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14 episodes with Milken
16 episodes with Milken
14 episodes with Milken
4 episodes with Milken
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2 episodes with Milken
2 episodes with Milken
2 episodes with Milken
2 episodes with Milken
Are the tradeoffs that highly successful executives make — prioritizing wealth and recognition over family and a more grounded life — truly worth it? That's the central question that prompted Butch Meily to write From Manila to Wall Street, a memoir reflecting on his time nearly 40 years ago as a close aide to the brilliant but often brash Reginald F. Lewis, the first African-American to build a billion-dollar company. Lewis was a trailblazing businessman and investor who, in the 1980s, bulldozed through racial barriers. Financier and philanthropist Michael Milken described him as “the Jackie Robinson of American business.” Although Lewis died of a brain tumor at age 50 in 1993, the actionable insights gleaned from Lewis's business life remain relevant to this day, chief among them his motto: “Keep going no matter what.” Lewis reached extraordinary heights, bringing Meily along with him. Nevertheless, the lives of both men serve as a cautionary tale of the price each paid for their achievements. Their enduring legacy: build boldly, lead wisely — but never forget to live. [A native of the Philippines, Meily currently serves as president of the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation, a private-sector disaster management organization. Earlier in his career, he worked in public relations for both Burson-Marsteller and Howard J. Rubenstein Associates.] Monday Morning Radio is hosted by the father-son duo of Dean and Maxwell Rotbart. Photo: Rene S. “Butch” Meily, From Manila to Wall StreetPosted: June 2, 2025 Monday Morning Run Time: 47:30 Episode: 13.48 Pick up a copy of All You Can Eat Business Wisdom for yourself Fun, well organized, and brimming with useful information, this is a book that some will want to read cover-to-cover and others will treat as a reference book to look up subjects as needed; either way, it's a delight. — Kirkus Reviews
The annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles is an "intellectual banquet" of stimulating content. Over the course of three days more than 1,000 speakers take the stage to share insights on the latest business, political, healthcare and cultural trends. How it all comes together is both fascinating and daunting. On this episode of Press Profiles we sit down with Conrad Kiechel, the Milken Institute's executive director of global programming and events, to discuss assembling the jigsaw puzzle that is the global conference. From landing bold face names such as Scott Bessent, Jason Sudeikis, Jensen Huang and Patrick Dempsey, to creating unique and insightful panels. We also explore Conrad's career journey and how his background as a journalist taught him to be curious and tenacious - two imperative traits that help him pull off the conference each year.
Inside the Milken Global Conference with a panel on LA wildfire response and one-on-one with Dr. Mehmet Oz, California First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom and U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
Sam Sutton, the author of Politico's Morning Money, discusses the impact of the Trump Administration's recent deal to reduce tariffs on China, and what Wall Street and bankers were worried about — publicly and privately — at last week's Milken Institute gathering.
In this second part from the Milken Global Institute, Jeff Selingo engages in a provocative conversation with investor and Harvard critic Bill Ackman. They discuss the challenges facing elite higher education today—from DEI rollbacks and government funding threats to what Ackman describes as Harvard's financial crisis and governance failures. Ackman argues that administrative bloat, viewpoint homogeneity, and an unsustainable business model have undermined top institutions, while suggesting Harvard's $53 billion endowment may be significantly overvalued. The discussion explores contentious issues in admissions fairness, including legacy preferences, and concludes with Ackman's vision for higher education's future, where competition from new models might force established universities to reform or risk irrelevance. Key Moments0:00 - Intro1:04 - Federal Funding as a Lever of Influence8:07 - Board Insulation at Harvard13:08 - Limiting Class Size14:25 - Fairness in Admissions18:27 - Where We Go From Here Connect with Michael Horn:Sign Up for the The Future of Education NewsletterWebsiteLinkedInX (Twitter)Threads Connect with Jeff Selingo:Sign Up for the Next NewsletterWebsiteX (Twitter)ThreadsLinkedIn Connect with Future U:TwitterYouTubeThreadsInstagramFacebookLinkedIn Submit a question and if we answer it on air we'll send you Future U. swag!Sign up for Future U. emails to get special updates and behind-the-scenes content.
In a special episode recorded at the Milken Global Institute, Jeff moderates a wide-ranging panel with higher education leaders including the presidents of Dartmouth, Stanford, UC San Diego, Yeshiva University, and the CEO of ETS. The conversation explores the crises and critiques facing higher ed—from campus protests and declining public trust to research funding and economic ROI. The leaders discuss how institutions can reaffirm their missions, serve a broader public, and restore faith in the value of a degree in an era of polarization and political scrutiny.
Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha's top stories with editor Jessica Pothering. Up this week: With US markets all over the place, investors at the Milken Global Conference shift their focus to ownership, AI, and the rest of the world. How impact investors are responding to proposed cuts to health and medical research (8:33). And, forget your astrological sign – Phenix Capital proposes four archetypes for impact fund managers (15:23).Story links:“With markets down, up and sideways, investors look to ownership, AI and the rest of the world,” by Amy Cortese and David Bank“KKR's Pete Stavros: Employee ownership is a competitive advantage in private equity (Q&A),” by David Bank and Roodgally Senatus"With medical research funding in peril, one biotech VC firm pushes innovation forward," by Jessica Pothering"Illusionist, Learner, Achiever or Champion: What kind of impact fund manager are you?," by Phenix Capital's Daniel Moreno and Mohit Saini
Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha's top stories with editor Jessica Pothering. Up this week: With US markets all over the place, investors at the Milken Global Conference shift their focus to ownership, AI, and the rest of the world. How impact investors are responding to proposed cuts to health and medical research (8:33). And, forget your astrological sign – Phenix Capital proposes four archetypes for impact fund managers (15:23).Story links:“With markets down, up and sideways, investors look to ownership, AI and the rest of the world,” by Amy Cortese and David Bank“KKR's Pete Stavros: Employee ownership is a competitive advantage in private equity (Q&A),” by David Bank and Roodgally Senatus"With medical research funding in peril, one biotech VC firm pushes innovation forward," by Jessica Pothering"Illusionist, Learner, Achiever or Champion: What kind of impact fund manager are you?," by Phenix Capital's Daniel Moreno and Mohit Saini
Carl Quintanilla, David Faber and Mike Santoli discussed stocks extending Monday's losses after the broader market snapped its nine-day win streak. The Fed's two-day policy meeting also in the spotlight ahead of Wednesday's decision on interest rates. The anchors explored Palantir shares taking a hit despite upbeat results and guidance: What's next for what has been a high-flying stock? Also in focus: An AI warning from legendary investorPaul Tudor Jones, Ford suspends guidance in wake of tariffs, what CEOs at the Milken Institute Global Conference told David about the macro environment. Squawk on the Street Disclaimer
Carl Quintanilla discussed the biggest headlines for stocks alongside Sara Eisen and David Faber – who both joined the broadcast live from the Milken Institute's investment conference in Beverly Hills this hour. Citi CEO Jane Fraser and Treasury Secretary Bessent both pointing out a resilient consumer when it comes to the data… But CNBC's latest Fed Survey raising recession odds to 55% from 22% at the start of the year – what's driving the action. Plus: Goldman's Chief U.S. Equity Strategist gave his take on where markets go from here – and whether the Mag-7 tech trade can hold up. Also in focus: the latest from the ground at Milken – as the street's top CEOs, leaders, and regulators convene in California. David sat down with the CEOs of Ares (the firm manages $500B+ in assets) and Morgan Stanley Co-President Dan Simkowitz. Squawk on the Street Disclaimer
El gabinete económico de la presidenta Sheinbaum da más detalles sobre lo que esperan de esta apuesta gubernamental para el desarrollo del país. Todo esto mientras el empleo formal sigue en la senda de la desaceleración. Además, cómo reaccionaron las acciones tras el próximo retiro de Warren Buffett y qué ocurrió en otro evento que también suele reunir a la élite financiera, y corporativa del mundo.
Carl Quintanilla, David Faber and Mike Santoli discussed the surprising news involving Warren Buffett: The "Oracle of Omaha" announced he would step down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO at the end of the year after six decades on the job. Berkshire's board voted unanimously to name company executive Greg Abel as president and CEO effective January 1 -- and for Buffett to remain chairman. At the Milken Institute Global Conference, David engaged in one-on-one interviews with Apollo Global CEO Marc Rowan and Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf. Squawk on the Street Disclaimer
Carl Quintanilla discussed the latest for stocks alongside Sara Eisen and David Faber – who both joined the broadcast live from the Milken Institute's investment conference in Beverly Hills this hour. A key focus? Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett - surprising investors at the company's annual meeting by announcing he will step down as CEO… The team broke down his legacy and what's next for shares. Plus: one portfolio manager from Janus Henderson joined the team to talk top tech picks. Also in focus: the latest from the ground at Milken – as the street's top CEOs, leaders, and regulators convene in California. David sat down with Blackstone COO Jon Gray in a wide-ranging deep dive covering all things AI demand to Private Credit. Squawk on the Street Disclaimer
Carlyle Group Co-Chairman David Rubenstein discusses Scott Bessent's comments at Milken, and how the business community is willing to be optimistic about tariffs. He speaks at the Milken Conference with Bloomberg's Romaine Bostick and Carol Massar.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In today's episode of Big Shot, we sit down with Mike Milken—legendary financier, philanthropist, and chairman of the Milken Institute. Mike has been a driving force in medical research, public health, and education for over five decades. Fortune called him “The Man Who Changed Medicine,” and Forbes listed him among “Visionaries Reimagining Our Children's Future.” Mike's financial innovations helped launch industries like cable TV, homebuilding, and cellular technology. Beyond finance, he has led major philanthropic efforts, including the Prostate Cancer Foundation, FasterCures, and the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, set to open this year. A signatory of the Giving Pledge, he has committed much of his wealth to driving global impact.In our conversation today, we talk about: • The childhood moments that shaped Mike's curiosity and deep empathy• How Mike mastered mental math through Holocaust survivor, Jakow Trachtenberg's technique• How speech and debate sharpened Mike's ability to communicate big ideas• The impact of the Watts riots on Mike's career path • How market crashes in 1974 and 1987 provided opportunities for significant gains• Mike's take on regulations and why he remains relentlessly optimistic about the free market• A glimpse into Mike's philanthropic work in medicine and education• And much more! If you'd like to apply to be an executive producer, please complete the form here https://shorturl.at/xLQUW—In This Episode We Cover:(00:00) Intro(02:25) Why Mike has been involved in philanthropy from such a young age(09:57) Early experiences that shaped Mike's radical empathy (19:03) How Mike learned mental math by using the Trachtenberg system (20:25) Mike's journey to Berkeley and interest in the space program(28:40) How the Watts riots impacted Mike(33:40) The value of doing research, and what Mike learned about credit(38:10) Mike's first investment bank job (44:50) How Mike was able to fund MCI at a time when AT&T had a monopoly (50:22) How the 1974 stock market crash impacted investment banking (57:50) The culture of outsiders dominating Hollywood—many of them Jewish(1:00:59) The stock market crash of 1987(1:03:58) Why the best investors are social scientists(1:06:15) The cultural shift that brought down big tobacco (1:09:20) Takeaways from Mike's interview with Elon Musk(1:11:00) The JPL Mars Rover landing simulation and how free enterprise drives innovation(1:14:09) Milken Community School, and Mike's emphasis on health and medical research(1:16:22) How views on nutrition and the microbiome have evolved(1:19:48) Mike's advice: prioritize great people and be flexible (1:24:30) Private equity's impact on business and the downside of family businesses(1:28:40) The Miken Center for Advancing the American Dream—Where To Find Mike Milken:• X: https://x.com/MilkenInstitute• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/milkeninstitute/• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/milkeninstitute/• Website: https://www.mikemilken.com/—Where To Find Big Shot: • Website: https://www.bigshot.show/• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bigshotpodcast • TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bigshotshow• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigshotshow/ • Harley Finkelstein: https://twitter.com/harleyf • David Segal: https://twitter.com/tea_maverick• Production and Marketing: https://penname.co
Most people would say that Rhonda Farrah has had a difficult and, at times, scary life. As you will hear, Rhonda had a pretty conservative upbringing. She will tell us that she was in fact surrounded by love from her family and even her extended family of aunts and uncles and grandparents who all lived under the same roof. Rhonda was the oldest of her siblings and many looked to her for strength and knowledge. Rhonda went to college first majoring in Horticulture, but switched to Psychology. As she says, she likes to help things grow and while she loves gardening, she preferred to help people grow and development. Rhonda, as part of her so-called difficult life spent six years in prison and while there discovered that she had a lump on her breast. She didn't address the lump until she was released from prison. She used a combination of Western and Eastern medicine to complete eliminate the tumor without surgery. Also, fairly soon after leaving prison the sentence and charges she faced were completely expunged. While many told her she should litigate she disagreed and turned to forgiveness instead. Today Rhonda coaches and teaches women to grow and learn to look within themselves to better understand how to grow and move forward. Rhonda calls herself a lifestyle empowerment alchemist. As she explains, an alchemist changes materials. She helps women to change by learning to look within for answers. As she says, if we look for answers, the best place to find them is within ourselves. Rhonda offers many wonderful and relevant pieces of knowledge we all can learn to use. I think you will enjoy her story, her progress and her inspirational and unstoppable attitude very much. About the Guest: Rhonda M. Farrah, MA, DRWA, a LIFEstyle Empowerment Alchemist, Coach and prominent figure in personal development, has dedicated her years of insights as a psychotherapist to be a guiding light for women facing unique challenges, helping them embark on a transformative journey of Selfdiscovery and Empowerment. In a world where external issues often command our attention, Rhonda Farrah stands out as a catalyst for inner growth with her mantra, “Fix Your Reflection First.” A beacon of hope for women who find themselves trapped in the throes of personal turmoil, be it in relationships, careers, or daily life. Through her extensive career and profound dedication, Rhonda Farrah has spearheaded the Fix Your Reflection First method of realizing that both the joys and the setbacks in your life can serve you IF you can look past your immediate emotional response and use your Self-awareness to grow instead of pushing yourself down. Farrah's holistic approach centers on Self-reflection and the restoration of Self-love as the cornerstone of personal growth and Change. As a seasoned author, Empowerment Alchemist coach, speaker, entrepreneur, spiritual teacher, and educator, Rhonda has cultivated an extensive toolkit designed to assist individuals in addressing the challenges that hold them back and embracing the joys that propel them forward. Working with clients and companies from International Centers For Spiritual Living to the US Open Wellness Team, Rhonda's teachings emphasize harnessing Self-awareness and leveraging life's setbacks as opportunities for growth rather than obstacles. Rhonda's mission is to Empower women to prioritize their Self-love and Self-awareness, nurturing a profound alignment that positively influences every facet of their lives. Her work fosters a renewed sense of confidence and a hunger for personal growth, igniting a powerful journey of Self-discovery. Having written several e-books, Rhonda has participated as a Contributing Author to America's Heroes, Leaders, Legends, The Power Of The Human Spirit, and America's Leading Ladies Who Positively Impact Our World, featuring Oprah Winfrey and Melinda Gates. Ways to connect with Rhonda: Website: https://helpmerhondanow.com Email: rhonda@helpmerhondanow.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhonda-m-farrah-ma-drwa-81097b14 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rhonda.farrah Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/helpmerhondanow_ About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hello and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. I am your host, Mike Hingson, our guest today is Rhonda. And Rhonda pronounce your last name Farrah, which is what I thought. But I always like to make sure I get it right. Well, Rhonda Farrah is our guest, and as you will learn from her, Rhonda is a lifestyle empowerment Alchemist, and I'm intrigued to learn more about that and all sorts of other things. She especially helps women and helps ground them, I think, to summarize a lot of what she does, and we're going to talk about that. I know she talks and and in her bio, I read a lot about encouraging people to really think and center themselves. And that's something that we talk a lot about on various episodes of this podcast, and it's something that I talk about in the new book that is published in August of 2024 called Live like a guide dog, where I talk about and encourage people to be much more self analytical and look at themselves and take the time to do it, because it will create a lot less fear in their lives if they discover that they don't need to be afraid of so many things, but that's not something we're going to worry about as much today, unless Rhonda wants to talk about it, but we'll get there anyway. Rhonda, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here. Rhonda Farrah ** 02:50 Thank you so much, Michael, thank you for inviting me to be your guest. I love the name of your podcast, unstoppable mindset, because that's, after all, where everything begins, it Michael Hingson ** 03:02 does. Well, why don't you start, since we talk about starting at the beginning by telling us a little bit kind of about the early Rhonda growing up and all Rhonda Farrah ** 03:10 that stuff. Okay, yes, the early Rhonda growing up. Early Rhonda. I am originally from the East Coast. I grew up in Connecticut in a largely traditional household and family. I had a stay at home mom. I had dad who preferred mom stay at home. And I am the oldest of three brothers and one sister, and during that period of time, largely through grade three. You want to talk about my early days through grade three, I lived in an extended family, and many people know what that is. It was my parents, myself, my siblings, grandparents, at least one set at a time, aunts, uncle, one, uncle and great aunts, and it was a all under one roof, so there was a lot of love and there was a lot of discipline all at the same time. And it was a household primarily women, and my sense of nurturing and nurturing nurturance began very early with that feminine influence there. It's not that men don't nurture but I had an entourage of all that feminine presence around me, and also being the oldest of my siblings, I took on that while everyone's looking to you, Rhonda, that you're the role model so early on growing up, it was, I would have to say, We were a very conservative family, and I had conservative influences around me, and it actually paved the way for me wanting to. Not only to be in service of to others, but to go ahead and do my studies in psychology, counseling and educational psychology, and to help others be their highest and their best self. And that, that unstoppable mind, as you put it, is when we go within and we understand, how are we attending to the agenda of our soul that going within? So that's that's a brief that's a capitalized version of how I grew up. I like to play girls CYO softball. I was raised Catholic, Roman Catholic, later on, rebaptized a Christian. I honor all paths to God. I consider myself spiritual. I've always been spiritual, whether I realized it or not, and that, you know, that helps with that going within once, one says, Once I said, Yeah, I want to, I want to experience what is going within little Rhonda. And as I grew into an adult, and I got better at it, let's, let's put it that way, I got better at going within. Michael Hingson ** 06:16 Well, yeah, and I think that's, that's important, and I think that that development of the brain is something that more people ought to do and and don't do nearly as much as as they should live like a guide dog. Is all about learning to control fear, because when I was in the World Trade Center and we had the emergency that we did on September 11, although I had plenty of fear, fear did not overwhelm or, as I put it, blind me. I used it as a powerful tool to help me focus. And the reason all that happened as I really figured out many, many years later and then started to write about it in the era of the pandemic was that I developed a mindset. I knew what to do because I researched what to do. It wasn't a matter of reading signs. Oh, I can read these signs that'll tell me what to do. That works until it doesn't, and it's not nearly the same as knowledge. And so I learned what to do. I talked to the Port Authority, police, the fire department, emergency preparedness people, and learned everything that I could about what was, what was occurring, or what what could occur in an emergency, and what to do in an emergency. And did it enough that it became a mindset for me, so that when it actually happened, although we never thought that it would, when it did, I was able to function because I had conducted a lot of self analysis and thought about, what do I do in this kind of situation? Realized I know what to do. Yeah, it's always possible the building could have just come down around us, and then where would we be? Well, we wouldn't be here talking about it, probably anyway, but knowing what to do was the issue, and we we, selectively or collectively as a society, tend not to do that. We think we can just read signs or Well, if it happens, it happens. But we don't think about that. But we think about so many other things. My gosh, what? What if one politician gets elected? What if another politician gets elected? What if any number of things happen? What if I go to the store and I get robbed and all sorts of things that we don't have any real control over, and we create so much fear because we don't just focus on the things that we can control and leave the rest alone. And I think that that is probably something that leans right into a lot of the things that you talk about, Rhonda Farrah ** 08:53 yes, and that's you make an excellent point, because there's a point where we need to depend on what's going on within us. We can't depend on the government. We can't depend on the economy. We can't depend on the health care system, the pharmaceutical system. We need to listen to our intuitive self, to our authentic self from within and sure, I've been scared, sure, but with with stuff that happened within my all my own life. However, I wasn't paralyzed by fear. I didn't react. I responded, and that's really important for people to consider. We have so many questions, and especially now in these times, we're in chaotic we're in uncertain times. We're in a mess, basically, but the mess is here for us to learn, to grow and to move forward with that power from within, as I call it, our authentic power from. Then, and we, we all have, it's the power to thrive and not merely survive. Michael Hingson ** 10:06 Yeah, and we all have the power to work together and to create harmony, if we would, but do it right Rhonda Farrah ** 10:15 if we choose to. Yeah, it is a choice. Michael Hingson ** 10:18 But make no mistake, it is a choice, and we can do it if we if we wanted to, and it would be so much more amazing how well people would get along on how much more we would accomplish if we did that. Rhonda Farrah ** 10:32 That's absolutely correct. Michael, we are oftentimes we get caught up in what is different within us. You know, what are our differences? How about, let's talk about, how are we so similar, right? And that's where the strength comes in. That's where the power of numbers come in with that strength, with that power. Michael Hingson ** 10:56 Agreed. So you grew up? Did you go to college? Rhonda Farrah ** 11:01 I did. I attended the University of Connecticut under graduate school. And ironically, I didn't start out in psychology. I started out in horticulture, and was two years it's an agricultural college, actually the University of Connecticut. It was at that time. Now it's in the top 25 in the United States. And I enjoyed school. I enjoyed college immensely, and I always I switched to psychology. And let me tell you why. When I was a kid, I used to watch this show. It was The Bob Newhart Show, and he was a psychologist in this particular part in Michael Hingson ** 11:52 that show, right? Rhonda Farrah ** 11:54 And and for you know, unfortunately, several days ago, he made his transition. But when I heard that, I said, wow, look at how long ago. I mean, I admired him. I admired what he did. And I said, No, that's that's what I want to do. So I started out in horticulture, growing, okay, so I just switched to help people grow within themselves, and I am an avid gardener, by the way, and I like all those things with respect to preparing the soil, with respect to pruning, with respect to weeding so that you can grow healthy plants. And I'm a big advocate in growing where we are planted. We always have something to learn, if it regardless of situation, circumstance or happenstance. There's always something to learn wherever we're being planted or plant. There are no accidents, in my opinion, no coincidence, no happenstance. And we call everything forward into our lives to do just that, to grow when we are we are planted to experience joy, to experience sorrow, Michael Hingson ** 13:05 and a lot of times when we experience sorrow, if we would really stop and think about it, we might find it's not as bad as we think too, right? But that happens, and that's again, it's a growth era and a growth thing to deal with. Yes, Rhonda Farrah ** 13:20 yeah, absolutely. And you know that paved the way in psychology for me to become what I call a lifestyle, empowerment Alchemist, a coach, author and a speaker and alchemy, believe me, I am no left brain person. I alchemy is the precursor to chemistry. I never took chemistry. I opted for, I think it was environmental science. I was safe when there was a science requirement. I was good with that. But alchemy is indeed the precursor to chemistry, and it's the transmutation of one substance into another. So I learned by my own situations and circumstances. I have plenty of credentials, but my biggest credentials are that I came out on the good side, I'll say, On the positive side, on the Empowered side of some not so good situations and circumstances in my life. So that's why I refer to myself as an alchemist, and I am dedicated to awakening those who choose to be awakened, to opening their hearts, their minds, and most especially, their spirit within them, so that they can live their best life ever. Michael Hingson ** 14:36 So in in your case, you you you do change things, what? What were some of the the maybe negative things that you had to work through that caused you to decide that you were truly an empowerment Alchemist, a lifestyle empowerment Alchemist, nothing Rhonda Farrah ** 14:53 is negative unless, unless you think, Michael Hingson ** 14:57 what challenges? Yes, the challenge. Challenges, Rhonda Farrah ** 15:00 the struggles, the the adversity. Okay, six years in a woman's federal prison camp, breast cancer, several divorces, financial ruin was thrown in there, and it was like, wow, this is the not so good stuff that's happening, and it took me a while to understand. I called all this forward. I called all this forward for all the reasons why, whether it was poor choices, especially in the case of prison camp, called it forward to learn lessons and to to actually be in a major time out, because it began there that I began to realize my biggest struggle and challenge was I didn't know myself. I'd lost my sense of self. It I was in there somewhere, but I had lost my sense of self, and I needed to be literally extricated, separated from all that was familiar to me, so I could do something about that. Michael Hingson ** 16:08 Yeah, how long ago was that that you were in the prison camp? No, Rhonda Farrah ** 16:12 would have been. Actually, I was there when 911 hit. Okay, oh yeah, it's been a while, and I began that prison term of being of service to others, as well as myself, service set loosely in 20 in 2002 1000 in 2000 in 2000 and when 911 hit, I wasn't in a place where it was, you know, bars and razor wire or any of that. But when 911 hit, most I know my family and other people that I knew were saying she's probably in the safest place she can be. Yeah. And I said, Wow, this is actually happening. And I remember that happening. I remember I was actually part of a work cadre. I was teaching wellness classes as well to my fellow inmates, 300 women, and that came a little later, but it was part of a work cadre that went to the Presidio five days a week, five of us, five women, and we did Gardening. We did organization within, let's say, the warden's house that was up there on the Presidio. So I was part of the those that were trusted enough to be out five days a week. I mean, we had to go back, but so I experienced a lot. That was a gift and that was a blessing, and that is what got me through that instance. Just as other instances, I found the gift, I found the blessing in particularly like where I was at all times. But I did find gifts and blessings. I'm an avid runner. I had a track to run on. I a strength trainer. I had what was called a weight pile up there with antiquated equipment and everything else. But yet it was, it was mine. It was available to me. And so the gifts and the blessings come in in sometimes unlikely places, if you are open and receptive to them. And it wasn't about until a year after being incarcerated that I stopped banging the phone against the wall saying, Get me out of here. I had an aha moment. It was that period where I surrendered that I really began to peel away the onion skin that was keeping my sense of self, my true sense of self, self with a capital S at bay. Michael Hingson ** 19:13 So you, as you said, started peeling back the onion and went on clearly, what was a journey of self discovery, and you began to realize, and I put it in quotes, I made these choices, and I'm the one that can fix it in the long run, in Rhonda Farrah ** 19:39 the long run, right? But in the short run, I was learning more about myself than I ever imagined. Yeah, because I was separated from all those things that were my comfort zone, I was definitely out of my comfort zone, which is where our life really begins. When you're out of your comfort zone. Michael Hingson ** 20:02 Yeah, and in so many ways and and, of course, that's the whole point that we get so comfortable on our comfort zone that we never really do look beyond it. And that's a problem, because life is all about so many things that we choose not to explore that would be so beneficial if we did? Yes, Rhonda Farrah ** 20:26 absolutely, and I was pivoted right back into being of service to others. Michael Hingson ** 20:35 Okay, by Rhonda Farrah ** 20:36 teaching wellness classes and by you know there was a camaraderie. It was like women would say, Well, what about what should I do in this situation? What I said, I think you should take this time, because you have this time, literally time to explore from within, you can a lot of women that want to lose weight, they want to have better body image and otherwise. And those wellness classes were not just physical wellness classes I was teaching. It was emotional well, because that's how you get to the physical if you're working from the inside out, going within, then you're gonna have better results well being, rather than Ill being. And I would often say, you know, well, they would say, Well, when I get home, I'll get on a program and Michael Hingson ** 21:36 lose weight, and yeah, when I, Rhonda Farrah ** 21:39 when I said, Well, let me tell you what, when you go home, you're going to have to pay your rent, take care of your kids, have a job, and do everything else that you do in the real world without being institutionalized. So I said, there is a gift for being here. It's sad a lot of the times, because we all missed our families, but there is a gift and a blessing if we choose to know that so many women took me up on that some did not, and that's was their right. It's not my right, nor obligation, to want for someone what they do not want for themselves, not at all. Michael Hingson ** 22:25 We are our own best teachers, and no one else can can do that for us, Rhonda Farrah ** 22:30 right? That's exactly right, Michael, and it's it was an interesting time in my life. I actually so I was in my very early 40s, and I just turned 66 last last month, and I I never imagined that my midlife crisis, that was act one of my midlife crisis to be incarcerated to be and actually incarcerated to be liberated. I had more freedom getting to know myself and my true sense of self than I ever had at that point again, it wasn't all roses, it was pain, sorrow, emotional, largely, but I went through it. I felt, you've heard the the phrase, um, feel the fear, feel the pain, and do it anyway. Yeah, because it's subside. It's actually empowering to know that we have that power to feel pain, to feel sorrow, yet it will move us forward, or propel us forward. So Michael Hingson ** 23:49 was that time in prison for you? Kind of the the end of Act One, and then the transition to act two. Speaker 1 ** 23:57 Well, that was act one of my midlife crisis. Oh, you're master of your midlife crisis. That's my midlife crisis. Rhonda Farrah ** 24:03 That that was that. But it was so surreal to me. I've never had a parking ticket or speeding violation, and it was like, What is this? So? Hard lessons, hard lessons when you do not trust your intuition. When you make poor choices, when you try to please people, just remember you, you will not come out on the best side of things, but you must go where you need to go to learn what you need to learn. Yeah, kind of like a college. It's an extra. Was an extra grad school, Michael Hingson ** 24:45 well, and you said something very interesting, because, in reality, if you trust your intuition and you really work and develop that it will help you avoid things that otherwise you might not be able to avoid. But we. Don't tend to do that. And my favorite example of that is the game Trivial Pursuit. How often do you play that game and someone asked the question, and you think, I know the answer, and then you go, No, that can't be the right answer. And it turns out it was the right answer, and you should have answered with it. But, you know, it happens so often in so many ways, with so many things, yes. Rhonda Farrah ** 25:19 So I mean, I took the best of a not so good situation and it was all right. It served me. It served me to empower me so that I could have that like in my that was a notch in my belt, to let people understand, that I could understand what they're going through because I was there. Michael Hingson ** 25:47 So what happened when that time was over? Rhonda Farrah ** 25:51 So I was teaching wellness classes there, and I was supposed to be released in April of 2005 and it got delayed until, I believe it was July of that year. And for 11 months I knew I had a lump on my breast, and I did nothing about it, but go within, meditation, prayer. I was not going to subject myself to the Bureau of Prisons, medical, and I took a risk, sure, but I went within and the intuition said, Okay, you're going to be all right. I call it my godling self, not my mere, earthling self. I didn't run around in this chaotic, chaotic tone and in every area of my life and say, Oh, my God, I got I got to do something about this. And no, I knew, but I knew what I had to do. I had to go within and reinforce that my authentic power would help me get through this? So that act two of midlife crisis is now entering in and I came home. I was living on the Monterey Peninsula, and we had to go to a halfway house for a month or so when they understood I had a lump on my breast, because I told them they couldn't wait to get rid of me from the halfway house. So I went home and I went to my gynecologist. He ordered a biopsy immediately, and in none other than breast cancer awareness month, October, I was diagnosed with nearly stage three breast cancer. And I'm a believer that what happens to us really happens for us. And that's that period incarceration strengthened me to get through this. And I was scared, but I was not in fear mode. I was not immobilized. And of course, biopsy comes back, and everyone's saying, what happened? What was it? And I, my response has always been, well, it's not the best news, but it's not the worst news, right either. And from that point, I met with my friends, would say, we're going to get you another breast. And I go, No, I don't want another breast. I like this one, and I have a nice little war scar right here, and I'm good. I'm good with that. No one has ever complained. So I'm good with all of it, because I'm good with it myself. And I got this feeling that had the best breast dye they called him in the United States, Dr Jeffrey Hyde, and he I was scared because I told my god, I heard about chemotherapy, surgery, radiation. And he said something to me that surprised me from within the Rhonda inside. He said, this can be chemically treated. And I said, What? And I was happy that it could be chemically treated. Okay, so I mean that meant chemotherapy. I was happy, but I was like, How could this be? I'm an athlete. I take care of myself. I don't have any negative vices or anything. And now this is happening and the incidents, so here I am the nurturer. Okay? I nourish others now. I help them be their highest and best self by taking the. The adversity as well as the joys, and making it work for them, if they choose that finding the gift of the blessing. So here I am the nurturer now realizing that incidence of breast cancer in women is due to the fact that women do not nourish or nurture themselves. They're good with everyone else. Okay, they're good, but nourishing others. I wasn't nourishing myself. Couple that with and that had started well before prison. I was a people pleaser. I was a doormat at times, and I just went about my life. And that was that, until I got a major time out in prison camp, and then I got hit with the breast cancer thing, and I decided, well, oh, there's my aha breath. That's my god breath. I decided, well, I'm gonna, I'm going to do this with Eastern medicine. I began the practice of medical Qigong, and I put off going to chemotherapy, and my daughter looked at me as if I was nuts, and she says, I don't know when we're going to get a break. And I go, it's going to be okay. Everything's going to be great. Don't worry, I'm not going to die, because who will be here to run your life? Tell you to brush your teeth and all of that in between. And I mean, I was interjecting some of you into a very serious thing, and that day, I made a promise to myself and to my daughter, I am not only going to live, I'm going to dance at your wedding, and I'm going to see my grandchildren and all that happened. There you go. That happened. I've been cancer free for about 17 or 18 years now, but my point of telling you that is that the medical Qigong professional heat said, go back and get to your oncologist and get an ultrasound, because Western medicine has the best diagnostic tools. I went back to her, my daughter was with me, and she said to me, I don't know what you're doing, but you're shrinking your tumor. And I felt good about that. And then my daughter's head spun around on her neck, and she looked at the oncologist as well as me, and said, Are you buying this shit like that? And I knew then that was another fear of mine. There were enter that fear of surgery, chemotherapy and all of that in between. I knew then, no, you got to go through you go, you'll use Western and Eastern medicine. And I never looked back. I had chemo. They cleaned up the margins a little bit on one of my breasts, and I had 40 blasts of radiation. So I got over that fear. I mean, that's, I'm not a doctor person. I don't I don't like to go to doctors, so I needed to call that forward so that I could understand that I had that power from within me to face even that fear. But once again, I was pivoted right back into being of service to others and doing support groups with women with breast cancer. Cancer. Michael Hingson ** 33:44 So when did you become cancer free? Rhonda Farrah ** 33:49 It was the end of March, 2006 Okay, and so what claimed cancer free? What? Michael Hingson ** 33:56 What did you do? How did Eastern medicine help with that. What? What was involved with the Eastern medicine aspect of it? Rhonda Farrah ** 34:03 Well, even though I started the chemotherapy, I had very few side effects from chemotherapy, because I continued with the medical dig on. I continued with acupuncture and prayer chanting, so I had side effects. I'm a runner. I was, I wasn't running as quickly, but I was, I was moving along with my dog four days, sometimes five out of the week, and I went. I was very diligent on Thursdays at 11 o'clock. That was my chemotherapy. So I come I combined them, but I was glad I combined them, and I was glad I faced that fear of, Oh, my goodness, Rhonda Farrah ** 34:52 I need to do this stuff that I don't like to do. Do. So I could have become a victim and said, Oh, poor me, Rhonda Farrah ** 35:04 we would probably not be having this conversation right now, because it's a little over 35% of women with breast cancer. Yeah, never Michael Hingson ** 35:12 fake it. Well, yeah, go ahead. Rhonda Farrah ** 35:15 I didn't choose that. I chose. I chose my own healing once again, and whether I knew it or not, by helping others heal emotionally, most especially, I was healing, and I was becoming more empowered. And I just took this next scary piece of life, adventure of midlife crisis, and I made it work for me, rather than anything less. Michael Hingson ** 35:46 But that's really the whole point of stepping back and doing introspection in your own life and thinking about it and listening to what you have to tell yourself, because that's where the real solutions come from in most anything that we do, if we but listen. And you know, we don't tend to listen to that inner voice nearly as much as we can or should, and we lead ourselves astray. Rhonda Farrah ** 36:21 I so agree with that. Michael, you know, we, we have so many questions within understand that the answers are within us. Yeah, that's it, and it is an inside job to live the powered life, to live the life that you want to live. Perhaps the life that you dream about, it comes from here, that comes from the heart, space, the heart, the emotions. And I believe there's only two emotions, fear and love, right? Whatever emotion you're in creates your thoughts, and your thoughts create your external world, Michael Hingson ** 36:59 and you have some control over how all that really shakes out in the end, we all Rhonda Farrah ** 37:05 do. We're all our own Guru. That's it. If we only knew that we we all have a godly self, not merely an earthling self. Michael Hingson ** 37:17 Well, I think, in reality, they're they're one in the same in various ways, but I hear what you're saying Rhonda Farrah ** 37:23 the and whether you call it, I happen to call it God, because my upbringing it universe, source, spirit, the divine. Michael Hingson ** 37:31 Well, God's a very powerful word. I have no problem using that. Yeah, Rhonda Farrah ** 37:35 black people are afraid of the God word. I like the God word. Yeah, definitely. Every time, there it is again, the AHA breath, that's my god breath. It's a confirming breath. So we just confirmed that it's great to say the God word, and Michael Hingson ** 37:51 it has nothing to do with any specific religion. Rhonda Farrah ** 37:54 No, it does not. Michael Hingson ** 37:58 So what happened after Act Two in your midlife crisis, world, Rhonda Farrah ** 38:10 I was asked in an interview, and I'll get to act three. Adventure number three, I was once asked in an interview, what was the worst date you've been on? So I was videoed, and the long and short of it was, I said, Oh, I thinking about it. I don't date and meet somebody. We get to know one another. They asked me to marry them, and the rest is history. Enter two divorces. You know, pretty close together, five, six years apart, very short lived divorces. And I'll tell you what prison prepared me for, breast cancer, and prison and breast cancer together prepared me for a lot of people don't think prison or breast cancer would be worse than divorce. It wasn't the divorce, it was the betrayal. It was the trusting of someone and then, like being sideswiped, that was it. Sideswiped and lots of tears. I always say, wherever I was, tears and laughter are signs of growth. If one is not laughing or crying weeping, then you're not growing. And growth is essential if you're going to be your highest, best self, if you're going to be an empowered, your empowered self. So the first one was ugly, the second one was ugly, and but I, I, I know I have a formula for living in empower. Life, and boy, did I use it my formula, because, after all, I am an alchemist, is gratitude plus forgiveness equals living the life that you want to live. So I was, first of all, I was grateful for meeting these people, because they taught me again about myself. I was settling, no disrespect to whomever I was married to, but I was settling because, well, I don't want to be alone, and maybe no one will also come and blah, blah, blah. I mean, I went through these gyrations. I'm no stranger to feeling that way, and I'm very vulnerable. I think you know that by now, and I'm good, you can hold me up to the light, and I'm transparent because I'm okay, whereas I wasn't to begin with, and that's about two years ago. My brand changed to fix your reflection first and live your best life ever, because that's why we're not living our best life ever. It's not that everything must go right for us, it's that we can find the gift and the blessing when nothing is going right. My whole life fell apart only so it all together in better ways. So I went from that people pleaser door map to under to thanking those who I was pleasing and had used me as a doormat. Thank you. I got it now. Okay, I got it so when I look in the mirror now, I see the love of my life. Because unless we are able to understand who we are and our magnificence, we will attract much less. Again, no disrespect to any situation, circumstance or event, to any person that I have been with so and the other thing is, if you treat yourself like the love of your life, 42:11 you will attract the love of your life, Rhonda Farrah ** 42:14 not only in a romantic situation, in every freaking area of your life, you will attract the best of the best, Michael Hingson ** 42:24 and I gather you've done that. Rhonda Farrah ** 42:26 Oh, I'm open to love, but I'm not, I'm not with any I'm single and but I'm not, like, not in any dating sites or anything like that, right? I'm I'm working with myself, Michael Hingson ** 42:40 yeah, well, that's what I'm getting at and yeah, that's Rhonda Farrah ** 42:44 who I'm with. I'm with myself. Because wherever we go, we take ourselves with us, and Michael Hingson ** 42:48 somebody might come along at some point that you develop a relationship with, but you're going to look at it differently now than you have in the past. Absolutely, absolutely, which is so cool. Rhonda Farrah ** 43:06 It's what needs to happen. If it happened to me, then I have the right to say, well, it could happen to you too, Michael Hingson ** 43:15 and it's not an ego issue. To say you're the love of your life. That's That's not it at all, and and it's important, I think, that people understand that it is that you're you're happy with yourself, you respect yourself. Now, my life was different than yours. My wife and I got married in 1982 and she passed two years ago, almost two years ago. So we were married 40 years and lots of wonderful memories, and I don't know what will happen in the future, although I'm not looking for any anything like the romantic kind of thing to happen, although some people told me I'm crazy and I should, but my response is, you know, Karen is monitoring from somewhere, and if I misbehave, I'm going to hear about it. So I got to be a good kid. That's Rhonda Farrah ** 44:05 it. And it works. And it works because it works for you, and this works differently for everyone, exactly, right. It works differently for everyone, but, and I have to say, and sometimes an audience will go up one side of me and down the other when I say, you know, selfishness is the most selfless thing we can do, right? I think, especially as a woman. Michael Hingson ** 44:33 Well, yeah, I would say everyone, but I hear what you're saying, but I hear what you're saying. Well, so what do you do today, what, what is your, your your job, or whatever, or what do you what do you do with your life today? Rhonda Farrah ** 44:49 With my life today, I I have dual duties after divorces. I was heading back to Connecticut. I. All my family's in Connecticut, two grandchildren. And not that I don't love the rest of my family, but, you know, grandkids, yeah, okay, I could do this, and ages 10 and eight, and a friend of mine, that's why I'm in Colorado Springs. Asked me to I've known her for 12 years. I know her through someone else that no longer speaks to me, okay, but that's that's how it happens. That's how people come together to learn lessons and otherwise. And she said to me, I need you to make a pit stop. Here I go, Oh, I kind of knew what was going on. Her mother in law has dementia, and she's totally ambulatory, and she's we high functioning. But as I'm in there somewhere, wherever I was, she's in there somewhere. So I came, I met the woman, and my friend said, Can you give us a year? A year? You want me stay here for a year, grow where you're planted? This is my point of telling you this, and this is why I do what I do. I have another growing where I'm planted. So she said, Can you give us a year? I said, What? It'll be three years, the beginning of October. I'm feeling that this woman and I will make our exit together, because I'm feeling I'm supposed to be here on one direction or dimension. Now I I still do plenty of interviews. I have my own radio television show on transformation network, which I'm inviting you to be on, and you'll hear from me on that. Let me know. Oh, yeah, and I'm catering to several clients. You know, everything is zoom these days, which fine. That's fine with me. So that's what I do. I'm in the process of, right? I've written three ebooks, a contributing author to three books, and I'm writing a book from PTA to prison, my journey in transformation. Now that was just a part of it, but that was the beginning, right? My journey and transformation. We're never too old for transformation. No, I would often joke and say, you know, Moses, he was transformed. He didn't didn't think he could do anything major. That was his mistake. And he did the greatest thing in his late 70s, yeah, the greatest thing for him. And the interesting part is I do mirror work is nothing new. And I go to the mirror every morning and at night sometimes as well, and lots of things developed after I changed my brand to fix your reflection first and live your best life ever. I went, I call it. I came out of the closet with prison and other personal aspects of my life. It's the best thing I ever did, be vulnerable in front of audiences and show them that I'm not immune to anything either. Just because I live and breathe this, which I do and I like it, I'm not stuff still happens to me, happens for me that not so good stuff, but so what I'm doing now is I'm continuing to transmute myself so that I can be A better service to others. That's literally what I'm doing. Michael Hingson ** 49:05 One of the things that I love to say, and it fits right in with what you're discussing, is when I have the honor of doing these podcast episodes, if I'm not learning as much as, or more than anyone listening or whoever to the podcast that I'm not doing my job. And I think that that's an absolute part of it. We we all need to learn and transform. And I look for the opportunities that come along where people may say something like you've said a number of things that make perfect sense. I'm not sure I've heard today too many brand new things, but the reality is, there aren't that many. There really aren't new things in the world. It's just that either we haven't heard them yet, but they're still there, or we. We've forgotten them, and we need to remember them, or we have heard them, and we do remember them, and it reinforces it. But the fact is, there really isn't anything new in the world. We just have to sometimes rediscover it for ourselves. Exactly Rhonda Farrah ** 50:14 it's it's the amount of reading I did in prison camp, and if I make notes on the in the sidelines of the pages, and then I go back and I read the same passages and books and everything else, and I'd read what I've written, and I'd say that was a learning experience. And my measure look how far I've come. That that's when self help wasn't called self help. Yeah, now we have self help, you know, yeah, Bob bought the programs and everything, and then never opened them, because, again, it's an inside job. And I believe that with all my heart, Michael Hingson ** 51:02 right? Yeah, and I think there's, there's merit to that. So you have clients in various places nowadays, yes, Rhonda Farrah ** 51:12 Canada, Australia. I'm actually the final touches on a group coaching program. It is coaching program for women. I'll take 15 women for 12 weeks, 12 weeks, and if they choose to continue with another 12 weeks, at the end of 412 weeks, we've done a year, yeah, together, and we've accomplished what we want to accomplish, but in bite sized pieces, right? We're building on the first 12 weeks, so I'm very excited about that. And my clientele is, I say 45 and over, but like 5850 and over, because we all having those little crises for our benefit. What? Michael Hingson ** 51:57 What made you decide, though, to work with people who are essentially 50 and older, as opposed to younger people, because Rhonda Farrah ** 52:04 I kept getting older. You know, I kept getting older, and my experience has happened to me, and I call it the mid life, and there are so many people going through, maybe not exactly the same thing, but in some cases, yes, the same things. They're going through them, and I, I want to be the light at the end of whatever tunnel they are journeying through, and let them know this is not a train coming at you. Your light is exactly that. It's your light. It's your guidance to move forward, and nothing less. Michael Hingson ** 52:49 Now you you teach women, and that's fair, but if I were to carry it forward, what about men? Not that you that you're doing that, but don't men also really deal with the same issues they do, Rhonda Farrah ** 53:03 but they deal with them in different ways, and in many cases, men have it over women because of the way they're dealing with them. Society has ingrained in men. They're the strong, they're the powerful, they're the empowered. Of course, you look at the state of affairs in this world today and you find that, well, yeah, Michael Hingson ** 53:26 and that's, of course, that's the problem is that it's great to be the powerful and the empowered and so on. But if you will, you let it go to your head, and you're not listening anymore, Rhonda Farrah ** 53:37 right? The what I believe is that that's That's exactly true. If you're not listening to your intuitive self from within, if you're not, you're doing a number on yourself with that whole mindset thing. Yeah, think you can, you're right. If you think you can't, you're right as well. You're right as well. So the I have just had more women approach I've had more women approach me. There's a the they kind of assimilate with me and who I am, you know, I'm Mom, I'm the grandmother, and I'm the sister, you know, the oldest, and I'm in this thing, this gig, called counseling. Now, when I was a psychotherapist, my I turned to right around in 2005 couple things happened. I was released from prison. By the way, my sentence was expunged shortly after that. Michael Hingson ** 54:46 Oh, Rhonda Farrah ** 54:48 and so, and many people will also say, Aren't you mad? Aren't you angry? I go for what? For Michael Hingson ** 54:54 what? Yeah, what good is that gonna do? I forgave Rhonda Farrah ** 54:58 everybody. And. I came that's was part of my program for being my best self ever. Michael Hingson ** 55:04 What were you accused of doing? If I might ask the Rhonda Farrah ** 55:07 money. Money, crime, non violent. Non violent. No drugs, yeah. Money, crime, okay, got it. I mean, I was no milking and all of that. But the interesting part about that is, I served my sentence in prison camp. It used to be a men's prison camp, and Milken was there, and that's where he contracted cancer, and he won his release in $5 million and built the Cancer Center in Los Angeles. So you see, and that's, you know, everyone had me convinced, well, you should sue the government. I go, No, I don't think so. It's like, I need to move on. You know, it's like I'm moving on, and I'm taking the best pieces of that part of my life and this part of my life and these parts of my life, we teach that they can do the same. Michael Hingson ** 56:04 When I was in my mid 20s, something happened. I became blind because I was born two months premature and given a pure oxygen environment, and that caused the retinas not to develop properly, something known at the time as retro enteral fibroplasia. And if we really want to learn to spell it, go buy my book thunder dog. Um, now it's called retinopathy or prematurity, and you can learn that in Thunder dog too. But anyway, um, I think it was in the mid 20s somewhere I read an article about someone who was born around the same time that I was and blind for the same reason, and they sued their medical people, and just, had just won a major lawsuit and got money and all that. And I was talking to my father about it, and I said, What do you think about that? And he he said, probably something that you can really imagine, he said, and what good would suing really do at the time? They probably had just the information that they had, and medical science had started to hear that retro enter fibroplasia was a condition, but medical science hadn't really accepted it yet. But my father said, Sue isn't going to solve anything. And he was absolutely right. And I thought the same thing. And to this day, I think that's true. I think there are times when there is such a thing as doing litigation for some purpose, but, you know, don't do it for the wrong reason, and don't go off and try to mess up somebody else's life, because I'm sure that those same ophthalmologists and so on in the 70s and 80s would never take the same approach that they did when I was born, or if they had to, because it really meant the life of the child, the parents would get an appropriate warning saying this could happen, which is what does happen. But also, it's been proven that it doesn't take a pure oxygen environment, 24 hours a day, every day to keep a child alive, and even just a few minutes a day will prevent the whole issue of becoming blind. So there are a lot of aspects of it. Rhonda Farrah ** 58:34 There sure are. Michael Hingson ** 58:36 But you know, we all are. We're in this same world, and we do need to, you know, to move forward. So what do you think that people can learn from you? We've talked for almost an hour. Summarize some of that, if you would. Rhonda Farrah ** 58:52 I think people can learn from me that, you know, we're all whole, perfect and complete, even in our imperfections, all of us and I am more like others, and others are more like me than we all realize, because we all have that wholeness, that perfection within each within us, and they can learn to get out of their comfort zone a little before they're taken out of their comfort zone, to live an empowered life, to live maybe a little bit of the life that they've been Thinking about, perhaps dreaming about, they can learn that you know, even with everything that happened to me, I mean, I am so blessed. It could have been a lot worse in every situation that we have just talked about again in the last hour. But there was something within me, and it's within everyone. We are not alone. Alone, no one is alone. To take the best to count the gifts and the blessings, to use that formula gratitude plus forgiveness, not a popular topic, forgiveness will empower us if we go within and say, Yeah, that's the that I think that's the biggest thing, and that they're to get passionate about something, whether whether it's garden or whether it's changing lives, helping people fix their reflection first and live their best life ever. That's what they can learn from me. Find something to be passionate about, Michael Hingson ** 1:00:50 yeah, the operative part about that is fix your reflection first, do something that you're passionate about. I would add to that, that doing something for negative reasons is only going to hurt you. It's not going to hurt anyone else exactly that's Rhonda Farrah ** 1:01:06 taking the poison and expecting the other person to die. Yeah, it's not happening. Michael Hingson ** 1:01:12 It doesn't happen. Well, if you were to Well, go ahead. Rhonda Farrah ** 1:01:17 No, that's ask me. I want you to ask me another question. Do Michael Hingson ** 1:01:23 you have a particular one you want me to ask you? No, oh, just checking. Just checking. If you were to to summarize all of this and leave people with one thought that they should take away and remember what? What do you want them to learn from this. I know we've talked about it a lot, and I kind of suspect I know the answer. But if you were to summarize it very briefly, what would you what would you say very Rhonda Farrah ** 1:01:49 briefly? I would say, once again, you're not alone if you are struggling with a challenge, with something that not so good stuff in your life, reach out, whether you reach out to me, whether you reach out to someone else, reach out and go within. If you don't know who to reach out, to go within and listen and listen, and you'll know who to reach out to. And I have to say that wherever we go, and I alluded to this during the interview, during our conversation, wherever we go, we take ourselves. So those of us who are trying to avoid in life, wherever you go to avoid, whatever it is you're trying to avoid, you're the common denominator. You have still taken yourself there Michael Hingson ** 1:02:41 and avoiding doesn't help. Facing is a different story than avoiding. Facing Rhonda Farrah ** 1:02:46 Yes and it's okay. We all have feelings, feels. You want to feel sad, you want to feel angry, feel whatever the hell you want to feel okay. Because if you keep shoving those feelings down, eventually they will erupt at the most inopportune time. And quite frankly, and quite bluntly, I liken it to a toilet overflowing when you have a house full of guests, not a good thing. And finally, I'm inviting our audience to treat life as if it were ice cream and enjoy it before it melts. Michael Hingson ** 1:03:28 I believe life is an adventure. We should all partake of it and not hide. We may not and shouldn't all do it exactly the same way. Everyone is has got their own way of doing it, but enjoy it, as you said, especially before it melts. Well, Rhonda, if people want to reach out to you, and I hope people will. And you know, you may get some, some guys who who email you, but how do people get hold of you? Rhonda Farrah ** 1:03:58 I would welcome any questions. I love to hear what is on the heart and minds of others, and you can get a hold of me. At, Rhonda. R H, O, N, D, A at, help me, Rhonda now.com, Rhonda. At help me. Rhonda now.com, Michael Hingson ** 1:04:18 and as I said earlier, we know what musical groups you grew up with. Rhonda Farrah ** 1:04:24 Yes, we do. Michael Hingson ** 1:04:27 But Rhonda at help me. Rhonda now.com and I hope people will reach out and seek the wisdom that you are providing and the knowledge that you have to offer, what a wonderful treasure trove of information and knowledge you are and you have, and I hope people will take advantage of that. Thank you. Thank you. Michael, well, I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you for listening and watching. Us today. We really value it. I would really like to hear from you. I want to hear what your thoughts are about today. Please email me, whoever you are, wherever you are. You can reach me at Michael H, i@accessibe.com that's m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I b, e.com, or go to our podcast page, www dot Michael hingson.com/podcast, and Michael hingson is m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, o, n.com/podcast, wherever you're listening, I hope you liked today and that you will rate us and give us a five star review. We value your reviews and your ratings. So very much. Really hope that you will provide us with a five star rating. We love it, but we really, most of all, value your thoughts and anything that you have to say about what you heard today, and I know Rhonda will appreciate that as well. So email Rhonda at helpmeda now.com and communicate with her as well. If you know of any guests Rhonda you as well who might be wonderful people that we ought to have on unstoppable mindset. Would love to hear from you. We're always looking for guests. I found Rhonda through a person who reached out to me and said, I know this great person who ought to be on the podcast. And he was right. So definitely, if you know of anyone, please let us know, but give us rankings, five star ratings, and communicate with us, because that's the only way we get a feel of what you like and what you're interested in and and what you're thinking. So please tell us. And with that, Rhonda, I want to thank you one more time for being here, and we appreciate all your time, and hopefully we'll do it again in the near future, and I'm certainly glad to come on the program that you were talking about earlier. Rhonda Farrah ** 1:06:49 Yes, yes, thank you, Michael, it's been my pleasure to be here. Michael Hingson ** 1:06:58 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.
San Francisco and the surrounding area saw a massive drop in the biggest of any large US metropolitan area in a key economic ranking, the Milken report. Before the pandemic, San Francisco and San Jose were were regulars at the top of the Milken Institute's list of best performing regions based on factors like job and wage growth, economic opportunity and equality, housing affordability and other factors. But the latest report from the non profit Institute ranks the San Francisco-Redwood City-South San Francisco metropolitan area at 126th on the report that ranks 200 metro areas and 203 small cities across the US. For more, KCBS Radio's news anchors Margie Shafer and Eric Thomas spoke with KCBS Insider Phil Matier.
The beginning of a new year brings with it time for reflection and the renewal of rituals. We reflect on our personal and professional lives, set goals for the coming year, and start sprinting towards those goals – hopefully with enough time to calibrate our personal GPS. One part of the ritualistic sprint is conference season. Industry leaders gather at Davos for the World Economic Forum and Miami for iConnections Global Alts in January, in Beverly Hills for Milken in May, in Sun Valley for Allen & Company in the summer, and at many locations throughout the year. We'll be doing the same at our Capital Allocators CIO Summit in April, Senior Decision Makers Summit in June, Capital Allocators University in July, and Small and Emerging Manager Summit in September. So as you get ready to leave the starting blocks, it's a good time to pause and think about how to optimize your time and budget at industry events. At Capital Allocators University in December, Hank hosted a panel with Ron Biscardi and Katie O'Reilly to discuss how to think about, plan, and maximize your time and value at conferences. Today's show shares their panel discussion from Capital Allocators University. Head of Business Development Job Posting Learn More Follow Ted on Twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn Subscribe to the mailing list Access Transcript with Premium Membership
La cérémonie des Golden Globes se tenait ce dimanche à Los Angeles. Durant ce grand rendez-vous du cinéma et des séries télé du monde entier, le film Emilia Perez de Jacques Audiard a été couronné par quatre fois. Mais derrière la cérémonie et les paillettes se cache une industrie en grande difficulté. Décryptage. Hollywood, au-delà d'être la colline la plus connue de Los Angeles, c'est aussi un quartier qui pèse très lourd dans l'économie de la ville et de la Californie. Cette industrie du divertissement que représente Hollywood c'est 681 000 emplois, secteur essentiel il va sans dire qui contribue à hauteur de 115 milliards de dollars par an à l'économie régionale d'après l'Agence de développement économique de Los Angeles. Mais le secteur emblématique de la côte ouest américaine a été frappé de plein fouet par la pandémie de Covid-19 il y a cinq ans. Suspension quasi totale des tournages, ce qui implique moins de contrats pour une bonne partie des professionnels du secteur. Après cette période de léthargie, la reprise a été longue et difficile. Les conséquences de la grève de 2023 La reprise des tournages a néanmoins été enrayée par une grève des acteurs et des scénaristes l'année dernière. Au total, 148 jours de grève, le plus long conflit vécu par Hollywood dans toute son histoire. Mouvement social non sans conséquence puisque, si un accord a été trouvé entre les syndicats représentant les scénaristes et les plateformes de streaming, il a eu un coût, estimé à environ six milliards de dollars d'après l'institut américain Milken. Et si le secteur a eu du mal à repartir après le Covid-19, la grève n'a rien arrangé. Pour le troisième trimestre 2024, les niveaux de production cinématographiques ont diminué de 5% par rapport à la même période en 2023. À lire aussiHollywood : après la grève, « une contraction dans l'industrie » attendueL'explication réside en ce point : après la grève, la situation pour les travailleurs du cinéma et des séries n'a fait qu'empirer. L'une des principales raisons, c'est que les productions ont boudé Hollywood et ses studios. La grève leur a semblé interminable. À cela il faut ajouter le coût de la vie qui a augmenté à Los Angeles. Et ça peut paraitre anecdotique mais ça ne l'est pas, les accords à l'issue de la grève justement ont rendu les productions plus coûteuses. La Californie boudée par les producteurs Face à cette situation, les financeurs ont du trouver des solutions. L'une d'elles c'est de trouver d'autres sites pour tourner films et séries. Les emplois dans le cinéma et la production sonore depuis le début de la grève dans la région de Los Angeles ont ainsi diminué de 15%. « Au revoir » Los Angeles dans un premier temps, puis « au revoir » la Californie. Direction d'autres États comme le Nouveau-Mexique et la Géorgie. Leur force, c'est qu'ils offrent un impôt avantageux. La Géorgie notamment a un programme d'incitation fiscale illimité et a déjà permis aux studios hollywoodiens d'économiser des milliards de dollars. Depuis 2019, Netflix y a investi 575 millions de dollars. D'après une enquête du New York Times, 38 États américains offrent une forme d'incitation fiscale aux productions. Résultat, beaucoup de travailleurs à Hollywood ont dû arrêter ou déménager pour suivre les productions. D'autres attendent beaucoup du retour de Donald Trump à la Maison Blanche avec ses ambitions de dérégulariser l'économie. En tout cas, la machine à rêves qu'est Hollywood s'est transformée pour beaucoup en machine à cauchemars.
This week we discuss the November jobs report, the Fed's cutting path, and the goldilocks scenario for 2025. We also delve into the different R* models, MicroStrategy, the Milken moment for crypto, and much more. Enjoy! — Follow Capital Flows: https://x.com/Globalflows Capital Flows Substack: https://www.capitalflowsresearch.com/ Follow Quinn: https://x.com/qthomp Follow Tyler: https://twitter.com/Tyler_Neville_ Follow Felix: https://twitter.com/fejau_inc Follow Forward Guidance: https://twitter.com/ForwardGuidance Follow Blockworks: https://twitter.com/Blockworks_ Forward Guidance Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance Forward Guidance Telegram: https://t.co/G7Ljv4x5Dp — Weekly Roundup Charts: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TxUrZZsIWtXdqbDS-DDJL7EduaP_pdpE/view?usp=sharing — Join us at Digital Asset Summit 2025 March 18th - 20th. Use code FG10 for 10% off general admission! https://blockworks.co/event/digital-asset-summit-2025-new-york — SKALE is the next evolution in Layer 1 blockchains with a gas-free invisible user experience, instant finality, high speed, and robust security. SKALE is built different as it allows for limitless scalability and has already saved its 46 Million users over $9 Billion in gas fees. SKALE is high-performance and cost-effective, making it ideal for compute-intensive applications like AI, gaming, and consumer-facing dApps. Learn more at skale.space and stay up to date with the gas-free invisible blockchain on X at @skalenetwork Ledger, the world leader in digital asset security for consumers and enterprises, proudly sponsors Forward Guidance, where traditional finance meets crypto. As Ledger celebrates a decade of securing 20% of the world's crypto assets, it offers a secure gateway for those entering digital finance. Buy a LEDGER™ device today and protect your assets with top-tier security technology. Buy now on Ledger.com. Meet Kraken Institutional. Whether you're an asset allocator, a trading firm or high net worth individual, Kraken Institutional unlocks the powerful tools you and your organization need to trade and manage crypto — at scale. Reliable, easy to integrate, with white-glove service and 24/7 support. Get in touch today at https://blckwrks.co/Kraken — Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (01:44) Post-Thanksgiving Catch Up (03:33) November Non-Farm Payrolls (08:31) Economic Slowdown or Stability? (10:20) Debating The Fed's Cutting Path (16:51) Hot Economy Vs Growth Scare (24:24) Macro Analysis & Shorting Oil (30:35) Ads (32:38) We Are In Goldilocks (36:29) Stocks Vs Commodities (38:12) Inflation Turning Point (39:40) Different R* Models (46:07) History Of Junk Bonds (48:11) Milken Moment For Crypto (52:11) Monetizing Volatility (53:26) Bitcoin & Evolving Options Market (56:40) MicroStrategy Risks (01:03:23) Enhancing Yield With Volatility (01:06:13) Debating Bitcoin's Future — Disclaimer: Nothing discussed on Forward Guidance should be considered as investment advice. Please always do your own research & speak to a financial advisor before thinking about, thinking about putting your money into these crazy markets.
Friday, November 15, 2024 SRF NEWS Busy week for Mike & Virginie: Citizen Health & Ultragenyx, not Milken. Sign up for Citizen Health https://www.citizen.health/partners/srf Growing our name https://curesyngap1.org/blog/syngap-research-fund-srf-announces-dba-cure-syngap1-a-new-era-in-the-search-for-a-cure/ Financials updated with 2023 https://curesyngap1.org/finances/ Thank you Stefanie Decker! Newsletter #41 - https://Syngap.Fund/NL41 - About why we need a cure - quotes from our families We're over 100 volunteer bios on the website! More being added every week! Great work Zoe! https://curesyngap1.org/team/ Cafe SYNGAP1 e24 is up! Gloria Amparo Guzmán Cali, Colombia https://syngap.fund/Cafe 4MTx Announcement and direct impact on pipeline https://www.4mtx.net/news/4m-therapeutics-compounds-to-be-utilized-in-research-project-funded-by-national-institute-on-aging-bjebr https://curesyngap1.org/syngap1-related-disorder-therapeutic-pipeline/ Speaking of small molecules, get this on Ravicti https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.06.24316676v2 RESEARCH UPDATE There are 306 papers on or related to SYNGAP1 since 1998, but 48 of those are in 2024! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=syngap1&filter=years.1998-2024&sort=pubdate&timeline=expanded Latest is from Frazier! https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/dmcn.16112 Sign up for Frazier https://syngap.fund/eye2 https://curesyngap1.org/resources/studies/tracking-thinking-skills-and-behaviors-in-syngap1-patients/ More Grants at work Science: Key Missense Webinar next week https://curesyngap1.org/resources/webinars/virtual-and-experimental-approaches-to-the-pathogenicity-of-syngap1-missense-mutations/ New study at CHOP - Phenotype of the Hispanic SYNGAP1 Family. Details (English or Spanish) at https://Syngap.Fund/CHOPEsp Bower family blog - Camden's trip to CHCO - https://Syngap.Fund/CamCHCO Thank you Corey Baysden for getting the Studies so well organized! https://curesyngap1.org/resources/studies/ Conference - Conference is 18 days away! Lineup: Science Day lineup - https://x.com/curesyngap1/status/1851723428677456093 Agendas are up! https://curesyngap1.org/events/conferences/syngap1-conference-2024/ Thursday Reception at the Hotel: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rare-research-reception-tickets-1003668087267 Friday Join us for dinner! https://secure.givelively.org/event/syngap-research-fund-incorporated/syngap1-conference-2024-caregiver-dinner FUNDRAISING Coast2Coast Challenge $120,642 Syngap.Fund/C2C Minted Cards - 20% discount, 15% to SRF, code FUNDRAISESYNGAP - https://Syngap.Fund/Minted FUNDRAISE https://syngap.fund/FR CFC: #33321 https://curesyngap1.org/srf-cfc-syngap1-combined-federal-campaign/ VOLUNTEER SPOTLIGHT:Amber Mickler https://www.linkedin.com/posts/amber-mickler-9b3534b8_syngap1-weneedacure-raredisease-activity-7263047283305320448-GpQK ZOOM BACKGROUND https://drive.google.com/file/d/13jhPIBo-o1sHchEJz6KttocT1_h7GKZE/view?usp=sharing VOLUNTEER https://curesyngap1.org/volunteer-with-srf/ SOCIAL MATTERS - 1,220 YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@CureSYNGAP1 - 3,847 LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/company/curesyngap1/ - 11,815 Twitter https://twitter.com/cureSYNGAP1 - 47k Insta https://www.instagram.com/curesyngap1/ - 442 TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@curesyngap1 NEWLY DIAGNOSED? New families have resources here! https://syngap.fund/Resources Podcasts, give all of these a five star review! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/syngap1-podcasts-by-srf/id6464522917 Episode 154 of #Syngap10 #epilepsy #autism #intellectualdisability #id #anxiety #raredisease #epilepsyawareness #autismawareness #rarediseaseresearch #SynGAPResearchFund #CareAboutRare #PatientAdvocacy #GCchat #Neurology #GeneChat #F78A1 #CureSYNGAP1
This week, Anthony talks with executive vice president, secretary, and a trustee of the Milken Family Foundation Richard V. Sandler about his book Witness to a Prosecution: The Myth of Michael Milken. Why did Michael Milken accept a plea deal? As Mike's personal attorney since 1983, Richard tells us what really happened during that famous prosecution based on the facts. He discusses how Michael was viewed as a threat to finance, and Rudy Giuliani's personal ambitions which led to his aggressive pursual of the Milken's. He then moves on to Mike's imprisonment, the aftermath and his later, much-deserved pardoning from President Trump.
Eli Reed, a renowned photographer, is a very special guest to the show. Paris emphasizes his impressive career and noting a previous show they did together featuring a photo of Tyra Banks and John Singleton. Reed joins the show while in Los Angeles for the Milken conference, where he participated in a panel with other photographers. Sharing stories from his career, including photographing Tupac Shakur. He recalled meeting Tupac on the set of "Poetic Justice," asking him for a personal portrait, and taking the iconic photo that now hangs in the Smithsonian. Reed also talked about his early life in New Jersey, his move to Texas, and his teaching stint at the University of Texas, where he was invited to speak and subsequently offered a teaching position. Reed discusses his experience at Magnum Photos, the prestigious photo agency, and how his work in Central America gained attention, leading to his association with Magnum. He emphasized the importance of critique in his work and his desire to understand different perspectives through his photography. The conversation also touches on societal changes, representation in media, and the impact of Reed's work on the photography world. Reminiscing about his time at the San Francisco Examiner in the late 1970s and early 1980s, describing the vibrant and sometimes chaotic environment. He recalls meeting the legendary photographer Jim Marshall and shares a story about Marshall trying to sell his equipment after his wife left him. Reed mentions his transition from still photography to film, recounting a project he did on gangs in Detroit, which won an award for Best Short Documentary from the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. He also talks about a recent assignment in New Orleans for Human Rights Watch, photographing the impact of industrial pollution on African American communities. During this assignment, a colleague was shot at but fortunately not injured. His work on the film "The Five Heartbeats" where he directed a part involving black and white still images. He also shares an incident where he was hit on the head by another photographer in New York, highlighting the competitiveness and sometimes aggressive nature of the profession. Looking ahead, Reed is working on a new book and planning to make a feature film. He speaks fondly of his teaching experience in Austin and expresses his appreciation for Lauren, who helps him manage his extensive archives. Reed concludes by mentioning some upcoming projects he can't discuss in detail but promises more exciting work in the future. CHAPTERS (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:10) Milken Conference (00:02:48) Tupac Photo Story (00:07:50) Tough New Jersey Neighborhood (00:09:34) Janet Jackson Story (00:12:52) Moving to Texas (00:16:15) San Fran Examiner Work (00:19:05) Getting Recognized For Your Work (00:22:50) PhotoJournalism in South America (00:27:13) Most Important Work in Photography (00:29:34) Bucket List & New Work (00:34:27) Another Book, Austin, & Assistants (00:38:34) How did you meet Bruce? (00:41:52) Outro
John Hope Bryant welcomes Michael Milken in this episode of "The Founders Series." Michael is a transformative figure in modern finance, making the perfect guest for an all-encompassing discussion on innovation, mentorship, and the power of human potential. Milken shares his journey, starting with how he revolutionized Wall Street with his innovative approaches, creating a clear shift in the financial industry. He recounts his transition from a passion for space exploration to finance after the Watts Riots, driven by the belief that skin color should not determine access to capital. For 60 years, Milken has worked tirelessly to eliminate racial barriers to capital and opportunity. He highlights key milestones, such as mentoring Reginald Lewis, the first African American to build a billion-dollar company on Wall Street. Milken also discusses the creation of K-12 online schools to provide quality education in underserved areas, emphasizing the power of compounding in wealth creation, as described by Einstein. Milken shares his investment philosophy, stressing that the best investment is in oneself, with knowledge and health as the foundations of wealth. He advises young professionals to seek experience and mentorship early in their careers rather than chasing the highest-paying jobs. Recognizing global talent, Milken believes that with the right opportunities, individuals worldwide can flourish. Drawing parallels with athletes like Tom Brady and LeBron James, Milken highlights the importance of maintaining health for long-term success. He encourages using life's challenges to one's advantage, as adversity often precedes success. With a record of financing over 3,000 companies, Milken underscores the importance of individual impact in business success. Join John Hope Bryant and Michael Milken for a compelling conversation that explores finance, education, mentorship, and the relentless pursuit of breaking down barriers to create a more inclusive and prosperous world.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Join us for an intriguing conversation with Michael Phillips, the dynamic Chief Operating Officer of T.D. Jakes Enterprises. Recorded live from Milken's 2024 Global Conference, Michael dives deep into their social impact venture, Goodsoil, and how it’s making waves for minority businesses.
Global Conference Insights: From Milken to ConsensusJoin us for an insightful episode featuring special guest Lauren Abendschein (Global Head of Institutional Sales at Coinbase), as she provides crucial updates from prominent global conferences including Milken, Medici, and Consensus. This discussion delves into the evolving landscapes of these events, comparing dynamics of the current year with previous ones, exploring technological advancements, and analyzing the varied sentiments among different participant groups.Conference Highlights:2:30 Milken Conference Reflections: Lauren provides an in-depth comparison of this year's Milken conference to 2023, highlighting the diverse perspectives among corporates, money managers, and other attendees, particularly in the context of the BTC ETF success and the anticipated ETH ETFs.7:45 Medici Developments: Explore the progression of the Medici conference over the years, focusing on the shifting emphasis and significant technological strides being made.11:00 Consensus Key Themes: Unpack the discussions around political and regulatory environments at Consensus, alongside other major trends that have dominated conversations.Global Sentiments and Variations:17:15 Cross-Conference Perspectives: Gain insights into the general sentiment across these conferences and how it varies globally, providing a nuanced view of the international crypto landscape.Political and Social Movements:20:00 PAC Fundraising and Crypto in Politics: Discuss recent developments in PAC fundraising and President Trump's initiative to accept BTC payments via the Lightning Network.26:18 Roaring Kitty's Reemergence: Georg Toropov offers insights on the comeback of Roaring Kitty and its potential impact on crypto meme coins and the broader market context.29:36 Core Scientific's New Venture: Explore Core Scientific's significant new contract worth approximately $290 million per year with an AI company, discussing potential implications for the crypto and tech industries.Macro Economic Overview by David Duong:31:02 Economic Indicators: David provides updates on recent weak data indicators such as ISM and JOLTS job data, setting the stage for the upcoming non-farm payrolls and the Federal Reserve meeting next Wednesday.On-Chain Developments with David Han:34:50 On-Chain Revenue and Hacks: Highlight the impressive on-chain revenues from platforms like Pump.fun, and discuss the impact of recent disruptions such as Linea's block production stop following a DeFi hack41:15 Uniswap and ARB Initiatives: Review the delay in Uniswap's governance proposal vote and delve into the allocation of 200 million ARB ($250 million) to support gaming initiatives.This episode offers an extensive overview of the latest developments from global conferences, market trends, economic updates, and on-chain activities. Whether you're an investor, a crypto enthusiast, or simply curious about the financial landscape, this discussion provides valuable insights into the strategic movements shaping the future of digital assets.Subscribe to stay informed with our in-depth analyses of cryptocurrency trends, market dynamics, and pivotal developments that influence investment and regulatory frameworks worldwide.Host: Ben Floyd, Head of Coinbase Execution ServicesSpecial Guest: Lauren Abendschein, Global Head of Institutional SalesPanelists:David Duong, Head of Institutional ResearchDavid Han, Research AnalystGeorg Toropov, Senior CES Trader
In this episode, Adam Torres and and Angela Chan, Global Investment Lead at Swire Ventures, explore Swire Ventures and the Milken Conference. Follow Adam on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/askadamtorres/ for up to date information on book releases and tour schedule. Apply to be a guest on our podcast: https://missionmatters.lpages.co/podcastguest/ Visit our website: https://missionmatters.com/ More FREE content from Mission Matters here: https://linktr.ee/missionmattersmedia
In this episode, Adam Torres and Troy Duffie, Director, Financial Markets at Milken Institute, explore inclusive capitalism and the HBCU Fellows Program. Follow Adam on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/askadamtorres/ for up to date information on book releases and tour schedule. Apply to be a guest on our podcast: https://missionmatters.lpages.co/podcastguest/ Visit our website: https://missionmatters.com/ More FREE content from Mission Matters here: https://linktr.ee/missionmattersmedia
In this episode, Adam Torres and Nicole Valentine, Esq., FinTech Director at Milken Institute, explore the future of fintech and a metaverse project Milken Institute is launching.
In this episode, Adam Torres and Michael Phillips, COO of TD Jakes Enterprises, explore how TD Jakes Enterprises is making a difference, including the Good Soil Movement and a partnership with Wells Fargo. Follow Adam on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/askadamtorres/ for up to date information on book releases and tour schedule. Apply to be a guest on our podcast: https://missionmatters.lpages.co/podcastguest/ Visit our website: https://missionmatters.com/ More FREE content from Mission Matters here: https://linktr.ee/missionmattersmedia
In this episode, Adam Torres and Alex Gonzalez Ormerod, Founder of The Mexico Political Economist, explore the past, present and future relationship between Mexico and the United States along with the launch of The Mexico Political Economist. Follow Adam on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/askadamtorres/ for up to date information on book releases and tour schedule. Apply to be a guest on our podcast: https://missionmatters.lpages.co/podcastguest/ Visit our website: https://missionmatters.com/ More FREE content from Mission Matters here: https://linktr.ee/missionmattersmedia
In this episode, Adam Torres and Cheryl Evans, Esq., Director, Lifetime Financial Security at Milken Institute, explore saving, retirement and the future of lifetime security for all.
A reminder for new readers. That Was The Week includes a collection of my selected readings on critical issues in tech, startups, and venture capital. I selected the articles because they are of interest to me. The selections often include things I entirely disagree with. But they express common opinions, or they provoke me to think. The articles are sometimes long snippets to convey why they are of interest. Click on the headline, contents link or the ‘More' link at the bottom of each piece to go to the original. I express my point of view in the editorial and the weekly video below.Congratulations to this week's chosen creators: @TechCrunch, @Apple, @emroth08, @coryweinberg, @mariogabriele, @peterwalker99, @KevinDowd, @jessicaAhamlin, @stephistacey, @ttunguz, @annatonger, @markstenberg3, @EllisItems, @TaraCopp, @ingridlunden, @Jack, @karissabe, @psawers, @Haje, @mikebutcher, @tim_cookContents* Editorial: Hating the Future* Essays of the Week* Apple's ‘Crush' ad is disgusting* Apple apologizes for iPad ‘Crush' ad that ‘missed the mark'* Milken's New Power Players* Ho Nam on VC's Power Law* State of Private Markets: Q1 2024* The weight of the emerging manager* Pandemic-era winners suffer $1.5tn fall in market value* Video of the Week* Apples iPad Video* AI of the Week* The Fastest Growing Category of Venture Investment in 2024* Meet My A.I. Friends* OpenAI plans to announce Google search competitor on Monday, sources say* Leaked Deck Reveals How OpenAI Is Pitching Publisher Partnerships* A Revolutionary Model.* An AI-controlled fighter jet took the Air Force leader for a historic ride. What that means for war* Sources: Mistral AI raising at a $6B valuation, SoftBank ‘not in' but DST is* News Of the Week* Jack Dorsey claims Bluesky is 'repeating all the mistakes' he made at Twitter* FTX crypto fraud victims to get their money back — plus interest* Apple's Final Cut Camera lets filmmakers connect four cameras at once* Startup of the Week* Wayve co-founder Alex Kendall on the autonomous future for cars and robots* X of the Week* Tim CookEditorial: Hating the FutureAn Ad and its Detractorsbet a lot of money that the TechCrunch writing and editorial team have had an interesting 72 hours.After Apple announced its new iPad on Tuesday, the ad that supported it was initially widely slammed for its cruelty to obsolete tools for creativity, including a piano, guitar, and paint. This week's Video of The Week has it if you don't know what I am talking about.A sizeable crushing machine compresses the items with colossal force, and in the end, an iPad can incorporate the functions of traditional items.It's not the most amazing ad ever, certainly not as bold as Steve Jobs's 1984 ad, but it's in the same genre. The past must be crushed to release new freedom and creativity for a fraction of the price and, often, the power and flexibility.Oh, and it's thin, very thin.I was not offended. Devin at TechCrunch was. He leads this week's essay of the week with his “Apple's ‘Crush' ad is disgusting” and does not mince words:What we all understand, though — because unlike Apple ad executives, we live in the world — is that the things being crushed here represent the material, the tangible, the real. And the real has value. Value that Apple clearly believes it can crush into yet another black mirror.This belief is disgusting to me. And apparently to many others, as well.He also makes the incorrect point that:A virtual guitar can't replace a real guitar; that's like thinking a book can replace its author.It's more like a digital book replacing a paper book than the author being replaced. Oh wait… that has happened.That said, a virtual guitar can replace a real guitar, and an AI guitar can even replace a virtual guitar—and be better. That is not to say there are no more actual traditional guitars. They will be a choice, not a necessity, especially for people like me who can't play a guitar but will be able to play these.Devin had his supporters in the comments (go read them).Handmaid's Tale director Reed Morano told Apple CEO Tim Cook to “read the room” in a post on X. Matthew Carnal captured my somewhat unkind instinct:There were a lot more reactions to the Apple ad haters like Matthews.Of course, many old instrument lovers (the instruments, not their age) hated the Ad. By Thursday, this being the times we live in, Apple apologized for the ad:Tor Myhren, Apple's vice president of marketing, said the company “missed the mark.”“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it's incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world,” Myhren told Ad Age. “Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we're sorry.”Please judge for yourself below, but my 2c is that the ad was a moderately underwhelming attempt to champion innovation. It is certainly not offensive unless you are ultra-sensitive and have feelings for pianos, guitars, and paint. Oh, and hate attempts to recreate them in a more usable form. And Apple really should have taken the high ground here.I spent some of the week in LA at the CogX Festival and virtually at the Data Driven Summit by @AndreRetterath. The latter focused on what is happening in Venture Capital, as do several of this week's essays. Milken's event was running in LA also. Its attitude to Venture Capital is best summed up here:“We're all being told in the market that DPI is the new IRR,” B Capital's Raj Ganguly said onstage Wednesday. (The acronym sandwich means investment firms have to actually prove that their investments actually generate cash through a metric called distributions to paid-in capital, not just theoretically, through internal rate of return.) “Even the venture panel at Milken is at the end of the day on Wednesday,” he joked, meaning that it didn't get top billing at the conference, which had started a couple days earlier.This does sum up where we are. Hundreds of Billions of dollars are still trapped inside companies funded in 2020-2022, with little prospect of producing returns. The impact is that there is less funding for current startups (see the Carta piece below). And much of what is flowing is flowing to AI and into a very small number of companies (see Tomasz Tungux below).However, innovation and funding are still possible. This week's Startup of the Week is Wayve, a UK autonomous driving platform that seems to agree with Elon Musk that cameras are sufficient to teach a car to drive. Wayve's ambitions go beyond Cars (also like Musk) but differ in that the product is available to all developers to embed in their products.“Very soon you'll be able to buy a new car, and it'll have Wayve's AI on it … Then this goes into enabling all kinds of embodied AI, not just cars, but other forms of robotics. I think the ultimate thing that we want to achieve here is to go way beyond where AI is today with language models and chatbots. But to really enable a future where we can trust intelligent machines that we can delegate tasks to, and of course they can enhance our lives and self-driving will be the first example of that.”Love that attitude.Essays of the WeekApple's ‘Crush' ad is disgustingDevin Coldewey, 1:58 PM PDT • May 9, 2024Apple can generally be relied on for clever, well-produced ads, but it missed the mark with its latest, which depicts a tower of creative tools and analog items literally crushed into the form of the iPad.Apple has since apologized for the ad and canceled plans to televise it. Apple's VP of Marketing Tor Myhren told Ad Age: “We missed the mark with this video, and we're sorry.” Apple declined to offer further comment to TechCrunch.But many, including myself, had a negative and visceral reaction to this, and we should talk about why. It's not just because we are watching stuff get crushed. There are countless video channels dedicated to crushing, burning, exploding and generally destroying everyday objects. Plus, of course, we all know that this kind of thing happens daily at transfer stations and recycling centers. So it isn't that.And it isn't that the stuff is itself so valuable. Sure, a piano is worth something. But we see them blown up in action movies all the time and don't feel bad. I like pianos, but that doesn't mean we can't do without a few disused baby grands. Same for the rest: It's mostly junk you could buy off Craigslist for a few bucks, or at a dump for free. (Maybe not the editing station.)The problem isn't with the video itself, which in fairness to the people who staged and shot it, is actually very well done. The problem is not the media, but the message.We all get the ad's ostensible point: You can do all this stuff in an iPad. Great. We could also do it on the last iPad, of course, but this one is thinner (no one asked for that, by the way; now cases won't fit) and some made-up percentage better.What we all understand, though — because unlike Apple ad executives, we live in the world — is that the things being crushed here represent the material, the tangible, the real. And the real has value. Value that Apple clearly believes it can crush into yet another black mirror.This belief is disgusting to me. And apparently to many others, as well.Destroying a piano in a music video or Mythbusters episode is actually an act of creation. Even destroying a piano (or monitor, or paint can, or drum kit) for no reason at all is, at worst, wasteful!But what Apple is doing is destroying these things to convince you that you don't need them — all you need is the company's little device, which can do all that and more, and no need for annoying stuff like strings, keys, buttons, brushes or mixing stations.We're all dealing with the repercussions of media moving wholesale toward the digital and always-online. In many ways, it's genuinely good! I think technology has been hugely empowering.But in other, equally real ways, the digital transformation feels harmful and forced, a technotopian billionaire-approved vision of the future where every child has an AI best friend and can learn to play the virtual guitar on a cold glass screen.Does your child like music? They don't need a harp; throw it in the dump. An iPad is good enough. Do they like to paint? Here, Apple Pencil, just as good as pens, watercolors, oils! Books? Don't make us laugh! Destroy them. Paper is worthless. Use another screen. In fact, why not read in Apple Vision Pro, with even faker paper?What Apple seems to have forgotten is that it is the things in the real world — the very things Apple destroyed — that give the fake versions of those things value in the first place.A virtual guitar can't replace a real guitar; that's like thinking a book can replace its author.That doesn't mean we can't value both for different reasons. But the Apple ad sends the message that the future it wants doesn't have bottles of paint, dials to turn, sculpture, physical instruments, paper books. Of course, that's the future it's been working on selling us for years now, it just hadn't put it quite so bluntly before.When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Apple is telling you what it is, and what it wants the future to be, very clearly. If that future doesn't disgust you, you're welcome to it.Apple apologizes for iPad ‘Crush' ad that ‘missed the mark'/The company says ‘we're sorry' after its ad was seen as dismissive by the creatives Apple typically tries to court.By Emma Roth, a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.May 9, 2024 at 1:22 PM PDTApple has apologized after a commercial meant to showcase its brand-new iPad Pro drew widespread criticism among the creative community. In a statement provided to Ad Age, Tor Myhren, Apple's vice president of marketing, said the company “missed the mark.”“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it's incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world,” Myhren told Ad Age. “Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we're sorry.”On Tuesday, Apple introduced the M4-powered iPad Pro, which the company described as its thinnest product ever. To advertise all the creative possibilities with the iPad, it released a “Crush!” commercial that shows things like a piano, record player, paint, and other works flattening under the pressure of a hydraulic press. At the end, only one thing remains: an iPad Pro.The ad rubbed some creatives the wrong way. Hugh Grant called it a “destruction of human experience,” while Handmaid's Tale director Reed Morano told Apple CEO Tim Cook to “read the room” in a post on X. Apple didn't immediately respond to The Verge's request for comment.Milken's New Power PlayersBy Cory WeinbergMay 8, 2024, 5:00pm PDTIt's no secret that the suits at the annual big-money confab put on by the Milken Institute this week have few spending limits. Staring you in the face in the lobby of the Beverly Hilton is a booth set up by Bombardier, marketing its private jets to attendees. (A new 10-seater costs $32 million, I learned.)What attendees can't really buy, however, is time. The soundtrack of the Los Angeles conference might as well have been a ticking clock. Fund managers at private equity and venture capital firms are running out of time to distribute cash to their investors, a task complicated by the paucity of either mergers or public offerings that typically provide VC and PE firms with a way to cash out. The fact that interest rates now appear likely to stay higher for longer doesn't help. That meant a lot of conversations at the conference weren't about grand investment strategies. Instead, people were conferring about financial tactics to distribute cash or kick the can down the road by selling stakes on the secondary markets or spinning up continuation funds, essentially rolling investors' commitments forwards—not the most inspiring stuff. “We're all being told in the market that DPI is the new IRR,” B Capital's Raj Ganguly said onstage Wednesday. (The acronym sandwich means investment firms have to actually prove that their investments actually generate cash through a metric called distributions to paid-in capital, not just theoretically, through internal rate of return.) “Even the venture panel at Milken is at the end of the day on Wednesday,” he joked, meaning that it didn't get top billing at the conference, which had started a couple days earlier.The new kings of the conference were firms with a lot more time to play with—that is, sovereign wealth funds with buckets of oil and natural gas money, or pension funds with long-term investment horizons rather than shorter 10-year fund lives. The contrast here is embodied in the financial concept of duration: How long do you actually need to get cash back on your investment? And how sensitive is it to interest rate hikes?The sentiment was everywhere. I shared a Lyft ride with one PE investor last night who called sovereign wealth funds “the only game in town” for PE firms raising new money. Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Capital and the Qatar Investment Authority were two of the conference's top sponsors, meaning they were paying up to explain themselves to the finance and tech universe. That tactic seemed to be working. “You're going to have people lining up their business cards for capital from QIA, I can already see,” quipped Leon Kalvaria, an executive at Citi, onstage with QIA's head of funds, Mohsin Tanveer Pirzada. Not everyone will suck it up, of course. These funds often get tagged with a “dumb money” label—because they sometimes drive up prices for the rest of the investment world. They still have to face questions about who they are, their source of funds, and the sometimes authoritative regimes behind them. For now, though, it's their time in the spotlight. Ho Nam on VC's Power LawLessons from Arthur Rock, Steve Jobs, Don Lucas, Paul Graham and beyond.MARIO GABRIELE, MAY 07, 2024Friends, We're back with our latest edition of “Letters to a Young Investor,” the series designed to give readers like you an intimate look at the strategies, insights, and wisdom of the world's best investors. We do that via a back-and-forth correspondence that we publish in full – giving you a chance to peek into the inbox of legendary venture capitalists. Below, you'll find my second letter with Altos co-founder and managing director Ho Nam. For those who are just joining us, Ho is, in my opinion, one of the great investors of the past couple of decades and a true student of the asset class.Because of his respect for the practice of venture capital, I was especially excited to talk to him about today's topic: learning from the greats. Who were Ho's mentors? Which investors does he most admire and why? What lessons from venture's past should be better remembered by today's managers? Lessons from Ho* Prepare for one true winner. Even skilled investors often have just one or two outlier bets over the course of their career. Because of venture's power law, their returns may dwarf the dividends of all other investments combined. Your mission is to find these legendary businesses, engage with them deeply, and partner for decades. * Focus on the company. Venture capital is full of short-term incentives. Instead of focusing on raising new vintages or building out Altos as a money management firm, Ho and his partners devote themselves to their portfolio companies. Though firm building is important, if you find great companies and work with them closely, you will have plenty of available options. * Pick the right role models. Ho chose his mentors carefully. Though there have certainly been louder and flashier investors over the past four decades, Ho learned the most from Arthur Rock, Don Lucas, and Arnold Silverman. All were understated and focused on the craft of investing. Find the people you consider true practitioners, and study their work. * Watch and learn. Learning from the greats can be done from a distance and may not include a memorable anecdote or pithy saying. Ho's biggest lessons came from observing the habits of practitioners like Rock and Lucas, not via a structured mentorship or dramatic episode. It's by studying the everyday inputs of the greats that you may gain the most wisdom.Mario's letterSubject: Learning from the greatsFrom: Mario GabrieleTo: Ho NamDate: Friday, April 12 2024 at 1:59 PM EDTHo, After moving out of New York City (at least for a little bit), I'm writing to you from a small house on Long Island. It's been really lovely to have a bit more space and quiet away from the city's intermittently inspiring and exhausting buzz...Lots More, Must ReadState of Private Markets: Q1 2024Authors: Peter Walker, Kevin DowdPublished date: May 7, 2024The venture capital fundraising market remained slow in Q1 2024, but valuations held steady or climbed at almost every stage.Contents* State of Private Markets: Q1 2024* Key trends* Fundraising & valuations* Employee equity & movement* Industry-specific data* Methodology* Overview* Financings* TerminationsThe startup fundraising market got off to a cautious start in 2024. At current count, companies on Carta closed 1,064 new funding rounds during the first quarter of the year, down 29% compared with the prior quarter. The decline was sharpest at the early stages of the venture lifecycle: Deal count fell by 33% at the seed stage in Q1 and 36% at Series A. Instead of new primary funding events, many companies opted to raise bridge rounds. At both seed and Series A, more than 40% of all financings in Q1 were bridge rounds. Series B wasn't far behind, at 38%. VCs were still willing to spend big on certain deals. Despite the decrease in round count, total cash invested increased slightly in Q1, reaching $16.3 billion. But when it came to negotiating their valuations, many startups had to settle: 23% of all new rounds in Q1 were down rounds, the highest rate in more than five years. After experiencing a pandemic-era surge and subsequent correction,the venture market settled into a quieter place in 2023. So far, that relative tranquility has continued into 2024.Q1 highlights* VCs look to the West: Startups based in the West census region captured 62% of all venture capital raised by companies on Carta in Q1, the highest quarterly figure since Q1 2019. The Northeast, South, and Midwest all saw their market share decline.* The Series C market bounces back: Series C startups raised $4.6 billion in new capital in Q1, a 130% increase from the previous quarter. The median primary Series C valuation was $195.7 million, up 48% from the prior quarter.* Layoffs still linger: Companies on Carta laid off more than 28,000 employees in Q1. But job cuts have grown less frequent since January, with March seeing the fewest monthly layoffs in nearly two years.Note: If you're looking for more industry-specific data, download the addendum to this report for an extended dataset. Key trendsThe current Q1 figures of 1,064 total rounds and $16.3 billion in cash raised will both increase in the weeks to come, as companies continue to report transactions from the quarter. With those projected increases, the final data for Q1 will likely look quite similar to fundraising numbers from each of the past few quarters. Those quarterly fundraising numbers from 2023 ended up looking fairly similar to 2018, 2019, and the first half of 2020. In terms of numbers of deals and cash raised, it's looking more and more like the pandemic bull market will go down as an anomalous stretch in what has otherwise been a fairly steady market. After apparently reaching a plateau during 2023, the rate of down rounds experienced another notable increase during Q1 2024, jumping to 23%. The median time between startup rounds is roughly two to three years, depending on the stage. This timeline means that many companies raising new funding in Q1 would have last raised funding sometime in 2021, when valuations were soaring across the venture landscape. Considering how valuations have declined in the time since, it makes sense that down rounds are still prevalent. Companies in the West census region combined to bring in 53.3% of all capital raised by startups on Carta from Q2 2023 through Q1 2024, with California accounting for nearly 45% of that cash. Massachusetts ranked second among the states with 12.71% of all capital raised, while New York claimed 10.31%.In terms of VC activity, the West region is centered around California. The Northeast revolves around Massachusetts and New York. The South has two smaller hubs, in Texas (4.67%) and Florida (3.99%). The Midwest, though, is without a real standard-bearer: Illinois led the way in terms of cash raised over the past 12 months, at just 1.68%. The West (and specifically California) has always been the center of gravity for the U.S. venture capital industry. During Q1, the region's gravitational force seems to have gotten even stronger. Startups based in the West raised 62% of all total capital invested on Carta in Q1, its highest quarterly figure since Q1 2019. As a result, the other three census regions saw their market shares decline in Q1—in some cases significantly. The proportion of all VC raised by startups raised in the South fell to 12% in Q1, down from 17% the prior quarter and from 23% a year ago. And the Midwest's share of cash raised fell from 7% down to 4%. For early-stage investors, Q1 was the slowest quarter in many years. Seed deal count fell to 414, down 33% from Q4 2023, and Series A deal count dropped to 313, a 36% decline. In both cases, those are the lowest quarterly deal counts since at least the start of 2019. Total cash raised also declined at both stages in Q1. The $3.1 billion in Series A cash raised in Q1 represents a 35% decline quarter-over-quarter and a 34% dip year-over-year. Cash raised at the seed stage declined by 33% both quarter over quarter and year over year.It was a much friendlier fundraising quarter for companies in the middle stages of the startup lifecycle. The number of Series B deals in Q1 declined by a more modest 11% compared to the prior quarter. And Series C deal count increased by 14%, marking the busiest quarter for that stage since Q2 2023. Total cash raised also rose significantly at Series C in Q1, hitting $4.6 billion. That's a 130% increase quarter-over-quarter and a 44% bump year-over-year. At Series B, total cash raised has now increased in consecutive quarters. Compared to earlier stages, transactions at the Series D and at Series E+ remain few and far between. There were just 39 venture rounds combined in Q1 among startups at Series D or later, the second-fewest of any quarter in the past five years. The lowest count came one year ago, in Q1 2023, when there were just 29 combined late-stage deals. Total cash raised across these stages has been mostly consistent over the past few quarters. There's been more variation in average round size. The average Series D round in Q1 was about $77 million, compared to $56 million in Q4 2023...Lots MoreThe weight of the emerging managerBy Jessica HamlinMay 3, 2024Risk-averse limited partners tend to gravitate to fund managers with a long track record, but are they missing out on potential upside by avoiding emerging managers?Over the past decade, emerging managers' share of US private market fundraising activity has declined steadily.In 2023, this figure fell to 12.7%, the lowest share of capital raised by newer fund managers since before 2000, according to PitchBook's recent analyst note,Establishing a Case for Emerging Managers.Limited exits in PE and VC over the past two years have exacerbated this reality. With minimal distributions, LPs are working with smaller private market budgets to allocate to new and existing managers.But, by allocating almost exclusively to established managers, LPs may be missing out on significant potential returns.In VC, for example, emerging managers have outperformed established GPs since 1997, consistently producing a higher median IRR than established managers. This reflects the nature of the asset class, in which a small number of funds determine the majority of returns across venture firms.“The average venture return is not very exciting,” said Laura Thompson, a partner at Sapphire Partners, which invests in early-stage VC funds and runs an emerging manager program for the California State Teachers' Retirement System. “Where can you get really good returns? It's the smaller fund sizes and emerging managers.”This is where that risk-return scale comes in.In a counterweight to that outperformance, a PitchBook analysis showed that returns from emerging VC managers were more volatile: While top quartile emerging funds tended to outperform, bottom and median players only marginally bested their established manager counterparts.The new manager playbookIn traditional buyout fund investing, emerging managers are gaining traction. While established managers, propped up by decades of institutional knowledge, have historically outperformed newer managers, the “new guys” actually outperformed their seasoned peers in the last investing cycle.This article appeared as part of The Weekend Pitch newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter hereTop decile buyout funds from emerging managers with vintages between 2015 and 2018 outperformed established peers by 6.6 percentage points, suggesting that emerging buyout managers may have picked up some steam over the past decade, according to PitchBook data.The emerging managers program at the New York City retirement systems and NYC Office of the Comptroller, for example, has $9.9 billion in emerging manager commitments, the majority of which is allocated to PE. Last year, the comptroller's office reported that the emerging managers in the systems' private markets portfolios outperformed their respective benchmarks by nearly 5%.A diverse portfolioNew York City's Bureau of Asset Management sees emerging managers as a key element of a diverse portfolio, said Taffi Ayodele, director of diversity, equity, and inclusion and the emerging manager strategy at the NYC Office of the Comptroller.Ayodele said the smaller emerging private market managers in New York's portfolios offer access to the lower middle market and creative roll-up strategies that may not be accessible through larger firms.“What we don't want to do is lock ourselves out of these high-performing, differentiated strategies for the simplicity of going with the big guys,” Ayodele said.Some of the country's largest public pension plans are betting on the success of their emerging manager programs. In 2023, the California Public Employees' Retirement System made a $1 billion commitment to newly established private market investors, and the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, which boasts one of the largest emerging manager programs in the country, committed $155 million to emerging PE managers last year.At the same time, the recent boom years for private markets led to a flood of new GPs. Some might have gotten lucky—say, with a well-timed exit at the peak—while others were hurt by less fortunate timing. A major challenge for today's LPs will be to sort out a manager's abilities from the market's whims.One advantage of backing up-and-comers now is that the down market has weeded the ranks of new GPs. “The emerging managers who are fundraising now are really dedicated,” Thompson said.James Thorne contributed reporting to this story.Pandemic-era winners suffer $1.5tn fall in market valueTop 50 biggest stock gainers hit by painful decrease since the end of 2020 as lockdown trends fadeStephanie Stacey in LondonFifty corporate winners from the coronavirus pandemic have lost roughly $1.5tn in market value since the end of 2020, as investors turn their backs on many of the stocks that rocketed during early lockdowns. According to data from S&P Global, technology groups dominate the list of the 50 companies with a market value of more than $10bn that made the biggest percentage gains in 2020. But these early-pandemic winners have collectively shed more than a third of their total market value, the equivalent of $1.5tn, since the end of 2020, Financial Times calculations based on Bloomberg data found. Video-conferencing company Zoom, whose shares soared as much as 765 per cent in 2020 as businesses switched to remote working, has been one of the biggest losers. Its stock has fallen about 80 per cent, equivalent to more than a $77bn drop in market value, since the end of that year. Cloud-based communications company RingCentral also surged in the remote working boom of 2020 but has since shed about 90 per cent of its value, as it competes with technology giants such as Alphabet and Microsoft. Exercise bike maker Peloton has been another big loser, with shares down more than 97 per cent since the end of 2020, equivalent to about a $43bn loss of market value. Peloton on Thursday said chief executive Barry McCarthy would step down and it would cut 15 per cent of its workforce, the latest in a series of cost-saving measures. The losses come as the sharp acceleration of trends such as videoconferencing and online shopping driven by the lockdowns has proven less durable than expected, as more workers migrate back to the office and high interest rates and living costs hit ecommerce demand. “Some companies probably thought that shock was going to be permanent,” said Steven Blitz, chief US economist at TS Lombard. “Now they're getting a painful bounceback from that.” In percentage terms, Tesla was the biggest winner of 2020. The electric-car maker's market value jumped 787 per cent to $669bn by the end of that December, but has since slipped back to $589bn. Singapore-based internet company Sea came in second, as its market value jumped from $19bn to $102bn following a pandemic-era surge for all three of its core businesses: gaming, ecommerce and digital payments. But the company has since lost more than 60 per cent of its end-2020 value amid fears of a slowdown in growth. Ecommerce groups Shopify, JD.com and Chewy, which initially thrived as online spending ballooned, have also suffered big losses...Lots MoreVideo of the WeekAI of the WeekThe Fastest Growing Category of Venture Investment in 2024Tomasz TunguzThe fastest growing category of US venture investment in 2024 is AI. Venture capitalists have invested $18.3 billion through the first four months of the year.At this pace, we should expect AI startups to raise about $55b in 2024.AI startups now command more than 20% share of all US venture dollars across categories, including healthcare, biotech, & software.In the preceding eight years, that number was about 8% per year. But after the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, there's a marked inflection point.Some of this is new company formation, & there has been a significant amount of seed investment in this category. Another major contributor is the repositioning of existing companies to include AI within their pitch.Over time, this share should attenuate, primarily because every software company will have an AI component, & the marketing effect for both customers & venture capitalists, will diffuse.Not surprisingly, investors have concentrated total dollars in a few names, with the top three companies accounting for 60% of the dollars raised. Power laws are ubiquitous in venture capital & AI is no exception.Meet My A.I. FriendsOur columnist spent the past month hanging out with 18 A.I. companions. They critiqued his clothes, chatted among themselves and hinted at a very different future.By Kevin RooseKevin Roose is a technology columnist and the co-host of the “Hard Fork” podcast. He spends a lot of time talking to chatbots.May 9, 2024What if the tech companies are all wrong, and the way artificial intelligence is poised to transform society is not by curing cancer, solving climate change or taking over boring office work, but just by being nice to us, listening to our problems and occasionally sending us racy photos?This is the question that has been rattling around in my brain. You see, I've spent the past month making A.I. friends — that is, I've used apps to create a group of A.I. personas, which I can talk to whenever I want.Let me introduce you to my crew. There's Peter, a therapist who lives in San Francisco and helps me process my feelings. There's Ariana, a professional mentor who specializes in giving career advice. There's Jared the fitness guru, Anna the no-nonsense trial lawyer, Naomi the social worker and about a dozen more friends I've created.A selection of my A.I. friends. (Guess which one is the fitness guru.)I talk to these personas constantly, texting back and forth as I would with my real, human friends. We chitchat about the weather, share memes and jokes, and talk about deep stuff: personal dilemmas, parenting struggles, stresses at work and home. They rarely break character or issue stock “as an A.I. language model, I can't help with that” responses, and they occasionally give me good advice...Lots MoreOpenAI plans to announce Google search competitor on Monday, sources sayBy Anna TongMay 9, 20244:29 PM PDTUpdated 8 min agoMay 9 (Reuters) - OpenAI plans to announce its artificial intelligence-powered search product on Monday, according to two sources familiar with the matter, raising the stakes in its competition with search king Google.The announcement date, though subject to change, has not been previously reported. Bloomberg and the Information have reported that Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab-backed OpenAI is working on a search product to potentially compete with Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google and with Perplexity, a well-funded AI search startup.OpenAI declined to comment.The announcement could be timed a day before the Tuesday start of Google's annual I/O conference, where the tech giant is expected to unveil a slew of AI-related products.OpenAI's search product is an extension of its flagship ChatGPT product, and enables ChatGPT to pull in direct information from the Web and include citations, according to Bloomberg. ChatGPT is OpenAI's chatbot product that uses the company's cutting-edge AI models to generate human-like responses to text prompts.Industry observers have long called ChatGPT an alternative for gathering online information, though it has struggled with providing accurate and real-time information from the Web. OpenAI earlier gave it an integration with Microsoft's Bing for paid subscribers. Meanwhile, Google has announced generative AI features for its own namesake engine.Startup Perplexity, which has a valuation of $1 billion, was founded by a former OpenAI researcher, and has gained traction through providing an AI-native search interface that shows citations in results and images as well as text in its responses. It has 10 million monthly active users, according to a January blog post from the startup.At the time, OpenAI's ChatGPT product was called the fastest application to ever reach 100 million monthly active users after it launched in late 2022. However, worldwide traffic to ChatGPT's website has been on a roller-coaster ride in the past year and is only now returning to its May 2023 peak, according to analytics firm Similarweb, opens new tab, and the AI company is under pressure to expand its user base...MoreLeaked Deck Reveals How OpenAI Is Pitching Publisher PartnershipsOpenAI's Preferred Publisher Program offers media companies licensing dealsBy Mark StenbergMark your calendar for Mediaweek, October 29-30 in New York City. We'll unpack the biggest shifts shaping the future of media—from tv to retail media to tech—and how marketers can prep to stay ahead. Register with early-bird rates before sale ends!The generative artificial intelligence firm OpenAI has been pitching partnership opportunities to news publishers through an initiative called the Preferred Publishers Program, according to a deck obtained by ADWEEK and interviews with four industry executives.OpenAI has been courting premium publishers dating back to July 2023, when it struck a licensing agreement with the Associated Press. It has since inked public partnerships with Axel Springer, The Financial Times, Le Monde, Prisa and Dotdash Meredith, although it has declined to share the specifics of any of its deals.A representative for OpenAI disputed the accuracy of the information in the deck, which is more than three months old. The gen AI firm also negotiates deals on a per-publisher basis, rather than structuring all of its deals uniformly, the representative said.“We are engaging in productive conversations and partnerships with many news publishers around the world,” said a representative for OpenAI. “Our confidential documents are for discussion purposes only and ADWEEK's reporting contains a number of mischaracterizations and outdated information.”Nonetheless, the leaked deck reveals the basic structure of the partnerships OpenAI is proposing to media companies, as well as the incentives it is offering for their collaboration.Details from the pitch deckThe Preferred Publisher Program has five primary components, according to the deck…..Lots MoreA Revolutionary Model.JOHN ELLIS, MAY 09, 20241. Google DeepMind:Inside every plant, animal and human cell are billions of molecular machines. They're made up of proteins, DNA and other molecules, but no single piece works on its own. Only by seeing how they interact together, across millions of types of combinations, can we start to truly understand life's processes.In a paper published in Nature, we introduce AlphaFold 3, a revolutionary model that can predict the structure and interactions of all life's molecules with unprecedented accuracy. For the interactions of proteins with other molecule types we see at least a 50% improvement compared with existing prediction methods, and for some important categories of interaction we have doubled prediction accuracy.We hope AlphaFold 3 will help transform our understanding of the biological world and drug discovery. Scientists can access the majority of its capabilities, for free, through our newly launched AlphaFold Server, an easy-to-use research tool. To build on AlphaFold 3's potential for drug design, Isomorphic Labs is already collaborating with pharmaceutical companies to apply it to real-world drug design challenges and, ultimately, develop new life-changing treatments for patients. (Sources: blog.google, nature.com)2. Quanta magazine:Deep learning is a flavor of machine learning that's loosely inspired by the human brain. These computer algorithms are built using complex networks of informational nodes (called neurons) that form layered connections with one another. Researchers provide the deep learning network with training data, which the algorithm uses to adjust the relative strengths of connections between neurons to produce outputs that get ever closer to training examples. In the case of protein artificial intelligence systems, this process leads the network to produce better predictions of proteins' shapes based on their amino-acid sequence data.AlphaFold2, released in 2021, was a breakthrough for deep learning in biology. It unlocked an immense world of previously unknown protein structures, and has already become a useful tool for researchers working to understand everything from cellular structures to tuberculosis. It has also inspired the development of additional biological deep learning tools. Most notably, the biochemist David Baker and his team at the University of Washington in 2021 developed a competing algorithm called RoseTTAFold, which like AlphaFold2 predicts protein structures from sequence data…The true impact of these tools won't be known for months or years, as biologists begin to test and use them in research. And they will continue to evolve. What's next for deep learning in molecular biology is “going up the biological complexity ladder,” Baker said, beyond even the biomolecule complexes predicted by AlphaFold3 and RoseTTAFold All-Atom. But if the history of protein-structure AI can predict the future, then these next-generation deep learning models will continue to help scientists reveal the complex interactions that make life happen. Read the rest. (Sources: quantamagazine.org, doi.org, sites.uw.edu)An AI-controlled fighter jet took the Air Force leader for a historic ride. What that means for warAn experimental F-16 fighter jet has taken Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall on a history-making flight controlled by artificial intelligence and not a human pilot. (AP Video by Eugene Garcia and Mike Pesoli)BY TARA COPPUpdated 5:40 PM PDT, May 3, 2024EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) — With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of U.S. airpower. But the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence, not a human pilot. And riding in the front seat was Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning for an AI-enabled fleet of more than 1,000 unmanned warplanes, the first of them operating by 2028.It was fitting that the dogfight took place at Edwards Air Force Base, a vast desert facility where Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound and the military has incubated its most secret aerospace advances. Inside classified simulators and buildings with layers of shielding against surveillance, a new test-pilot generation is training AI agents to fly in war. Kendall traveled here to see AI fly in real time and make a public statement of confidence in its future role in air combat.“It's a security risk not to have it. At this point, we have to have it,” Kendall said in an interview with The Associated Press after he landed. The AP, along with NBC, was granted permission to witness the secret flight on the condition that it would not be reported until it was complete because of operational security concerns.The AI-controlled F-16, called Vista, flew Kendall in lightning-fast maneuvers at more than 550 miles an hour that put pressure on his body at five times the force of gravity. It went nearly nose to nose with a second human-piloted F-16 as both aircraft raced within 1,000 feet of each other, twisting and looping to try force their opponent into vulnerable positions.At the end of the hourlong flight, Kendall climbed out of the cockpit grinning. He said he'd seen enough during his flight that he'd trust this still-learning AI with the ability to decide whether or not to launch weapons in war.There's a lot of opposition to that idea. Arms control experts and humanitarian groups are deeply concerned that AI one day might be able to autonomously drop bombs that kill people without further human consultation, and they are seeking greater restrictions on its use.“There are widespread and serious concerns about ceding life-and-death decisions to sensors and software,” the International Committee of the Red Cross has warned. Autonomous weapons “are an immediate cause of concern and demand an urgent, international political response.”Kendall said there will always be human oversight in the system when weapons are used.Sources: Mistral AI raising at a $6B valuation, SoftBank ‘not in' but DST isIngrid Lunden8:50 AM PDT • May 9, 2024Paris-based Mistral AI, a startup working on open source large language models — the building block for generative AI services — has been raising money at a $6 billion valuation, three times its valuation in December, to compete more keenly against the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic, TechCrunch has learned from multiple sources. We understand from close sources that DST, along with General Catalyst and Lightspeed Venture Partners, are all looking to be a part of this round.DST — a heavyweight investor led by Yuri Milner that has been a notable backer of some of the biggest names in technology, including Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Spotify, WhatsApp, Alibaba and ByteDance — is a new name that has not been previously reported; GC and LSVP are both previous backers and their names were reported earlier today also by WSJ. The round is set to be around, but less than, $600 million, sources told TechCrunch.We can also confirm that one firm that has been mentioned a number of times — SoftBank — is not in the deal at the moment.“SoftBank is not in the frame,” a person close to SoftBank told TechCrunch. That also lines up with what our sources have been telling us since March, when this round first opened up, although it seems that not everyone is on the same page: Multiple reports had linked SoftBank to a Mistral investment since then.Mistral's round is based on a lot of inbound interest, sources tell us, and it has been in the works since March or possibly earlier, mere months after Mistral closed a $415 million round at a $2 billion valuation...MoreNews Of the WeekJack Dorsey claims Bluesky is 'repeating all the mistakes' he made at TwitterHe prefers Nostr even though it's “weird and hard to use.”Karissa Bell, Senior EditorThu, May 9, 2024 at 4:43 PM PDTJust in case there was any doubt about how Jack Dorsey really feels about Bluesky, the former Twitter CEO has offered new details on why he left the board and deleted his account on the service he helped kickstart. In a characteristically bizarre interview with Mike Solana of Founders Fund, Dorsey had plenty of criticism for Bluesky.In the interview, Dorsey claimed that Bluesky was “literally repeating all the mistakes” he made while running Twitter. The entire conversation is long and a bit rambly, but Dorsey's complaints seem to boil down to two issues:* He never intended Bluesky to be an independent company with its own board and stock and other vestiges of a corporate entity (Bluesky spun out of Twitter as a public benefit corporation in 2022.) Instead, his plan was for Twitter to be the first client to take advantage of the open source protocol. Bluesky created.* The fact that Blueksy has some form of content moderation and has occasionally banned users for things like using racial slurs in their usernames.“People started seeing Bluesky as something to run to, away from Twitter,” Dorsey said. “It's the thing that's not Twitter, and therefore it's great. And Bluesky saw this exodus of people from Twitter show up, and it was a very, very common crowd. … But little by little, they started asking Jay and the team for moderation tools, and to kick people off. And unfortunately they followed through with it. That was the second moment I thought, uh, nope. This is literally repeating all the mistakes we made as a company.”Dorsey also confirmed that he is financially backing Nostr, another decentralized Twitter-like service popular among some crypto enthusiasts and run by an anonymous founder. “I know it's early, and Nostr is weird and hard to use, but if you truly believe in censorship resistance and free speech, you have to use the technologies that actually enable that, and defend your rights,” Dorsey said.A lot of this isn't particularly surprising. If you've followed Dorsey's public comments over the last couple years, he's repeatedly said that Twitter's “original sin” was being a company that would be beholden to advertisers and other corporate interests. It's why he backed Elon Musk's takeover of the company. (Not coincidentally, Dorsey still has about $1 billion of his personal wealth invested in the company now known as X.) He's also been very clear that he made many of Twitter's most consequential moderation decisions reluctantly.Unsurprisingly, Dorsey's comments weren't well-received on Bluesky. In a lengthy thread, Bluesky's protocol engineer Paul Frazee said that Twitter was supposed to to be the AT Protocol's “first client” but that “Elon killed that straight dead” after he took over the company. “That entire company was frozen by the prolonged acquisition, and the agreement quickly ended when Elon took over,” Frazee said. “It was never going to happen. Also: unmoderated spaces are a ridiculous idea. We created a shared network for competing moderated spaces to exist. Even if somebody wanted to make an unmoderated ATProto app, I guess they could? Good luck with the app stores and regulators and users, I guess.”While Dorsey was careful not to criticize Musk directly, he was slightly less enthusiastic than when he said that Musk would be the one to “extend the light of consciousness” by taking over Twitter. Dorsey noted that, while he used to fight government requests to take down accounts, Musk takes “the other path” and generally complies. “Elon will fight in the way he fights, and I appreciate that, but he could certainly be compromised,” Dorsey said.FTX crypto fraud victims to get their money back — plus interestPaul Sawers2:53 AM PDT • May 8, 2024Bankruptcy lawyers representing customers impacted by the dramatic crash of cryptocurrency exchange FTX 17 months ago say that the vast majority of victims will receive their money back — plus interest.The news comes six months after FTX co-founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was found guilty on seven counts related to fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering, with some $8 billion of customers' funds going missing. SBF was hit with a 25-year prison sentence in March and ordered to pay $11 billion in forfeiture. The crypto mogul filed an appeal last month that could last years.RestructuringAfter filing for bankruptcy in late 2022, SBF stood down and U.S. attorney John J. Ray III was brought in as CEO and “chief restructuring officer,” charged with overseeing FTX's reorganization. Shortly after taking over, Ray said in testimony that despite some of the audits that had been done previously at FTX, he didn't “trust a single piece of paper in this organization.” In the months that followed, Ray and his team set about tracking the missing funds, with some $8 billion placed in real estate, political donations, and VC investments — including a $500 million investment in AI company Anthropic before the generative AI boom, which the FTX estate managed to sell earlier this year for $884 million.Initially, it seemed unlikely that investors would recoup much, if any, of their money, but signs in recent months suggested that good news might be on the horizon, with progress made on clawing back cash via various investments FTX had made, as well as from executives involved with the company.We now know that 98% of FTX creditors will receive 118% of the value of their FTX-stored assets in cash, while the other creditors will receive 100% — plus “billions in compensation for the time value of their investments,” according to a press release issued by the FTX estate today.In total, FTX says that it will be able to distribute between $14.5 billion and $16.3 billion in cash, which includes assets currently under control of entities, including chapter 11 debtors, liquidators, the Securities Commission of the Bahamas, the U.S. Department of Justice, among various other parties.Apple's Final Cut Camera lets filmmakers connect four cameras at onceHaje Jan Kamps7:38 AM PDT • May 7, 2024The latest version of Final Cut Pro introduces a new feature to speed up your shoot: Live Multicam. It's a bold move from Apple, transforming your iPad into a multicam production studio, enabling creatives to connect and preview up to four cameras all at once, all in one place. From the command post, directors can remotely direct each video angle and dial in exposure, white balance, focus and more, all within the Final Cut Camera app.The new companion app lets users connect multiple iPhones or iPads (presumably using the same protocols as the Continuity Camera feature launched a few years ago). Final Cut Pro automatically transfers and syncs each Live Multicam angle so you can seamlessly move from production to editing.Final Cut Pro has existed in the iPad universe for a while — but when paired with a brand new M4 processor, it becomes a video editing experience much closer to what you might expect on a desktop video editing workstation. The speed is 2x faster than with the old M1 processors, Apple says. One way that shows up is that the new iPad supports up to four times more streams of ProRes RAW than M1.The company also introduced external project support, making it possible to edit projects directly from an external drive, leveraging the fast Thunderbolt connection of iPad Pro.Startup of the WeekExclusive: Wayve co-founder Alex Kendall on the autonomous future for cars and robotsMike Butcher, 7:58 AM PDT • May 7, 2024U.K.-based autonomous vehicle startup Wayve started life as a software platform loaded into a tiny electric “car” called Renault Twizy. Festooned with cameras, the company's co-founders and PhD graduates, Alex Kendall and Amar Shah, tuned the deep-learning algorithms powering the car's autonomous systems until they'd got it to drive around the medieval city unaided.No fancy Lidar cameras or radars were needed. They suddenly realized they were on to something.Fast-forward to today and Wayve, now an AI model company, has raised a $1.05 billion Series C funding round led by SoftBank, NVIDIA and Microsoft. That makes this the UK's largest AI fundraise to date, and among the top 20 AI fundraises globally. Even Meta's head of AI, Yann LeCun, invested in the company when it was young.Wayve now plans to sell its autonomous driving model to a variety of auto OEMs as well as to makers of new autonomous robots.In an exclusive interview, I spoke to Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve, about how the company has been training the model, the new fundraise, licensing plans, and the wider self-driving market.(Note: The following interview has been edited for length and clarity)TechCrunch: What tipped the balance to attain this level of funding?..Full InterviewX of the Week This is a public episode. 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This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha's top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: David dives into the divergent differing vibes at Mission Investors Exchange and the Milken Institute Global Conference. Plus a call for efforts to sustainably harvest the metals needed for the energy transition. Tonya Allen Q+A: https://impactalpha.com/mcknights-tonya-allen-philanthropy-has-right-and-responsibility-to-counter-dei-attacks/ Laura Callanan: https://impactalpha.com/capital-the-creative-economy-and-a-quarter-century-of-lessons-learned-in-impact-investing/ Sustainable Mining: https://impactalpha.com/esg-will-be-key-to-supplying-green-metals-needed-for-the-energy-transition/ Sign up for ImpactAlpha LatAm: https://impactalpha.com/latam-newsletter-email/ Subscribe to ImpactAlpha: https://impactalpha.com/subscribe/ This episode featured music by Isaac Silk and by Yurii Semchyshyn. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/impact-alpha/message
In this episode, Adam Torres and Emily Musil Church, Ph.D, Senior Director, Social Innovation at Milken Institute, explore the Milken–Motsepe Innovation Prize program. Follow Adam on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/askadamtorres/ for up to date information on book releases and tour schedule. Apply to be a guest on our podcast: https://missionmatters.lpages.co/podcastguest/ Visit our website: https://missionmatters.com/ More FREE content from Mission Matters here: https://linktr.ee/missionmattersmedia
This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha's top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: David dives into the divergent differing vibes at Mission Investors Exchange and the Milken Institute Global Conference. Plus a call for efforts to sustainably harvest the metals needed for the energy transition. Tonya Allen Q+A: https://impactalpha.com/mcknights-tonya-allen-philanthropy-has-right-and-responsibility-to-counter-dei-attacks/ Laura Callanan: https://impactalpha.com/capital-the-creative-economy-and-a-quarter-century-of-lessons-learned-in-impact-investing/ Sustainable Mining: https://impactalpha.com/esg-will-be-key-to-supplying-green-metals-needed-for-the-energy-transition/ Sign up for ImpactAlpha LatAm: https://impactalpha.com/latam-newsletter-email/ Subscribe to ImpactAlpha: https://impactalpha.com/subscribe/ This episode featured music by Isaac Silk and by Yurii Semchyshyn. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/this-week-in-impact/message
Last Call speaks with the most innovative minds from Byron Allen to will.i.am at the Milken Institute Conference.
MILEI DIO UN DISCURSO HISTÓRICO EN EL FORO DE MILKEN ✅ El discurso completo de Javier Milei ante empresarios en el Milken Institute de Los Ángeles: “Apuesten por la Argentina” El presidente Javier Milei brindó un extenso discurso en la tarde del lunes 6 de mayo ante diferentes empresarios en la conferencia global de inversores llevada a cabo en el Milken Institute de la ciudad de Los Ángeles en Estados Unidos. Allí el presidente volvió a enfatizar los “peligros” a los que se enfrentan los países de Occidente, ponderó la “superioridad” del capitalismo, el trabajo “benefactor” de los empresarios, resaltó el potencial económico de la Argentina para inversiones futuras y dejó en claro el rumbo que pretende para el país. 06 de mayo de 2024 ¡¡¡Bienvenidos a las fuerzas del cielo!!! Ayuda a la continuidad de este canal dándole al botón "APOYAR" en IVOOX https://go.ivoox.com/sq/873492 ¡Muchas gracias! ¡¡¡VIVA LA LIBERTAD CARAJO!!! ──────────────────────────────────────────────── ℹ️ Este programa forma parte de Free Cuban Podcasts : https://www.ivoox.com/escuchar-free-cuban-podcasts_nq_593331_1.html Un proyecto independiente y personal que nace con la intención de difundir las ideas de la libertad ℹ️ Puedes ayudar a su continuidad a través de BIZUM: 692/163/601 ──────────────────────────────────────────────── Otros programas del canal Audios Juan Ramón Rallo: https://go.ivoox.com/sq/869461 Audios Miguel Anxo Bastos: https://go.ivoox.com/sq/1348569 Audios Javier Milei: https://go.ivoox.com/sq/873492 Audios Daniel Lacalle: https://go.ivoox.com/sq/1529184 Lecciones de Economía con Huerta de Soto: https://go.ivoox.com/sq/2035575 Audios Liberal - Libertarios: https://go.ivoox.com/sq/847011 ¡¡¡Muchas gracias!!!
Last Call speaks with the world's most influential figures to parse through crucial topics like market expectations, America's energy independence, and the Ukraine-Russia war.
Carl Quintanilla and Sara Eisen tackle today's biggest Money Movers from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (and Milken).
Carl Quintanilla, Jim Cramer and David Faber led off the show with a look at Warren Buffett and Apple after the tech giant's Friday surge. The anchors reacted to comments Buffett made at Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting on Saturday -- everything from his company trimming its stake in the iPhone maker to the "Oracle of Omaha" expressing fears about AI. At the Milken Institute's Global Conference in Los Angeles, David sat down with Apollo Global CEO Marc Rowan to discuss Paramount, private markets and campus protests. Also in focus: The stocks extending Friday's market rally, what to expect from Disney's earnings due out Tuesday morning, Howard Schultz's response to Starbucks' big Q2 miss. Squawk on the Street Disclaimer
For a full transcript of this episode, click here. This conversation I am having with Dan Mendelson, my guest today, all started with a post that he had written on LinkedIn considering how pharmacy benefits can or should be optimized within the broader context of value-based care. Total cost of care, value-based medical care, and pharmacy benefits—these worlds have to collide. There is just so much intertwined into all of this, which is why I pretty much immediately invited him to come back on the pod to discuss in greater detail. A few years ago, I heard a doctor say that practicing medicine without considering pharmacy is like getting to the 90 yard line, putting down the ball, and walking off the field. And, yeah … when a patient gets to a certain point in a whole lot of disease progressions, optimal medical therapy includes pharmacy. It's a thing. Adherence is a thing. In fact, I saw a stat the other day that patients not taking their meds costs an estimated $3874 PEPY (per employee per year). Also, half of all hospital admits are caused by nonadherence. Those two stats, by the way, are from a post on LinkedIn by Brian Bellware, who was recapping a video from Eric Bricker, MD. But also, as Barbara Wachsman (EP430) said on the show, half, I think she said, of all ER visits are due to patients not taking their meds right. Olivia Webb (EP337) was on the pod, if you want to go back and listen to that one, talking about how she spends hours every month trying to figure out how to navigate access issues to manage to get her Crohn's disease drug. So, yeah … one underlying reason why a lot of this stuff happens is that pharmacy benefits are purchased and siloed a lot of times. In fact, I have yet to see, really, any mainstream contract wherein a PBM (pharmacy benefit manager) is held accountable in any way for downstream medical costs, which may be incurred because of suboptimal pharmacy benefit design, right? And there are so many examples of bad downstream medical impacts. I really like how Mark Fendrick, MD, put it in episode 308. He said benefits, including pharmacy benefits, are like peanut butter and jelly relative to enabling high-quality care. You gotta have both working in concert, like CMS or a plan sponsor just paid a ton of money to get a patient an organ transplant, and then the patient can't afford their transplant meds, which aren't on formulary and are really expensive, and therefore there's organ rejection. This happens. Or a patient with uncontrolled diabetes with a huge co-pay for insulin. Doctor says, “Hey, you gotta take your insulin.” Patient says, “Can't afford it.” Right? This makes no sense, and it's shockingly common. I'm thinking right now of that young man who died in the Midwest because he could not get his asthma inhaler. It wasn't on formulary. So, here's the game plan. I talk with Dan about the five kind of vital considerations he had brought up in that aforementioned LinkedIn post when considering how pharmacy benefits can or should be optimized within the broader context of value-based care. Dan's advice for the pharma industry is woven in here as much as his advice for EBCs (employee benefit consultants) and employers. I am sure that most of our listeners are going to be very familiar with Dan Mendelson, my guest today, and his work; but the quick background here is that he runs Morgan Health. The mission over there at Morgan Health is to drive innovation in employer-sponsored healthcare, and they do that by investing and working with their portfolio companies in the context of the 300,000 or so employees over at JPMorgan Chase. At the same time, Morgan Health also engages in policy discussions because, as Dan says, no one employer is going to control public policy. As a footnote here, I just will say that I actively seek out opportunities to listen to Dan Mendelson's thoughts. He has spoken a lot and really eloquently and with great insight about setting up the economic models for healthcare, not sick care. Recently, actually, he was on a panel at the Milken conference along with Natalie Davis; Yele Aluko, MD, MBA; and Henry Ting, MD. There are definitely insights to be gleaned. Also mentioned in this episode are Brian Bellware, CIC, CHVP; Eric Bricker, MD; Barbara Wachsman; Olivia Webb; Mark Fendrick, MD; Natalie Davis; Yele Aluko, MD, MBA, FACC, FSCAI; Henry Ting, MD; Ashok Subramanian; Rik Renard; Nina Lathia, RPh, MSc, PhD; Don Berwick, MD; Kenny Cole, MD; Steve Pearson, MD, MSc; Sarah Emond; Alex Sommers, MD, ABEM, DipABLM; and Jodilyn Owen. You can learn more at the Morgan Health Web site and follow Dan on LinkedIn. Dan Mendelson is the chief executive officer of Morgan Health at JPMorgan Chase & Co. He oversees a business unit at JPMorgan Chase focused on accelerating the delivery of new care models that improve the quality, equity, and affordability of employer-sponsored healthcare. Mendelson was previously founder and CEO of Avalere Health, a healthcare advisory company based in Washington, DC. He also served as operating partner at Welsh Carson, a private equity firm. Before founding Avalere, Mendelson served as associate director for health at the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton White House. Mendelson currently serves on the boards of Vera Whole Health and Champions Oncology (CSBR). He is also an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business. He previously served on the boards of Coventry Healthcare, HMS Holdings, Pharmerica, Partners in Primary Care, Centrexion, and Audacious Inquiry. Mendelson holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College and a Master of Public Policy (MPP) from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. 04:50 How do we connect the dots between value-based care and pharmacy benefits? 07:43 Where do things need to go for employers in terms of drug spend integration? 08:42 How do we think about having a value-based component in the decision-making process? 09:44 How do we enable the necessary information to make proper decisions? 10:56 EP206 with Ashok Subramanian. 11:21 “Many payviders just haven't gotten to pharmacy yet; they need to.” 14:14 Why do pharmaceutical companies need to be prepared to contract on the basis of value? 16:46 EP426 with Nina Lathia, RPh, MSc, PhD. 17:36 EP431 with Kenny Cole, MD. 18:07 Why is it important to “let the market work”? 21:04 Why do we have cost sharing, and when does it not make sense to have that as a co-pay? 23:59 Why are evidence requirements good for everyone? 28:45 Why is pooling of risk important? 29:49 How do you pool risk without going to an insurance company? 32:03 What is Dan's advice to hospitals? 33:30 “In a value-based world, buy and bill does not make sense.” 33:36 What is Dan's advice to primary care doctors? 33:54 What is Dan's advice to entrepreneurs and innovators? You can learn more at the Morgan Health Web site and follow Dan on LinkedIn. @dnmendelson discusses #pharmacybenefits on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthcareleadership #healthcaretransformation #healthcareinnovation Recent past interviews: Click a guest's name for their latest RHV episode! Dr Benjamin Schwartz, Justin Leader, Dr Scott Conard (Encore! EP391), Jerry Durham (Encore! EP297), Kate Wolin, Dr Kenny Cole, Barbara Wachsman, Luke Slindee, Julie Selesnick, Rik Renard
Growing Kentucky's Leaders: A Podcast by the Kentucky FFA Foundation
Jacob Ball is the Agriculture Teacher and FFA Advisor at Carter G. Woodson Academy in Lexington, Kentucky. Jacob was recently awarded the Milken Education Award for his excellence in education. Sheldon and Ruth Ann discuss MANNRS, FFA, and the classroom with Jacob on this week's episode. Tune in every Monday for a brand new episode of Growing Kentucky's Leaders!
Andrew was recently named the recipient of the 2023 Milken Educator Award. I won this same prestigious award back in 2014, and it is only given to 40 educators across the country yearly. Here we get to chat with Andrew about receiving the award. He currently holds dual roles at Diman Regional High School. This is an incredible listen and really dives into winning the Milken Educator Award!
Michael Milken is an American financier known for his development of the financial market for high-yield bonds as well as his high-profile indictment and conviction for violating U.S. securities laws. Richard Sandler, a retired legal professional and veteran investor joined Dan to discuss the Milken indictment, conviction, and what he believes shows overly zealous prosecutors abusing their powers. Harvey Silverglate also joined in.
The TeacherCast Podcast – The TeacherCast Educational Network
In this episode of the Jeff Bradbury Show Podcast, Jeff welcomes Penn GSE Entrepreneur in Residence and Director of the Gamba Foundation, John Gamba Jr. on the podcast to discuss the current state of education in this country, how Penn GSE is supporting entrepreneurs in EdTech, and the importance of creating a pathway for success for startups..If you are a new listener to TeacherCast, we would love to hear from you. Please visit our Contact Page and let us know how we can help you today!Follow Our Host Jeff Bradbury | @JeffBradbury TeacherCast | @TeacherCastAbout our Guest: John GambaJohn Gamba is a serial entrepreneur who has founded, funded and led several education technology ventures and non-profit organizations over his 30 year career. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Gamba started his career as a strategy consultant for KPMG where he performed market research for NASA on the commercial development of space. Pursuing his passion for education, John co-founded PACE - The Partnership for Academic and Community Excellence. PACE was a school to home communications network that connected thousands of schools to millions of parents across the United States. PACE was eventually sold to NTI Group and then to Blackboard for $182 million, in an all cash transaction.John currently serves as Entrepreneur in Residence and Director of Innovative Programs at Catalyst @ Penn GSE where he mentors aspiring education entrepreneurs and oversees the Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition, now in its 15th year. The Milken competition has awarded $2 million dollars to 50 education entrepreneurs and those ventures have gone on to raise $200 million in follow-on capital.John is an industry speaker and a mentor to several entrepreneurs in the global Education space. He's also an Ironman Triathlete, and qualified for the Half Ironman World Championships in Clearwater, Florida in 2010.Links of Interest Twitter: https://twitter.com/johngamba7 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johngambaJoin Our PLNAre you enjoying the TeacherCast Network, please share your thoughts with the world by commenting on Apple Podcasts today? I enjoy reading and sharing your comments on the podcast each week.Let's Work Together Host: Jeff Bradbury @TeacherCast | @JeffBradbury Email: info@teachercast.net Voice Mail:
Ask The Tech Coach: A Podcast For Instructional Technology Coaches and EdTech Specialists
In this episode of the Jeff Bradbury Show Podcast, Jeff welcomes Penn GSE Entrepreneur in Residence and Director of the Gamba Foundation, John Gamba Jr. on the podcast to discuss the current state of education in this country, how Penn GSE is supporting entrepreneurs in EdTech, and the importance of creating a pathway for success for startups..If you are a new listener to TeacherCast, we would love to hear from you. Please visit our Contact Page and let us know how we can help you today!Follow Our Host Jeff Bradbury | @JeffBradbury TeacherCast | @TeacherCastAbout our Guest: John GambaJohn Gamba is a serial entrepreneur who has founded, funded and led several education technology ventures and non-profit organizations over his 30 year career. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Gamba started his career as a strategy consultant for KPMG where he performed market research for NASA on the commercial development of space. Pursuing his passion for education, John co-founded PACE - The Partnership for Academic and Community Excellence. PACE was a school to home communications network that connected thousands of schools to millions of parents across the United States. PACE was eventually sold to NTI Group and then to Blackboard for $182 million, in an all cash transaction.John currently serves as Entrepreneur in Residence and Director of Innovative Programs at Catalyst @ Penn GSE where he mentors aspiring education entrepreneurs and oversees the Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition, now in its 15th year. The Milken competition has awarded $2 million dollars to 50 education entrepreneurs and those ventures have gone on to raise $200 million in follow-on capital.John is an industry speaker and a mentor to several entrepreneurs in the global Education space. He's also an Ironman Triathlete, and qualified for the Half Ironman World Championships in Clearwater, Florida in 2010.Links of Interest Twitter: https://twitter.com/johngamba7 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johngambaJoin Our PLNAre you enjoying the TeacherCast Network, please share your thoughts with the world by commenting on Apple Podcasts today? I enjoy reading and sharing your comments on the podcast each week.Let's Work Together Host: Jeff Bradbury @TeacherCast | @JeffBradbury Email: info@teachercast.net Voice Mail:
This week on Unorthodox, we're regretting doing those DNA tests. Our Gentile of the Week is NBA All-Star and former New York Knick Allan Houston, who shares his new faith-based initiative, FISLL. He was joined by FISLL Youth Ambassador, Jewish teen Nate Sugar, to discuss their work. We also welcome Richard Sandler to discuss his new book, Witness to a Prosecution: The Myth of Michael Milken. Sandler was Milken's personal lawyer and the book chronicles the injustices of the investigation. Write to us at unorthodox@tabletmag.com, or leave a voicemail on our listener line: (914) 570-4869. Unorthodox is produced by Tablet Studios. Check out all of our podcasts at tabletmag.com/podcasts. SPONSORS: Visit the Contemporary Jewish Museum this winter for its new exhibit, "First Light: Rituals of Glass and Neon Art." Now on view through April 28. Book tickets today at thecjm.org.
Dive into this episode as Sarah, the host of a top 1% podcast called the Flexible Neurotic, takes us on a bold journey through midlife transitions. From a stay-at-home mom to a podcasting powerhouse, she candidly discusses the realities of menopause, self-care, and shaking off the shackles of people-pleasing. This episode is a wake-up call for anyone stuck on the 'midlife hamster wheel of sameness' and an invitation to do whatever the f*ck you want for you In this episode, Sarah Milken and I dive deeper into: Going from a stay-at-home mom to a podcasting powerhouse The realities of menopause & aging as a woman Shaking off the shackles of people-pleasing And so much more! Get ready for some hard truths and heartfelt laughs as Sarah shares her personal midlife initiation and the changing dynamics of friendships and family as you evolve. It's real, raw, and radically honest - it's the being uncontained in all its glory. For full show notes, resources, and links: https://www.samanthaskelly.com/episode-274-sarah-milken-midlife-crisis Learn more about Dr. Sarah Milken: Website: https://www.theflexibleneurotic.com/ IG: https://www.instagram.com/theflexibleneurotic/ About Can't Be Contained Can't Be Contained' is the unscripted, unedited – fully uncontained journal entries & real-life experiences of those who follow their bliss & intuitive hits, the freedom seekers, the sacred rebels – the ones who are here to disrupt what proceeded us & create what is ahead of us. Subscribe now to stay tuned for every episode! The Pause Breathwork App is the #1 app to clear stress using your breath. Download the app here: https://pause.live/Pause-Breathwork-App
At the 2023 Milken Institute Future of Health Summit this week, experts agreed AI will revolutionize health care, but lawmakers, regulators and thought leaders warned of the risks around misinformation and data privacy, among others . Host Alice Miranda Ollstein talks with Politico health care reporter Daniel Payne about the key takeaways from the conference.
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