick up and do tomorrow. There's not a discreet separate bit that is about spatial reasoning. It's really an integrated set of ideas and concepts and skills that I can start to build upon right away whatever curriculum I have. Robyn: And that's the point. Often in mathematics, we think more explicitly about algebraic or numeric reasoning, but less frequently in classrooms about spatial reasoning. But spatial reasoning supports not only mathematics development, but other stem domains as well, and even skills that crossover into social studies and language arts as we're talking about mapping, as we're talking about language. So, as students have these experiences, they, too, can start to mathematize the world, see spatial connections as they go out to recess, as they go home from school, as they're walking through their neighborhoods, or just around the house. And it's ingrained ideas of measurement that we are looking at on a daily basis, the ways that we plan out our days and plan out our movements, whether it's really a plan or just our reactions to the world that support building these skills over time. And so, there are those really practical applications. But it also comes down to supporting overall mathematics development and then later STEM career interests, which is why I get excited about the work and want to be able to share it with more and more people. Mike: I think that's a great place to stop. For listeners, we're going to link all of the content that Robyn shared to our show notes. And, Robyn, I'll just say again, thank you so much for joining us. It's really been a pleasure talking with you. Robyn: Yes, absolutely. Thanks so much. 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

Buy our new book, The Score That Matters https://amzn.to/44kKLHK Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Never Miss a Day – In the summer, going into Paul's freshman year of high school, he was at a lacrosse camp at Loyola University… At the end of the morning session, an all-time coaching legend, Tony Seaman spoke to the group. He told them he could guarantee that they could earn a college scholarship. All they had to do? "Take 100 shots per day. Here's the catch. You can never miss a day. No excuses." What are your 100 shots a day? Goal Setting – Most people don't set goals because the act alone is both a major and personal step in the direction of commitment, and it invites hope, fear, and the possibility of regret.  Focus on what you can control – John Wooden was 5'10. Below average for a basketball player. He was really good at “understanding the things at which he had no control and things over which I had some control.” Let Go of Outcomes – Archery master Awa Kenzo told his students to pay no attention to the target. Success and failure come from the same place, so that's where the archer should point all of their attention: not on the outcome, but the effort. Therapy– Dr. Lindsey Hoskins once said that when we hurt someone we love, it's because we fear disconnection from that someone. We hope that by lashing out, they'll show us love, and as a result, we'll feel safer in the relationship.” The Difference Between Self-Promotion and Passion - "I'm not going to convince you to like what I do. I'm going to show you how much I love what I do.” You won't achieve ambitious goals if you don't set ambitious goals. The legendary Michael Ovitz shotgun pitch to Coca-Cola. He and his team outworked the competition, flew in a day early, practiced in the actual room the pitch would take place, bought new suits, and over-delivered during the pitch meeting. Their competitors took the meeting for granted, flew in the morning of, and didn't perform. Michael and his team won the $300m contract and earned the business for years to come. A true champion is intensely focused on the things they can control. Being coachable is rare—it's being curious, eager, self-aware, and ambitious. Discover and harness your unique learning style. What might appear as an inability or perceived disadvantage could be your greatest asset in mastering your chosen field. For example, Paul grew up with a learning difference called Auditory Processing Disorder. The only way to learn from failures is to feel it, study them, make adjustments, a new commitment, and put it behind you. The Voice No One Else Hears – Performance psychologist Jim Loehr has worked with some of the top athletes in the world. He has them wear a microphone during a competition, and he asks them to honestly articulate what the voice in their head says and thinks. Whatever the circumstances, Loehr said he asks, “Is this how I would speak to someone I deeply care about? Or, if I were speaking to someone I deeply cared about, what would I say?” "I've been here before." "I've taken 35,000 shots." Rebound... Bounce back. Paul loves the "up and down" statistic in golf. It refers to a golfer recovering from a bad shot and still making a par on the hole. In life, it's all about how you choose to respond. Paul's Brother, Mike - “One of my favorite chapters in this book is about planting “little acorns.” (p.174) Had it not been for the biggest acorn in the family, who left his job to build the PLL with me... well, I'd just be a retired athlete, continuing the pursuit of my next professional life. Thank you for everything, Mike.”

The National Security Hour with Col. Mike and Dr. Mike – One avenue for such an action is by a two-thirds vote of each House of Congress in favor of the president's permanent removal. Almost all Americans have seen Biden wander dazed through his term, unable to speak either clearly or cogently, and tied inextricably to the criminality of the Biden crime family, and yet no move has been made to activate the 25th Amendment. Why?

The National Security Hour with Col. Mike and Dr. Mike – One avenue for such an action is by a two-thirds vote of each House of Congress in favor of the president's permanent removal. Almost all Americans have seen Biden wander dazed through his term, unable to speak either clearly or cogently, and tied inextricably to the criminality of the Biden crime family, and yet no move has been made to activate the 25th Amendment. Why?

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

“As leaders no matter what business you're in, you're tasked with leading change,” states host Mike Horne. The first half of season four has contained many valuable insights from guests who are leaders of authentic change within their organizations. They have spoken on everything from coaching to organizational and executive development, diversity and inclusion, and the ai revolution. Today, Mike shares highlights from episodes 72 through 85 for this special 100th episode celebration of Authentic Change Podcast.  In Episode 72, Dr. Toby Travis spoke on the high level of trust required for those in leadership roles to be successful. Then, in Episode 73, Dr. Beth Banks shared her tips for architecting change on an organizational level. In Episode 74, John Sanders talked about the importance of building and optimizing teams, explaining that leaders regardless of industry are always responsible for leading change. Next, Gina Riley spoke about the importance of networking and the types of things that can derail the career transition process. In Episode 76, Kevin Palmieri shared his love of podcasting, discovered while falling out of love with his corporate career. In 77, Fatima Mirza discussed AI and the tools that are available to assist people with their job searches. Then, Brenda Pack spoke about designing inclusive workspaces and the unfortunately common experience of feeling like an outsider as a minority woman in the workplace. In Episode 79, Hortense la Gentil spoke on being authentic and connecting with your true self, flowing into an episode with Laurie Smith on utilizing the power of your voice to unleash executive presence. In Episode 82, Douglas Spencer shared personal branding strategies, explaining how the generations differ in their approach to brand loyalty. In 83, Robert White shares that good leadership is based on good relationships. Then, in 84, Dr. Jan Freed discussed leaving a breadcrumb legacy. Lastly, episode 85 featured Beth Ridley who went into a deeper explanation of diversity and the importance of recognizing all the things that make each person unique.  Part one of season four was filled with wisdom from the best leaders in their fields and the second half of the season was no exception. Be sure to subscribe to the Authentic Change Podcast if you have not already to be among the first to listen to Episode 101 which will feature highlights from episodes 86 through 99.  Quotes: “Episode 100 is major milestone for the Authentic Change Podcast.” (2:34 | Mike)  “One of the things that Toby said that absolutely resonated with me was, without a high level of trust in those who are in leadership positions, organizations do not experience the kind of growth or success that they desire.” (3:07 | Mike) “As leaders no matter what business you're in, you're tasked with leading change.” (4:30 | Mike) “You have to be aligned if you want to be authentic, a powerful reminder expressed eloquently by Hortense la Gentil in episode 79 of Authentic Change.” (6:51 | Mike) “In our episode, organizational culture consulting with Beth Ridley, she says, when we think of diversity in the United States, we tend to start and end with the visible things that we can see, race and gender, which are really important. But I think if people really want to get the most out of your talent, you've got to really appreciate everything that makes people unique.” (9:11 | Mike)  Connect with Mike Horne: Schedule a meeting with Mike: https://calendly.com/mikehorne/15min Learn more about Mike Horne on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikehorne1/ Email Mike at mike@mike-horne.com Learn More About Executive and Organization Development with Mike Horne     Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

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

This episode of Over the Edge features an interview between Matt Trifiro and Mike Libecki (National Geographic Explorer, National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, Dell Ambassador, and Adidas Athlete) and Bill Pfeifer (Edge Messaging and Thought Leadership Director at Dell Technologies).Bill has worked in IT for over twenty years. Hel is an expert expert on the latest details of AI, 5G, IoT, and all the other emerging technologies. At Dell EMC, Bill works on research studies, talks to analysts, and helps shape how the company interacts with the market every day. Mike Libecki has an obsession with exploring and the world's most remote corners of the planet to climb world class first ascents, support science, conservation and humanitarian projects, and bring these powerful, emotional stories back with hopes to inspire us all to take care of our Mother Earth. Mike has completed more than 90 major expeditions, from Afghanistan to Antarctica, to Greenland and Guyana, and everywhere in between, taking him to over 100 countries. He is a producer, director, videographer, humanitarian (has his own 501c3 nonprofit), conservationist and leads science teams. He is also a math and tech nerd at heart, and uses the latest technologies (Virtual Reality, 3D, Artificial Intelligence etc.,) on his expeditions to succeed on and share the magic, power and beauty of our planet. In this episode, Mike and Bill describe the relationship between Dell Technologies and Mike's expeditions. Mike brings Dell technology to the most remote corners of the world; he uses the technology himself, and he gives it to the people he encounters. In an effort to give back, Dell and Mike work hand-in-hand to bring technology, education, and innovation to communities across the globe. Mike and Bill describe how they deploy edge technology in far-away regions. Bill discusses the future of the edge, while Mike explains how it ties into his humanitarian missions and nonprofit. ---------Key Quotes:Bill: “I could tell you a couple of like high tech wizbang cool things that we see coming with the edge, in terms of home automation and car automation and farm automation and things like that. But then when you're talking about natives who are farming for a living and hunting for a living and don't have any technology, what can they do with just a little bit that's specifically applied to help the trajectory of their village? Or, you know, get their kids into maybe mainstream life, maybe just doing their life better.”Mike: “One small point that I see when I'm out in the field that you know, this edge technology come in and understand how much water, what's going here, how's the fruit looking? I mean, there's, there's real issues out there that they don't know how to contend with, they just go with what Mother Earth gives them. And to think about edge technology and what Bill understands in his team that I don't, that can be efficient, that can make things metaphorically and literally fruitful, and for them to take that to the markets. I mean, there's so much going on here that it's a whole new excitement of this mystery for me to be connecting with this kind of technology that I don't understand. Because my goal is how do we make the lives better for these people in Bolivia, for the world, for the, you know, to be part of this global family.”Bill: “We have our view of the edge,and it's technological. Looking at data centers, looking at clouds. How do we help rebalance that technology so it's closer to people? So, it's providing new types of value? [Mike's] going farther out. And so, that's kind of pushing the definition of the edge. It's taking technology out of the data center and putting it close to where the people are.”Mike: “When I'm working with Bill and hearing about Edge, the stuff that I've learned that creates that new enthusiasm is that it takes some time, but the impossible takes longer. I feel like there's some impossible things that this edge technology is gonna unfold or unravel. I'm just fascinated.”---------Show Timestamps:(3:38) How Mike became an adventurer(4:35) Mike's partnership with Dell Technologies(7:23) How to define an expedition(10:29) Pushing the definition of Edge(11:28) Dell's field mission(14:08) What technology does in remote places(15:01) Mike's mission to give back(16:41) The start of Mike's nonprofit(18:45) Making expeditions sustainable(23:10) Painting a picture of an expedition(25:57) Investing in the future of Edge(28:47) Dell's definition of Edge(31:50) Making technology fruitful in the field(34:45) Mike's Joyineering Fund(38:40) The importance of giving back(40:07) Why does Dell prioritize this work?(45:47) Questions technology can help us with(47:21) What makes Dell unique(50:06) The future potential of Edge--------Sponsor:Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we're here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting DellTechnologies.com/SimplifyYourEdge for more information or click on the link in the show notes.--------Links:Connect with Host and Guests Connect with Matt on LinkedInConnect with Bill on LinkedInFollow Mike on LinkedInFollow Mike on InstagramMike and Dell ProjectsEdge For GoodMercy ShipsProject Alvarium Learn more about how Dell Technologies is using edge for good: Dell Technologies - Who We Arewww.CaspianStudios.com

Vin and Mike celebrate the one-year anniversary of the show with NFL Wildcard review, picks for the NFL divisional round and some anniversary moments. Gambling Problem? Call 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY), If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, crisis  counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling 1-800- GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537) (CO/IL/IN/LA/MD/MI/NJ/PA/TN/WV/WY), 1- 800-NEXT STEP (AZ), 1-800-522-4700 (KS/NH), 888-789-7777/visit  ccpg.org (CT), 1-800-BETS OFF (IA), visit OPGR.org (OR), or 1-888- 532-3500 (VA). 21+ (18+ NH/WY). Physically present in  AZ/CO/CT/IL/IN/IA/KS/LA(select   parishes)/MD/MI/NJ/NY/PA/TN/VA/WV/WY only. Void in OH/ONT.  Eligibility restrictions apply.  $200 in Free Bets: Valid 1 per new customer. Min. $5 deposit. Min $5  bet. Promo code req. $200 issued as free bets that expire 7 days (168  hours) after being awarded. Free bets must be wagered 1x and stake  is not included in any returns or winnings.  Stepped up Same Game Parlay: 1 Stepped Up Same Game Parlay  Token issued per eligible NFL playoff game after opt-in. Min $1 bet.  Max bet limits apply. Min. 3-leg. Each leg min. -300 odds, total bet  +100 odds or longer. Profit boosted up to 100% (10+ legs for 100%  boost).   Promotional offer period ends 2/12/23 at 11:59:59 PM ET.See terms at  sportsbook.draftkings.com/footballterms Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About MikeBeside his duties as The Duckbill Group's CEO, Mike is the author of O'Reilly's Practical Monitoring, and previously wrote the Monitoring Weekly newsletter and hosted the Real World DevOps podcast. He was previously a DevOps Engineer for companies such as Taos Consulting, Peak Hosting, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and many more. Mike is originally from Knoxville, TN (Go Vols!) and currently resides in Portland, OR.Links Referenced: @Mike_Julian: https://twitter.com/Mike_Julian mikejulian.com: https://mikejulian.com duckbillgroup.com: https://duckbillgroup.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at AWS AppConfig. Engineers love to solve, and occasionally create, problems. But not when it's an on-call fire-drill at 4 in the morning. Software problems should drive innovation and collaboration, NOT stress, and sleeplessness, and threats of violence. That's why so many developers are realizing the value of AWS AppConfig Feature Flags. Feature Flags let developers push code to production, but hide that that feature from customers so that the developers can release their feature when it's ready. This practice allows for safe, fast, and convenient software development. You can seamlessly incorporate AppConfig Feature Flags into your AWS or cloud environment and ship your Features with excitement, not trepidation and fear. To get started, go to snark.cloud/appconfig. That's snark.cloud/appconfig.Corey: Forget everything you know about SSH and try Tailscale. Imagine if you didn't need to manage PKI or rotate SSH keys every time someone leaves. That'd be pretty sweet, wouldn't it? With Tailscale SSH, you can do exactly that. Tailscale gives each server and user device a node key to connect to its VPN, and it uses the same node key to authorize and authenticate SSH.Basically you're SSHing the same way you manage access to your app. What's the benefit here? Built in key rotation, permissions is code, connectivity between any two devices, reduce latency and there's a lot more, but there's a time limit here. You can also ask users to reauthenticate for that extra bit of security. Sounds expensive?Nope, I wish it were. Tailscale is completely free for personal use on up to 20 devices. To learn more, visit snark.cloud/tailscale. Again, that's snark.cloud/tailscaleCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and my guest is a returning guest on this show, my business partner and CEO of The Duckbill Group, Mike Julian. Mike, thanks for making the time.Mike: Lucky number three, I believe?Corey: Something like that, but numbers are hard. I have databases for that of varying quality and appropriateness for the task, but it works out. Anything's a database. If you're brave enough.Mike: With you inviting me this many times, I'm starting to think you'd like me or something.Corey: I know, I know. So, let's talk about something that is going to put that rumor to rest.Mike: [laugh].Corey: Clearly, you have made some poor choices in the course of your career, like being my business partner being the obvious one. But what's really in a dead heat for which is the worst decision is you've written a book previously. And now you are starting the process of writing another book because, I don't know, we don't keep you busy enough or something. What are you doing?Mike: Making very bad decisions. When I finished writing Practical Monitoring—O'Reilly, and by the way, you should go buy a copy if interested in monitoring—I finished the book and said, “Wow, that was awful. I'm never doing it again.” And about a month later, I started thinking of new books to write. So, that was 2017, and Corey and I started Duckbill and kind of stopped thinking about writing books because small companies are basically small children. But now I'm going to write a book about consulting.Corey: Oh, thank God. I thought you're going to go down the observability path a second time.Mike: You know, I'm actually dreading the day that O'Reilly asks me to do a second edition because I don't really want to.Corey: Yeah. Effectively turn it into an entire story where the only monitoring tool you really need is the AWS bill. That'll go well.Mike: [laugh]. Yeah. So yeah, like, basically, I've been doing consulting for such a long time, and most of my career is consulting in some form or fashion, and I head up all the consulting at Duckbill. I've learned a lot about consulting. And I've found that people have a lot of questions about consulting, particularly at the higher-end levels. Once you start getting into advisory sort of stuff, there's not a lot of great information out there aimed at engineering.Corey: There's a bunch of different views on what consulting is. You have independent contractors billing by the hour as staff replacement who call what they do consulting; you have the big consultancies, like Bain or BCG; you've got what we do in an advisory sense, and of course, you have a bunch of MBA new grads going to a lot of the big consultancies who are going to see a book on consulting and think that it's potentially for them. I don't know that you necessarily have a lot of advice for the new grad type, so who is this for? What is your target customer for this book?Mike: If you're interested in joining McKinsey out of college, I don't have a lot to add; I don't have a lot to tell you. The reason for that is kind of twofold. One is that shops like McKinsey and Deloitte and Accenture and BCG and Bain, all those, are playing very different games than what most of us think about when we think consulting. Their entire model revolves around running a process. And it's the same process for every client they work with. But, like, you're buying them because of their process.And that process is nothing new or novel. You don't go to those firms because you want the best advice possible. You go to those firms because it's the most defensible advice. It's sort of those things like, “No one gets fired for buying Cisco,” no one got fired for buying IBM, like, that sort of thing, it's a very defensible choice. But you're not going to get great results from it.But because of that, their entire model revolves around throwing dozens, in some cases, hundreds of new grads at a problem and saying, “Run this process. Have fun. Let us know if you need help.” That's not consulting I have any experience with. It's honestly not consulting that most of us want to do.Most of that is staffed by MBAs and accountants. When I think consulting, I think about specialized advice and providing that specialized advice to people. And I wager that most of us think about that in the same way, too. In some cases, it might just be, “I'm going to write code for you as a freelancer,” or I'm just going to tell you like, “Hey, put the nail in here instead of over here because it's going to be better for you.” Like, paying for advice is good.But with that, I also have a… one of the first things I say in the beginning of the book, which [laugh] I've already started writing because I'm a glutton for punishment, is I don't think junior people should be consultants. I actually think it's really bad idea because to be a consultant, you have to have expertise in some area, and junior staff don't. They haven't been in their careers long enough to develop that yet. So, they're just going to flounder. So, my advice is generally aimed at people that have been in their careers for quite some time, generally, people that are 10, 15, 20 years into their career, looking to do something.Corey: One of the problems that we see when whenever we talk about these things on Twitter is that we get an awful lot of people telling us that we're wrong, that it can't be made to work, et cetera, et cetera. But following this model, I've been independent for—well, I was independent and then we became The Duckbill Group; add them together because figuring out exactly where that divide happened is always a mental leap for me, but it's been six years at this point. We've definitely proven our ability to not go out of business every month. It's kind of amazing. Without even an exception case of, “That one time.”Mike: [laugh]. Yeah, we are living proof that it does work, but you don't really have to take just our word for it because there are a lot of other firms that exist entirely on an advisory-only, high-expertise model. And it works out really well. We've worked with several of them, so it does work; it just isn't very common inside of tech and particularly inside of engineering.Corey: So, one of the things that I find is what differentiates an expert from an enthusiastic amateur is, among other things, the number of mistakes that they've made. So, I guess a different way of asking this is what qualifies you to write this book, but instead, I'm going to frame it in a very negative way. What have you screwed up on that puts you in a position of, “Ah, I'm going to write a book so that someone else can make better choices.”Mike: One of my favorite stories to tell—and Corey, I actually think you might not have heard this story before—Corey: That seems unlikely, but give it a shot.Mike: Yeah. So, early in my career, I was working for a consulting firm that did ERP implementations. We worked with mainly large, old-school manufacturing firms. So, my job there was to do the engineering side of the implementation. So, a lot of rack-and-stack, a lot of Windows Server configuration, a lot of pulling cables, that sort of thing. So, I thought I was pretty good at this. I quickly learned that I was actually not nearly as good as I thought I was.Corey: A common affliction among many different people.Mike: A common affliction. But I did not realize that until this one particular incident. So, me and my boss are both on site at this large manufacturing facility, and the CFO pulls my boss aside and I can hear them talking and, like, she's pretty upset. She points at me and says, “I never want this asshole in my office ever again.” So, he and I have a long drive back to our office, like an hour and a half.And we had a long chat about what that meant for me. I was not there for very long after that, as you might imagine, but the thing is, I still have no idea to this day what I did to upset her. I know that she was pissed and he knows that she was pissed. And he never told me exactly what it was, only that's you take care of your client. And the client believes that I screwed up so massively that she wanted me fired.Him not wanting to argue—he didn't; he just kind of went with it—and put me on other clients. But as a result of that, it really got me thinking that I screwed something up so badly to make this person hate me so much and I still have no idea what it was that I did. Which tells me that even at the time, I did not understand what was going on around me. I did not understand how to manage clients well, and to really take care of them. That was probably the first really massive mistake that I've made my career—or, like, the first time I came to the realization that there's a whole lot I don't know and it's really costing me.Corey: From where I sit, there have been a number of things that we have done as we've built our consultancy, and I'm curious—you know, let's get this even more personal—in the past, well, we'll call it four years that we have been The Duckbill Group—which I think is right—what have we gotten right and what have we gotten wrong? You are the expert; you're writing a book on this for God's sake.Mike: So, what I think we've gotten right is one of my core beliefs is never bill hourly. Shout out to Jonathan Stark. He wrote I really good book that is a much better explanation of that than I've ever been able to come up with. But I've always had the belief that billing hourly is just a bad idea, so we've never done that and that's worked out really well for us. We've turned down work because that's the model they wanted and it's like, “Sorry, that's not what we do. You're going to have to go work for someone else—or hire someone else.”Other things that I think we've gotten right is a focus on staying on the advisory side and not doing any implementation. That's allowed us to get really good at what we do very quickly because we don't get mired in long-term implementation detail-level projects. So, that's been great. Where we went a little wrong, I think—or what we have gotten wrong, lessons that we've learned. I had this idea that we could build out a junior and mid-level staff and have them overseen by very senior people.And, as it turns out, that didn't work for us, entirely because it didn't work for me. That was really my failure. I went from being an IC to being the leader of a company in one single step. I've never been a manager before Duckbill. So, that particular mistake was really about my lack of abilities in being a good manager and being a good leader.So, building that out, that did not work for us because it didn't work for me and I didn't know how to do it. So, I made way too many mistakes that were kind of amateur-level stuff in terms of management. So, that didn't work. And the other major mistake that I think we've made is not putting enough effort into marketing. So, we get most of our leads by inbound or referral, as is common with boutique consulting firms, but a lot of the income that we get comes through Last Week in AWS, which is really awesome.But we don't put a whole lot of effort into content or any marketing stuff related to the thing that we do, like cost management. I think a lot of that is just that we don't really know how, aside from just creating content and publishing it. We don't really understand how to market ourselves very well on that side of things. I think that's a mistake we've made.Corey: It's an effective strategy against what's a very complicated problem because unlike most things, if—let's go back to your old life—if we have an observability problem, we will talk about that very publicly on Twitter and people will come over and get—“Hey, hey, have you tried to buy my company's product?” Or they'll offer consulting services, or they'll point us in the right direction, all of which is sometimes appreciated. Whereas when you have a big AWS bill, you generally don't talk about it in public, especially if you're a serious company because that's going to, uh, I think the phrase is, “Shake investor confidence,” when you're actually live tweeting slash shitposting about your own AWS bill. And our initial thesis was therefore, since we can't wind up reaching out to these people when they're having the pain because there's no external indication of it, instead what we have to do is be loud enough and notable in this space, where they find us where it shouldn't take more than them asking one or two of their friends before they get pointed to us. What's always fun as the stories we hear is, “Okay, so I asked some other people because I wanted a second opinion, and they told us to go to you, too.” Word of mouth is where our customers come from. But how do you bootstrap that? I don't know. I'm lucky that I got it right the first time.Mike: Yeah, and as I mentioned a minute ago, that a lot of that really comes through your content, which is not really cost management-related. It's much more AWS broad. We don't put out a lot of cost management specific content. And honestly, I think that's to our detriment. We should and we absolutely can. We just haven't. I think that's one of the really big things that we've missed on doing.Corey: There's an argument that the people who come to us do not spend their entire day thinking about AWS bills. I mean, I can't imagine what that would be like, but they don't for whatever reason; they're trying to do something ridiculous, like you know, run a profitable company. So, getting in front of them when they're not thinking about the bills means, on some level, that they're going to reach out to us when the bill strikes. At least that's been my operating theory.Mike: Yeah, I mean, this really just comes down to content strategy and broader marketing strategy. Because one of the things you have to think about with marketing is how do you meet a customer at the time that they have the problem that you solve? And what most marketing people talk about here is what's called the triggering event. Something causes someone to take an action. What is that something? Who is that someone, and what is that action?And for us, one of the things that we thought early on is that well, the bill comes out the first week of the month, every month, so people are going to opened the bill freak out, and a big influx of leads are going to come our way and that's going to happen every single month. The reality is that never happened. That turns out was not a triggering event for anyone.Corey: And early on, when we didn't have that many leads coming in, it was a statistical aberration that I thought I saw, like, “Oh, out of the three leads this month, two of them showed up in the same day. Clearly, it's an AWS billing day thing.” No. It turns out that every company's internal cadence is radically different.Mike: Right. And I wish I could say that we have found what our triggering events are, but I actually don't think we have. We know who the people are and we know what they reach out for, but we haven't really uncovered that triggering event. And it could also be there, there isn't a one. Or at least, if there is one, it's not one that we could see externally, which is kind of fine.Corey: Well, for the half of our consulting that does contract negotiation for large-scale commitments with AWS, it comes up for renewal or the initial discount contract gets offered, those are very clear triggering events but the challenge is that we don't—Mike: You can't see them externally.Corey: —really see that from the outside. Yeah.Mike: Right. And this is one of those things where there are triggering events for basically everything and it's probably going to be pretty consistent once you get down to specific services. Like we provide cost optimization services and contract negotiation services. I'm willing to bet that I can predict exactly what the trigger events for both of those will be pretty well. The problem is, you can never see those externally, which is kind of fine.Ideally, you would be able to see it externally, but you can't, so we roll with it, which means our entire strategy has revolved around always being top-of-mind because at the time where it happens, we're already there. And that's a much more difficult strategy to employ, but it does work.Corey: All it takes is time and being really lucky and being really prolific, and, and, and. It's one of those things where if I were to set out to replicate it, I don't even know how I'd go about doing it.Mike: People have been asking me. They say, “I want to create The Duckbill Group for X. What do I do?” And I say, “First step, get yourself a Corey Quinn.” And they're like, “Well, I can't do that. There's only one.” I'm like, “Yep. Sucks to be you.” [laugh].Corey: Yeah, we called the Jerk Store. They're running out of him. Yeah, it's a problem. And I don't think the world needs a whole lot more of my type of humor, to be honest, because the failure mode that I have experienced brutally and firsthand is not that people don't find me funny; it's that it really hurts people's feelings. I have put significant effort into correcting those mistakes and not repeating them, but it sucks every time I get it wrong.Mike: Yeah.Corey: Another question I have for you around the book targeting, are you aiming this at individual independent consultants or are you looking to advise people who are building agencies?Mike: Explicitly not the latter. My framing around this is that there are a number of people who are doing consulting right now and they've kind of fell into it. Often, they'll leave one job and do a little consulting while they're waiting on their next thing. And in some cases, that might be a month or two. In some cases, it might go on years, but that whole time, they're just like, “Oh, yeah, I'm doing consulting in between things.”But at some point, some of those think, “You know what? I want this to be my thing. I don't want there to be a next thing. This is my thing. So therefore, how do I get serious about doing consulting? How do I get serious about being a consultant?”And that's where I think I can add a lot of value because casually consulting of, like, taking whatever work just kind of falls your way is interesting for a while, but once you get serious about it, and you have to start thinking, well, how do I actually deliver engagements? How do I do that consistently? How do I do it repeatedly? How to do it profitably? How do I price my stuff? How do I package it? How do I attract the leads that I want? How do I work with the customers I want?And turning that whole thing from a casual, “Yeah, whatever,” into, “This is my business,” is a very different way of thinking. And most people don't think that way because they didn't really set out to build a business. They set out to just pass time and earn a little bit of money before they went off to the next job. So, the framing that I have here is that I'm aiming to help people that are wanting to get serious about doing consulting. But they generally have experience doing it already.Corey: Managing shards. Maintenance windows. Overprovisioning. ElastiCache bills. I know, I know. It's a spooky season and you're already shaking. It's time for caching to be simpler. Momento Serverless Cache lets you forget the backend to focus on good code and great user experiences. With true autoscaling and a pay-per-use pricing model, it makes caching easy. No matter your cloud provider, get going for free at gomemento.co/screaming That's GO M-O-M-E-N-T-O dot co slash screamingCorey: We went from effectively being the two of us on the consulting delivery side, two scaling up to, I believe, at one point we were six of us, and now we have scaled back down to largely the two of us, aided by very specific external folk, when it makes sense.Mike: And don't forget April.Corey: And of course. I'm talking delivery.Mike: [laugh].Corey: There's a reason I—Mike: Delivery. Yes.Corey: —prefaced it that way. There's a lot of support structure here, let's not get ourselves, and they make this entire place work. But why did we scale up? And then why did we scale down? Because I don't believe we've ever really talked about that publicly.Mike: No, not publicly. In fact, most people probably don't even notice that it happened. We got pretty big for—I mean, not big. So, we hit, I think, six full-time people at one point. And that was quite a bit.Corey: On the delivery side. Let's be clear.Mike: Yeah. No, I think actually with support structure, too. Like, if you add in everyone that we had with the sales and marketing as well, we were like 11 people. And that was a pretty sizable company. But then in July this year, it kind of hit a point where I found that I just wasn't enjoying my job anymore.And I looked around and noticed that a lot of other people was kind of feeling the same way, is just things had gotten harder. And the business wasn't suffering at all, it was just everything felt more difficult. And I finally realized that, for me personally at least, I started Duckbill because I love working with clients, I love doing consulting. And what I have found is that as the company grew larger and larger, I spent most of my time keeping the trains running and taking care of the staff. Which is exactly what I should be doing when we're that size, like, that is my job at that size, but I didn't actually enjoy it.I went into management as, like, this job going from having never done it before. So, I didn't have anything to compare it to. I didn't know if I would like it or not. And once I got here, I realized I actually don't. And I spent a lot of efforts to get better at it and I think I did. I've been working with a leadership coach for years now.But it finally came to a point where I just realized that I wasn't actually enjoying it anymore. I wasn't enjoying the job that I had created. And I think that really panned out to you as well. So, we decided, we had kind of an opportune time where one of our team decided that they were also wanting to go back to do independent consulting. I'm like, “Well, this is actually pretty good time. Why don't we just start scaling things back?” And like, maybe we'll scale it up again in the future; maybe we won't. But like, let's just buy ourselves some breathing room.Corey: One of the things that I think we didn't spend quite enough time really asking ourselves was what kind of place do we want to work at. Because we've explicitly stated that you and I both view this as the last job either of us is ever going to have, which means that we're not trying to do the get big quickly to get acquired, or we want to raise a whole bunch of other people's money to scale massively. Those aren't things either of us enjoy. And it turns out that handling the challenges of a business with as many people working here as we had wasn't what either one of us really wanted to do.Mike: Yeah. You know what—[laugh] it's funny because a lot of our advisors kept asking the same thing. Like, “So, what kind of company do you want?” And like, we had some pretty good answers for that, in that we didn't want to build a VC-backed company, we didn't ever want to be hyperscale. But there's a wide gulf of things between two-person company and hyperscale and we didn't really think too much about that.In fact, being a ten-person company is very different than being a three-person company, and we didn't really think about that either. We should have really put a lot more thought into that of what does it mean to be a ten-person company, and is that what we want? Or is three, four, or five-person more our style? But then again, I don't know that we could have predicted that as a concern had we not tried it first.Corey: Yeah, that was very much something that, for better or worse, we pay advisors for their advice—that's kind of definitionally how it works—and then we ignored it, on some level, though we thought we were doing something different at the time because there's some lessons you've just got to learn by making the mistake yourself.Mike: Yeah, we definitely made a few of those. [laugh].Corey: And it's been an interesting ride and I've got zero problem with how things have shaken out. I like what we do quite a bit. And honestly, the biggest fear I've got going forward is that my jackass business partner is about to distract the hell out of himself by writing a book, which is never as easy as even the most pessimistic estimates would be. So, that's going to be awesome and fun.Mike: Yeah, just wait until you see the dedication page.Corey: Yeah, I wasn't mentioned at all in the last book that you wrote, which I found personally offensive. So, if I'm not mentioned this time, you're fired.Mike: Oh, no, you are. It's just I'm also adding an anti-dedication page, which just has a photo of you.Corey: Oh, wonderful, wonderful. This is going to be one of those stories of the good consultant and the bad consultant, and I'm going to be the Goofus to your Gallant, aren't I?Mike: [laugh]. Yes, yes. You are.Corey: “Goofus wants to bill by the hour.”Mike: It's going to have a page of, like, “Here's this [unintelligible 00:25:05] book is dedicated to. Here's my acknowledgments. And [BLEEP] this guy.”Corey: I love it. I absolutely love it. I think that there is definitely a bright future for telling other people how to consult properly. May just suggest as a subtitle for the book is Consulting—subtitle—You Have Problems and Money. We'll Take Both.Mike: [laugh]. Yeah. My working title for this is Practical Consulting, but only because my previous book was Practical Monitoring. Pretty sure O'Reilly would have a fit if I did that. I actually have no idea what I'm going to call the book, still.Corey: Naming things is super hard. I would suggest asking people at AWS who name services and then doing the exact opposite of whatever they suggest. Like, take their list of recommendations and sort by reverse order and that'll get you started.Mike: Yeah. [laugh].Corey: I want to thank you for giving us an update on what you're working on and why you have less hair every time I see you because you're mostly ripping it out due to self-inflicted pain. If people want to follow your adventures, where's the best place to keep updated on this ridiculous, ridiculous nonsense that I cannot talk you out of?Mike: Two places. You can follow me on Twitter, @Mike_Julian, or you can sign up for the newsletter on my site at mikejulian.com where I'll be posting all the updates.Corey: Excellent. And I look forward to skewering the living hell out of them.Mike: I look forward to ignoring them.Corey: Thank you, Mike. It is always a pleasure.Mike: Thank you, Corey.Corey: Mike Julian, CEO at The Duckbill Group, and my unwilling best friend. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry, annoying comment in which you tell us exactly what our problem is, and then charge us a fixed fee to fix that problem.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

"Dirty Saints" are what Jaymee calls people who spends a good portion of their life in various forms of abuse and intoxication, who at some point face their demons by doing deep internal work on themselves, and then spend the rest of their lives searching for others to bless with the gift of identification. Mike "One Shot" Coulter is the definitive "Dirty Saint", a man who bleeds emotion and famously "won't do anything in life that doesn't have a chance of breaking my heart." An incredibly talented therapist, craftsman, and songwriter, Mike can now add author to his list of credits, having nearly completed his first book, a 500+ page collection of autobiographical writings that he describes more as the "secrets list" he "would've rather died than ever share with anyone". Mike speaks (as usual) with a raw sincerity with his ongoing struggle with body image, sex and drug addiction, and how hard it has been to live knowing how many hearts he's broken. But he's found a reason to live and share every bit gold he finds within his former wretchedness. As he puts it: "people are the spiritual intervention that have got me here." Explore MIke's Writing: www.biggerthanchristmas.com Mike on IG: @semtexkiss Mike's Cell: (310) 739-0653 LOVE IS THE AUTHOR: produced, edited, and hosted by Jaymee Carpenter. MGMT: lacee@loveistheauthor.com Follow L.I.T.A on Instagram: @loveistheauthor

Mike Isaacson: The earth isn't flat. Everything is going downhill. [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. Today I am joined by Kelly Weill, reporter at The Daily Beast on the fringe ideology beat and author of the book Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything. Ms. Weill, thanks so much for coming on the show. Kelly Weill: Hey, thank you so much for having me. Mike: So now when I finished the book, I DM'd you to tell you that you're absolutely brilliant. And the reason why is your intentional approach when it comes to being a conduit of misinformation. You're very careful in how you reference your source material so as not to lead readers to it. Can you talk a little bit about your methodology a bit and how you dealt with your sources? Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. It's weird dealing with somebody like flat earth, which is objectively wrong, right? When you're talking about that subject, you already kind of risk platforming that conspiracy theory as if there's any validity to it. So one thing that I tried to do throughout the course of my reporting and then to replicate as I was writing this book, was not to really engage with flat Earth as though it were a legitimate theory. And I kind of had it easy there. If I were doing something like medical misinformation, I would have probably had to get in the weeds a little bit more. But as far as flat earth goes, I would go to these conferences and when I was interviewing people, I'd be really straightforward. I'd be like, "Hey yo, I'm not I'm not a flat earther. I'm a reporter; I believe in the globe. But let's talk about why you believe this thing." And for me, that was a bit more interesting than the details of what exactly they believed because flat earth is wrong, but I wanted to come to why they bought into a theory that's so wrong. And when we had those conversations about their pathways to belief, that turned out to be a lot more interesting to me than just the zaniness of this theory. Mike: Okay, and we'll get into that soon. I want to talk about some things I learned. So the first thing I learned from your book is that flat earth theory is actually not that old? Like, there were cultures that believed in a flat earth, but there wasn't the sort of pseudoscientific theory to justify it. So, when does the story of the flat earth movement start? Kelly: Yeah, totally. This is a bit of a misconception actually. I know when I was a kid I thought that there was, you know, Columbus thought he might have been sailing off the edge of the world. That's not true at all. We've known for thousands of years that earth was round because you can prove it with some pretty basic math. It's something that we've been able to do long before we could physically observe the shape of the Earth. But where flat earth theory actually comes back in is in England in around 1840. And that's when we have a guy named Samuel Rowbotham. He's a really interesting guy. He was a failed leader of a socialist commune; he had his hands on all kinds of short-lived fringe movements. I had a great time going through, you know, pre-Marxist socialist newspapers to find out what he was up to. But one of his career trajectories that didn't fail had to do with misinformation. He sold fake miracle cures, sort of a proto-Alex Jones. And he started shelling this idea that maybe earth was flat. And that idea was really alluring to certain people in that moment because, around mid-1800s, we're talking about a time when the natural sciences are taking on more and more of a role in the discourse and the importance of things like religion are taking more of a backseat. So when a theory like flat Earth comes out, it allows people to discard huge swathes of science and say, "Oh, I knew it was wrong all along. Oh, the scientists are all in league with each other to keep us in the dark." So as baffling and unscientific as flat earth was, even back then, it really did allow people to affirm their priors, to cast out information they didn't want to believe in, and sort of reshape their beliefs around this new and creative and just wholly counterfactual idea. Mike: It just blew me away that Rowbotham had no predecessors whatsoever, he just kind of built this out of whole cloth, just him in the Bible. So how did flat Earth stick around? Kelly: It stuck around because he had cronies just like any conspiracy influencer we have today. You know, I've just a couple of minutes ago compared Rowbotham to Alex Jones. He had his entourage, the people who might be like Owen Shroyers of the movement, who were even louder and a bit more virulent in their dissemination of these theories. These were the people who– He had a follower named John Hampden who just reminds me so much of one of these guys who goes on YouTube and is like, "Debate me. Debate me." And he would lure actual scientific professionals into these stupid, pointless debates over established science about the shape of the world. But because he was just so tenacious and he wouldn't admit that he had lost a bet about a scientific wager and he would go to jail because he was harassing people about the shape of the world, you know, that emotional appeal, it continued to resonate with people throughout the years. And even though flat earth has ebbed and flowed a little bit in popularity, just the wildness of it, I think ,has always had an appeal for certain people who are looking for it. Mike: So, one thing I was surprised about was that the flat earth movement was rather a latecomer, as far as conspiracy theories go, to the internet. So, what brought the flat earth online? How was it received? Kelly: Yeah, that was really interesting to me, too. Because while I was researching this, I was kind of trawling through OG conspiracy pages online. What's interesting to me actually if I might take a step back here is that conspiracy theories have always been early adopters of a lot of technology. You know, Rowbotham had a friend who was running a printing press, and he was getting his flat earth zines out. There was a flat earth commune in the early 20th century, and they had one of the earliest powerful radio programs that they could broadcast along the way. So when I was looking at early internet conspiracy theories, I did find that conspiracy theorists were some of the first voices online who were really putting out weird information. So I was deep in the trenches looking at Y2K influencers and all that. But there actually, to your point, was sort of a lack of flat earth theory early on in the internet. And I can think of a few reasons for that. For a while, flat earth theory was very tied to the Flat Earth Society, which was shepherded until 2001 by this very elderly couple. They were super literally off the grid. They lived in the desert, and they just were not the type of people to get online. And a lot of their archives actually burned in a house fire. So flat Earth really kind of took a nosedive with their deaths. It came back online when some archivalist started going through those older records of this Flat Earth Society couple. And these people relaunched the Flat Earth Society online as a forum, a discussion place where people could talk. It's interesting to me. I am not completely sold on the idea that the people who relaunched the Flat Earth Society online were genuine. I think there's a reasonable chance that they're kind of fucking around like they thought it was funny. But they did resurface this huge archive of decades and decades of flat earth writings and they put them online. And that became, I think, the basis for a lot of more genuine believers to start going through the back catalog and seeing what flat earthers had been saying for the past 150 years. And eventually, it went from this sort of more moderate discussion on forums to things that could go a lot more viral with the advent of sites like YouTube. Mike: Okay so let's talk about the algorithm. How did flat earth wind up profiting from the YouTube recommendation algorithm? Kelly: Yeah, this was huge. And throughout this book, I wanted to be careful about ascribing flat earth's resurgence to any one thing, you know, any one website or any one algorithm. That said, YouTube has a lot of blood on its hands as far as flat earth goes. Basically, for quite a long time YouTube's algorithm would promote videos that it thought people would want to watch. It actually still does this, but they've done tweaks that hamper flat earth, I'll get to that in a minute. But basically, what people really want to watch, what people really want to click on at two in the morning, is not necessarily factual information. It's not really the “Eat Your Vegetables” kind of video. It's the weird scintillating stuff. If you see a video in your sidebar, a recommended video on YouTube and it says, "Is earth really flat?" Yeah, you're gonna click on that because it's just so weird you have to find out what that video is about. Because those videos performed so well, because they tapped into this curiosity and this weird factor, they started overperforming in the algorithm, and they appear to have been promoted overwhelmingly. So conspiracy YouTubers would realize that, "Hey, I can get a lot of views by having a title that references flat earth.” So from a confluence of people making flat earth videos because they're being cynical, because they knew it would get a lot of views, and people who are actually starting to get earnestly converted from these videos going and putting their genuine beliefs in these new channels, we started seeing this huge swell of flat earth videos and a pretty powerful recommendation algorithm that gave those videos a disproportionate share of traffic. I do want to note that YouTube kind of acknowledged this and changed its algorithm in 2019 specifically so that flat earth would not be such an issue. Mike: One thing you didn't draw a comparison to, or maybe I missed it, and I'm about to regurgitate one of your points, was to multilevel marketing. Like, these YouTubers are not just looking for converts to watch their videos, so that they can get monetized ads or whatever; they want converts to make videos themselves and then reference their videos so that they can get traffic that way. Can you talk a little about the culture of the flat earth movement on YouTube? Kelly: Absolutely. I think the multi-level marketing comparison is such an apt one, and I'm actually kind of mad that I don't make it in the book, because it's relevant. And you bring that up. But literally the first Flat Earth conference I went to, this one flat earth celebrity YouTuber came up to me and she started talking to me. She goes, "Oh, I didn't realize you are a reporter. I was gonna say you should maybe make some videos about flat earth." Because she thought I was there and I was being genuine and... I'm gonna say something really mean. A lot of flat Earthers are kind of like boomer men that you don't want to watch a video of. And I was a 24-year-old woman so I think that was what was going on. [laughs] But to that end, yeah, flat earthers don't just want to preach; they want to convert. And they want to build this community around themselves and around their videos because that's what keeps the theory going. Flat earth in and of itself could just be a set of talking points that you accept, and then you move on with your life. But for a lot of flat earthers, it becomes a way of life. It becomes a community that they build, and frankly, a set of relationships that they cling to because they often have deteriorating relationships with the rest of the world when they convert to this theory. So there's a very strong community basis in flat earth and other conspiracy theories. And I definitely think that flat earth YouTubers are often trying to make more flat earth YouTubers, and they're trying to promote a community that will further promote their videos. Mike: Okay. So another thing I liked about the book was the way you brought human dignity to a lot of the people you talked about (not so much the cult leaders and grifters, but just kind of average people). Can you talk a bit about the people you met during your reporting and some of their backgrounds? Kelly: Absolutely. I mean, there's no one profile for a flat earther. I know I just said a lot of them are kind of boomer guys. And maybe the average flat earther is a little bit older. But there's a surprising diversity in how people come to flat earth. When I was talking to people, I was trying to get a sense of, you know, “what were their priors?” Initially at the first flat earth conference, I went and started asking people about their political beliefs. And I found that although this movement does skew conservative, a lot of people were very disenchanted with politics and they didn't really affix themselves to a tidy political profile. So what I started doing was looking into that disaffectation. Why were people dissatisfied? Why were people looking for such a radical alternative explanation for the world? And I found quite a lot of pathways to flat earth. A lot of them are fairly upsetting; a lot of them had to do with people who were looking for new forms of community because they felt alienated in some sense, people who were looking for religious alternatives, a lot of people who came from faith traditions where they didn't fully feel like they were getting the right answers. So when I was talking to people, I think I was in a certain sense maybe trying to diagnose what exactly had gone a little bit wrong to lead them to this movement. And I found the people who were actually quite forthcoming with me, were quite generous in explaining their path to flat earth. So that's something I tried to do regardless of, you know, if somebody told me they were a Trump supporter or an Obama fan who had completely fallen out of political circles. I just tried to try and keep an eye on that human element. Mike: Okay. You have this chapter, Alone in a Flat World, where you talk about people losing their social lives to flat earth. This seems to play into this 21st-century decentralized cult phenomenon. You talk a lot about QAnon too, which is similar. So there are flat earth organizations, but apart from getting high-rolling flat earthers to a conference once a year, they don't really hold on to the movement. That's coming from the YouTube culture. Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. I think a decentralized cult is a really interesting way of thinking about flat earth and frankly a lot of other conspiracy communities. It's hard to strictly call it a cult because there's no one leader, there's no one person they take marching orders from. And yet it has a lot of the hallmarks of a cult. There's a central idea that you have to adhere to and block out all the other noise. You have to distance yourself from people who criticize this idea. It's a very in-group out-group affirming structure. And it's interesting when I started looking at that model for flat earth, it was pretty easy to apply to a lot of other fringe movements and frankly some not-so-fringe movements. I thought it was really interesting to apply to Trumpism, and I know that sounds like a very Twitter-lib talking point saying, “Oh Trump is a cult leader.” But in the more maybe psychological aspect of it, where you do think about people's willingness to create this community around a central figure or central idea at the expense of the rest of their entire world. I think that was really interesting. And it also, for me, explains why it's so hard to pull people away from these figures or ideas. Because they're not really operating on “debate me” facts and logic; they're operating on very emotional grounds. They tie a lot of their identity to flat earth or a political ideal. And so when you're trying to help them disengage from that, I think you need to also try and have some element of emotional healing. You need to offer an alternative to what sustenance they're getting from that movement. So yeah, that was definitely a model that helped me while I was thinking about flat earth and why people believe. Mike: Yeah. It's like when I was doing my research on fascism for my Ph.D.-- that I didn't complete-- [laughs] one of the articles that I came across was talking about how the condition for someone deprogramming themselves from the Nazi movement, and from cult movements in general, is not only kind of a disillusionment with the movement that they're in but also kind of like an alternative that they can jump to, like a landing pad of a community that they can segue into without having to basically be alone in the world. Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's funny. There were a few interesting anecdotes earlier this year, and I can't fact-check them, but I think there's the plausibility to people who were saying that they had former QAnon relatives who dropped it when they found something that met that same need. One of them was an aunt who got really into K-pop, which has this huge really loud online fandom, right? And so if the aunt was into QAnon because she wanted that community around her, well there's actually something comparable and infinitely less harmful in stanning BTS or whatever. And then the other was someone whose relative was into QAnon because she liked the puzzle element, and she got into Wordle. And she did 500 Wordle knockoffs a day. And that was just kind of taking the place for her. So I think people don't turn to these ultra-irrational things for no reason at all, they're seeking some unmet need. And if we can hopefully redirect them into something as harmless as BLACKPINK or whatever, that's definitely preferable. Mike: Yeah. Okay. One interesting thing that you did in the book, which I'm not sure that you even noticed, was you adopted some of their manners of speaking. So like in particular, more towards the end of the book, you start using "flat" to refer to flat earthers in the way that someone might use "gay" to refer to someone who's gay. You describe someone as being flat. You do point out also that they often use the phrase "coming out of the closet." So can we talk about how badly these people want to be gay? [Kelly laughs] But was there an acculturation process in talking to and understanding these people, though? Kelly: Yes. And also in terms of the coming out, what's so funny to me is these people really do want some legitimate form of victimhood because they do feel victimized and so they're just borrowing the language of the queer community, which is funny because a lot of these people are quite religious and conservative and are actually anti-gay, which I just thought was wild to see. Yes, there definitely was a process of learning how to talk to these folks. I think one of them was– I was never, like I said earlier, I was never really trying to debate people. There was one thing that I had to dodge almost every time I went to a conference or I was talking to a new person on the phone, was I said, "Hey, I've got my views, you've got yours. I don't know that we're going to come to any synthesis in the course of a 30-minute conversation." But yeah, I did try and hue pretty closely to their language. People would refer to themselves as being members of a community. When I talk about flat earth I, even now, refer to it as a community. I think because I've spent so much time around them, and hearing that term and actually kind of accepting that it is for them, a very communally based thing. One thing I had to dodge quite a lot was discussions of religion. I'm very much an atheist. This is very much a religiously-influenced movement. Although flat earth doesn't necessarily have to be religious, it's predominantly quite Christian. So just kind of learning how to approach a discussion like that, and be able to honestly represent my views without putting them off. And that's a little challenging sometimes. I'm also of Jewish heritage, and a lot of, frankly, there was a good deal of anti-semitism there. So, you know, just talking in open terms about faith I found was helpful. And yeah, you do kind of adopt the vocabulary a little bit. And I hope to put it in a way in this book that folks can read and feel like they were somewhat immersed in flat earth without completely giving them credence. Mike: Yeah, I definitely got that sense. You devote a chapter to flat earth fascists, but in all, it didn't seem that significant to me. Is this a misperception on my part? It didn't seem like there were that many flat fascists. Kelly: No. I'm very glad to say that most flat earthers are not fascists. But by that same token, I did feel like it was relevant enough that I had to put it in the book. And I think that's because it speaks to a broader issue with conspiracy theories. I think conspiracy theories are very, very useful to fascists, to totalizing movements in general, because they do allow people to cast out information that they don't want to grapple with. They allow people to have a very reduced view of the world and to perceive enemies where they don't exist, to perceive persecution where it doesn't exist, to form these in-group out-group associations. So I was fascinated by the existence of some flat earth nazis, which they are around. One of the biggest flat earth video makers also has multiple neo-nazi rap albums. So it bore mentioning. But I thought it was maybe a good way to draw connections between something like flat earth, which is so zany that I think most people can laugh at it, to something like QAnon which is an equally absurd conspiracy theory but has way more fascist momentum behind it. QAnon is just a fascist fever dream. So I thought that I had to, in some way, make an allusion to how these conspiracy theories can be weaponized for something that's less funny than flat earth. Mike: Yeah. So your last chapter is about one of my favorite things to do, and that's leaving. Talk about the people that left flat earth and what we might learn from their stories. Kelly: Absolutely. It was challenging for me to find people who left the flat earth movement who were willing to speak for this book. And that's not because a lot of people don't leave flat earth, they do, but they're kind of embarrassed about it. They don't want to go on the record, because it is an embarrassing thing to be wrong about. So I'm very, very grateful for the people who did speak to me on the record about this. And something that they told me was that there was this intense feeling of overcoming themselves almost to leave flat earth. They had sunk so many relationships into this theory. They'd alienated people; they'd been very argumentative about this theory; they'd been passionate about it. There were sunk costs, right? They didn't want all of it to have been for nothing. And so they put off leaving the theory really as long as they could, as long as they could still plausibly believe it. One guy told me that he was–at the end of his belief–he was so distressed that he couldn't look up at the sky. He didn't want to see a sunset because it would disprove flat earth. And he didn't want to look at it and grapple with that. So I think it took a tremendous amount of personal honesty and bravery for these people to say, "You know what? I was actually wrong. And these losses that I've experienced from flat earth were exactly that, they were losses." But I do think what helped the people I spoke to was having a community around them outside flat earth who helped them leave and didn't make them feel like idiots, who welcomed them back even though they'd been on a long strange trip for a couple of years. And so I think going back to that idea of community, that idea of having alternatives, being able to have a safe landing, I think, was the most helpful thing for these people. Mike: Okay. Kelly, thank you so much for coming on The Nazi Lies Podcast to talk about flat Earthers. The book again is Off the Edge out from Algonquin Books. Thanks again, Ms. Weill. Kelly: Thank you so much for having me. Mike: You missed reading Off the Edge with us in The Nazi Lies Book Club, but there are still plenty of great books from our upcoming guests to read. Come join us and support the show by subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start as low as $2 and some come with merch. Check us out at patreon.com/NaziLies and follow us on Twitter @NaziLies and Facebook at facebook.com/TheNSLiesPod [Theme song]

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]

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

Mike Isaacson: If your free speech requires an audience, might I suggest a therapist? [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 once again to The Nazi Lies Podcast. I am joined by two historians today. With us is Evan Smith, lecturer at Flinders University in Adelaide, and David Renton, who taught at a number of universities in the UK and South Africa before leaving the academy to practice law, though he still finds time to research and write. Each of them has a book about today's topic: the free speech crisis. Dr. Smith's book, No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech, chronicles the No Platform policy of the National Union of Students in the UK from its foundation in 1974 to the present day. Dr. Renton's book, No Free Speech for Fascists: Exploring ‘No Platform' in History, Law and Politics, tells a much longer story of the interplay of radical leftist groups, organized fascists, and the state in shaping the UK's speech landscape and their significance in politics and law. Both are out from Routledge. I have absolutely no idea how we've managed to make the time zones work between the three of us, but welcome both of you to the podcast. Evan Smith: Thank you. David Renton: Thanks, Mike. Mike: So David, I want to start with you because your book goes all the way back to the 1640s to tell its history. So what made you start your story in the 1640s, and what did contention over speech look like before Fascism? David: Well, I wanted to start all that time back more than 300 years ago, because this is the moment when you first start to see something like the modern left and right emerge. You have in Britain, a party of order that supports the state and the king, but you also have a party which stands for more democracy and a more equal distribution of wealth. And essentially, from this point onwards in British, European, American politics, you see those same sites recreating themselves. And what happens again, and again, and again from that point onwards for hundreds of years until certainly say 50 years ago, you have essentially the people who are calling for free speech, whether that's the levellers in 1640s, Tom Paine 100 years later, J.S. Mill in the 19th Century. The left is always the people in favor of free speech. In terms of the right, if you want a kind of the first philosopher of conservatism, someone like Edmund Burke, he's not involved in the 1640s. He's a bit later, about a century and a half later. But you know, he supports conservatism. So what's his attitude towards free speech? It's really simple. He says, people who disagree with him should be jailed. There should be laws made to make it harder for them to have defenses. And more and more of them should be put in jail without even having a trial. That's the conservative position on free speech for centuries. And then what we get starting to happen in the late 20th century, something completely different which is a kind of overturning of what's been this huge, long history where it's always the left that's in favor of free speech, and it's always the right that's against it. Mike: Okay. Now, your contention is that before the appearance of Fascism, socialist radicals were solidly in favor of free speech for all. Fascism changed that, and Evan, maybe you can jump in here since this is where your book starts. What was new about Fascism that made socialists rethink their position on speech? Evan: So fascism was essentially anti-democratic and it was believed that nothing could be reasoned with because it was beyond the realms of reasonable, democratic politics. It was a violence, and the subjugation of its opponents was at the very core of fascism. And that the socialist left thought that fascism was a deeply violent movement that moved beyond the traditional realm of political discourse. So, there was no reasoning with fascists, you could only defeat them. Mike: So, let's start with David first, but I want to get both of you on this. What was the response to Fascism like before the end of World War II? David: Well, what you do is you get the left speaking out against fascism, hold demonstrations against fascism, and having to articulate a rationale of why they're against fascism. One of the things I quote in my book is a kind of famous exchange that takes place in 1937 when a poet named Nancy Cunard collected together the writers, intellectuals, and philosophers who she saw as the great inspiration to– the most important writers and so on that day. And she asked them what side they were taking on fascism. What's really interesting if you read their accounts, whether it's people like the poet W.H. Auden, novelist Gerald Bullitt, the philosopher C.E.M Joad, they all say they're against fascism, but they all put their arguments against fascism in terms of increased speech. So C.E.M Joad writes, "Fascism suppresses truth. That's why we're against fascism." Or the novelist Owen Jameson talks about fascism as a doctrine which exalts violence and uses incendiary bombs to fight ideas. So you get this thing within the left where people grasp that in order to fight off this violence and vicious enemy, they have to be opposed to it. And that means, for example, even to some extent making an exception to what's been for centuries this uniform left-wing notion: you have to protect everyone's free speech. Well people start grasping, we can't protect the fascist free speech, they're gonna use it to suppress us. So the Left makes an exception to what's been its absolute defense of free speech, but it makes this exception for the sake of protecting speech for everybody. Mike: Okay. Evan, do you want to add anything to the history of socialists and fascists before the end of World War Two? Evan: Yeah. So just kind of setting up a few things which will become important later on, and particularly because David and I are both historians of antifascism in Britain, is that there's several different ways in which antifascism emerges in the interwar period and several different tactics. One tactic is preventing fascists from marching from having a presence in public. So things like the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 is a very famous incident where the socialists and other protesters stopped the fascists from marching. There's also heckling and disrupting of fascist meetings. So this was big meetings like Olympia in June 1934, but then also smaller ones like individual fascist meetings around the country were disrupted by antifascists. There was also some that are on the left who also called for greater state intervention, usually in the form of labor councils not allowing fascists to congregate in public halls and stuff like that. So these kinds of arguments that fascism needs to be confronted, disrupted, obfuscated, starts to be developed in the 1930s. And it's where those kinds of free speech arguments emerge in the later period. Mike: Now immediately after the Second World War, fascist movements were shells of their former selves. They had almost no street presence and their organizations usually couldn't pull very many members. Still, the response to fascism when it did pop up was equally as vehement as when they organized into paramilitary formations with membership in the thousands. Something had qualitatively changed in the mind of the public regarding fascism. What did the immediate postwar response to public fascist speech look like, and what was the justification? Evan, let's start with you and then David you can add anything he misses. Evan: David probably could tell the story in a lot more detail. In the immediate post-war period in Britain, Oswald Mosley tries to revive the fascist movement under the title The Union Movement, but before that there's several kind of pro-fascist reading groups that emerge. And in response to this is kind of a disgust that fascists who had recently been imprisoned in Britain and their fellow travellers in the Nazis and the Italian Fascists and the continental fascists had been, you know, it ended in the Holocaust. There was this disgust that fascists could be organizing again in public in Britain, and that's where it mobilizes a new kind of generation of antifascists who are inspired by the 1930s to say "Never again, this won't happen on our streets." And the most important group and this is The 43 Group, which was a mixture of Jewish and communist radicals, which probably David can tell you a little bit about. David: I'd be happy to but I think before we get to 43 Group, it's kind of worth just pausing because the point Mike's left is kind of around the end of the Second World War. One thing which happens during the Second World War is of course Britain's at war with Germany. So what you start to get is Evan talked about how in the 1930s, you already have this argument like, “Should stopping fascism be something that's done by mass movements, or should it be done by the state?” In the Second World War the state has to confront that question, too, because it's got in fascism a homegrown enemy, and the British state looks at how all over Europe these states were toppled really quickly following fascist advance, and very often a pro-fascist powerful section of the ruling class had been the means by which an invading fascism then found some local ally that's enabled it to take over the state and hold the state. So the British state in 1940 actually takes a decision to intern Oswald Mosley and 800 or so of Britain's leading fascists who get jailed initially in prisons in London, then ultimately on the Isle of Man. Now, the reason why I'm going into this is because the first test of what the ordinary people in Britain think about the potential re-emergence of fascism comes even before the Second World War's ended. When Oswald Mosley is released from internment, he says he has conditioned phlebitis, he's very incapacitated, and is never going to be politically active again. And the British state buys this. And this creates–and an actual fact–the biggest single protest movement in Britain in the entire Second World War, where you get hundreds of people in certain factories going on strike against Oswald Mosley's release, and high hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions demanding that he's reinterned, and you start to get people having demonstrations saying Mosley ought to go back to jail. That kind of sets the whole context of what's going to happen after the end of the Second World War. Mosley comes out and he's terrified of public opinion; he's terrified about being seen in public. He's convinced that if you hold meetings you're going to see that cycle going on again. So for several years, the fascists barely dare hold public meetings, and they certainly don't dare hold meetings with Mosley speaking. They test the water a bit, and they have some things work for them. Evan's mentioned the 43 Group so I'll just say a couple sentences about them. The 43 Group are important in terms of what becomes later. They're not a vast number of people, but they have an absolute focus on closing down any fascist meeting. We're gonna hear later in this discussion about the phrase "No Platform" and where it comes from, but you know, in the 1940s when fascist wanted to hold meetings, the platform means literally getting together a paste table and standing on it, or standing on a tiny little ladder just to take you a couple of foot above the rest of your audience. The 43 Group specialize in a tactic which is literally knocking over those platforms. And because British fascism remained so isolated and unpopular in the aftermath of the Second World War, you know, there are 43 Group activists and organizers who look at London and say, "All right, if there going to be 12 or 13 public meetings in London this weekend, we know where they're going to be. If we can knock over every single one of those other platforms, then literally there'll be no fascists to have any chance to find an audience or put a public message in Britain." That's kind of before you get the term 'No Platform' but it's almost in essence the purest form of No Platforming. It's people being able to say, "If we get organized as a movement outside the state relying on ordinary people's opposition to fascism, we can close down every single example of fascist expression in the city and in this country." Mike: Okay. So through the 50's and 60's, there were two things happening simultaneously. On the one hand, there was the largely left wing student-led free speech movement. And on the other hand, there was a new generation of fascists who were rebuilding the fascist movement in a variety of ways. So let's start with the free speech movement. David, you deal with this more in your book. What spurred the free speech movement to happen? David: Yeah. Look in the 50s and 60s, the free speech movement is coming from the left. That's going to change, we know it's going to change like 20 or 30 years later, but up to this point we're still essentially in the same dance of forces that I outlined right at the start. That the left's in favor of free speech, the right is against it. And the right's closing down unwanted ideas and opinion. In the 50s and 60s, and I'm just going to focus on Britain and America, very often this took the form of either radicals doing some sort of peace organising–and obviously that cut against the whole basic structure of the Cold War–or it took the form of people who maybe not even necessarily radicals at all, just trying to raise understanding and consciousness about people's bodies and about sex. So for the Right, their counterattack was to label movements like for example in the early 60s on the campus of Berkeley, and then there's originally a kind of anti-war movement that very quickly just in order to have the right to organize, becomes free speech movements. And the Right then counter attacks against it saying, "Essentially, this is just a bunch of beats or kind of proto-hippies. And what they want to do is I want to get everyone interested in drugs, and they want to get everyone interested in sexuality, and they want everyone interested in all these sorts of things." So their counterattack, Reagan terms this, The Filthy Speech Movement. In the late 60s obviously in states, we have the trial of the Chicago 7, and here you have the Oz trial, which is when a group of radicals here, again that their point of view is very similar, kind of hippie-ish, anti-war milieu. But one thing is about their magazines, which again it seems very hard to imagine today but this is true, that part of the way that their their magazine sells is through essentially soft pornographic images. And there's this weird combination of soft porn together with far left politics. They'll get put on trial in the Oz trial and that's very plainly an attempt– our equivalent of the Chicago 7 to kind of close down radical speech and to get into the public mind this idea that the radicals are in favor of free speech, they're in favor of extreme left-wing politics, and they're in favor of obscenity, and all these things are somehow kind of the same thing. Now, the point I just wanted to end on is that all these big set piece trials–another one to use beforehand is the Lady Chatterley's Lover trial, the Oz trial, the Chicago 7 trial, all of these essentially end with the right losing the battle of ideas, not so much the far right but center right. And people just saying, "We pitched ourselves on the side of being against free speech, and this isn't working. If we're going to reinvent right-wing thought, make some center right-wing ideas desirable and acceptable in this new generation of people, whatever they are, then we can't keep on being the ones who are taking away people's funds, closing down ideas. We've got to let these radicals talk themselves out, and we've got to reposition ourselves as being, maybe reluctantly, but the right takes the decision off of this. The right has to be in favor of free speech too. Mike: All right. And also at this time, the far right was rebuilding. In the UK, they shifted their focus from overt antisemitism and fascism to nebulously populist anti-Black racism. The problem for them, of course, was that practically no one was fooled by this shift because it was all the same people. So, what was going on with the far right leading into the 70s? Evan, do you want to start? Evan: Yeah. So after Mosley is defeated in Britain by the 43 Group and the kind of antifascism after the war, he moves shortly to Ireland and then comes back to the UK. Interestingly, he uses universities and particularly debates with the Oxford Union, the Cambridge Union, and other kind of university societies, to find a new audience because they can't organize on the streets. So he uses–throughout the '50s and the '60s–these kind of university platforms to try and build a fascist movement. At the same time, there are people who were kind of also around in the '30s and the '40s who are moving to build a new fascist movement. It doesn't really get going into '67 when the National Front is formed from several different groups that come together, and they're really pushed into the popular consciousness because of Enoch Powell and his Rivers of Blood Speech. Enoch Powell was a Tory politician. He had been the Minister for Health in the Conservative government, and then in '68 he launches this Rivers of Blood Speech which is very much anti-immigration. This legitimizes a lot of anti-immigrationist attitudes, and part of that is that the National Front rides his coattails appealing to people who are conservatives but disaffected with the mainstream conservatism and what they saw as not being hard enough in immigration, and that they try to build off the support of the disaffected right; so, people who were supporting Enoch Powell, supporting the Monday Club which is another hard right faction in the conservatives. And in that period up until about the mid 1970s, that's the National Front's raison d'etre; it's about attracting anti-immigrationists, conservatives to build up the movement as an electoral force rather than a street force which comes later in the '70s. Mike: There was also the Apartheid movement, or the pro-Apartheid movement, that they were building on at this time as well, right? Evan: Yeah. So at this time there's apartheid in South Africa. In 1965, the Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia has a unilateral declaration of independence from Britain to maintain White minority rule. And a lot of these people who are around Powell, the Monday Club, the National Front, against decolonization more broadly, and also then support White minority rule in southern Africa. So a lot of these people end up vocalizing support for South Africa, vocalizing support for Rhodesia, and that kind of thing. And it's a mixture of anti-communism and opposition to multiracial democracy. That's another thing which they try to take on to campus in later years. Mike: So finally we get to No Platform. Now, Evan, you contend that No Platform was less than a new direction in antifascist politics than a formalization of tactics that had developed organically on the left. Can you talk a bit about that? Evan: Yeah, I'll give a quick, very brief, lead up to No Platform and to what's been happening in the late '60s. So Enoch Powell who we mentioned, he comes to try and speak on campus several times throughout the late 60s and early 70s. These are often disrupted by students that there's an argument that, "Why should Enoch Powell be allowed to come onto campus? We don't need people like that to be speaking." This happens in the late 60s. Then in '73, Hans Eysenck, who was a psychologist who was very vocal about the connection between race and IQ, he attempts to speak at the London School of Economics and his speech is disrupted by a small group of Maoists. And then also– Mike: And they physically disrupted that speech, right? That wasn't just– Evan: Yeah, they punched him and pushed him off stage and stuff like that. And a month later, Samuel Huntington who is well known now for being the Clash of Civilizations guy, he went to speak at Sussex University, and students occupied a lecture theater so he couldn't talk because they opposed his previous work with the Pentagon during the Vietnam War. This led to a moral panic beginning about the end of free speech on campus, that it's either kind of through sit-ins or through direct violence, but in the end students are intolerant. And that's happening in that five years before we get to No Platform. Mike: One thing I didn't get a good sense of from your books was what these socialist groups that were No Platforming fascists prior to the NUS policy stood for otherwise. Can we talk about the factionalization of the left in the UK in the 60s and 70s? David, maybe you can help us out on this one. David: Yeah, sure. The point to grasp, which is that the whole center of British discourse in the ‘70s was way to the left of where it is in Britain today, let alone anywhere else in the world. That from, say, ‘64 to ‘70, we had a Labour government, and around the Labour Party. We had really, really strong social movements. You know, we had something like roughly 50% of British workers were members of trade unions. We'll get on later to the Students Union, that again was a movement in which hundreds of thousands of people participated. Two particular groups that are going to be important for our discussion are the International Socialists and International Marxist Group, but maybe if I kind of go through the British left sort of by size starting from largest till we get down to them. So the largest wing we've got on the British left is Labour Party. This is a party with maybe about half a million members, but kind of 20 million affiliated members through trade unions, and it's gonna be in and out of government. Then you've got the Communist Party which is getting quite old as an organization and is obviously tied through Cold War politics to the Soviet Union. And then you get these smaller groups like the IS, the IMG. And they're Trotskyist groups so they're in the far left of labor politics as revolutionaries, but they have quite a significant social heft, much more so than the far left in Britain today because, for example, their members are involved in editing magazines like Oz. There is a moment where there's a relatively easy means for ideas to merge in the far left and then get transmitted to the Labour Party and potentially even to Labour ministers and into government. Mike: Okay, do you want to talk about the International Marxist Group and the International Socialists? Evan: Do you want me to do that or David? Mike: Yes, that'd be great. Evan: Okay. So as David mentioned, there's the Communist Party and then there's the International Socialists and the International Marxist Group. The International Marxist Group are kind of heavily based in the student movement. They're like the traditional student radicals. Tariq Ali is probably the most famous member at this stage. And they have this counter cultural attitude in a way. International Socialists are a different form of Trotskyism, and they're much more about, not so much interested in the student movement, but kind of like a rank and file trade unionism that kind of stuff, opposition to both capitalism and Soviet communism. And the IS, the IMG, and sections of the Communist Party all coalesce in the student movement, which forms the basis for pushing through a No Platform policy in the Nationalist Union of Students in 1974. Mike: Okay. So in 1974, the National Union of Students passes their No Platform policy. Now before we get into that, what is the National Union of Students? Because we don't have an analogue to that in the US. Evan, you want to tackle this one? Evan: Yeah. Basically, every university has a student union or a form of student union–some kind of student body–and the National Union of Students is the national organization, the peak body which organizes the student unions on all the various campuses around the country. Most of the student unions are affiliated to the NUS but some aren't. The NUS is a kind of democratic body and oversees student policy, but individual student unions can opt in or opt out of whether they follow NUS guidelines. And I think what needs to be understood is that the NUS was a massive organization back in those days. You know, hundreds of thousands of people via the student unions become members of the NUS. And as David was saying, the political discourse is much bigger in the '60s and '70s through bodies like this as well as things like the trade union movement. The student movement has engaged hundreds of thousands of students across Britain about these policies much more than we see anything post the 1970s. David: If I could just add a sentence or two there, that's all right. I mean, really to get a good sense of scale of this, if you look at, obviously you have the big set piece annual conventions or conferences of the National Union of Students. Actually, it doesn't even just have one a year, it has two a year. Of these two conferences, if you just think about when the delegates are being elected to them how much discussion is taking place in local universities. If you go back to some local university meetings, it's sometimes very common that you see votes of 300 students going one way, 400 another, 700 going one way in some of the larger universities. So there's an absolute ferment of discussion around these ideas. Which means that when there are set piece motions to pass, they have a democratic credibility. And they've had thousands of people debating and discussing them. It's not just like someone going on to one conference or getting something through narrowly on a show of hands. There's a feeling that these debates are the culmination of what's been a series of debates in each local university. And we've got over 100 of them in Britain. Mike: Okay, how much is the student union's presence felt on campus by the average student? Evan: That'd be massive. David: Should I do this? Because I'm a bit older than Evan and I went to university in the UK. And it's a system which is slowly being dismantled but when I was student, which is like 30 years ago, this was still largely in place. In almost every university, the exceptions are Oxford and Cambridge, but in every other university in Britain, almost all social activity takes place on a single site on campus. And that single site invariably is owned by the student's union. So your students union has a bar, has halls, it's where– They're the plumb venues on campus if you want to have speakers or if you want to have– Again, say when punk happened a couple of years later, loads and loads of the famous punk performances were taking place in the student union hall in different universities. One of the things we're going to get onto quite soon is the whole question of No Platform and what it meant to students. What I want to convey is that for loads of students having this discussion, when they're saying who should be allowed on campus or who shouldn't be allowed on campus, what's the limits? They feel they've got a say because there are a relatively small number of places where people will speak. Those places are controlled by the students' union. They're owned and run by the students' union. It's literally their buildings, their halls, they feel they've got a right to set who is allowed, who's actually chosen, and who also shouldn't be invited. Mike: Okay, cool. Thank you. Thank you for that. That's a lot more than I knew about student unions. Okay. Evan, this is the bread and butter of your book. How did No Platform come about in the NUS? Evan: So, what part of the fascist movement is doing, the far-right movement, is that it is starting to stray on campus. I talked about the major focus of the National Front is about appealing to disaffected Tories in this stage, but they are interfering in student affairs; they're disrupting student protests; they're trying to intimidate student politics. And in 1973, the National Front tried to set up students' association on several campuses in Britain And there's a concern about the fascist presence on campus. So those three left-wing groups– the IMG, the IS and the Communist Party–agree at the student union level that student unions should not allow fascists and racists to use student buildings, student services, clubs that are affiliated to the student union. They shouldn't be allowed to access these. And that's where they say about No Platform is that the student union should deny a platform to fascists and racists. And in 1974 when they put this policy to a vote and it's successful, they add, "We're going to fight them by any means necessary," because they've taken that inspiration from the antifascism of the '30s and '40s. Mike: Okay. Now opinion was clearly divided within the NUS. No Platform did not pass unanimously. So Evan, what was opinion like within the NUS regarding No Platform? Evan: Well, it passed, but there was opposition. There was opposition from the Federation of Conservative Students, but there was also opposition from other student unions who felt that No Platform was anti-free speech, so much so that in April 1974 it becomes policy, but in June 1974, they have to have another debate about whether this policy should go ahead. It wins again, but this is the same time as it happens on the same day that the police crackdown on anti-fascist demonstration in Red Lion Square in London. There's an argument that fascism is being propped up by the police and is a very real threat, so that we can't give any quarter to fascism. We need to build this No Platform policy because it is what's standing in between society and the violence of fascism. Mike: Okay. I do want to get into this issue of free speech because the US has a First Amendment which guarantees free speech, but that doesn't exist in Britain. So what basis is there for free speech in the law? I think, David, you could probably answer this best because you're a lawyer. David: [laughs] Thank you. In short, none. The basic difference between the UK and the US– Legally, we're both common law countries. But the thing that really changes in the US is this is then overlaid with the Constitution, which takes priority. So once something has been in the Constitution, that's it. It's part of your fundamental law, and the limits to it are going to be narrow. Obviously, there's a process. It's one of the things I do try and talk about in my book that the Supreme Court has to discover, has to find free speech in the American Constitution. Because again, up until the Second World War, essentially America has this in the Constitution, but it's not particularly seen as something that's important or significant or a key part of the Constitution. The whole awe and  mysticism of the First Amendment as a First Amendment is definitely something that's happened really in the last 40-50 years. Again, I don't want to go into this because it's not quite what you're getting at. But certainly, in the '20s for example, you get many of the big American decisions on free speech which shaped American law today. What everyone forgets is in every single one of them, the Supreme Court goes on to find some reason why free speech doesn't apply. So then it becomes this doctrine which is tremendously important to be ushered out and for lip service be given to, just vast chunks of people, communists, people who are in favor of encouraging abortion, contraception, whatever, they're obviously outside free speech, and you have to come up with some sophisticated justifications for that. In Britain, we don't have a constitution. We don't have laws with that primary significance. We do kind of have a weak free speech tradition, and that's kind of important for some things like there's a European Convention on Human Rights that's largely drafted by British lawyers and that tries to create in Articles 10 and 11 a general support on free speech. So they think there are things in English legal tradition, in our common law tradition, which encourage free speech.  But if we've got it as a core principle of the UK law today, we've got it because of things like that like the European Convention on Human Rights. We haven't got it because at any point in the last 30, or 50, or 70 or 100 years, British judges or politicians thought this was a really essential principle of law. We're getting it these days but largely by importing it from the United States, and that means we're importing the worst ideological version of free speech rather than what free speech ought to be, which is actually protecting the rights of most people to speak. And if you've got some exceptions, some really worked out well thought exceptions for coherent and rational reasons. That's not what we've got now in Britain, and it's not what we've really ever had. Mike: Evan, you do a good job of documenting how No Platform was applied. The experience appears to be far from uniform. Let's talk about that a little bit. Evan: Yeah, so there's like a debate happening about who No Platform should be applied to because it states– The official policy is that No Platform for racists and fascists, and there's a debate of who is a racist enough to be denied a platform. There's agreement so a group like the National Front is definitely to be No Platform. Then there's a gray area about the Monday Club. The Monday Club is a hard right faction within the conservatives. But there's a transmission of people and ideas between National Front and the Monday Club. Then there's government ministers because the British immigration system is a racist system. The Home Office is seen as a racist institution. So there's a debate of whether government politicians should be allowed to have a platform because they uphold institutional racism. We see this at different stages is that a person from the Monday Club tries to speak at Oxford and is chased out of the building. Keith Joseph, who's one of the proto-Thatcherites in the Conservative Party, comes to speak at LSE in the 1977-78 and that there is a push to say that he can't be allowed to speak because of the Conservative Party's immigration policies and so forth like that. So throughout the '70s, there is a debate of the minimalist approach with a group like the International Socialists saying that no, outright fascists are the only ones to be No Platformed. Then IMG and other groups are saying, "Actually, what about the Monday Club? What about the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children? What about Conservative Ministers? Are these people, aren't they also sharing that kind of discriminatory agenda that shouldn't be allowed a platform?" Mike: Okay, and there were some objections within the National Union of Students to some applications of No Platform, right? Evan: Yeah, well, not so much in the '70s. But once you get into the '80s, there's a big push for it. But probably the biggest issue in the '70s is that the application of No Platform to pro-Israel groups and Jewish student groups. In 1975, there's a UN resolution that Zionism is a form of racism, and that several student groups say, "Well, pro-Israel groups are Zionists. If Zionism is a form of racism and No Platform should be applied to racists or fascists, shouldn't they the pro-Israel groups then be denied a platform? Should pro-Israel groups be disaffiliated from student unions, etc.?" Several student unions do this at the local level, but there's a backlash from the NUS at the national level so much so the NUS actually suspends No Platform for about six months. It is reintroduced with an explicit piece of it saying that if No Platform is reinstituted, it can't be applied to Zionists groups, to pro-Israel groups, to Jewish societies. But a reason that they can't, the NUS can't withhold No Platform as a policy in the late 1970s is because they've been playing catch up because by this time, the Anti-Nazi League, Rock Against Racism are major mass movements of people because the National Front is seen as a major problem, and the NUS has to have some kind of anti-Fascist, anti-racist response. They can't sit on their hands because they're going dragged along by the Anti-Nazi League. Mike: One thing that you talked about in your book, David, is that simultaneous to No Platform was this movement for hate speech prohibitions. Talk about how these movements differed. David: Well, I think the best way to convey it is if we go back to the motion that was actually passed at the National Union of Students spring conference in May '74. If you don't mind, I'll just begin by reading it out. Conference recognizes the need to refuse any assistance, financial or otherwise, to openly racist or fascist organizations or societies (e.g., Monday Club, National Front, Action Party, Union Movement, National Democratic Party) and to deny them a platform. What I want to try and convey is that when you think about how you got this coalition within the National Union of Students in support of that motion, there were like two or three different ideas being signaled in that one motion. And if you then apply them, particularly what's happening as we're talking 50 years later now, if you apply them through the subsequent 50 years of activism, they do point in quite different directions. To just start up, “conference recognizes the need to refuse any assistance” dadadada. What's really been good at here, I'm sure some of the people who passed No Platform promotion just had this idea, right? What we are, we're a movement of students' unions. We're a movement of buildings which are run by students and are for students. People have said to themselves, all this motion is really committing us to do is to say that we won't give any assistance to racist or fascist organizations. So what that means in practice is in our buildings, in our halls, we won't invite them in. Now, it may be that, say, the university will invite a conservative minister or the university will allow some far-right person to have a platform in election time. But the key idea, one key idea that's going on with this, just those things won't happen in our students' unions. They're our buildings; they're our halls. To use a term that hasn't really been coined yet, but this is in people's heads, is the idea of a safe space. It's just, student unions are our safe space. We don't need to worry about who exactly these terrible people are. Whoever and whatever they are, we don't want them on our patch. That's idea number one. Idea number two is that this is really about stopping fascists. It's not about any other form of discrimination. I'll come on to idea three in a moment. With idea three, this is about fascist organizations. You can see in a sense the motion is talking to people, people coming on and saying like I might not even be particularly left wing, but I don't like fascists. Evan talked about say for example, Zionist organizations. Could a Zionist organization, which is militantly antifascist, could they vote this motion? Yes. And how they'd sell it to themselves is this is only about fascism. So you can see this in the phrase, this is about refusing systems to “openly racist or fascist organizations,” and then look at the organizations which are listed: the National Front, well yeah, they're fascists; the Union Movement, yeah, they're fascists; the National Democratic Party, they're another little fascist splinter group.And then the only one there that isn't necessarily exactly fascist is the Monday Club who are a bunch of Tories who've been in the press constantly in the last two years when this motion is written for their alliance with National Front holding demonstrations and meetings together. So some people, this is just about protecting their space. Some people, this is about excluding fascists and no one else. But then look again at the motion, you'll see another word in there. “Conference recognizes the need to refuse any assistance to openly racist or fascist organizations.” So right from the start, there's a debate, what does this word racist mean in the motion? Now, one way you could read the motion is like this. From today, we can all see that groups like the National Front are fascists. Their leaders can spend most of the rest of the decade appearing constantly in literature produced by anti-fascist groups, identifying them as fascist, naming them as fascist, then we have to have a mass movement against fascism and nazism. But the point is in 1974, that hadn't happened yet. In most people's heads, groups like the National Front was still, the best way to describe them that no one could disagree to at least say they were openly racist. That was how they described themselves. So you could ban the National Front without needing to have a theological discussion about whether they fitted exactly within your definition of fascism. But the point I really want to convey is that the motion succeeds because it blurs the difference between saying anything can be banned because it's fascist specifically or anything can be banned because it's racist or fascist. This isn't immediately apparent in 1974, but what becomes pretty apparent over time is for example as Evan's documented already, even before 1974, there have been non-fascists, there have been conservatives going around student unions speaking in pretty racist terms. All right, so can they be banned? If the answer is this goes to racists or fascists, then definitely they can be banned. But now wait a second. Is there anyone else in British politics who's racist? Well, at this point, both main political parties are standing for election on platforms of excluding people from Britain effectively on the basis of the color of their skin. All right, so you can ban all the main political parties in Britain. All right, well, how about the newspapers? Well, every single newspaper in Britain, even the pro-Labour ones, is running front page articles supporting the British government. All right, so you could ban all newspapers in Britain. Well, how about the television channel? Well, we've only got three, but the best-selling comedies on all of them are comedies which make fun of people because they're foreigners and because they're Black. You can list them all. There's dozens of these horrible programs, which for most people in Britain now are unwatchable. But they're all of national culture in Britain in the early '70s. Alright, so you say, all right, so students we could ban every television channel in Britain, every newspaper in Britain, and every political party in Britain, except maybe one or two on the far left. It's like, wait a second people, I've only been doing racism. Well, let's take seriously the notion, if we're against all forms of racism, how can we be against racism without also being against sexism? Without being against homophobia? So the thing about No Platform is there's really only two ways you can read it in the end, and certainly once you apply it outside the 1970s today. Number one, you can say this is a relatively tightly drawn motion, which is trying to pin the blame on fascists as something which is growing tremendously fast in early 1970s and trying to keep them out. Maybe it'd be good to keep other people out too, but it's not trying to keep everyone out. Or you've got, what we're confronting today which is essentially this is an attempt to prevent students from suffering the misery, the hatred, the fury of hate speech. This is an attempt to keep all hate speech off campus, but with no definition or limit on hate speech. Acceptance of hate speech 50 years later might be much more widely understood than it is in early '70s. So you've got warring in this one motion two completely different notions of who it's right politically to refuse platforms to. That's going to get tested out in real life, but it's not been resolved by the 1974 motion, which in a sense looks both ways. Either the people want to keep the ban narrow or the people want to keep it broad, either of them can look at that motion and say yeah, this is the motion which gives the basis to what we're trying to do. Mike: Okay. I do want to get back to the notion of the maximalist versus the precisionist view of No Platform. But first before that, I want to talk about the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism to just get more of a broader context than just the students in Britain in terms of antifascism. David, do you want to talk about that? David: Okay. Well, I guess because another of my books is about Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League, so I'll try and do this really short. I'll make two points. First is that these movements which currently ended in the 1970s are really very large. They're probably one of the two largest street movements in post-war British history. The only other one that's candidate for that is the anti-war movement, whether that's in the '80s or the early 2000s. But they're on that same scale as amongst the largest mass movements in British history. In terms of Rock Against Racism, the Anti-Nazi League, the total number of people involved in them is massive; it's around half a million to a million people. They're single most famous events, two huge three carnivals in London in 1977, which each have hundreds of thousands of people attending them and bring together the most exciting bands. They are the likes of The Clash, etc, etc. It's a movement which involves people graffitiing against Nazis, painting out far-right graffiti. It's a movement which is expressed in streets in terms of set piece confrontations, clashes with far-right, Lewisham in ‘76, Southall in ‘79. These are just huge movements which involve a whole generation of people very much associated with the emergence of punk music and when for a period in time in Britain are against that kind of visceral street racism, which National Front represents. I should say that they have slightly different attitudes, each of them towards the issue of free speech, but there's a massive interchange of personnel. They're very large. The same organizations involved in each, and they include an older version of the same activist who you've seen in student union politics in '74 as were they you could say they graduate into involvement in the mass movements like Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League. Now, I want to say specifically about the Anti-Nazi League and free speech. The Anti-Nazi League takes from student politics this idea of No Platform and tries to base a whole mass movement around it. The idea is very simply, the National Front should not be allowed a platform to speak, to organize, to win converts anywhere. Probably with the Anti-Nazi League, the most important expressions of this is two things. Firstly, when the National Front tries to hold election meetings, which they do particularly in the run up to '79 election, and those are picketed, people demonstrated outside of them  A lot of them are the weekend in schools. One at Southall is in a town hall. These just lead to repeated clashes between the Anti-Nazi League and the National Front. The other thing which the Anti-Nazi League takes seriously is trying to organize workers into closing off opportunities for the National Front spread their propaganda. For example, their attempts to get postal workers to refuse to deliver election materials to the National Front. Or again, there's something which it's only possible to imagine in the '70s; you couldn't imagine it today. The National Front is entitled to election broadcasts because it's standing parliament. Then the technical workers at the main TV stations go on strike and refuse to let these broadcasts go out. So in all these ways, there's this idea around the Anti-Nazi League of No Platform. But No Platform is No Platform for fascists. It's the National Front should not get a chance to spread its election message. It's not yet that kind of broader notion of, in essence, anything which is hate speech is unacceptable. In a sense, it can't be. Because when you're talking about students' unions and their original No Platform motion and so forth, at the core of it is they're trying to control their own campuses. There's a notion of students' power. The Anti-Nazi League, it may be huge mass movement and may have hundreds of thousands people involved in it, but no one in Anti-Nazi League thinks that this organization represents such a large majority that they could literally control the content of every single TV station, the content of every single newspaper. You can try and drive the National Front out, but if people in that movement had said right, we actually want to literally carve out every expression of racism and every expression of sexism from society, that would have been a yet bigger task by another enormous degrees of scale. Mike: Okay, I do want to talk a little bit more about Rock Against Racism just particularly how it was founded, what led to its founding. I think it gives a good sense of where Britain was at, politically. David: Right. Rock Against Racism was founded in 1976. The two main events which are going on in the heads of the organizers when they launched it, number one, David Bowie's weird fascist turn, his interview with Playboy magazine in which he talks about Hitler being the first rock and roll superstar, the moment where he was photographed returning from tours in America and comes to Victoria Station and appears to give a Nazi salute. The reason why with Bowie it matters is because he's a hero. Bowie seems to represent the emergence of a new kind of masculinity, new kind of attitude with sexuality. If someone like that is so damaged that he's going around saying Hitler is the greatest, that's really terrifying to Bowie fans and for a wider set of people. The other person who leads directly to the launch of Rock Against Racism is Eric Clapton. He interrupts a gig in Birmingham in summer '76 to just start giving this big drunken rant about how some foreigner pinched his missus' bum and how Enoch Powell is the greatest ever. The reason why people find Eric Clapton so contemptible and why this leads to such a mass movement is weirdly it's the opposite of Bowie that no one amongst the young cool kids regards Clapton as a hero. But being this number one star and he's clearly spent his career stealing off Black music and now he's going to support that horror of Enoch Powell as well, it just all seems so absolutely ridiculous and outrageous that people launch an open letter to the press and that gets thousands of people involved. But since you've asked me about Rock Against Racism, I do want to say Rock Against Racism does have a weirdly and certainly different attitude towards free speech to the Anti-Nazi League. And this isn't necessarily something that was apparent at the time. It's only kind of apparent now when you look back at it. But one of the really interesting things about Rock Against Racism is that because it was a movement of young people who were trying to reclaim music and make cultural form that could overturn British politics and change the world, is that they didn't turn around and say, "We just want to cut off all the racists and treat them as bad and shoot them out into space," kind of as what the Anti-Nazi League's trying to do to fascists. Rock Against Racism grasped that if you're going to try and change this cultural milieu which is music, you actually had to have a bit of a discussion and debate and an argument with the racists, but they tried to have it on their own terms. So concretely, what people would do is Rock Against Racism courted one particular band called Sham 69, who were one of the most popular young skinhead bands, but also had a bunch of neo-nazis amongst their roadies and things like that. They actually put on gigs Sham 69, put them on student union halls, surrounded them with Black acts. Knew that these people were going to bring skinheads into the things, had them performing under Rock Against Racism banner, and almost forced the band to get into the state of practical warfare with their own fans to try and say to them, "We don't want you to be nazis anymore. We want you to stop this." That dynamic, it was incredibly brave, was incredibly bold. It was really destructive for some of the individuals involved like Jimmy Pursey, the lead singer of Sham 69. Effectively saying to them, "Right, we want you to put on a gig every week where you're going to get bottled by your own fans, and you're going to end up like punching them, just to get them to stop being racist." But we can't see any other way of shifting this milieu of young people who we see as our potential allies. There were lots of sort of local things like that with Rock Against Racism. It wasn't about creating a safe space in which bad ideas couldn't come in; it was about going onto the enemy's ideological trend and going, "Right, on this trend, we can have an argument. We can win this argument." So it is really quite an interesting cultural attempt to change the politics of the street. Mike: Okay, now you two have very different ideas of what No Platform is in its essence. Evan, you believe that No Platform was shifting in scope from its inception and it is properly directed at any institutional platform afforded to vociferous bigots. While David you believe that No Platform is only properly applied against fascists, and going beyond that is a dangerous form of mission creep. Now, I absolutely hate debates. [laughter] I think the format does more to close off discussion than to draw out information on the topic at hand. So, what I don't want to happen is have you two arguing with each other about your positions on No Platform (and maybe me, because I have yet a third position). David: Okay Mike, honestly, we've known each other for years. We've always been– Mike: Yeah, yeah, yeah. David: –your listeners will pick up, there's loads we agree on, too. So I'm sure we can deal without that rubbish debate. [Evan laughs] Mike: All right. So what I'd like to do is ground this discussion as much as possible in history rather than abstract moral principles. So in that interest, can each of you talk a bit about the individuals and groups that have taken the position on No Platform that you have, and how they've defended their positions? David let's start with you. What groups were there insisting that No Platform was necessary but its necessity was limited to overt fascists? David: Well, I think in practice, that was the approach of Rock Against Racism. They took a very different attitude towards people who were tough ideological fascists, to the people who were around them who were definitely racist, but who were capable of being argued out of that. I mean, I've given the example of the policy of trying to have a debate with Sham 69 or use them as a mechanism to change their audience. What I want to convey is in every Rock Against Racism group around the country, they were often attempts to something very similar. People talk about Birmingham and Leeds, whether it be sort of local Rock Against Racism groups, they might put on– might get a big band from some other city once a month, but three weeks out of four, all they're doing is they're putting on a local some kind of music night, and they might get a hundred people there. But they'd go out of the way to invite people who they saw as wavering supporters of The National Front. But the point is this wasn't like– We all know how bad faith debates work. It's something like it's two big ego speakers who disagree with each other, giving them half an hour each to debate and know their audience is already persuaded that one of them's an asshole, one of them's great. This isn't what they were trying to do. They were trying to win over one by one wavering racists by putting them in an environment where they were surrounded by anti-racists. So it was about trying to create a climate where you could shift some people who had hateful ideas in their head, but were also capable of being pulled away from them. They didn't do set piece debates with fascists because they knew that the set piece debates with fascists, the fascists weren't going to listen to what they were going to say anyway. But what they did do is they did try to shift people in their local area to try and create a different atmosphere in their local area. And they had that attitude towards individual wavering racists, but they never had that attitude towards the fascist leaders. The fascist leaders as far as they're concerned, very, very simple, we got to close up the platform to them. We got to deprive them of a chance. Another example, Rock Against Racism, how it kind of made those sorts of distinctions. I always think with Rock Against Racism you know, they had a go at Clapton. They weren't at all surprised when he refused to apologize. But with Bowie, there was always a sense, "We want to create space for Bowie. We want to get Bowie back because Bowie's winnable." That's one of the things about that movement, is that the absolute uncrossable line was fascism. But if people could be pulled back away from that and away from the ideas associated with that, then they wanted to create the space to make that happen. Mike: Okay, and Evan, what groups took the Maximalist approach to No Platform and what was their reasoning? Evan: Yeah. So I think the discussion happens once the National Front goes away as the kind of the major threat. So the 1979 election, the National Front does dismally, and we can partially attribute that to the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism, kind of this popular antifascist movement. But there's also that Margaret Thatcher comes to power, and there's an argument that's made by historians is that she has pulled away the racist vote away from the National Front back to the conservatives. It's really kind of a realignment of leftwing politics under Thatcher because it's a much more confrontational conservative government, but there's also kind of these other issues which are kind of the new social movements and what we would now term as identity politics, they're forming in the sixties and seventies and are really big issues in the 1980s. So kind of like feminism, gay rights, andthat,  there's an argument among some of the students that if we have a No Platform for racism and fascism, why don't we have a No Platform for sexism? Why don't we have a No Platform for homophobia? And there are certain student unions who try to do this. So LSE in 1981, they endorse a No Platform for sexist as part of a wider fight against sexism, sexual harassment, sexual violence on campus is that misogynist speakers shouldn't be allowed to have a presence on campus. Several student unions kind of have this also for against homophobia, and as a part of this really divisive issue in the mid 1980s, the conservative government is quite homophobic. Section 28 clause 28 is coming in in the late eighties. It's a whole kind of homophobia of AIDS. There's instances where students object to local Tory politicians who were kind of outwardly, explicitly homophobic, that they should be not allowed to speak on stage. Then also bubbling along in the background is kind of the supporters of apartheid, so South African diplomats or kind of other people who support the South African regime including Conservative politicians, is that several times throughout the 1980s, they are invited to speak on campus, and there's kind of a massive backlash against this. Sometimes the No Platform policy is invoked. Sometimes it's just simple disruption or kind of pickets or vigils against them. But once fascism is kind of not the main issue, and all these different kind of politics is going on in the eighties, is that there's argument that No Platform for fascism and racism was important, but fascism and racism is only one form of hate speech; it's only one form of discrimination; it's only one form of kind of bodily violence; and we should take them all into consideration. Mike: Okay. Now there's been a fair bit of backlash against No Platform in kind of any of its forms from various sectors, so let's talk a bit about that. Let's start with the fascist themselves. So their response kind of changed somewhat over time in response to No Platform. David, you talk about this. David: Yeah. In the early ‘70s in Britain or I suppose in the late ‘70s too, what's extraordinary is how little use fascist make out of saying, "We are being attacked, free speech applies. We've got to have the right to be heard." I made the point earlier that Britain doesn't have a strong legal culture of free speech. We do have some culture of free speech. And again, it's not that the fascists never use these terms at all, they use them, but they use them very half-heartedly. Their dominant approach is to say, "We are being attacked by the left. The left don't understand we have better fighters than them. If they attack us on the streets, we'll fight back. In the end, we'll be the ones who win in a kind of battle of machismo, street fighting power." Now A, that doesn't happen because actually they lose some set piece confrontations, mostly at Lewisham in 1977. But it's interesting that they don't do the kind of thing which you'd expect the far right to do today, which is to say, like the British far right does today, they constantly say, "We're under attack. Free speech demands that we be heard. We're the only people who take free speech seriously." There's a continuous process in the British far right these days of endlessly going on social media every time anyone even disagrees with them a little bit, they immediately have their faces taped up and present themselves as the victim of this terrible conspiracy when in the mid-'70s when there really were people trying to put the far right out of business, that isn't what the far right did. I think, in essence, a whole bunch of things have to change. You have to get kind of a hardening of the free speech discourse in the United States; you have to have things like the attack on political correctness; the move by the American center-right from being kind of equivocal on free speech to being extremely pro-free speech; and you need to get the importation into Britain of essentially the same kind of free speech discourse as you have in States. Once we get all of that, the British far right eventually twigs that it's a far more effective way of presenting themselves and winning supporters by posing as the world's biggest defenders of free speech.  But in the ‘70s, they haven't learned that lesson yet, and their response is much more leaden and ineffective. In essence, they say, "No Platform's terrible because it's bullying us." But what they never have the gumption to say is, "Actually, we are the far right. We are a bunch of people putting bold and dangerous and exciting ideas, and if we are silenced, then all bold and dangerous and difficult ideas will be silenced too." That's something which a different generation of writers will get to and will give them all sorts of successes. But in the ‘70s, they haven't found it yet. Mike: Okay. Now fascists also had some uneasy allies as far as No Platform is concerned among Tories and libertarians. So let's talk about the Tories first, what was their opposition to No Platform about? Evan, you talk about this quite a bit in your book. Evan: Yeah. So the conservative opposition to No Platform is essentially saying that it's a stock standard thing that the left call everyone fascist. So they apply it to broadly and is that in the ‘80s, there's a bunch of conservative politicians to try to go onto campus, try to speak, and there's massive protests. They say that, "Look, this is part of an intolerant left, that they can't see the distinction between fascism and a Conservative MP. They don't want to allow anyone to have free speech beyond that kind of small narrow left wing bubble." In 1986, there is an attempt, after a kind of a wave of protest in '85, '86, there is an attempt by the government to implement some kind of protection for free speech on campus. This becomes part of the Education Act of 1986, that the university has certain obligations to ensure, where practical, free speech applies and no speech is denied. But then it's got all kind of it can't violate the Racial Discrimination Act, the Public Order Act, all those kind of things. Also, quite crucially for today, that 1986 act didn't explicitly apply to student unions. So student unions argued for the last 30 years that they are exempt from any legislation and that they were legally allowed to pursue their No Platform policy.

On this fun episode I sit down w/ Kemp and Mike from the Bogota, Colombia band One Reason to Rise to discuss their career as a band and their upcoming EP entitled “City Lights” that is getting released in June. We also chat about about forming 1R2R from the ashes off their previous band Defy, naming the first record that as well, their covers EP, growing up and getting into punk rock in Colombia, their influences ranging from Ska to metal to skate punk, as well as funny stories and much more. So sit back, pop open a can, and check out this new episode of TIJAP. *** (songs included by 1R2R are the following: “Don't Let Me Go,” “Turn Back Time,” “I Believe,” “Everything's Wrong,” and I'm Still Standing.”) *** --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

What happens to an NFL team with a great draft class and what kind of setback occurs with a slate of picks that miss? One pick can change everything. Join Michael Beck on the latest edition of The Live Mike as he helps Steeler Nation navigate through the 2022 offseason and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Mike Isaacson: Of course you're gonna be replaced. No one lives forever. [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: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Nazi Lies Podcast. Subscribe to our Patreon to join our book club. This should be an interesting episode. I've got Dr. Michael Cholbi with me. He's chair in philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and editor of the volume Immortality and the Philosophy of Death. He's joining me to discuss Replacement theory. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Cholbi. Michael Cholbi: Thanks very much, I really appreciate the invitation. Mike: All right, so before we get too deep into the philosophy, talk a bit about what you study and how it contributes to the human experience. Michael: Well, I'm a philosopher, and I specialize in particular in ethics. Within ethics, much of my research addresses philosophical issues, ethical issues, related to death and mortality. Some of the issues that I have written on include things like suicide and assisted dying, the desirability of immortality, the rationality of attitudes such as fear toward death, and most recently, working a significant bit on philosophical questions related to grief and bereavement. In terms of what I think it contributes to the human experience--well, I hope it contributes something to the experience--I do think that it's probably the case that even if non-human creatures have some understanding of death, some inchoate understanding of death, we human beings learn at a pretty early age about death, and we learn at a pretty early age as well, that death is ultimately unavoidable. We learn that every creature that we have ever known, every creature that ever will exist including ourselves, does die eventually. And I think as a consequence of that, we have to live our lives in light of that fact. It seems to be pretty clear that our attitudes about death and mortality impact a lot of how we approach the world, what our attitudes are, what our aspirations are. So I'd like to think that philosophy of death or dying is a subject that is relevant to people not because of, you know, their being a member of a profession, or because they come from a certain part of the world or whatever it might be, but simply because they're human and they are aware of the fact of their mortality. I think we all grapple with it, and I think that philosophy has some particular tools or methods that can help people grapple with it in a helpful way. Mike: Now, the reason I wanted to have you on is because I think replacement theory sort of revolves around a fear of death or an inability to grapple with one's own mortality. So there's this idea of being replaced, it's obviously fundamental to the theory itself, and I think this relates to the idea of the first part of your book, “Is death bad for those that die?” I think that replacement theory would answer in the affirmative, and probably most people, though less frantically. So what do philosophers have to say on this question? Does anyone say no? Michael: Well, I actually think there's a pretty significant contingent, right, of philosophers in different traditions who don't think that death is bad for the person who dies, or at least isn't bad necessarily. And I think that those who hold that view fall into several different categories. One category are those philosophers who believed in the afterlife. A significant number of philosophers have worked in Christian and Islamic traditions and of course, according to those traditions, death is not really the end of us; it's more like a transition for us in that we change from being mortal embodied living creatures to being immortal creatures. Not all of the thinkers who believe in afterlife have believed in what we would think of as religions in the usual sense. Socrates famously argued that his death was not going to be bad for him because this was his opportunity to be released from his body and to become acquainted with the eternal and unchanging forms that he believed are the source of all knowledge. Another school of thought that has denied that death is bad for us were the Epicureans and they have their contemporary defenders. Epicurean philosophers believe that death is neither good nor bad for us. Their famous slogan is "Death's nothing to us," and their point of view is that death is the end of us. We don't survive it. There's no afterlife. And because we don't survive it, we don't experience anything bad, there's nothing to be bad about death, and we simply don't exist. So in their view, death is neither bad nor good. Then there's a third school of thought that's a bit more contemporary. Most philosophers who adopt this school of thought would call themselves Deprivationists or Comparativists, and roughly the idea is something like this, that your death can be bad for you, and the way it can be bad for you is that if you die at a particular point in time, then had you not died at that time you would have lived longer, and had you lived longer, there's the possibility that you would have had a better life overall. So were I to die today then that means I would not survive longer, and perhaps had I survived longer, I would have had the opportunity to have a better life, a happier, more fulfilling life, to say. So there's certainly been many schools of philosophical thought, many philosophers, that have thought that death is not bad for us, or at least not necessarily bad for us, I should say. That said, I think it's been one of the sort of perennial questions in philosophy and there are a good number of people on the other side of the ledger who think that there's something deeply terrible about death just insofar as it represents the kind of destruction of our consciousness or of our subjectivity. It's bad simply insofar as it represents the cessation of the existence of the only thing that each of us can really say that we know or count on–ourselves. And maybe that's bad enough to make death bad. Mike: This kind of gets us into the next topic I want to get into. One of the topics that comes up in your book is the idea of life as a narrative arc that concludes with your death. And it seems like that is roundly refuted but it still feels compelling. It forms the basis of most action, adventure, sci fi, fantasy, etc, stories. And it kind of implies destiny, which is something crucial to replacement theory. Even the Comparative approach touched on in the first part of the book takes for granted one's destiny that we compare, you know, beyond one's ultimate death, or one's untimely death. Replacement theory kind of takes this narrative arc story of an individual life and puts it at the meta level with the grand narrative of the nation. So, how do philosophers take on this idea of life as a story, presumably that concludes with one's death? Michael: Well, I certainly think that outside of philosophy and say psychology, we see an abundance of evidence that perhaps one of the defining features of human beings is that we're storytellers, right? We tell stories about ourselves, about other people, about our communities. And it's certainly possible to look at one's life as a narrative, as a kind of story. There are philosophers who have denied that this is sort of essential to us. There's a living philosopher now named Galen Strawson who has essentially said that, or at least from his point of view, he lives his life as a series of disconnected episodes as if there's sort of no narrative, unity, or structure to them at all. And of course, there's also the possibility that we tell stories about our lives or craft narratives about our lives that turn out to be false or incoherent or really don't make any sense. I don't think necessarily that the notion that we view our lives as narratives and our lives as narratives implies destiny. In fact, I think a lot of what people are attempting to do in the course of their lives is to try to craft a life that corresponds to a certain story. So, perhaps you have a life where a certain kind of adversity was present early on in life, but one of the central things that you tried to do was to overcome that adversity, and by the end of your life, it's clear that you had overcome that adversity. That's a pretty common trope in the stories that people aspire to create for their lives. I think at the collective level-- and that seems to be really what sort of Nazi replacements theory is operating at a sort of meta level as you said-- you know, the notion that we aspire to tell stories about ourselves that connect us with others, and in particular connect us with others who will continue to exist after we are gone is a very powerful human equation. I think certainly, many people when they think about what they want out of their lives, they want in some ways their lives to transcend their own biographies, right, to have a legacy, to leave an impact in the world, to improve life for the next generation. In fact there's a philosopher recently, Samuel Scheffler, who has kind of coined this idea of the "collective afterlife" that much of what we do and care about, when we sit back and reflect upon it, seems to assume that there will be people who will exist after we're gone. So if you're a cancer researcher, and you were to learn that in the days after your death the entire earth and the whole human species were to be destroyed by an asteroid, Schaeffler says that would probably change your goals, right? You wouldn't think that curing cancer was so important a goal. So I think it's pretty baked in. I think, to human nature to be able to view our lives as stories, to want our stories to interconnect with other people, other members of our family, our community our nation, our religion. It's actually a very commonplace feature of human life that we struggle with death, and one of the ways that we try to address that struggle, I think, is by crafting a narrative that transcends ourselves as individuals. Mike: All right. So your book ends with a part on immortality, which I think is also important for Replacement theory. This idea that you will somehow live on through your nation or your race or your genes or whatever. It seems like a mystical way of achieving immortality. So, historically philosophically, how do people seek to attain immortality? How does it color the way we navigate the world? Michael: Well, I mean  in some ways I would say that the desire for a kind of immortality that is symbolic, as some people have said, a kind of immortality that doesn't involve literally surviving as an individual, but a kind of immortality that consists in having a legacy or leaving an impact on the world. That kind of immortality is, in some sense, less mystical than in certain other ways of thinking about immortality. I suppose the most mystical or most puzzling is one that I was referring to earlier in our conversation, you know, the notion of an afterlife. It does seem to be on its face puzzling how we can die and be entirely completely dead and yet somehow survive that and come out on the other side, so to speak. But certainly, the various narratives of the afterlife are one of the ways that people have thought they could attain immortality. Another, of course, is what we've been calling legacy through family, culture, religion, nation, and so forth. And a third one-- and this is the one I suppose that sometimes people forget about-- is that you could conceivably attain immortality simply by not dying. [laughs] So you know, if you were to be able to find the proverbial fountain of youth, that would give you eternal life rather than some post mortem immortal life, that'd be a kind of immortality too. I think in terms of the place that thinking about mortality has in human life, you know, there's a school of psychologists led by Sheldon Solomon who put forward something called terror management theory. And as the name suggests, what terror management theory is about is the idea that we human beings are aware of our deaths, and we either find this completely incomprehensible that we could die, or we find it completely terrifying, and either way, we adopt certain strategies, perhaps subconscious or unconscious strategies, to try to manage or address that anxiety. In this respect, the terror management theorists are following upon the work of an anthropologist's writing in the 1970s named Ernest Becker, he wrote a famous book called The Denial of Death. But the terror management theorists in effect say to us, "Well, many of us work very hard to either deny that we die. I suppose that could be one way of looking at belief in the afterlife as kind of the assertion that we simply don't die really. Or we try to live our lives in such a way that we're kind of reassured by the prospect that even if we do die, things that we care about continue, right? Our institutions that we're allied with, the community that we live in, our families, sports clubs that we root for, all of those kinds of things may continue to exist. And that gives us a kind of immortality that's not sort of metaphysical, right? It's not where you actually continue to exist, but I suppose you could call it a symbolic or ethical immortality." But again, I think that I agree with the terror management theorists that somewhere deep in most of our consciousness is the awareness of the fact of our death, and it probably has a huge influence on how we behave individually. It's probably responsible for many of the principal features of human culture. Anthropologists have observed that pretty much every culture that has ever been studied has beliefs and rituals surrounding death, right? [laughs] That's like the starting point for anthropologist's study of the world. So yes, definitely immortality, or striving for immortality, is a way to wrestle or grapple with a mortality that I think we all come to appreciate early on in life. Mike: So, replacement theory has been around for a while although it didn't really have a formal name as a theory until the Christchurch shooter wrote his manifesto, The Great Replacement. One thing I found interesting about the manifesto was the statistic he chooses to focus on. So fascists, racists, xenophobes, they generally appeal to a variety of statistics—racial crime statistics, racial population demographics, not very often racial immigration rates. But the Christchurch shooter chose to focus on racial birth rates. For him, death is the birth of the Other. There's this fear of being bred out. For fascists, there's a sort of philosophical underpinning to this. It has to do with how they view the life and the nation. They consider the nation or identity or whatever, to be literally a living organism or super organism. This implies all the normal things about life–the power of decision making, a lifecycle, etc. For fascists, the nation is a living thing with the state as its power of cognition. This is very similar to one thing we discussed on a previous episode, The Great Chain of Being, this idea that a kingdom is a living organism with the king is the head, and various classes of society as various body parts. So whereas The Great Chain of Being is held together by divine right, fascism is held together by kinship, yielding culture, civilization, politics, economics, etc. This kinship is a unifying force that fuses individuals into an organic nation. And like all living beings, a nation is born; it has a youth, it has a maturation, a frail old age, and an eventual death. Now, fundamentally this comes from a fascist obsession with the organic and applying pseudo-biological models to everything. Anyway, here's my question. How does death shape the way we view non-living phenomena? Michael: Hm. That's the toughest question you've asked me. When we're thinking about non-living phenomenon, are we thinking about just sort of matter? [laughs] Mike: One example you can think of may be like the way that we think of when a computer breaks down, it dies. You know? But also like the idea that a nation in decline is dying or things like that. Michael: Okay, I see. So death as a sort of metaphor for nonliving things, things that can't in some literal sense die. Good. Okay. Again, I think in some ways this goes back to storytelling. There is this well observed psychological tendency we have to attribute agency, personhood, to things that our better selves know aren't agents and don't have personhood. You know, your cell phone breaks down, your cell phone dies on you-- noticed how I used that word dies-- we tend to personify it, right? We sort of think of it as something like an organism. Now, part of that, of course, is simply that thinking of things as having agency, as being person-like, is one of the ways that we try to conceptualize the world around us. And of course, this has some limitations. Sometimes I think you could say that perhaps certain advances in science have been impeded because we have some difficulty in understanding the prospect that events can happen without there being a storyteller or something sort of behind these events that instigates them or chooses them. This is kind of the basis for the infamous argument for God's existence, the argument from design that the world seems so orderly and harmonious in certain sorts of ways. And so this argument tries to infer that that order, that harmoniousness had to have been willed into existence by a god, right? By some sort of divinity. It's certainly, I think, an instinct we have to personify other beings even when they're not persons, to treat them as agents even when they're not agents. I suppose that there's a kind of distortion there as at root in thinking about collective entities as if they are organisms. They're not organisms. And you're certainly right that there's something perhaps misguided about the Nazi replacement theory insofar as it thinks of society as a kind of organism that has these parts that can be healthy or diseased. And I suppose that part of the Nazi ideology has been to try to extirpate the diseased parts in order to preserve and maintain the healthy parts. I'm not sure it's the metaphor that's the problem, but perhaps the particular construal ofit that the Nazi ideology gives, that societies are collectivities or organisms that have these parts that thrive or can be unhealthy on their own. Mike: Okay so there was one article in the volume that at least one review I read took exception to. So the article in question is titled “Constructing Death as a Form of Failure: Addressing Mortality in a Neoliberal Age.” Now I won't make you rehash someone else's article. But I do want to talk about kind of the underriding theme of this article which is the idea that social values shape the way we conceptualize death. So how do social values shape the way we conceptualize death? Michael: I think that particular article was emphasizing a certain way in which contemporary societies sometimes seem to understand death. That death is a sort of failure and that we should attempt to extirpate it, eliminate it if we can, or delay it as long as possible. I mean, certainly many people as they face death, as they become ill and their days become short, some people--not all--do seem to think that their deaths would amount to a kind of failure. Even some physicians have difficulty letting go of the idea that a patient who dies is a patient that they have failed. But I think that's an indication of a sort of broader phenomenon and a broader reality where societies certainly do have values that invite certain interpretations or understandings of the significance of death. Just to give a sort of stark contrast, societies like ours that suppose often that the best sort of life is one that is very productive, where you have a lot of accomplishments, where you enjoy the various kinds of successes and various kinds of material goods. Well, death then looks like the end of all that, and that looks to be a misfortune. Conversely, if one looks at societies or cultures that have a much more communitarian or perhaps cyclical picture of the human condition, they don't necessarily seem to view death as the end of something good or a kind of failure. They view it as a fact that we need to reconcile ourselves to, because again we do eventually die. So I certainly think that our attitudes toward death have very rich logical and evidential interconnections with other things that we care about. And it certainly seems to be that with respect to the theme of your podcast, the Nazi belief system views deaths of white people or white culture or white civilizations as a profound loss, because of course the background ideology is one where those groups or those individuals are supposed to sort of be eternal to reign supreme. And so it's unsurprising then that they would view death as such a detrimental blow to them. Mike: All right. Now obviously, you didn't compile this book as a metaphor for replacement theory. So what do you hope that people get out of your book? Michael: Well, there's of course a collection of articles by a number of scholars--only one of the articles is by me--but I think that what this book can offer people is a richer understanding of two distinct questions that nevertheless interlock or overlap, if you will. So the first question that the book addresses is really the first question you asked about today; is death bad for us? Should we think that it's a bad thing? I think there's a diversity of opinions about this as I mentioned. There are certainly philosophical traditions that have thought that death is bad for us, others that have thought that it isn't bad in fact it's neither good nor bad. Others sort of thought that it may be bad depending upon sort of the circumstances of your death and the circumstances of your life. So I'm hoping that people will garner a more robust understanding of why that's an interesting question and the different ways that philosophers might answer it, and the kinds of arguments they give for their positions. Now, the other question that I think people will gain some insight about is the question of whether immortality would be good for us. It's natural to think that if death is bad for us then it would have to follow that the absence of death, which is to say immortality, would be good for us. But many philosophers have been skeptical about that too. [laughs] They've sort of argued that we're simply not built to be immortal, we would ultimately find the life of an immortal boring and tedious. We would end up like the immortal gods of Greek and Roman mythology where all they seemed to do with their days is sort of meddle in the lives of mortals and create mischief. Others have thought that this would amount to such a distortion of our values, you know, certain kinds of things that we care about in our mortal lives. They wouldn't be sustainable if we were immortal, right? I mean, what would it mean to marry someone, you know, to use that language "till death do us part" if death never comes? [laughs] Would we still value our romantic relationships in the same way? That's just one example where people have wondered whether immortality would in fact alter our values beyond recognition. But I guess what I'm hoping people will see in the book is that those two questions about the value of death and particularly whether it's bad, and on the other hand whether immortality would be good, are both independently interesting, but also, I think, interesting jointly. Because the question of the value of immortality arises very naturally if you believe that in fact death is bad for us. Mike: Okay. Well, Dr. Cholbi, thanks so much for coming on to The Nazi Lies Podcast to talk about death and replacement theory. The book again is Immortality and the Philosophy of Death out from Rowman and Littlefield. Thanks again. Michael: Thank you. It was really a pleasure to talk to you. Mike: If you want to be an upcoming guest with us, join The Nazi Lies Book Club on Patreon. Patrons get access to the Discord server where we host the book club and occasionally share Animal Crossing memes. Patrons also get a bundle of merch for signing up, access to The Nazi Lies Calendar, and advance show notes, transcripts and episodes. See you on the Discord! [Theme song]

Mike Isaacson: I assure you World War II had little to do with it. [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. You can join our Discord and get fun show merch by subscribing to our Patreon. Get access to our book club, calendar, advance episodes, and show notes, all at tiers starting as low as $2. Today we are lucky enough to have Daniel Kevles, Stanley Woodward Professor Emeritus of History, History of Medicine & American Studies at Yale University. For those who don't know, Dr. Kevles literally wrote the book on eugenics. His highly influential 1985 book, In the Name of Eugenics, remains a central point of reference for anyone studying the history or present of the eugenics movement. Thank you so much for joining us Dr. Kevles. Daniel Kevles: It's a pleasure to be with you, Michael. Mike: So before we talk about the eugenics movement proper, there were a lot of early scientific and medical research areas that influenced eugenics. Can you talk a bit about what biological and social science looked like in the Victorian era that led to the emergence of the eugenics movement? Daniel: Sure. The dominant trend or scientific movement, or knock off of science, was social Darwinism. It was a derivative of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, which he advanced in his famous and influential Origin of Species, which was published in 1859. As your listeners will know, Darwin argued that evolutionary success selected the most fit organisms for survival. And the social Darwinist, in a perverse fashion which I'll explain in a moment, borrowed or extracted from his theory the idea that social evolution put the most fit people at the top of society, both economically and socially, and relegated the least fit to the bottom. I say that it was a perversion of Darwinism in many ways, but not least because what Darwin meant by fitness was fitness for reproduction. That meant that the more offspring you reproduced, the more fit you were. And the fewer you reproduce, the less fit you are. The social Darwinists turned this idea on its head because they noticed that people at the top of society like themselves tended to have smaller families and people at the bottom of society had larger families. But that was a major impetus. Social Darwinism was a major impetus to the eugenics movement. In addition, there were also widespread theories of racial differences, where race meant not just what we understand it to be today, say principally black-white, or yellow-white or brown-white, but ace meant differences between groups that we understand to be nowadays just ethnic groups or national groups like Poles or Italians, or Hungarians, and Jews. There are theories around that characterized these different groups and attributed to them various characteristics, many of them socially deleterious. And then finally, there were studies of different people that were quantitative as in the case of craniometry, the measurement of the size of the head or of facial types in the 19th century, that attributed differences in character and intelligence to people of different, say, head sizes. So that's a Victorian background, but we shouldn't forget that right at the very end of the Victorian era, the rediscovery of Mendel's papers on heredity in peas which gave rise to the new discipline of genetics. And genetics had its roots in 19th century. Mendel did his work and then published in the mid-1860s, and was buried for a long time but then rediscovered in 1900 in three different places, and then burst upon the scene of science and was appropriated by eugenicists along with social Darwinism, racism, and the study of intelligence. Mike: One other thing that was kind of floating around there too was the the kind of enthusiasm for the sterilization of what they call the feeble minded, right? Daniel: Well, we're getting ahead of the story. It's not floating around very much at all. In the later 19th century, people did– physicians did sterilize, but they had some weird theories about sexual drive and so on, arising from over-development of the gonads especially in males. And of course there was also always the issue of prostitution, or prostitutes and easy women. But there was no movement for sterilization at all in the Victorian era, that came with the eugenics movement in the early 20th century. Mike: Okay. Now we can actually get into the actual eugenics movement then. First of all, let's talk about its founder, Francis Galton. Who is Galton and what kind of things did he believe? Daniel: Well, Galton was a remarkable man. He was a cousin of Charles Darwin. He was influenced by the Origin of Species. And he was curious about lots of things. He had gone to Cambridge, he was a failed medical student. He couldn't stand blood. Then he went to Cambridge where he studied mathematics and didn't do very well. And he was at sixes and sevens but very well to do, and so he took himself in the 1840s and 50s to the Middle East and then to Africa where he established a reputation of considerable authority as a geographer. And he came back to London and became a figure in geographical circles. But then in the mid-1860s, he got interested in following the publication of his cousin Charlie's book in differences in the quality of human beings. And he started with analysis of heredity and talent and did some biographical analyses connecting the genealogies of people who succeeded in Victorian society. His notions of success did not extend to the business very much at all, or indeed even much to, the arts. His notion of success was fundamentally scholastic and scientific, and to a certain degree, in the practices of state; that is politics and government. And so he mapped the relationship between people in different generations who succeeded in these areas and were prominent in British life and found that there was a very strong hereditary connection. They were all in some small cluster of families. And so he came to believe that there were powerful hereditary forces that shaped human beings and their ability to succeed at least in the areas that he studied. He decided that he wanted to figure out the laws of heredity because he convinced himself that heredity in human beings is very important for qualities of not only physical characteristics like blue eyes but also of talent and character. And so he couldn't experiment with human beings, but he did figure out that he could experiment with peas. And he was devoted to quantifying everything. He said, "Whenever you can, count!" While he was in Africa, for example, he was interested in the size of the female bodies and their shapes among the African natives, especially their tendency to have large back sides. And so he couldn't go and ask them to allow him to measure them, so he measured them at a distance through a telescope, and quantified and analyzed the results. He applied the same quantitative techniques to peas and discovered what we call now the law of regression, and then he wanted to see if law of regression worked in human beings. And I say he couldn't experiment with human beings, but he could take their measurements. He invited human beings, people in London, to an exhibition in 1884 where he measured the, say, height and the distance between the nose and the fingertips of parents and children, you know, such things. And he found that there were correlations, mathematically, in how they grouped themselves. They were not one-to-one correlations, but there were correlations in the sense that there was a strong statistical propensity for children to be like their parents, and so he devised from this the law of statistical correlation. And regression and correlation have proved to be ever since two of the most profoundly important statistical tools for analyzing a whole bunch of different things. The point I want to make here is that he was not only eccentric in his interest and devoted to the study of heredity of a certain kind, but also that he established a research programme as part of eugenics. And right all the way through the heyday of the eugenics movement, we have eugenics as a social movement and also as a research programme. For example, one more thing about Galton is that in his later years, he wanted to institutionalize the study of heredity for eugenic purposes, and he gave University College London a lot of money to establish the Galton Eugenics Laboratory, which became a major center for research in eugenics and then ultimately, in human heredity. And then today, it's one of the leading centers of research in human heredity and human genetics that we have. Mike: So let's talk a little about what eugenics says. When most people think of eugenics they think of selective breeding or maybe the Holocaust, but that really discounts kind of the breadth of the theory and its popularity and influence. What kind of people became eugenicists and what kinds of things did they say? Daniel: Well first, it's important to recognise that eugenics was a worldwide movement. It wasn't confined to England or to the United States or to Germany. It expressed itself in all of the major countries of Europe and had corollary movements in Latin America and in Asia, and to some degree in the Middle East. It's a kind of universal phenomenon among people who were of a certain class. We would recognise them as middle to upper middle class and also people who were educated and scholastically interested. They also tended to be, in this country and in England, to be White, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. They were, how shall I put it? They were distressed in this country by the negative sides of urbanizing and industrializing society, with its sharp distinctions and deep distinctions of class and economic standing. They were apprehensive that the lower income groups were out-reproducing upper income groups and thus leading to the degeneration of the population, they thought. And they responded to this with a eugenics movement, drawing on the new biology of genetics and the cultural context of social Darwinism. So what they did was to invent two different kinds of eugenics, one which they called positive eugenics, and the other was negative eugenics. And the positive eugenics was aimed at people over the middle and upper classes, mainly white Anglo Saxon Protestants, with the idea that they should reproduce more. And they devised various means to incentivize that reproduction. Then they invented negative eugenics, which was to discourage lower income groups from reproducing as much as they were. That's basically how it all started and what the outlines of their commitments and programmes were. Mike: And there were kind of some camps of eugenicists, right? I mean, there was like socialists, there was conservative people who were eugenicists... Daniel: Right. There were– Eugenics was not by any means a uniform movement. For example, here in the United States there were African-American eugenicists; there were Jewish eugenicists; there were no Catholic eugenicists of any standing to speak up because the church, the Roman Catholic Church, strongly opposed any kind of interference with human reproduction, ranging on one side to contraception and abortion, and on the other side to sterilisation. So, you have disparate groups. And eugenics was embraced by a number of people on the left, socialists in England and the United States, and what they shared with people on the right was the tantalizing faith that the new science of genetics could be deployed to improve the human race. Now, they were encouraged in this regard because in the early 20th century, late 19 to early 20th century, science commanded enormous authority. It was changing the world manifestly every day in ways that people experienced, in telephones, in movies, in automobiles, in aircraft, and in radio. These were forms of physical technologies, and so people thought, "Well, now that we have genetics, why can't we do this in biology as well?" And people were doing it on the farm by improving a corn or pigs or what have you, farm animals and farm plants. And so the idea that you could extend it to a human being was seemed perfectly natural. The socialists and the conservatives, however, had much different attitudes towards one particular element in the eugenics movement, and that was the role and rights of women. Conservatives wanted to devote women to the reproduction of– You know, the “good women” to the reproduction of more children, and only in the context of marriage. Whereas the Socialists were much more inclined to embrace free love and new ways of women taking their place in society. So they were at loggerheads on those two things, and for that reason they also disagreed about birth control at least for some years. So, it was a coalition of ideologically different groups and religiously different groups. Mike: Now eugenics is kind of unique among scientific theories in that it was popularized largely outside of the academy. In a way, it also kind of pioneered modern grant funding. Talk about how eugenics became popular. Daniel: Well, it became popular in the way that lots of things were becoming popular in the early 20th century. There are mass circulation magazines, for example, by the 1920s–magazines like Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post. There were many books published on eugenics, many articles and magazines by popular lectures. There were some films on eugenics. There were also lectures and exhibitions. We have, for example, many state fairs, agricultural fairs in the South and Midwest, and in these places the American Eugenics Society mounted exhibits. And also things that were called the Fitter family contest where people could enter as individuals or families, and they would be judged. And these contests occurred in what were called the human stock section that is distinct from the agricultural stock. And many families entered these contests. If you entered as an individual you could win a Capper medal in the state of Kansas. It's hard to tell exactly what made these families fitter, but one indicator is that they all had to take the Wassermann test for syphilis. So there's a certain middle class morality that suffused the eugenics movement as well. What also made it popular was that the eugenics literature allowed you, or the eugenics ideal allowed people, in middle classes to discuss issues that were not comfortably discussed publicly for the most part. And I have in mind issues of sex, of pregnancy, and of child rearing, but especially sex and pregnancy. Since if you're interested in the improvement of the race biologically, inevitably, you have to talk about sex; who's having sex with whom? And talk about contraception and so on. Eugenics enabled people to talk about those things publicly or attend lectures on them publicly. Mike: Okay. Let's talk about what the eugenicists were advocating for. What was their agenda politically? Daniel: Well as I said, in this country and in England, eugenicists were mainly White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. They were distressed by the increasing number of lower-income poor people in the cities. They were also even more distressed by the behavioural characteristics that they attributed to these people, notably alcoholism, criminality, poverty, and prostitution. They attributed these characteristics to bad biology. They were also, in an overlapping way with what I just said, disturbed by the enormous wave of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe that flooded into the United States from the 1880s to the late teens or the early 20s. They thought that these people were biologically inferior and disproportionately responsible for the social sins that I've mentioned, such as alcoholism, etc. So what they wanted to do then– And in addition, they also began to have access to quantitative demonstrations or evidence, allegedly, that these people were mentally inferior, that they had lower intelligence. And where that came from was World War I and the administration of an IQ tests to the 1.7 million American men who were drafted into the US Army. The tests were developed and so widely administered in the army because the army had the unprecedented task of trying to place all these people in suitable tasks, whether they were going to be in infantry or drive jeeps--not jeeps, that's an anachronism--but drive cars or be in the medical service or whatever; Quartermaster Corps, Signal Corps, etc. They had to find out if they were mentally capable– what task they were mentally suited for. So way after the war the results of the IQ tests were published by the National Research Council, and differentiated in terms of country of national origin, region of the United States, and so on, and also by race-- black or white, etc. And it didn't take too much of a high intelligence to figure out--that is, you didn't have to be a rocket scientist--to take this data and conclude that the recent immigrants had lower IQs as compared with native Whites, and to conclude even further that Blacks were simply inferior to everybody. So all of these trends together--the social behaviors, the disproportionate representation of lower income groups especially recent immigrants among the impoverished and the imprisoned, and the IQ tests that reinforced the idea that they were really not very smart–led to a series of legislative proposals. Nationally, eugenicists provided a scientific rationale for the immigration restriction movement that culminated in the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which grossly discriminated against immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Secondly, at the State level, the eugenicists deploying their data were strong advocates of eugenic sterilization laws, and they were passed in several dozen-- well, not several dozen-- but a dozen or more states before World War I. They were declared unconstitutional by state courts and appeals courts in the States on grounds that they were cruel and unusual punishment because some of these laws required castration, or that they provided unequal protection of the laws. I mean, they didn't conform to equal protection because the only people eligible for eugenic sterilization were those who were incarcerated in homes with the so called feeble-minded, and an unequal protection of the laws, and that they violated the 14th Amendment due process. So in the early 1920s these laws were revised, and a model sterilization law was developed by a guy named Harry Laughlin at the Cold Spring Harbor Eugenics Record Office and taken up in the state of Virginia as a model law. It provided for due process with a hearing, it did not provide for castration, and so on. And they proposed to sterilize a woman named Carrie Buck under this new law in the early 1920s, and they intended this as a model case–a test of the law and its constitutionality. And eventually it made its way through the state courts, appeals courts and into the Supreme Court. Mike: Can you talk a bit about who Carrie Buck was and kind of what her situation was? Daniel: Sure. Carrie Buck was not an immigrant, she was a native Virginian. She was lower income, not well educated, and she was living in a foster home when she was a high teenager, I forget her exact age. The later research showed that she was raped by the son in the house. The authorities at the time didn't know that, but it was sufficient for them that she became pregnant with an illegitimate child. So she had this child and–I'm blocking on the name, I'll come to it. It'll pop up in my head in a minute–and she was consigned, because she had an illegitimate child, to the Virginia Colony for the Feebleminded. Illegitimacy was enough to tag a woman as feeble minded. She was put in the institution, her mother was there as well, and they were given IQ tests, and they scored in the feebleminded range. Oh, Vivian. Vivian was the name of the little girl, Carrie's child. And a nurse was assigned to test her at the age of eight months and came back, of course she couldn't give her an IQ test, but she came back and said she had a "odd look" about her and therefore cataloged her as feebleminded as well. So there you had it, you see, with Carrie's mother Emma, and Carrie, and then Vivian, all of them found to be feebleminded in the Virginia colony. And so their feeblemindedness was putatively taken to be strongly hereditary in character. And this was introduced as evidence in the Supreme court hearing in the case of the Buck v. Bell in 1927. So the court-- have I told you enough about Carrie Buck? Mike: Yeah, yeah. Sure. Daniel: I mean, and she was characterized as quote "poor White trash" by this same fellow Laughlin, who didn't go to Virginia to examine her, but was given a case record about her, and he characterized her that way. So his evidence was introduced, and the evidence of three generations of imbeciles, in Carrie Buck and her mother and Vivian, were all introduced as evidence. And the Court ruled by a majority of eight to one to uphold the constitutionality of the Eugenic Sterilization Law in Virginia. The majority decision was delivered by a very progressive jurist, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. And the decision was in a perverse way, a progressive decision. What do I mean by that? Well, the courts before the 1920s, were involved in litigation concerning the legitimacy or the constitutionality of laws passed to regulate business. Businesses, corporations, claim that they were individuals and that these laws were unconstitutional because they were being deprived of life, liberty and property without due process of law. Well, they had due process in this procedural sense, but they were claiming due process in what came to be called a substantive sense. That is, the substance and the right that was being taken away. Their substantive claim was that they had a right to do with their corporations as they saw fit, to charge whatever prices, for example, they wanted. And Holmes was in the school of progressive jurists who said that substantive due process can also be limited, and the substantive right is not absolute and you can take away a substantive right for the public good–the public good being a more economically equitable society. So he applied that same kind of reasoning and Buck v. Bell. The claim was that the Carrie Bucks of the world threatened the public good by reproducing because they were biologically degenerate in character. And so it was legitimate, according to Holmes, to sterilize Carrie even though it took away her substantive right to reproduce. And what trumped her substantive right to reproduce was precisely the service of the public good trumping that right produced. Which is to say that by sterilizing the the Carrie Bucks of the world, the United States would be safeguarded from the degeneration of its population. So it's a progressive decision in that that Holmes, in character of his beliefs, said that the public good dominates Carrie's right to reproduce. It puts Carrie in the same substantive relationship to the public good as a corporation, and they were claiming that they had the right to charge whatever prices they want, for example. And Holmes took for granted the evidence introduced by people like Harry Laughlin that feeblemindedness was hereditary in the Buck line, and a dictum that as part of Holmes' decision, is rung infamously down the annals of courts jurisprudence, Holmes wrote that, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough," meaning Emma, Carrie and her daughter Vivian.  Mike: And so– Daniel: By the way, that decision has never been flatly repudiated, Buck v. Bell. It has been undermined enormously by later jurisprudence on the 14th Amendment and so on, so that you cannot forcibly sterilize a woman nowadays legally by invoking some kind of eugenic law. But it might interest your listeners to know that Buck v. Bell was invoked by the Supreme Court in Roe v Wade in service of the following point: does the state have a right to interfere with the human reproductive process? And as we know now, as a matter of high public interest, the Court in Roe v Wade says the State has no right to interfere with reproduction to the point of quickening. But then once quickening occurs, and the fetus acquires the ability to live outside the womb, then it does have the right to interfere, and the Court invoked Buck v. Bell in saying that. Mike: So between the Immigration Control Act and the sterilization laws, how long are these policies in effect? Daniel: Well, the Immigration Restriction Act was in place until the mid 1960s. It was then revised, and the national origins criteria that discriminated against people from Eastern and Southern Europe was abolished. That produced the wave of immigration that we've known heavily from the Middle East and Asia and Latin America since the mid '60s. The sterilization laws, as I say, were never frontally struck down, but they have been undermined since the expansion of the reach of the 14th Amendment beginning in the 1940s and since. But this is not to say that eugenic sterilization did not persist after World War II. It did until probably the very early 1970s. The reasons for it were different, you know, state sterilization were different after World War II. For example, North Carolina which had hardly done any eugenic sterilization before the War, got into it in a big way after the War because the people who were winding up in the hospital, which is where the sterilizations were conducted, tended to be lower income African American women. And it's not a state policy, but it was sort of on the initiative of the doctors in the hospitals. But there is a kind of sympathetic support of it on the part of the State because the New Deal measure of Aid to Families with Dependent Children gave rise to so-called welfare mothers who were in North Carolina disproportionately Black. And so, North Carolina sterilized a lot of Black women in the hospitals, not by state law but by apprehension on the cost of welfare. I should add, though, that there's an excellent study of North Carolina sterilization, which reminds us once again that it is all kind of complicated insofar as women in the relationship to eugenics are concerned.A number of the women who wound up as a candidate for sterilization in North Carolina, as I say, were Black. They were also already the mothers of multiple children. And they did not have access to birth control, and they asked to be sterilized. They volunteered for it because it was the only way open to them of limiting their births after having a number of children. So it was liberating for some fraction of the African-American women who were sterilized in North Carolina. But anyway, the process of sterilization continued until the early 70s when it was widely exposed and condemned. And it's pretty much ceased since then. Mike: You also discuss in the book a distinction between mainline and reform eugenics. Was this terminology used among eugenicists themselves? Daniel: Not at all. I invented the terms in the book– Mike: Okay. Can you explain the distinction then? Daniel: –to distinguish between the early eugenicists, whom I called mainline, and the eugenicists, or the people who embraced the idea of eugenics, that is improving the human race and improving the human family as well beginning in the 1930s. They were reformers in the sense that they wanted to use biological knowledge to improve the race on the whole, but also they were much more focused on the family than were the earlier eugenicists. What mainly differentiated them also from the so called mainline eugenicists was that they recognised the degree of racism that pervaded the American Eugenics Movement, and they were staunchly opposed to any kind of racist eugenics. They just wanted a eugenics that was based purely on human talents and character, including medical features of human beings with regard to, say, deleterious diseases like Huntington's and Tay–Sachs and so on, and wanted to deploy human genetics to good familial and social ends. And so part of their programme was not only to try to get rid of racism in American eugenics, but also to establish eugenics on a sound scientific basis. Their efforts played a significant role in emancipating the study of human heredity from eugenics, and setting and establishing it as a field that we call human genetics rather than eugenics. Mike: Okay. Now, neo-eugenicists, nazis, and people who don't know better like to say that eugenics declined because the end of the Second World War made it unpopular because of the Nazis, but that isn't quite true. How did eugenics really die? Daniel: Well, the idea of eugenics, I should add, hasn't fully died. Mike: Right. Daniel: People are still eager, even more so than ever, to have healthy children. Now that is taken by some to be a kind of neo-eugenics. I disagree with that point of view. If you just want to have a healthy child, or don't want to have a child that is doomed to die at the age of three as Tay-Sachs children are, then that seems to me a legitimate reason for a) developing knowledge of human genetics, and b) deploying it in reproduction, conception, and pregnancy. And millions of people make use of that kind of knowledge nowadays through prenatal diagnosis and abortion. So it's not eugenics in the sense that it's trying to make a better society or a better human race, but it's simply a means of having a healthy, happy family. In that sense, the ideal of controlling human reproduction in a genetic way for improvement is about the family rather than the human race. But eugenics as a social movement did die off. First, a key feature, a central feature of what I call mainline eugenics was precisely that the State was invoked in its advancement. You can't have it, you know, immigration restriction without the US government. And you can't have state eugenic sterilization laws without state governments. What died away was the willingness of people to invoke the state, deploy the state, enlist it if you will, in the control of human reproduction in a eugenic fashion. The reason for that was partly because of the response to the Holocaust and the Nazis, because there was the invocation of the state for these nefarious purposes in human reproduction to an extreme degree. Secondly, there were all these extensions of the 14th Amendment that made it dicey, or in many respects, impossible for the state to interfere in human reproduction in the way of the mainline eugenicists. But then also, there was a whole congerie of scientific developments in social sciences and in genetics itself that undercut the scientific doctrine of mainline eugenics. So the recognition, for example, that human characteristics are shaped to a significant degree by environment as well as by genes, that is by nurture as well as by nature. Secondly, the idea that the characteristics that people admire so much, like ability to do well in a scholastic test or get good grades or be a doctor or lawyer or what have you, that those are not genetically simple to a degree that they are genetic at all. They are undoubtedly, to some degree genetic, but they involve clusters of many genes. And no one to this day knows how to figure out what goes into the human characteristics and behaviors that we admire as well as deplore. I say deplore by criminality, the quest for genetic accounts of criminality go on, but they rise up and then they are slapped down by further research repeatedly. Then there are the characteristics that we admire and willing to pay a lot for such as the ability to put a basketball through a hoop at 30 feet. Nobody knows what role genes play in that either, and it's gonna be a long time if ever before they figure it out. So, the complexity of the human organism, if you will, has also helped to undercut either both positive eugenics and negative eugenics, each in its own somewhat different way but in very similar ways. So those certainly helped undercut eugenics and basically destroy it as a social movement. Then there's also the rise to power and advancement in society of precisely the groups who were the targets of eugenicists in the early 20th century, that is the then new immigrants coming from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe–Italians, Poles, Hungary, Hungarian and so on. They have done very well in American society, in all branches of it. And so that in and of itself, they are kind of a living repudiation of the early doctrines of eugenics, and they provide a kind of strong caution for us in embracing the temptation of any kind of new eugenics of social nature. So all of those things together had a lot to do with corroding the foundations of eugenics and removing it basically as a social movement. I go back to in the contemporary scene in these kinds of analyses and say that, when we talk about the new reproductive technologies or CRISPR or what have you, and say that they're giving rise, or can give rise, to a new eugenics, I just think that's counterproductive and it doesn't get us anywhere. And for my money, I think we should–[laughs] What I'm saying is putting myself out of business, if you will-- just get rid of the idea of eugenics in discussing what goes on in contemporary molecular biology and reproductive technologies, and talk about them in and of themselves, rather than try to tie them to any kind of eugenics. Mike: Yeah, I'd actually kind of agree with that. Because looking at what eugenicists who are still around do now, none of them are doing genetic or molecular biological research, right? They're all psychologists doing twin studies– Daniel: Well, I can't say. I can't say. I mean, there are some biologists who are neo-eugenicists, but I just don't see any widespread support for them in the scientific community or elsewhere. Mike: Okay so I asked this same question to my last guest when we were talking about the science of sex differences in the brain, but I think it works equally well here. So what can we learn from the story of eugenics both as scientists and as people who listen to scientists? Daniel: Well, that's a very good question Michael. It's hard to provide any kind of blanket answer. And any answer might lead to counter examples that are not very attractive. So let me illustrate what I just said. I think what we need to do in responding to these things, or these kind of dreams, is to be cautious when claims are made in the name of science, especially those of long term consequence that border on the utopian, for example that we can engineer human beings, etc. I just don't think that's in the offing. But even when more modest claims are made, I think we just have to be cautious. It's good idea to raise an eyebrow whenever you hear them and whenever people are asked to turn them into social, economic political movements. An advantageous way of threading this needle is to encourage people to be as scientifically literate as possible. That itself is a utopian quest. But I think that it behooves us all to do that. Now we also need to pay attention as to whether any scientific claims, as in the case of sex differences between men and women, need to be treated with particular caution when they imply anything about human rights. And that is, you know, that we ought to curtail human rights of any kind or in any group because of alleged biological claims, or privilege others because of biological claims. I think we need to be very cautious about that. I say this can be hazardous and cut more than one way, one of these points I'm making, because I automatically right away think about the the claims of the anti-vaxxers nowadays. They say we shouldn't pay attention to scientific authority, that they're interfering with human rights and liberty etc. So you have to be judicious in the way you think about this degree of skepticism. Skepticism of the kind I'm talking about does not extend to the anti-vaxxers because virtually the entire scientific community is of one voice and one mind in saying that vaccines work, and that they're socially important, and medically important, etc. Whereas, I think in other claims about sex differences between men and women, you will find sharp divisions in the scientific community. So we need to pay attention to how the scientific community is thinking about these things as well. Mike: Okay well, Dr. Kevles, it has been an honor to have you on The Nazi Lies Podcast to talk about eugenics. Again, the book is In the Name of Eugenics out from Harvard University Press, an absolute classic in the history of science. Thanks again for coming on the podcast. Daniel: Thank you, Michael. Pleasure to chat with you. Mike: If you liked this episode of The Nazi Lies Podcast and want more, consider subscribing to our Patreon. Patrons get exclusive access to early episodes, even earlier access to show notes, access to the calendar, and a membership slot in our book club on Discord. Come join us weekly as we read and discuss the books of our upcoming guests. Go to patreon.com/nazilies to sign up. [Theme song]

Today's episode will get you all “shook” up! It is all about the power of becoming a published author. Becoming an author is one of the three things that has changed my life the most. I wrote my first book, The Ultimate Childcare Marketing Guide, in 2012 and it has opened so many doors and propelled my career in numerous ways. My guest today, Mike Capuzzi, is a seasoned business owner turned author turned expert marketing strategist. He specializes in helping people of all industries around the world write books, particularly his trademark “shooks.” We talk all about creating the content, marketing your book, and leveraging your expertise. Even if you don't want to become an author, this episode is full of useful tips for direct response marketing vs. branded marketing, selling by helping, becoming an elevated influencer in your industry, and other tools to get your name and business out there.   Key Takeaways: [:52] How books changed Kris's life and the books she has available. [13:14] More about Mike and his role in the child care industry. [14:43] What exactly is a direct response ad? [17:20] What is a “shook” and how does it help Main Street Businesses? [21:12] What other industries has Mike helped with creating a shook? [22:57] More on the POWER of books. [25:07] Discussing the Choosing a Child Care Center shook. [28:06] What are some of the main ways our clients are using this shook? [30:39] What about claiming authorship of a marketing tool that you didn't necessarily write cover-to-cover? [34:18] Mike's program is so fast and simple that you can get published within weeks.   Quotes: “It is designed to elicit a response.” — Mike “A key differentiator with direct response marketing is that it's measurable. And if it's measurable, the good news is you can adjust when needed.” — Mike “If people are engaging with your advertising or marketing, by default they're going to want more from you. They want information, they want the next step, and if you don't make that offer for them to get that next thing, then shame on you!” — Mike “A ‘shook' is designed to be read in about an hour so it gives the reader the opportunity to finish it and then hopefully take that next step.” — Mike “One of the things that these prospective clients are looking for or want is peace of mind. And in my opinion, a properly designed book, a properly written book, can really go a long way to creating that peace of mind, creating that trust, bringing down the stress level, and really positioning the person whose name is on the cover as the authority.” — Mike “The power of books is real!” — Kris “It's like a calling card that opens doors but it's way better than just a business card. It's an actual book that has value and people will want to work with you just by the fact that you've got your name on the cover of a book.” — Kris “If someone's listening to this, honestly, they could have their paperback copies in their center within a month of listening to this. It's that fast.” — Mike   Mentioned in This Episode: Kris Murray The Child Care Success Company The Child Care Success Academy The Child Care Success Summit The Ultimate Childcare Marketing Guide The 77 Best Strategies to Grow Your Early Childcare Program - FREE! Rock Star Stories: Success Secrets of Preschool Leaders Around the Globe, by Kris Murray Child Care Millionaire Mike Capuzzi Find this exclusive offer HERE from Mike Capuzzi to create your shook today!

The time has come for you to meet Jaymee & Lacee's psychedelic love child, the legendary Mike 'One Shot' Coulter. This episode is rank with compelling evidence to support the notion that forces are always working behind the scenes to orchestrate epic encounters with life changing potential(s), such as the truly unbelievable story of how Mike entered into Jaymee & Lacee's lives. Mike is someone who (at a low point in his life) made fun of Jaymee prior to knowing him, and a mind-blowing confluence of events would bring the two men together in a whirlwind of synchronistic forces as patient and clinician in a Malibu addiction treatment setting. Mike now credits Jaymee (and Lacee) for having saved his life and redirected his purpose into becoming a therapist and EMDR facilitator, all by learning to unapologetically be himself. Mike is also an amazing songwriter, and in this episode we share the title track of his solo album 'Saviors', which you can find wherever you stream music. 

About this episode In this episode, we pay homage to fantasy movies in general (like the fun Mythica series) and Dungeons and Dragons movies and games. Yes, there is a scene in a tavern... We both love these types of movies and games, so we were really looking forward to the chance to play around in this genre.  Links: Dungeons and Dragons on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons The Dungeons and Dragons Movie on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_(2000_film) Mythica on Amazon Prime: https://www.amazon.com/Mythica-Quest-Heroes-Robert-Jayne/dp/B00ZN31MK6 Time codes Segment 1: 04:38 Segment 2: 09:55 Segment 3: 16:25 Start of show: 25:18 Improv Game - Ding: 25:24 Improv Game - Emotional Lists: 30:58 Improv Game - Superheroes: 39:43 Improv Game - Best of Times, Worst of Times: 48:02 Improv Game - Cutting Room: 58:30 End of show, into announcements: 1:18:55 More Information about the show, Mike, and Avish Subscribe to the podcast:  Our Website: www.AvishAndMike.com Our Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/143183833647812 Avish's site: www.AvishParashar.com  Mike's site: www.MikeWorthMusic.com/ Transcription of the “Discussing the Genre Tropes” Segment (Unedited and un-cleaned up) Avish: Alright, so segment one - Discussing the genre tropes alright,  Avish: So now we're going to spend five minutes just talking about the commonalities cliches tropes of the genre and it's something we're well versed in so Mike. Avish: When you think of a fantasy dungeons and dragons style movie what comes to mind. Mike: Well, first it's almost always a party based a party based system, even though there is usually one major well in the film there's usually one major protagonist but this protagonist always has to be supported by. Mike: The various specialist right there's always going to be the tank or the fighter the wizard the crafty rogue you know I mean like we don't even need. To be in there. Avish: yeah very in thief and. Mike: And acrobat. Mike: Right, so all that you know clerical that stuff as a matter of fact, the mythic I think we had cleric wizard fighter in thief I think was the was the Holy quadruple. Avish: Another thief is over the fighter user client on the magic user and yeah. Avish: I would say the hero is often not always but often some kind of a chosen one or you know. Mike: or gifted uniquely or something like that yeah. Avish: yeah it's like they're special. Avish: it's not random. Avish: it's not just Frodo you know carrying a ring it's like. Avish: yeah oh my God you're able to do that, and no one can do that cool. Mike: yeah yeah totally the magic in the the part of job is that magic does exist it's not like one of these conan ones where. Mike: magic is kind of like it's like low fantasy or magic kind of reviled no no there's there's magic and there's you know. Avish: it's around knows about it, it exists and it's a big part of the story. Mike: yeah exactly uh. Avish: So we're gonna there's monsters usually often a dragon or. Avish: Yes, troll like some kind of big bad monster. Mike: yep there's gonna be there's gonna be. Mike: The monster scale up through the movie so the initial attacks are with little things like orcs and knowles and all that stuff and then they usually encounter a couple of like sub bosses right like Trolls or like a minute or something like that. Mike: And you know that it culminates in like usually an epic battle when they go up against the head bad guy was good to second there's one epic battle against a large evil monster, where the party has to use their resources and come together. Mike: Oh that's The other thing the party kind of has to learn to trust each other and there's like you know some act one, I want to say bickering but like posturing and kind of things like. Avish: That I don't know for my sake of time, a lot of times in these the  party is formed over the course of the movie that may take too much time for our improv format, you know, but a lot of times like Oh, they meet the thief Oh, then they meet the fighter Oh, then they meet the cleric. I mean may or may not have that. Mike: yeah it's kind of in Bremen time musicians, you know there's always a single had bad guy even if he's the member of a larger cult or a larger government there's always a head bad guy which they have to take down at the end of the movie. Avish: That is always.  Either a wizard or hazmat. Mike: Yes, yes, exactly so let's just for the sake of this just make sure the BAT let's just had a bad guy be a wizard or spell a spell caster yeah. Avish: Oh, he may or may not also be the monster or the monster, maybe a secondary. Mike: Right his lieutenant um let me think what else, what else what are some other okay that's the setup the tropes the adventures they go through their i'm. Avish: busy yes here's the like quests or or obstacles there's there's almost always a journey right there trying to get from point A to Point B. Mike: Yes, um it depends upon how deep you want to get we actually refer back to even crawl for this. Mike: there's two there's two reasons you do the quests in the shows or other information quests trying to find out where the guy lives or they're stockpiling quests it's like I gotta get the magic scroll or I got to get the destiny hammer. Avish: Right, I think it's yeah I think it's a, I think it's much more cliche to say we have to go find the weapon to use to defeat the whatever. Mike: yeah the glade. If the glue well, what do you think um there's all you know all the characters are all the secondary characters that show up our character chores and or pastiche is there's like very little like. There's very little thought going into depth with these characters that's half the fun is that you're like. Avish: Oh it's a toy J. Mike: One knows a drunken fighter right he's here's a here's a half length okay he's going to be a nimble tongue, you know sneaky little TV kind of guy right. Avish: yeah yeah there's not a lot of not game of thrones or each character is like very complex yeah. Mike: or like ever on the whole point of the DVD Rom was like oh yeah you can have like a good cobalt and an evil Elf. Avish: You know kind of thing yeah that's gonna give us wisecracking your fighters off your cleric has overly pious like it's. Mike: yeah it's got no money we break it up this way this, this is an astonishingly like simplistic set of tropes we've we've broken down movies, that have been a lot more nuanced than this. Avish: yeah this just gets complicated because when you got a party got and then like it's like a lot can be a lot of plot can be a lot of characters none of those things are particularly deep or complex. Avish: New Right, and that is the end of our five minute timer. Mike: sounds good to me. Transcription of the “Creating the Outline” Segment (Unedited and un-cleaned up) Avish: Alright, so now, this is where we spend five minutes hashing out creating an outline for the movie we're going to do we're going to do we're going to use a four act structure which is similar three but we take the big actor and break it into two halves so we have for X. We're going to cover the outline now but because this is improv and improv comedy with games and we're things we may veer from this, but this is our kind of our kind of lifeline will use so let's reset the timer. Mike: yep one resume to change any and everything. Avish: Exactly alright so to discuss the outline we usually start with a trailer or prologue I feel when you're talking epic fantasy slash dungeon dragons the almost it's almost always a prologue. Mike: I think, so too, if you want to set the stage. Avish: yeah that prologue is usually something involving either the bad guy or the history or the object. Mike: Yes, yes, the pro level you either be showing the bad guy and why is evil as nefarious plan right or a scene with the macguffin object. Avish: mode this it's like the bad guy you see him being nefarious like he's trying to implement his big world ending plan, but it fails, and then you realize it fails because Oh, we don't have the macguffin. Mike: Right. Avish: He realized Oh, you know where is the macguffin and then. Mike: yeah now the only thing is in in fantasy oftentimes the macguffin device it's a subtle difference does actually have some useful powers like. Avish: yeah real macguffin like has no actual impact. Mike: Right, the Maltese falcon right it's everybody wants it know or or the The case of golden the tarantino film. Avish: Pulp Fiction right yeah this is yeah it actually does something but yeah you'll kind of learn about it, and maybe the bad guy. Mike: yep alright so act one. Avish: Act one we obviously meet the hero  almost always some kind of a simple villager. Mike: yeah this is hero's journey 101 right it's like the everyday you know i'm, then you know let's play the hero's journey card like they get a call to adventure somebody helped me obi wan kenobi you're my only hope so i'm like that. Avish: they're usually yeah either they they stumble across either the either the objects or the bad guys, you know, like um you know they're out in the world, and you know they see someone being attacked, so they intervene or they kind of fall in a cave and they find this object like Oh, what is it so. Mike: yeah yeah i'm. Avish: accidentals how they get. Avish: Initially embroiled in the. Mike: Right and then you know what here's what's gonna happen, I think the hero needs to go out to fix the evil, but as woefully unequipped and must recruit help that's how the party's gonna kind of right. Avish: yeah so at the end of act one is when he kind of sets out probably on his own, and I was actually kind of start gathering up the party. Mike: yeah exactly so it says how to stop the body. But is it under prepared needs help. Avish: Yes, busy, and act one something bad will happen, it will be kind of thrust out to. Mike: who's literally is like reading like Star Wars it's like. it's like Jesus is like. Avish: How to gather his pilot and is wiki and. Active active. Mike: gathers his party and then a series now for the impromptu we just want to be like a couple of requests. Avish: And I know you like one question act by one question each. You know act like act act to me will be the quest to find out where the object is And then act three will be them questing to get the object. Mike: yeah. Avish: back to the quest to learn act threes the quest to get but then at three is going to end in some kind of a encounter disaster where they. You know, lose to the bad guy or they lose the object like they get it, but then they lose it like a bad guy gets it, and so the kind of all is lost moment. Mike: yeah yeah yeah What did you these happens, they lose either either lose the macguffin. or bad guy captures some of the party. Avish: or both. Mike: or all your all right, you know, are all the party right, you know and then what happens in act for is the ingenious rescue of party. Requiring. Avish: And then the final confrontation. Mike: Or the macguffin yep and then final confrontation. Which is almost always one of two things it's a big. Big bad monster fight. Right or a stop the big bad evil guy plans. timed it's almost always like the rituals happening and. Avish: As yeah there's urgency and usually there's some kind of twist on how to beat the bad guy it's not just like oh I killed him with my sword it's usually like oh I realized that if I you know kill his cat that will force him and i'll be his familiar so he'll be dead, then. Mike: This factory, because the. Avish: last thing i'll say runs out of time here is that X. X to certainly and even in act three you know the hero is often like.  ineffectual insecure lacking confidence and act, the kind of the finale is where he steps into his or her accepts his role and confidence and realizes, the key to his power. Mike: Yes, and and the and the last other one to that is a party has trouble in the beginning kind of finding its groove.  But the PowerPoint have asked for, is that the parties working together smoothly as a team they figured out each other's strengths in the way to support each other that's a really important part for good. fantasy right it's okay if they're if they're screwing up in the afternoon at three and they're like fighting against that fighting, but like they're not. Avish: optimizing but they're optimized by at for. Alright awesome all right good, that is the end of our outlining days. Mike: so simple when you put it. In a fantasy novel.

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]

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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]

The Steelers are only days away from bring on the clock. How does the big board in the Burgh look right now and will it change? Join BTSC Deputy Editor Michael Beck on the latest edition of The Live Mike as he helps Steeler Nation navigate through the 2021 offseason. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we have a special episode of our podcast. To start off the 2021 New Year, Mike and I have looked over our 100+ episodes and pick the ones we think are the most interesting or thought-provoking. We also want to thank all of our super guests and you, our listeners. In the 2 plus years, we have been doing this podcast, we have had over 17,000 listens all around the world. From the United States to Sweden to Saudi Arabia to India to Uganda. It has been a load of fun and we have certainly garnered many insights from our guests. Bela: One of the episodes that stands out to me is EP-95 with Mike Saccocio. He is the executive director of the city mission in Schenectady, New York. The creativity, energy, and compassion that Mike has helped so many people. I was fascinated to learn how Mike took a negative, ie. having a homeless shelter in your neighborhood, and turned it into a positive with the downtown ambassador program. Just pure genius. A complete win-win. So check out EP-95 with Mike Saccocio Mike: My favorite topic has been organizational culture and two episodes that really helped me better understand entrepreneurial culture were David Dussault and Darrin Jahnel. David was our guest in EP-2 and is the CEO of P1 Industries, which is a precision mechanical component manufacturing company. And Darrin Jahnel was featured in both EP-5 and EP-84. Darrin is the Co-Founder of Jahnel Group, a software development company. Darrin was on the show twice so, that in itself says something. I was really impressed with how both David and Darrin focused on their company culture, It is reflected in everything they do, their management style, company functions, and meetings, hiring practices, and opportunities for employee growth. Many founders talk about culture, but very few do anything about it. We can all learn something from these two founders. Give them a listen on EP-2, 5, and 84. Bela: The next one I have is EP-27 with Euwyn Poon the founder of Spin. Spin partners with cities, college and corporate campuses, and businesses to provide dockless scooter-share services to get you where you need to go. I had several key take-a-ways from this episode. Euwyn spoke about how he looks at the VC's who invest in his company. He is hiring them! He looks at what the VC's bring to the table in addition to money. What connections do they have? What skills and experience do they have? How can they help him grow his business? Euwyn also discusses how he wanted to be at the epicenter of the start-up universe. He wanted to be where all the action is, the talent is, because he fletch this was the best environment for success. Mike: One thing I am really focusing on right now in my teaching is trying to influence issues of gender inequality in the startup world. The data are really concerning, so I have been actively trying to explore my own teaching, coaching, and mentoring to try and make sure opportunities are not being unintentionally blocked for women entrepreneurs. So, I really like EP-10 with Charlotte Hayden and EP-11 with Nicole Snow. You know Charlotte and I think there is a good story about inspiration, taking actionable steps, seeking mentors and advisors. For Nicole, I think it's all about building a customer community. Both are great stories that are worth listening to. This has been a fun episode to put together. What a great way to kick off what we hope is a better 2021 for all of us after all the challenges we faced in 2020! We love to hear from our listeners, send us your questions, comments, and suggestions at bela.and.mike@gmail.com - we will answer your questions in a future episode. Thanks for listening, Bela and Mike --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bela-musits/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/bela-musits/support

Dave can't believe people are spending money on Mike Tyson vs. Roy Jones, Jr. Is "Iron Mike" truly that much of a draw? Paul Finebaum on why Dabo Swinney seems so unlikable and if there's a landing spot for Jim Harbaugh after Michigan.

No doubt, 2020 came out of nowhere, and, for a time, human potential and momentum were seemingly put on pause. Human beings were “forced” to take a step back and revisit their strategizes and plans for the year. At the end of the day, it all comes down to focusing on what matters. Welcome to the 100th episode of Warrior Week: Parables From the Pit, with head coach, Sam Falsafi, in this very special father-son edition with guests Mike Hardy and his son, Jacob. warriorweeknow.com   Parable #1: Warrior Week 29 & 51 Before Mike entered the gates of Warrior Week 29, nearly five years ago, he was in a place where he knew he needed to change his thought process. Work was becoming all-consuming, and he was aware that he needed to reprioritize and realign his role as husband and father and his entire life. Warrior Week 29 was perfect timing for Mike because it helped him get centered, focused, and clear on the things that were really important to him. Why return to Warrior Week 51? Mike realized that if there’s no intention to grow with a healthy environment, it’s part of human nature to easily slip back. “Warrior Week 51 was almost a recommitment to “no compromise” in all areas of life. Things were moving in a good direction, but I think I needed to re-anchor the foundation, and get to a place where I had a higher level of certainty, and double-down on what worked.” QUESTION What caused you to enter the gates of Warrior? Parable #2:  Letting GoK Often we will stay in a place of comfort for years. However, in order to grow, it is imperative that we learn to let go and step out of that comfort zone – especially if it’s working for us – and have the courage to step into the new. The hardest part of getting to great is giving up good. Mike: “One of the things I’ve always struggled with is that I am a very calculated risk-taker. Through the Warrior training, I’ve learned to slow down long enough to take that quiet time (meditation) every morning to listen to that still, small voice, and then act on that, which is not always logical. There are windows in time, like a strong intuition, that open up worlds of opportunity that I would have completely missed out on had I not slowed down and listened.” QUESTION Where in your world do you know it’s time to let go and step outside your comfort zone? Parable #3: A Father’s Impact Coach Sam recalls something his father told him on his wedding day that has stayed with him throughout the years. “Living a life with someone is easy, but building a life with someone is difficult.” When things get heated between two people, he realizes that he could live with someone for a very long time, but to build something and have common projects is something entirely different. Mike’s son, Jacob, is currently nineteen years old. At the time of his father’s entry into Warrior Week 29, he was fourteen. He recounts several projects he and his father have worked on together throughout that time, notably fixing up his first car. “He let me just kind of figure it out, and then I worked through it.” Currently, they are working towards getting their pilot’s licenses. QUESTION What message from your father has remained with you throughout your life?   Parable #4: The Pit “There is a miserable process that takes place on day one of Warrior Week that’s long and goes into the night. It’s called the Pit. It makes us face things and feelings that we’ve kept inside, things that we regret, relationships that caused us harm, and the pain that resides deep inside. No matter what man you look at, all of us have this pain inside of us, but the majority of us are not willing to feel the pain. The first night is a transition into allowing a man to feel some of that pain.” Coach Sam “There’s a heightened learning experience that takes place when I’m pushed to my limit. There are things to let go of and lessons that can be absorbed that just wouldn’t happen otherwise. There’s a catharsis from being able to let go. My belief is that it’s almost impossible to really grow into who you’re supposed to be, and experience what’s possible for life if emotional baggage and anchors are holding one back.” Mike QUESTION What emotional baggage are you hanging onto? Parable #5: Exposed Mike recalled his experience during one of the evolutions, where a picture of his family was presented to him. “There’s something about when what you love most and have to fight for, a human being can make anything happen.” Knowing that intellectually, he experienced it firsthand during this evolution., “It was like a little microcosm for my capacity of what I can do for my family.” From the beginning of time, every generation faces a heavy crisis that they have to go through. Ours is COVID. Mike sees this as a gift, not a curse. “When there are challenges, people will fall to the level of their foundation or their base systems. Everyone is being exposed right now for who they really are. As Einstein said, within every challenge is an opportunity so great that it will literally dwarf the problem itself. Look for the gift and the opportunity.” QUESTION How has 2020 exposed you? “Parables From The Pit” “There is nothing more powerful in this world than to train your brain in gratitude. If your brain is trained in gratitude, it will be a weapon in this society.” –Sam Falsafi “When something is in front of you, and you feel it welling up, it’s there for a reason, and you’re supposed to act on it. When you feel it, you just GO!” –– Mike Hardy “While I’m working on my car, my dad walks in and asks me, “Are you winning, son?” –Jacob Hardy

We speak with Mike One, the general manager of the Peterborough Petes. Mike shares his experiences and his career path to date with topics including his time with ISS, his tenure with the Peterborough Petes, his connection to Sport Management Worldwide and more!

Neil talks about his childhood wish to stop the waves. DJ and academic Mike Dimpfl talks about his research on "toilet feelings." ABOUT THE GUEST Mike Dimpfl is a teacher, academic, costume builder, and DJ. His academic work explores the connection between hygiene, bureaucracy, and institutional racism, particularly in the southern US. Mike’s costumes often focus on the comic and confusing relationship human beings have to their garbage and to the possibility of the divine. When music is his focus, he is especially committed to reckless abandon on the dancefloor. ABOUT THE HOST Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com. ABOUT THE TITLE SHE’S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast. CREDITS This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund, Western Bridge, and the David Shaw and Beth Kobliner Family Fund Producer: Devon Guinn Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue Mixer: Fraser McCulloch Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver Theme Song: Jeff Hiller Website: Itai Almor & Jesse Kimotho Social Media: Lourdes Rohan Digital Strategy: Ziv Steinberg Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Larry Krone, Tod Lippy, Sue Simon, Jonathan Taylor TRANSCRIPTION NEIL: Mike Dimpfl, welcome to SHE’S A TALKER MIKE: I’m so delighted to be here. NEIL: It’s impossible to imagine you’re as delighted as I am to have you here. Now, can I ask where this recording is finding you? MIKE: Yeah, this recording is finding me, sitting at my dining room table in Durham, North Carolina. It’s a lovely gray, 64 degree day. NEIL: Do you like a gray day? MIKE: I do right now because I have a bit of sort of structural gardening work to complete. And when the summer comes here it becomes so insanely hot that it’s just completely impossible to be outside. We’ve had a really long, cool spring, so the bugs aren’t here yet. NEIL: What is structural gardening work? MIKE: It’s a critique of the, sort of political economy of earlier forms of gardening. We’re remaking our yard and we’ve been doing all of the actual construction work. So not planting plants, but building walls and building fences and moving dirt around and things that. So all the things that are sort of a pain in the ass and give my sort of inner type A control freak a lot of pleasure, but don’t actually produce anything you would say is recognizably a garden. It’s a lot of getting your hands cut by all of the pieces of broken glass that are in the soil around your house. NEIL: Oh, how come there’s broken glass inside the soil around your house? MIKE: It’s just an almost a hundred year old house, and I think that over time things break and people throw bottles into the former dump behind the former garage that’s no longer there, and you find them and I’ve probably taken out an entire garbage can, an actual garbage can of broken glass out of the yard. NEIL: Wow, one shard at a time? MIKE: One shard at a time, yes. I’m going to start an Etsy store with all of the other things I found, like yard cured fork and yard cured wrench, they have a nice patina. NEIL: Oh, I bet, people would pay a pretty penny to give you their new wrench to make it look that. MIKE: To bury, totally, totally. NEIL: It’s like the kimchi of wrenches. MIKE: Exactly, exactly. NEIL: What drove you to leave New York? MIKE: Oh God, I had a terrible day job, crushing, horribly boring development work that I was doing. And I don’t know if you knew, I’d had a bunch of surgeries on my ears. I had a genetic hearing loss condition and they actually messed it up in my right ear, so I’m super deaf in my right ear now. And it meant that I couldn’t DJ as much. And so I kind of lost the love of New York, and I was like, “Maybe I’ll go back to grad school.” And I did, and of course grad school is a little bit returning to the fourth grade playground. But you realize that your bully is secretly closeted and you’d just know that. And then I did my PhD down here at Chapel Hill and was lucky enough to get a job at Duke, and I teach in the writing program there. And I have been kind of unlearning grad school since then, but enjoying life. NEIL: What is unlearning grad school consist of? MIKE: I mean, I’d be curious about what your own experiences of this actually is because you teach in another kind of weird, precious environment. The performance of mastery, I think is one of the most insane and weird things that we encounter. There’s some tension between mastery and a willingness to just be open to what is, I feel they push each other away. And I feel like a willingness to be open to what is, requires a particular kind of thinking and willingness to take things apart in a careful way. Whereas the production of mastery is, do I know these terms? Can I Lord over this seminar space? Can I make some comment that seems complex? And there’s so much value placed on that style of interaction. NEIL: That question of mastery makes for such a great segue to the first card, the connection between teaching art and 19th century medical practices. You tell someone like, “We will bleed you for 30 minutes and then you must go home and apply the poultice.” MIKE: Yeah like, “Wait for the moon to wax, and put these three stones on your back steps.” NEIL: Exactly, but instead it’s, watch this other artist read this text. MIKE: Yeah, I feel like mastery and practice are at odds with each other. NEIL: Yes, yeah. MIKE: Practice is what I’m into, practice, just keep practicing, right? You just have to keep doing. NEIL: Yes, yeah, and if you’re holding onto idea of mastery, you will make one piece of work, maybe. Because making art is about getting to the place of most resolved failure, where the failure becomes clear, and then that is what carries you over into the next piece. Also this idea of professional development, to use that term where, where so many students have the idea of, “Okay, well, if I do this, this, this, and this, I will have an art career versus if you do this, this and this, you will make art, I guess.” MIKE: Well, I mean mastery, it relies on it in some ways, like the way that we’re so addicted to exceptionalism. It’s a weird narrative that despite the fact that all, effectively statistically, all artists are failed artists, right? NEIL: Right, exactly. Exactly, exactly. MIKE: They’re like, “No, it’s going to be me. I’m going to be the next Jeff Koons, but I hate Jeff Koons.” That whole… NEIL: Totally, that is the Vegas thing that keeps graduate programs in business. This card is writing midterm evaluations for art school is like doing a horoscope. MIKE: Oh my God, I love that for a number of reasons, just because I imagined you doing it. Just sitting cross legged with your taro out and the incense going, just watching videos of student work on your phone or something. You’ve got a very rough hewn robe on, you’re like- NEIL: You nailed it. MIKE: … your wicker sandals, whatever it is that gets you in that sort of coastal medieval witchcraft mood. Yeah, it’s funny, as a grader, I tell my students that I’m a harsh critic, but an easy grader. We have to be able to look at our own work with critical kind of generosity and be willing to be wrong. But to be a generous writer is a whole thing that takes your whole life to do. It’s easy to be critical, right? It’s easy to be snarky and sarcastic or funny or quick, right? You can be creative and original, but also quick in a way that I feel is not always helpful, right? Being generous is about taking care, but also I was just thinking about it and if only we could be actually honest. If only you could just be super honest with your students about what they’re doing. MIKE: I mean, would that change what you said to yours? Because I feel like I am honest to a certain extent, but I’m also not, and I don’t mean this in a mean way, but I just want to be like, “This is just a terrible waste of your time, this thing that you’ve written. The way that you’re going here, isn’t going to get anywhere that’s going to be fun for you, interesting for other people, allow you to do the work that you’re going to do.” And I never quite do that. NEIL: That’s where the horoscope comes in though, about I’m honest but there’s always kind of a anomic, is that the word? You add this intentional ambiguity. MIKE: It’s both honest and a little bit of a sidestep- NEIL: Exactly, yeah, yeah. MIKE: You’re like, “There’s something that’s not right here. It’s in this thematic zone of things that aren’t right, consider that zone for yourself.” NEIL: You said something about mortality as it relates to grades and we’re all going to die. MIKE: No, my thing was like… I think the thing that I always want and increasingly want, I always want students to think of themselves in their lives… Think of themselves as living their lives, not as having goals about what it should be. I was at Chapel Hill and now I’m at Duke, they’re both iterations of very fancy campusy bubble experiences. The way that we produce the isolation of education always struck me as a little bit problematic. I used to teach about labor at Duke and I’d be on the first day, my activity was like, “On one side of this card, tell me a job that you want based on your experience here. And then on the other side, tell me a job that you would love to have if money were no object or job security were no object?” And it’s like stockbroker, magician. The world of the jobs they want is the world we all want to live in. It’s like, runs a dog farm, is a chef, is a magician. And the really problematic ones are the ones that are stockbroker, stockbroker. MIKE: I think in my most compassionate sense, I want to be like, for kids who are really freaking out, but really good students just be like, “This is great, it wasn’t awesome. There’s a lot more in the world that you should be thinking about besides this class. Go call your mom, go be with your family, go do something that’s about your life that’s worth living because you’re getting lost in the illusion of mastery.” NEIL: Professor Dimpfl, what’s my grade? MIKE: Yeah, literally at the end of all that, I’ll give them this whole… I will put on my NEIL: shaman cloak, I will go for a walk around Duke’s campus and I’m trying to share some… I’m always trying to get all my aphorisms in check and at the end they’re like, “But do I still have an A minus?” NEIL: Okay, those people who you think are going to eventually feel embarrassed for themselves, but never do. MIKE: I feel like they’re from a more perfected future. People who are never embarrassed, I feel like they just are doing it better, right? Their inability to feel shame is in some ways a rejection of our worst selves, right? Shame is a wasted emotion, it’s not even they’re proud, it’s post embarrassment. Not being able to feel embarrassment is not about not being ashamed, it’s just being beyond embarrassment. If we could only live in that world, think about how forgiving you would be about being wrong, if being embarrassed wasn’t a part of being wrong. NEIL: So where does Donald Trump fit in that? Sorry to do that but… MIKE: Donald Trump is from the post embarrassed future, at his best self. There’s some childhood version of Donald Trump that would be able to exist in the post embarrassed future. And in a tragic way, he was just corrupted in the most horrible way by his life and turned into this horrible… He is his own portrait of Dorian Gray, there was some switch that happened. He walked through the mirror, in the mansion early on and that was it. It’s actually Ronald Trump that we wanted to be living with and Donald was the one that we got. But the ethos there, I think isn’t wrong. The content is horrible and hideous, but the idea that you would live in a world where your mistakes, aren’t the thing that define you is a world beyond embarrassment. NEIL: This episode is going to be called post embarrassment, I think. MIKE: I hope for all of us it is, I want that… Because shame is such a heavy, historical emotion. I don’t know if you read, I always want to call it The Velvet Rope, but that’s the Janet Jackson album, The Velvet Rage. NEIL: No, I never did. MIKE: The Velvet Rage is some queen wrote a book about how, it’s problematic in a number of ways, but the overarching theme is that gaze of a certain era learn shame before they have a word for it. And it just festers inside of them and creates all this anger and frustration and all these problems later on in life, the closet and all that stuff. And I think just in general, we govern ourselves so much through shame. Instagram culture is shaming. Facebook culture is all about shame. Mastery is about shame. Our actual inability to deal with the future, and the inevitability of death is about being ashamed that we’re not going to be living a life that’s rich enough to justify our death. I think that there’s a lot tied up in that experience. MIKE: And to be looking at someone who’s beyond embarrassment. I mean, I think about the people that I was like, “Gosh, I hope they feel embarrassed about that.” And now in retrospect, I just admire them all. I’m just like, “God, you just don’t care that everybody hates that joke. You just don’t care.” And your joie de vivre is unassailable and it’s a like a Teflon joie de vivre, what a joy. NEIL: Okay, next card. When someone mentions shit while you’re eating. MIKE: Oh my God… Okay, first of all, it just reads as when you mention shit, because I am this person. I still get toilet news from people that I’ve encountered across the globe, all the time. NEIL: Could you share for the audience, your professional relationship to shit? MIKE: My professional relationship to shit, I am not only a person who shits, like all of your audience, but I wrote a master’s thesis, I would like to say that it’s about toilet feelings. I interviewed a bunch of people who had been forced by the city of Syracuse to install composting toilets in their lake side cabins, as a means of protecting what was an unfiltered watershed. So they couldn’t install septic systems. They had this kind of high functioning, but archaic system where they all had outhouses, and instead of shitting just into a hole, they would shit into buckets. And then every week the city would come around on a shit boat and collect all of their buckets of shit and take them away from them. MIKE: A job that I think about a lot, just when your job is to, in the hot summer sun, drive around on a beautiful, pristine lake with a boat full of buckets full of shit. That boat is post embarrassment, that boat is living a post embarrassment life. We have nothing on that boat. MIKE: Anyway, so I wrote this master’s thesis and I interviewed all these households and it was a lot of older folks, people who have had these cabins for a long time and a lot of retired folks. And I’ll tell you what, if it’s summer and you’re going to visit an old retired couple and you actually want to talk to them about their shitting, they’re there for that. They are really there for that. In some ways, the knowledge of their own death to get back to it, the fact that they’re like, “It’s coming.” They’re like, “There’s no reason to hide.” They’re all trying to, for better or for worse, are trying to deal with these strange toilets that don’t flush and encountering them with their bodies that sometimes don’t work with them. MIKE: So this one couple, the wife was always on antibiotics and you can’t use a composting toilet when you’re on antibiotics because it kills the bacteria in the shit that actually digests the toilet, so it just becomes a kind of cesspool, kind of anaerobic nonsense. And so they had two toilets, one, one of my favorite, the macerating toilet, which is a toilet that has a food processor on the back that you turn it on and it makes this kind of horrible grinding noise, and it turns your poop into kind of a poo shake. And the other was this incinerating toilet, and it has a little jet engine in it and you poop and then this jet engine thing turns on and just burns your shit to ash, it’s like an outer space thing. I mean, obviously I had to use all of them, so it’s this crazy noise of like, “…” It’s like being in an airplane. MIKE: And so to be honest, I did it for two reasons. One was how we structure our relationship to the nature in our households is a real problem, right? We have a lot of weird ideas about what is inside and outside. I think that’s the kernel of truth behind it, if I were to be my post embarrassed self. But I think the other is that I just was so aware of the absurdity of grad school at a certain point that I was like, “I’m just going to write my stupid master’s thesis about people shitting.” So that I get to go to conferences and give presentations, which are like, “Here are things that people said about their own shit.” On panels of academics who were like, “What is the materiality of the biological other?” MIKE: All this theory that actually not only makes no sense, but it’s profoundly unethical and has no politics. And is the bread and butter of graduate school theory. All of these things where they’re like, “What is the boundary of the human? And we cannot tell.” And what do you say? It makes no sense. NEIL: I was just reading Jacques Derrida on the animal, he’s talking about the violence done on the animal. And someone asked him, “Are you a vegetarian?” And he was like, “I’m a vegetarian in my soul.” It’s like, “Fuck you.” I’m sure the suffering pig is so happy that you’re a vegetarian in your soul. MIKE: So happy to hear that, like in a real zen like moment. NEIL: Yeah. MIKE: But the crazy thing about that shit thing is I was at dinner the other weekend with Jackson’s sister’s family and she’s a plastic surgeon. And I just thought about, I’m mentioning shit at the table and maybe people are uncomfortable with that or whatever. And she was like, “Yeah, this…” One of her former clients was run over by a backhoe or something. But she talked about reconstructing one of her breasts and then did this gesture of like, “And then you just kind of stitched up her chest.” And kind of did this putting out a vest of your chest skin kind of gesture. And I had a bite of food in my mouth and I was like… It turned to like ash. MIKE: On the one hand, it was perhaps the appearance of mime at the dinner table that I was like, “Goddammit, mimes.” I wanted it to seal myself up in my own mime box to not have to hear it. But then I was sort of like, “Wow, props to mime, it’s a powerful medium. Actually, I get it now, you can fake make the wall all you want.” MIKE: But when you hear someone mentioning shit, are you that person? Or are you someone- NEIL: I’m not mentioning shit at the table, no. MIKE: You’re not NEIL: I think about it all the time, but I know I don’t talk about it at the table. And Jeff, for instance, my husband, Jeff will casually mentioned shit at the table and I’ve never told him in our 12 years of being together… MIKE: Don’t do that. NEIL: Yeah, because at that moment, something happens in my mouth. Yeah, where it’s just like, it’s wrong, but yeah. MIKE: You got to be post embarrassed about it. You got to just be like, “Yep, I’m just chewing future shit right now.” NEIL: Right, future shit, future shit. I love… Oh, God. Makers spaces and the fetishization of making. MIKE: I don’t even know what’s that… I just want them to just be like, “Call it a real thing.” Where I understand what’s going on there. Makers spaces, it’s like we work. I find it to be such a twee like… The maker space is just Ren Fair trying to be normal. It’s like Ren Fair without the foam swords. I’m like, “What’s the point of going to Ren Fair if you can’t have a foam sword?” It’s like Ren Fair without the carbs, I guess is what I would say. NEIL: I think it’s Ren Fair with 3D printers. MIKE: It’s Ren Fair with 3D printers. Where is the raw craft in that? I feel like 3D printing is the cheating of making. NEIL: But the flip side of it, first of all, this is going to come back to shit, I just realized. But the flip side of it is the fetishization of making. Why don’t you just make and not tell us about it? MIKE: I think that there’s something there, the fetishization of making, because we live in embarrassed culture, so we know that we don’t make anything, right? NEIL: Right. MIKE: In the system we live in, we don’t make anything, right? You don’t make shit, you maybe make your lunch and that’s the end of it. NEIL: You exactly make shit. That is what you make. MIKE: You only make shit, and even that you’re like, “Let’s not talk about it.” The fetishization to me is just all back to the leg, what is missing? I mean, I’ll wear a cutoff overall that’s handmade, for sure. But I don’t need to post it on it in my Etsy account or the hand carved spoons, even though I really love the hand-carved spoons. It was a local spoon maker that I just found that’s in the triangle or whatever, and they make these gorgeous spoons and the fetishization of spoon making is that it’s very hard. People are like, “Oh, it’s a very…” I don’t know if you’ve heard that, but people are like, “If you carve wooden spoons…” It’s some achievement of woodwork to make a spoon. And I always think in my head, spoons have been around for a pretty long time, we’ve known how to scoop a thing for awhile. NEIL: Well, just the idea that you fetishize it by virtue of its difficulty, that is a… MIKE: Totally, totally. It’s like endurance performance art, right? Which I love, I’ll tell you this, I have been doing a performance art project with my friend Ginger for a couple of years now. It’s called, Leaving Impossible Things Unattended, it’s a waste project. And we work with plastic… We’ve made this half mile long braid of plastic bag that we roll in unroll in awkward ways. But we went to Miami to the art fair this year, and the piece that we did, it’s physically super, super hard. But watching people say stuff about it there, it’s like the fetishization of how painful it is, becomes the mark of its value. NEIL: Oh my God, yeah. MIKE: What I want to be is like, “No, encounter your fetishization of that as the mark of the thing you’re supposed to be thinking about here.” Your fetishization of that is more important to me as a thing that you’re engaging with right now, then anything that we’re doing. What is it about you that you need to see someone bleeding from the cut glass that they’re crawling over to be like, “That’s real.” NEIL: The thing I wanted to add, to just put a button on the whole question of maker spaces and what are we making, is when I was a kid, my parents would ask me, “Do you need to make?” MIKE: Oh yeah… Yeah, totally, to take a shit. NEIL: Right, do you need to make? MIKE: Yeah, no, I feel like do you need to make is a North Eastern cultural description for taking a shit that is so like… I want to just know the colonial etymology of that, is it the puritanical thing or like… Also, I find, do you need to make to be similar to people who say that they make instead of take pictures, I make pictures, I make photos. NEIL: Oh, that’s interesting. MIKE: I’ve heard photographers say I make photos, instead of saying I take pictures. NEIL: Oh, right, right, I take photos, yeah. I get that.   MIKE: …around shitting in the exact same… it’s like, do you need to make a shit or do you need to take a shit? I mean, why don’t we say, I need to leave a shit because that’s really what’s happening. NEIL: Okay, let’s end with one last question, which is, what keeps you going? MIKE: I think the thing that mostly keeps me going is a pretty secure notion that it’s not supposed to be bliss, it’s just supposed to be work. So if you’re ready to work in whatever way, then life is just going to keep unfolding for you moving forward, right? There is a future if you think that life is a struggle. Because that’s a beautiful thing, even though it’s incredibly difficult. And I think that, even though I have a deep, deep concern for the future and I certainly worry about it a great deal, I don’t feel hopeless. I don’t feel like a cynic or a nihilist I guess. I don’t have that energy in me whatsoever because it’s not supposed to be easy. NEIL: Mike… MIKE: Neil… NEIL: This is amazing, thank you so much for being on She’s a Talker. MIKE: And it’s my absolute pleasure.

In this episode, Stan and Mike talk with CCW Safe Accounts Manager, David Darter.  They talk about some of the most common questions from our members and prospective members, and some of the best practices for getting help with your account.   Full Transcription below! Speaker 1: Welcome to the Inside CCW Safe podcast with founders Stan Campbell and Mike Darter. If you're forced to fight the battle for your life, CCW Safe will fight the battle for your future. Mike: Okay. All right. Peter Gordon. Mike: Hi, welcome back to the Inside CCW Safe podcast. I'm Mike Darter with CCW Safe in Oklahoma City. Here, we're with Stan Campbell. Stan Campbell: Yeah, Stan Campbell holding down Los Angeles today. Mike: You're what? Stan Campbell: I said I'm holding down Los Angeles, sorry about that. Mike: Holding down Los Angeles. I hit my little mute button to turn off all ... I'm turning off all my phones and beeps and stuff, and I accidentally hit the mute button on my computer which muted you. Mike: So, Stan man, it's been freezing here. We've been like had two school days. Stan Campbell: You said two school days? Mike: Two no school days. Stan Campbell: Oh, two no school days. Yeah, you guys have ice storms out there, right? Mike: Yeah, it's been crazy. But I think today it's supposed to get up to like 40. So, it should be pretty good. What's LA like? Stan Campbell: LA is kinda overcast. It's not that pretty, but it's no ice. I haven't seen ice over there. No ice. Mike: Good deal. Anything else going on recently we need to know about? Stan Campbell: No. I mean, we're following the ... And we will get to talk about it at a later podcast, but we're following the constitutional carry that just got passed here in Oklahoma, and that's a good thing. Mike: Yeah. I think it goes in November? Stan Campbell: Yeah. November 1st is gonna be when it pushes through. So, that's a good thing. It's always good to hear some governors willing to stand up for those who support the Second Amendment and take care of concealed carriers and such. Mike: Yeah. I didn't know that was even going through until yesterday. I know it went through last year and then the governor didn't sign it. But, cool. Mike: Well, today we got on my brother. My real brother, not my first [inaudible 00:02:23]. Mike Darter: Not a brother from another mother. Stan Campbell: They're brothers from the same mother. Brothers from the same mothers. Mike: David Gardner, he's our account manager. David, thanks for coming on. David Darter: You bet. Mike: Thank you, Dave. David Darter: Good to see you around. Mike: Did you still end up in the city as well, fighting this ice? David Darter: Yeah, I already fell yesterday. I busted my butt. Stan Campbell: That's not good. Well, what, as long as it wasn't on CCW Safe property, I'm okay with it. So get back to work, Dave. Get back to work. David Darter: That's hilarious. Stan Campbell: For those who don't know, I mean, we always talk about our support staff. You guys heard about, we had just added Justin. The usual suspects, Don and Gary, but behind the scenes, who really keeps this thing moving and who coordinates all the efforts of customer service is David Darter. He is the star really of CCW Safe because if you're not involved in a critical incident and they need our support because of an arrest or use of force to defend your life, you're dealing with just simple issues of customer service and just simple questions that you just might have if you just chose to join us without really learning about us. And David is the one who really ... He holds down that position and he does an awesome job with our customers. Stan Campbell: I really love having him in that position and being over the specialist, just coordinating all the efforts and all the help with the members in our CCW Safe family. I just wanna let you guys know, David is a rockstar. David Darter: Thank you, Stan. I appreciate that. Stan Campbell: No, it's okay. David Gardner: We take a great pride in our customer service. Stan Campbell: Yeah. That's true. And what, David, I was really trying to invest. That was the opening for Michael to list. It's obvious that there's some big brother, little brother issues going on here, where he can't give you a simple account- Mike: This is what happened. I'd just plugged in my headphones at the time he said that 'cause I didn't know if my mic was picking up you coming over the deal. So, I was like, "Maybe I'll just talk to my headphones." I'm taking them off now because it's like watching a- Stan Campbell: A Chinese movie? Mike: ... a 1970s movie. So I didn't hear what you said. Stan Campbell: That's hilarious. Mike: There you are. Now you're talking in your mouth. Stan Campbell: Yeah, we're here Michael. Mike: So yeah, he is a rockstar. Stan Campbell: Yeah, he is. Mike: He does great with our customer service, and that's one of the things that ... It's hard when you're dealing with tens of thousands of members and trying to provide good customer service for a nationwide covering. It's very hard to do that. I know that some of our competitors have the same issues that we do, but I think we handle ours very well and I think that we have a very good handler of our customer support, and a lot of it is because of David. Stan Campbell: Absolutely. David, and David sorry, we're gonna talk about you first. So David, he is the accounts manager, and of course, like I said, he's over the CCW Safe specialists who get your non-emergency calls. If I had to really do an estimate, I'd say about 98% of the calls for service are non-emergency. The 2% would be emergency calls, talking about arrest and use of force issues. Stan Campbell: So it's a lot of work. What everybody needs to understand, and let's start out with backstage, stating that, we have a great system in place, and it's a layered system. Number I, we want everyone to know that if you have account issues, absolutely send them to David. Don't call the non-emergency number if it's an account issue because, by design, we don't have them ... The contracted organization who handles our non-emergency calls, we don't have them able to have access to your accounts. And that's just to protect you guys. It's all about protecting you all from police officers here. Everything that we do, even what we desire for customer service, is so to protect you, your credit card, access, and all that. Stan Campbell: So if you guys have any account issues, please send it to david@ccwsafe.com, or support@ccwsafe.com. That way, you don't waste any time, you don't get frustrated because the non-emergency agents you can't have access or can't access your account. So you don't want to put that information out there. Stan Campbell: The other thing that I want you guys to understand is that this is a very unique business and it's a very unique service. And when people call us to get answers, it's not usually a quick one-minute phone call. We spend a lot of time with our members on the phone. I wish we could do it a little bit faster but those who call can really, and please send emails supporting my statement right now for those who have enjoyed the time and effort that we have spent with you 30 minutes to an hour, to really give you an understanding of this service, your protection, because a lot of this stuff is built in legal leads. Stan Campbell: Although our agreement is pretty cut and dry, there's still some legal leads in there; it has to be because of contractual agreements. But people usually you don't understand a lot of this stuff without lawyers. So when they called David, or when I see there's an overflow and I jump on the phone, because I oversee all of it as well: If I see there's a pending call, I'll jump on it as well and take some calls. But when we spend that time with you, please understand if we don't get back with you, we have to put it in a priority and we're getting back to you as fast as we can. So, make sure that you guys just really be patient with us. Kudos to David for spending that amount of time and giving these people a real understanding of their coverage. Stan Campbell: But before we start with David, I wanna talk about a call that I just received, because Dave is going to go over today. Not the Top 10, nor the most significant, the calls that we get most often, the frequently asked questions that come across his computer most. But before he starts, I'm gonna jump ahead of him and talk about one that I received today. Stan Campbell: One of our members who has been with us for a long time, I'll just call him Jim S., it becomes [inaudible 00:10:07] listen to this, but Jim called me and he and I, we've been ... I've been trying to give him understanding and we finally kind of got through to him today 'cause I got on the phone. Sometimes it's best to get off the computer and get on the phone. Stan Campbell: I talked to Jim about his services that he's providing for his church with a volunteer security. Please understand that we absolutely support what you guys are doing when you, as concealed carriers, are getting together, teaming up with your churches, and trying to give them some extra support beyond who they hire for security, their armed security outside or if they don't have it. Putting teams together, training together, and doing all those things. That is a noble thing that you do will be a church and it's absolutely needed. Stan Campbell: Well, Jim and I discussed today because he has one of our older plans and he's moving toward the ultimate plan, which has a special coverage for volunteers security, for churches only. So, he and his wife are moving to the ultimate plan to have that coverage because I sent him some other alternatives. Because, for us, CCW Safe, what we try to do is really cover you and give you advice and recommendations that even protect you from yourself. Stan Campbell: What I mean by that is, I already stated, and you all will agree with me, it's a great thing to defend the church, and those that go there, but please understand, if you get into a use of force, you will absolutely be a hero that first day, second day, that first week. But if you overshoot and you make a mistake while all the members of the church are running around, and you accidentally shoot an innocent person, although they will thank you initially for defending their life, please understand they will be contacted by a lawyer and they will sue you and the church for damages. It's just going to happen. It's human nature, it's the process. It's unfair, but it's just what's gonna happen. Stan Campbell: And that's the reason why Mike and myself and Kyle, the partners, decided to protect you guys a little bit with the ultimate plan because it's a dedicated million dollar civil liability coverage that will cover you for that type of incident when you're in a legitimate shooting, and you're trying to protect others or yourself and you shoot an innocent bystander. It's needed. Stan Campbell: So, I went over those things with him. I made it known. He told me that he even got permission from his pastor, who created this volunteer group. But I told him. I said, "Please protect yourself and get that in writing, because at the end of the day, when the smoke clears and they start trying to sue the church, it's gonna be every man for himself regardless of how long you guys have known each other. I mean, it's every man for himself. So, we're trying to get you guys to protect yourselves. If you are in church security, please protect yourself no matter what you think and upgrade to the ultimate plan so that you can cover yourself, because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about and that's what we care about. Stan Campbell: On that same note, I'll give this one more little tidbit before we add David in. Sorry for taking up all this time, but it is very important. The reason why it's important to go beyond your homeowner's insurance and any other insurance entity, we hire civil attorneys for you, not for CCW Safe, to protect you and your actions with that as the agenda. Other entities, homeowner's insurance, they're gonna hire lawyers associated with that insurance company to protect that company first, and you second. That makes a big difference, and that's why we open this thing up for you. Stan Campbell: Guys, please research. Research your own ... I'm not gonna tell you that. Research your homeowner's policies, make sure that they say that they cover, and it has to in its verbiage, "We cover intentional acts because, although you didn't force a shooting, it is an intentional act." If it does not say that in your policy, you are not covered no matter what your broker may try to slide to you in between the smiles and laughing. Please protect yourself, and that's what I had to say on that. Mike I'll let you jump in. Mike: No, that's great points. And we do have a lot of that. So, what do we want to do? Let's get right into it. Just for time, do you have some questions that we were gonna go over today or did you- Stan Campbell: Well, what we did was we had David pick up some of his top questions and, as he's going forward, I'll add some more, ask some more- Mike: Yeah, we can jump in. Stan Campbell: Yeah, we'll jump in. Mike: Okay. What we figured was that we would kinda get a list of our top questions, because we do get these spurts of questions too, that we get one question that starts coming in and then we get a bunch of those questions coming in. I don't know where ... Mike: (silence) Mike: ... have some that are more common than others. So we figured we'd kind of go through that, and somebody maybe who listens to our podcast, who's not a member, might be able to get some insight. Or if you're a member, you might not have full understanding of everything that we do. So, let's just jump right in. Stan Campbell: Okay. Who'll be your first? David Darter: Okay. Let me start just real quick by kind of talking and following up on what you said, Stan. We try to do the best job we can. We take great pride in our customer service. We are in the midst of an upgrade to make the check out much easier right now. Stan Campbell: That's right. David Darter: And then within the next probably four to six months, we are going to be updating some of our phone systems and things like that. So, we constantly try to make it better and easier for new members to get ahold of us and we wanna answer your phone just as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, you can't have an infinite number of specialists. Stan Campbell: That's right. David Darter: So, sometimes it might take us a little bit, but we try to get used as quickly as we can, and we are doing a lot of updating that's going to make your whole experience I think much easier. So, I just wanted to throw that out there. So I think- Mike: And, on that too, there are other ways that people can can find out answers to their questions. We have a new chat that we kind of rolled out maybe six months ago. Some of that is automated; kind of takes you through. So if you ask a certain question, email support at ccwsafe.com is a good one. Sometimes, if you have a pretty simple question, if you email it, you might get an e-mail back before you would if you were to try to call in. So, we have different ways that people can get ahold of us. Stan Campbell: Absolutely. Mike: The chat, I think, has been a really get additional niche right on the website. If you go to ccwsafe.com, you'll see it pop up there. Stan Campbell: Yes. Just to piggyback what Mike's saying, hey guys, this works Central time because that's where our hub is located. We also have the West Coast times, but the West Coast Times but West Coast [inaudible 00:18:27]. So, if you do have issues that you need dealt with pretty quickly, you don't try to contact David between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. in Central Time. Stan Campbell: Once again, we're trying to get ahead of any frustrations you might have or delays. David also does not work on the weekends. So, be mindful of that. If you say, "Hey, I contacted David on Friday at 10:00 p.m., you're not gonna get a response from him until Monday morning. So, please be mindful of that as well. Stan Campbell: Also, Mike did mention some of the other ways that you can gather information. A lot of people don't know that you can go to the website and you can find our frequently asked questions. Locate the frequently asked questions. I mean, there's two pages of them. So, you can get ahead of it and really study what your policy is about. Look at our terms of service. Look at the terms of service and copy that now. I mean, it too is on the website. Make sure that you go to the terms of service and have an understanding of what you actually have as coverage. Stan Campbell: But those means there, and to go along with Michael, you did mentioned the Chat function as well. We have a live chat, but a lot of the questions that you guys have can be answered on the FAQs, either in the Chat function or automated function, also has FAQs that we've seen with the live agents there. You can go there, look at the frequently asked questions on chats, look at their frequently asked questions on the website, and you actually have your answers when you put it together before having to call us. If you don't have an understanding then .... Stan Campbell: And we actually designed the chat function. It is automated initially so that it can answer simple questions. But if you ask a question a second time, please understand that the automated function is gonna state, "I'm gonna send you to a live representative." Okay? Then it sends us a message and we pick up on it. All of that's by design, like real simple stuff that it won't take us a long time to deal with. We can deal with the medium level request, and also semi-emergencies and emergencies. Stan Campbell: We're doing all this to try to keep the machine moving because at the end of the day, it's all about the emergency calls and everything else, it's not really an emergency, we can help you through. It's a non-emergency or an elevated non-emergency where you have a credit card issues, please, by all means, call David to get it taken care of. Stan Campbell: I wanted to kinda jump in and let you guys know about that so that you know those are the working hours. Don't frustrate yourself. I'll also give you a little head's up. Thursdays is the day, for some reason, that we don't have a lot of calls and e-mails. So, if you have something that can wait to Thursday, call at us Thursday. But if you try to hit us on a Monday, we're catching up on weekend stuff, non-emergencies and David is swamped on Mondays. You're probably not gonna catch him as fast on a Monday as you would on a Tuesday, and then Wednesday and Thursday. And please be mindful of that. Stan Campbell: We're trying to really assist tens of thousands of people, and just to be honest, we're still talking about hundreds a day. Let's be honest. 50 to 100 contacts a day is what we're dealing with, and these people all expect 30 minutes to an hour and it's only an eight-hour day. So, if you guys do the math, I hope you understand that. You have to just be mindful of that. Stan Campbell: Anyway, sorry. I get to talk too much, but go ahead Michael. God bless. David Darter: So, I think one of the first things that is probably one of our most frequently asked questions now, and is probably due to the political climate, the things that have been happening in some of the states. Do we cover New York? Do we cover Washington? Both of those states now have passed legislation where some of the other companies can't service members in those states. We still do. And Stan, I don't know if you wanna kind of explain the [inaudible 00:22:49] of the business. Stan Campbell: Absolutely, I will. Stan Campbell: Hey, guys. Those who are already members, kudos to you because you chose the right company. Those who are not, research, make an independent decision, and be Michael especially if you're in some of these questionable anti-gun states. Stan Campbell: David brought up New York and Washington state. We know the issues with New York. About a year ago, their governor all out, assault on, one of our competitors and also anybody associated with the Second Amendment. The reason why I say kudos to those who are members and part of our family already is the fact that we saw this coming years ago. And in 2016, 'cause we talked about it in 2015, we saw the writing on the wall. That's the importance of having people that know what they're doing and experienced in the criminal justice system, and handing handling a serious civil litigation across the nation. That's what you have in CCW Safe, and we are also leaders in the industry and forward thinkers. So we tried to get ahead of the anti-gun campaigns, and one was New York. Stan Campbell: So we saw the fact that we should not follow everyone else and attach ourselves to a traditional insurance and broker for insurance coverage backed by a foreign entity in Europe. We knew not to do that because we knew that it left you open as vulnerable to that traditional insurance industry that is regulated, while our competitors, all of our main competitors did that. They went for about a year or so, doing a really, really good job and taking their members. Stan Campbell: What I mean my good job is taking in a lot of members, but then once they got attacked, the anti-gunners, they were smart enough to attack the brokers, not the actual company. So they attacked the brokers and stated technically, 'cause this is what it comes down to, technically they are engaged in selling their illegal insurance products by teaming up with this competitor of ours. And by doing that, because they're allowing them to sell products and they're outside of the traditional regulation, it makes it illegal in that state. That's why the government sued our competitor and they exited out of New York. There's another competitor that is still not selling any additional ones but allowing its members to stay on board until their memberships expire, and then they give them a letter to say, "Now you're no longer covered in the insurance, which is a different conversation. Stan Campbell: One thing that I'm gonna fall back on again is the way that we designed our model. Our model was designed so that CCW Safe is insured through our insurance company that we own, backed by reinsurance as well. So, we have a two-layered protection for CCW Safe to help us to deal with these catastrophic events and these critical incidents in support of our benefits for our packages. Stan Campbell: So CCW Safe is the insured, we are not an insurance company. Let me say that one more time. We are not an insurance company, and we do not sell insurance policies. Our competitors do that. We are a legal service subscription plan, and we facilitate finance and coordinate all the efforts and resources associated with defending your actions in the use of force that is critical. Therefore, we are allowed to stand strong in those states because we're not doing what these other companies are doing. We are not presenting ourselves as an insurance company, nor an associate with traditional insurance product. Therefore, we are the only one standing strong in Washington State and New York. There are no other products there, just us. Stan Campbell: And there are other there other states that are doing the same thing, like California and New Jersey. So please, if you live there, pay attention to what's going on there in your legislation because they're trying to put a stop to you guys being covered as well. And then once that happens again we're going to be the only one standing strong and only ones that's going to be able they truly state that we cover everyone in 50 states. No one else in the industry is gonna be able to state that, unless they follow suit and design themselves like CCW Safe, and it takes about a year to do that. So, in that time, in the next year, we're gonna be the only organization standing strong in certain states because of the way that we're designed. Stan Campbell: You got anything to add on that, Mike? I know I said a lot. Mike: No, no. That's good. Good point. Stan Campbell: Thank you. I did my job, thank you. Mike: You did your job, and you did it well. David Darter: You did. You did it. Stan Campbell: [inaudible 00:28:28] David Darter: No, I just wanted to bring it up. That has been a very popular question. David Darter: So, one of the other questions that we get a lot of is, what is the difference between civil defense versus civil liability? So, all of our basic packages cover unlimited civil and criminal defense stemming from a self-defense incident. That covers attorneys expert witnesses, private investigators, any fees that come along; deposition fees, filing fees, trial cost, court costs, mistrials or retrials appeals, anything that has to do with your actual defense is covered unlimited on what we pay. David Darter: Now, the civil liability is a little different animal, in that your civil defense is covered while the trial is going on. After a trial, if there was a civil monetary judgment brought against you, then that's what the civil liability covers, up to $1 million dollar civil liability. And that's after a civil trial. That comes after a civil trial, and so that's what the difference is to those two. While one covers defense costs, the other one covers after a trial for any liabilities that would be brought against you. Mike: Yeah. One good point I want to bring up is, it's a dedicated one. If you have a civil liability coverage, meaning that after the trial is over and the judge says, "Okay, you're found in judgment of $1 million, if you have the civil liability protection, then that is a dedicated $1 million. So it's not a wasting policy where, if the cost of the trial was $400,000, then you have $600,000 left over. That's a wasting policy. So that's taken out of that million. Ours is the dedicated millions. So if you have $400,000 trial costs, then you still have $1 million dedicated on that civil liability policy because it's a add-on separate policy or a separate membership. So, that's just one point I wanted to make. Stan Campbell: Absolutely. Just piggybacking both of your thoughts, I want to caution everyone who hasn't made a decision to get coverage thus far. I wanna caution you to truly be careful about how some of these companies market their product. And really, at the end of the day, anybody that's watched a used car dealerships commercial or you've been up at night and, you've got, while you are punch, drunk and tired, you end up buying something from a commercial when you know you went to purchase that thing in the morning. Be cautious of the tricks that are associated even in our industry. Because some of these companies, I mean, wow, they are masterful in their marketing attempts. Stan Campbell: Some these companies spend more money on marketing than they do on their members. No, we don't. But there's a reason for that. We keep all of our resources for you guys when you need it, and of our stuff is word of mouth as well, but I want you to be careful because they use a lot of scare tactics, videos, to scare you into submission, and buying their product so that you think that the civil liability is your first fight, and it is not. Stan Campbell: I mean, if you can do any research, because part of my job is to research the industry, and in doing so, I challenge anyone listening to my voice at this time, to locate three, more than three, incidents across the nation, in the past 20 years, in which a concealed carrier has used legitimate self-defense, and has won a criminal trial, but the system allow a civil proceeding to continue and a civil suit to go through, and in that they actually lose a civil suit because, Number I, you're not gonna find too many where someone that is not or that's acquitted of the criminal charges, are not protected by the state for the civil proceedings. But you're not going to find any, unless you find it in Philadelphia. I think I found one in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is the only place that you might find one or two, where someone has won a criminal case and they lost the civil ... The civil was allowed and they lost it, and they had damages. Stan Campbell: So, I'm saying all that to say, you being sued for your use of force, if you just hit the suspect ... If you just hit the suspect, it's so small of a chance. We only deal with, to be honest with our listeners, 0.1% of our members, there are tens of thousand of them, 0.1% get involved in the deadly use of force incident. 0.1%. Less than that, 0.1% of that, will be those involved in a civil proceeding. In the seven years that we've been doing business, and we serviced a lot of members in shooting cases, We've only had one that went to the beginnings of a civil proceeding before we were able to resource it out and to negotiate it out. We have not had anyone, and we have not had to pay out, on a civil lawsuit. Stan Campbell: And we and we do the most work out of everyone. We're the only ones with a documented use of force by one of our members that went from an allegation of murder and completed an entire murder trial with the Stephen Maddox case. We're actually sitting on two other deadly force cases that we cannot mention for confidentiality reasons. But I need you guys to know that. And challenge these companies. When they tell you, "Hey, we've got a gun for you." Or, "Hey, we've got this and that," or, "We'll give you extra two months on your service if you join us now," challenge them and say, "How much work have you done? Show me. How many members have you paid out on civil cases?" They're not gonna be able to produce anything because it just doesn't happen that often. Stan Campbell: So, you guys, be careful about that because it's really tricky in the way they bring you in. Just like Mike talked about the wasting policy. Nobody really knows what that is. They think with somebody tells them that you have $2 million of coverage, you go, "Well, my God, that's twice the amount of everybody else's coverage." Well, really it's not. They're saying, out of all of the things that you can do, all of the little elements that you can use them for and you can be resourced for, that it amounts to that. The problem is, it wastes and it takes away for every dollar that you use, and it starts off with $100,000 for a retainer if you take someone's life. That's where they turn you. Stan Campbell: You can do your own independent research on this, guys. Look at the industry, check with your local criminal defense attorneys, ask anyone that has tried cases for murder, how much do they require for a retainer. And the retainer just readily, it started working. That's not all that it cost. So, I want you guys just to be mindful of that because it's scary. Stan Campbell: This is why we're so upfront with you guys and we're so truthful. Number I, we all come from a background of servicing citizens, but we like to lead with honesty, integrity, and good character, and it stands by and it supports our core values as well. So, we give you information in support of our core values. Mike: Yes. Next up, David. David Darter: Okay. So, I think next we came out with some new plans here. It was late 2017, fourth quarter of 2017, and anybody that had plans, who'd had been a member with us longer than that, you were grandfathered in with what you had. And so, basically, pretty much what happened was they just renamed the plans and made a few changes like bond amount. David Gardner: So, if you had the military law enforcement plan, which was what it was called up until 2017, and you go to the site now, what you're gonna wanna look at is the protector plan. 'Cause the difference, one of the main differences between what you have and that protector plan is the amount of the bond. Unless you've upgraded to the $1 million bond on the old plans, you're covered for $250,000 bond and the new plans cover up to $500,000 bond on the basic plans. Mike: And David, before we go any ... Or I'm gonna let you wrap this up, then I'll talk about the bond. David Darter: Okay, all right. So, if you had the military law enforcement, you would basically wanna look at the protector plan, which is the renamed plan with some changes. If you had the annual single membership, you can look at the defender plan. And if you had the dual membership, it would be either one of the protector or defender with spouse. So, we get that a lot. You are grandfathered into those. You could keep those as long as you want. A lot of members do, but you do not have to update, upgrade, or switch to one of the new plans. Stan Campbell: Yeah, and then just to cut and jump in real quick David, hey guys, remember you're allowed the grandfather in as long as your automated payment does not stop. If you're automated payment because there's a guy that they'd have to e-mail you. But there's a guy that allowed his payment to lapse back in 2018, and back then he was on the 129 payment plan, which is our old basic. He wants to get the 129 plan again, and it's just we can't do that. I mean, if you allow your payment to continue on, then you can be grandfathered in. Stan Campbell: If it does cease and you stop it, and you try to come back later, we can't give you that. We're not selling that any longer. I mean, it doesn't even compute. We can only allow it to continue. Our computer doesn't allow us to go back to that price because it's not attached any longer. You cannot get the old plans. We know what the pricing in the old plans if you did not have it and it's not a continuous cycle. That's the point of being grandfathered in. Just to let you guys know, that that came from Mike Darter. Stan Campbell: Mike Darter wanted to take care of those who wanted to hold their pricing, but at the same time, when he explains the reason for us changing the standard, which he will do in a minute, there's a reason why we did what we did and moved away from those plans. We're trying to give you guys more protection. If you don't mind, I might just jump in real quick and handle that, and we will let David finish. Mike: Yeah. So there's two things that went into this decision. One was the Maddox trial, and one was the fact that his bail was set at $500,000 just based on the fact that there was a man that was killed and he was the shooter. Didn't really take anything into effect about the case, about that it was a self-defense case. I mean, that was just based on the fact that, "Your honor, we have one dead, we have one deceased, and this man shot him." Boom! $500,000. Mike: Again, there's another- Stan Campbell: Hey Mike, also I think that was because he lived in another county. So he lived outside that county as well, is reason why. They made that soft justification 'cause it is really weak what they used that one. Mike: All right. Yeah, it was weak. There's another article that came out on priceonomics.com, and I'll try to put this in a show notes but it was on America's peculiar bail system. It came out kind of talking about the Freddie Gray in Baltimore, and some of the other cases. And it was really a kind of a more liberal piece talking about, why is bail for murder cases so much higher than the other cases? Mike: In the bail system, you have bail starting at $1,000 or so going up to, I think it was around $55,000 for most cases, felony cases, and then, I think it went up to $250,000 for rape and sexual cases, and then murder cases, manslaughter cases, jumped to $500,000 to a million. It was basically saying that the bail system is unfair, but it's just another key piece that made us realize that if we have, in the case of Steven Maddox, he had coverage for up to a million dollars bail. If he would have got that bail set at $500,000 and would have had the standard $250,000, we might not have been able to get him out of jail. Stan Campbell: Yeah. And the reason why Mike says that is because, we would pay 10% or up to 10%, which would be 25,000, and Stephen would have had to pay 25,000, which he did not have. Mike: One of the whole things that we have to worry about, that we have to kinda moderate with our members is, keeping them in the best physical, mental, and emotional shape to prepare them for that trial. We can only do so much. If somebody is in jail and cannot get out of jail, and some people think, "Well, if I could get a bond out." Well, you might bond out. The judge may say he's not issuing any bail. And in the case of Stephen Maddox, it was 30 days later. He's gonna miss Thanksgiving with his family. Mike: We were able to get that within, I think, eight days or seven days, something. But, we have to make sure that our members stay healthy emotionally, mentally, physically to prepare them for this time. Stephen went to a two-year trial process before he even went to trial. You can see from some of the videos of Stephen, there are many days that he woke up and he didn't really want to even stick around. As far as, he just wanted to just give up. He would call our critical response coordinator, which was John Risenhoover at that time, which did a phenomenal job on that. Stan Campbell: He did. Mike: He had dietary guidelines and workout regimens for Steven. So that's why we said, "If there's a case of a self-defense case that is gonna be a murder 1 charge, a murder 2 , manslaughter, it's going to be most likely $500,000 or more. Stan Campbell: Sure. Mike: And if we can better cover our members, that's why we took our bail up to $500,000 'cause we didn't wanna have to have one of our members get stuck in a situation where, based on our terms of service, that we couldn't help them and get them out. That's another reason why, if you look at our website, our whole site ... We do three posts a week. Last week, we didn't do a podcast. We kinda took a week off because we've been re-strategizing some things. This week we're back on and every Wednesday we're gonna have a podcast, or try to I can't say that we will for sure have one, but we're gonna try to do this weekly. Mike: We've been doing weekly for the last three, four months. We also have posts every Friday from Shawn Vincent and Don Weston, in self-defense, which looks at high profile cases and what they did right, what they did wrong. We also have posts by either us, or Steve Moses, or Bob O'Connor on Mondays, and all those, if you look at our site, all those are trying to help people to avoid these situations. So, if we can help our members avoid these situations and give them examples of what should be done, and we're doing the best we can to help them mitigate the risk, that they're not gonna be in a situation that is not gonna be defendable as self-defense. So that's the whole reason why we took that. Mike: I'll put that link in the show notes, it's priceonomics.com. If you search America's peculiar bail system, you'll probably get it in a search and you can look at it. It has all the kinda statistics on that. Based on that and the fact that we had our own experience with Steven Maddox is why we took that up. Stan Campbell: That's right. I couldn't say anything better than that, Mike. That was awesome. What Mike is saying ... Like I said, we invite you guys to grandfather your plans, but our new standard, and we're trying to make this to the industry's. The standard is a $500,000 bail coverage. I think there's only one other company that has matched that standard, but that's where actually they tap out. We tap out at a million dollar bank coverage. Stan Campbell: But the reason why we do that, like Mike said, we really need you guys out of jail. It doesn't help us at all for you to stay in jail. If Steven Maddox would have, and I know you didn't hear the numbers from Michael, right? If he couldn't get out of jail, please understand that's two years in jail waiting for trial. That's not where you wanna be. And for $50 or more, and that's the reason why we made the increase to 170 now, for the defender plan, you get the $500,000 coverage. Stan Campbell: So, even all of you who are coming up on your renewal date, please do, do so thinking about how should I be covered? Or do I have? Or really, you don't have to upgrade because it's really not about the money for us. We're just trying to help you. Put $25,000 aside in a savings account so that you can match our $25,000 so we can get you out of jail. And if you don't have that, like most Americans, please allow us to take the financial burden off of you. That's it. David Darter: All right. Let's move on to the next one. On the dual plans, we have quite a few people. Lot of members getting the ultimate plan now where it automatically covers a spouse. And the question that always comes up is, where do I put my wife's name and why is she not showing up on the account? David Darter: Most likely, she's there. If you go to your ... If you log into your account, or if you're in your account, and you go to My Memberships, you'll the primary membership card, and then right next to it, you'll be able to sign a second card. Now, that second card is therefore your spouse only. That's not for a friend that lives in another town or anything like that, that's for your spouse. David Darter: So, if you go to that, you'll be able to enter your spouse information and then she will be listed right there next to you. And you can look at her membership card if you like, by, I think there's a view button, or you can click on her account number that's there. But that's where you'll enter your spouse's name, and that's what that second card is for. It is for a spouse for one of the dual memberships. We have a lot of people that think that that's, "Hey can I put somebody else in there? Can I put my neighbor in there?" Whatever. That's not the case for that. It is for spouse only. You can do that under the My Membership selection under My Account on the top menu bar. Stan Campbell: That's right. David Gardner: Just like- Mike: Ultimate plan has a lot of ... If you haven't looked at that, it has a civil liability. I mean, it's our top-tier plan. It has everything available. So, if you do have a spouse, whether they just wanna be covered in the home or if they do have a permit, that would be a great plan to look at. Stan Campbell: That's right. And then also, that plan still does cover you guys for your spouse if you wanna cover her for provisional terms. She'll be covered on the provisional terms as well, but she will not be covered for civil liability. Only the primary is. Because we get that question as well. Unless you add civil liability, that's an additional $220 a year, you make the decision whether or not it's worth it. Weigh out the options of your wife. If she carries, she doesn't have as much as you do in public while you guys are together, weigh out the options whether or not you wanna pay that. We don't push that upon you. We leave it up to the member whether or not they wanna just be primary covered or not. Stan Campbell: But please understand, she is not covered, or he ... Your spouse is not covered unless you have that additional civil liability coverage. And David Darter explained that yes they do get civil defense. And although David said unlimited, sort of you guys are gonna use our words against us, what that really means is that, your defense funds are not capped for everything needed to prepare you for, or to get through trial. Because something might say there is no such thing as unlimited. There is a limit. When the trial's over, then that's over. Stan Campbell: We don't have a cut-step plan. That's one of the reasons why our defender plan, we can match against ... And that's our standard plan. Our defender plan, we can match against most companies' higher plans because we created the ultimate plan through the brilliance of Mike Darter to be the best in the nation [inaudible 00:53:59], and the most amount of benefits for the most reasonable amount of cost. So, for 4.99, you get all of that, that we give you, and it covers a lot. Stan Campbell: And people that don't understand, even those companies that they say, "You have over $2 million of coverage," but look at the coverage you have for your defense. Because if you'd only have $500,000 of coverage or less, to $250,000 of coverage, say this is worse, for your defense, when that money runs out, where do you think it's coming from? They're not gonna just say, "Hey you, I owe you. It comes from the member." So, when they say, "This is all you need," or, "You only need 20% because we're a reimbursement plan," please don't fall for that. Use your good judgment, please understand what happens in these cases, and how much money you would need. If you run out of money, if your plan runs out of money with these other companies, you're gonna pay. That's it. Stan Campbell: Now David. David Darter: Okay. All right. Next one I just wanted to touch on was credit cards. With credit cards, we have a lot of people that will have a change of address. And they change their address in their mailing address, in their profile, but because billing addresses can be different than mailing addresses, if you change your address in your profile, you'll also need to go into your billing information, which is under My Subscriptions. You can go in there. There's a Change Payment Method, you can go in and change that, and make sure you get that changed there as well. Because if you change your profile address, it does not automatically change your billing address. Stan Campbell: That's correct. David Darter: Absolutely. Stan Campbell: Yeah. The reason why they've told you guys that is because your plan is gonna fail. It is gonna fall. You went in and changed your profile, but you didn't go in and change what you need. And he's giving you that information now that let's you know, go in there and edit your credit card. Don't get mad at us because you get a failure and it has a mismatch. It's just part of the system. You need to upgrade it, just like you would at your bank. All of these need to be upgraded. And it's the same thing for us, you gotta update that information so that it doesn't fail. David Darter: And the failure is the security. Stan Campbell: Yeah, is is. David Darter: It's therefore your security. So yeah, that's just something that we don't wanna change a lot for people because they don't realize that but they can do that right there on their own account. So, I think the last thing I wanted to just touch on was our membership cards. At the end of 2017, I did a digital membership card, which is a membership card that you can download to a phone, iPhone or Android, and have it with you always on your phone. It just gives you another place to have our emergency information. David Darter: The wallet card is is not automatically sent out any longer. However, if you have to have a wallet card, then you can always request that by just sending me an email at david@ccwsafe.com, and we will send you one. But it's not an automatic thing. The digital card is a card of choice, currently. Stan Campbell: That's correct. And then, in saying that too, David, guys please remember, 'cause I know that there's some folks that either don't have a ... There's a small number of you don't have a smartphone, or you're just old school, because this is what I say all time, "I'm old school. I need something in my pocket." Even if you request one from Dave and he sends it out to you, I just wanna caution you guys again. Although we used to back when we first started ... We used to say, "Show them your CCW Safe membership card and say that you're having a lawyer on the way, we no longer do that. I mean, we put that word out a couple of years ago, that we don't want to sway a decision of a responding officer, investigator, or anyone, that you planned for this to happen. So, we don't wanna give that to them. All we need you to do is say that, "Hey, I will give you the details of this incident in the presence of my attorney, and I've already called my attorney." Stan Campbell: So, to just add another quick one before Michael closes this down, but that's also why we want you guys, don't stay on the phone with 911. Do it long enough to give them your description, that you've been attacked and you had to defend your life. You need medical and police. Get off the phone and call us. Because we do that, we tell you that for a reason. We don't want you to have to say, "Here's my card." You don't have to try to make a phone call in a police car, in front of a police car, because of the videotapes, the car cams, and anything you say in the police department as well, you don't have any expectation of privacy initially. When you make a phone call there, everything's recorded. And they wanna take you to a recorded interview room for your statement. Stan Campbell: So, please know that if you want your phone call with the lawyers to be privilege, do it prior to the officers getting there, from a safe place. Make sure that you're not in high shot of the suspect, get behind cover, and make the call. Even if there's a car or something like that. Stan Campbell: I had to add that. Sorry Mike. Mike: No, you're good. You're good. It is going on rather than an hour, so we're gonna have to turn off. Shut it down. Mike: Do we have any other questions that we wanna address today? David Gardner: I don't have any. We are constantly trying to keep questions updated on our FAQ page. So, it's always good to go look there first. I think most of our main questions that we get asked over and over are on that Frequently Asked Questions page. Stan Campbell: Hey, Mike. Can I ask? I have one more and I'll get off of it. Mike: Yeah. Stan Campbell: Just because it comes up so much. This is for those guys who really concentrate on the forums and the information they're getting about zones that say no guns. I'm gonna talk about this real quick before I have to bring it back later, 'cause I'm gonna David back. Although Dave is saying he doesn't have anything, we doesn't have time for you, he went to come back and assess for Part II. But no gun zones, if it is a felony or a misdemeanor in itself to possess a firearm at a location like a federal building et cetera, you're not covered. You're outside the scope of coverage because it's illegal to do so. You know that. Stan Campbell: If you are in a state in which it is not a misdemeanor crime to walk on to private property of someone else's, and it only becomes a crime after they tell you to leave and you refuse to do so, the crime of trespassing, if you accept that charge of trespassing you refuse to leave, you're outside of the scope of your coverage. If you agree to leave, or if they don't know that you have it and you accidentally ... Stop trying to challenge these, don't use us to challenge people. If you accidentally walk on to property and you didn't see their sign, and something happens you defend others and then they come back with a charge, and they didn't tell you to leave, we will cover you. Stan Campbell: If you will on your way out after they tell you to leave, and Al-Qaeda or ISIS comes in the front door and you handle the threat, we will cover you. So, I just want you guys to know, this is not a game for us. This is really not a Second Amendment issue. This is about using deadly force, which is not a Second Amendment issue. We're trying to protect you from yourself as well. So, please, stop trying to challenge these things and know how you're covered. Stan Campbell: Go Michael. Mike: Well, I'm just gonna say, a lot of the examples we get from people, the only answer is, "Well, that would be a challenge case and that's not what we're here for." Like Stan said, that's why we put all these case studies and stuff online, so you can see what other people have done, and what life sentences other people have gotten for what they've done, and it's just not worth it. Mike: (silence) Mike: (music)  

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

Producer Max Savage Levenson brings us the story of Pennsylvania State Senator Mike Folmer, a conservative Republican, and his peculiar journey from staunch opponent of cannabis to co-sponsoring Pennsylvania's medical marijuana legalization.

Originaire de St Martin,Dj AUSTIN pimente régulièrement les nuits avec un style unique.Il a su s'imposer en quelques années comme Dj incontournable de la région Alsace,Suisse,Allemagne. Résidant tous les weekend dans les meilleurs clubs et bars de la région qui réunissent de 200 à 2000 personnes(Universal Dog,Diamonds,LeVoG,V.I.P,Jet Set,Velvet etc..) lui a permis de confirmer son statut de vrais bête de scène,d'artiste des platines qui ne laisse aucun public indifférent. Dj officiel de PARTYKINGZ,Dj AUSTIN a bénéficié de collaborations prestigieuses avec des artistes et Dj's tels que:LIL JON,ELEPHANT MAN,BEENIE MAN,NESSBEAL,LA FOUINE,LORD KOSSITY,SERANI,ADMIRAL T,KRYS,MIKE ONE,JAIRO,MYSTYKAL CUT,NICHOLS,FANNY J,MEDHY CUSTOS,DADDY MORY,SAIK,X-MAN. Dj AUSTIN, évolue dans un univers musical ouvert : Hip Hop,R&B,Reggeaton,Dancehall,House,Zouk,Salsa, Kuduro et c’est toujours avec cette chaleur musicale que toute les nuits, il enflamme les foules de la France et au-delà.