Podcasts about pdas

Today on the show the team talk about the event where the athletes are on the juice, and look for NZ's Slackest Route. Plus ACC Head G Lane, Dai Henwood, and who's the oldest couple you know doing PDAs? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Prince and Princess of Wales spent their 10th wedding anniversary visiting the stunning Inner Hebrides.  The Lord and Lady of the Isles - as they are titled there - visited Mull and Iona on a stunning and loved up visit which was also a trip down memory lane.  Pod Save the King host Ann Gripper is joined by Daily Mirror royal editor Russell Myers, who joined William and Kate on their tour, to discuss the highlights.  They also reflect on the King's most open comments yet about his cancer, the resurfacing of Meghan's HRH and monogram - and whether a blue suit is acceptable at a funeral. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 Se instalarán tabletas en los vehículos policiales y se prevé la adquisición de 30 PDAs

This week in Episode #154 Cj and Dee They Get Into Black History In The Making (21:00), The Recent Place Crashes (23:10), Was Integration Good For Black People? (44:24), LeBron Not Playing In The All Star Game (56:50), Gen-Z Not Buying Alcohol (1:16:00), PDA On Social Media (1:27:25), And They Ask “Can You Be Bought?” (1:45:18).

** Anti-Valentine's Day Edition! ** Forget roses and heart-shaped boxes, 'cause this is for those who truly HATE this time of the year, and those who can't stand PDAs in general! Absolutely NO talk of (or songs) about love, relationships, and all that mushy CRAP! Peace!Playlist: Dead Infection - The End of LovePathologist - Secretion of EjaculateCannibal Corpse - Post Mortal EjaculationHour of Penace - From Hate To SufferingFlesh Hoarder - Dwelling With HatredDeicide - Hate of All HatredsSlug Gore - Mucus ChainsawGuttural Disgorge - Chainsaw MasturbationBone Gnawer - Chainsaw CarnageHaemorrhage - Open Heart ButcheryHaemorrhage - Bathed in BileGorgasm - Erotic DislimbingGorgasm - Lacerated MasturbationGorgasm - CarnivwhoreAborted - Six Feet of Foreplay200 Stab Wounds - Drilling Your HeadConcrete Funeral - Stabbed To DeathFesterdecay - Genital RupturedCarcass - Genital GrinderCarcass - Under the Scalpel BladeDevourment - Masterbating At The SlabDevourment - Serial CocksuckerDevourment - Autoerotic AsphyxationDevourment - Anal ElectrocutionDevourment - Fuck Her Head OffButcher'd - BloodlustKraanium - Face Fucked With a BrickVisceral Disgorge - Force Fed Shredded GenetaliaVisceral Disgorge - Maggot Infested Fuck HoleRibspreader - A Night To DismemberKilling - Legion of HateKilling - Kill EveryoneKilling - Don't Get Mad, Get EvilMegadeth - Go To HellKerry King - Everything I Hate About YouSlayer - Hate WorldwideSuicidal Tendencies - I'll Hate You BetterSuicidal Tendencies - AloneSuicidal Tendencies - One Finger SaluteSuicidal Tendencies - Widespread Bloodshed ... Love Runs RedSuicidal Tendencies - Just Another Love SongCradle of Filth - Death of LoveQueensryche - I Don't Believe in LoveUgly Kid Joe - Everything About YouDiemonds - Get the Fuck Outta HereKobra and the Lotus - Get the Fuck Out of HereSkid Row - Get the Fuck Out!Skid Row - Can't Stand the HeartacheDio - As Long as It's Not About Love

Join Sue for an upcoming Live Virtual Workshop where you will learn from Sue practical tips & strategies to make a difference. In this episode, we will discuss: ✅ PDA teens need genuine interest without hidden agendas. ✅ Staying steady and consistent is crucial for PDA support. ✅ Autonomy and control are essential for PDA individuals. ✅ Words matter: Avoid demands and offer choices to PDAs. ✅ PDA individuals can thrive with proper adaptations and environment. ✅ Equal relationships and honest communication benefit PDA support. ✅ Understanding PDA helps reduce tension in family dynamics. Read more about this podcast in the show notes found via the link below suelarkey.com.au/helping-pda-teens-thrive Join the Facebook group specifically for this podcast www.facebook.com/groups/suelarkeypodcastcommunity/ Join my Neurodiversity Network suelarkey.com.au/neurodiversity-network/ Follow my Instagram account for regular tips www.instagram.com/sue.larkey/ To learn more about teaching or understanding ASD, please visit my website below. elearning.suelarkey.com.au

Send us a textEver wonder who laid the groundwork for the podcasts you binge today? We're thrilled to host the tech visionary Ken Rutkowski, the inventor of the first podcast-like technology for PDAs in the 1990s. Ken reveals the fascinating story of his journey and the unexpected sale to Microsoft that changed the game. We also explore the unique benefits of both audio and video podcasts, and Ken shares his surprising take on using workout time to consume educational content, likening music to brain "carbs."Our chat then shifts gears as we recount the creation of METAL (Media, Entertainment, Technology, Arts, and Leaders) in Los Angeles during the dot-com bubble burst. The evolution of this network, especially its transition to a global Zoom community during the Covid era, brought unparalleled insights and speakers from around the world. We challenge preconceived notions about travel destinations like Dubai, Beirut, and Tel Aviv, emphasizing the transformative power of firsthand experiences and the benefits of remote work in discovering hidden gems.Finally, we distinguish between being a connector and a networker, using poignant examples like Bill Clinton's genuine care and memory for personal details to illustrate the impact of intentional relationships. We discuss contemporary men's struggles, notably environmental impacts on testosterone, and outline eight core principles for men's success. Rounding it out is Ken's passionate take on living well in Bangkok, highlighting the city's superior food quality, impressive gym facilities, and overall appeal. Join us for a conversation packed with invaluable life lessons and practical advice for personal growth, networking, and well-being.How to Reach Ken Rutkowski:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kenradio/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenrutkowski/Metal Men: https://metal.men/ To Reach Jordan:Email: Jordan@Edwards.Consulting Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ejFXH1_BjdnxG4J8u93Zw Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordan.edwards.7503 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jordanfedwards/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanedwards5/ Hope you find value in this. If so please provide a 5-star and drop a review.Complimentary Edwards Consulting Session: https://calendly.com/jordan-555/intro-call

Interview with Steve Leininger, Designer of the TRS-80- Model I Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics  Arcade Shopper   0                                 Floppy Days Tune 1 min 13 sec              Vintage Computer Ads 1 min 42 sec              Intro 9 min 03 sec             bumper - Peter Bartlett  9 min 11 sec              New Acquisitions 17 min 11 sec             bumper - Ian Mavric  17 min 19 sec            Upcoming Computer Shows 21 min 53 sec            bumper - Myles Wakeham 21 min 58 sec            Meet the Listeners 28 min 37 sec            Interview with Steve Leininger 1 hr 20 min 29 sec    Closing This particular episode has a special meaning for me, personally.  You see, as I've mentioned on earlier episodes, the TRS-80 Model I from Tandy/Radio Shack was my first home computer (even though my first programmable device was a TI58C calculator).  I recall the joy and wonder of playing with the machine (it wasn't called the Model I at that time; just the TRS-80; as it was the first of the line) in the local Radio Shack store in 1977 and 1978 and the incredible rush of owning one in 1979; after my wife purchased a Level I BASIC machine for me as a gift for college graduation.  That machine only had 4K of RAM and 4K of ROM (Tiny BASIC), as it was the entry-level machine, but it was a thing of beauty.  I felt like I could do anything with that machine, even though my justification to the wife was that we could track our checkbook and recipes on it.  I think she knew better, but went along with it anyway.  The computer came with everything you needed, including a tape drive and black-and-white monitor, which was good for a poor recent college graduate.  I quickly, as finances allowed with my new engineering job, upgraded the computer to 16K of RAM and Level II BASIC (a powerful Microsoft 12K ROM BASIC) and enjoyed the machine immensely, even using it in my job supporting the build-out of a new nuclear power plant back in those days. I eventually sold off the Model I, in favor of a computer that had color graphics and sound (the Atari 800), but have always continued to have a huge soft spot for that first computer. When I started the Floppy Days Podcast, one of the people that has always been on my bucket list to interview has been Steve Leininger, who, along with Don French while at Radio Shack designed the TRS-80 Model I, among other things.  A few years back, I had the opportunity to participate in an interview with Steve for the Trash Talk Podcast, when I was co-hosting that show, but an ill-timed trip to the hospital for my son meant that I was not able to participate.  While my son's health is of paramount importance, of course, I always wanted to get another chance to talk with Steve.  Not only was Steve the designer of one of my favorite home computers of all time, but he also was a fellow Purdue University Boilermaker, who graduated just a year before I started there.  The thought that I could have met Steve on campus if I'd been there just a year earlier was very intriguing to me, and fueled my desire to talk with Steve even more. In the last episode (#141 with Paul Terrell) I talked about VCF Southeast in Atlanta in July of 2024.  After I had made plans to attend that show, I was flabbergasted to find out that Earl Baugh, one of the show organizers, had somehow managed to contact Steve and get him to come to the show!  I have to thank Earl for the work he did to make that happen.  Here was my opportunity to certainly meet Steve, and perhaps even talk with him!  I prepped some questions, just in case I was able to get an interview. While at the show, I met Steve and asked him if he would be willing to do a short interview for Floppy Days while at the show.  Amazingly, he was very kind and agreed to do that.  We found a quiet room and I was able to talk with Steve for almost an hour.  This show contains that interview. Another note on this: as you'll hear in the interview, the connection to Steve is even stronger than I realized!  He not only went to my alma mater, but also grew up in some of the same towns that myself and my wife did.  We personally peripherally know some of his relatives.  Things like this really do make you think the world is small! One other, final, note: This interview even ties into the recent and continuing interviews I've been publishing with Paul Terrell.  As you'll hear in upcoming episodes with Paul, and in this interview with Steve, Steve actually worked at the Byte Shop before getting the first job with Tandy, and in fact his work at the Byte Shop directly led to him getting hired by Tandy to design the Model I. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I enjoyed getting it.  I am overjoyed I finally got the chance to talk to one of my vintage computer heroes, Steve Leininger! New Acquisitions C64 Sketch and Design by Tony Lavioe - sponsored link https://amzn.to/4dZGtt2  Compute's Mapping the IBM PC and PC Junior by Russ Davies - sponsored link https://amzn.to/3yQmrlP  The Best of SoftSide - Atari Edition - https://archive.org/details/ataribooks-best-of-softside-atari-edition  ZX81+38 - https://github.com/mahjongg2/ZX81plus38  magnifying glasses - sponsored link https://amzn.to/4cBQYla  Japanese power adapter - sponsored link https://amzn.to/3XjeUW5  Upcoming Shows VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/  VCF Europe - September 7-8 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/  World of Retrocomputing 2024 Expo - September 14-15 - Kitchener, ON, Canada - https://www.facebook.com/events/s/world-of-retro-computing-2024-/1493036588265072/  Teletext 50 - Sep 21-22 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, UK - https://www.teletext50.com/  Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/  Tandy Assembly - September 27-29 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/  AmiWest - October 25-27 - Sacramento, CA - https://amiwest.net/  Chicago TI International World Faire - October 26 - Evanston Public Library (Falcon Room, 303), Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/   Retro Computer Festival 2024 - November 9-10 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/  Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we   Schedule Published on Floppy Days Website - https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSeLsg4hf5KZKtpxwUQgacCIsqeIdQeZniq3yE881wOCCYskpLVs5OO1PZLqRRF2t5fUUiaKByqQrgA/pub  Interview Steve's Workbench at radioshack.com (archived) - https://web.archive.org/web/19980528232503/http://www.radioshack.com/sw/swb/   Transcript of Interview-Only Randy Kindig: All right. I really appreciate your time today, Steve.  Steve Leininger: Thank you for having me, Randy.  Randy Kindig: So let's start out maybe just by talking about where You live today, and what you do? Steve Leininger: I live in Woodland Park, Colorado, which is 8, 500 feet, right out in front of we got Pike's Peak out our front window. Randy Kindig: Oh. Oh, that's nice.  Steve Leininger: Yeah we get snow up through about June, and then it starts again about September. But it's not as much snow as you would imagine.  Randy Kindig: I've got property in Montana, and I lived out there for a couple of years,  Steve Leininger: so there you go.  Randy Kindig: We probably got more snow up there.  Steve Leininger: Hey, you asked what I did.  I'm involved with Boy Scouts, a maker space with a church based ministry firewood ministry, actually. Some people call it a fire bank. So we provide firewood to people who can't afford that.  Randy Kindig: Oh.  Steve Leininger: So it's like a food bank, but with fire, firewood.  Randy Kindig: I've never heard of that. Steve Leininger: We source the firewood. We cut it down and we split it. Lots of volunteers involved; pretty big project.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Okay, cool. I also wanted to mention, I'm a fellow Boilermaker.  Steve Leininger: There you go.  Randy Kindig: I know you went to Purdue, right?  Steve Leininger: I did go to Purdue.  Randy Kindig: Did you ever get back there?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, and in fact they've got a couple learning spaces named after us. Randy Kindig: Oh, okay.  Steve Leininger: We've been donating to our respective alma maters. My wife went to IU.  Randy Kindig: Oh, is that right? Oh my.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, oh my and me. Yeah, the fact that the family who's all IU, their family tolerated me was, quite a remarkable thing.  Randy Kindig: Okay.  I find it interesting because I think you graduated in 76, is that right? Steve Leininger: 74.  Randy Kindig: Oh, 74.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Yeah. I was there from … Randy Kindig: Oh yeah, you actually were gone before I started.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. So I was there from 70 to 73. 70 to 70 four. When I graduated in four years, I got both my bachelor's and master's degree by going through the summer. I managed to pass out of the first year classes because of some of the high school stuff yeah.  Randy Kindig: Okay. I started in 75, so I guess we just missed each other.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Yeah. You're the new kids coming in.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. . So I, I found that interesting and I wanted to say that. Do you keep up with their sports program or anything like that? Steve Leininger: Yeah, they play a pretty good game of basketball in fact, I ribbed my wife about it because she was from the earlier days, the Bobby Knight days at IU that were phenomenal.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, exactly. For those of you listening, I'm talking with Steve Leininger, who was the primary developer, if not the developer, of the TRS 80 Model I.. Steve Leininger: I did all the hardware and software for it. I'll give Don French credit for sticking to it and getting a project started. And for refining, refining our product definition a little bit to where it was better than it would have been if I would have stopped early.  Randy Kindig: Okay. And I have talked with Don before. I've interviewed him on the podcast, and I met him at Tandy Assembly. But I'm just curious, when you were hired into Tandy and you were told what you were going to do; exactly what were you told?  Steve Leininger: They had a 16 bit microprocessor board that another consultant had developed. And they were trying to make a personal computer out of this. It was the Pace microprocessor, which was not a spectacular success for National, but it was one of the first 16 bit processors. But they had basically an initial prototype, might have been even the second level of the thing. No real documentation, no software, ran on three different voltages and didn't have input or output. Other than that, it was fine. I was brought in because I was one of the product one of the engineers for the development boards, the development board series for the SCAMP, the S C M P, the National Semiconductor had a very low cost microprocessor that at one point in time, I benchmarked against the 8080 with positive benchmarks and ours was faster on the benchmarks I put together, but as I was later told there's lies, damn lies, and benchmarks. But so they said take a look at using that, their low cost microprocessor that you were working with. And it really wasn't the right answer for the job. Let's see, the Altair was already out. Okay. That was the first real personal computer. The Apple, the Apple 1 was out. Okay. But it was not a consumer computer. Okay. They, it was just, it was like a cookie sheet of parts, which was very similar to what was used in the Atari games at the commercial games. Okay. pong and that kind of stuff at that time. And I had been working, after Purdue, I went to National Semiconductor. There's a long story behind all that. But in the process, some of us engineers would go up to the Homebrew Computer Club that met monthly up at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. We're talking Wilbur and Orville Wright kinds of things going on. Yeah. Everyone who was in the pioneering version of computing had at one time been to that meeting. Randy Kindig: It's very famous. Yeah.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were basically a couple guys working out of their garage at the time. I was still working at National Semiconductor, but I also had a Moonlight job at Byte Shop number 2. The second computer store in all of California. Randy Kindig: And So you worked with Paul Terrell. Steve Leininger: I actually worked with one of, yeah, Paul, I actually worked for Paul's I don't know if it was a partner, Todd, I don't even remember the guy's name. But I just, it was.  Randy Kindig: I was curious because I'm talking to Paul right now and getting interviews. Steve Leininger: Yeah. I, I'm sure we met, but it wasn't anything horribly formal. Since it was the number two shop, it still wasn't the number one shop, which Paul worked out of. And so we had an Apple 1 there. I actually got the job because I when I When I went in there, they were trying to troubleshoot something with what looked like an oscilloscope that they pulled out of a tank, and so it had, audio level kind of bandwidth, but could not do a digital circuit. And I said what you really need is a, I told him, a good tectonic scope or something like that. He said do you want a job here? I ended up moonlighting there, which was, as fortune would have it, was a good deal when the folks from Radio Shack came down to visit. Because when they came down to visit the sales guy wasn't there. We'll let the engineer talk to them, they almost never let the engineers talk to them.  Randy Kindig: So you had to talk with them.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. It was John Roach, Don French, and it was probably Jack Sellers, okay and Don was probably the; he was the most on top of stuff electronically because he was a hobbyist of sorts. The other two guys: Mr. Sellers ran the engineering group. John Roach was the VP of manufacturing. And they were basically on a parts visit. They do it once a year, once, twice a year. And they also did it with Motorola and a couple other places. But I told him about this microprocessor and that I was writing a tiny BASIC for it. Okay. Tiny BASIC was a interpreted basic that a guy named Li-Chen Wang actually had the first thing in Dr. Dobbs, Dr. Dobbs magazine. We're talking about, we're talking about things that you don't realize are the shoulders of giants that turned out to be the shoulders of giants. And in fact, we reached out to Mr. Wang as we were working on it. We thought we had the software already taken care of because I'm jumping ahead in the story, but we were going to have Bob Uterich, and you'd have to chase that back. We had him signed up to write a BASIC interpreter for us, but because he'd already done one for the 6800, and it was included in Interface Age magazine. on a plastic record. You remember the old plastic records you could put in a magazine?  Randy Kindig: Yeah, I did see that.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, so this was called a floppy ROM when they did it. Yeah. So if you had the right software and everything you could download the software off of the floppy ROM and run it on 6800. I think he used the Southwest Technical Products thing. And so we'd signed him up to do the BASIC. This was independent of the hardware design I was doing. And he went into radio silence on us; couldn't find him. And so we get to, in parallel, I was using the Li-Chen Wang plan to do at least a demo version of BASIC that would run on the original computer. And when the demo went successfully on Groundhog Day in 1977. This is the time frame we're talking about. I I started work on July 5th, the year before it. With Tandy? Yeah. Okay. We rolled into town on the 3rd, and of course they're closed for the 4th. And on the 5th I started, and there was the wandering around in the desert at the beginning of that, and Don's probably talked about how I was moved from there to their audio factory and then to the old saddle factory. Tandy used to be primarily a leather company before they bought Radio Shack in 1966 or something like that. And anyway, when the software didn't come out, I ended up writing the software, too. So I designed all the hardware and all the software. I didn't do the power supply. Chris Klein did the power supply. And, a little bit of the analog video circuitry, but it was very little part of that. Because we were just making a video signal. I did all the digital stuff on that. Yeah.  Randy Kindig: So the software ended up being what was the level one ROM, right?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, the level one ROM started out as the Li-Chen Wang BASIC. But he had no I. O. in his software, so I was doing the keyboard scanning. I had to do the cassette record and playback. Had to implement data read and data write Peek and poke, which is pretty simple. Put in the graphic statements. Yeah, oh, and floating point. Now, floating point, luckily, Zilog had a library for that, but I had to basically, this was before APIs were a big deal, so I basically had to use their interface, To what I had written and had to allocate storage, correct? We're talking about 4K bytes of ROM. I know, yeah. Very tiny, and to put all the I. O. in there, and to make it so that you could be updating the screen, when you're doing the cassette I put two asterisks up there and blinked the second one on and off, you remember that?  Randy Kindig: Oh yeah. Steve Leininger: Sort of as a level set.  Randy Kindig: Yeah.  Steve Leininger: And someone said, oh, you should have patented that thing. And actually I have seven or eight patents, U. S. patents, on different parts of the computer architecture.  Randy Kindig: Oh, do you?  Steve Leininger: But not the blinking asterisk, which is probably a patentable feature.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, I wish I'd had that on other machines, that I ended up having. So that would have been nice, yeah. I liken what you've done with what Steve Wozniak did, for the Apple II. You're somebody I've always wanted to talk to because I felt like you were one of the important pioneers in their early years. What do you have to say about that? Do you feel like what you did was ... Steve Leininger: in retrospect, yes. And I have a greater appreciation for people like the Wright Brothers. If you think about the Wright Brothers they took all their stuff from their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop down to Kill Devil Hills. We now know it as Kitty Hawk. But they would take the stuff down there by train, and then they would have to put it in horse driven wagons. Think about that. And people would ask them, what are you going to use the airplane for? It's what are you going to use a home computer for? Yeah, to maintain recipes and to play games.  Randy Kindig: Do your checkbook.  Steve Leininger: Do your check, home security. There's a whole lot of stuff that we talked about. And other giants entered the field: Multiplan, which became Lotus 1 2 3, which became Excel. Not the same company, but the idea, could you live without a spreadsheet today? Very difficult for some things, right?  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Yeah, it's ubiquitous.  People use it for everything. Yeah. Yeah. So you've been, I talked with David and Teresa Walsh. Or Welsh, I'm sorry, Welsh. Where they did the book Priming the Pump. Steve Leininger: That's very that's pretty close to the real thing.  Randy Kindig: Is it? Okay. They named their book after what you did and said; that you primed the pump for home computers. Can you expand on that and tell us exactly what you meant by that?  Steve Leininger: It again goes back to that shoulders of giants thing, and I forget who said that; it's actually a very old quote, I can see further because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. And I think the thing that we brought to the table and Independently, Commodore and Apple did the same thing in 1977. There were three computers that came out inexpensive enough that you could use them in the home. They all came with ROM loaded BASIC. You didn't have to load anything else in. They all came with a video output. Some had displays. Some Commodore's was built in. One of ours was a Clip on and you had to go find one for the apple. For the Apple, yeah. Apple had a superior case. Apple and Radio Shack both had great keyboards. Randy Kindig: apple was expandable, with its... Steve Leininger: yeah, Apple Apple was internally expandable, yeah. And, but it cost $1,000. Without the cassette. Without the monitor. It wasn't the same type of device.  Randy Kindig: I was a college student. And, I looked at all three options. It was like the TRS-80; there are Radio Shacks everywhere.  You could go in and play with one; which was nice. And they were inexpensive enough that I could actually afford one. Steve Leininger: And, Radio Shack can't duck the, if you did something wrong, you had to fix it.  Randy Kindig: That's right. Let's see here. So initially the idea was to have a kit computer by Tandy? Steve Leininger: Yeah. I'm not sure whose idea that was. It made some kind of sense. Because that's the way the Altair was, and Radio Shack did sell a number of kits, but in the process of still kicking that around, saying it could be a possibility. I was one of the ones that said it could be a possibility. Within the same group that I did the design work from, they also would take kits in that people had built and troubleshoot the things if they didn't work. We had a couple engineers that would see if you connected something wrong or something.  If you didn't, sometimes it was a matter that the instructions weren't clear. If you tell someone to put an LED in, yeah. You specifically have to tell them which way to put it in. And might be an opportunity to tweak your timing. Yeah. Anyway, we get this clock in, and it was a digital clock. Seven segment LEDs probably cost 50 bucks or more. Which is crazy. But It says, put all the components in the board, turn the board over, and solder everything to the board. And, pretty simple instructions. This had a sheet of solder over the entire bottom of the board. Someone figured out how to put two pounds of solder on the back of this thing. And, as we all got a great chuckle out of that, You realize, oh, you don't want to have to deal with a computer like this. You really don't. And Lou Kornfeld, who was the president at the time, didn't really want the computer. But he said, it's not going to be a kit. All right. That, that, that took care of that. great idea. Great idea.  Randy Kindig: Were there any other times when you thought the computer might, or were there any times, when you thought the computer might not come to fruition? Any snags that you had that made you think that maybe this isn't going to work?  Steve Leininger: Not really. I was young and pretty well undaunted. Randy Kindig: Pretty sure you could,  Steve Leininger: yeah I, it wasn't any, it wasn't any different than building one at home. I'd been building kits since, night kits, heath kits, that kind of stuff, since I was a kid. And home brewed a couple things, including a hot dog cooker made from two nails and a couple wires that plugged into the wall. Don't try that at home.  Randy Kindig: No kidding.  Steve Leininger: But, it's funny if you If you look it up on, if you look that kind of project up on the internet, you can still find a project like that. It's like what's it called? Anvil tossing, where you put gunpowder under an anvil, shoot it up in the air. What could possibly go wrong? Don't,  Randy Kindig: It's very well documented in books like Priming the Pump, Stan Veit's book, which I assume you're familiar with, and Fire in the Valley, what your involvement was with the Model 1. But there was some mention of your involvement with the Expansion Interface and other TRS 80 projects. What else did you work on while you were there?  Steve Leininger: The Color Computer, the Expansion Interface. The model three to a little.  Randy Kindig: Okay.  Steve Leininger: Little bit. The model two was the big one. And point I just got tired of the management there.  Randy Kindig: Did you? Okay.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. I my mind was going faster than theirs, and they made the conscious decision to do whatever IBM has done, but do it cheaper. That, to me, that's not a. Didn't say less expensively either, so the whole thing just troubled me that, we're not going to be able to do anything new unless IBM has done it. And at about the same time the Macintosh came out and a superb piece of work. Yeah.  Randy Kindig: Okay. So what education training and previous work experience did you have at the time you got hired by Tandy that made you uniquely qualified for that project that they were looking for?  Steve Leininger: I'd been playing around with electronics since I was in the third grade. Actually, electricity.  Randy Kindig: The third grade, wow.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. My, my mom got me a kit that had light bulbs and bells and buzzers and wire from, I think it might have been the Metropolitan Museum. They had a kit. They, they've got a, they still today have an online presence. It, of course the materials have changed, but the kit had all these parts and it had no instructions. And I don't know if that was by design or it didn't have instructions, so I had to learn how to hook up wires and light bulbs and bells and switches to make it do things. And, in the process, I found out that if you put a wire right across the battery terminals, it gets hot. And, interesting stuff to know. Pretty soon, I was taking this stuff in to show and tell in the third grade. Look, and I was very early in electronics. It's electricity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then my mom would take me to the library. She was quite a voracious reader, and I'd go to the library. technical section specifically the Dewey Decimal 621, which was electronics and things like that. Randy Kindig: you still remember that.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And in the 590 series, there's some good stuff too. And I would usually take out a stack of books, even though I was a horrible reader because I'm dyslexic and ADD. So I have an attention span and reading problem. But the technical stuff I was reading about pipeline architecture processors while I was still in junior high. And not that was important to where I ended up, but it was important because I understood the words and data flow, and stuff like that. And between that and building the kits and things like that, I When we moved to Indianapolis, my dad moved jobs down to Indianapolis. Randy Kindig: Oh, you lived in Indianapolis?  Steve Leininger: Yeah. So I moved from South Bend down to Indianapolis. So I probably passed your house as . Actually we came down through Kokomo, but but yeah.  Randy Kindig: I actually grew up in that part of the state. Just south of South Bend.  Steve Leininger: Okay. So yeah La Paz, Plymouth,  Randy Kindig: yeah, Warsaw, Rochester.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, I was born in Rochester.  Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. So that's where I grew up in that area.  Steve Leininger: Okay, there you go. My dad's from Akron.  Randy Kindig: Are you serious?  Steve Leininger: I am serious.  Randy Kindig: Akron's where my wife grew up. And I was just 10 miles from there.  Steve Leininger: The general store there, Dan Leininger and Sons, that's my great grandfather. Randy Kindig: Really?  Steve Leininger: Yeah.  Randy Kindig: I'll be darned. Okay. Okay.  Steve Leininger: So now it all makes sense.  Randy Kindig: That's amazing.  Steve Leininger: Anyway, we started a garage band. This is before Apple's garage band. And I made my own amplifier. It basically had the sun sun amplifiers back end on the thing and a Fender Showman front end on it. Completely home brewed really loud amplifier. And I had a friend who had a guitar amplifier that was broken, and he had taken it down to the music store there. And after six weeks of not getting it back, they said we've had trouble with our technician and all that. I asked if I could go down and look at it, and in 15 minutes I had his amplifier fixed. And they said, do you want tom so you want a job? All right. Yeah, because I'd been doing, I'd had a paper route before and I don't think I was doing anything since we'd moved and ao I started working in a music store and they ended up with two music stores and then an organ store next door and I started repairing that kind of stuff. And this was the end of my first year in college. Went to the extension in Indianapolis.  Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. And Was that I U P U I?  Steve Leininger: IUPUI, yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I U P U I.  Randy Kindig: Huh. I went there as well.  Steve Leininger: Yeah and learned Fortran there, got all my first year classes out, and then moved on up to the campus. And because we'd always go to the library, and because my mom would often take me to the library, the newsstand not too far from the library, and she'd get a couple magazines, but she let me get an electronic magazine. And, I didn't understand these things, pretty soon you start understanding the pic, you start understanding it. This is a resistor, I built a little shocker box based on a design in probably elementary electronics. And It's like a handheld electric fence.  Randy Kindig: Oh, wow.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Think hot dog cooker. Anyway, so I learned some electronics that way. A lot of that was self taught. I learned quite a bit more by working in the music store, again, this was before I was taught any formal electronics. And actually when I moved up to campus on Purdue, I thought I was going to be a world class guitar amplifier designer. That's where I thought. And it turns out my analog gut feelings aren't, weren't as good as other people's. Paul Schreiber does a much better job with electronics, with analog electronics than I do. But digital electronics, I understood this stuff. I would hang out in the library and I'd read the trade magazines. So I was up to date on, I was way more up to date than a typical professor would be on current electronics. And in 1973, which was the end of my junior year, Electronics Magazine had an article on the Intel 8008. And I said, Oh, I understand this. See, I'd already been taking assembly language. Now they didn't teach assembly language programming in the electronics school. They had Fortran, but there was no way to get from Fortran to ..they weren't teaching programming languages. I had to go to the business school where I learned assembly language on the school's CDC 6600 mainframe.  Randy Kindig: Really?  Steve Leininger: Yeah.  Randy Kindig: Through the business school?  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And for those of you who have never tried assembly language programming, it looks like a foreign language until you just internalize it in your brain: there's ADD, A D and A D C for ADD with carry, and there's a whole bunch of different things. There's different ways to move data around, but you're only doing a few really basic things, and if you do it fast enough, it looks like it's instantaneous. That's the way even your phone works today. It's because you're doing it fast enough. It fools you.  Randy Kindig: Yep. Wow. Do you ever look back at these days, at those days, with amazement? As far as how far the industry has come?  Steve Leininger: Oh yeah. And, it's funny because you wouldn't, you couldn't probably, but you wouldn't start over again. I had to learn, I had to learn digital video. Actually the giant that I, whose shoulders I stood on there was the late Don Lancaster. He had a book called TV Typewriter Cookbook. And actually that came out a little bit later, but he had a TV typewriter series in Radio Electronics Magazine. And basically alphanumeric display. If you think about it, just the glass teletype, the keyboard display and a serial interface at the time that the RadioShack computer came out was selling for 999. Another 400 on top of what we were selling the whole computer for. Because we had a microprocessor in there. We didn't have a whole lot of options. We didn't have a whole lot of fluff. In fact Motorola said, send this to your schematics and your parts list and let's see if we can minimize your circuit. And after two weeks they sent it back. He said, you did a pretty good job here. . .  Randy Kindig: Okay. Huh. You still stay in touch with people at Tandy?  Steve Leininger: A few of them. It's actually been more lately. Because it's almost more interesting now. It's like the, I don't know whatever happened to Atwater and Kent, of the Atwater Kent radio. But, that's an old school radio that now you've got people that rebuild them and got them all polished up and all this kind of stuff. But for a while they ended up in the dump. I'm sure, there are some trash 80s that ended up in the trash.  Randy Kindig: I'm sure.  Steve Leininger: Yeah but I've gotten rid of lots of PCs that don't meet my needs anymore, right? Randy Kindig: Sure. Yeah, we all have, somewhere along the way. It seemed like you were really quiet there for a long time and that you were difficult to get in contact with. Steve Leininger: I wasn't really that difficult. I didn't maintain a social media presence on the thing, but things that I had my own consulting company for quite a while. I actually came back to Radio Shack two more times after I left. One was to come back as a technologist there. The politics still didn't work out well. Then I came back as a contractor to help them with some of their online things. I actually had a website called Steve's Workbench. Steve Leininger: And you can find it on the Internet Archive. The Wayback Machine. And it had some basic stamp projects. And we were going to do all sorts of other things. But I managed to upset the people at RadioShack. com. They didn't have a big sense of humor about someone being critical about the products that they'd selected. And I, I did a... I was going to start doing product reviews on the kits, how easy it was to solder, whether it was a good value for the money and all that kind of stuff. And I gave a pretty honest review on it. And Radio Shack didn't appreciate the power of an honest review. It's what makes Amazon what it is, right? You go in there and if there's something that's got just two stars on the reviews, Yeah, you really got to know what you're doing if you're going to buy the thing, right? And if you see something that's got a bunch of one star and a bunch of five star reviews Yeah, someone's probably aalting the reference at the top end. And so I mean they had such a fit that when they changed platforms For RadioShack. com, they didn't take Steve's Workbench with it And I basically lost that position. Radio Shack should own the makerspace business right now. They at one time, one time I suggested, you ought to take a look at buying Digikey or maybe Mouser. Mouser was right down the street from us. They already had their hands into Allied, but these other two were doing stuff, more consumer oriented, but they didn't. They were making, they were flush with money from selling cell phone contracts. And they thought that was the way of the future until the cell phone companies started reeling that back in. At a certain point, you don't want to be paying your 5 percent or 10 percent royalty to Radio Shack for just signing someone up.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Okay. I didn't realize you had ever gone back and worked for them again.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, twice,  Randy Kindig: and so I'm curious, did you meet any other famous figures in the microcomputer revolution while you were working at Tandy?  Steve Leininger: At Tandy, let's see.  Randy Kindig: I'm just curious.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, Bill Gates, of course. I went out when we were working on level two BASIC. And Bill Gates I think was probably a hundred- thousand- aire at that time. And, working in a, thhey had a floor in a bank building in Seattle. He took me to the basement of his dad's law firm, and we had drinks there, and I went out to his house on the lake. This was not the big house. I've never been there. It was a big house on the lake, but it wasn't the one That he built later on. So I knew him early on run across Forest Mims a couple times. And of course, he's the shoulders upon which a lot of electronic talent was built and some of the stuff is lost. Jameco is actually bringing him back as a… Jameco is a kinda like a Radio Shack store online. It's yeah it is, it's not as robust as DigiKey or Bower, but they've held their roots.  Someone I've not met Lady Ada from Adafruit would be fun.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Would, yeah.  Steve Leininger: I, that, that's another thing that, if we had something along those lines, that would have been cool, but the buyers weren't up, up to the task and they when you don't want criticism at a certain point you've got to quit doing things if you don't want to be criticized.  Randy Kindig: Sure. When you finally got the Model 1 rolled out and you saw the tremendous interest, were you surprised in the interest that it garnered?  Steve Leininger: I wasn't. I wasn't. In fact, there's a quote of me. Me and John Roach had a discussion on how many of these do you think we could sell? And, this is actually quoted in his obituary on the, in the Wall Street Journal. I, Mr. Tandy said you could build 3, 500 of these because we've got 3, 500 stores and we can use them in the inventory. And to take inventory. And John Roach thought maybe we could sell, up to 5, 000 of these things in the first year. And I said, oh no, I think we could sell 50, 000. To which he said, horseshit. Just like that. And that, now I quoted that to the Wall Street Journal, and they put that in his obituary. Yeah I don't know how many times that word shows up in the Wall Street Journal, but if you search their files you'll find that it was me quoting John Roach. So … Randy Kindig: I'll have to, I'll have to look for that, yeah, that's funny. So you were not surprised by the interest,  Steve Leininger: no, it, part of it was I knew the leverage of the stores I'd been working, when we introduced the thing I'd been working for the company for just over a year. Think about that. And it wasn't until just before probably, it was probably September or October when Don and I agreed on the specs. I'd keep writing it up, and he'd look at it. Don actually suggested that, demanded, he doesn't, in a, but in a good natured way, he made a good case for it, that I have, in addition to the cassette interface on there, that I have a way to read and write data. Because if you're going to do an accounting program, you got to be able to read and write data. I actually figured out a way to do that. There were a couple other things. John Roach really wanted blinking lights on the thing. And my mechanical, the mechanical designer, there said that's going to cost more money to put the LEDs in there. What are you going to do with them? And, Mr. Roach was, you know, familiar with the IBM probably the 360 by then? Anyway. The mainframes. Yeah, mainframes always had blinking lights on them.  Randy Kindig: Exactly.  Steve Leininger: And since it's a computer, it should have blinking lights. And Larry said, Larry the mechanical guy said what are you going to do with them? I said, I can't, I said I could put stuff up there, It's… Randy Kindig: What are they going to indicate?  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And then, he said, I'll tell you what, I'm going to make the case without holes for the lights and just don't worry about it. That was the end of the discussion. Mr. Roach was probably a little disappointed, but yeah, no one else had them,  Randy Kindig: it's funny to think that you'd have blinking lights on a microcomputer like that. Yeah. Yeah. Is there any aspect of the Model one development you would do differently if you were doing it today?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, I would, I would've put the eighth memory chip in with the, with the video display so you get upper and lower case. Randy Kindig: Yeah, there you go. Okay.  Steve Leininger: Might've put buffers to the outside world. We had the, the microprocessor was buffered, but it was, it was very short distance off the connector there. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot I would have changed. Software could have been written a little better, but when one person's writing all the software the development system that I had was a Zilog development system. And 30 character percent a second. Decorator, line printer. The fact that I got it done is actually miracle stuff.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, and you got it done in a year, right?  Steve Leininger: And it was all written in assembly language. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Got it all done in a year.  Randy Kindig: That's a good year's work. Steve Leininger: It is.  Randy Kindig: Building a computer from scratch, basically, and then getting it...  Steve Leininger: and back then we had to program EEPROMs. We didn't have flash memory. Okay. Didn't hardly have operating systems back then. Not that I was using one. There was something in the Zilog thing, but yeah we were so far ahead of things, we were developing a product rather than a computer. And maybe that's the whole difference is that we had a product that you pull it up, plug it in, and it says these are TRS 80 and it wasn't the Model 1 until the Model 2 came out.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, exactly. It was just the TRS 80. Yeah. So I have to know, do you have any of the old hardware? Steve Leininger: I've got a Model 1. I don't use it except for demonstrations now. I actually have two. I've got one that works and one that's probably got a broken keyboard connector from taking it out of the case and holding it up too many times.  Randy Kindig: Were these prototypes or anything?  Steve Leininger: They are non serial production units. I've got the, I've got a prototype ROM board that's got the original integer basic that I wrote. I don't have the video boards and all that kind of stuff that went with it when we did the original demonstration. Let's see we had four wire wrapped, completely wire wrapped industrial wire wrapped versions that we used for prototyping the software. One went to David Lein, who wrote the book that came with the thing, the basic book. One I had at my desk and there were two others. Yeah. And they got rid of all of those. So a cautionary tale is if you do something in the future where you've got that prototype that was put together in Tupperware containers or held together with duct tape, you need to at least take pictures of it. And you might want to keep one aside. If it turns out to be something like the Apple III, you can probably get rid of all that stuff. If it turns out to be something like the Apple II, The RadioShack computer, the Commodore PET, you really ought to, enshrine that. The original iPhone. Apple did stuff that was, what was it, can't remember what it was. They had a they had a thing not unlike the... 3Com ended up getting them. Anyway the hand of the PDAs, no one knows what a Personal Oh, digital assistant. Yeah. Yeah. We call that a, we call that a phone ...  Randy Kindig: Palm Pilot. Yeah.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Palm Pilot. That's the one. Yeah. I've got a couple of those. I've got three model 100's. I've got one of the early… Randy Kindig: Did you work on the 100s? Steve Leininger: I used it, but I didn't work on it. The design. No. Okay. That was an NEC product with Radio Shack skins on it.  Randy Kindig: Oh, that's right. That's right.  Steve Leininger: Kay Nishi was the big mover on that. Yeah. Let's see I've got an Altair and an ASR 33 Teletype. Yeah, we're talking about maybe the computer's grandfather, right? I've had a whole bunch of other stuff. I've probably had 40 other computers that I don't have anymore. I am gravitating towards mechanical music devices, big music boxes, that kind of stuff.  Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. Cool. Interesting. Steve, that's all the questions I had prepared. Steve Leininger: Okay.  Randy Kindig: Is there anything I should have asked about that?  Steve Leininger: Oh my,  Randy Kindig: anything you'd want to say?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, I, I've given talks before on how do you innovate? How do you become, this is pioneering kinds of stuff. So you really have to have that vision, man. The vision, I can't exactly say where the vision comes from, but being dyslexic for me has been a gift. Okay and this is something I tell grade school and middle school students that, some people are out there saying I, I can't do that because, it's just too much stuff or my brain is cluttered. Cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what's an empty desk the sign of? Embrace the clutter. Learn a lot of different things. Do what you're passionate about. Be willing to. support your arguments, don't just get angry if someone doesn't think the way you do, explain why you're doing it that way. And sometimes it's a matter of they just don't like it or they don't have the vision. The ones that don't have the vision, they never, they may never have the vision. I've quit companies because of people like that. But When you've got the vision and can take it off in your direction, it could just end up as being art. And I shouldn't say just art, art can be an amazing thing. And that behind these walls here, we've got a pinball machine and gaming conference going on. And it is nutcase. But is there stuff out there you look at and say, Oh, wow. Yeah. And I do too. Keep it a while going. Randy Kindig: Very cool. All right. That's a great stopping point, I think. All right. I really appreciate it, Steve taking the time to talk with us today.  Steve Leininger: Thanks, Randy.  

Holmberg's Morning Sickness - Monday August 19, 2024 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Holmberg's Morning Sickness - Monday August 19, 2024 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Haakon The Good   • The Philosophy of Self-Preservation  Keanu Reeves and his Mom Patricia Taylor arrive at 2020 Academy Awards   • Keanu Reeves and his Mom Patricia Tay...  Bill & Ted's Alex Winter Reacts to Keanu Reeves and Alexandra Grant's Relationshiphttps://www.etonline.com/media/videos...Mystery Link:    • Vídeo  Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/c-2039428Odysee.TV: https://odysee.com/@SandmanMGTOW:cBitchute Link: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/YIxe...Sandman 2:    / @sandman2317  Twitter:   / sandmanmgtow  SubscribeStar.com: https://www.subscribestar.com/sandmanPaypal / Email: Sandmanmgtow @ Gmail.comBitcoin Address: bc1qtkeru8ygglfq36eu544hxw6n9hsh22l7fkf8uvHi Everyone Sandman, This video is brought to you by a donation from AJ and here's what he briefly has to say: "Hi Sandman, Any thoughts as to why Keanu Reeves is dating a woman that easily looks like she could be his mother, despite only being 50? Why go for an old granny when he could have anyone else? In fact, in the cited video attached, Keanu makes attempts at feigning a few PDAs on the red carpet, but his tight lips and open eyes suggest that their relationship isn't even real."Well AJ thanks for the donation and topic. In case people are wondering who Alexandra Grant is here's a picture of her and here's a picture of Keanu's mother. My thinking that Keanu has a case of male mother need. His parents were divorced while he was small and he lived with his mother and his mother kept re-marrying over and over again. He's been single for a very long time and I thought that he was going his own way especially when you see those pictures of him eating alone on a park bench. He's also not fifty, but in his late fifties and yeah he could easily find an attractive woman in her thirties or early forties and have a relationship. But I think Alexandra being a writer he uses her as bit of a muse. The kiss in the video seems forced and his facial expression changes from happy to upset the moment the kiss is over. His eyes were open during it and I just think the guy is socially awkward. I do believe the relationship is real because if she's just his beard he would have found someone much younger and prettier. The guy is emotionally damaged from his childhood with three different step-fathers and being ferried around by his mother everywhere. Plus he faced another tragedy in 2001 when he lost his wife in a car accident and a child that she miscarried. There's another video I made about this back when they first got together and spoke about how he got together with her most likely because she has a lot of qualities of his mother. I also spoke about how their relationship gives all the middle aged milfs and gilfs tons of hopes that they might get their own Hollywood hulk one day and that they don't have to look like a movie star or be all that much younger looking than him.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/mgtow/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Sequoia Simone from Fanatical Fics and But Make it Scary returns to TNO to continue our coverage of The Lost Hero and, in typical fashion, happens to be here for some TRULY IMPACTFUL CHAPTERS. Topics include: being liked, Big Sur, sharks & paparazzi, surfing, sandwiches, Bonne Mamman, stupid rich money, Larry the Cable Guy, PDAs, JD Power & Associates, corruption, Monty Python, infomercials, Justin Timberlake, The Great Salt Lake, karaoke, making new friends, 2 Great 2 Prophecy, Catholic priests, Justin Bieber, coin flips, and more! TNO Live: www.thenewestolympian.com/live TNO Patreon: www.thenewestolympian.com/patreon TNO PO Box: www.thenewestolympian.com/contact — Find The Newest Olympian Online — • Website: www.thenewestolympian.com • Patreon: www.thenewestolympian.com/patreon • Twitter: www.twitter.com/newestolympian • Instagram: www.instagram.com/newestolympian • Facebook: www.facebook.com/newestolympian • Reddit: www.reddit.com/r/thenewestolympian • Merch: www.thenewestolympian.com/merch — Production — • Creator, Host, Producer, Social Media, Web Design: Mike Schubert • Editor: Sherry Guo • Music: Bettina Campomanes and Brandon Grugle • Art: Jessica E. Boyd — About The Show — Is Percy Jackson the book series we should've been reading all along? Join Mike Schubert as he reads through the books for the first time with the help of longtime PJO fans to cover the plot, take stabs at what happens next, and nerd out over Greek mythology. Whether you're looking for an excuse to finally read these books, or want to re-read an old favorite with a digital book club, grab your blue chocolate chip cookies and listen along. New episodes release on Mondays wherever you get your podcasts! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to another transformational episode of Wellness Renegades! I'm your host Jason Stein, and today, we are honored to have Michelle Grasek join us to navigate the tumultuous waters of the wellness industry post-COVID. Michelle, a veteran in the field, will shed light on the intricacies of marketing in our new digital era, especially for wellness entrepreneurs. Together, we'll dive deep into the shift towards online marketing and the importance of understanding the essentials of SEO before pouring resources into digital strategies. Michelle brings her personal experience to the table, including the art of negotiation with ad firms and the critical analysis of whether increased online traffic genuinely converts into patients. We also talk about How COVID impacted wellness providers. Understanding SEO manipulation and how to invest wisely. Negotiating prices for ads or SEO investment. Frustrations with insurance and considering going cash pay only. Growth of telemedicine and potential outreach to rural areas   Links Website: https://WellnessRenegades.com Instagram: @WellnessRenegades For a full transcript of the episode, visit: https://shorturl.at/cdH37   Michelle Grasek  Bio: Michelle Grasek is the host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast. She's a practicing acupuncturist and marketing strategist and she's been teaching marketing, both online and in-person, over a decade. In that time, Michelle has taught marketing to over 3,500 acupuncturists. It's her mission to help you grow your business using marketing techniques that are genuine and generous. Through MIchelle's articles and online PDA courses, she aims to help you outline a strategy, focus on marketing that's authentic, and get new patients every week. She shares all of her practice-building tips at michellegrasek.com and on social media @michellegrasek.   Social Links: - Instagram: @michellegrasek   - Website: www.michellegrasek.com - Acupuncture Marketing School online class [15 PDAs]

When Movie Night was not available to us, Love Island gifted us with The PDAs! Our own award show that was heavy on Georgia Steele's love triangle as well as an attack on Arabella. As if the girl has not been through enough! It seems as though Callum and Georgia Steele are done for good but is there still a chance remaining for him and Molly? CHOO CHOO because this podcast is back on the conspiracy train! Join our patreon for extra content every week! https://www.patreon.com/notfriendshipislandpod Follow us on Instagram for all the INFI updates you could dream of! https://www.instagram.com/notfriendshipislandpod/ If you are loving our recaps and going on this Love Island journey with us, please subscribe and rate us 5-stars! For all business inquiries email us at sarah@muckaboutindustries.com

Calls: Injustice, Trump, War of 1812, Civil War. Double standard of justice! Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson and husband's crying and PDAs! The Hake Report, Wednesday, January 24, 2024 AD TIME STAMPS * (0:00:00) Start/Topics: Crime, Ketanji (JLP interrupts)* (0:02:20) Hey, guys! (Wovenhand tee) * (0:04:44) JOE, AZ: Trump going to jail, civil fraud will be criminal* (0:12:56) JOE: I'm hated b/c they fear me; English, all/some/general* (0:18:06) NY man convicted of murder, woman in wrong driveway* (0:27:19) Woman reefer madness killing, MJ-induced psychosis* (0:33:52) MARK, CA: Injustice, Trump, Juries, JOE, whites* (0:40:45) MARK: Ronnie from OH, War of 1812* (0:44:45) Supers: Shoutouts, Mark out of line, pretending?* (0:47:58) DANIEL, TX: War of 1812, sovereignty, bit off more * (0:51:07) DANIEL: Negotiate around Civil War? Start of war. * (0:57:10) DANIEL: Division. Differences. Mexican-American War, Grant, Lee* (1:00:13) DANIEL: Confederates can call it "Civil War," Southerners * (1:04:25) Starflyer 59 - "when I learn to sing" (2001, Leave Here a Stranger)* (1:11:21) Ketanji Onyika's husband (2022)* (1:26:39) Ketanji-Jackson kiss (censored/uncensored)* (1:30:30) DAVID, FL: Buttiegieg, Ketanji, Biden, LGBT, Give up?* (1:34:48) DAVID: Chinese, Asians, high-trust, honesty* (1:37:07) DAVID: Civil War stuff at a grandma's house, Atlanta, GA* (1:38:58) DAVID: Cakebread wine; DEI train* (1:40:18) RICK, VA: No hands are clean. Get over anger. Black ladies. Dating. * (1:46:28) DARIEN, GA: Middle East, Ukraine wars. Awakening? * (1:51:28) Supers tomorrow! (Which worse: Click or complaint?) * (1:51:51) Vollmar - "William, Go Away" (2004, 13 or so people who need chances)Hake is live M-F 9-11 AM PT (11-1 CT / 12-2 ET) Call-in 1-888-775-3773 – https://www.thehakereport.com  (Also see Hake News on The Jesse Lee Peterson Show)  BLOG https://www.thehakereport.com/blog/2024/1/24/the-hake-report-wed-1-24-24 PODCAST / Substack  VIDEO  YouTube  |  Rumble*  |  Facebook  |  X  |  BitChute  |  Odysee*  PODCAST  Substack  |  Apple  |  Spotify  |  Castbox  |  Podcast Addict  *SUPER CHAT on platforms* above or  BuyMeACoffee, etc.  SHOP  Teespring  ||  All My Links  JLP Network:  JLP  |  Church  |  TFS  |  Nick  |  Joel  Get full access to HAKE at thehakereport.substack.com/subscribe

John McClane battles terrorists at Dulles airport, then saves the United States from cybercriminals. Special guests Dom Monfre and Daron from Board Games are for Losers join us to chat about the benefits of naked calisthenics, a steampunk baggage claim, and writing ads for PDAs. Then we find out if Die Hard 2 and Live Free or Die Hard stand the Test of Time.

Do you wonder how life might differ between an Autistic individual without ADHD and an Autistic individual with ADHD? In this episode, Patrick Casale and Dr. Megan Anna Neff, two AuDHD mental health professionals, talk with Amanda Diekman, mother of three neurodivergent children, and an author and coach in the neurodivergent-affirming parenting world, about her experiences as an Autistic individual without ADHD. Top 3 reasons to listen to the entire episode: Understand some of the struggles, grief, and loss surrounding switching between a masked and unmasked self. Identify some of the ways that autism without ADHD can present differently from other neurotypes, including sensory issues, special interests, demand avoidance, and life tasks. Get a glimpse into the world of parenting for neurodivergent moms. There are many nuances surrounding the experiences of Autistic individuals since autism is a disability you can't necessarily see. We want to give this disclaimer that this episode only highlights the experience of one Autistic person, but it still gives a glimpse into the unique ways that various neurotypes experience the world. More about Amanda: Amanda Diekman's mission is to lead weary parents into the joy and ease of the low-demand life. She's an ordained pastor and parent coach, a late diagnosed autistic adult, and a mom of three neurodivergent children. Since recovery from her own burnout and PTSD, Amanda has been spreading the message of low-demand parenting — dropping demands and aligning expectations to meet children with radical acceptance. She lives in the North Street Community, an intentional community of all abilities in downtown Durham. Amanda's Website: www.amandadiekman.com Amanda's Book: Low Demand Parenting Parenting Summit: Low Demand Parenting Summit Mastermind: Amanda's Mastermind Program    A Thanks to Our Sponsors, Tula Consulting & Marisa La Piana LCSW Psychotherapy! ✨ Tula Consulting: We would love to thank Tula Consulting for sponsoring this episode. Workplace communication can be messy. Considering the lens of neurodiversity can be helpful for understanding this. Maybe you found yourself frustratedly typing "per my last email" in an office communication, perplexed about how a colleague or client doesn't seem to understand your very clearly written email. Consider this. Visual information processing isn't everyone's strength. Perhaps a quick call could make a world of difference. Or how about including a video or voice message with your email? And this technology exists! Simple steps like these can make your work environment more accessible and bring out the best in everyone. Tula Consulting is on a mission to help organizations build more neuro-inclusive products and work environments. Tula does this by bringing curious minds to solve curious problems. Find out more by visiting tulaneurodiversity.org. ✨ Marisa La Piana LCSW Psychotherapy: We would love to thank Marisa La Piana Psychotherapy for sponsoring this episode. Marisa (she/they) is a neuroqueer licensed clinical social worker and trauma therapist. They bring a queer and neurodivergent-affirming, anti-ableist lens to their practice. She is passionate about utilizing attachment-focused EMDR work, parts work, and body-based somatic work to support folks with trauma healing. They are also deeply influenced and inspired by the inherent strengths, resilience, and wisdom of queer, disabled, and neurodivergent communities. Marisa offers both individual therapy as well as workshops and trainings.  If you reside in the state of California and you're looking for a queer, neurodivergent-affirming therapist, you can schedule a free consultation at marisalapianalcsw.com.   Transcript MEGAN NEFF: Well, welcome back to segment three of our Ask A Neurotype series. We have Amanda here for Ask An Autistic, which I'm so excited about. First, just a huge disclaimer, we are asking one person about their experience of their neurotype, that is not a global statement on everyone's experience. So, with that, I'm really excited to introduce you to Amanda. Amanda and I have worked on a few projects together. She just released a fantastic book, Low Demand Parenting. And she's really active in the neurodivergent informing parenting world, especially, for PDAs or anyone wanting to learn how to parent in a low demand way. Amanda, do I feel like I captured that right? What would you like to add? I should say. AMANDA DIEKMAN: I am a mom of three neurodivergent kids. And I discovered that I was autistic some point in my 37th year. So, I gave myself my autism, like official diagnostic experience was my 38th birthday present to myself. MEGAN NEFF: Oh my goodness. Wait, I love… like you went for an assessment on your birthday? AMANDA DIEKMAN: It was two days before because my- MEGAN NEFF: I love that. AMANDA DIEKMAN: …birthday was on holiday. MEGAN NEFF: I love that so much. Did you make like a cake? Like. Happy Birthday, I'm Autistic because that would have been amazing. AMANDA DIEKMAN: The truth is that I was super ready for the assessment. I had self-identified for months and gone through a full diagnostic process for one of my kids where I was like, check, check, check all the boxes. But it's still getting the official diagnosis sent me into about a two-week swirl brain cloud where I wasn't really very present or celebratory. I was just communing with the younger parts of myself and feeling a lot of self-compassion and grief. So, I think the cake part came about three weeks after the diagnosis when I was ready to say hello world, I'm autistic. Yeah. MEGAN NEFF: Oh my gosh, there's so much I love about what you just said. And my brain is diverging in so many ways. Like, one, just the combination of grief, and liberation, and how that is such a common experience. So, love how you dropped parts work in there, which Patrick talks about all the time. I think is so healing, especially, in that discovery process. Yeah, I was also 37. I feel like I keep seeing, maybe it's like confirmation bias, but I feel like I see 37 pop up a lot as a time of identification. Yeah, yeah. Well, part of your claim to fame beyond your book and your awesome resources is that you're the only autistic person in your family that's not also ADHD. Do I have that right? AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yes, yes, yes. And some of my family members are very ADHD-forward. Like, that's kind of the leading edge of how they move through the world. So, I feel like not being ADHD in a way is a big part of what kept my wider family from knowing I was neurodivergent because they were like, "Well, clearly you don't struggle because we are all struggling and you are over there just fine." And it made it harder for some of the places that I really struggle, like some of the social communication, and the intense inward feeling of not ever fitting in anywhere that some members of my family didn't struggle with quite as intensively. I think in some ways the ADHD kind of gave them, I don't know, some sort of social superpowers that I didn't have. But that was not as evident in the family dynamic because it seemed like I didn't have any trouble following through when I said I was going to do something. I was incredibly detail-oriented. I never lost the thread in a conversation. And those were many of the biggest skill gaps that the people around me were struggling with. So, they were like, "Man, Amanda, she's as neurotypical as they come. Like, just not ADHD." MEGAN NEFF: Well, that's interesting because what you're describing is intact executive functioning. And so with that the autism could go missed. Patrick, do you mind muting when… I'm hearing the, I don't know if it's the right noise? Oh, there it is. Thanks. Okay. PATRICK CASALE: I just want to jump in real quick though, Megan, because that's kind of what my experience was like, too. Although I am autistic ADHD, I think autistic parts are much more pronounced and it gets missed a lot. And I just remember, like, feeling like exactly what you said that intense loneliness, disconnection, and socially, especially. It was what really led to me seeking out my diagnosis in terms of being 35 and getting diagnosed at that time. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yeah, I agree. And sometimes people talk about like not having the rulebook to other people, feeling like the key to unlocking connection was always missing unless I contorted, and chameleoned, and performed, Like, became somebody else. And it felt like it was one option or the other. It was authenticity and loneliness, or it was connection and betrayal of self. And they both hurts so excruciatingly that I ended up choosing connection and betrayal itself because it felt like it was the safer way. Of course, it was very reinforced by the world around me. Masked Amanda was very well-liked. But the hard part is that the lonely authentic part of me doesn't go anywhere. She just hangs out inside. Like, no one really likes me, no one really sees me, no one really wants me that you ultimately can't betray yourself because wherever we go, there we are. And so it was, you know, intact executive functioning in some ways. Made me a really strong masker because I was very, very perceptive and making some pretty clear cognitive loops between what other people were saying and wanting from me and then how I performed. I sometimes envied family members who seemed like they were like, "Well, I am who I am. You know, take me or leave me." I was like, I never have that power. It was take me, take me, please. I'll do anything. MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, yeah. PATRICK CASALE: That internal experience feels so, I've said, like, feels so torturous, like internally, like this push/pull tug of war, and like, where do I belong? How do I show up as my true self? Do I even understand my true self? Why do I feel so disconnected? Why do I feel so lonely and isolated even when I'm around people who "care about me?" And I just commend you for just, you know, working through that experience and naming that too. And I think, for me, I've said it many times in this podcast, like the grief relief process of like, diagnosis was grief-inducing, for sure. And it was also majorly relieving in a lot of ways after I processed the grief and some of my own internal experiences. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yeah, I feel so free. Over and over again, in my life, I've had people who love me really well help me to name this reality with some metaphors that have been really powerful. I'm an ordained Presbyterian pastor. And when I stepped down from pastoring, I knew… this was years before my diagnosis, but I knew that this work that we're outlining was the path ahead for me and that it was too hard for me to be a pastor and figure out who I wanted to be in the world. And I had come up with the metaphor of myself feeling like I was a turtle, that all the soft, tender parts of me were very small and very hidden. And the shell, the big, strong, capable back was like, displayed for all to see and there were all these people all over my shell. And that I was just dragging them along with me, and that I was dreaming of being a turtle without people all over my shell. And then this dear friend and colleague pulled me aside and said, "Amanda, you're not a turtle. You're a flipping bird." And that was like my first glimmer of being autistic. It's like, I'm not even a turtle. It's not that I've got so many people on my shell and that I'm so tired, it's that I'm the wrong creature altogether. And that, gosh, becoming the bird has been because a bird-like soars and a bird has urgency, and be like alone, and in a flock, and just like the isolated, tired turtle dragging the people across the street is like all of my old self. And the freedom has been the bird. MEGAN NEFF: That's a beautiful metaphor, I love that. Yeah, I was going to ask kind of based on that, I think the answer is yes, first of all, I love the kind of this or that scenario that you drew out of like, either I think it was authenticity and- AMANDA DIEKMAN: Loneliness. MEGAN NEFF: Loneliness, or connection and betrayal. Was that it? That captures it, I think, so profoundly. And I was going to ask if since diagnosis and discovery, have you found a third way? AMANDA DIEKMAN: One thing is that I've discovered how much I enjoy being alone. So, I have recovered loneliness, that loneliness is actually still bound up in ableism. It's still saying there's something wrong with this emotional experience or something scary. And I've discovered how little social interaction I need in order to feel whole and thriving. MEGAN NEFF: Same. AMANDA DIEKMAN: It is remarkably little. And that that doesn't then make me and then like a loner, a social misfit. Like all of these labels that are put on people who really just have a very small need for social interaction. And that, like, it fills me all the way up. I'm all full, and I feel so good, and I really only need one friend that I see every couple of weeks for a short period of time, relatively. Like [CROSSTALK 00:12:16]- MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, yeah. I love that. AMANDA DIEKMAN: … that. So, my third way is like, maybe it's a healing and a recovery of that earlier self. I guess, it is a third way. It's saying loneliness is really not loneliness. It's being honest about what fills me up and then choosing those things wholeheartedly without label or judgment. And then recognizing that being full of myself is actually how I feel most connected to the world. But my primary connection to me is actually what makes me feel so vibrantly alive. And that connection to other is quite secondary for me. And then I have to say that my family has become a really crucial middle space there. The more that I unmask, and that I feel truly free, and cozy, and nestled, and comfortable in my immediate family dynamic, like with my children, with my husband, that I'm experiencing, really, for the first time what it feels like to be in a flock, that I've kept myself lonely even within my most intimate connections for the before times as well. So, even with the people I trust the most, I still am holding back so much of myself, I'm still being very secretive with my true self. And so laying aside those old patterns of protection and choosing to trust the people who have earned it is also a big piece of what makes me feel whole and connected to myself and others at the same time. It's the same work. MEGAN NEFF: Well, and yeah, those are still reciprocal, right? Like, I actually talk to people about this a lot of, we you could be going through the motions of connecting to others, but unless we're connected with ourself, we're not actually going to feel deeply connected to others. And so I hear the both and of that, and taking the space you need to connect yourself it also has allowed you to show up kind of authentically in your core relationships, to where you're also feeling deeper connections. I've experienced a very similar experience, especially, with my nuclear family. And, like, I was relating so hard to everything you were saying about, like being alone and giving myself permission to be okay not being social. Like, so on the SRS, it's one of the autism measures, there's a scale for social motivation. And if it's really elevated, that means you have very little. Mine is very, very elevated. It was the most elevated out of my scales. And for so long I overrode that instinct because of all the shoulds, like I should be socially X,Y, Z and just realizing, yeah, I love connecting with ideas through books, and through taking in information, and I love being creative. And being able to actually think through do I want to go to this event? Like, it sounds so simple, but it's actually quite radical. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yeah, yeah, it's made a big difference in our family life for me to be really honest about this because I do opt out of a lot of things that I was participating in before. But it's actually really freeing because a number of my children don't want to go to various things, too. And so it becomes very aligned to that my partner, my husband is neurotypical with a really strong love for kind of like, busy social environments. He's a social butterfly, I guess you would say. And so, you know, if there's a soccer game, where I know there's going to be a ton of sideline conversations, and interruptions, and some kids want to stay home, like in the old times, we would have done a pretty detailed dance around who's going to do what. And now it's like, "Can I please stay home? I would love to stay home." And he's like, "Okay, awesome because I really want to go." And it's so easy. It's just like what do you want to do? MEGAN NEFF: I love that. AMANDA DIEKMAN: And same with birthday parties. We live in an intentional community. So, we have a lot of big community events, which my heart is with everything that we're about, but I don't actually love going to most of the events, but my husband does. So, it's just made it so easy. So, I get all of this cozy alone time with my more introverted or maybe somebody who's kind of a little anxious about that gathering, or it's just not their thing, then they always know they can stay home with me. And we're all getting our needs met. I used to think that, like, not only the shoulds but some shame that I didn't really want to go. And so I would override it, in part because I didn't want to face my own shame. And- MEGAN NEFF: Can I jump in? AMANDA DIEKMAN: Go ahead. Yeah. MEGAN NEFF: And I don't want to do reels too much into like, mom and parenting. But I think, especially, you know, we're both in kind of a heteronormative structured marriages, there's a lot of social pressure for the moms to be the ones to take the kids to the events. And same thing in my family since discovery. My husband is introverted. But he has so much more tolerance for socializing than I do. So, we've shifted, we've defaulted to where he takes the kids, or similarly like one of my kids really loves the movie theater, one doesn't. I cannot handle movie theaters. So, I'm the designated, I'll stay home with the kid. And it works really well. And I also love how it pushes against a lot of the narrative of what a mom should be because there's so much pressure for us to be the designated social parent. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yeah, yeah. And I'm in the homeschooling world, also, where that is like times 10. MEGAN NEFF: Yes, that is times 10 for your world. AMANDA DIEKMAN: So, opting out or saying, "You know, one person can come over. I would love for one person and one kid to come over, but we can't do a co-op, we can't do, you know, gathering, I can't turn something like my home that feels super safe into something that feels chaotic. It needs to meet my needs too." And that has been so much easier to do as I've become more honest with myself. MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, yeah. Well, can we ask you some questions that we've been asking everyone kind of about their neurotype experience as our little compare and contrast? AMANDA DIEKMAN: Sure, let's do it. PATRICK CASALE: You can start us off, Megan, with whatever you've got. MEGAN NEFF: I noticed you unmuted so I thought maybe. Well, first, I feel like you've started talking about this, but can you tell us a little bit more like what is your experience of small talk and kind of socializing I guess, in general? AMANDA DIEKMAN: Okay, I experience small talk, especially, in an environment where there are multiple small talk conversations happening all at the same time. It feels to me like being in a rushing river. It feels like I will drown here and that my first mode is actually to try to dissociate in order to float. I imagine myself I'm like thrashing and kicking trying to participate in this moment. And instead, I kind of like go under, and put my head back, and I drown out the sound. It's like, it all turns into a moo moo, like when you put your head under the water, and I'm just like, just make it, just stay right here. I'm remembering imagining myself, one of the last parties that I went to was a while back. And I usually cling pretty tightly to my partner in these environments because of that drowning feeling. It's like, you're the only person here that I feel like I can anchor to. And he went inside to do something. And so I was out all by myself. And I feel so acutely aware of my body. Like, I turn into like a reptile or something like that. And I sort of start to slowly move away from the conversation that I'm a part of, like, maybe if I just like, take tiny steps away, I can extricate myself from this. And so I eventually went and sat, there was like a bunch of people chatting, and there was one table. And I went and sat at the table by myself and just ate. I just, like, shoveled food. And my husband came and found me later and he was like, "Do you need saving?" And I was like, "No, I'm okay." And he said, "Well, there's a person over there that is interested. I think they study autism and medical care, something like that. And like, do you want me to introduce you?" And I was like, "Yes, that would be great." And so then he kind of like found me a person that I could special interest with. And I said, "Do you mind if we moved to this corner of the yard?" And we had like a deep dive conversation separate from other people and I was able to really enjoy that. But it's so acutely different that, like, it's a kind of a panic reaction to in terms of what my physiology is communicating. So, I'm guessing that both parts of my nervous system are hitting it hard. And what I think is so confusing, it always has been confusing for me, is that when I disconnect from my genuine self, like, if I completely disconnect from my body, I'm actually really good. I can fake and I don't know how fake it is. I can perform small talk really well, where the other person would never know how hard I am working and the cost. And so I didn't know because I kept the reality of the experience that I was having way under lock and key. But of course, like many people, you know, it just came out in all these other ways. Like, why am I so chronically anxious? Why am I depressed? Why can't I accomplish the things that I want to in life? And it was kind of all bound up in this round neckly extremely stressful social situation that I kept getting myself into. As a pastor, I did [CROSSTALK 00:24:16]- MEGAN NEFF: I was thinking about that. I was like, if you were a pastor there's a lot of small talk that goes into that, yes. AMANDA DIEKMAN: So much. And sometimes I was able to quickly steer it into deep talk. But usually, I was suppressing just how intense the embodied experience is that I was having. PATRICK CASALE: I actually want to ask you about the... that's a good segue as well, is during small talk, right? When you're noticing these experiences now, maybe not in those moments beforehand, what are you experiencing behind the scenes when you're feeling like trapped in terms of like, are we mimicking gestures? Are we mimicking body language? Are nodding our head a lot? Like, how was eye contact as well? Because I notice for me when I'm in a masked state, I feel this need to like nod my head a lot, and validate, and socially reinforce, and like make more eye contact, even though it's unbelievably uncomfortable for me instead of being able to just look away, or look down, or look to the side. And what I'm experiencing internally is, like, this constriction feeling of like, how the hell do I get out of this? And I do a lot of, I won't call them Irish goodbyes anymore, but I'll call them autistic goodbyes maybe, but I definitely don't do a good job of it. Like, if I want to get out of the conversation, I do not do a good job of like saying, like, "Hey, I'm going to leave. Goodbye." I'm just like, "I'm getting out of here." And I just pack away. AMANDA DIEKMAN: I do the same thing. My goodbyes are one of, I think, that's like a clear place that I've never been able to mask. I have always done something where I like make it clear it looks like I'm going to the bathroom or like, "Oh, I got a call." And then I just leave instead. I still do that. MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, me too, me too. AMANDA DIEKMAN: All the time. PATRICK CASALE: All the time, all the time. MEGAN NEFF: [CROSSTALK 00:26:06] like wrap up a conversation. I mean, every week on this podcast, I'm like, "Patrick, you do…" I actually was just having an anxious moment Patrick might hop off early today. And I was like, "Oh, shit, am I going to have to say the goodbye." And I was starting to script like what does he say every week? Like, why are goodbyes so hard? PATRICK CASALE: It's so true. And I do the same thing, Amanda. Like, I will pretend I have a phone call. I'm like, "Oh, hey." And I like put it to my ear. And I'm like, I just walk away. And then I just put the phone in my pocket. Like, it's clearly not illuminated. Clearly, nobody's calling me, there's no voice coming out of the other side. But I have to get out of there. And when I have to get out of there, I have to go immediately. Like, it has to be like that. It cannot be like a long drawn-out process. MEGAN NEFF: Oh, longer goodbyes are so awkward because you, like, keep summarizing, like, "Have a good week, have a good week, good to talk to you, good to talk to you. Bye-bye." It's like what is the closing statement? PATRICK CASALE: Yeah, you get caught in this loop of like, continuously saying the same thing over and over, hoping for that like, exit point, and then you can't find it. So, you have to like force the issue. And my face will just shift completely. Like, it'll be like, looking for the exit very dramatically. And like, I don't know how to get out of this situation, I'm out. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yes, well, the only thing I would add to all of this around, like what's happening in my body when I'm masking really heavily is I get increasingly rigid in my body. So, I start to lock my knees, then I'm flexing my thighs, then my hands are starting to turn into little grippy balls, then I start clenching my jaw. It's like my whole body is freezing up. And I often lock on eye contact which people have always commented, like, that I'm such a good listener but I never look away. I am, like, zeroed in and like, the looking away and knowing when to look like, I can't do that. But if I'm really going to be in touch with myself, any kind of truly difficult question like, "What do you want for dinner?" I have to close my eyes. Like [CROSSTALK 00:28:30]- MEGAN NEFF: …couple of questions like what do you want for dinner? Because that's so true. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yes. Like, if you guys asked me, like, you'll know it's a hard one when I'm like, I have to close my eyes. Like, there's just no way for me to know what I think unless I shut out the visual stimulation. MEGAN NEFF: You did that just a minute ago when I asked you about small talk. You took a moment, you shut your eyes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yeah, it's a need and yet it's one that I have overridden with this intense eye contact. MEGAN NEFF: Yes, yes, okay, that's right. Is there any other autistics specific questions, Patrick, you want to ask before I hop on the like ADHD verse autism questions? PATRICK CASALE: I always like to know, socializing is always the big one. I like to always know about like transitions and like changes unexpectedly and abruptly, how those feel or experience. I also think about, like, food consistencies, textures, things like that. But ultimately, special interests, all of those questions are the things that come to mind. But I am happy to sass out the two between ADHD and autism as well. MEGAN NEFF: Well, those are great questions. Amanda, you just heard a bunch basically, yeah, all the autism criteria, special interest, sensory stuff, routine disruptions, which with a family full of ADHD, I think you'd have a bit of. Like, are there any of those that are grabbing your attention of like, oh, yeah, I want to talk about that. AMANDA DIEKMAN: I've always had an uneasy relationship with routine. I always craved it as a young person and I would generate a lot of very rigid routines. But in a family of ADHDers, it was really difficult for us to ever stick to any of them. And so I created a idolized persona of myself, where I am very consistent and routine-driven. And then as I've grown into myself as an actual adult, and not the fictional adult I thought I wanted when I was a kid, it turns out that I actually much prefer to have free and open time where I can move through it without a sense of how it is supposed to be that actually scripting my own day and following a regimented order is more of a stress as, what did they say? That the autism criteria are actually autism stress behaviors. Like, I think that that is actually a stress behavior for me and not actually a safety and flow need. And that, if there are too many things expected of me, then that produces stress. And then I get very regimented on how I will do all of those things. But when I do what I do, which is drop all those demands, release the expectations, and do the proactive and deep work around restoring a sense of flow in life that actually works for me, very few externally driven routines, I'm very much in tune with, what do I feel like doing right now? What might feel good to my body? But I think, in a way because I'm not ADHD, just to kind of get to your, I don't have quite the same sense of time blindness. Like, I don't lose myself in quite the same way. And so I feel like I'm able to follow the flow without it completely derailing like the things that I want to do with my day. Like, I can hold the kind of loose agenda, and follow my flow, and feel like it'll probably all get done. Like, that's the thing that I can have confidence in, which I think, and I've never been autistic and ADHD, but I think it's hard to feel that sense in yourself. Like, I can do these things if I just follow my flow. MEGAN NEFF: That's so interesting because I I've always thought of this as hyper fixation, but maybe it's more hyper-focus. I have a hard time, kind of, I'll create a structure for my day or a to-do list. But then what will often happen is I'll end up spending like eight hours deep in a workbook, when I like set out to be like, I'm going to do three hours of admin, email, like charting. But then I'll get into a project, get really focused, the day has gone by, and I have no inertia to go do the boring things. But does that that happens to you less? Like, if you're like, I'm going to do these things today, you just do them? AMANDA DIEKMAN: So, like yes and no. I can only do three things in a day and sometimes more. And it depends on if they're hard things. Like, if I have to call and make a doctor's appointment, it's just one thing. MEGAN NEFF: Oh, yeah, yeah, nothing more. AMANDA DIEKMAN: That's it. Yeah, it is. And I know a lot of people talk about, like, you kind of sit around waiting for five hours, and then you do the thing, and then you decompress for another four hours. Like, that is actually my real life. I am spending a lot of that time, you know, with my children. And it's not empty time. But I only do one hard thing a day. And I think that's one of the ways that, like, I am autistic in that, sometimes my capacity for those challenges is pretty limited. But I can find a time in my day when I will want to do it. Like, that's how I feel about daily tasks, like not every day do I find a time where I want to wash the dishes, but almost every day at some point I want to do it. But if I say I always do it first thing in the morning when I wake up, and then I don't want to do it at that time, that can really throw me off. So, I'll just say, like, pay attention to yourself, when do you want to do it? When is it the right match for energy? MEGAN NEFF: I love that. I do a ton of that, of like I have tasks, but then I pair it to my energy because my energy is all over the place. Sometimes it's physical energy, sometimes it's cognitive energy. And that's been probably one of the biggest accommodations, or the best accommodations I've given myself is to create enough space in my life where the tasks can pretty much pair with the energy. And I love that. Before like that created a lot of strain and stress in my body, when I was like doing a task that was in conflict with the energy I had. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yeah, I agree with that. And a lot of times I would be doing it out of somebody is putting a lot of pressure on me to do the thing. Like, you really need to do this, you really need to do this. And that just increases my stress and resistance to doing the thing. And so if I feel a lot of stress, like, well, recently, I got a computer a while back, and I really needed to get AppleCare on it because we have so much issues with broken technology around here. And the harder my husband reminded me to do it, the less likely I was to do it. And guess what? I never did it. And then it got broken. And he was like, "Did you do it? Like, I really wanted you to." And I was like, "I know, I didn't. I really didn't." And then I felt really terrible because like he tried his very hardest to get me to do it. And I started to like, maybe I don't deserve a new computer. You know, this was my fault. And I really appreciated the way that my husband pivoted, maybe this is a good example of what it looks like for the people in our lives to be accommodating. Because he was like, "You know, it's okay. This is one of the costs of having a disability that people don't see. And it's okay, you couldn't do it. And next time, we'll put it in my name so that I can do it for you, that asking you to do it was too much." Because sometimes I can tell right away that the task is not like at some point, my energy is going to match this task. Like, my energy will never match this task. That's how it was for me with the AppleCare. Like, I was never going to get it done. MEGAN NEFF: Yeah. First of all, I love that as a response from your husband. That's really beautiful. I've mentioned similar stories with my husband where things that, yeah, are expensive that I like start having so much shame about where he stepped in and be like, "You know what, that's part of your brain. You also like use your creativity in your brain to bring in income, and there's like…" Like, actually I had the other day, I realized a pretty significant oversight that cost my business quite a bit of money and I don't know if you've seen those reels of like the ADHD tax for personal life? I was like, "Oh my gosh, if I applied the ADHD tax for my business, it is substantive." And again, this is part of our brains, it's going to happen. But that's actually pivoting me to a question I wanted to ask you, which is around the interest-based nervous system because I've gone back and forth on putting that in the middle of my Venn diagram between ADHD and autism. But part of what I heard in that was, it was hard for you to get yourself to start that task. I'm curious, does the interest-based nervous system so that idea that if it's outside of an area of interest, or urgency, or novelty, that it's really hard to get started? Does that resonate with your experience? AMANDA DIEKMAN: Just say those things one more time, I just need [CROSSTALK 00:40:51]- MEGAN NEFF: Interest, urgency, novelty. AMANDA DIEKMAN: The category I would put on there that you didn't mention is like, love or service. Like that is what enables me to do that. MEGAN NEFF: This is my… Well, actually, my theory is much colder than you, my theory was that if you add duty to it, then that's the autistic experience, that duty. But I love how you put it in more relational terms of service. And that is very motivating for autistic people. So, that's so funny that that was exactly the theory I was working with, yeah. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yeah, my oldest is autistic and needs, like, cleanliness, and a certain type of cleanliness is a really high bar for him. But it's really difficult for me to execute with our family structure. And so the only thing that gets me over the hump to do it is I think about how much I love him and how much he needs this and then I can do it. I don't need novelty, I don't need… Actually, some of those things hurt me, urgency really hurts me. MEGAN NEFF: What? That was my hypothesis was I think autistic people are probably more prone to kind of get paralysis and its urgency. I see that, the pressure. Whereas for an ADHD system, it's like, okay, let's go. So, that was another one of my kind of theories around that was the urgency would actually backfire. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yeah, yeah. Interest is always going to be, you know, the way in. MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. AMANDA DIEKMAN: I'd put that at the center of the diagram. MEGAN NEFF: You would say, like, interest and then, like, relational care service would be two drivers. If it's outside of those two, is it hard to get yourself started on a task? AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yeah, yeah. Pretty much everything else is hard to get started on. MEGAN NEFF: Yeah. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yeah. If it's not an area of special interest, or it is not in service to someone I love, that's pretty much everything I don't do. MEGAN NEFF: Yeah. PATRICK CASALE: Speaking of special interest, what special interests do you have? Or have you noticed over the years? AMANDA DIEKMAN: A friend of mine, where we're kind of kicking around things about our neurotype lately, and she said, "Is it okay to say that I think I'm my own special interest?" And I was like, "It's okay to say that." That really struck a chord with me. I think that deep introspective work about me, like I have always been one of my own favorite subjects. I am the easiest thing for me to talk about. It's part of the reason that I have really enjoyed podcasting is that it takes away the obvious 50/50 reciprocity of most conversations, and it's like I'm expected to talk about myself 90% of the time, and that feels so easy. And my children have been a special interest for me since they were born. I got really hyper-focused on understanding autism for a season when that was my number one special interest in parenting. Parenting with radical acceptance at the center is the other thing. And I pretty much think about all those things all the time. My kind of less known special interests are, Disney World is one. I'm wild about Disney World. And when we were talking about connection, like fiction reading, historical fiction about women, especially, if it's like fantasy historical fiction about like, ancient witches and stuff like that, like that is 100% my jam. And I get a lot of connection from like the ancestors. And sort of a sense of like, alternate identity. Like, if I'd been born in another time and place, like who I would have, yeah. PATRICK CASALE: I can relate so hard to that, like so hard. Yeah, I got to jump off of here, but you all are going to continue the combo. So, I appreciate meeting you and having you on for this. I just wanted to say that before I get out. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Thank you, thank you. PATRICK CASALE: As much as I hate saying goodbyes. So, goodbye, see you, Megan. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Just go. MEGAN NEFF: I love how you made a business out of your special interest. That's something Patrick and I both also done and I don't think I could run a business or really do work outside of my interest because it would be so, so hard. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yeah, I've never even fathomed it really. I think it's always felt so utterly impossible. And when I was a pastor, and well, before I was a pastor, I think that my sense of inability to get like a job, and how deeply I have known that, and how long I have known that is another piece of this, like self-knowledge that has always been really clear. Like, I have absolutely never been able to imagine myself doing almost every job I see other people doing. And really any job that's handed to me because it has to be my unique view of the world in order for it to be a fit. So, even though I was completely consumed and engrossed in theology, and church history, and social action, and the way that we can, like, corporately represent our values in the world, I was like, I could never serve a church because I mean, I could never be a part of a system like that. I've never been able to participate in a system. One of the ways that I compensate or work around that is that I always am the leader of everything that I'm a part of, and then I infuse it with my interests. MEGAN NEFF: So, that was one of the reasons it was hard for me to see myself as autistic is, like, I'm pretty good at leading groups or creating groups. But then I realized that, especially, when I went through my doctoral training, I realized I had a hard time developing friends within my cohort. But what I became was like, my supervisor or mentor called me like the TA extraordinaire. Like, I would TA all the classes, I would lead groups, and I can mentor people. And again, that's not a reciprocal relationship. Therapy is not a reciprocal conversation, I mean, to some degree. And so I found myself in these roles where I could, like, kind of hide the reciprocal aspects that were harder for me. So, yeah, it's interesting. And I also did seminary, we've talked about that. And theology was a special interest of mine for a long time. And I thought I was going to become, like a Hebrew scholar, was my first school, which would have worked well, right? That's reading, and research, and writing, and teaching, which is, again, not very reciprocal. The church would have been hard for me, too. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yeah, I've also gravitated to those kinds of roles where I'm in deep connection with others, but where I'm playing a specific role in their life, that I find it easier, you know, again, to use the parts where it's like I'm choosing only one part, and occupying that, but like being the fullness of me is harder. And so I can be teacher Amanda or I can be pseudo therapist Amanda. But all of those are pretty narrow slices of me, and that's what enables me and they're non-reciprocal relationships, yeah. Usually, where I'm in a giving role. Although, I can sometimes flip it where I'm in the exclusive teaching role. I'm also good at that. MEGAN NEFF: Right, when you're teaching, or you're coaching, or you're on a podcast. Yeah, yeah. That's actually one of the reasons I think a lot of people that go unidentified is like when we're in the helping role, it's still a non-reciprocal conversation, but people aren't expressing concern about that. And so, you know, we go under the radar, under the autism radar, yeah. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Absolutely. MEGAN NEFF: Because you could be like a good helper and a good listener. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yep. It's very reinforced as well. And so you become more and more that role as people are like, "Wow, this is you, you're just so this." And you're like, "Oh, this must be me." This is just so… But it's really a very, very small [CROSSTALK 00:50:04]- MEGAN NEFF: Well, and that gets so complex, right? Because that becomes, I think, for a lot of us, I know for me part of our core identity because it's so reinforced that then to unmask for me meant to give up this part of my identity that had been so reinforced and valued, that that's its own complex process of giving up that, accommodating- AMANDA DIEKMAN: Right. MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, yeah. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Especially, when the identity that came before it, largely for me, when I was younger, and before I took on that role so very, very fully, was like, "You're too much, you're so picky." So, I was like, "Oh, okay, then I'll become super flexible and the nicest person you've ever met." And everybody liked that version much better. And the first one was actually much truer. And so that also makes unmasking feel extra risky. MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I want to ask one more, maybe two more ADHD questions, and then I want to be cognizant of your time as well. Okay, I just did a deep dive on RSD, rejection-sensitive dysphoria. And the research really comes out of the ADHD research. It's also common among autistic people, but it's unclear if that's because of co-occurring ADHD or if it's just a shared experience. And again, to summarize, RSD is kind of like an intense response to any perceived rejection or criticism. A lot of people with RSD describe it as like will have a physical pain, like a gut punch or kind of chest pain. Is that part of your experience? AMANDA DIEKMAN: I've actually thought about this a lot. So, as with the things I've thought about a lot, it's like I could tell you 20 minutes of things about it, but I'm not sure how to summarize. I think from sitting with this question, I do not experience it very often. I have experienced it enough that when you say those words, I can feel the echo of sensation in my body, like I have felt that. But it's not a common experience for me. And I think that it's possible that because of that, the mechanism that's leading to it is different than for people with RSD. MEGAN NEFF: Okay, so like, I'm going to bring it to practical, we're both on social media. I'm at a point where like, every time I open the app, I have a stomachache. Like, I actually struggle to open the app because of, like, if there's a negative comment on a post, I will think about that all day and it might even carry over to the next day. Like, last week, I had a Venn diagram that there was a lot of dislike of the Venn diagram I put up. And like that ruin my day. And I hated that it ruined my day. And then I like, hated that I hated that, you know, those spiraling emotions. You're on social media. I imagine that some of your posts don't get all love because these are controversial topics. When you have a negative comment, what is that experience like for you? AMANDA DIEKMAN: My primary emotion is shame, and hide, and never show up again. I want to withdraw- MEGAN NEFF: Okay, yeah. I relate. AMANDA DIEKMAN: …and retreat, yeah. And so one of the things that feels good to me and that is, I have like a little thing that I say to myself, I say I'm just a mom in North Carolina. Like, I try to remember, I'm like, I'm just another human. And it's a way that I also remind myself that I don't have to be anything. Like, my identity is not what's out there in the world being judged like that resides with me and me only. And also just like a little, like, I can always quit. Like, I can always just stop being Low Demand Amanda and just be a mom in North Carolina. Like, I'm not stuck. Sometimes I will get into like a pretty lengthy argument with the person inside of my head. I don't love that because I'm giving them a lot of real estate in my head and I really don't enjoy doing that. MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, yeah. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Something that I really like to do that is like, kind of celebrate that like my ideas are big enough that people don't like them because I have aimed to be likable my whole life. Like, that's been the sum total of my energy in the world was like, "Please like me." And so sometimes I can bring it around myself and be like, "Wow, like you're something. You're something and you're someone. And so people aren't going to like it." But like, that's my goal. I've been trying to do that, so it can help me to…. So, I'm not really answering your RSD question. It probably is, though because if I'm able to pull all of these mental resources in, in the moment, I'm probably not spinning out at quite the same rate as other people might be. MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, so the big like, kind of one of, like, the litmus tests that I use is so for normative rejection sensitivity, right? Which this is like makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, it's proportional to the criticism. For RSD it's out of balance, right? So, like, your ability… it does sounds like it stings and then you have an ability to come in and self-soothe. And then, like, yeah, how long does that process take till you've released it and it's not like, in the back of your head? AMANDA DIEKMAN: It can be as quick as a kind of a like five minute about that- MEGAN NEFF: Oh, my God. AMANDA DIEKMAN: …that really hurts. MEGAN NEFF: That sounds pretty nice. Okay [CROSSTALK 00:56:14]- AMANDA DIEKMAN: I'll go swing or something like that, like some kind of intense body movement and it'll move through. Sometimes it takes a couple of hours. But I can usually flesh it out with some really vigorous play. I usually have to get really immersed in like some other part of me in order to release it, yeah. Definitely a playful self yeah. MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, yeah. I've been experimenting with like, reducing how I'm on social media, or I have played around with just leaving, but I don't think I will. But partly for exactly what you said about like, the mental real estate of I don't want that being the thing in my head. But your experience does sound a bit different than mine in regards to like, how long it lingers. I do a lot of that self-talk, too. But it's like, I have to keep doing it because it'll keep coming back. And so the releasing takes a little bit longer for me. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Oh, I'm sorry. That sounds hard. MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting, I've actually seen a lot of autistic advocates leave. And I am not at all surprised. I understand. And ADHD advocates. A lot of us have, I think, kind of a short lifespan in the advocacy space, which I think is really sad. And I think it's really understandable. AMANDA DIEKMAN: I agree, I agree. Something I'm wrestling and struggling with right now, too, is like, the way that privilege intersects with all of this. And it feels like so inescapably true that my privilege is a large part of what enables me to be the advocate that I am because of all of the supports that I'm able to put in place for myself to show up this way. And also that that is then making the message itself more difficult for people to hear because it is wrapped in my own privilege. And yet, I don't want to not do it because I think of all of the people who are saying, "You're the only one saying this stuff, we need you to keep on going." And it's not that I'm only doing it for others, it also comes out of me and an alignment there. But it's a complex picture to sit with. Like, if someone was less privileged than I am, they wouldn't be able to withstand the challenge of being this kind of advocate and so people are leaving, and so then we're losing those voices in those spaces. And yet, I can't be the only voice on this or the message is going to get very convoluted by my own privilege. MEGAN NEFF: No, I love that you bring in that lens of privilege because that absolutely intersects in so many profound ways. And yeah, like I was sharing my experience with someone with a ton of privilege, most specifically white privilege, and I think that it is like, yeah, when I look at particularly trans autistic advocates and BIPOC autistic advocates, like the level of risk they take, and just the crap they have to deal with, the terrible, terrible stuff they have to deal with. Yeah, yeah, I really appreciate the work of the people who are out there. Yeah, and I feel a lot of sadness when they ultimately, many of them often have to leave for their safety or their well-being. And I think that says a lot about where we are in the movement and where we are in society, yeah, AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yeah, I agree. And as my children move into some more vulnerable identities, that also makes me less and less able to kind of embody the transparency that I want to have in protection. So, there's also different roles that we need to occupy for the vulnerable people in our lives. MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, no, absolutely. I asked Patrick to take a reel down previously because I was like, "This doesn't feel safe." Because it was like a reel where I share a lot of my identities and like, we're a very neuro queer family. I was like, "I've gotten one too many death threats around this, so can we take that off?" And it is, especially, when you're thinking about vulnerability of family. Yeah, gosh, this just felt heavy, Amanda. I just like felt a wave of heaviness. AMANDA DIEKMAN: I feel that too. I feel that too. And I think that maybe it's not RSD, right? It's like, there's nothing out of proportion here. Like, this is a very proportionate reaction to the incredible risk of being alive today in the intersection of, yeah, like you said, like neuro queerness. Like, it's not safe. And even those of us with tremendous privilege are still feeling just the acuteness of the unsafety. And that tells you, like you said before, like, of course, anybody who is embodying even more vulnerable identities, it just becomes unbearable. MEGAN NEFF: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I feel like I'm wanting to transition us either to the end or to like, back but I'm also realizing… like, I'm feeling the heaviness of this and like, how forced of a transition that feels in this moment. Yeah, I want to say I really appreciate the work you do because I know, I actually saw like a pretty, pretty big creator in the ADHD world, like, criticize the summit that I was a part of. And I think it was actually because of an infographic I made that went viral. And then like, they were completing it with permissive parenting, which is a really shallow understanding of low demand parenting. And I was just like, "Oh my gosh." Like, it made me really thankful for the work you do, just realizing how I'm sure you get a lot of people who are like getting a two-second bird's eye view of what you do and making a ton of assumptions. And I've had so many people who typically are on my email list, and they've heard about your resources who are like, "Thank you so much. Amanda's work has changed our family's life." So, I really, really appreciate that you're showing up even though it is a risk to our safety, and it does take a lot of spoons and a lot of our resources. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yeah, I saw yesterday somebody put up the book cover on autism inclusivity. And I was like, "What do people think about this?" And my heart just dropped. I was like, "Oh, God, like, this could be anything." You know? Like, because that space can be, it's gray and also they can really be harsh. MEGAN NEFF: Oh, yes. AMANDA DIEKMAN: And it was mostly positive. But yeah, it does feel really hard. Like, I want people to get this message. And yet, every time there's just a world of people who are going to misunderstand and I do get a lot about permissive parenting, like a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. And I'm trying to recover permissive parenting. I wrote a piece… I'll send it to you if you're interested in about, like, why I even question, I'd be curious from, like, you've read so much research is like, whether the original research even found that permissive parenting has the lowest or the worst outcomes? Like, I even wonder and I haven't gone back. I only didn't know if I would have the skills to deconstruct it. But just whether or not that was actually just capturing neurodivergent parenting, even then, that people that, like, the other two, they only gave three categories, right? So, everybody fell into something. And so anybody who was, and I looked at all the measures, and stuff of like how they, and equality with your children was one of the key differentiators between authoritative and permissive, and that no matter what, if indeed it was capturing neurodivergent parents back then, then they were never going to score as well on the standardized testing and the markers of success that were generated in the 60s. MEGAN NEFF: It's really interesting. I'm not sure that's a factor. I personally do still think the research around permissive parenting and like how that impacts children and children's mental health and self-efficacy, like I do believe in that research, but I don't believe low demand parenting is permissive parenting. So, I think that's where I would tease it out slightly differently because part of what's the classic definition of permissive parenting is kind of that level of, well, okay, we are very much diverging. AMANDA DIEKMAN: We are, we're way off, we're way off. MEGAN NEFF: So, Amanda, you've got fantastic resources. I know people and families really benefited from them. Tell us where people can find you, if they want to connect with you. I don't know if you're still doing one-on-one coaching or if it's mostly group coaching, but tell our listeners where to find you. AMANDA DIEKMAN: I would love to connect. The best places to find me giving things away and sharing with the world is on social media through Instagram and Facebook. I'm Low Demand Amanda, Low Demand Amanda. And also I have a quiz on my website called Why Are Things So Hard? That can help get a sense of what you might be up against if you're a parent and you're trying to figure out, yeah, that question like, why do I feel like I'm drowning? And then one next step that you can take to begin to get either to start floating or to get a life raft out there in the deep end. I also love to share in in groups in deeper ways about this method and about learning how to take care of ourselves, and caring for neurodivergent parents is a real passion point of mine right now. So, I'm running group coaching. And I'm just starting in the next month a mastermind group that's going over six months with live retreats where I can get off of the computer and into real face-to-face connection with other people and really designed around deep care for neurodivergent moms in particular. So, I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to, like, what my real deep purpose is in the public space. MEGAN NEFF: I love that. And I love that you're incorporating embodied work every time I meet with you. And though it's all been over Zoom, like you have an embodied feel to you. So, I'm not at all surprised to hear you're hosting embodied retreats. I worked for about a year or a year and a half over an autistic moms group. That was like one of the highlights of my month because it is really rare to find a space where we're moms and we're not talking about our autistic children, we're talking about our experience. I love that you're leaning into that right now because there's so much need for spaces for neurodivergent parents. AMANDA DIEKMAN: Yeah, I would say like people find me in the world if you are a drowning mom thinking, why am I messing this all up? Like, you're my people because you're not, but the game is rigged. So, we're going to start, like, to change the roles. MEGAN NEFF: Yes, yes. Well, Amanda, thank you so much for coming on. I think sometime we'll have to have you on to talk about the work you actually do, which is like low demand parenting and caring for neurodivergent parents. So, if we do, I know people have been asking for parenting episodes. So, if we do a parenting episode, we might have you back on if you're willing. But thank you so much for being our representative autistic person without ADHD. AMANDA DIEKMAN: It's a pleasure. Thank you. MEGAN NEFF: So, new episodes are out every Friday on all major platforms and YouTube. And you can like, download, subscribe, and share. Thank you so much and goodbye.

This week Nathalie & Damien discuss a listeners dating dilemma & share their opinions of defining relationships, PDAs, and grand gestures when asking someone to be 'official'. After one year seeing someone, would you expect it to be a relationship? Do you think the man should be the one to ask? Do labels matter? Be sure to rate, subscribe & follow the podcast, tag Nathalie & Damien on socials if you enjoyed this episode or send them a message to their socials. Damien - https://rb.gy/u07so Nathalie - https://rb.gy/w4ln7

On this weeks episode we dive into deep waters, from the mysterious abyss of our oceans to the dark corners of high finance and even the sinister secrets of the world's powerful elites. First, submerge with us into the enigmatic ocean depths, as we discuss the lost submarine on a peculiar Titanic expedition, intriguing sounds echoing from the underwater world every half hour, and the captivating possibility of aquatic extraterrestrials. Next, we resurface into the complex world of politics and economics, discussing a shocking $6.2 billion Pentagon accounting 'error' benefitting Ukraine, and exposing a candid conversation of a BlackRock recruiter that confirms our worst suspicions. From there, we delve into a grim criminal case: the sentencing of a CNN producer for child sex crimes and the disconcerting links to Ghislaine Maxwell. The trail of darkness doesn't end there - if you're game to stick around, we're ready to delve into a thought-provoking discussion on potential global blackmail, secret military bases, and mind control. So before we set sail on this daunting voyage, hit that subscribe button, and then, if you're a regular listener, help us by leaving a five-star review. Buckle up for a journey that could take us to the brink of what we know and understand about our world - who knows where we'll end up?   All Links: https://linktr.ee/theaustinjadams Merch: https://antielite.club Substack: https://austinadams.substack.com ----more---- Full Transcription:   The Adams archive.  Hello, you beautiful people and welcome to the Adams Archive. My name is Austin Adams, and thank you so much for listening today on this week's episode. Second episode, we are going to be going into the deep, dark depths, not just of the ocean, discussing the recently lost. Submarine that was down for some reason, looking at the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean. So we will discuss that. We are also going to discuss the weird noises that they're hearing every 30 minutes coming from the depths of the ocean when they've been on this hunt. As well as my, uh, hopeful, uh, dream that this ends in us figuring out that we have had undersea aliens this entire time that rescue this mission. So we'll talk about that and then we're gonna jump into some other topics, including, uh, the Pentagon announcing that there was an accounting error providing an extra 6.2 billion to Ukraine. That is quite an accounting error and I betcha nobody lost their job cuz they did exactly what they were supposed to do. Then speaking of large finances, a BlackRock employee. Came out and well didn't come out. He was, uh, thinking he was on the date with somebody from O'Keefe Media, the former head of Project Veritas, uh, started O'Keefe Media Group and caught somebody from BlackRock, a BlackRock recruiter saying everything that we already knew, but just from the perspective of an employee there. So we'll discuss that. Then we will get into the depths of the conversation where we're going to talk about the CNN producer who was sentenced to 19 years in prison for child sex crimes. Then we'll get into his relationship or his wife's relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell as there's some photos that we will discuss surrounding that. And then if we're feeling frisky and you stick with me the whole time, we might just talk about the blackmail that is running the world underground military bases. Alice in Wonderland, trauma-based mind control programming and the mind control running our world. I came across an interesting Reddit thread that led me down some rabbit holes that we will explore together if you stick around. So first thing I need you to do is head over to the. Well, don't head over anywhere just yet. Hit that subscribe button. Press it right now. I would appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. Thank you so much for listening. Again, I just love doing this for you guys, but I need you to do one thing for me. If you have not subscribed, go ahead and hit that subscribe button for me. Write this moment. Before we get into all these amazing topics, before we discuss all of these untouchable uh subjects, I need you to hit that subscribe button just in case my podcast so happens to wither away into the wind after this one. So go ahead and hit that subscribe button. I would appreciate it. Then if you are subscribed, go ahead and leave a five star review. That is literally the only thing that you can do to give back to me at this point, is hitting that five star review. So if you're listening week after week after week, and you haven't taken, just take the three seconds it takes just to hit that five stars. I don't even need you to write something. All right. Now as you're doing this, I'll, I'll go, I'll give you three seconds to pull it up. One, two. Three. You got it up. I know you do hit the five stars. It takes two seconds. Two seconds. And we've already been talking about this for seven seconds and I would've been done had you just done it already. So go ahead and hit that button, leave a five star review, and if you would like, please write something that is the only thing I ask of you at this moment. Subscribe. Leave a five star review. All right. I would appreciate it. From the bottom of my beautifully large heart. All right,  today's podcast, we're going deep. Let's jump into it.    The Adams archive.  All right, let's get right into it. If you have not heard yet, which you probably have because everybody's talking about it, there was a group of, well, one, I believe it was Iranian or Israeli billionaire, as well as some other crazy ass people who decided to put their life on the line to go look at a screen in the submarine to take a look at the Titanic. These people must really love Leonardo DiCaprio because it cost around $250,000 just to go on this excursion. Pretty wild that this many people at one time would actually go and do that. Um, so I am reading this article from Real News, no Bullshit, which just came up with a bullshit. Uh, Pop up saying that I'm not subscribed, which I am. So hold on one second while I go ahead and click that beautiful button. All right, there we go. Now this article says, US Coast Guard leads urgent search for Titanic viewing submarine. It goes on to say, A rescue operation led by the US Coast Guard with Canadian support began on Monday in the Atlantic Ocean to find a submersible vessel used for Titanic exploration, which was reported missing on Sunday evening south of St. John's, new Finland, interesting Open gate expeditions. The company that owns the Submersible Con, uh, confirmed the search for its five person vessel and expressed concerns for the crew and their families. Wow. Keeps wanting me to sign in, even though I'm already signed in. Come on real news. Um, let me just give you my breakdown while this is pulling up. So basically, these four crazy ass dudes went down with this other crazy ass dude who owns a submarine, and he takes people down to go see the Titanic. Now, when you think of a, when you think of a submarine, usually you think of this big, beautiful thing with like a, you know, a little tube coming out the top of it, and sonar and all this wild other shit. This doesn't have that. This looks like a tin can wrapped in duct tape. And by the way, the way that he controls this thing is with a PlayStation and controller, a literal Bluetooth PlayStation controller. And also the only thing that these four guys can actually see is TV screens. They're sitting in this like seven by four box together with four other people looking at TV screens. They can't even actually see the Titanic. There's like a, a heat, um, camera and like IR camera that they can actually see the Titanic with out of a screen. They don't actually get to go view it themselves. They sit there with a remote control. You could have taken a drone, just get a drone for 250 grand. You probably could have bought seven of them. What the hell are you doing? Putting yourself in danger this way. These guys look stoked though. Um, so this article's backed up and it's gone. So let's find another one. Um, we'll just move on from real news cuz that's, uh, making me irritated. All right, so it says it was a suicide mission, said the German adventurer recalling his past experience aboard the Titanic, exploring submersible now lost at sea. So this is somebody else that came out and talked about this and this man says, And this is coming from the post-millennial. It starts off by saying, while an international effort is underway to rescue those on board, the Titanic exploring submersible that has been lost at sea, a German adventurer who once went on the same exploration called the voyage a suicide mission as officials raced against time before the vessel loses its oxygen supply, Arthur Lobel told the German outlet build that. He went on the voyage in August of 2021 and immediately noticed a flu, a slew of concerning red flags. And here's a little bit from Fox News. What could possibly have happened? Uh, uh, worst, worst situation is, you know, something happened to the hull. And, uh, and our fear is, is it, you know, it imploded at around 3,200 meters. And is there anything that the US Navy can do right now? No. No. I mean, I. I don't see anything that can happen at this point. I mean, I'm trying to be, you know, somewhat cautious and, you know, don't want to basically be the naysayer of what's going on. But I, when you're talking 6,000 pounds per square wrench, it is a dangerous environment. More people have been to outer space than to this depth of the ocean. And when you're diving in these situations, you have to, you have to cross your, cross, your t's, dot your i's, you have to do everything absolutely perfect and by the book. And, you know, throw in a bunch of tourists in a new sub that, you know, was just created over the last several years. Um, it, it's not looking good, Jesse. Alright, well thanks for joining us in this, uh, tender time and we're gonna be praying for everybody on that sub. Thanks. Wow. That's a shocking thing to say that more people have been to outer space than have been to the same depths of the ocean as they took this tin can with a PlayStation controller. Imagine paying $250,000 just to go to your own death. Now, there was far more pressing things that went on this week, including Hunter Biden essentially getting off, uh, during a, um, hearing where he pled guilty to two charges, um, for tax evasion among several other things like I posted about. Um, so this is not to take away from those things, but this is what everybody's talking about. So here we are for very, very rich people are sitting very, very deep under the ocean. Now, again, that's not to take away from the fact that this is tragic and horrible, um, cause I can't imagine the, the, the amount of stress and anxiety and the, the, you know, if, if they're alive right now. Um, currently as we're having this discussion and conversation, they're running out of air. So, terrible, terrible. But this goes on to say, The that, uh, he was recalling his experience on board the Titans submersible that tours the famous Titanic wreckage, 12,000 feet below sea level. It was a suicide mission. He exclaimed the first submarine, didn't work, then a dive at 1600 meters had to be abandoned. Lobel told the outlet that he went on the underwater expedition with two passengers that are currently trapped aboard this missing vessel French Titanic expert Paul Harvey n Gillette 73, and Ocean Gate CEO Stockton Rush 61. The two men are trapped with three other passengers in this vessel, which authorities believe to be located around 350 miles off the coast of Canada, excuse me. And it says, while the vessel was about to launch mobile explained that the submersible had a series of electrical issues, which resulted in a five hour delay. In addition to those issues, the entrepreneur who paid $110,000 for his ticket said that the bracket of the stabilization tube had to be reattached with zip ties. The stabilization tube balances the submarine according to the outlet. You need strong nerves. You mustn't be claustrophobic and you have to be able to sit cross-legged for 10 hours. He said, of his experience, it must be held down there. There's about 2.5 meters of space. It's four degrees. There's no chair and no toilet. Those aboard. The Titans submersible, which has been missing since Sunday, include a British billionaire, Harnish Harding, Pakistani businessman should zdi de wood and his 19 year old son and the two passengers previously mentioned. As of Tuesday afternoon, the submersible has around 41 hours of oxygen supply left and it is now Wednesday. Uh, they're looking at maybe 16 hours or so. Um, depending on how good you are in math. So, um, this also says that, uh, another article, and this one coming from The Daily Wire says that authorities don't know what's causing underwater banging. As experts rush to determine if sound comes from these Titanic sub, the US Coast Guard is still trying to determine if the underwater noises picked up by sonar planes. Tuesday came from the missing Titanic submersible. The search and rescue teams detected banging sounds in 30 minute intervals near where the five passengers aboard the Titanic sub went missing. During a Wednesday afternoon press conference, coast Guard Captain Jamie Fredericks said that the team of experts is listening to recordings of the baning sounds picking up by search and rescue teams, but added we don't know what they are. To be frank with you at the news conference, Carl Hartsford of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute said it's possible for underwater animals to make noises that sound like they came from humans. A Canadian airplane picked up the underwater noises on Tuesday, resulting in the search team focusing their operation on the area where the sounds came from. According to Frederick, there are five surface assets and two remotely operated vehicles searching for the submersible to Titan. Five more assets are respected to join the search in the next two days. The Coast Guard captain said that the search operation was still a 100% search and rescue mission added, that we need to have hope. According to the Coast Guard estimates, the five passengers reported the Titan have less than 24 hours of oxygen. Remaining. Rescue teams initially were searching an area roughly the size of Connecticut after the vessel went missing. In the last ditch effort, he came, uh, began Wednesday involving heavy machinery and submarines that involved the new Funland on Tuesday night. Now, according to, uh, according to, who is it, what is the fella I'm thinking of? Um, lemme see. I forget who had mentioned this. Let's see. All right. Yeah, that's who it was. It was according to Dan Crenshaw, the, the US Coast Guard has a very, very able bodied sub, uh, submarine that they could send down there with plenty more capabilities than they're willing to, and they decided not to. So that's unfortunate for these people. Um, but you know, like I talked about, I I, the underwater banging is, is, is interesting here. Now, obviously, it's probably most likely not the submarine, and it's probably something else potentially, as that person pointed out, sea creatures. But what I like to think is gonna end up as the result of this is, you know, how, how many times have we seen that aliens or U f O aircraft drop underneath the water surface? So maybe just maybe. You know, let's call back, go back to Project Bluebeam and say maybe our underwater friends that are dropping down from the sky are going to pick up this submarine and drop it just politely back onto the White House lawn and greet us and then have a hologram in the sky and then, you know, start their takeover. So maybe this is the intro to that. Probably not. Uh, anyways, let's move on. The Pentagon announced a accounting error, which provided an extra $6.2 billion for Ukraine. 6.2 billion and that's an accounting error, 6.2 billion. Could you imagine if you worked for a finance company and you messed up so bad that you gave somebody 6.2 billion extra? That's probably never happened ever in the history of finance. 6.2 billion. What type of accounting error could that have been and does anybody actually believe that it's an accounting error? Because I, I don't think there's probably a single person in the White House or the Pentagon that you could find that actually agrees with that statement. How stupid do you think the American people are that they, that you believe that we would believe you after all things that we've found out about Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, the White House, the military industrial complex with Ukraine, that this came from the result of, oops, press the wrong button. Darn it. Not another $6 billion. How, how dumb do you think the American people are that you can come up here and make a statement like that? Speaking of statements, let's go ahead and listen in. Oddly following up from, um, some announcements earlier this year, during the department's regular over of presidential drawdown authority for Ukraine, we discovered inconsistencies in equipment valuation for Ukraine in a significant number of cases, services used replacement costs rather than netbook value, thereby overestimating the value of the equipment drawn down from US stocks and provided to Ukraine. Once we discovered this misvaluation, the comptroller reissued guidance on March 31st, clarifying how to value equipment in line with the financial management regulation and D O D policy to ensure we use the most accurate of accounting methods. We have confirmed that for F Y 23, the final calculation is 3.6 billion, and for F y 22, it is 2.6 billion for a combined total of 6.2 billion. These valuation errors in no way limit or restricted the size of any of our PDAs or impacted the provision of support to Ukraine. And while the d o d, while the d O D retains the authority to utilize the recaptured P D A, this has no bearing on appropriated U S A I or Ukraine P D a replenishment funding approved by Congress. Oh, okay. You just throw out a bunch of acronyms, so we don't know what you're saying, but I know what you're saying, lady. Could you imagine being her? It's like her first day and they just have to, they're like, okay, by the way, I, I know. Here's your notes. And but also we need to do to tell the American people that she, that we accidentally miscalculated $6.2 billion of their tax money and just sent it to Ukraine. What a, what an interesting first day that must have been for this woman. I'm sure it wasn't her first day, but you know, it's the first time I've seen her. Uh, anyways, this goes on to say, and this comes from DC dno. He says, insane Pentagon announces an overpayment of 6.2 billion to Ukrainian calls it an accounting error. How much do you want to bet? A good chunk of that accounting error landed in the pockets of Ukrainian oligarchs. Yep. Wow. All right. Now let's, let's talk about this because if you or I make a. Error on our tax returns resulting in, let's say, let's just use a, let's use a crazy number here. $60,000, $60,000 accounting error. That wouldn't be a small percentage fraction of what happened here. Let's just use 10,000, let's use 10,000 here. If you miscalculated your taxes by $10,000, the IRS, as we found out recently, can literally knock down your door with weapons drawn as they did to a gun store owner recently. But they make a $6.2 billion error and, you know, make it a one minute conversation in the press conference. At what point do, do we reclaim our tax system? Right? What I find to be the craziest thing, like the federal income tax, like when, when was the federal income tax created? Cause I believe it was like the fricking eighties or something. Might even be later than that. It says, in American, the first American income tax was imposed during the Civil War in 1861 with flat 3% tax on all incomes, over $800. Um, so not the eighties, but it wasn't officially enacted that we know it today until 1913 was when the federal income taxes, we know it now, was officially enacted. That was literally your great grandparents didn't have to deal with the federal income tax. And now you have people giving 40% of their income to the government, and they're misspending it on proxy wars so that Hunter Biden can smoke meth off of a stripper's butt cheek in dunes. Meanwhile, they'll kick down your door over $10,000 miscalculation on your taxes. The, the whole federal income tax thing is, you know, I, I cannot believe we're in a place now where they take such a large percentage of your money, and yet we have to sit here and listen to the nonsense that they talked to us about, where they take that tax money that they would've, you know, put you in jail if you didn't tell them about, and then send it to wherever this fictitional places where these, you know, billionaires in, in Ukraine could get their hands on it. Or, or even worse yet, the military industrial complex, uh, in organizations of the world. Now speaking of the people who own those, of the military industrial complex, you know, the, the Raytheons, the, uh, you know, basically the stark industries of 2023. Let's watch this video that comes from O'Keefe Media Group, uh, in James O'Keefe, where BlackRock employee, a BlackRock recruiter decides, uh, who decides people's fate says war is good for business in undercover business or undercover footage. Let's watch it. They don't wanna be in the news. They, they don't want people to talk about 'em. They don't wanna be anywhere on, on the radar. Why not I on film? But I suspect it's probably because it's easier to do things when people aren't thinking about it. All of these financial institutions, they buy politicians. You can take this big ton of money and then you can start to buy people. I work for, uh, a company called BlackRock Meets Varley, a recruiter at BlackRock. Lemme tell you's not who is the president, it's who's controlling the, the wallet. And if you didn't just hear that, because he's speaking very low in a restaurant, he says, let me tell you, it's not who the president is. It's who's controlling the wallet of the president. This recruiter for BlackRock says it's, it's And who's that? The hedge funds, the banks. These guys campaign financing. Yep. You can buy your candidates. Obviously we have the system in place first. There's the Senate, so these guys, you got 10 grand you can buy. I can give you 500 K right now. No questions asked. Yeah, I did to be done. Does like everybody do that? Does BlackRock do that? It doesn't matter if who lens you're So they're, they're my father. Here's Serge Varley. On how good war is for Black Rocks business. Do you have any, um, thoughts on the Ukraine, Russia war? Yeah. I mean, I, I do have thoughts. What, what am I, Ukraine is good for business, you know? Right. I'll give an example. Russia. Russia blows up Ukraine. US price of wheat's gonna go mad up. Ukrainian economy is tied very largely to the wheat market, global wheat market. Mm-hmm. Prices of bread, of, you know, literally everything is goes up. Now, this is fantastic. If you're trading, volatility creates opportunity to make profit. War is no good for, for business. It's exciting when, right. Rock rack manages 20 trillions. It's in comprehensive numbers. BlackRocks Varley says all of this is above a normal person's understanding. You're like a undercover reporter. This is, this is beyond them. The whole thing of like domination forum, a concept said you're like an undercover reporter. Yeah. No shit buddy. Yeah, and you're pretty smart for picking up on that and still talking this entire time. He said war is good for business and that BlackRock manages 20 trillion trillion dollars in assets. So interesting. Hi, I'm James O'Keefe with OMG News. Here we are with our latest story this time on BlackRock, one of the world's leading asset and investment managers, which owns significant shares of companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Anheuser-Busch, meta Target, Proctor and Gamble, Comcast, cnn, Fox, and yes, Pfizer, just to name a few. At OMG, we do not shy away from exposing powerful companies, and we're not afraid of powerful people. So we decided to take a look for ourselves of the influence BlackRock has on our politics and the influence they have on our culture. So to do that, what better place to start a hidden camera investigator. I'm the person who, he funds people from other firms. So I would approach and be, Hey, this is a good reason why you should come for us, Serge tells us who really runs the world, how they do it, and just how much it costs to buy. People like politicians, let tell you, it's not the who's the president, it's who's controlling the, the wallet. It's, it's the, and who's that? The hedge funds cloth, the banks, these guys. And if you think of that, it's not really. The banks, the hedge funds, it's the people who own the banks and who own the hedge funds, who are sitting in the boardroom when they're having strategy discussions about how to rig the next election, allegedly, right? It's the people who are sitting there trying to figure out whether they're going to put pride stuff at the front of Target when they own it. It's the people who decide the, uh, you know, what is it? The c e I scores is now going to be the next way that a company gets funding, right? So it's not, it's not the entity. That's making these decisions. It's the people in the strategy meetings at these board rooms that are making these decisions. And, and the people at the strategy of those board rooms only sit there as long as the owners of these companies, the the highest up people within these companies, the, the families who started them, the, the head of those families, like the Rockefellers, like the, the Rothchilds, like the George Soros says, who determine the fate of humanity, who determine the fate of our country, who determine the fate of these wars. Because whether they wanna fund one side or the other, they're both gonna win, right? They're, they're still gonna make profits either way, just as he talked about. So whether they're, they're investing on wheat or they're shorting wheat when they know there's about to be an airstrike on a major wheat, uh, you know, silo. That determines the Ukrainian uh, economy, right? So you get, you get Raytheon or you get, you know what, whatever the, you know, military industrial complex is making strategic decisions or, or giving strategic advice to these companies, and also pumping them full of missiles. And then they make these decisions about where they're going to strike, and that causes changes in what happens to the economy, which they then short or, or invest in the stocks of each side making money knowing what's about to happen. So the longer that these wars go on, and the longer that they have a say in the strategy of these wars, the more profits they make. So when you figure it out from that perspective, and then you understand that that's what you're sending your sons or your daughter into when, when it comes to being in the military, uh, maybe it's time to second guess whether, you know, that's what's in their best interest, especially when they only generally go after, you know, lower income families. You know, literally, I, I can't tell you how crazy it is to have a, uh, recruiter. Come to a, uh, you know, a high school that you're at and, and put a pull up bar there. Like, you know, show me how tough you are and then throw a fucking t-shirt at you and then try to recruit you so you can go shoot some, you know, somebody with a different religion who was born in the different side of the world than you, uh, for them to make profits. Right? It's just so messed up. So let's see if there's anything else interesting in this, and then we'll wrap it up and move into our next topic. Campaign financing. Yep. You can buy your can. So how so all of these financial institutions, they buy politicians. How do they run the world? You acquire stuff, you diversify, you acquire, you keep acquiring. You spend whatever you make in acquiring more. And at a certain point, your rest club is, is super low. Like imagine you've invested in, um, like 10 different industries from food to. To drinks to like technology. Right? One, one of them fails. It doesn't matter. You have nine others to back you up. Risk management is, is inherently just about everything. And in the finance space, it's all about, it's, it's, well, it's all about the money you make. You don't, you don't let it sit. Yeah. Like you keep using it over and over and just reinvest. Yeah. And exponential growth. And then once you just own a little bit of everything, is that where the control, yeah. You own a little bit of everything and a little bit of everything Gives you so much money on a yearly basis that you can take this big ton of money and then you can start to buy people. Obviously we have this system in place first. There's the senate and these guys, you got 10 grand, you can buy a, it doesn't matter who wins. They're still not, they're, they're my father. I can give you 500 K right now. No questions asked. Yeah, I gonna do what needs to be done. Like yeah, of course. Why not? Does like everybody do that? Does BlackRock do that? The BlackRock recruiter also tells us about how the US government relies on BlackRock for their economic simulation, computational power, economic simulation. They need to understand the impact of something, right? They're gonna like raise the interest, for example. Mm-hmm. It's gonna create this cascade of various factors that aren't, they're not sure what's gonna do, basically, and just how freaking great the Ukraine war is for business. Do you have any, um, thoughts on the Ukraine, Russia war? All right. So it looks like he's just going over everything that they already showed in the first part of the video, but good on. O'Keefe Media Group, it's, it shames me to not be able to say Project Veritas cause those words have been slipping from my mouth for so long. Um, but good on James O'Keefe for pivoting from Project Veritas so quickly and then coming up with these amazing stories as well. Uh, so now let's go ahead and jump into the next portion of this discussion, which is going to be where we start to get a little deep, not quite as deep as the submarine just yet, but you'll see where this goes. Alright, so this says, disgraced former c n n producer sentenced to 19 years in prison for child sex crimes. Now, I don't know about you, but I am not surprised. All right, so let's go ahead. And see what this article has to say. And it says, former CNN producer John Griffin has been sentenced to 19 years in prison on Tuesday for committing child sex crimes in Vermont. John Griffin, 45 convinced, confessed to coercing a woman online to bringing her 19, her nine year old daughter to Ludlow, Vermont for illicit acts. Wow, that's horrible. The US Attorney's office for the District of Vermont charged Griffin with three counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice minors to engage in unlawful activity in 2021. However, Griffin entered entered into a plea agreement in December, and the government dropped two additional charges for enticing a minor after he confessed his crimes. Now, one thing to mention in a segue with that other portion of this is that BlackRock owns C Nnn and hired this man a criminal, you know, and also they own Target and every other one that's pushing, you know, uh, All of the pride materials and drag shows for children within their brands. A criminal complaint filed by the state, uh, of Nevada against a mother accused of pimping her nine year old daughter out to CNN Strong Griffin, and revealed that authorities arrested the mother in August, 2020 and CS Griffin's devices the following month. This means that law enforcement allegedly knew about Griffin's abuse for more than a year before arresting him. Court records reveal that Griffin paid the mother to fly with the girls from Nevada to Boston, where the girls said Griffin assaulted her. According to court documents, federal investigators seized computer storage, media devices, phones, cameras, micro SD cards, images, and video from Griffin on September 2nd. The in indictment alleged that Griffin lured a mother and her underage daughter to his home for the purposes of abuse in July, 2020. Man, I, I can't even read this whole thing. Geez. All right. So no surprises there that somebody from cnn, nonetheless, the one pushing pride, the one pu pushing the trans agenda, pushing sex changes in children, all of that is somehow or another in intertwined in into some shape or form of actively sexually assaulting minors. And what we find out too, as we go a little deeper into this ocean of information, is that the convicted CNN producer and former CNN's president's wife was connected to Epstein. So the same man that was the producer for CNN, who got 19 years in prison, just sentenced to him for sex crimes against children's wife was friends with Ghislaine Maxwell. And now you start to see where all these little spiderwebs come together. Now there's a picture here that was posted now, um, posted by an anonymous source on, uh, Twitter, but it has photos and it says, we found photos of Ghislaine Maxwell Epstein's co-conspirator, socializing with Jeff's zucker's wife, Karen Zucker. For context, Jeff Zucker is the current president of C Nnn. Now, this man doesn't seem to be, have been trafficking this child this same way, so he was involved in the same trafficking ring. And you wonder why C Nnn was not covering Epstein's trial or his murder properly. It's because the producer's wife was best friends with Ghislaine Maxwell, and now he's finally being convicted on separate charges. But if they would just open the book and let us know who was actually a part of the sex trafficking ring of Epstein, maybe this would've happened. We would've found this out prior to this child getting assaulted. Maybe we would've found this out prior to all of the assaults that have happened since then, and they still won't release the documents. They still won't go after the Johns. They still won't go after the people that were in Epstein's book. They still will not release the flight logs so that you can actually find it out, and they still won't go after them legally. Why? Especially when almost in every account of Epstein people talk about him having videotapes and videos to blackmail these people. Now, what we come to find out later, as so many people have talked about prior, is that it's very likely. That Epstein was an asset of three letter agencies. Somewhere in the world could even be the United States. Some people seem to believe it was Maad. Some people seem to believe that he was a part of several. But the idea here is that Epstein was leveraging children and these type of sexual acts with all of the people that he's flown out to that island, including Bill Gates, whose wife left him for being associated with Jeff Jeffrey Epstein, the way that he was, including Steven Hawking, including Alec Baldwin, including Hil, uh Clinton, including almost every single person we know now to be true that has been convicted within Hollywood for assault on children. Or child pornography. How many of these assaults, how many of these children would've been saved from these acts if our institution, our government, these three letter agencies did their job and actually went after this list of people that they so clearly know were a part of this? And why would you not do that unless you were in some way, shape, or form involved? Right? And this kind of goes back to the John F. Kennedy, uh, assassination. Now, I'm not saying for certain that the CIA was the ones who decided to pull the trigger on this. Now it's very compelling that they might have been the ones to decide that. But what we do know 100% is that they at least covered some of their tracks. We do know that they dropped the, the magic bullet. Into the gurney. We do know that they, they placed people in positions to be able to cover up the tracks by, by having them go out with the coroners and have the autopsy done by somebody who was in their pocket. So whether he was a controlled asset of these three letter agencies, or whether they were just covering their tracks because they were somehow associated in the spiderweb of horrificness that was happening here, that's, that's yet to be told. But what we do know is there is some association with some type of entity, because they knew this about Jeffrey Epstein for the longest time, and how many children continued to be horrifically, horrifically assaulted, how many child child's lives were ruined, how many children were flown to an island while the ccia, the fbi, and all of these other organizations knew everything about it. So that leads us into our next conversation. Um, which was a comment off of that Reddit thread. Um, so here we go. It says, an overview of the blackmail running our world. And this speaks to the things that I was just talking about. It says, this post is an overview of the blackmail tactics used to control the most influential people in governments around the world. Obviously, I cannot cover everything in a single post, so as with my previous post, I highly encourage you to research further yourself. All sources and links are at the bottom of the post. An understanding of what trauma-based mind control programming MK Ultra slash Monarch is and how it works is again, necessary to understand much of this. My other posts are here. The world is run on blackmail, mind control and shame. There exists many collections of videotapes of high up people engaging in some of the worst sickest things imaginable. Now, to preempt this, I'm not condoning that all of this is true. I'm simply reading you something that I found online. Um, but there seems to be a lot of evidence and, and there seems to be a lot of people who seem, who, who agree with this position. Uh, so here's some of the information that people believe drugs, torture, pedophilia and murder are common themes to these videos. These tapes are in the hands of many different people, groups, and especially intelligence agencies. Honey trap operations are constantly being run to gather, compromising, and incriminating evidence on people of importance. Child slaves will be used to compromise people on video. Global leaders are often covertly, videotaped, doing perverted things with slaves sent to them by intelligence agencies, the Illuminati, Illuminati, or other groups. And this is then leveraged. Uh, one of the most repulsive things possible that you can do is many times filmed to ensure future compliance. Then he goes on, or she goes on in this, to quote many people discussing these things, uh, whether they were c i a, assets intelligence agencies that they worked for, um, or others, x m i six. Uh, and then they, he actually, or she actually names these people. But, uh, I don't want to get too into the weeds on these, but I'll read you a couple and, and hopefully the, the most important ones are at the top. This is back in 1966. Oh, let's see if this is where we wanna start. Back in 1966, Rothstein became the first police detective assigned to investigate the prostitution industry almost immediately, that he discovered an underground sexual blackmail operation that compromised politicians with child prostitutes. Human compromise is what he was labeled the honey trap process. Rothstein and his colleagues found that approximately 70% of the top US government leaders were compromised In this way, Rothstein said the CIA conducted the human compromise operation while the FBI was tasked with covering up any leaks. Wow. It says Fiona Barnett. Let's see if we can get a who that actually is for you guys. Uh, Fiona Barnett. She's in a documentary called Candy Girl. Let's see if we can watch a couple minutes of that. Let's get some context. Extraordinary claims coming out of Canberra tonight with a former Prime Minister allegedly on a list of suspected pedophiles liberal Senator Bill Heffernan, who is pushing for the child abuse Royal Commission to include the legal profession. Told an explosive Senate hearing. He has a police list of 28 prominent suspects. There's a former Prime Minister on this list and it is a police document. And now I'd like to introduce to you Fiona Barnett. That's B a r n e t, who is one of the bravest people you will ever have the privilege to meet. Throughout my childhood, I was a victim of Australia's v i p child sex trafficking ring. For example, I was prostituted to pedophile parties at Parliament House Canberra, and to an international leader at Fair Bain Military Airport. The people involved in this elite pedophile ring included high ranking politicians, police, and judiciary. From the late 1980s, I reported my abuse experiences to multiple healthcare professionals, not one of whom adhered to mandatory reporting requirements. I reported to New South Wales Police in 2008. I reported to the Royal Commission in 2012. I reported to operation of test in Canberra. I made formal witness statements to New South Wales Police and have agreed to do more. I've reported directly to the New South Wales and Federal Police Commissioners and to the New South Wales coroner. I have provided sufficient names, times, dates, and places for authorities to investigate. My experiences were hor horrific beyond words. I witnessed child abduction, torture, rape, murder, but. The way I've been treated for reporting the crimes I witnessed and experienced has been far worse than my original abuse experiences. Victims endure the most miserable childhoods. We then spend the rest of our lives paying for the crimes committed against us. Victims are constantly placed under excessive scrutiny. If we can't provide a precise time and date for something that happened 40 years ago, we are called liars. If we get emotional, we're labeled crazy. If we are vocal, we're just attention seekers. It's time to focus our attention away from victims and onto those responsible for the crimes against children. In the 2006 census, Australians identified child protection as their number one concern. Why then does our government continue to ignore the public's concern for children? Australia is a pedophile haven. Our laws are written, interpreted, and administered in a way that benefits pedophiles and silences victims of crime, teach pro pedophilia material, our health boards. Now, the man that she accused of being one of her abusers was Nicole Kidman's dad, who eventually fled to Singapore as a result of these accusations and was mysteriously dead. So that's an interesting piece of the puzzle that I just read. Wow. Crazy. I believe, uh, she wrote something called Eyes Wide. Sh No, that's not her. Okay. Uh, random book. Um, so. There's a big grab a hole there with her. Just, just her, you know, um, justice Scalia was mentioned under her name several times. Uh, several different things. So, so just to show you that there's validity in merit to the person that he is quoting here in just one of these, one of these subsections. So I, I, I didn't have any research on her or any of this prior to that, so, um, but just googling that name, you can find validity to it. And, and here we go. And we'll read some of the. Next parts of this here. Uh, but let's, let's read what, what she had to say about that. Um, and, and maybe I'll give a couple more reads of this. She said, one of the things that I found out over the last 10 years of studying governments and listening to intelligence and counterintelligence agencies is that those in government are sexually compromised and their sexual secrets are collected, and then they are promoted into governments and into ju judiciaries and into all the positions of importance. Pedophilia is the preferred dirt as it is easily photographed, easily presented in a range of media, immensely shameful, and the public demands your resignation. The next person quoted here is Greg Hallett. Paul Bacci, one of the victim witnesses. Of the Franklin Affair. Also clearly stated Larry King used him in blackmail operations in New York, in Washington. The latter was in connection with the activities of a close associate of Larry King Craig Spence, who was involved in the prostitution ring consisting of underage boys that were supplied to Washington's upper class, which went right up to the White House. Greg Hallett also said Bob Hope was politically connected and knew how to lure people in and ensure that they would work for him. He invited them to his parties and dangled various kinds of illegal and immoral perversions in their faces. Once their perversions were uncovered, he could blackmail or control them. That is how Bob worked. Bob was very good at this. I watched him do it to people over and over. He lured them in, detected their weaknesses, then used that knowledge in his favor for his connections, and ultimately for his personal gain. Uh, Bryce Taylor goes on to say, These blackmail practices are often used in conjunction with trauma-based mind control. This mind control is an integral component of and is deeply intertwined with child trafficking, sex slavery, satanic, ritual abuse, and many other horrific crimes. Many of the children used for the blackmail are programmed and many of these people being blackmailed, including sometimes future politicians, leaders, and presidents are also programmed themselves. Hmm. This is my personal belief based on my experiences, is that over the years, more leaders were undermined control. So what this is saying is that there's documented evidence consistently that there is being used blackmail and mind control techniques against high level politicians so that they can be manipulated for profit over time. Let's see if there's any of the other ones that we wanna mention here, cuz there's a ton, a ton. There's one from the Pegasus file. Um, I'll read this one and the next one and then we'll move on. It says, check out for the FBI records on Scarlet. What was his original hook that got him so deeply embedded with the UK Illuminati culture? He murdered the nanny of Lord Luan in the 1970s. Luen wasn't actually involved. Scarlet got it wrong. He was under mind control at the time. How we laughed on his training sessions when he heard that, not when he heard that one. Not funny. Really, we were all in the same boat. Each had something terrible attached to us in our past. That's all part and parcel of the Illuminati contract. Young people forced under mind control to commit murder when, when young and then later on picked up by British intelligence to be used and abused as they wished as loyal servants to the British Crown. One can only hope that by exposing these hooks that some sort of amnesty can prevail. If these people are freed from their demonic Illuminati contract, by exposing their hooks, one can only hope that they will come forward at a sizeable and influential body of political and public figures in order to put to an end here's hope. Check it out. Remington's Hook to see what sort of mind ran M 15 for so long, or I five. Um, for so long it's a game called Mafia and it is all about blackmail. Hmm. This is from an ex I six agent says he had previously signed off on Epstein's sweetheart deal because Epstein had belonged to intelligence. Acosta then serving as US Attorney. The Southern Florida had also been told by unspecific figures at the time that he needed to give Epstein a lenient sentence because of his links to intelligence. Wow. Now that same Fiona Barnett mentioned satanism quite a bit in some of her, uh, talks here. Um, but this just goes on and on and on and on of other documented conversations about this blackmail and mind control process. Now, if you don't know about. MK Ultra. You need to go back. I did a full episode on it and broke it all down. I think I've done actually two episodes on MK Ultra, which is a ccia a uh, a C I A operation, which was done. There's over like a hundred and something different ways that they were doing, conducting different scientific experiments, uh, during the Cold War and beyond to try and figure out how to conduct mind control on people. Um, and it was like almost between, I don't remember exactly, but it was like almost 35 to 40 years that they were conducting these type of experiments. And, and it's all public knowledge. You can actually go to the cia.gov website, to the archives and look up the documents on MK Ultra to figure out, and now you know how they're actually using it. Uh, so let's read the next part of this. If you want to find this article, um, I will link it in a sub email that I will send out, uh, tomorrow. Um, so Austin Adams dot sub stack.com. I will link this conspiracy red article, which is not very much traction. I wonder why, but has tons and tons of receipts of legitimate people who have made legitimate claims over time that is well documented about this blackmail process. Now, the next thing that he talks about here, or she, uh, says deep underground military base information. This post is an inter or is an overview of deep underground military bases, dumbs. As with my other posts, I highly encourage that you'll research further yourself. An understanding of what trauma-based mind control programming is and how it works is necessary to understanding much of this. See, my other posts. And we will be looking at those. Um, for information about the programming heavily referenced and related to this post, all citation sources and links are at the end of the section. These above top secret, deep level underground bases are used for trauma-based mind control, or monarch pro programming, experimental programming, genetic and other human experimentation. Military Illuminati, N W O Technology development and storage, including advanced weapons and advanced anti-gravity crafts, the highest level scientific and paranormal experiments, military abductions, black ops child, human trafficking, breeding programs, and other terrible things. There exists a huge network of mag Lev tube shuttle connections under the United States, which extends into a global system of tunnels and underground bases in cities. Many pictures of the machines used for digging are on this page. Let's click that link. I told you we were going deep Fellas told you we were going deep. Uh, so this is an article from, no, I can't read that far. Um, it shows these huge US Air Force drilling machineries that were used to drill these types of tunnels. Wow. I'm not gonna get into that, but just know that it's there. If you want it to go to it, to look at these machines, it comes from project camelot.org. And again, I'll link it in the ck. This one I'll need to do the sub stack cause of how much information we're going over. Um, it says they're basically whole cities underground. They are between 2.65 and 4.25 cubic me miles in size. They have laser drilling machines that can drill a tunnel seven miles long In one day, I was involved in building an addition to the deep underground military base at DOLs, which is probably the deepest base. It goes down seven levels and over 2.5 miles deep. I helped Hollow Hollow out more than 13 deep underground military bases in the United States. That came from Phil Schneider. The next one comes, or from Phil Schneider says, I discovered that not only, so yeah, that one came from Phil Schneider. This next one comes from Fritz Springier says, I discovered that not only was our government focused on building deep secret cities, but the Illuminati families were also, furthermore, they were using technology that the public was unaware existed. The idea idea behind it was to create safe and secret place for themselves. Witnesses have described elevators going miles down super fast, trains, backup government agencies, genetic experiments, warehouses of stockpiled materials, and a non-human hybrid project. But what continues to haunt me was what they looked took from one eyewitness, which gave me, when he said, Fritz, you don't have a clue what is going on behind, beyond all of you have thought of. And after that, what is going on is beyond what all of you have thought of. And after that, there was a stone-faced mask on his face counter nets. I don't know what that means. Um, the next one comes from Phil Schneider, which says, these underground bases are funded by the black budget and non appropriated funds. Intelligence agencies run the global drug trade. Where's this money coming from? It's not from our regular Black Ops budget. It comes from an illegal sale of drugs. And we know that to be true because of the cocaine that the, the CIA and, and these agencies were selling in the eighties and the crack in the nineties. So we know that to be true 100%. There's already been articles about that, that the, the CIA was ab absolutely selling cocaine to fund these types of operations. So we know that to be true too. Says, where's this money coming from? It's not coming from regular Black Ops budget. Um, it's coming from the illegal sale of drugs in the United States. There's, at least by conservative estimates, a quarter of a trillion to a half a trillion of illegal drugs just sold in the United States. That goes directly into underground budgets. And 90 to 95% goes to these dumps. Black Ops budgets is a half trillion dollars per year, a quarter of the US Gross National product. Um, black budget is not monitored by Congress. It's an independent having body, but it's mainly financed by drug operations by the ccia NSA and the Drug Enforcement and Enforcement Administration. Also, the fbi. More recently an FBI man tried to tell me the public about this and was murdered in January of 95. Interesting. Uh, Phil Schneider goes on to say that much of this Black Ops drug money is being used to fund projects classified above top secret. These projects include the building and maintaining of deep level underground basis, such as the Chris Anton Crissan Anthem Underground Biogenetics facility in Doles, New Mexico. Pine Gap in Australia, Breen Beacons in Wales, snowy mountains in Australia. The Nyla range in Africa, west of Hindu in Africa, next to the Libyan border in Egypt to Mount Blanc and Switzerland, NVA and Scandinavia, Gotland Island, and Sweden. There are at least 1400 of these DBS worldwide, 131 in the US with two underground bases being built per year in the US at the moment. The average depths of these bases are of four and a quarter miles underground, some shallower and some deeper. These bases are on average, the size of a medium-sized city. Each D U M B cost between 17 and 26 billion to build, which is funded by MI six and ccia Drug money. A nuclear powered drill is used to dig underground. The drill goes through the rock at a tremendous rate and literally melts the rock away to form a smooth glass like surface around the edges of the tunnels. The next one comes from James Kasal, which says, project Mannequin was started in 1972 and is still being run from a six level underground facility beneath the small town of smore in Berkshire, A few miles from where I grew up. Also, the CLC one base, which, uh, whatever in London was connected to a large base in Parliament la, the underground facility below the Porten down bio warfare facility in Wilshire. This underground base is also so secret that the local residents of peace more are not even aware it exists. The NSA facility known for the intelligence circles as AL 4 99 bases located 200 feet below the village. There are entrances to the facility at Greenham Common, um, which is the Bravo entrance, which is now sealed off. Whitefield Military Science College, Harville Laboratories in Oxfordshire, so on and so forth. The underground base at Lambourne is the area 51 of the UK with many exotic anti-gravity aircraft stored there. Wow. All right. This goes on and on and on and on. This is a crazy, crazy idea. I have not heard about this yet. Next one. And then literally, there's so many of these, so many of these quotes and links in sources, uh, that, that this goes into. Um, and we're just scratching the surface, scratching the surface. Wow. Let's see if we can grab one of his links here. Wow. This links to something called the Illuminati formula, used to create an undetectable mind control slave. Told you we're going deep. Wow. Let me look at this index here. Dear God. All right, so I'm not even gonna go into that, but like I said, I will link that. Uh, this is a book from Fritz Spring Meyer and Cisco Wheeler called The Illuminati Formula, used to create an undetectable mind control slave, and it comes from whale to so many links, so many articles. So many little twisted tunnels that you could get into from this. Let's read one more. Uh, this, uh, comes from Veronica Swift, which says One thing that they do is very advanced, almost mind bogglingly advanced is genetic manipulation and crossbreeding of humans. We already know that to be true. It's the chimes that we've talked about, that China admitted to be experiment theon, and she mentions it. Here we go. Both Jesse and Cisco report that the Illuminati Brotherhood is secretly creating human animal hybrids called chimes. They're breeding humans with birds and other animals, as well as inserting DNA into humans that normally would belong only to a fish, for example. Dear Lord, Next one says, area 51, dreamland Groom Lake, Nevada Area 51 is also known as dreamland. There are a number of extensive underground facilities in the area. This is one of the first genetic research fili facilities in the us, perhaps the first major genetic research facility. The people's workers and victims are brought in by airplane and tube shuttle. The worst cases of U F O alien type of monarch programming are coming out of Area 51. The eggs from slaves are being harvested and weird genetic creatures are being developed from human eggs, which has been genetically mixed with other things. Ooh, we're going deep, hidden high atop the mountainside along going into the sun road at more than 6,600 elevation is the secret tunnel entrance for an extensive underground Nazi slash CIA facility in the above satellite image. The larger circle denotes the hidden rock facade entrance, and the smaller circle denotes the position of camouflage guards. The secret tunnel descends more than two miles to a giant, hollowed out industrial complex below the mountain. This huge underground city slash base connects to Montana to Canada, just north of the national border at the cleverly named International Peace Park. This underground base is where the CIA keeps its stolen Holocaust trillions and test its most secret new world order black projects, including Tesla's flying discs, opt optically, invisible aircraft, and other stolen Tesla technologies. Operations at the base include maintenance and deployment of stealth drones. Wow. It also says Glacier National Park was the first national park to have railroad access at the time, a necessity for all large scale underground, military, industrial construction. This enabled them to transport the rumored Nazi gold train of stolen Holocaust Loot from Uck. New York to a secret base located inside the mountain. On the pro, uh, prominently above the secret tunnel entrance, there is a strange looking outcropping of rocks that a certain times of day looks like a grizzly bear. Hence the name Grizzly Peak. The c i a uses a secret tunnel route to illegally smuggle drugs, guns, ss Nazi war criminals, and dignitaries into Canada without stopping at any border crossings. Good Lord, this just goes deeper and deeper and deeper. Wow. I'm gonna have to do a whole episode on this. Yeah. We'll have to do a whole episode on this. The next topic that we were supposed to go into is, The Alice in Wonderland, trauma-based mind control programming. So I'll touch on this super briefly and then we're gonna have to wrap this up. But I will dive into these topics and come back to you guys with a, a full understanding, cuz I'm just finding this out with you. It says, A basic understanding of what trauma-based mind control is and how it works is absolutely necessary to understand this post. Um, it will not make sense otherwise. If you haven't read my other post, uh, first this is a follow up. This posts quite heavily on the character limit. Alison Wonderland is one of the two most commonly used mind control program scripts. The other is the Wizard of Oz. All mind control programming is a variation on a theme determined in part by the victim's own imagination and their set role in the cult. Hence, while Oz and Alice programming are uniformly employed, their application differs from every victim. Now again, it comes to Fiona Barnett, the person that we talked about earlier. Alice is the name given to every female MK Delta Child Soldier, hence the Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass programming. There are many variation used by different groups, but the basic concepts are the same. In alter personality or multiple. Who believes that they are Alice, a mirror world referred to as through the looking glass or the other side of the mirror. This is the fantasy world. This alter personality goes to or lives in, completely disassociated from the human extreme trauma. The Alice in Wonderland programming theme is used in air water programs and mirror programs, which the Illuminati, cia, nasa, Jesuit, and other like so. Well. The idea is that there exists a mirror world, which is a reversal. Along with it attached is the idea that the slave can enter into a timeless dimension of time. Or as some refer to it, interdimensional time travel going through the looking glass takes them to a world where the ordinary world is turned upside down and backwards. Uh, Fritz Spring Meyer says, using the movie programmers encourage slaves to go into over the rainbow, follow the yellow brick road, or follow the rabbit, and disassociate effectively separating their minds from their bodies the same way Alice follows a white rabbit through the looking glass. To enter the strange world of wonder, slaves follow their handlers through programming to reach complete disassociation. In the fairytale, Alice enters a fantasy world where everything is magical, inverted, and unstable. A place similar to the slave's internal world where everything can be modified by the handler. Therefore, in mk symbolism Wonderland represents the state of mind of disassociation, mind control slave, the place where they escape the plane of trauma. The next person said, I had listened to. A queen at talk at length about such concepts before hypnotic talk of past, present, future set my mind in a spin that when combined with Alice in Wonderland, NASA mirror, world concepts C uh, created an illusion of timeless dimensions. I know that the only dimensions I experienced were elaborate memory compartmentalizations of real earthly events by real earthly criminals, and certainly not by aliens, Satan or demons. Wow. It goes on to talk about another one which says that, uh, The White Rabbit is a programming figure for Alice in Wonderland programming who will allow you to go otherwise inaccessible places for adventure. He represents the master. The white rabbit is an important figure to the slave. Fritz Springer says, Alice, uh, represents mind control in general. The meaning of is purposeful referenced in media, for example, the Matrix or Pet Goat two, which is symbolism. Uh, this page has collected a collection of celebrity monarch slave pictures referencing Alice Mind Control in popular media. It's everywhere. Interesting. I'm sure we can go down that rabbit hole, no pun intended. Wow. Hmm. Talks about, it shows Adam Lambert. It shows like it's just basically showing all of the symbolism within Hollywood, referencing the White Rabbit and Alice in Wonderland. It even shows a picture of Britney Spears wearing the rabbit years during a performance. His Cameron Diaz followed the white rabbit as well. Who knows? Maybe it's just a coincidence. So this is just all speculation, but it does show a fair amount of correlations between Hollywood figures and Alice in Wonderland, which to be fair, was a huge Hollywood hit, and maybe that's why and has absolutely nothing to do with CIA m i six, Illuminati Satanic mind control. And maybe these people are all crazy. That could be very well it, but that's a pretty big, pretty big amount of pictures and people, and when you say, uh, Bri Britney Spears, you go watch some Britney Spears videos, that's some of the wildest, weirdest things you'll ever see in your life. Uh, yeah. Interesting. Says the same way Alice follows a white rabbit through the looking glass to enter a strange world of wonder. Slaves follow their handlers through programming to reach a complete disassociation. And the fairytale Alice enters a fantasy world where everything is magical. Right. We already talked about that, um, over the years. Uh, interesting. All right. I don't have the mental fortitude to continue going down this road because it seems to be pretty dark. Uh, but I, I will read it when I have the ability to do so and come back to you

This week we are joined by Carl Anderson and Matt Glover, two long time educators and authors dedicated to student writing. Carl and Matt explore what makes a strong writing teacher, and what we can glean from the writing process. They identity several principles and aligned actions that teachers can take to improve their practice.If you enjoyed this conversation and want to learn more about improving your practice, sign up for Carl and Matt's upcoming PD event “Becoming a Better Writing Teacher” on July 11-12, 2023, at Heinemann.com/PDAs always, a transcript of this episode is available at blog.heinemann.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today, a cautionary tale for hotel dwellers. Mike dishes out some "Intelligence for your Life" and we wonder about PDAs with our kids. Julia gears up to graduate and AI could take control before we know it. Plus, we are your "watch restoration station". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Monday so it's time to get motivated!Plus I chat PDAs and cringe TOWIE kisses!Follow us and let me know on instagram @fiveminutespeacepodChat tomorrow, Georgia x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we chat with Michelle Grasek, an acupuncturist who also specializes in marketing. Michelle shares with us her journey to becoming an acupuncturist and how her grandmother's experience with acupuncture sparked her interest in the field. Michelle also talks about Her love for marketing and how she started her blog on Acupuncture Marketing. The biggest struggles acupuncturists and healers face in marketing their practice. How the COVID pandemic impacted Michelle's practice and how she shifted focus. The importance of thinking outside the box and finding one's passion points to avoid burnout. What's coming up for her in 2023 and how letting go of insurance gives you more time Website: https://WellnessRenegades.com Instagram: @WellnessRenegades For a full transcript of the episode, visit: https://bit.ly/WREpisode1   Michelle Grasek  bio:   Michelle Grasek is the host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast. She's a practicing acupuncturist and marketing strategist and she's been teaching marketing, both online and in-person, for 9 years. In that time, Michelle has taught marketing to over 3,500 acupuncturists. It's her mission to help you grow your business using marketing techniques that are genuine and generous. Through MIchelle's articles and online PDA courses, she aims to help you outline a strategy, focus on marketing that's authentic, and get new patients every week. She shares all of her practice-building tips at michellegrasek.com and on social media @michellegrasek.   Social Links: - Instagram: @michellegrasek   - Facebook - Website: www.michellegrasek.com - Acupuncture Marketing School online class [15 PDAs]  

Are you on social media? Of course you are. So follow us!    Twitter: @MemberTheGame Instagram: @MemberTheGame Twitch.tv/MemberTheGame Youtube.com/RememberTheGame   And if you want access to hundreds of bonus (ad-free) podcasts, along with multiple new shows EVERY WEEK, consider showing us some love over at Patreon. Subscriptions start at just $2/month, and 5% of our patreon income every month will be donated to our 24 hour Extra-Life charity stream at the end of the year!   Patreon.com/RememberTheGame   Doom 3 was a reimagining of the series back in 2004, but these days, it's kinda the "forgotten" Doom. People love the original Dooms, and Doom 2016 & Eternal reviewed really well (Eternal is phenomenal), but Doom 3 just gets left behind. It was a MASSIVE step forward back when it came out. The graphics were insane and it was legitimately terrifying. But it was also kinda basic, combat wise, and once the scares wore off it was a fairly standard shooter. Or at least, that's how I felt.    Replaying it for the first time in almost twenty years her the past couple weeks, I feel the same way. I love the graphics, like the level design, got kinda bored of the combat, and fucking HATE the PDA system.   This was one of our Stupid Sexy Sponsored episodes, so community member/hot dog Brandon is gonna pop by and tell me why he's such a Doom 3 junkie, and then I'm explain why I like this game, but don't think I can fall in love with it. And yeah, I rant about the PDAs.   And before that, I slap together another edition of the 'Remember The Game? Infamous Intro'!   This week, we talk about what could be in store for the Switch as it starts to enter its home-stretch. What should you say what someone tells you that video games are a waste of time? And why don't I like Diablo??   Plus we play another round of 'Play One, Remake One, Erase One', too! This one features 3 additional FPSs from 2004: Half-Life 2, Metroid Prime 2, and Halo 2.  

Roses are red, violets are blue, love and romance are hard work too... or are they? Join us this week as we look at coworkers' crushes, PDAs, and AITA stories of when Cupid mingles with your 9 to 5. Let's Check-In! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/biascheckin/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/biascheckin/support

With over 80% developer growth the past year, the Solana ecosystem has never been stronger. Chase Barker, Head of Developer Ecosystem at The Solana Foundation joins Brian Friel to talk about the current initiatives happening on Solana that excite him the most, along with the biggest opportunities he sees for Developers on Solana in episode 20 of The Zeitgeist. Show Notes:00:05 - Intro                            01:56 - Background / Start with Solana                        11:49 - Highlights from last year with the developer ecosystem16:13 - Latest exciting initiatives in Solana                  20:56 - Opportunities for devs in Solana 25:03 - Opportunities to build a project on Solana27:36 - Solana plays Pokemon" game           30:43 - Where will Solana be in 5 years                          32:55 - A builder he admires Full Transcript:Brian Friel (00:00):Hey, everyone and welcome to The Zeitgeist, the show where we highlight the founders, developers, and designers who are pushing the web 3.0 space forward. I'm Brian Friel, developer relations at Phantom and I'm super excited to introduce none other than the man, the myth, the legend, Chase Barker of Solana Foundation. Chase, welcome to the show.Chase barker (00:24):Hey man, thanks for having me.Brian Friel (00:26):This has been a long time coming. For those who don't know, Chase is the head of developer ecosystem at Solana Foundation. He's one of the earliest guys you could have seen if you were a developer coming into Solana. And it's special for me personally because Chase was the first person I reached out to on Solana. We actually did an episode on your old podcast, Chewing Glass at one point. It's great to be on the other side of the mic though, but officially welcome to the show, Chase.Chase barker (00:49):Thanks man. Yeah, it was super cool and it's also wild for me to be on this other side because we met in some interesting circumstances, you trying to dive into the whole ecosystem and I had no idea what I was doing and I needed help. And you wrote some really cool shit for me for the Solana Cookbook and here you are, leading Phantom. So anyways, I won't dive into that too much. Maybe we'll talk about it later, but it's super cool to be here, so thanks for having me.Brian Friel (01:15):Yeah, thanks for coming on. No, I couldn't agree more. Probably a good place to start, is maybe rewinding time a little bit, going back to some of those early days. Solana's pretty unique from a developer perspective. There was always, having worked in the industry pre-2018, it was always... If you're doing something development wise, solidity is the only game in town you got to be working in EVM. And Solana basically struck it out on its own and completely changed that narrative and you were around to see pretty much that whole evolution. Can you talk a little bit about your journey to finding Solana? Who are you, what were you doing, and what have you seen evolve in Solana since you've been there?Chase barker (01:56):Yeah, for sure. So I've told this story a lot and I'm going to keep this one shorter than I normally do, but I was an engineer for 12 years and then started trading crypto in 2017, made a bunch of money, lost it all in 2018, like most people. And then along that journey I found this project, Kin, who now exists on Solana, but they had their own fork of Stellar and I was into crypto and the bear market in 2018 and they had this hackathon thing and I built a tip bot with a group of other people to be able to tip on Reddit, discord, Twitter and Telegram. And I was like, okay, this is really cool. I really sort of hate my web2 job right now. I'm doing this government contracting work working on legacy Spring VC systems. It was miserable and I've talked about this a lot before and I just got everybody's email addresses and started saying, give me a job.(02:47):And they told me that all the jobs were based in Tel Aviv, but they have this developer relations role for Kin. And I was like, okay, that sounds great. What the hell is that? I had no idea what developer relations was at the time. So did a little bit of research, ended up taking the role and really just started working. They had an SDK, but documentation tried to grow a community. It's a little bit different. I'll get into this from Solana because Kin was like, this is the ICO days. Nobody really gave a shit about use cases. It was just like how am I going to be the most degenerate thing here. It was way ahead of its time, but eventually flash forward after a couple years of really loving what I was doing, traveling around the world, speaking at conferences, and helping people learn how to build in crypto.(03:31):And I heard, and it's March or April 2020 way early, and I'm talking, nobody that I knew, knew about Solana. So they were like, we're going to migrate to Solana this new blockchain. Nobody knows about it, but it's going to be super fast. Our tech team says it's great. So I followed along. Around December, I was involved in the migration process and I had spoken with Dan Albert, who's now the head of the Solana Foundation, and Raj and I engaged with a bunch of these guys but didn't really know them, but I was part of that migration. And then a little bit later into 2021, early 2021, people don't know this, but actually I was leaving Kin and I was looking for another role and I got hired by Circle for one week as a developer advocate. And then I saw Solana had a developer relations role, applied.(04:21):So I actually had an awkward situation where I had to tell Circle that “I know I just started, but I'm going to go work at Solana.” But the reason I worked at Solana is because I just DMed the shit out of Raj and Dan until they finally submitted into saying, okay, finally we're we're going to let you take this role. And at that time all that existed was the core documentation and the PaulX Escrow tutorial, aka the Solana Bible. And that was the start. May 5th, the day after my birthday of 2021, I joined Solana as the first sort of developer advocate and that's sort of the entry point.Brian Friel (05:01):Wow. So yeah, it's not really that long in calendar days. Chase barker (05:07):It's been 20 years. It's been 20 years.Brian Friel (05:09):Yeah, exactly. 20 years in crypto years for sure. A lot has changed since then. Maybe the only thing that hasn't changed is the strategy of just spam DMing somebody to try to get a job. I definitely tried to employ that with you back in the day. I know a few other people who have successfully deployed that strategy as well. But yeah, it's been crazy. There's a lot to talk about here. Maybe we just focus on the last year in particular because you mentioned 2021, it's a pretty crazy year. There was just the public tutorial on the docs and then all these people come in, you get anchor that gets built around that time. Solana takes off, a bunch of independent teams.Chase barker (05:49):Actually, let's go a little bit before that because I think this is just a really interesting thing and I like telling this part because when I started at Kin I was begging people to build on it because nobody was really building on blockchain except Ethereum at the time. And then I started with Solana and I had the exact opposite problem. You had a ton of people that were like, hell yeah, this sounds really awesome, but how the hell do you build on this thing? What the hell is rust? There's no documentation. You go into the Discord and the cord devs are just “go read the tests, that teaches you how to build on Solana.” And that's literally the world that we lived in at the time. And then started putting together this sort of part-time dev advocate team, if you want to call it that. I just skimmed Discord and looked for people who were helping others and be like, hey, come over here into this private discord with me.(06:39):And I'm like, help me scale myself. Because I was starting to write some example code and there was none of that. And then luckily I met Donnie and then Jacob and a couple other guys that are now full-time at Solana Foundation and they were helping in dev support. Jacob was working on the Java STK with Skynet Cap, if any of you guys know him. He was really one of the early OGs there. And then this whole group formed and they were writing content and then you reached out and contributed to the Solana cookbook and this whole thing just came out of nowhere. And I was literally sinking. The demand for Solana was so high because the tech was so new and the sort of hardcore engineers just really wanted to build, and the Dafi's and the Max's and the Armani's just figured the shit out.(07:28):But everybody else was like, let me, let me. And I could not do that on my own. I didn't even have the brain big enough to supply the knowledge to all these people. And then long story short, or maybe long story long is that you and I started talking and you wanted to be part of it and you wrote some really important stuff for the Solana Cookbook, I think retries, possibly PDAs and some of these other things. And it's like, thank you. And I do remember you being like, hey, can I work at Solana? And I didn't have any approval of power at the time and you left me and probably a month later I got approval to hire somebody else, but by that time you were at Phantom, but it seems like it worked out. So it is what it is.Brian Friel (08:12):I think you're right about the demands being so strong for people to figure it out that you just saw people coming together. A lot of times, you look at people who are evangelizing new tech and they're like, hey, here's this awesome thing. Try to explain it. And the first reaction of everyone is like, okay, cool, but then they just move on. And I feel like Solana was one of the few cases where that was the opposite, where everybody was like, this is incredible. How do I use this thing? How do I build this thing? And it was just this hive mind of people coming out of the woodwork to try to make it happen.Chase barker (08:43):Even me leading into Solana, and I say this a lot too because it's true in my mind, and I was like, listen to Anatoli and all this stuff, and I'm one of two things. This is the giant scam, or this is actually really fucking awesome. And luckily my instincts were right on that one and everything sort of worked out. And when I met you and then we started doing this part-time DevRel team that you were a part of for a while, first Solana Foundation.(09:09):And the next thing, my Twitter account became this thing where people would create content and I would share it and then somebody else would be like, oh, I want my shit shared. And then they would make content and I would share it. And this was this huge flywheel and that's really what turned into my account was this person who, you do cool shit, I'm going to share it. And then I became this other guy where I'm also, I do stupid shit and then I also share good shit. So it's this perfect mix of this idiot and then this guy who knows where the good stuff is.Brian Friel (09:46):You either die a developer or you live long enough to be a Twitter celebrity, I guess in your case?Chase barker (09:52):Yeah, I mean I don't necessarily love the celebrity side, but I do love getting DMs from people to say, Hey, all the things that you shared, and you probably hear some of the same like, hey, I got a job here because of this tweet that you made or this thread because I started making threads, who's looking for a job or who's whatever. And in the early days that's all we had, was Twitter. There was no other way to connect. I made a Twitter developer list and I added 300 people to it so that not everybody had to come into Solana Twitter and be like, follow each individual person and these were such manual, weird, really hard... I had no idea what I was doing. Luckily people showed up and were there and then just ran with it. I mean, looking back, dude, it's just awesome to look and see what's happened since then.Brian Friel (10:40):Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. Lots of connections made in those early days, like you said too, where people get jobs, all this kind of stuff happens and it's crazy how little interactions like that go really far.Chase barker (10:49):Yeah, exactly.Brian Friel (10:50):So I guess taking it now to this past year, so we're recording this January 2023. The past year in particular, if you were just an outside observer looking at crypto, you're like, wow, prices are way down, everything's dead. And there's a report that comes out just the other day, Electric Capitalist Developer Report, which says Solana developers grew over 80% in the year. You and I... I had an intuition for this, I'm sure you did too. It was just developer activity.Chase barker (11:20):I didn't have intuition. I actually knew.Brian Friel (11:23):Yeah, you knew. But other people I'm sure had intuition if you're around the developer ecosystem, it's not stopping. Developer activities keeps picking up, summarize a little bit in your words over the last year, what has stood up to you? What are some of the highlights? You mentioned you started this thing and it's just you and DMing people on Twitter and getting this thing going. Now it's a serious operation of a developer ecosystem here going. What are some of the things you're most proud of that stood out to you?Chase barker (11:50):Yeah, so I think the start of the year in January of 2022, we're all sitting there, and the crypto markets nuke, and the blockchain literally is devastated. And that was any sort of pre any sort of ideas about what is wrong, what is it? Basically it was all these sort of liquidators, spamming to try to liquidate people and that just turned into this thing. And I think by that point in time though, we had some really high conviction developers that were already super invested themselves in Solana. So they stuck around and I think that's very unique for that to happen. Everybody's like, when are you going to fix this? But it literally took two to three months before they even identified what those solutions might be and those solutions to many of you, the devs out there were quick and fee-markets and some of these other things that improved.(12:45):But even though these solutions were being built, that shit takes time. So during that same time, Solana NFTs were going through the roof and these bots were spamming the network. Luckily we're flash forward briefly to right now all of those things have been implemented, but the work is never complete. But we've been pretty battle tested and recently, but I think to your original question, what I'm most proud of is being able to keep that morale up, being able to really build out this sticky community and I'm focused on devs, but it's not just the devs. Without that normal diehard community, without the Dev community, without the NFT community, we would've failed miserably like every other blockchain that tried to do what we did failed.(13:33):But I think a lot of this really comes down to personal relationships and when you come into Solana and you get involved, people really cheer you on and there's that sort of camaraderie there that kept people here, even in the darkest of times. I'm just really happy. Like I said, I knew that those numbers were high and to be honest, a lot of the reason while I've been memeing about the 75 developer ridiculous reports that have been coming out, I was memeing it so hard in the last couple weeks because we crawled GitHub internally and we know where our dev numbers are and we always make sure that we know where those things are. So it was sort of funny to me to just keep memeing that and then knowing Electric Capital was going to put out a report that sort of reflected... at least they have some pretty strict rules around what they constitute a dev. Our numbers are slightly higher, but their rules are strict. As a full-time dev, you have to commit code X amount of days per month or whatever that is.(14:32):I'm sure they have that somewhere and the way that they do it, but yeah man, it takes a village to do this and there's not one person you can point to, but there's obviously some champions out there that really made people inspired to continue building. The proudest thing I can think of is all the shit we took this year and we're still here and now we just have been pretty much named and given the silver medal of the second strongest developer community in crypto and you got to give a shout-out to Eat the Kings, fully open source and putting up numbers for devs, so you got to give them credit.Brian Friel (15:06):Yeah, we mentioned a little bit early on about how it was a narrative violation for Solana to have a completely different programming paradigm to not be using Solidity to get into an account model lower level dealing with Rust.Chase barker (15:20):There was FUD that was like “Solana's using Rust? Good luck. You guys are basically screwed.” Nobody's ever going to build on Rust. So that was false.Brian Friel (15:29):Yeah, most loved GitHub developer language though I'm pretty sure that's another narrative violation for you there. So talking a little bit more about what you guys have been up to you, you mentioned you guys have been crawling the GitHubs and you've seen this dev activity, you now have a full-time team like you said that, that you're working with, but it's not just you guys at Solana Foundation, there's all these other ecosystem teams now. There's people like Super Team Dao who are doing their own thing, coordinating devs and building devs. I'd say there's stuff on the community side getting devs and raising awareness there. There's Lamport DAO, I might be giving you too many answers here, but the community side and the tech side, what are some of the initiatives that are happening right now in Solana that have you most excited?Chase barker (16:14):I think one of the most important things to note about Solana Foundation and Labs in general is the headcount stays low. This sounds weird to a lot of people, but our job is to make ourselves irrelevant in the next five to 10 years as an organization, the super team and the Lamort DAOs and Meta Camp and Singapore in these different groups, a lot of them will get grants from the foundation to get themselves up and running. But after that they basically become these sort of miniature Solana foundations where they start growing their community from the inside out and giving out grants and doing all these really cool things. But you think of Solana as this giant bubble and every time one of these new miniature groups spins out, the Solana Foundation bubble gets smaller, and then these other bubbles start getting more and plentiful to eventually you reach a point where Solana Foundation bubble was the size of the rest of these small groups.(17:08):This is the antithesis of Web 2.0, hiring as many people in as much headcount as you can and trying to own everything. I don't want to own everything. I want to find Mertz, I want to find Super Teams. I want to find Meta Camps and I don't want to just go find them and ask them. I want to find these guys that just put everything they have into Solana the blockchain and they're just so passionate about it, that it's like this is the team that we want to put our energy behind. In the beginning it really was a lot of us at Foundation and Labs doing a lot of the talking, but now you have these stronger voices and I'm not going to lie, it makes my life a lot easier to not have to be doing all that talking online anymore, but I still do it.(17:53):And I think the important point here is that if we're going to become a decentralized blockchain, we also want to become a decentralized organization itself and that means nobody has to get our permission. I think one of the greatest examples of no permission is Hacker House was kicked off, everybody's like, when my city and MTN DAO was like, fuck this, I'm just going to make my own thing. And they actually built the best thing that's really happened out of our community to date and they produced multiple, clockwork previously, Kronos, mtnPay, all these guys won hackathons.(18:33):Because T.J. Littlejohn literally came up with mtnPay at MTN DAO and a food line being like, Solana Pay just came out. Oh shit, maybe I should just build a payment thing with this new thing. And then he set up the system and people were paying with USD right there. So if that trajectory keeps happening through Solana, and I know other blockchains are trying to emulate what we do, but there's no way to emulate this unless you actually do this organically and it's happening. And anytime I just find somebody like a TJ or a  MERT or whoever or a Brian or whatever, I'm going to put all my time and energy behind them and that's literally my philosophy and the foundation's philosophy in general, I think.Brian Friel (19:15):Yeah, for sure. No, I've seen that too. It feels like there's more... Solana is the only ecosystem I know outside of Ethereum really is there are these factions not the best word, but it's these unofficial groups of people that... Maybe it started as simple as we like to ski in February and we want to get together and hack. MTN DAO, but it's becoming an official collective now. People are identifying with it. And it has influence in the community. I mean I totally see what you're saying too about the Hacker House is I know we had our own last summer, we kind of piloted the Summer Camp Hackathon fan of Sponsor [inaudible 00:19:51]. But I just see that model continuing to go and more and more teams coalescing around certain regions and sponsoring their own thing.Chase barker (19:57):And for everybody listening here, don't ask for permission, don't ask when, just literally do it. And if you do it and you do it well, the attention will get drawn onto you and then I'll come find you and I'll knock on your door and ask you how I can help. So that's really the sort of mentality that I personally have.Brian Friel (20:15):Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that. That was my approach trying to work in this space, just do it and then ask for help or permission. Someone will find you. That's so much better than trying to ask somebody for permission to do something. So I guess that's a good transition to, let's put ourselves in the shoes of a developer who's looking at Solana right now. There's a lot of devs out there that might see Solana and they still think, oh, Rust and scary. That's probably not true. We can talk about that. But there's also probably a lot of devs who maybe know a little bit about Solana, they're kind of like right on the cusp, because they want to jump in. What do you want to say to these devs? What are some of the biggest opportunities that these devs should be looking at right now in Solana?Chase barker (20:56):Yeah, I think there's a couple things here. I think it depends on your demographic and age range. I mostly meant age range. So if you're in college right now, look up solanau.org and it's @SolanaUni on Twitter because Dana is our university relations person who is absolutely crushing it, sponsoring and participating in hackathons, doing workshops, just really bringing in my opinion, the next generation, the most risk averse group of people are students who are still funded by their parents that can make some sort of mistakes early on. So they're the next generation that's going to take this forward and luckily they have some really tech heavy guys out there that are just so dedicated to this, the Solana core engineers and the Jito team and all these different groups that are there to mentor them when they're ready to get in this. But I think SolanaU is probably a really high leverage thing.(21:54):We spend a lot of time working with Build Space who's built Solana Build Space Core, which is an amazing program. Things are getting easier. We're still in that place where new things are coming around the corner and I get a lot of shit for this, especially from Rust maxi's, but there's Seahorse Lang where you can build smart contracts on Python right now, not fully ready for production. There's a version of this in typescript coming. We're doing whatever we can to make it easier because the Chewing Glass thing is true and it's mainly true not because of Rust, not because of Solana, it's because learning Rust and Solana and all those concepts at the same time, is literally painful as hell. But content and all these other things combined put together right now and all of the sort of tooling that different groups are building like indexers and all these things are making the lives easier because as adapt dev you want to deal with “get program accounts and all that stuff”, it's not...(22:56):We're getting to a better place and it's coming right now there's a couple places, I mean solana.com/developers we're curating our own list, but I cannot negate what ELO from SOL Dev has done at soldev.app and the whole entire thing that he's built out. So I'm super bullish on a lot of the stuff they're doing. I think there's just too many things to name of how many independent contributors are out there just building shit. I said this the other day on Twitter, I know when things are getting really good when I can't even keep up with the retweets of the things that are being built that I have no idea about. And then you have this other guy that most people don't really know yet. His name's Jonas and I think it's Soul Play Jonas on Twitter,Brian Friel (23:40):He's our hackathon winner.Chase barker (23:41):Is he?Brian Friel (23:42):Yeah. So when we hosted the Summer Camp Hackathon last summer, we had a Deep Links prize and he won as the best use of Deep Links because he was the first to build a Unity game on Solana using it.Chase barker (23:53):I'm not going to dox his location, but I'm going to tell you this mfr is legend and really going to try to push the gaming world forward on Solana, which I think is the blockchain that has the best ability to actually scale. And I want to give credit where it's due, zk-Tech is going to be fucking amazing, but Solana as is right now, has the best chance to scale if a big top tier sort of gaming company hits and decides to leverage that tag.Brian Friel (24:24):Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit because I had Anatoly on as the first guest and he always talked about how his dream was blockchain at Nasdaq speed and it was like “it's DeFi all the way". Then you and I are both around for the 2021 craze where it was just all of a sudden it's the world's greatest JPEG trading machine, it's all NFTs. Now we're seeing stuff about gaming. Is there a certain type of developers interested in something they should come to Solana? It's just like everybody... It's not necessarily specialization here, but what are some of the biggest opportunities maybe if you're looking to start a company on Solana, build a project on Solana?Chase barker (25:03):Yeah, I think we're being honest here. If your use case does not necessarily require high throughput, then the options are pretty unlimited in blockchain. But if you want to be able to have fully on chain games.. And not to say that we both know this, when you're building a game on any blockchain, not everything has to be on chain and it's almost like not necessary to the extent, but DeFi, we need to reignite that on Solana. There's been a series of unfortunate events that–whatever, but I think there's a really strong group of people that are working on this open book DEX and this massive amazing thing that came true. But for me personally, I think that the big unlock comes in gaming and the real original use case of crypto that has never actually been solved, which is payments. I mean it's been solved but not in a usable way. If you're going to bring payments to new and emerging markets, the fees and stuff are important because the fees on some of these different chains is more money than is-Brian Friel (26:12):Not feasible. It's a non-starter.Chase barker (26:13):It's not feasible. And Solana Pay and a lot of these other payment options are starting to enable that. And I think it honestly just has the potential to change a lot of lives, JPEGs and all these other things. That's cool. And I love that people are having fun on blockchain also. Solana is definitely the funnest chain by the way, but payments, man payments, we have to do it. We have to get payments, remittances done on chain and Solana's the most equipped to do it, especially related to fees.Brian Friel (26:45):Yeah, I love you said it too about it being the most fun chain, priding yourselves with that because for a while, and I think you noticed this, with every new blockchain, something that starts, the first thing everyone does is copy what worked before. We're going to have an AMM, we're going to do some DeFi thing, we're going to have an NFT marketplace. But I'm starting to see now on Solana things that are uniquely Solana and just couldn't be done elsewhere. And it definitely feels like there's a unique culture. And I'll shout out too, one, we talked about T.J. Littlejohn and you mentioned payments, the Solana pay spec. Yeah, you can send payments to anyone, but you could send any transaction. So he built that NFT photo booth. You take a photo, scan it, and it mints as an NFT using the payment protocol. It's pretty cool. There's another one though, we just had him on as a guest, which will launch fairly soon on this podcast. Have you seen the “Solana Plays Pokémon” game?Chase barker (27:37):Yeah, I have briefly, but I don't know a ton about it.Brian Friel (27:40):I don't know. It's a game like that... It's like you said, it doesn't have to be crazy. It's not everything on chain, but it's almost like a new genre of game because here you have this emulator that's sitting off chain, it's playing Pokémon and it's like anyone can permissionlessly show up and just start voting to say, press this button, press up, press down. And Solana's so fast that it's basically processing these very quickly and all of a sudden you have people warring over, should we train a Squirtle? Should we release the Squirtle? Should we fight this gym leader? It's a toy today, but you can kind of see how wow, this could become kind of a new game genre where it's multiplayer and, you don't know who you're even playing with or against and it's all real time. It's all being coordinated. It's pretty wild.Chase barker (28:22):I think a lot, and I'm a big advocate of looking at the Web2 world and seeing what is possible on Solana, and also what makes sense because not every use case makes sense, but for example, like I said, I mentioned Shek earlier and Wordcel Club, which is the blogging platform and they're doing some other cool social primitives and it's like they're starting to open source those primitives, but why would you do something on web 3.0 that you could do on Web 2.0? And the answer is sort of incentives. And you look at some of these bigger social platforms that absorb 99.9% of the value and there's a way to distribute that value on web 3.0 that there never was in web 2.0. So I think that's an important one. There might be some disagreement here, but I think the group that really got closest to some sort of web 2.0 success was Stepn, because they went product first instead of... You see a lot of stuff in web 3.0 of it's like, developers first developing for developers, they're developing for things like that.(29:27):But Stepn was like, what does everybody do that we could reward them for and get this on chain? And that was working out, this is an incentive mechanism. Obviously it didn't fully work out and I think there's probably... They're working on that, but at the same time, we need to start thinking what in the web 2.0 world is working, how can we do that on web 3.0, and why would that app make sense in web 3.0? And then usually it's incentive mechanisms that give the user a reason to use it, but they're not going to do that with massive delays or lag times or all this stuff. It better work just like web 2.0 if not better if you're going to do that. So really focusing on things that Solana can do that other blockchains can't at this current moment is probably going to be some of the highest rate of success or at least some more of the higher impact things I think.Brian Friel (30:21):Yeah, I agree. It's got to be seamless in the background. There's people in crypto who care, but the vast majority of people don't want to sit around and wait for something to load. So we talked a lot about the state of Solana today, what you're excited about all these different people building. You alluded to this a little bit, but paint a picture for us. What do you see the Solana ecosystem five years from now?Chase barker (30:43):Five years from now, I see myself not having a job anymore, and I'm okay with that because I've said this since day one. If I do my job the way that I'm supposed to do my job by empowering, enabling others, then there's no need for a me anymore. And any true ecosystem that has a foundation or a labs, whatever, there should be a point that they're looking towards. The North Star is literally being able to walk away and that community in those small groups that you've sort of empowered and sort of distributed out, you can walk away and that shit just runs itself forever.(31:19):That's not just the blockchain that's actually distributed community, not just the distributed blockchain. So that's the North Star. Five years, probably not likely, but I do think in the next five years that it's going to be about as easy to build on Solana as it is to build on React. That's what I have in my mind. And we have the firepower in the ecosystem and the dedicated people that I already see completely just trying to push with Seahorse and all these other things. People are just thinking, how can I make this easier for people if we're already there two to three years in from [inaudible 00:31:59] Beta Solana, we're progressing rapidly right now and if we keep that rate in the next five years, it's going to be insane.Brian Friel (32:09):Love that. And yeah, the beta tag, I'm sure given all the trials and tribulations, we will be shedding that beta tag soon.Chase barker (32:17):I haven't seen the Bernie meme in a while and if anybody listening to this doesn't know, Anatoly said that we're going to drop the beta tag after one year from the Bernie meme that he posts about validators.Brian Friel (32:27):Zero days since last Bernie meme. Really? Okay.Chase barker (32:31):I mean who knows if that happens, but I haven't seen him post that Bernie meme in a while, so we'll see. We'll see.Brian Friel (32:36):Yeah, I'll miss that Bernie meme. We'll put some pit vipers on Bernie again, just for all time sake. Well Chase, this has been an awesome discussion, really great having you on, and it's been a long time coming. One closing question we ask all of our guests, I want to hear it from you, is who is a builder that you admire in the Solana ecosystem?Chase barker (32:55):So my initial sort of instinct is to probably mention somebody that's never been really mentioned before, but I can't not just talk about Armani because he was part of the first wallet. He was part of the framework that made Solana better in terms of developer experience with Anchor. And I mean I know he's now building another wallet and it's just the truth. Armani, his whole sort of ethos and what he is trying to do is just trying to make crypto usable and better for a lot of people.(33:34):And I think that's just an important thing for me and I really respect that about him. So I truly think that Armani is one of the people that I really respect the most in the space for what he's done and transparently and just like everybody who has a very large voice gets a lot of shit. And for people like that to stick around, it's incredible. We all deal with it. You work at Phantom, I work at Solana Foundation. Armani has worked at various groups or whatever and we have to just continue what we're doing and just deal with all the that shit we get and you just got to respect that, man. So that's pretty much my answer.Brian Friel (34:17):That's Awesome. I couldn't agree more. Well, Chase, it has been awesome having you on. Thank you so much for your time. Where can developers go to get started with Solana?Chase barker (34:27):Solana.com/developers or I'll also not show our own stuff and you can go to soldev.app as well. We have different offerings like soldev.app has a lot more, solana.com/developers has a little more curated smaller list, but both are very good options. So yeah man, that's the place. So check it out and let's get going.Brian Friel (34:53):Love it. Chase Barker, head of developer ecosystem at Solana Foundation. Thank you so much.

We loved some of the conversations from last season and thought we'd revisit a few while you're waiting for series 10. In this episode we talked about P.D.As - public displays of affection. During this chat, Brendan shared what he's like when he falls in love and we also asked, are we living in an age of performative affection? We have to say - it was a P.D.A episode - Pretty Darn Amazing. Make sure you're following @lennoncourney on all social platforms for all the latest Lennon Courtney news. See you soon!

@sol_idity, developer and creator of Solana Plays Pokemon joins Brian Friel to talk about how he created a community-controlled game of Pokemon where users can vote to press buttons in a turn-by-turn game via transactions on Solana. Show Notes:00:44 - What is Solana Plays Pokemon?02:23 - Who he is /  Why build on Solana?05:55 -  Surprises or challenges while building on Solana?08:12 -  Strategy for building new features12:41 -  How to improve games on Solana? What's missing 15:47 - What environments for crypto games?17:06 - Future goals for the game19:08 -  Expanding the team?20:02 - Advice for people starting to work in Solana20:55 - A builder he admires in the Web3 space22:00 -  Contact info         Full Transcript:             Brian (00:05):Hey everyone and welcome to the Zeitgeist, the show where we highlight the founders, developers, and designers who are pushing the Web3 space forward. I'm Brian Friel, developer relations at Phantom, and I'm super excited to introduce our guest today, Solidity, the creator of a new on-chain game called Solana Plays Pokemon. sol_idity. Welcome to the show.Solidity (00:26):Hi, GM. GM, everybody.Brian (00:28):GM, it's great to have you here. Solidity, Solana Plays Pokemon. Those are some words that people have probably heard in their life, but maybe not in the same sentence. Can you describe for our listeners who haven't played this game before, what is “Solana Plays Pokemon”?Solidity (00:44):Solana Plays Pokemon generally is an on-chain game where players will vote on the blockchain to play the game together. So every button press is collaborative and everyone on Solana is playing a single game of Pokemon collaboratively together on the blockchain. Brian (00:59):In real time. Yeah. So this is a new game. How long ago did this launch?Solidity (01:03):January. I think about a week-plus ago. Yes.Brian (01:05):Wow. So 10 days ago, you launched this game on Solana and essentially it's a website where there's a Pokemon emulator in there and then there's ability to connect your wallet and anyone else who's on the site at the same time can all vote for what button you press to continue playing the game and then every 10 seconds, Solana is just tallying these up and putting these inputs into the game. And in 10 days, this thing, in my world and Twitter world, has taken Solana Twitter by storm. I believe at the time of this recording, which is January 17th, we've officially beaten the game. Is that correct? Solana has beaten Pokemon?Solidity (01:38):Yeah, but I think we've beaten it for quite a few days really. I mean, for three or four days. Yeah, we've been around for I think 15 days, so I think it took about a week or 10 days to complete the game. So the game is kind of a bit done. Yes.Brian (01:50):Yeah. This is super cool. So basically you put this thing out there, Twitter catches it, all of a sudden, you have all these people who are connecting their wallets, playing this game collectively. It's chaos. Then there's trying to have organization, you've made some changes to the game. I want to get into all the kind of details and how you've built it and what the game is and all that. I would categorize this as potentially a new genre of game. Before we dive into everything that you've built, can you tell us a little bit about who you are? You go by the name Solidity, how did you decide to build this and why did you decide to build this on Solana?Solidity (02:24):Personally, I've been in Solana since, I think, September of 2021. In the beginning, I was just doing NFTs, minting stuff in general, just doing the usual Degen stuff. I was a web2 developer already, so I got more curious about developing on Solana. In a sense, I started with Solana because it was one of the blockchains that had the best experience in a sense in that the transactions were very fast, gas fees were low. It's like, why do people not start doing NFTs on other chains? Why is Solana a lot of people's first chain? It is because the gas fees are very low, so even minting an NFT back then, even at all-time highs, it cost like what? Two USD to mint an NFT, which was unheard of in the whole space back then, and that's why in a sense, I kind of stuck to Solana and continue doing Solana even after I stopped being a Degen, I continue developing for the chain.(03:11):I was trying to learn smart contract development for the longest time. In a sense, it's kind of hard to learn something new when, in a sense, you have other stuff in your life like working a full-time job. So over the Christmas holidays, that was when I was like, "Okay, this is when I'm going to really do something to learn how to develop smart contracts." And I feel like the best way to learn how to develop something new, you have to write a program and deploy to the main net to successfully learn how to write these kind of smart contracts properly.(03:42):So why do I want to make a Pokemon game that is playable on-chain? So the reason is kinda interesting because I was very interested in the concept of the blockchain oracle, how do we get external sources of data onto the blockchain? Some important sources of information would be maybe a set price of a coin. So, DeFi exchanges all need information off chain, and I was very curious about how the blockchain gets this data? That's why I was like, if I'm going to write a smart contract program, it has to have something to do with oracles, I want to in a sense make my own oracle and implement it. And that in a sense, the Solana Plays Pokemon idea was kind of born because one of the first few ideas of an oracle I thought of would be maybe a game control. So what if I could have an oracle that gives me output from a, let's say, a Game Boy emulator?(04:31):And that was something that I was like, "Hey, I could actually work with that." So I would say that it is kind of inaccurate to say that the game runs on the blockchain. It starts all the states on the blockchain, but it does not really run on the blockchain. The game runs off-chain and then data is transmitted onto the chain, so it is sort of an oracle, just that it's not decentralized. That was kind of my inspiration for making the game and now I felt that it was a pretty interesting idea and I worked on it over the Christmas holidays. Then everything subsequently happened, I guess. Yes.Brian (05:03):Yeah, no, that's awesome and there's a lot to unpack there, but just to tease that out a little more, so you were a Web2 dev before all this. You said you had a full-time job and essentially just over the Christmas break, you decided, "Hey, I'm going to finally learn how to do Solana program development." And I assume, did you build this in Anchor or did you build this in native Rust Solana programs?Solidity (05:25):I used Anchor, yeah. Native Rust is a bit too much, I guess.Brian (05:29):Yeah, but that's still pretty incredible that in a couple weeks, you build this thing from zero to one. You deploy in the wild and it's battle tested. Like you said, you learn best by deploying the main net. You have all these people actually using this program. I want to ask, before we get into talking about the game, just a little bit more on the development journey. Were there any big surprises or challenges that you faced as you built this and as you learned the ins and outs of Solana?Solidity (05:54):I'm actually a software engineer working in the Solana space. My full-time job, I'm working for more on the DeFi protocols on Solana.Brian (06:01):Okay.Solidity (06:02):But I'm more of a front-end developer, so that's why I was very curious to learn more about the back-end aspects. I would say that for the learning journey of bridging from the front-end to the back-end, smart contracts in a sense, what was very interesting about Solana compared to other blockchain languages, maybe Solidity on the EVM chains is the concept of PDAs. I feel that PDA is a very elegant concept and if you use them right, they're actually very powerful and that was the most interesting thing that I, in a sense, learned about Solana as I was doing this.Brian (06:35):No, I couldn't agree more. That was one of my first entry points as well, was writing an early PDA guide. Definitely something elegant, Solana's architecture there. So that's a story I've heard a lot though too, is people work full-time in the Solana space and it's essentially Web2 development skills translated over to a Web3 world. You're probably building something in React, definitely something in TypeScript, but from the front-end you're using Web3 JS and there's some intricacies to awaiting certain actions on a blockchain, but you don't really get into the program side of things. It's super cool that you're able to pick this up and deploy basically a full app in just a couple weeks.(07:10):I want to talk a little bit more about the game holistically, what this means, because a lot of people see, "Okay, yeah, you're playing Pokemon, that's cool. People do that all the time." But there's something unique here and you did say, the game's not being run on the blockchain, this is a Pokemon emulator that's being run like any other emulator. But the unique thing is there's this social coordination aspect of it that the blockchain is coordinating, where anyone can kind of show up on this site.(07:38):It's not like you're making a team match where some server is organizing players together. There doesn't necessarily have to be a concept of a chat. You could just have random actors doing their own thing. You did decide to build a chat as you went. Talk a little bit about the genre of this game. This seems to be something new where it's kind of multiplayer in real time, but you don't know who's on your team, who isn't. You decide to build features also as you go. How did you decide to build these features? Were some of these planned? Were some of these reacting to what you saw in the wild and how did you experience this as you built it?Solidity (08:12):I would say that it's an interesting genre because I expected there to be a lot more chaos. I didn't expect everyone to complete the game so early on, so that was surprising. I expected more bad actors in a sense. There was a bad actor, he or she released our starter Pokemon.Brian (08:27):Yeah, I want to go in on that. So you get a starter Pokemon when you start any version of the gen one. I played yellow growing up and I think it was red or blue that you guys were playing and a lot of people get emotionally attached to this thing. You get a little Squirtle or a Charmander, you're supposed to grow it into this great thing and classic internet, it's like you guys kick this off and you beat the first gym leader and someone just goes and releases the Pokemon in the wild and you can never get it back. Was that surprising to you? Did you expect to see more of that troll behavior?Solidity (08:55):Yeah, it wasn't that surprising. I expected to see a lot more of those troll behaviors. Even some of my friends in real life who are in the Solana space, they're like, "Oh, you have this thing. People are going to come in to release Pokemon and stuff." And I'm like, "That's the fun part. That's why it's decentralized. Anyone can do anything they want to. Just connect their wallet." I mean, the wallet address will be on-chain, but that's all there is to it. And I'm kind of disappointed there was not much more drama, but that was attributed to the strong community who were defending the game. So it's like when they see anyone taking steps to go and release or do anything funny, then they'll outvote the bad actor.Brian (09:30):Yeah, it's like you had a time delay because you can only make one move every, what was it, 10 seconds, is that right?Solidity (09:36):Yeah, 10 seconds.Brian (09:37):So yeah, you could see somebody walking to the computer in the game to release the Pokemon. That's how you did it. And Twitter, it was kicking a beehive. People could just rally and log in and overvote this person. I think that's also kind of a wild component where the players of the game maybe aren't always playing the game, they're reacting to the state of things. Like, it's a game that could potentially run 24/7 and things are updating and more players pile in to add cooks to the kitchen at the last minute. I've never seen something like that before in a game. I think that's pretty wild.Solidity (10:06):Yeah, it was kind of what I was expecting in a sense, the changes that I subsequently made to the game, there were actually quite a few changes. Most of the changes, I actually did not really plan for them. I was like, "Okay, this thing is kind of done. I'm not going to touch it anymore. I'm just going to watch people play." That was my initial point of view. But then once enter main net and people started playing, then some of the flaws were kind of clear. It's like, maybe sometimes the game runs a bit too slowly and, in a sense, it's gaming, so you want the immediate feedback to what you press.(10:34):So there's a lot of work on optimizing, how am I going to make the game faster? So for example, Solana is very fast already. So in a sense, there was really nothing much I had to do on the underlying technology. But for some of the other small things, maybe let's say, for example, on the game state, I actually started on IPFS. They're not started directly on the blockchain. They're started on IPFS and the IPFS ID is referenced on the blockchain. So what I did is that I ran my own IPFS node, so that uploads for the safety and the image is faster and that probably cut down about three seconds per execution. And some other things, like maybe a turbo mode to allow people to vote for multiple buttons at once.(11:15):So in a sense, a lot of my iterations were really geared on, how do I make this game, in a sense, more responsive and faster? Because that's what keeps people's attention. The problem might have been I made the game a bit too fast because I expected a lot more chaos. So the problem with some of those, in a sense, enhancements with that, it made it easier to complete the game. It made it harder for bad actors to come in, in a sense, I guess at the end, if I make a V2, then I'll be looking at some of the other decisions to make. Brian (11:48):V2, I love it. That's a hint at what's to come, but yeah. You mentioned that your kind of North Star I guess is making the game more engaging, basically cutting out these downtimes between feedback. Is there anything that you think in particular is needed in either the development ecosystem or maybe something that wallets can implement or some feature in the gaming, tooling world that would help make games on Solana this more and more frictionless, kind of like you were just using a normal website? Because right now there is a lot of friction. You connect the wallet, every action, you get a simulation, you send that and you have to wait and coordinate and all this, but you can kind of get glimpses of a world where you're like, "Wow, this could work just a normal game I'm playing on a web browser one day." What do you think are some of the biggest pieces that are missing, having developed a game now on your own?Solidity (12:42):For me, for this game, people have feedback when we do that, the wallet approvers are kind of cumbersome, but the fact is that I feel that for security, it is very important for people to understand every transaction they are submitting to the blockchain. Because real money is involved. There was this guy who asked me to provide a box to put in his private key so that he can play the game without approval and I would kind of put it out there. Right now that is not a very good security practice, so that is something we shouldn't do.(13:08):I would say that since Solana is a very fast blockchain, so there is really not much to complain about, in the sense, the back-end side of things, the transaction settlements and stuff like that. They're fast enough for online games in a sense. Now the question we should grapple with is more of the wallet approvers. What is a good balance between security and speed? How integrated a wallet is into an application?(13:30):So for me, actually Solana Plays Pokemon is supported on mobile too. That's a primary way I've personally been playing it. I'm playing it on the Phantom mobile app. And the thing about Solana is that there's this mobile wallet adapter, which is pretty cool. If you were on an Android phone and if you were to open the website, the Solana Plays Pokemon website on any web browser, you'll be able to connect your wallet on the web browser itself and then you open your native wallet app.(14:00):So it's these kinds of integrations that make gaming, or not even gaming, but everything you do in the Web3 space more frictionless for the user. I remember the first time I used the mobile wallet adapter, I was also shocked. I was doing a jigsaw and I was like, "I just saw money on my Chrome, on my phone." And I felt like, "Oh, that's like the future." Yeah, it was very interesting.Brian (14:22):Yeah, it just works. You don't have to go through the in-app browser anymore, it just works. We would love to get that on iOS too, believe me, we're proud to support that on Android. iOS is another battle, but that's a little bit out of our control right now. But I agree that's totally where this is heading. I also totally resonate with the auto approve. Sounds like you've been around Solana a long time. You probably were there for when Phantom used to have a semblance of auto-approve in the wallet, which was a pretty wild, wild West days. And I think there's something that, having had that feature once, we definitely understand how awesome it can be. It's just like you said, it's very, very important that you do that safely. So that's definitely something that we're thinking about too. I think there could be a balance there. That's something we're actively kind of researching right now.(15:09):One question too is, you hear a lot from games that I see are oftentimes, "Hey, we're building in Unity or we're building in Unreal. We're building these really intensive environments that give this great sense of realism in a game." But they're development cycles could be pretty long. I mean, you built this thing in a couple weeks in a browser. It seems like that might be the first frontier of this kind of crypto gaming that a lot of people talk about. Do you feel strongly about that? Do you think games in a browser is a pretty viable path for a while? Or how do you think about the different environments in which a crypto game could live?Solidity (15:47):In a sense, it could live off the web browser, it could be the desired state where it is like you download some game on Steam and it has all the Web3 components you need. Personally, I feel that we are still very far from it. There's a lot of ideological pressure. Traditional gaming communities, they absolutely hate NFTs and stuff like that. So I do feel that we are still quite some time away from one day where that's the norm. I do feel that in the short term, web browser games will be the entry point to gaming on Web3 because there's less friction now, just visit a website, approve a transaction, you don't need to sign in or create an account, just approve for transaction or see some actions and be like, "Oh, that's cool." But in this current time, I guess society is still not ready for that yet. Brian (16:31):Yeah, no, I agree. I think it's something that everyone can see coming, but it's a question of what's the path to get there, what happens in between? Things are always changing in this space and so it's good to be reactive like that. Just to circle back on the game. So despite all odds, despite the trolls, people completed the game. We might have released our starter Pokemon, but we got the Nido Chad, the Nido King and basically breeze through the game. Where do you go from here with the game? I've seen a couple things that you've kicked around on Twitter, but what's the current state of the game development? Does this project live on? How far are you trying to take this thing?Solidity (17:06):Currently, I'm just letting people mint NFT of whatever rounds they have voted in. So they'll be able to go to a page where they can just mint the NFT of the frames that they voted in. So it's like a small little memory of their game playing.Brian (17:18):Oh, that's cool. Because all the game states on-chain, each action was recorded on-chain. So you can mint an NFT based on that action?Solidity (17:26):Yeah. After this, I'm going to deploy the code and probably just check the security of stuff and be like, "Oh, okay, I will deploy it." Yeah, but I'm still checking the security of stuff to make sure that it's secure. For medium-term goals, I've been reaching out to a few DAOs to try to get together a competitive version of the game and we will see how that goes. I'm currently in talks with a few DAOs who try to get it set up. Brian (17:50):And the thinking being that each DAO has their own game. Is it just DAO members that could play or would it be like you could attack another DAO's game and try to troll them?Solidity (18:02):You could attack another DAO, I guess. Yeah, they'll just all have different websites to play the game on, but they'll be playing the same game and we just see who is the best DAO in a sense.Brian (18:11):But it's permissionless, so it's not like I need to be part of MonkeDAO to play MonkeDAO's game. I could go in and release their Charmander. Not saying I would do that, but yeah.Solidity (18:20):Yeah, that's the current plan, yeah.Brian (18:22):That's cool. So that adds another layer of, you gotta watch your back. Someone's always got to be awake. No, you can't always be sleeping when you're playing this game.Solidity (18:31):Yes, there's more at stake in round two. Yep.Brian (18:32):Wow, okay. That's pretty wild. Yeah, I could definitely see a world too, because it's on Solana, it's on a blockchain where there's a token at stake here or something that really aligns incentives and then all of a sudden, you have a pretty wild scenario. This is kind of like taking eSports to the next level. I could see some long Twitch streams about this one day. That's super exciting. So it's just you working on this, correct? You said, you learned this over Christmas, you built it yourself. It sounds like this is something that could potentially have legs, you could continue this. Do you have plans to bring more people on or do you think it's just going to be you for the foreseeable future?Solidity (19:08):For the foreseeable future, I'll be supporting this on my own. In a sense, I'm just having fun along the way. It's like, "Oh, I'm learning new things." I'm writing code that I've never written before, so I haven't really thought beyond having fun. Yeah, so we'll see about that I guess. Yeah.Brian (19:24):Well I'd say that's a good guiding North Star just to have fun. So far it's worked out pretty well for you. As we begin to bring this to a close, one question I have, you mentioned, "Hey, I'm just having fun. I've just been learning this on my own." You've done this in a couple weeks. If there's another developer that's listening to this podcast, let's say, they're kind of like the standard Solana front-end dev. They know their way around, what 3JS, they know some Solana terms. Having gone through this, what would you recommend as their process for getting involved with building their first Solana program, deploying to main net? Are there any gotchas that got you caught up? Is there anything that you would impart on them as they begin that journey?Solidity (20:02):Yeah, I would say that generally, there's nothing really surprising, I guess. Anchor has been around for quite some time. What I hope is that old Anchor, there are a bit more gotchas with old Anchor. The new Anchor is pretty well documented. If there's really something they can't really understand, you can just look at the source code. So it is still kind of fine for me to get started. I use this resource code, SolDev, S-O-L-D-E-V.Brian (20:31):That's Italo's app. Italo Casas.Solidity (20:32):Yeah. So there's a course on it that was really amazing. Probably you'll be able to  write your first full on-chain program after you run through the whole course. So yeah, if I had to recommend resources, that's what I would recommend. Yes.Brian (20:44):That's awesome. Well, Solidity, this has been a great conversation. One question that we always ask our guests in closing, want to hear from you is, who is a builder that you admire in the Web3 ecosystem?Solidity (20:56):Okay, so that is a very interesting question. I kind of knew that you were going to be asking that and I tried to kind of think about it. But the fact is that I haven't been on crypto Twitter for very long. Know who I kind of want to build with. I mean the people I work with, they're very talented. I work for different protocols, so I love working with them. In the larger space itself, probably maybe people from the Solana Foundation, maybe even the Metaplex team. Sometimes I do look at the source code for stuff because sometimes I want to understand how they do certain things. I want to understand the intricacies of things and in a sense, when I look at the source code, it's like it's elegant, it's very well written. And the interesting thing about this is that they're always iterating and these are the kind of values that I kind of write with and these are the kind of people that I want to work with.Brian (21:40):Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. Those are two great examples and nothing's ever finished. I would say. Everyone's always iterating and looking to improve and everything can always be improved, so it's a really great value to uphold. Well, Solidity, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for coming on and telling your story. Where can people go to learn more about Solana Plays Pokemon?Solidity (22:00):They can go to solana.playspokemon.xyzBrian (22:07):Awesome. Solana.playspokemon.xyz – That's great. Well, I'm proud to say that I played for a couple turns. I one-shotted a Zubat with Thunderbolt from our Nido King. So I look forward to minting that NFT that commemorates that. And I also look forward to seeing, what I believe, is potentially a new game genre. Where this goes from here, like you said, it will keep it fun, keep developing and keep changing things and improving and I really look forward to seeing where this goes. Thank you so much for coming on the show.Solidity (22:32):Thank you, sir.

Ty and Dan react to the news that CJ Stroud is declaring for the NFL Draft despite rumors that an NIL deal would keep him on campus for another season. Plus, amid the Jaden Rashada debacle at Florida, a conversation about how NIL is affecting college football for the better an worse. Also, a look at Dabo Swinney's big move in hiring Garrett Riley away from TCU, rumors around Alabama's next defensive coordinator as Pete Golding leaves for Ole Miss, and Brian Hartline's promotion to Ohio State offensive coordinator. And finally, a look at the odd PDAs between Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan administration, Kevin Warren's move back to the NFL, and more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this midweek show, Tye Reed and Camille Gix from House Our Neighbors fill Crystal in on why Seattle should vote Yes on Initiative 135 this February. In describing the four pillars of I-135's social housing approach - publicly-owned, permanently affordable, cross-class communities, and resident-led - House Our Neighbors tells us how their effort to create a new Seattle social housing developer is different and complements the existing players in the current nonprofit low-income housing landscape. With working examples from around the world as well as here in Maryland, their model envisions a self-sustaining cycle that creates the social housing desperately needed to address our housing and homelessness crises. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Tye Reed at @themobilepauper, Camille Gix at @CamilleGix, and House Our Neighbors at @houseRneighbors.   Tye Reed Originally from Kansas City, Tye Reed (she/her) is a community organizer in Seattle focused on homelessness advocacy and direct aid to encampments. She is the Co-Chair of House Our Neighbors and a member of the Seattle Transit Riders Union.   Camille Gix Camille Gix is a steering committee member for Initiative 135, a policy intern at Real Change, and finishing up her Masters degree in Public Policy at UW, focusing on social policy analysis and housing studies.   Resources House Our Neighbors | Yes on I-135   Public Development Authorities (PDAs) from the Municipal Research and Services Center   “Seattle to vote on ‘social housing' initiative in special election” by Amanda Zhou from The Seattle Times   “Social Housing Measure Qualifies To Run on Seattle Ballot Next Year” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist   “Public Housing For All” by Paul Williams in NOĒMA Magazine   “Social Housing in the U.S.” by Oksana Mironova & Thomas J. Waters from Community Service Society   “Growing Social Housing in Seattle” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today I'm really excited to be welcoming two people from Initiative 135, the Social Housing Initiative in the City of Seattle. We have with us Tye Reed, who's originally from Kansas City, and she's a community organizer in Seattle focused on homelessness advocacy and direct aid to encampments. She's the Co-Chair of House Our Neighbors and a member of the Seattle Transit Riders Union - fellow member. Camille Gix is a steering committee member for Initiative 135, a policy intern at Real Change, and finishing up her Masters degree in Public Policy at UW, focusing on social policy analysis and housing studies. Welcome, both, to the program. [00:01:32] Camille Gix: Thank you. [00:01:32] Tye Reed: Thank you, Crystal. Thanks for having us. [00:01:34] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. So I just want to start out by getting an overview - people have now probably heard that social housing is a thing, but what is it? What will this initiative do? What kind of change will people see? [00:01:47] Camille Gix: Yeah, I can take this first question. So social housing - we can define through four pillars. So one is that social housing is publicly owned, it is permanently affordable, it promotes cross-class communities, and it is resident-led. So diving into each of those just a little bit more - the public ownership is really key. Social housing, as it's been practiced around the world, is on public land - it is considered a public good and something that we really haven't seen in a large way in the United States, except for one county in Maryland. The permanent affordability component means that regardless of a person's income, it will always be affordable - it will never go over 30% of a household's income in rent payments. The cross-class communities is how the financing for social housing works. You have people who make a lot more money living in the same communities with people who make a lot less money, and the people on the higher end of the income spectrum are able to cross-subsidize those on the lower end of the income spectrum - meaning that they help to cover the operations and maintenance costs of the housing in a way that communities that only have lower income people isn't able to meet. And then the cross-class communities is also important because of our country's history of segregating low-income and Black and Brown communities, and so the social housing works against that historical narrative that we have with low-income housing. Then the resident-led component is the idea that residents in the buildings and in the housing have say over what happens to their housing, so not only do they make up a substantial part of the board of directors of what we're doing here, but each building will also have a governance council that makes decisions for their specific buildings. And so basically, just to sum up, the initiative itself is the culmination of all four of these pillars of social housing. It is creating what will be known as the Seattle Social Housing Developer, which operates under Washington State's Public Development Authorities models, and the initiative establishes this developer which will own, develop, and maintain housing that is modeled after social housing - so cross-class, resident-led, permanently affordable, and public in perpetuity. [00:04:21] Crystal Fincher: So Tye, why did you decide to bring this initiative forward now, and why is it so important? [00:04:29] Tye Reed: Yeah, the now aspect, as I feel like most of us in Seattle can understand, it's - this isn't something that we needed now, this is something that we needed 30, 40 years ago. The social housing models that we've used to build up what we want in this initiative - Vienna, Singapore, all these other places, even places with a lower amount of social housing - they've been doing it for far longer - decades - they've just built housing for a really long time. So right now is because we're really behind. And I think that politically - personally, in 2021, after the No campaign to - No to Compassion Seattle - that was really formative to this Yes, right? I did not know and did not come to be with a lot of the people in House Our Neighbors - including Camille Gix, including my Co-Chair Tiffani McCoy - until we had something to say No to. And then as we've built this energy and this movement and got people talking about why aren't we doing more for the housing crisis and the homelessness crisis, then we had an opportunity while people are all together to say Yes. So I think the why now is just like kismet, just like whatever - it had to happen eventually. But the reason that it's important is a lot of the things that Camille named are so fundamentally different from not just the way that we've built and developed housing, but the way that people in Seattle, people in the United States build communities together, right? We don't build communities in mind that renters have power. We don't build communities in mind that poor and rich people should be living together, and that your income shouldn't really have a bearing on the amenities that your housing has, right? So I think a lot of it is - it's important morally and ethically and ideologically that we actually start building a city, infrastructure, housing, education networks that model better morals than what we have today. So that we are able to actually create community. So I don't want to say it's a highly moral thing - I think it's also super pragmatic. But for me, the description of social housing with those four pillars is fundamentally different from how I grew up. As a poor person who grew up almost exclusively on Section 8 or living in public housing, you know you're poor. And you feel it every day - everybody around you is poor - you have that sense of feeling everywhere and your neighborhood is specifically poor. We're talking about creating neighborhoods where people don't have to feel the existential dread of poverty just by existing. And so I think that there's a lot of political reasons why we should do it now. And I think our homelessness crisis is why we should do it now. And our housing crisis - and all of the units that we know we're missing in the City. But I also think that we're talking about fundamentally changing the way Americans, the way people in Seattle, relate to each other and think of each other as community. [00:07:18] Crystal Fincher: Which makes sense and we're at a moment now that is a different moment than we've been in for a while in Seattle. I feel like there is more recognition than there ever has been before and more motivation for action to address the housing crisis, and people really recognizing that the housing crisis is making the homelessness crisis worse. And that people are not able - to enter into the housing market, certainly, is extremely difficult - but even the rental market in the City of Seattle has excluded and displaced so many people and will continue to unless something very different happens. So I guess the next question is - when it came to figuring out what the different thing that needed to happen was, we've heard conversations about, Hey, there are a number of publicly-funded nonprofit Public Development Authorities, developers that currently exist in the City of Seattle. Why go this different route with social housing rather than invest more in the existing public housing infrastructure? [00:08:34] Tye Reed: I'm sure Camille has a lot of response to this. She did a lot of research for this. But I think the fact that housing nonprofits, the housing industrial complex itself has existed for decades, proves that those models aren't working and that just really investing in models that have very limited scope exclusively isn't going to work for us. Obviously, those things like the PDAs that exist in Seattle - especially the ones that are meant to undo historical marginalization or address historical marginalization - those things are super needed. But a lot of what we see here, once again, is reinvesting in this public housing model where we're talking about short-term or limited amounts of housing being on the market for public housing and this - not mixed-income communities. I think that's important and I want to hammer into that more than anything is that the models that we've seen before aren't creating mixed-use communities that are able to actually thrive and not create segregation and displacement. We're finding that, yes, you can create a PDA and get a certain group of people inside housed, but not at the scale that we need. We're also talking about scale. We're hoping to develop a citywide, non-neighborhood specific, which is what we have a lot - we have the Pike Place PDA and the Chinatown PDA - that is citywide, that is saying that this whole entire city needs to be, for one, rezoned. And also needs to have the kind of housing, the level of housing that certain neighborhoods already do, so that we're not just forcing housing into the same neighborhoods over and over. So I do think the fact that this is a citywide program that is meant to actually address the scale of - estimating 40,000-60,000 people experiencing homelessness in King County - we need to be building at that scale and I don't think the PDAs that we have currently, as useful and as important as they are, are at that level quite yet. [00:10:31] Crystal Fincher: And what are your thoughts, Camille? [00:10:32] Camille Gix: Yeah, I think that Tye did a really great job at explaining the citywide component of this particular thing. And then I think as far as the social housing - and bringing it back to how social housing is a really new concept for us in the United States - I think if you look at Vienna, for example, is the one that people tend to talk about the most because it has the longest history of social housing. But like Tye was saying, nonprofits on their own haven't gotten us to where we need to go - and it's not to say that they haven't done a lot of important work, but we're not to the numbers of housing units that we need to keep everyone affordably housed. And Vienna is a city where they do have a very large nonprofit sector, and the nonprofit sector is doing its part to house people. But the majority of the housing in Vienna is publicly-owned, and it is this publicly-owned social housing component that has made them one of the most affordable housing cities in the world and kept people affordably housed across the income spectrum. And then I think the other really important thing to note here is just to reiterate this sort of cross-class mixed-income component of social housing, and why the existing Public Development Authorities that we have within the City of Seattle are not necessarily going to get us to where we need in a sustainable way - because the nonprofits and Public Development Authorities that currently exist are limited very much by federal financing mechanisms like the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and things that are provided to them through the Housing and Urban Development Department of the United States. And this department is - it keeps people at a very low income - it requires that all units are for very low incomes and this causes this lack of financial stability and financial sustainability. Because if you only have people with very low incomes in an apartment, you're not going to be financially stable because there is going to be this idea of operations and maintenance that will not be able to be met by the rents of very low income people. And so when you have higher income people in the same apartments as those who are very low income, then you're able to meet the maintenance and operations costs of a building and still maintain this financial sustainability component. [00:13:08] Crystal Fincher: So I think what a lot of people are wondering is how this social housing initiative is set up to have a more sustainable funding mechanism and be more able to address the scope of the challenge that we're facing in terms of this housing crisis. One of the things that seems to be a challenge is not necessarily that the existing programs are somehow bad, but that they lack funding. And that they just aren't able to address the scale of the housing problem because they're reliant on limited federal funding - for as good as their projects are, they just aren't able to do enough of it. How would social housing address that and how can it provide a more sustainable funding source that can address the scope of the problem that Seattle is facing? [00:14:07] Camille Gix: Okay. So to talk a little bit about the financial model of social housing - as it's been done in Montgomery County, Maryland, which is the only existing social housing developer in the United States right now - and it's the model that the Seattle social housing developer and a lot of what we've been doing is mostly based off of. This model of social housing starts with a relatively small capital grant of anywhere from $5-10 million. So the capital grant can come from a variety of sources - the city budget, state budget, and non-restrictive federal funds outside of the Housing and Urban Development Department. And this $5-10 million is - again, like I said - relatively small. So in comparison to the amount of capital that a nonprofit would need, it is very small because the majority of the funding for social housing is coming from debt. So that means very low interest municipal bonds - the City of Seattle provides about 4% interest municipal bonds if we're getting into the details, which is the low interest debt that it pays off over time. And because of the mixed income component of social housing, the higher income rents are able to make sure that the debt is able to be paid off over time. And after the term of the loan, so usually 30 to 40 years, the debt is now paid off and the rents are now able to go towards new buildings. And so every rental payment after a loan for a specific building is paid off is then going into the developer to create new buildings. And this is a cyclical process that allows for the developer to be sustainable, not only within a specific building, but also to be sustainable in creating more and more housing over time. And the more buildings it owns and the more residents it is renting out to, the more it is able to grow - and it's this exponential growth that it's able to see. And in this process, it doesn't require these rental subsidies, which most nonprofit development requires because you're only renting to low income people - so you need, in order to pay off debt or make maintenance costs, you need these subsidies that keep people in their housing. But with social housing, it has this cyclical nature to it. [00:16:51] Crystal Fincher: Okay. So you talked about the funding, if this is approved, could come from a variety of sources. So is this reliant on a budget allocation from an external entity, or is there a funding mechanism to start built into this initiative? [00:17:05] Camille Gix: There is no funding mechanism built into the initiative. This is something that we did initially hope to do and set out to do, but we learned pretty quickly in the drafting process of the initiative that it is not legal within Washington state law for Public Development Authorities to have taxing authority, so we weren't able to direct any specific funds from the city or state budget to this developer. What we are doing simultaneously to running this campaign is looking for options to funding - so it will require allocations to come in the form of city or state budget allocations, but we do have a number of state legislator endorsers of the initiative who are working with us to make sure that we have a budget proviso in this upcoming session to create some funding from the state budget. And then as far as the city budget, we are also looking into possibilities there. And something that we've been very open about throughout the campaign is that if we are unable to get money from the city or the state, we will run another initiative as a coalition to create a funding source that's able to fund social housing. [00:18:22] Crystal Fincher: Okay, and in this process as - so working on getting that budget proviso - there is funding provided, and I think you said in the neighborhood of a few million dollars? Did I have that correct? [00:18:35] Camille Gix: The initiative does stipulate that the City of Seattle will have to provide 18 months of in-kind support to the developer - and this will mostly look like staff time for the initial staffers as well as office space for the initial entity to get up and running. And so that's going - I believe during budget discussions, the City Council determined that this would be about $750,000 over 18 months, just for the startup costs. But then as far as the initial capital money that the developer will need, that will be found on the side through staff time and grant writing. [00:19:14] Crystal Fincher: And then how are the properties going to be acquired? Are they going to be built? Are they going to be bought? How does that process happen? [00:19:24] Camille Gix: Yes, and - so they can be constructed - so Public Development Authorities in the City of Seattle have a history of partnering with other public entities like Sound Transit to build housing near transit hubs. And so you have a light rail station and all of the airspace above it, so housing could be constructed on these public lands. And it can also then acquire housing off of the private market, and this is something that we imagine - we don't know for sure - and it'll very much depend on the board and the staff and what is available on the market once this is up and running, but you have lots of buildings that are going up on the market every day. We have a building which recently sold in the Capitol Hill neighborhood called the Madkin Apartments - this was what a lot of people would consider naturally occurring affordable housing - and the apartments were sold to an LLC. And the building will likely increase its rents to the point where most of the residents will have to move out. And so the Seattle social housing developer will be able to acquire buildings like that to keep them affordable for their current residents. [00:20:35] Crystal Fincher: And will that require additional funds, allocations? Is this basically just a municipal authority entity that will need allocations - like any other entity - to perform their functions, I'm assuming? [00:20:51] Camille Gix: Yeah, exactly. I think that as it first gets started up, it will require allocations from the city and state to be able to purchase these buildings, but again - they're also, even if it's purchasing a building that is already in existence, it would be much like an individual family purchasing a home. It can work still primarily off of debt - meaning that if it has enough for a down payment, then the rest of the funds would come through these municipal bonds, which would allow it to pay off the amount of the building over time. And then again, as the entity has more and more assets, it then has more funds to be able to acquire buildings without the need for city and state grants over time. [00:21:37] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. So tell me more about how you're looking at the sustainability of this model when it comes to some people who may be of much lower incomes needing some form of subsidy - it looks like the plan is from other higher income residents in these buildings. Is that currently working? Is there a model where you're seeing mixed income public developments that are self-sustaining? [00:22:06] Camille Gix: Yeah. So this is where it's really great to have this model in Maryland. So Montgomery County - their Housing Opportunities Commission is doing just that. They have been doing that for a number of years and recently have started an uptick in their production - because the county saw what they were doing and said it was great and they've started allocating more funds to their Housing Opportunities Commission, so they're growing at a higher rate now. And they have these buildings which are - they have the mix from very low income, the 0-30% Area Median Income levels, all the way up to market rate housing. And the market rate housing is - the rents from those high income earners are going back into the Housing Opportunities Commission to help to subsidize the 0-30%, 0-50% AMI earners - and it has been a very successful model. They've also built to Passivhaus standards, which is a standard of green building, that we've also written into our initiative. And they're just getting started, but over the last six to seven years, they've done a really wonderful job at building a large amount of housing to house people from this wide range of incomes. [00:23:26] Crystal Fincher: And what are your thoughts, Tye? [00:23:27] Tye Reed: Yeah - I love Camille a lot because she has so much knowledge about this initiative and she has just given us a really good overview of what this could be and how this could work. But I would like to say that the caveat to what she just described - and mentioning Maryland - is that there's a political will to do it. I think that one of the things we talk about a lot at House Our Neighbors - about the decision of about anything we do is - once this gets set up, there's nothing we can do to make it actually work. There's nothing that we can do to get the City to invest - if the City, if this actually gets passed and when this gets passed - and the City could see a recognized mechanism for actually building affordable housing - because we all are admitting we have a housing crisis - we could be having a budget allocation from lots of other places in the city budget that are going to waste. I would say the police department gets a blank check. But the idea of using not even experimental, but innovative housing solutions for our crisis that we're in - I think that's the caveat to what she's saying is - regardless of the numbers, regardless of how right it sounds, or what could or could not happen, I think that a lot of this is about the political will to actually invest in a solution that isn't only what we've been doing. And I commend Maryland County - or Montgomery County, Maryland - for actually seeing that this is something that they needed to invest in, and hopefully they continue to invest in it over the years to get that payout of actually housing people and maintaining housing affordability. But once this gets passed, nothing that House Our Neighbors does is going to actually make it actually happen. We have to get people in office who are fighting to get some kind of capital investment in the budget every year. We have to have people in office who are willing to set aside some funds, who are willing to invest in the project, who are willing to have City lands be used to build upon, we have to have people in office willing to rezone the City so we can actually be building that kind of housing more. And so a lot of this is not just about what the mechanism is that we're putting in place. A lot of it is what's the political landscape of Seattle right now, which is of course a whole another discussion. But I wanted to add that on top of Camille's excellent explanation of this initiative. [00:25:41] Crystal Fincher: Thank you very much for that. And I also just want to talk a little bit more about the impacts on the ground. So we're talking about percentage of annual income. In terms of numbers and salary, what does that mean? Who would this potentially impact in the City of Seattle and what kind of difference can it make? [00:26:02] Tye Reed: I'm sure Camille has more of the exact numbers, but when we're talking about housing people from 0-120% income - I think one of the criticisms we get online, so who knows whether it's valid or not, is that we shouldn't invest in anything that supports people who make 120%, just outright. And that doesn't really make sense, right? Because those are teachers, social workers, nurses, myself - people in the range of 80-120% aren't mega-rich people who have a lot of ability to choose anywhere that they live, especially if you're talking about people who are raising families. And so we're going to see a lot of this open up possibilities to actually making the city affordable, so that people aren't always paying 60% of their income, 70, 50% of their income on housing, right? It's about making it lower so that you can actually have a higher quality of life. Large swaths of the city are not making $150,000 and so they have some sort of flexibility in where they live. Everybody should have the right and have the ability to choose where they live in the city. And right now for lower income people, it is very limited. And this initiative hopes to change that and to stop displacement as well. [00:27:16] Crystal Fincher: So Camille, what does that equate to in terms of an average, an annual salary for people in Seattle? [00:27:23] Camille Gix: Yeah, so the 100-120% of the median income right now for an individual is just under $100,000. And so you have - it varies from household size - so if you have 1-4 people, it's going to change. But if you're an individual making about 120% of - sorry, $120,000/year - you would qualify to live in this housing. And like Tye said - this is nurses, this is some public school teachers who've been in the system for a long time - and these are people who currently don't qualify for any form of affordable housing. People who arbitrarily are denied affordability because they make an arbitrary - above an arbitrary threshold of money per year - and so you have that. And then there's also the component of - what I would just add to what Tye said as well - that right now a lot of our affordable housing programs, if you are currently - if your last year you made 75% of the Area Median Income, or about $75,000, you qualify for your affordable apartment. But you get a raise and you go up to 80% of the Area Median Income, or about $80,000/year, you're kicked out - you don't qualify for that apartment anymore and you have to go find something on the private market. And so what this is doing also is saying that - You change your income? Great. You stay in your housing and maybe your rent might adjust to your new income, but you don't need to go and find an entirely new apartment and pay market rates just because you're making a little bit more. And so I think that this not only applies to those people who are currently making 80-120% AMI, but it also applies to people who have denied raises or decided to work fewer hours in order to maintain their benefits in their apartments. [00:29:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And Tye, the point you made just about how many people this does impact - that both of you have made about how many people this does impact - we are talking about shortages in teachers and nurses and drivers - and just so many people everywhere - transit workers. And those oftentimes are the types of people who are falling into this income bracket - the people who we rely on to make our community vibrant and beautiful and work. And we're excluding so many people from that and displacing so many people from Seattle. How will this make a difference? Do you anticipate that this is something that is a long-term solution that we need to get started on now? Is this something that can have a quick impact? How do you see this playing out if it's passed? [00:30:15] Tye Reed: So a lot of that goes back to political willingness, right? I think that social housing, as we've described it, is objectively without question a long-term project. We should have built dozens of thousands of units years ago, and there's just no way to make up for that - even - there's just no way to do that by tomorrow, by next year, we've just made up that huge gap. But we have to start today. And even if - I don't think it's not going to pass, but say this doesn't pass - House Our Neighbors is dedicated to doing something this year then to make sure it happens - because this is a long-term project. This is a movement to stop displacing people. It's a movement to say that housing should be affordable to everybody, not just people who can afford to move here with a degree that grants you access. And so I think that it can happen pretty quickly - once it's set up, you have a team working on finding buildings to acquire, finding sources of funding. One of the things Camille didn't mention that I think will probably make leftists a little prickly, but I personally don't care, is that we could go after - this PDA could go after private donations, right? There's nothing stopping them from getting money from anybody who wants to provide those funds in order to start acquiring buildings and getting them into position to be part of the social housing network. And so I think that if we have councilmembers and we have a mayor who's interested, there's nothing stopping us from dumping money into this and just buying up - as every unit that comes onto the market - making sure everybody's part of this, getting people - I don't know the word for "grandfathered in" is - but really turning our housing market around and getting these units off of the private market so that they can actually be owned forever by the City. I think that that just depends who's in office and who has the interest. And aside from all of the electoral power that I think people have - people power - how are we going to press people, once this is passed, to make sure that they're enacting it, that they're taking this seriously, that they put the right people on the board who are going to make sure that we're acquiring buildings quickly, making sure that we are buying buildings quickly, making sure that we have a financial advisor on that board who's going to be making bold decisions about what we can use our funds on. So there is no real answer to how this acts on its own. It is all going to be up to - what are elected officials willing to do? And when they don't do it, what are the people in the City willing to do to make them do it? [00:32:51] Crystal Fincher: And that raises a big question. You talk about building political will - obviously, passing policy on the ballot is a significant undertaking. So what is the plan to actually communicate with the 150,000-200,000 people it's going to take to pass this, especially on a February ballot? [00:33:15] Tye Reed: Luckily, the one thing we've encountered is that most people are on board. If you're talking about our Field team that's out canvassing and tabling - door knocking and all that stuff - a lot of people, once they've heard of it, are on board. I think a lot of people recognize that we are in a housing crisis and the City hasn't done anything to relieve it at all. So a lot of it has just been having conversations with people and talking to them about what their rent is and how things could be different. So getting people going - we've just had a really extensive field operation that started all the way in January, or basically - when did we file, March or whatever of last year - building that movement up. When we first launched ourselves, nobody really knew what we were doing or what we were talking about. And in the year that we've been working on this - two rounds of gathering signatures, hiring staff in order to make this operation go - we've been talking to more and more people, we're reaching out to more groups, getting more folks involved. And so - like I said before about this being like a movement, this is not just one thing that House Our Neighbors is working on and this isn't just one thing, one initiative that will be passed. It's about having conversations about - how do we make this city affordable through taxes, through rezoning, through minimum wage increases - whatever that might look like - we need to all be engaging in that conversation and working on it politically. And so House Our Neighbors and this initiative has started that conversation for a lot of people and propelled it for a lot of people who are already involved. And so I think we've seen an increase in interest in this initiative, especially from people outside of the state who are really interested in making this happen. People want this to happen in other states and other cities because this is not unique to Seattle - no matter what people will tell you, this is happening nationwide. And so hitting up doors, talking to people in person - we have a lot of partners from different unions and organizations who have been putting their people on the streets with us and having conversations, putting our word in their newsletter. A lot of it has gone really far in order to educate, and most people - they hear about it - are not a No. So I'm sure we'll get some No votes, but I don't think it's going to be the hardest fight Seattle's ever seen for sure. [00:35:27] Crystal Fincher: Do you have anything to add to that, Camille? [00:35:29] Camille Gix: I think Tye did a great job at summing it up. And I think one of our volunteers said a few weeks ago after a canvass is - not a lot of people know about the initiative relative to the city population, but every person that we talk to about it - the vast majority, 90+% - are very enthusiastic about it when they hear about it. I know one of our field organizers was out yesterday and came across one of the first sort of tough conversations that he's had to do on this campaign. I was talking to some folks who are maybe a bit skeptical and - but after that door knock and that conversation, they both ended up signing pledge cards to pledge - they pledged to vote Yes on the initiative. And we definitely have skeptics out there, but I think that the enthusiasts far outweigh the skepticism. [00:36:25] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. So are you looking at primarily continuing the field plan through the campaign? Is there also a communications plan happening? How does that look? [00:36:36] Tye Reed: Yeah. I'm sure Camille will talk about that - Camille is very involved on the communications side. Yeah, the Field team is going strong. We have a launch coming up, actually, in three days. I don't know all the locations - Camille, you made the graphics, you probably do. We've got five or six locations that we're going to launch at to do a big canvass with different partners across the city. I think most - maybe if not all districts - most districts throughout the city to have that big Get Out The Vote launch. But we have been campaigning for weeks, right? We've been doing that for a long time already. And so there is a huge communications plan - we've gotten new flyers, we're working with a new graphic designer to create door knockers - which I'd never worked on a campaign that had door knockers, they're actually really cool - we have window signs, we're talking about yard signs. So that thing that Camille said about most people not knowing and - but when they find out they're supportive - our biggest campaign, other than going door to door, because that's only - that's limited to some degree - is making sure that people know about us on social media and through ads in different ways. [00:37:42] Crystal Fincher: And did you want to add to that, Camille? [00:37:44] Camille Gix: Yeah. Our biggest mission is - through our field and communications plan - is to raise awareness. That's our biggest task. The persuasion part has not been too difficult - there's not a lot to be persuaded on - people understand the crisis that we're in and people feel it personally. We have so many people who have told us their stories throughout this campaign of their - the rent gouging and being priced out of the city. And so the persuasion part is not our biggest issue. It's just raising awareness. And so we've got lots of really wonderful endorsers who are helping to write op-eds and send out mailers. And I think - yeah, we've got these different work groups of field and communications that's really just hoping to raise the awareness component of this initiative. [00:38:33] Crystal Fincher: All right. And if people want to learn more or get involved with the initiative, how can they do that? [00:38:39] Tye Reed: Volunteer! Go to HouseOurNeighbors.org, get involved. Like we said, we have canvasses and tables, but we also have lower key things like communications, which Camille does a lot of. There are so many things that House Our Neighbors is involved in and ways that people can plug in. We deliberately designed it that way so that folks who cannot canvass, who cannot do traditional campaigning, are able to be involved. So if you like phone banking, text banking, data entry, fiddling around improving our website - like whatever it is that you think you want to do to actually contribute to this movement, this growing movement of people fighting for social housing, fighting for housing affordability - you can participate, right? You can reach out. If it isn't something we're currently doing that meets your needs, we'll figure out some way to start doing that thing. And so I would say - a lot of the volunteers that we've had have actually become paid staff members because we are so deeply invested in working closely with our volunteers and hopefully maintaining this group of volunteers throughout the campaigns that House Our Neighbors does. So I would say go to HouseOurNeighbors.org. I think there's a Get Involved button that you can click on, sign up for newsletters, even if you're not interested in getting involved because we're gonna need to be reaching out to people and communicating a lot. So definitely go to the website. [00:39:52] Crystal Fincher: All right. So thank you so much - to both you Tye, and you Camille - for joining us today. And we'll continue to follow this as it proceeds through its February election. [00:40:04] Camille Gix: Thank you so much for having us. [00:40:05] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

In this 17th episode of the What Bird Are You (WBAY) Podcast, Suzy and Sam are talking about public displays of affection. When are PDAs appropriate or not? What's too far? Who get's to create the rules? We'd much rather watch people showing loving affection in public then, say, fighting. And it really does spice things up kissing and petting when you know others may be watching. We talk about using the wifi controlled WeVibe Vector when going to a restaurant and bar. Also, we address the importance of code words to STOP the play when you partner may be thinking your resistance or reluctance may be simply part of the play. Power roles can be challenging both in the bedroom and outside without good communication. What are your thoughts of PDA? Have you used toys like the Vector in public? What are you code words to advance or stop the play according to the comfort levels of you and your partner? Let's hear from you. Reach out on IG @wbay.podcast

We're a man down again. This flu season will be the end of us! With a special out of town guest we make the best of it and cover topics all over the spectrum. Take a listen and give us you thoughts on some of these topics! Who's crazier, Putin or Kim Jong-Un? George tells us all about trying to travel while the winter storm was shutting down the country and questions us about PDAs. Do you have any weird NYE traditions? We also touch on girl dads (not in a creepy way), Muslims and Christmas, waiting tables, guns, and plane etiquette. But the biggest debate of them all? Who was the biggest death of 2022? ** New entries were made into the debate after we recorded. To be continued...Instagram- enmistiempos_podcastFacebook- /EnMisTiemposPodcastTwitter- EMTPodTikTok- EMT_enmistiempospodcast

Congenital heart disease is the most common birth defect, affecting 1 in 100 babies. Amongst these ventricular septal defects are very common with the majority of patients living into adulthood. In this episode we will be reviewing key features of VSDs including embryologic origin, anatomy, physiology, hemodynamic consequences, clinical presentation and management of VSDs. Dr. Tommy Das (CardioNerds Academy Program Director and FIT at Cleveland Clinic), Dr. Agnes Koczo (CardioNerds ACHD Series Co-Chair and FIT at UPMC), and Dr. Anu Dodeja (Associate Director for ACHD at Connecticut Children's) discuss VSDs with expert faculty Dr. Keri Shafer. Dr. Shafer is an adult congenital heart disease specialist at Boston Children's Hospital, and an assistant professor of pediatrics within Harvard Medical School. She is a medical educator and was an invited speaker for the inaugural CardioNerds Sanjay V Desai Lecture, on the topic of growth mindset. Script and notes were developed by Dr. Anu Dodeja. Audio editing by CardioNerds Academy Intern, Shivani Reddy. The CardioNerds Adult Congenital Heart Disease (ACHD) series provides a comprehensive curriculum to dive deep into the labyrinthine world of congenital heart disease with the aim of empowering every CardioNerd to help improve the lives of people living with congenital heart disease. This series is multi-institutional collaborative project made possible by contributions of stellar fellow leads and expert faculty from several programs, led by series co-chairs, Dr. Josh Saef, Dr. Agnes Koczo, and Dr. Dan Clark. The CardioNerds Adult Congenital Heart Disease Series is developed in collaboration with the Adult Congenital Heart Association, The CHiP Network, and Heart University. See more Disclosures: None Pearls • Notes • References • Guest Profiles • Production Team CardioNerds Adult Congenital Heart Disease PageCardioNerds Episode PageCardioNerds AcademyCardionerds Healy Honor Roll CardioNerds Journal ClubSubscribe to The Heartbeat Newsletter!Check out CardioNerds SWAG!Become a CardioNerds Patron! Pearls - Ventricular Septal Defects Most common VSDs: Perimembranous VSD The shunt volume in a VSD is determined largely by the size of the defect and the pulmonary vascular resistance. VSDs cause left to right shunt. The long-term effects are left sided chamber dilation, as is the case with PDAs (post-tricuspid shunts) VSDs can be associated with acquired RVOTO, double chamber right ventricle, LVOTO/sub aortic membrane formation, and aortic regurgitation from aortic valve prolapse. Eisenmenger syndrome results from long-term left-to-right shunt, usually at higher shunt volumes. The resulting elevated pulmonary artery pressure is irreversible and leads to a reversal in the ventricular level shunt, desaturation, cyanosis, and secondary erythrocytosis. Endocarditis prophylaxis is not indicated for simple VSD. It is required for 6 months post VSD closure, in patients post VSD closure with a residual shunt and in Eisenmenger patients with R—>L shunt and cyanosis. Show notes - Ventricular Septal Defects Notes (developed by Dr. Anu Dodeja): What are types OF VSD? (Please note that there are several nomenclatures) Perimembranous VSDMost common type of VSD - 80% of VSDsOccurs in the membranous septum and can be associated with inlet or outlet extensionLocated near the tricuspid and aortic valves, often time can be closed off by tissue from the septal leaflet of the tricuspid valve and associated with abnormalities in the septal leaflet of the tricuspid valve secondary to damage from the left to right shuntCan be associated with acquired RVOTO, double chamber right ventricle, LVOTO/sub aortic membrane formation On TTE, the parasternal short axis view at the base demonstrates this type of VSD at the 10-12 o'clock position. Muscular VSDSecond most common VSD - 15-20% of VSDsCompletely surrounded by muscle,

My mother, Deborah, my older brother, Danny, my older sister, Jamie and myself, Kat, all discuss the differences between technology and *c*orn... then and now... I will forever listen to minute 35-36 on repeat honestly... This is either the best podcast I've ever made or the worst. Feel free to keep your opinions to yourself. Feel free to share the podcast however with your friends. Please please, if you don't want to listen all the way through, at least skip to the end as well... *chef's kiss* Support the showWebsite: www.theteachablesoul.comFacebook: The Teachable SoulInstagram: @theteachablesoulTiktok: @TeachableSoul

In the main episode this week, Sonya and Brendan talked about PDAs but for the bonus minisode, we took a different tack. We recorded this episode a while back, after the Johnny Depp trial and the memeification of people's experiences was on our minds. We discussed the dilution of serious issues online and the lack of critical thinking engaged when we consume media.

This interview features Taehoon (TK) Kim, Co-Founder and CEO of nWay. We discuss going to arcades with his mom in South Korea, why he wasn't allowed to play console games as a kid in Canada, what he learned from Samsung's work culture, why it's hard for VCs to invest in gaming, finding passion at the intersection of technology and art, the best type of IP for game partnerships, how he ended up selling nWay to Animoca Brands, and how player ownership in games creates attachment and meaning, and prevents gamer exploitation.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow us on LinkedIn: RockWater LinkedInEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.comInterview TranscriptThe interview was lightly edited for clarity.Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders.Taehoon Kim:So I was really upset when Lightspeed thing fell through. I went out drinking with my friends and I got hammered that night. I had another VC pitch the next morning. I was so hungover that during the presentation I threw up three times. During the pitch, I would say, "Excuse me, I'd run to the bathroom." I would throw up, come back, continue the pitch. And I did that three times., And I did the presentation 9:00 AM I came home and I was, "Oh, my God, I totally screwed that up." I fell asleep. I woke up at 4:00 PM, got a call at 5:00 PM saying that he was in. Usually it doesn't happen that way, but it was a really weird period of time in my life.Chris Erwin:This week's episode features TK Kim, CEO of nWay and a serial gaming entrepreneur. So TK was born in Seoul, South Korea to a mom who was a gamer and a lover of arcades. After studying at Cornell, TK started his career at Samsung, where he helped launch their smartphone and next gen mobile gaming businesses. TK then went on to co-found three gaming companies, and raised over $90 million in venture capital. Today he's the CEO of nWay, which is a developer, publisher, and tech platform for competitive multiplayer games across mobile, PC, and consoles. nWay was sold to Animoca in 2020.Some highlights of our chat include why he wasn't allowed to play console games as a kid in Canada, why it's hard for VCs to invest in gaming, finding passion at the intersection of technology and art, why he doesn't mind getting rejected by investors, the best type of IP for game partnerships, and how player ownership in games creates attachment and meaning and prevents gamer exploitation. All right, let's get to it.TK, thanks for being on The Come Up podcast.Taehoon Kim:Hey, thanks for having me. Super excited to be here.Chris Erwin:We have a pretty amazing story to tell about your career, but as always, we're going to rewind a bit and kind of go to the origin story. So it'd be awesome to hear about where you grew up and what your parents and what your household was like.Taehoon Kim:I was born in Seoul, Korea, and then I moved to Vancouver, Canada when I was in fourth grade. I think I was 10 or 11. At the time, growing up in Seoul, a little bit more strict environment. One funny thing is that my mom was a gamer and she would take me to the arcade, I think when I was super young, five or six years old. That's when I got really into gaming and how fun could that could be. But when I moved to Canada, however, she didn't really let me have any consoles, when that switch from the arcade era to the console era happened.I think she was a little bit influenced from the Asian culture and didn't want me to be getting too loose on academics. But when I got the computer, that's when I started really getting back to gaming. She didn't know I was playing games, but I was really into that. And then when Doom came out, that's when I really also started getting into online gaming, which is a big part of the reason why I'm so into PVP and competitive gaming.Chris Erwin:So your mom was a gamer and she would take you to the arcades in Seoul. What were the types of games that you guys liked to play together? And was this just something special that you and your mom did? Or was it a whole family outing that you did with your mom and dad and your siblings?Taehoon Kim:My dad didn't really like games, so it was just me and my mom. And she was really into Galaga and getting on the top of the leaderboard there. Oftentimes, I would watch her play and I would also try, but I wasn't as good as her. So I mean, I would mostly try to beat a record, but I couldn't. That's how I got into it early on.Chris Erwin:Did you also go to the arcade with a lot of your peers growing up when you were in Korea? And did any of your peers parents play? Or was it kind of like, I have the cool mom, she's into gaming, and we'd go do that on the weekends?Taehoon Kim:Oh, later on when I got older and I got in elementary school, yes, I definitely did go to the arcade with my friends. And then later on, in Seoul, arcades turned into PC bang. I'm not sure if you heard of it, but it's like the room full of PCs and it would play PC games there. I mean, I got in earlier than my friends, because of my mom.Chris Erwin:Remind me, what was the reason that you guys came to Vancouver from Korea?Taehoon Kim:I'm not a 100% sure if this is the real reason, but my parents would always tell me it's because I wasn't really fitting well with the type of education in Korea, where it was more, much more strict and less creative. They wanted us, me and my brother, to get a Western education. I think it turned out to be good for me, I guess.Chris Erwin:Do you remember when you were kind of joined the academic and the school system in Vancouver, I know it was at a young age, you were about 10 years old, you said, did you feel that that was like, "Hey, this is immediately different and I really like it and enjoy it"? Or was it nerve-wracking for you to make such a big change in your life to be uprooted at such a young age? What were you feeling at that time?Taehoon Kim:It was immediately different, lot less grinding. Even at third or fourth grade, back in Seoul, it was pretty tough. After school was over at 5:00 PM, I still had to go to all these after school programs until 9:00 PM or something like that. And I didn't do the homework afterwards and everybody was doing it. So there was a lot of peer pressure for parents to also put their kids to the same kind of rigorous program. And when I was in Vancouver, I didn't have to do any of that. So it felt more free and math was a lot easier.Chris Erwin:Math was a lot easier in Vancouver.Taehoon Kim:You know how crazy it is for Asian countries with math early on.Chris Erwin:So you're probably the top of your class. You were such a standout, and I bet at a young age that was pretty fun because it was easy to you too.Taehoon Kim:People thought I was super smart. I wasn't, it was just that I started earlier doing more hard stuff in math. It wasn't necessarily that was smarter. But again, on the other subject, because my English was suffering, I had to get a lot of help. So I would help them in math and they would help me with the other subjects.Chris Erwin:And you mentioned that in Western education there's also probably more emphasis on using the creative part of your brain as well, and balancing that out with the math or the quantitative side. What did that look like to you as you were going through middle school and high school before you went to college? Any specific applications or stories stand out?Taehoon Kim:Yeah, one thing that stood out to me was how a lot of the homeworks and assignments were project based and group based. Where teamwork mattered, and I would have to work with two or three other students to do a project, where we had a lot of freedom to create what we wanted. And the fact that there's no right answers. And it was really weird for me at the beginning, but I got used to it later on. But I think that's kind of a key difference. And at least at that time.Chris Erwin:During your teenage years and coming of age, before you go to Cornell, what was the gaming culture in Vancouver? And what was your role in it?Taehoon Kim:Early '90s when the console wars were happening with Nintendo and Sega, and there was a lot of cool things happening there, but I didn't get to really partake in that. My parents didn't allow me to have consoles. But same things were happening in the PC gaming, especially without modems and the early stage of internet happened. Me and my friends, we got started with Wolfenstein, which was mind blowing.Chris Erwin:Oh, I remember Wolfenstein, it was one of the earliest first person shooters on a PC.Taehoon Kim:It was mind blowing. It was the first game to really utilize 3D spaces in the way it did. But then the real game changer was Doom because you can... Even with the slow modem, I think it was an amazing feat, think about it now, with limited technology and networking, I could dial into, using my modem, and then connect with my friends, and I could play PVP. And that was when the gaming was the most fun for me, actually, playing with friends live. And I would play it late until night early in the morning, over and over again, the same map.Chris Erwin:I remember playing Wolfenstein at my friend's place, shout out, Adam Sachs. And then I also remember playing Doom, and I remember having the cheat codes where I can go into God mode.Taehoon Kim:Oh, right.Chris Erwin:And I was invincible and I could play with five different types of guns, including the rocket launcher. I can specifically remember from my youth some of the different levels. And sitting at my PC station kind of right next to my family's common room. Those are very fun memories. I don't think I was ever doing... I was never live playing with friends. Were you able to do that within the Doom platform? Or were you using a third party application on top of that?Taehoon Kim:I think it was within the Doom platform. It's pretty amazing. Doom was a fast game, so the fact that it worked, it was amazing. When Quake came out, afterwards, that's when I think e-sports was really ended up becoming more serious and people were going to playing at a more higher tier. But that's when I got out of FPS and dove into fighting games.Chris Erwin:Got it. You moved to Vancouver, you're a standout in school, on the math side just because of all your training in Korea. And you're learning about work in these more kind of project based environments or team based work, where there's also a lot of freedom for collaboration. You end up going to Cornell. When you were applying to school, what was your intention? Did you have a very clear focus of, "This is what I want my career to look like, so this is what I'm going to study in undergrad"? Or was it a bit more free flowing?Taehoon Kim:I really wanted to go into a top engineering school. I knew that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to study electrical engineering or computer science, and I was looking at Cornell, MIT, Stanford, they had really good engineering programs. And I knew that the playing online games and doing a lot of mods and all that stuff in the computer, and looking at kind of the early stage of internet, I knew that was going to be a big thing later on. My goal was to kind of get into that sector by studying engineering or information technology.Chris Erwin:Was there any certain moments when you were at Cornell that to help to point you in kind of this gaming leadership, gaming entrepreneurship career path that you've now been on for the last couple decades?Taehoon Kim:Well, a couple things happened. I was good at math. I was good at engineering, and internet was happening. And then one thing I didn't talk about was that I was also really good at art. At one point, I even thought about going to art school. I think it was because of my mom's side of the family, a lot of artists. And I think it was the DNA from my mom's side. What I love about gaming was the fact that you can kind of combine technology and my love for technology and also my love for art.And when I graduated, Cornell, started work at Samsung and there was an opportunity to go into a new gaming. That's when it clicked for me. I was like, "Wow, I really want to get into this industry. It's as both of what I love." But at Cornell, because we had super fast ethernet, a lot of people were playing StarCraft at that time. And that's how I saw the world in terms of, "Wow, these type of massively play online games. I mean, RPGs or games where you can play competitively is going to be a big thing."Chris Erwin:I don't want to date you TK, if that's uncomfortable, but around what time period was this? What year was this around?Taehoon Kim:College was from 1997 to 2002.Chris Erwin:I have to ask, too, when you say that you almost went to art school, and that you had a passion for arts, since it's very early on, what type of art applications? Was it painting? Was it drawing? Was it sculpture? Was it something completely different? What did that look like?Taehoon Kim:Sculpture, I was good, but I didn't excel at it. I was mainly good at sketching, painting, and doing just a lot of creative art, concept art, which is a big part of game development, actually.Chris Erwin:Your first role, what you did for work right after Cornell was you went to Samsung, and there you were a product manager where you helped start Samsung's smartphone business, and you're also a product manager for next-gen mobile gaming. And as you said, this was exciting to you, because you saw gaming as the intersection of technology and art. Tell us how that first role came to be and kind of what you focused on there.Taehoon Kim:I was part of a team called new business development team. Group of 13 people, and our job was to create next-gen businesses. Three businesses that we isolated as something that we should work on was telematics, which is using the map data to help people and navigations and bring new technologies to the car. Second one was smartphone business, taking some of the operating systems from PDAs at the time and then moving that over to the phone. And then third one was gaming, because Nokia was going big with gaming at that time. And Samsung was second to Nokia in market share and someone wanted to do whatever Nokia was doing at that time.So those were three main things. And I got into the gaming side after one of the first business trips was to San Jose, which at that time was hosting GDC, Game Developer Conference. And it was my first time going to GDC. And, yeah, I was just fascinated with the group. It was engineers, artists, players, developers, publishers. And that community really fascinated me, and that's when I decided, "Hey, I really want to be part of this group. I want to get into gaming." So I came back and said, "Hey, I want to take on this project." And a lot of my peers were avoiding the gaming sector, because they knew that was difficult. And Samsung previously tried to do a console and it failed. So they knew it was difficult, but I wanted to get into it. I was super excited to get into it.Chris Erwin:Was it hard to convince your leadership, just based on the past challenges that Samsung had, to do it? Or did they just say, "Hey, TK, sure if you have an idea, see what you can do and then come back to us"?Taehoon Kim:Well, the leadership really wanted to do it mainly because Nokia at the time, that's when they launched their first gaming phone called N-Gage. I'm not sure if a lot of people remember, but it was a really weird device. They launched that business, and it was getting a lot of press. And our CEO was like, "We also have to a quick follow, and we have to get into gaming phones as well." So it was but different from what they did in the past, because it wasn't just a pure console, it's a smartphone plus a gaming device.So it was a completely different type of environment at that time compared to when they were doing console. But nonetheless, because gaming is a [inaudible 00:14:06] driven and also because it's a tough business, my peers were, "Hey, I want to be in another sector." So it was less competitive for me to take on that project.Chris Erwin:So that must have been pretty exciting. Your first role out of school, you work for a very large technology company that essentially gives you as a young in your career a mandate. It's like, "Hey, TK, you know what? You want to go forward and figure out a new gaming business line for Samsung? You got the green light to go and do it." That must have felt pretty good. And I think you were there for a few years. What did you accomplish? And then what was the reason for why you decided to move on from that opportunity?Taehoon Kim:It was a very unique opportunity for me. I think I got lucky being at the right place at the right time, because that's when Samsung was really taking off as a global brand name. That's when they first overtook Sony in brand value. And that's when the consumers were looking at the brand more than as a microwave company, and a major player in the IT space. And that's when they were also hiring a lot of people from overseas.And I did both undergrad and master's program at Cornell. And when I was in my masters, I got to know the founders of Palm, which was also a Cornell EE grad, through my professor. I got really stuck into Palm OS. I was semi expert with the Palm OS. I think that's why they hired me, because Samsung was the first major mobile manufacturer to adopt the Palm OS into their phone. And then the second thing is, because at that time Samsung's culture was still, it wasn't easy for Western certain people to... A lot of people from the US schools starting there, they weren't lasting that long. So it was hard for me as well, but I kind of decided, "Hey, I'm going to really make sure that I can stick around and tough it out."Chris Erwin:I think this is another important point for the listeners is that you are also building another company that you had founded while you were at Samsung called IvyConnection. Is that right?Taehoon Kim:Right.Chris Erwin:I like this because I think this is the beginning of a ongoing theme in your career that you are a builder and you're a founder. You're working at a full-time role, you're also building something on the side. And then this leads to, I think, some other big entrepreneurial ambitions kind of later on that we'll get to. But tell us quickly about IvyConnection.Taehoon Kim:IvyConnection kind of came out of the school project that was doing at Cornell, my master's program. At first, it was supposed to be a platform to connect tutors and students. And then I quickly realized, when I got to Seoul that there were a lot of parents who were looking to send their kids overseas to top schools, and they didn't know that things were different over there in terms how admissions worked. So I kind of created the category, which is a huge category is now it was the first company to do it. And so we did get a lot of demand. I started that right before I started working at Samsung, and it was just continuously growing. I recruited a whole bunch of my friends, and I had them kind of run the company. I was a co-founder, and while working at Samsung, I was advising and helping the growth.Chris Erwin:It's amazing, because you describe at Samsung it was a very brutal work culture at the headquarters. So you're probably working very long hours, very demanding, and then you're also building something on the side. It's like when did you have time to sleep?Taehoon Kim:I was young though, so I didn't need... I was happy to just work, until I was young and single. I was at my early 20s, so it was not problem for me. But, yeah, it was pretty brutal. We had to get to work right at 8:00 AM and the system kind of keeps record of exactly when you get into the company. And then you also had to come out on Saturdays for half a day.Chris Erwin:I did not realize that, that's the expectation across... Is that across all companies in Korea, as part of the work culture and the work norms? Or is that just unique to Samsung?Taehoon Kim:I think what's pretty unique to Samsung. I think at that time chairman wanted us to start early. You basically only have one day weekend.Chris Erwin:And for you, where you're also building another company on the side, it's almost like you never had time that you weren't working or very little bit, most likely. So you're at Samsung for about three years, but then you transition to Realtime Worlds. Explain why did you transition from your Samsung role? And what were you building at Realtime Worlds?Taehoon Kim:As I said, I was a project manager for a new gaming platform, and part of my job was also to source content for the device. And I remember playing Lemmings and I met the creator of Lemons, Dave Jones who just sold DMA Design and created Realtime Worlds. And I try to convince him to create games for my platform, but him and his co-founder, they ended up recruiting me. They're like, "Hey, join us. We just started Realtime Worlds, and we'd love to get your help, because we want to get into online gaming. And you have a lot more exposure to online gaming from Seoul, from Korea. So we wanted to be part of this exciting venture." So I decided to leave Samsung and joined them.Chris Erwin:How was that experience? Was it a similar work culture? Did you feel your past experience was very helpful and so you got in there and you're like you knew exactly what to do? Or was it still a very steep learning curve at that point in your career?Taehoon Kim:It was a steep learning curve for me, in terms of game development, because I have never done game development. Because Realtime Worlds is a game developer and publisher. That's right around when they just signed a contact with Microsoft for a game called Crackdown. It was like a souped up version of GTA. Dave Jones was also the creator and designer of GTA, the original GTA 1 and 2. So it was creating a similar game. And they had ambition to also create an online version of GTA, which is where I got involved.I got one of the large publishers in Korea called Webzen to do a publishing deal to fund portion of development for the GTA online project, and be a publisher for that. So they wanted me to create the Asia branch for Realtime Worlds, they called it Realtime World Korea. I started the studio here in Seoul, recruited some engineers and designers and also did biz dev work to get that publishing deal with Webzen.Chris Erwin:And I think also one of the highlights from your time there is that, did you also help to raise money from NEA, in your role at the company as you guys were growing?Taehoon Kim:Oh, yes. My professor from Cornell, he was friends with the founder of NEA, and he knew a lot of VCs. And Realtime Worlds was based in Scotland, and they knew very little about Silicon Valley. So I told him, "Hey, we're doing something amazing here and online gaming is a new sector, so I think we should be able to raise some money." So I created the deck, which I learned from school on how to do, so created a deck, created a business plan, and then flew over to Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park and pitched to a few VCs including NEA. I was surprised. I was like, it was fairly easy at that time to raise money. NEA decided to, all by themselves, bring $30 million into the company and we didn't even have product launched at that time.Chris Erwin:This is pre-product. Did you go to Sand Hill Road by yourself? Or did you have a support team? Or was the company leadership saying, "Hey, TK, you know what you're doing here, you have the connections, go make this happen by yourself"?Taehoon Kim:It was just me at the beginning. It was just me by myself, just trying it out, because the first meeting is exploratory anyways. So at the beginning it was me. They love what they saw, and then afterwards it was like everybody, all the partners from the NEA side and also everyone from our side. At the beginning, it was just me.Chris Erwin:Wow. Did you enjoy the fundraising process? I mean, it seems like you're wearing so many hats, you're doing business development, you're fundraising, you're also building out different offices as part of the core game development practice. Was there something that you felt like you were gravitating towards more specifically? Or did you like doing it all and having a broad top down view of the company?Taehoon Kim:Yeah, I think the reason I ended up taking the fundraising process is because I actually enjoyed the process. A lot of people hate it, because part of the fundraising process is just being comfortable with getting rejected. But I didn't mind that at all. I'm like, "Fine [inaudible 00:21:57]." And big part of the process is also not only selling, but knowing what they're looking for. So I got really good at researching all the VCs, and instead of having one deck and just one approach for all the VCs, I would custom create the deck for each of the VCs, and only target the top tier ones. I quickly realized that it's actually easier to raise money from the top tier VCs than the second or third tier VCs, surprisingly. And that approach really worked, and I love the process.Chris Erwin:Why is it easier to raise money from top VCs versus tier two, tier three?Taehoon Kim:It's actually simple. The top tier VCs are able to make decisions on their own, even though it seems odd or different or something that doesn't seem intuitive. They are able to say, "Hey, we're going to take a bet on this," and they can make a quick decision. The second and third tier VCs are always looking to see what others are doing. They're always looking for validation. They're always looking to see what the first tier guys are doing.So a lot more due diligence, it takes a lot more work, and they kind of beat around the bush a lot more. They take a lot longer to make their decisions. And a lot of times they bring in other VCs to co-lead or see what they think. So it's actually a lot more work to get them to lead. So if you have a great product and you have a good vision, then just go to the top tier guys. Go straight to top to your guys. They'll be able to make a much quicker and faster decision.Chris Erwin:That's a great insight. TK, though, I do have to say yet again, while you're at Realtime Worlds, I think the same year that you start working there, is 2005, you also are the co-founder of another company called Nurien Software. So yet again, you're working at a company, it's a very big role, you're working across a variety of different company functions, but you're also building something on the side. Is that right?Taehoon Kim:Right. Yeah.Chris Erwin:What was Nurien Software?Taehoon Kim:So Nurien Software was actually a spinoff off of the Realtime Worlds' Korea office. Dave Jones, he introduced me to the guys at Epic Games, and that's when they were launching on Unreal Engine 3. And he also introduced me to another studio who was doing a music game, and that kind of clicked for me. I was like, "Hey, what if we take Unreal Engine 3, which is very high graphics fidelity, which is usually used for like MMORPGs and then create a music game out of it, because the music is to be very visual." And they wanted this to be kind of separate. So I decided to be make it, instead of doing it Realtime Worlds Korea made it into a separate one.And that also started to get momentum. And it turns out music plus gaming was a huge thing, especially in Asia. Just as we were starting the development for, we call it MStar, a music based MMO, another game called Audition just took off massively in China. It was doing a billion a year. It was a tough time for me because Realtime Worlds and Nurien Software, at the same time, was kind of taking off.Chris Erwin:And again, for Nurien Software, you also led a $25 million fundraise from NEA and top VCs.Taehoon Kim:I pitched them on Friday, and they told me they were in on Monday. So it was crazy times. That's when online gaming was really taking off. So it was actually, it's not just me, but it was much easier to raise money at that time.Chris Erwin:Probably, again, working a lot, building, not a lot of sleep. You're running both these companies. And then Nurien Software sells in 2010 to Netmarble CJ E&M. And what was the end result for Realtime Worlds? What happened to that company?Taehoon Kim:I was only running both companies for a short period of time. So right after Nurien Software got funded, the board wanted me to focus on the new VCs, and Nurien Software wanted me to focus on Nurien Software. So I helped Realtime Worlds find a replacement for me, and I left Realtime Worlds, and I was full-time at Nurien.Chris Erwin:Hey, listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you, if you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot, if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work, and it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it everybody. Let's get back to the interview.Taking a step back, so, TK, you're part of these very exciting companies. The leadership and the founders clearly, really believe in you, and think you are someone special. So they're giving you the green light to essentially co-found spinoffs, and then go raise additional venture funding for that. Did you feel at this point in your early career that you're like, "I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. This is an exciting path, These are growing industries. I'm good at it. I have the right international connections. And now it's time where I want to double down on this, and I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I see white space in these gaming markets, and I want to build towards that. And I'm going to go raise capital to make that happen." What was going through your head? Because it feels like the story that you're telling is so exciting for someone to be at your career stage. What were you feeling?Taehoon Kim:That's when I realized that this act of dreaming something up, raising money for it, and actually launching it and seeing it become real and seeing a product go live, and enjoyed by millions of people, is just really fulfilling. And it's something that I knew that I wanted to continue doing. It's something that I really enjoy.So even to this day, that's the main reason that I'm doing this. Well, it's more than financially driven motives. I just love creating new things and bringing it out to people and surprising people and seeing them delighted. It makes all the hard work worthwhile, and it's a very kind of thrilling experience for me. And that's when I realized, "Hey, I want to do this long term. This is what I'm good at. Coming out with new ideas and getting it funded and launching it." Not all of them are successful, but that's fine. The act of doing it is a reward.Chris Erwin:Very well said. So I think, was it that mindset, I think, a company that you did found and you worked at for one to two years before nWay was Pixelberry. What was the quick take on Pixelberry? What was that?Taehoon Kim:So Pixelberry was also a spinoff from Nurien Software. Nurien Software was an MMO company, so, as I said, it was using Unreal Engine 3. It was still very heavy. You had to download a big client, and run it on pc. And back in 2009, 2010, that's when social gaming and hyper-accessible gaming was taken off. So Pixelberry, at the beginning, was an experiment to try to bring over a lot of the core technologies built at Nurien Software and make them more accessible, and make it so that people can just instantly play on a browser.And the first game that we tried to do was a fashion game, because we realized from launching MStar, which was a music MMO, the best way to monetize those games were through, we're making a lot of money by selling clothing for the avatars, selling fashion, in other words. So we wanted to create a game, a social game, focused on creating fashion and selling fashion.Chris Erwin:I didn't realize that Pixelberry was also a spinoff of Nurien Software. So it seems that you had a really good thing going with the founding team of Lemmings that created Realtime Worlds. There was a lot of market opportunity. The founders really believed in you, and you had all these different ways, as you said, to kind of create and innovate as the gaming markets were evolving, and bring these incredible gaming experiences to users. And I think you were part of that team for almost six years, from 2005 to 2011. What was the catalyst that caused you to break off from that, start the venture that you still run today, which is nWay?Taehoon Kim:I was doing Pixelberry and it wasn't doing that well, mainly because, me as a gamer, didn't really enjoy fashion games that much. Maybe that was the reason. Or maybe because the industry was kind of changing rapidly, but it wasn't doing that well. Zynga and a handful of others were kind of dominating the social gaming space. And the co-founders of Realtime Worlds, Dave Jones and Tony Harman, at that time, just sold realtime worlds to GamersFirst. And they're like, "Hey, TK, let's start a new company together." And that's when I kind of jumped at the opportunity, because I really wanted to work with those guys again. And that's when nWay was founded.Chris Erwin:Oh, got it. So Dave and Tony are part of the founding team of nWay?Taehoon Kim:Yes, the three of us that were the founders [inaudible 00:30:16].Chris Erwin:So I think what would be helpful for the listeners is to explain what was the initial vision for nWay, when you, Dave, and Tony were coming together to found the company. What was your vision for what you wanted to build?Taehoon Kim:By that time, I did a lot of different type of games, did [inaudible 00:30:31] mobile gaming at Samsung, I did MMOs, PC MMOs Unreal Engine 3, and then also browser based games at Pixelberry. And the vision at nWay was like, "Hey, a lot of people are becoming gamers now through new technologies, new devices, mobile was really taking off. People were playing games on mobile browsers, smart TVs, and there was new technologies to bring them all together." So the vision was, "Hey, let's go back to the type of games that we love. Let's go back to the days when we were playing Doom online, and playing fighting games with other live players. Let's bring competitive gaming, let's bring real time multiplier gaming to the emerging platforms." So that was the vision.Let's create new technologies to bring console quality, competitive multiplier games that could run on mobile browsers, smart TVs, where people can kind of play together regardless of what device they were on." That turned out to be a big thing, these days with Fortnite and Minecraft, everybody's playing crossplay games. Your friend is on tablet, somebody else is on a Nintendo Switch, and you can play together.Chris Erwin:Okay, so when you start out, that's the vision. So where do you start? What was the first steps? Is it pre-product, we're going to go raise money, and put together a team? Or in the beginning of it self-finance and you were working on a certain game or a certain platform? What were your first early moves?Taehoon Kim:I took a lot of the learnings from the previous products. So by then I knew how to make games that would run on multiple devices. I knew it wasn't easy, but we wanted to do a quick prototype of an action RPG game, where it can have four player co-op and two player PVP mode that would run on a mobile phone and a browser. We were able to create a quick prototype in about six weeks, and the prototype, it did all the selling for us.Because I could just show it to the investors, "Hey, look, I'm over here. There's another guy on a mobile device, there's another guy on another device." And they could see that we're all synchronized, and they could see that it was a very fast action game. A lot of them were blown away at how there was low latency and running so fast just over the internet. And so we were able to raise money from the top tier VCs. But at the same time, 2011, 2012 was a period of time when there were a lot of acquisitions happening, and we were also getting a lot of acquisition offers at the same time, that complicated the process.Chris Erwin:So six weeks into building a prototype, you're fundraising on Sand Hill Road, but you're also getting inbounds from companies that want to buy your business that early.Taehoon Kim:Yeah. They saw the prototype and immediately give us ridiculous offers to buy the company. It was basically VCs and companies trying to buy us competing, which helped the valuation to go up.Chris Erwin:All right. So a couple questions on that. It's really interesting. One, were you at a point, because you've successfully raised money from Silicon Valley investors, you've had exits for them, where you and the investment funds made money. Were you able at that point, where you felt like you could walk into a room, do a product demo, you didn't need to show up with a deck and they would say, "Yeah, this sounds great, TK, we're going to give you money"? Were you at that point or were you still running a formal process? You show up with the business plan and everything?Taehoon Kim:We didn't need the business plan anymore, but we still need a deck. By then, I just became really an expert on how to create a simple deck that walked through the business, and I knew what type of prototype need to be created to fundraise. It was a simple 15 to 20 slides deck plus a quick demo. And simpler story the better, is this basically a storytelling deck walkthrough, why you're able to do what you're doing now. Why it hasn't been done until now. And then you talk about the market and how big the market would get, show a quick prototype, and talk about the technologies involved. And that was pretty much it.Chris Erwin:You're getting these incredible inbounds from companies who want to buy you, plus, you're also raising from venture capitalists. How did you and the two other founders come together to decide, do we sell or do we not sell?Taehoon Kim:The VCs helped us with that as well, maybe because they were trying to convince us to maybe take their deal. But they would let us know what each of the companies are like, and they would connect us to founders who have sold to that company previously. And I was able to pick their brains or interview them. We decided, "Hey, we really want to try this on our own." So we decided to take the VC route. And I think at that time that was, the VC was Lightspeed Ventures, who gave us a good term sheet and we decided to sign that term sheet.And the reason in the beginning I told you why things became complicated is because after we signed the term sheet with Lightspeed, one of their portfolio companies, KIXEYE, they also decided that they wanted to buy us. And they give us an offer we rejected, and then they got really mad at Lightspeed Ventures asking them why they're funding a company that could be a competitor to them. And KIXEYE basically threatened to sue them if they invested in us. So at the last minute it kind of fell apart.Chris Erwin:Oh, so Lightspeed did not end up investing in you at that point.Taehoon Kim:So imagine this Zynga gave us an offer, a pretty good offer to buy us. We rejected Zynga's offer and signed with Lightspeed, but Lightspeed couldn't follow through because of KIXEYE. I'm thankful to them because at that time they actually gave me a check for a million dollars, it was like a loan, with no interest rate.Chris Erwin:Lightspeed gave it to you?Taehoon Kim:Yeah, I was really surprised by this. They were like, "Hey, we need to talk." I met them at a coffee shop, and they like, "Hey, here's a check for million dollars. I'm really sorry to have wasted your time, and take this money and use it to give more time to find another investor, because it's not your fault that this deal kind of fell through." So if we didn't get that, it would've been a lot harder for us. Because we did spend a lot of time, a lot of cycles with them, and that meant we had less time to finish the fundraising. That million dollar check, give us more time.Chris Erwin:Think about that million dollar Check is an incredible marketing for Lightspeed as being a go-to partner, as a tier one VC, right? Because one, for you, TK, in your career, knowing that they did that, that they had your back, they understood the challenging situation that they put you in. And they were very direct with you about how they want to do a make good. Next time you go need to go raise money for the next thing that you found, are you probably going to have a conversation with Lightspeed? I would say the answer is yes.Taehoon Kim:Yeah, became really good friends with them. But isn't that incredible? They don't know if they're going to get the million dollar back. What if we fail, and we just kind of go bankrupt or whatever, and then I have to pay them back? But they were, "Hey, here's a million dollars, there's no interest rate. You can pay us back time."Chris Erwin:I agree, it is amazing. I think what they were putting a price tag on was, we want to be in the TK business. We want to be in business with Dave and Tony. And so this is not the last time that we're going to have a chance to invest in a company that could make them millions, if not billions of dollars. And so they said, "We're going to invest in that relationship," and probably a $1 million check to them was easy money, right?Taehoon Kim:Yeah.Chris Erwin:That's amazing. I've never heard of something like that before, but I totally get why they did it. That's incredible. So I understand that Lightspeed and other venture firms were introducing you to founders who had sold their businesses to these potential acquirers of your business. What was one or two things that you learned that made you decide, "I don't want to sell right now"?Taehoon Kim:They were describing to me the culture of the company, because once you sell, you're basically getting a job at that company. And if there's a culture fit, that's great. But if it's a different type of culture, then maybe you won't enjoy it as much. Again, I was doing it because I love that process because the actual act of creating and launching is what's rewarding for us. So I think that's main reason why we decided, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't sell." But after Lightspeed thing fell through, we were like, "Oh, maybe we should have sold." Right after that million dollar check and that conversation, literally, the next day or two days from then I was able to get another term sheet from another VC. So this one is actually a funny story. So I was really upset when Lightspeed thing fell through. I went out drinking with my friends, and I got hammered that night. I had another VC pitch the next morning. I was so hungover that during the presentation I threw up three times, and I was doing a pitch.Chris Erwin:During the pitch.Taehoon Kim:Yeah, during the pitch, I would say, "Excuse me, I went to the bathroom." I would throw up, come back, continue the pitch. And I did that three times, and whenever I made that trip to the bathroom, people were kind of laughing at me, who were at the front desk. I did the presentation 9:00 AM, I came home and I was, "Oh, my God, I totally screwed that up." I fell asleep. I woke up at 4:00 PM, got a call at 5:00 PM saying that he was in. So I was like, "What the..." Because I told him the story of what happened as well, so he said, "Hey, all that stuff just added more color to your storytelling," and then he was in.But then later I realized that the reason he was able to make quick decision, this is a Baseline Ventures, by the way. Baseline Venture was, it was a very unique firm that they had one partner, so they were able to make decision very quickly. And I pitched to them, I think, two days after Instagram was acquired by Facebook. So Baseline was in a flush with cash and they were very happy about the outcome. And so I think that's one of the reasons why they were also able to make a bet, and make that decision very quickly. I literally made a pitch 9:00 AM, and then got a call 5:00 PM saying, they wanted to put in the money. Usually, it doesn't happen that way, but it was a really weird period of time in my life.Chris Erwin:No incredible in a situation in which you thought that that was probably the worst pitch that you've ever given in your life, because you're running to the bathroom to throw up. It turns out that it was, at least one of the more impressive pitches in converting a VC into someone who has interest within just a handful of hours. So it just goes to show you got to stay resilient. And you're human, you just went through this traumatic event where Lightspeed pulled out at the last minute, so you need to go blow off some steam. You go out boozing with your buddies, but you come back the next morning, you put your game face on, and you do what you got to do. That's an incredible story. Thank you for sharing that.So then you raised the money from Baseline, and a few others, and then when did you feel, "Okay, we turned down some initial inbound offers to buy the company," but when did you feel that you really started to get some real momentum that showed you and the other founders, "Hey, we have something much bigger here"? What did that look like?Taehoon Kim:That's when mobile gaming was becoming more serious and evolving from just casual Match 3 games to a device that could run any type of game. So that's when we really got a lot of momentum. So the first prototype they created, I told you it was a four player co-op plus a PVP action RPG game. So we continued to develop on that prototype. We called the game ChronoBlade, and when we had a much more alpha version of the game, that's when things were really blowing up in Asia for RPG games and mobile.And during GDC, when a lot of the publishers were in San Francisco, we had publishers after publishers lined up, literally, signing offers on a napkin table and presenting us, "Here's how much we were willing to pay for MGM and royalty fees for your game." And we were able to just pick from the top tier ones. So we had offer from Tencent, NetEase, Netmarble, the biggest and the best. That was at the point in the company when we knew that things were becoming really serious.Chris Erwin:What year was that?Taehoon Kim:I think that was like 2013, about a year after fundraising.Chris Erwin:Seven years later you do end up selling the company to Animoca. How did that come to be?Taehoon Kim:Oh, this is a complicated story. So in 2018 there was a company called Tron, it's a big blockchain company, who moved in right above our office space. And that company was just taking off like crazy and they had happy hours, they had events. As neighbors we would show up, and that's how we kind of learned about blockchain space, and merging blockchain with gaming could be a new thing. And at that time it was getting really difficult to monetize competitive games because the game has to be fair. So we can't sell things that's [inaudible 00:42:30] base, it can only sell cosmetics. And we were always trying to find new ways to innovate on how to monetize those type of games.And we quickly realized, "Hey, if we can make items in the games that players can earn into NFTs, and if the players can kind of trade NPS items among themselves, and we don't have to even sell them, they can get them in the game, and then exchange from themselves," which was already happening in the MMORPG space anyways. And if we can charge a transaction fee for each of the trades, that could be a model where we didn't have to do any of the [inaudible 00:43:01] box stuff that the players didn't like, and have a enough steady and viable business model.And that's how we got into the blockchain space. At the same time, Animoca was investing like crazy into anything related to the blockchain. It's when I met Yat Siu, the chairman of Animoca, and we kind of hit it off. But funny thing happened to my board at that time, I've never seen this happen. I had a five member board, and our lead investor, our biggest investor at the time, Bridge Ventures, which was a IDG Ventures US, who renamed themselves Bridge Ventures, and they separated from IDG. And so they had to raise their own LPs, and their LPs looked at their investment portfolio and said, "Hey, you do a lot of gaming, you do a lot of enterprise, maybe you guys should pick one instead doing both."And they decided to pick enterprise and get out of gaming. But the partner at Bridge Ventures who was on our board, basically, said, "Hey, then what am I going to do?" And he ended up leaving with Bridge Ventures to create a new VC fund called Griffin. Now it's like the biggest gaming fund by the way, but he left. And then TransLink Ventures, which was our second biggest investor, partner from TransLink Ventures for another whole separate reason, he ended up leaving TransLink. And so he was gone. And then our third board member, Peter Levin from Lionsgate, he ended up leaving Lionsgate. So he was gone from the board. So three of our biggest board members all left for different reasons around at the same time, and they were all replaced by new people and the mandate was to get out of gaming. All of a sudden, boom, my board was gone.And so they wanted to get out. They wanted to sell the company. So when I went met with Yat Siu, I hit it off with the Yat, and I thought it would be amazing to work together. And that's how the deal went through. If it was the same board and then there wasn't that kind of shake up at the board level, I'm not sure if I'd be able to sell the company, probably would've been the state of independent. But because of that and the special circumstance, the deal was able to go through. So that was a good thing for Animoca.Chris Erwin:Good thing for Animoca. But if it was up to you, you would've stayed independent for at least a few years longer, because you saw a bigger opportunity ahead, right?Taehoon Kim:Yeah. If it wasn't for that shake, I probably would've stayed independent. But looking back now, I'm thinking that it was a good thing to kind of join forces with Animoca. Right after we joined forces with Animoca, Animoca went through a growth phase. I've never seen a company grow that fast. They basically went from a $100 million valuation to the $6 billion valuation in like two years. They were doubling in valuation every three months. It was kind of nuts. It was really fun to be part of that ride. And right now it's an amazing partnership.Chris Erwin:In that sale, was it a cash and equity deal? So are you able to participate in this crazy run that Animoca's had?Taehoon Kim:It was mostly equity, so it was a huge upside for the investors.Chris Erwin:Got it. A final note before we get to the rapid fire section is now that you're partnered up with Animoca, what do you see as the future for nWay and what you're building together? What gets you excited? And what is some recent success that you want to be building upon?Taehoon Kim:I'm super excited about what we're doing. I think that we're still very early stage with about three, and this whole kind of digital ownership revolution that we're going through. I think there are opportunities for companies like us to develop and publish online games where players can truly own things. I don't want to make a game where it's like an instrument for people to just make money, but I do think that there's something special about being able to really own some of the items that you're playing with. I think it adds meaning, and when you have ownership you just get more attached to things. And so our vision right now is to create more meaningful entertainment through real games that players can play and also have ownership in. And we're going to be doing a lot of experiments and try to really bring together the Web3 community and the gamers under one community.Chris Erwin:And I know something that you've talked about is some recent wins and partnerships and games that you've done is the International Olympic Committee you published Sean White NFTs, likely a powerful marketing engine for that. And then also you have a Power Rangers game, and a game with the WWE. Do you have similar type projects that are upcoming that build on top of these?Taehoon Kim:So Power Rangers and WWE, those are just regular free to play games. They don't have any blockchain or NFT components in there. The innovation there was to have a game where people can just quickly pick up and play and immediately play with another player. Power Rangers especially was super successful. We had over 80 millions downloads, and I think it's in two year five now, and it's continuously profitable. So the game's been amazing.With the Olympic game, we were able to meet with IOC right when their decades long exclusivity with Nintendo and Sega was coming to an end. And so they wanted to explore a new type of game partnerships. One thing that they were noticing is that the younger audience, who were not watching TV anymore was caring less about Olympics and they wanted to focus on bringing the younger audience into caring more about their brand. And they also at the same time noticed that the younger audience are on Fortnite and Minecraft and they're playing games that are crossplay.So they were looking for a game developer or game development partnership where they could have their game run on multiple devices at the same time. And a real time game where people can play to have a social experience. And as you know that's like right on our sweet spot. We were able to prove that we have some of the best kind of technology to make that happen. With another Power Rangers game called Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, I think it's still is the only fighting game in the world where it runs on everywhere, the runs on Xbox, PlayStation, and the Switch. It even ones on a browser through Stadia. And it's a really fast action game and you can play together with anybody on any device, and there's no lag and there's no [inaudible 00:48:45] issues.So they saw that and they were like, "Hey, we want to partner with you guys." I threw them curve ball and said, "We want to partner with you guys, but we also want to add this thing called NFTs. And we think that there's a 100-year-old tradition that's already there with your brand. When people go to the Olympics they still trade the Olympic pins. We want to make the pins into NFTs, also integrate them to the game, so that when people collect these NFT pins, they could use it in the game to give them a boost in the game." To my surprise, even though they are a very conservative organization, we won the RFP, and they wanted to partner with us. And we launched the project and we got a lot of press from that. And that was a really fun project to launch.Chris Erwin:And I just have to ask, this is a minor detail, but this 100-year-old tradition about trading Olympic pins, are these pins like representative? If you're from the United States and you go to the Olympics, you're wearing a US pin, and then the different athletes will trade them amongst themselves. Is that how that works?Taehoon Kim:Well, there's tons of variety of pins created from poster artworks, emblems, mascots, Coca-Cola always creates Olympic pins together. But the tradition got started, I think, in 1932 or something like that, when they had Olympics in Paris, and the officials, for the first time, had badges or pins and they started trading that. But right now there's a really high variety of pins out there.Chris Erwin:Super cool. It sounds like digitizing those pins and converting them into NFTs that can be traded on chain and in an efficient digital manner that seems it's like a perfect application. I had no idea about the underlying tradition behind that, but makes a ton of sense to me.So let's go into rapid fire. Before we do that, I just want to give you some quick kudos. Look, I think we first met two to three months ago over a Zoom call. And so this is literally our second conversation ever. I did research into years story online, but hearing it come to life, there's a few things that really stand out. I think, one, that your willingness to really work hard and also try different things and take bets very early on in your career, but align those bets with things that you are really passionate about.So even if they were risky, you are doing them down these vectors where it was strong, passionate, and meaningful areas to you. And there's almost in a way you were going to will them into existence or make them work. And clearly you took a bet at the intersection of technology and art, which manifested in gaming that has really paid off.Something also stands out is within the category that you've bet on, in contrast to others that would just say, "Hey, I found myself in this unique opportunity. I'm able to open up doors to raise capital, build businesses." And instead of having the goal just be, "I want to make a lot of money," it is. Instead, "I want to bring delight to users. I have a unique expertise of what the gaming ecosystem, where it comes from and where it's going. And I know what users want. And I want to give them delights. And I'm going to enjoy the journey along the way."And I think that's probably something that we didn't get into, but this probably speaks to a reason why you've been able to recruit teams that build alongside you consistently, and investors that want to back you is because you're going to enjoy the journey. And I think when you focus on the end user and the experience and delight, the money is then going to follow versus going about it the other way. So it's clearly worked out incredibly well for you and very excited to see what you continue building next.Taehoon Kim:Thank you.Chris Erwin:Welcome. Let's go to rapid fire. So six questions, the rules are very straightforward. I'm going to ask six questions and the answers can be either one sentence, or maybe just one to two words. Do you understand the rules?Taehoon Kim:Yes.Chris Erwin:All right, here we go. What do you want to do less of in 2022?Taehoon Kim:Less of Zoom meetings, and more of in-person interactions.Chris Erwin:Got it. What one to two things drive your success?Taehoon Kim:I think it's the ability to read the market, ability to raise money, and then having the optimism to try new things and innovate on things that could be deemed risky.Chris Erwin:Got it. What advice do you have for gaming execs going into the second half of this year?Taehoon Kim:The advice would be to focus on making a fun game. There are a lot of game companies who are getting funded going to kind of play to earn or Web3 games, where they're kind of losing that kind of focus. But I think at the end of the day, the game should be fun. And if the games are able to create a community of gamers who really care about the game and their kind of community inside the game, then you can create an economy within the game that's not a bubble, that's sustainable.Chris Erwin:Well said. Any future startup ambitions?Taehoon Kim:I think AR and VR would make a comeback. It's a really difficult business to be in now, but if I kind of look decades into the future, I think that could be something that could be a new space that could be blossoming later on.Chris Erwin:Proudest life moment?Taehoon Kim:I think that would be a tie between when I got married to my wife and also when I had my twin boys in 2011.Chris Erwin:Oh, you're a father of twins. I'm actually a twin myself.Taehoon Kim:Oh, yeah, I have twin boys.Chris Erwin:Oh, that's the best. How old are they?Taehoon Kim:They're both 11.Chris Erwin:Very cool. TK, it's been a delight chatting with you. Thank you for being on The Come Up podcast.Taehoon Kim:Thank you so much. It was definitely a pleasure.Chris Erwin:All right. Quick heads up that our company has a new service offering. We just introduced RockWater Plus, which is for companies who want an ongoing consulting partner at a low monthly retainer, yet, also need a partner who can flex up for bigger projects when they arise. So who is this for? Well, three main stakeholders, one, operators who seek growth and better run operations. Two, investors who need help with custom industry research and diligence. And, three, leadership who wants a bolt-on strategy team and thought partner.So what is included with RockWater Plus? We do weekly calls to review KPIs or any ad hoc operational needs. We create KPI dashboards to do monthly performance tracking. We do ad hoc research ranging from customer surveys to case studies to white space analysis, financial modeling where we can understand your addressable market size, do P&L forecast, ROI analyses, even cash runway projections. We also do monthly trend reports to track new co-launches, M&A activity, partnerships activity in the space. And lastly, we make strategic introductions to new hires, investors for fundraising, and then also potential commercial strategic partnerships. So if any of this sounds appealing or you want to learn more, reach out to us at hello@wearerockwater.com. We can set a call with our leadership.All right. Lastly, we love to hear from our listeners. If you have any feedback on the show or any ideas for guests, shoot us a note at tcupod@wearerockwater.com. All right, that's it everybody. Thanks for listening.The Come Up is written and hosted by me, Chris Erwin, and is a production of RockWater Industries. Please rate and review this show on Apple Podcast. And remember to subscribe wherever you listen to our show. And if you really dig us, feel free to forward The Come Up to a Friend. You can sign up for our company newsletter at wearerockwater.com/newsletter. And you could follow us on Twitter, @tcupod. The Come Up is engineered by Daniel Tureck. Music is by Devon Bryant. Logo and branding is by Kevin Zazzali. And special thanks to Alex Zirin and Eric Kenigsberg from the RockWater team. 

Sex on your Wedding Night, PDAs on your Wedding Day, Losing Weight for your Wedding — Nothing is off limits in this episode as we dive into some of our expectations going into marriage verses what the true reality reality looked like. This isn't always cool stuff to talk about but we think it's super important to discuss these expectations before your wedding day. Plus it's good to have a laugh about now! Enjoy :) Did you enjoy our new "Storytime" Segment? Head over to our Instagram @tobewed_podcast and let us know what the segment should be called! Plus feel free to send us a Wedding Story of your own so we can share it on the Podcast! If you enjoyed this episode please consider sharing this episode with friends or family members who you think would also enjoy it! Another way you can support our show is by leaving a rating or review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. This really helps us get our show out to a new audience of people planning their wedding just like yourself! We would like to pay our respects to the Darug People whose land on which this podcast is recorded. We acknowledge that their custodianship of this land was never ceded and we pay our respects to Elders past and present of the Darug Nation.

It's a grab bag of Chrissie Topics this week! But first, just in time for Steve's COVID recovery tour, Gobletstock 8 is happening this Saturday! Find out why it's awesome and listen to the PIC plan their weekend on a podcast! Then, stick around because Chrissie's laptop repair saga continues. The laptop's still broken, but Chrissie learns an iPhone magic trick that may finally let her move this process along. Plus, Steve calculates exactly how much it would cost to Uber to summer camp, Chrissie survives working with her teenage daughter, and a moment of accidental technical literacy makes Chrissie's home life a little bit smoother. All that and some talk about PDAs...LIVE from the 19046! Topics Discussed: - Gobletstock 8 this Saturday! - https://www.brokengoblet.com/event-details/gobletstock-8-anniversary-party - https://upstreamprints.com/ - Chrissie's laptop repair saga update - Taking the silver sedan to camp - http://www.burnbraedaycamp.com - Surviving work with your teenage daughter - Accidentally proficient calendar usage

Chewing glass is what Solana developers do. Introducing the fifth episode in a new series on the Solana Podcast, Chewing Glass. Chase Barker (Developer Relations Lead at Solana Labs) talks shop with the most interesting builders in the Solana ecosystem. It's for devs, by devs.Today's guest is Cronos, an on-chain task scheduler that allows users to schedule instructions and winner of the recent Riptide Hackathon. 00:38 - Introductions01:25 - How they started                 02:48 - How they met                     04:26  - Who else is in Austin            05:09  -  Cronos backstory                 07:34 - How they started building tasks    09:11 - TLDR: what is Cronos?              13:33  - Winning the Riptide Hackathon               15:40  - How cronos came to life           18:12 - Building on solana and familiarity with other languages20:16  - Learning curve with rust         22:50 -  Nick's  learning curve              25:04 -  Advice on learning curve         27:08 - What's missing in Solana         29:20  - Advice to new developers on Solana DISCLAIMERThe information on this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The information on this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor.  Chase (00:38):Hey everybody. And welcome to Chewing Glass, the show where we talk to developers building in the Solana ecosystem. Today, we have Nick and Elias from Cronos, the recent winners of the Riptide Hackathon. Welcome guys. How's it going?Elias (00:50):It's going well.Nick (00:51):Yeah, great to be here.Chase (00:52):So let's start with you, Nick. What's your history? How'd you get into this whole thing?Nick (00:56):My background is basically, I worked on the payments team at Uber for about four years or so, helping build out the payroll system there. And so, was working on a lot of international banking integrations and just became very aware how broken the current legacy payment system is. Can't really even tell you the number of times I got woken up at 4:00 AM because some system failed somewhere and had to email a CSV file to some banker to push money through the system, it happens all the time.Nick (01:28):And so I heard about Solana and I had a light bulb moment really, where I realized that this thing is cheaper and faster and easier to use than any existing payment rails that I know about and so, I got quite excited about the potential for disruption there and this was all pre Solana Pay stuff. So, yeah, we dove in during the Ignition Hackathon.Chase (01:52):Oh, you did? Cool.Nick (01:53):Yeah.Chase (01:53):Yeah, I didn't realize that. I was actually, when you were talking, I was thinking in my head, I was like payments? I was like, wow, didn't even build anything on Solana Pay. So you guys were already rolling a little bit before that, so that's cool. Yeah. So Elias, how about you?Elias (02:06):I'm pretty fresh as far as experience in industry. I did have an internship in college as a data scientist in Argentina for a bit. I then transitioned into front-end development that following year and had been a front-end developer up until when I got into Solana development. But that's pretty much it.Chase (02:23):Cool. So, with all that said, you guys' backgrounds, how did you guys end up meeting each other? What's the story? Are you in the same place? You guys are in the same city? How did that work?Nick (02:34):We're both in Austin. Elias is a few minutes north of Austin. I'm kind of downtown and we meet up down here a few days a week. We basically met on Twitter last summer.Elias (02:45):Yeah. I was at Samsung before I met Nick. I was basically a site reliability engineer for this semiconductor facility here in Austin. I didn't love it. I absolutely hated it. So I was creating toy projects on GitHub just for front-end development purposes, just to better my skills, because I wasn't really progressing that well at Samsung. I was then tweeting about it and my philosophy was, well, what's the worst that could happen? Someone's going to see this and maybe look at my repo, who knows?Elias (03:13):Randomly I get a DM from this guy named Nick. He was like, "Hey, I like what you're doing. I looked at your GitHub. We're looking for front-end developers at this product studio that we have in Austin. I would love to grab a beer." And that's really where it started.Chase (03:25):Oh wow. That's awesome. I thought that stuff only happened in Web 3, but I guess it's happening outside of that too. So how did you find that tweet, Nick, in the first place?Nick (03:36):I don't remember, honestly. It's like scrolling the timeline, don't really remember what you saw 10 minutes ago. But, I think I saw Elias tweeting, maybe a GitHub link or something, saw he was a dev and I was just looking through his projects on GitHub. And, I found his resume actually and everything there was kind of focused around like Next.js and React, which we were doing a lot with at the time. And so, I figured sending a DM couldn't hurt and just kind of realized that he was based in Austin. I had just moved here, I think a week or so prior and we met up and grabbed a beer and just hit it off from there and have been working together since.Chase (04:18):Very cool. I think there's a couple other people in Austin. I believe Castle Finance is there. There's actually a pretty decent Solana builder presence at University of Texas at Austin.Nick (04:30):The [inaudible 00:04:30] team is here as well.Chase (04:31):Oh nice.Elias (04:32):I think BuffaLou is also here.Chase (04:34):BuffaLou? The famous BuffaLou is in Austin. Are we doxxing him over here?Elias (04:37):No, he's tweeted about it.Chase (04:39):I'm just kidding. So, that's pretty cool to hear the story about how you guys met. Now, let's dive into a little bit, go a little bit further. Where did this idea get birthed or what were you building? And start at Ignition and lead up to how the idea of Cronos came about.Nick (04:55):As we were saying before, we were looking at Solana initially from that perspective of payments and coming from the payments industry. And so we started in the Ignition Hackathon building an on-chain Venmo where users could send and receive invoices and pay those back on-chain. And then that kind of rolled into a token streaming service. And-Chase (05:16):Was that called Cronos or did it have a name at the point in time?Nick (05:20):Yeah, that was called Factor at the time. What we were specializing on was the use cases of subscription payments and payroll. And specifically we were trying to figure out how to schedule token transfers because it's kind of these inefficiencies in the vesting contract model where the sender has to lock up future payments up front into investing contract. So there's some inefficiency there. And the receiver has to go out of the way to claim from the vesting contract. So we thought if we could schedule token transfers, maybe that would be a better user experience.Nick (05:52):And we were working on that for a few months, got the whole system up and running. And then around February 1st, 2022, when mtnDAO was taking off, we realized that we could generalize that protocol from only supporting token transfers to being able to automate any arbitrary instruction. And from there it just took on a life of its own.Chase (06:14):So you guys were at mtnDAO?Nick (06:16):Yeah, I was at mtnDAO before it was mtnDAO. There was a version of it in 2021 called Mountain Compound. It was way smaller, but it was 14 of us, or so, just locked down in a house, trying to escape COVID, in Salt Lake City. And that was where I first met Edgar and Barrett. Barrett, at the time, was already working on Solana and Edgar and I were working on separate startups, but I think we both got the Solana pill during that time.Chase (06:47):Man. Wasn't expecting that one. That's a really cool story, actually. Those guys are involved in red-pilling a lot of people on to Solana, so I'm always happy to hear these stories. They just keep coming up randomly wherever I go.Nick (06:58):Yeah.Chase (07:00):Yeah, so that's awesome. So when you were building this payment stuff, the idea came around at mtnDAO, and that was, or right at the beginning-ish, I think, of Riptide. TJ was just on the show. That's when he started to talk about building out mtnPay. So you guys were like, "okay, we were doing payments, we just came up with this thing. We think we have solved a really big problem and we're going to build this out." Tell me a little bit more about that.Nick (07:25):Yeah, it started with just a proof of concept. So we just had this basic question of, can you even schedule arbitrary instructions on-chain? And how do you do that? So we started by building a basic Anchor program where users could create tasks and each task is a different account. And inside those accounts we would store serialized instruction data with a schedule.Nick (07:50):We basically had set up a separate off-chain bot process, also written in Rust, but using the RPC client. Which basically watched for task accounts and then would trigger transactions whenever the tasks came due. And we found that we could invoke those inner instructions as CPIs and that then unlocked this whole like, okay, we can schedule any arbitrary instruction.Elias (08:15):Yeah. I remember whenever he called me on our sync, I think it was on Monday because he built the proof of concept during the weekend. He told me, "you know, we have Factor and it's really cool, but imagine if we just generalized it to allow for any arbitrary instruction." And I was like, "Oh. Yeah, let's do that. That's a good idea."Chase (08:33):Yeah, I was really stoked. I remember seeing it the first time and I saw what it was and I was like, "Wow, people are really going to like this." By the way you guys are both technical founders. You both built out Cronos, correct?Nick (08:45):Yeah, correct.Nick (08:46):Mostly Nick, let me just... Mostly Nick.Chase (08:49):Actually, this is probably a good point to talk about what Cronos actually is officially. Like a TLDR for everybody watching. What you guys built and how it actually works at a high level?Nick (09:01):The basic concept is, it's just a keeper network for Solana. Every blockchain, at least that we're aware of right now, has this fundamental limitation and that's, you can't schedule transactions with a validator network and there's a few different reasons why that's the case. But it creates challenges for teams that have background jobs or tasks that they need to run just to make their programs work. And so, what Cronos is, is a keeper network to be able to facilitate that and service that. But the main difference is that we're kind of turning the Solana validators into the keepers for the system rather than relying on some external, off-chain, opaque bot network. And so that's required a lot of deep integration with the validator codebase in order to enable that.Chase (09:48):That is actually very, very cool. I wasn't officially, 100% certain how it worked. So you're using the validators as the keeper network to run these jobs on the network?Nick (09:58):Yeah, exactly. Our v1, proof of concept version was not integrated into the validator network. Hadn't even had that idea at the time, really.Elias (10:08):I didn't even know we could do that, knowing that we can just build a plugin for validators. Pretty cool.Nick (10:13):Yeah, it was around the same time we were building that initial bot that we started seeing some tweets about the account's DB plugin framework. And that has since been renamed to Geyser plugin framework and we just realized that there was all these scaling problems when you rely on these off-chain bots and that they have to submit transactions through the RPC network. And that can take up a whole bunch of bandwidth and you have to compete with other traffic to get those transactions through. And we realized there was this interface that Solana was providing, and the Geyser plugin framework, that we could actually spawn transactions from there. And it was much more efficient and made the system a lot more reliable. And so we basically copy pasted our bot code into the Geyser plugin framework and it mostly just worked out of the box.Chase (11:01):Oh wow. And that's quite unusual. For things that just work. So did you guys actually have to work with the validator community or did you guys have ever set up or run a validator? What's your knowledge there?Nick (11:12):Yeah, we have a few nodes that we got through the Solana server program, which that is a very useful program, if there's anyone that's looking to set up a node on Solana. And we have some servers running on DevNet and Testnet right now, that we're using to stress test the system. But yeah, we've been reaching out to all the node operators we can to talk with them and we're looking to get this thing rolled out on DevNet and Testnet quite soon. And actually, by the time this is published, it should be out on DevNet and Testnet, and we'll have quite a few integrations going on those networks.Chase (11:49):Yeah. I'm not going to lie. So like just leading in the sense, congratulations, you guys won the Riptide Hackathon. This was super incredible. And for me personally, I was so insanely excited to see some tooling win because this is just... developers need this tooling and to see that people watching a hackathon and a lot of these other, in the past, DeFi protocols, which are amazing out there, winning, but to see developer tooling take the grand prize, says a lot about what you guys had built and what the judges thought of it. So, that's quite amazing. So congratulations. But tell me, what was that like? Were you guys, have any idea, any expectations? Like what was your thoughts going through all that?Nick (12:33):Man. Yeah, there was a lot going on at the time, even, even outside the Riptide Hackathon. It was quite a journey, I think, to get here. Cronos was what we wish we had when we were building Factor. We came upon the idea for Cronos because we were trying to build Factor, this scheduled token transfer service. And we're like, "how do you schedule a timer on-chain?" And then we found out you couldn't schedule a timer on-chain, there just isn't a way. So we were talking to some other teams and I think it was, he goes by DoctorBlocks, at Switchboard. He described for us what a Crank function was and how they were running their automations. And from there we just started pulling on that thread and realized that here was all this dev tooling that was missing that we could build out and just started running with it.Chase (13:22):Were you expecting to win the grand prize of the hackathon? How did you react whenever you actually found out that you guys had won that thing? Was there-Nick (13:30):I didn't know we were going to win. We had been getting tips from a few people that we were on these ever shorter shortlists, but we didn't know until the moment of, that the blog post went out, someone sent it to me and then a moment later, Twitter started blowing up. And from there it was just a flood of inbound messages coming in from all directions. And last few weeks have been a lot of dealing with that.Elias (13:57):Yeah. A lot of dealing about knowing what is spam and what isn't from people it's pretty difficult to do.Chase (14:03):So did you guys celebrate, did you guys go out for beers? Like you did the first time you met? Did you do anything?Elias (14:08):Sure did.Nick (14:09):Yeah.Chase (14:11):That's awesome, man. Like I said, it's really great to see some developer tooling win and that value in that. Whenever I started at Solana Labs, like a year ago, there was no developer tooling out there. This was like... Then comes Armani and then here's Anchor. And then now we have all these indexers and then now we have Cronos and they just keep piling on. And eventually we're going to reach a place where every little narrow gap is covered and developers are going to be able to just jump in and do all the things that they could do in Web 2, in Web 3 and it's going to be a huge game changer for everybody. Not quite there, or we're pretty far off from there, I would say. Every tool like this really, really matters.Elias (14:51):To piggyback off that, the most exciting part about this job is not only building it and dealing with really interesting engineering problems, but knowing the impact that it will have to developers and how empowering it is to allow them to automate things on-chain. That's a pretty wild idea. So I'm really excited for that.Chase (15:09):Yeah and I think that's why a lot of engineers get into building out developer tooling instead of products because they're engineers themselves. And they're like, "man, if I was like on the other end of this and somebody built this tool, I'd be so stoked." And how many people that outwardly impacts is probably just a really incredible feeling. And it's just really awesome. So sorry, Factor, but I'm glad that Cronos ended up winning. By the way, is Factor just kind of sitting on a shelf somewhere right now, never to be reopened again?Nick (15:38):Yeah. We, we kind of just rolled Factor into Cronos. Actually the Twitter account is the same Twitter. We just changed the name now.Chase (15:46):Nice. Okay. So it's dead.Nick (15:48):Yeah.Elias (15:49):Dead, but very much alive.Nick (15:51):Yeah.Chase (15:52):Yeah. If Cronos would've never came alive, you would've been sitting at the mtnDAO with TJ, directly competing against each other. So, that's awesome. So basically two of these projects were the winning of the payments track and then the grand champion of Riptide. They both came out of mtnDAO. Every time I hear about mtnDAO and we talk about this, it's one more reason why understanding how incredible it was out there and how many builders were out there building really cool stuff.Elias (16:20):Yeah, the community in Salt Lake was amazing just knowing that you were in the same boat with all these developers. Either just getting into Solana or being in it just recently. Learning Rust and learning the runtime environment and what is possible on Solana is really crazy. And everyone was trying to help each other and answered questions. And if you didn't know the answer, they would direct you to somebody else. And everyone's just like, "yeah, let me help you with this," which is my favorite part about that.Nick (16:48):Yeah, it's been really cool to see communities pop up. Also happening right now is like AthensDAO in Greece. And unfortunately we weren't able to make it there, but I think we'll see, over the coming months, a few more of these communities start to pop up that are a bit more like longer running than just the kind of week long hacker house format.Chase (17:06):Yeah. I'm a big fan of the community run hacker houses and all these sorts of things like mtnDAO, just because whenever it's built out with the community like that, it just forms this other type of bond with everybody and it's just really exciting to see all that happen.Chase (17:23):This is the point in the show where we shift gears a little bit. We talked about that excitement, how Cronos came alive, you guys winning Riptide and now I want to talk about what that experience was like for you guys. Because this is the very important part of this show where we talk about what sucked and what was good and what could be better. So, I want to start with Elias this time. You came from a front-end engineering background? What's actually the languages that you had touched before you came to start building on Solana?Elias (17:58):Even before I was a front-end developer, I was dabbling in data science for a bit. It was a lot of fun, but a bit too meticulous for my taste. So I was dealing with a lot of Python. Fast forward to when I graduate, I was really interested in front-end development, got pretty good at helping with some friends and building toy applications and TypeScript React, some toy web apps with Next.js. And then that's whenever, like I said, met Nick, joined the team and I was building front-end applications for a while at, like, six months. And then I found, like a lot of people who started their Web 3 journey, Nader Dabit's Ethereum article on how to... It was like a super simple... I forget exactly the context of what the project was, but it was on dev.to. And read through it and tried to understand what is this environment? What is this dev environment? What's going on? Not too long after I found Solana and Nick also brought it up, was like, "Hey, we should maybe look into this." And then-Chase (18:53):Did you do Dabit's tutorial on Solana too?Elias (18:55):I did. Yeah, I did. Yeah.Chase (18:56):Yeah.Elias (18:57):It was a lot simpler. I don't know. But also more difficult in some ways. When we were working on Factor, Nick gave me the talk like, "Hey, we may not need front-end developers. So there's a chance that I need you to flex over to becoming a Rust engineer, which is, you know-Chase (19:13):So he didn't fire you?Elias (19:15):No, no he did not. Luckily. Yeah. So fast forward to like mtnDAO when we know finally realize Cronos has a lot of potential. I buy the book that a lot of people seem to have and I have it on my desk right here, the programming Rust book. And it's been my north star, I would say, as far as growing my skills as a Rust engineer, as well as living in the Solana repo and Anchor repos.Chase (19:39):So you guys are building this in straight Rust? Are you guys also using Anchor?Elias (19:44):Yeah. So in the core of Cronos, it's a lot of Anchor. A lot of what I deal with, I'm building and optimizing the Geyser plugin that we have to listen to Cronos accounts and execute tasks when needed. That's just built in Rust and other like asynchronous libraries and things like that, but not Anchor specifically.Chase (20:03):This is the part, the glass chewing, what was your learning curve during that process of learning Rust coming from front-end? Was it as painful as everybody says? Everybody's different on this front, so what was that like to learn Rust?Elias (20:16):A big mistake that I would advise people attempting to get into the space would be first of all, just learn Rust by itself first. At least start there and understand that it is different from Anchor. And it's just a framework that lives with Rust. And then try to understand the Solana runtime just a little bit. And those are three separate entities, but they all coexist and you need the three in order to make a simple to do app in Rust on-chain. So differentiating between those three different entities is really important. And if you just jump straight into a Solana Anchor project, not knowing Rush, you're going to get really confused and pretty frustrated.Chase (20:52):So for you, was it hard or was it just time consuming? You just had to grind it out and you learned along the way?Elias (20:58):Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those things that you just have to do every day. You have to, you know, for me every morning before we would go to the mtnDAO-Chase (21:06):Glass for breakfast.Elias (21:07):Yeah, I would literally just sit on the couch and wait for Nick to finish showering before we drove to the office. And I would just read a chapter of the programming Rush book and it would just go over super simple things like structs and basic functions. And if you're a software engineer, it's not too difficult to transition into Rust, it's just another programming language just in the different context. And it looks a little weird with two semicolons next to each other or whatever, syntax. But it's not too bad. One of those things you just got to do every day. And then before you know it, you'll just hit the road running. It's pretty nice.Chase (21:39):I think a lot of people talk about chewing glass, like it's actually Solana, that's the real glass chewing, about learning the native concepts, like using PDAs and these things. And there are people out there who just don't ever end up learning Rust and they never actually tried it. They never just sat down and did it. You could get a little bit resistant to it just because it looks so foreign.Chase (22:00):And then the other part is, I've done a couple of Twitter Spaces around this exact same thing about you saying start with Rust. That's my recommendation always start with the base layer before you're using any sort of framework or anything that's intertwined in it, but there are people out there on the other side of the camp that say, just start with Anchor. I obviously disagree, because I think learning that first base language is always going to be the best. And it's going to save you down the road when you're running into issues.Chase (22:27):I'm going to go ahead and ask you Nick, kind of the same question, what your experience was like? What did you do to learn it? Was it similar to Elias? Was it hard? Was it easy? Was it just time consuming? What would that look like?Nick (22:39):I had some background working in back-end systems. Yeah, for my time out in California, I had worked mostly with Go prior and actually first tried picking up Rust in 2020, because I'd seen it was the most popular language on GitHub and it was just like, what is this? And I actually hated it the first time I looked at it because I was coming from that Go world. And Go is designed to be super ergonomic and easy to read and talk about and communicate and Rust is more optimized for performance,Chase (23:13):Performance and pain.Nick (23:16):Yeah. And so I hated Rust when I first looked at it, and I pushed it off to the side and didn't actually look at it again until we dove into Solana. I've since come to love it. It is a little bit steeper of a learning curve and there are some extra pieces to the mental model that you need, in terms of understanding memory and ownership of variables and how all that stuff works, lifetimes, for example, that other languages don't have. So that makes it a little more complicated or harder to learn. But it's not anything that can't be overcome, I think. It's just another programming language.Nick (23:50):But yeah, definitely breaking apart, as Elias said, the difference between Rust problems, Anchor problems and Solana problems and understanding that these are all like three different systems is probably the hardest thing when you're first diving into Solana because it all looks the same and all the error messages are cryptic and if you don't have a whole lot of debugging experience, it can be hard to pull that thread because all this stuff is quite new and a lot of devs, I think have the pattern of, you get an error message you don't understand, copy it in a Google and see what Stack Overflow results come up. Usually we're running into problems that no other devs have run into yet. And it's just like-Chase (24:28):It's actually pretty cool though. Like to be one of the first group of people on the planet. You guys are going to be the ones who answer these Stack Overflow questions in the future because that always starts somewhere. The first guy had to just figure it out.Elias (24:40):It's cool, but you're like, "I don't know what to do now." I guess we're just going to have to figure it out. So that's where I would just go to the Solana codebase and Nick has recommended multiple times. Just go live in there, you'll understand the runtime environment better, your errors will be easier to debug. It's a lot. The Solana codebase is a lot, but there are parts of it that really help you understand what is going on underneath.Chase (25:03):A lot of people come from Web 2, and again, I'm one of those people. We're used to having our hands held. We're used to being able to find the answers we want. We're used to all these pretty, amazing tutorials and all these different things. And when that's not the case, it makes it a lot harder. Sadly enough, not everybody's this reverse engineering code diver that's going to go do that sort of thing. And it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort and sometimes, at the end of the day, there might not be considered the greatest payoff for all that work. But the true engineers, the ones who just like to figure shit out, are going to go do that and then they're going to figure it out and then they're going to build Cronos. So it's awesome.Nick (25:43):It's definitely how you know you're on the bleeding edge, is when Google doesn't come up with any results for your error message.Chase (25:49):Zero results.Nick (25:51):Yeah.Elias (25:52):The beautiful, no search results for that Google search and like, well, okay cool. Like whatever.Nick (25:57):Yeah. I Would say to any devs that find themselves in this situation, the Anchor discord in particular is my new Google for trying to find solutions to these problems. And usually, 70% of the time, someone has asked about some of the error problems like we're running into in the Anchor discord somewhere. And there's been someone that is able to chime in and help and Armani and the team that's there is extremely helpful in terms of answering questions and generous with their time.Chase (26:27):And Alan and everybody that's out there and Jacob who's on our DevRel team and Donny. There's so many people and these are guys that are actually working on like Serum and Anchor and Solana Labs and all that stuff. But outside of that, the community of people just helping each other solve these problems, it's amazing to watch it happen in real life.Chase (26:48):We've been going on for a while now and I want both of you, if you can, to tell me what is missing from Solana right now, like in tooling? You guys just created one that was missing, where you were seeing a lot of tooling come out.Elias (26:59):I have one.Chase (27:00):Okay. All right, we'll start with you Elias. What are we missing right now?Elias (27:04):I'm probably stealing this from Matt because he's probably thinking about it, but one thing we've ran into recently is DevOps pipelining. It's pretty difficult to handle versioning from so many different projects. And when we're developing, we're having to stay ahead of Mainnet and work on Testnet and it's a very complicated, and different projects do it differently, but right now in our repo, we have a forked version of Anchor just so that we have up-to-date versions of Anchor, but using some different-Nick (27:32):The latest Solana dependency versions.Elias (27:34):Yes. So that right now is something that we have to build, but if there's a way to do that at scale for a lot of other teams, that'd be great.Chase (27:41):Yeah, that's not the first time I've heard that one, but that's a good one. I hear it just because I'm always paying attention to a lot of different places, but I don't know if everybody, except the ones who are coming into this problem actually know that this is something that's kind of necessary. It's not one of the ones that people are most vocal about. It's usually error codes and indexers and all these things. So Nick, did Elias steal yours or do you got something else for us?Nick (28:05):No, I think that's a great one. There's, at least for what we're doing, where we have both on-chain programs and a plugin, that we're trying to ship DevOps challenges around keeping the versions in sync between those two pieces can be challenging. And then, I guess something that's been on my mind a little bit is how there was a DeGit project in the Riptide Hackathon, decentralized Git, which I think, stuff in that space like decentralized DevOps processes and how does a decentralized global team of engineers contribute to a protocol and how do you keep the community open, but also secure, is, I think, an unsolved problem at this point.Chase (28:50):Well, I look forward to the Cronos team actually building out this suite of tools, all of it.Nick (28:56):A few pieces, but yeah.Chase (28:58):Yeah. So I usually wrap these shows up just asking what advice would you give to somebody who's thinking, on the other side, "Hmm, maybe I'm about to jump into Solana. I'm not sure if I want to put in the effort to build something." What general advice would you give somebody who was going to build or is building on Solana right now?Elias (29:17):If you're frustrated with learning Rust, but you're really wanting to build on Solana, then you're doing it right. You're not doing it right if you're not frustrated, that's the chewing glass part.Chase (29:27):Yeah.Elias (29:27):Just keep going. Because at some point you'll be able to look at other projects and their smart contracts and go, "oh, I see what they're doing." Like right now I'm looking at the Holaplex, that's called RabbitMQ plugin or Geyser plugin, shout out to the Holaplex team, and trying to understand why they made certain engineering designs with their plugin and see what we can take from. And that's just the beauty of open source of course. But yeah, if I wasn't chewing glass consistently and I wasn't looking at code and other repos, then I wouldn't be able to do that.Chase (29:58):Yeah. That's awesome. And like it is, I wish everybody would start open sourcing their code out there, but we'll get there eventually. How about you Nick, what kind of advice do you have? And again, we've kind of talked about a few good ideas for the community, so what do you think?Nick (30:13):Yeah, I think probably two things, as Elias mentioned, spending time in the Solana repo, it's helped a lot. There's a lot of patterns in there that, if you're trying to get familiar with Rust, it's a great resource to learn from. And the second thing is to actually read the error messages that you get back, because when you actually pull on that thread, they are very cryptic error messages a lot of times, but they do have information that leads you to the bug and the problem or points you in the right direction, maybe is the best way to put it. I find that skill, that debugging skill is like a muscle that needs to be trained and learned and doesn't always come supernaturally, because it's just hard. But yeah, reading error messages and trying to decipher what they're telling you is a fundamental exercise to dealing with large complex systems.Chase (31:10):Yeah, and it's also just a really cool skillset to have, to be able to just do these manual debugging stuff. Yeah. Like you said it becomes like a natural kind of mental muscle that all of a sudden, now it just happens quite naturally, once you get to a certain point.Elias (31:23):Yeah. One thing for those interested in just in general, distributed systems, trying to understand Solana a little bit better from a higher level, there's a great YouTube course from MIT. If you just search "distributed systems MIT", it's an OpenCourseWare, like 12 lecture series, just to understand like RPCs, multi-threading, concurrency, consensus and things like that. It's really beneficial to understanding distributed systems, blockchains, well, not necessarily blockchains, but at least for Solana distributed systems.Chase (31:55):Awesome. Yeah. There's a lot of people that come into blockchain and they don't even really know what a distributed system is. And then a lot of the times it's like, hey, go actually read about like what this thing is before diving into this.Chase (32:07):All right guys. Well really, really, thanks for coming on the show. I'm glad that we got to catch up. Congratulations winning Riptide. I'll talk to you later.Nick (32:16):Yeah. Well see you in Austin.Elias (32:17):Sounds good. Yeah, see you in Austin.Chase (32:19):All right. Cheers.

PDAs, implements of sabotage, dodgy wrists, clean clothes, Joel pegs it, samey tasks, norks galore, Operation Vengeance/Shitshow, diabetes, cage fighting and landslides denied.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Are you neglected by your partner on Insta? If so, don't worry we have Bamboleo to cheer you up and a round of Craft Beer or Lord Of The Rings character? in the quiz.

With Melissa Etheridge on the cover and the DIVA Power List between the sheets, we are celebrating the visionaries blazing a trail for LGBTQIA women and non binary people.With exclusive coverage from the 2022 DIVA Awards featuring Suranne Jones, Sandi Toksvig and a host of other luminaries.We also discuss PDAs, Mental Health Awareness Week and leaving *gasp* Twitter!Debrief dives into the current issue of DIVA magazine once a month.With hosts Rachel Shelley (The L Word) and Victoria Broom (Cheaters)Plus exclusive interviews featuring you, the DIVA listener. Wherever you are in the world.This month: Tati from BrazilProduced and edited by Rachel Shelley with love and support from #TeamDIVApodDIVA: Queers for your EarsGet in touch: editorial@divamag.co.uk Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey Skele-fam! We're back with another piping hot, fresh podcast. We're a little off schedule, we had to skip last week but we're back! And we'll have another episode next week, meaning back to back SSFP! What more could you ever possibly want?? In this episode, Grace finally made Derek watch High School Musical (something she'd been trying to do for a really long time). Also Elon Musk is buying twitter, but we were too busying researching Doom and Quake ports on early 2000's PDAs to really pay close attention! Also, it's probably not a good thing that Elon Musk is buying twitter, but anyway... Play Dates are starting to ship! Does this mean we're starting a new pocket gaming era like the late-90's and early 2000's? Well, with Nintendo allegedly bringing GBA games to Switch Online, we could see something like that. Plus your questions! That's it for now, but we'll see you next week! Stay powerful! Uncle Derek

Today on the Ether we have the Levana AMA discussing Faction Wars, PDAs, token launches, network congestion, and more! Recorded on March 8th 2022. Make sure to check out our sponsors, Orbital Command, Luart, Talis, WeFund, and Glow Yield! We appreciate their support.

Chewing glass is what Solana developers do. Introducing the third episode in a new series on the Solana Podcast, Chewing Glass. Chase Barker (Developer Relations Lead at Solana Labs) talks shop with the most interesting builders in the Solana ecosystem. It's for devs, by devs.Todays guest is Brian Friel, a Solana dev and regular contributor to the Solana Cookbook who recently joined Phantom as Developer Relations Evangelist.01:18 - Intro / Phantom04:04- Brian's background05:10 - His experience before working in Solana06:42 - How did he start working in Solana08:06 - When did he start looking into Solana09:41 - First project on Solana11:36 - What are the challenges working in Solana13:14 - Anchor vs. Solana native15:31 - The Solana cookbook18:09 - Contributing to the space21:01 - Solana Native Programs23:01 - Any advice?DISCLAIMERThe information on this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The information on this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor. Chase (00:39):Hey, everybody. Welcome to Chewing Glass, the show where we talk to developers building in the Solana ecosystem. My name is Chase Barker, developer relations at Solana Labs. Today, we have with us, Brian Friel. Brian is actually a heavy contributor to the Solana ecosystem. I spoke with Brian, probably, a few months ago. I started noticing that he was writing some really great articles about Solana. I always have my eye out to kind of find people who are just altruistically contributing in the ecosystem. Brian was one of those guys, and here he is today. Brian, how's it going, man?Brian (01:13):Hey, Chase. Good to be here. Big fan of the show.Chase (01:16):Super excited to have you. You have done so many contributions to the ecosystem, everything from your own personal articles about PDAs with Anchor. You've contributed heavily to the Solana Cookbook. Actually, many people probably don't know because you never really spoke about it, there is some great news today. Brian, I actually heard from a little birdie that you just got hired at Phantom.Brian (01:50):That's correct. This is a Solana podcast exclusive. I'm joining Phantom, and I'll be their first developer relations hire there. Super stoked to build out the best wallet on Solana.Chase (02:02):Yeah, that's awesome. I haven't fully grasped what... I know that there's a use for that on a wallet. Every company's completely different whenever it comes to developer relations. You've been hanging out with the Solana Labs devrel team. I'm sure you'll jump in there, and you probably have already started to try to figure out what you're going to do on day one, I'm sure.Brian (02:24):It's a green-field kind of space here. There's a lot to do. I think you're right. One of the best things about this space, too, is that so many people are just building in public that we get a lot of feedback of what developers building on Solana want to see out of us at Phantom. My job is really to kind of get in touch with everyone who's building and start triaging what the biggest priorities are to make this the best experience.Chase (02:46):That's awesome. I'm sure you're going to do great. Also, another one of our wonderful part-time dev advocates, Loris just got hired by Metaplex. But, at the end of the day, we love this. This is exactly what we want. All the better and congrats on that.Brian (03:00):Yeah. Shout out, Loris. He's awesome. Metaplex got a huge win there, getting him.Chase (03:05):For sure. I guess, I usually start these out with some more of the boring things for most people. Everybody wants to hear about the development stuff. Number one, when you did start working with us, had I reached out to you or did you reach out to me? I've been thinking about this today, and I cannot actually remember how that unfolded.Brian (03:25):I think, way back, I actually reached out to you once. At the time, I might have not even been on Twitter under my real name. I just started a Twitter account just to check out a couple different things. I was interested in crypto. I saw your presence pretty early on and messaged you, but I'm pretty sure, at that time, you were just drowning in DMs. I went all out my way starting to build stuff, and then starting to just share stuff publicly, which we can talk about. But, I think, through that, then you had circled back, and then we reconnected.Chase (03:55):Yeah, exactly. If you're listening, that's how you do it. If I don't respond to you, do something cool, and we'll eventually connect. Anyways, definitely, generally curious on your background, whether it's tech related or not, just whatever you are comfortable with sharing and what you were doing before you were involved in any of this crazy thing that we call crypto.Brian (04:16):It feels like a lifetime ago. I, actually, didn't study computer science unlike a lot of people, but, over time, I did make my way into the tech world. Then, quickly after graduating, I got pretty lucky, and I got a job as a front end engineer at a small crypto hedge fund here in the Bay Area. It's called Castle. Was with those guys for about four years. Absolute, awesome experience. It was really interesting to see the whole trading side of the industry, which, obviously, is kind of how this all got its legs. People want to speculate on this. Over time, my role there really evolved from just the pure dev to somebody who was really kind of boots on the ground trying to figure out what's new in the space.Through that, I came across Solana pretty early on. Obviously, seeing Sam Fried throw his weight behind it, but then some other stuff that came along like Mango. I'm seeing the possibilities there. In my free time, I really started just digging to it outside of work. Work was the catalyst for finding it. But, that's really how I got my start, just looking into the developer side of things on Solana.Chase (05:18):What was your experience level directly before Solana?Brian (05:22):I was a React front end engineer, was really my specialty. I, specifically, was tasked with building interfaces for our trading systems. We had a whole proprietary tech trading system, and I was the front end guy, so I would say pretty proficient with React and Node JS and TypeScript. But, I really wasn't a back end guy. I'd never done anything with Rust, and I actually hadn't really done too much on Solidity at the time yet. I had kicked around a few side projects, but nothing really ever got past just a couple weeks, side hobby sort of deal.Chase (05:54):What I definitely am seeing in this ecosystem, and I think Armani's talked about it a handful of times is that a lot of engineers in Solana are actually Solana natives that have never touched Solidity. They've never owned a MetaMask wallet. Obviously, a lot of these guys are probably some of the more younger guns, even some of the older ones as well, probably for a variety of reasons. But, it's interesting to see technologies that have been around for a while that newer technologies are actually being used and developed on first. It's never really been a thing before. There was always a learning path that was you find out about Bitcoin. You find out about Ethereum. You build on Solidity. Then, you find some other things, and you might jump ship. We're seeing a lot of people that are really just going straight to Solana. You were involved in that space, tasked with finding out what's hot, what's going on, and you saw SBF was building a central limit order book on Solana, and, then, that's kind of what set you in that direction?Brian (06:54):Yeah. I was pretty aware of the Ethereum ecosystem before. We actually were running our own validators for Eth 2 and doing a couple other things as it relates to trading, actually, on Ethereum Mainnet today. For me, personally, I think it was just really an interesting time to dedicate my free time in learning Solana because it felt like there was this new paradigm of blockchain development. A lot of the stuff that was coming out with other earlier ones felt a little bit derivative of Eth, but Solana really felt like it was carving its own path out, and I thought that was worth exploring.At the same time, I could see there was people who had serious credibility in the space who were dedicating their time to it. Then, combined with that, they're just wasn't any resources or really any subject matter experts on it yet. That, to me, was the signal that it is a really good time. I still think it is a fantastic time to just dig my heels in and learn about this. I haven't really looked back since.Chase (07:52):The first time we kind of talked, it was probably early on, and I was really just trying to get a feel for everything. There probably wasn't a ton of information or content. I feel like there was some. You made a note to Mango Markets. What timeframe did you really start paying attention to Solana, not necessarily about what's going on in the ecosystem, but rather start looking at the documentation? Was this super early 2021?Brian (08:18):I had kicked the tires on things at the end of 2020 when Sollet was the only wallet, and there really wasn't anything. But, I think Break Solana was out there, and I think Raydium was out there.Chase (08:29):Serum DEX was also there around that time as well, I believe.Brian (08:32):Yeah, Serum. I had just kind of made a mental note around that time. Things were pretty crazy in the space, too, just everything was going on.Chase (08:40):The market, yeah-Brian (08:41):I was pretty busy at work, but, I would say, when the market kind of cooled off in the summertime is when I, personally, started to dig into the development side a lot more. Mango and Phantom, well, trying that out was definitely just the light bulb moment for me when I saw just how insane that user experience was. What really got me down the rabbit hole of development was following Armani on Twitter. Shout out, Armani's the man, and seeing what he was doing with Anchor, specifically.I had stayed away from the development side of Solana purely because I had told myself, oh, I'm a front end guy. I would have to learn Rust first. Then, I would have to learn all the intricacies of Solana. It's just not worth my time. But, Anchor signaled to me that I could start a side project, and I could get up and running with something quickly. Then, if that was interesting to me, then I could dig in further. That's what I did. I think that's actually a pretty good path for people who are just kicking the tires on Solana development.Chase (09:39):I guess that means that you're pretty much intro journey into development. You went straight for Anchor before you-Brian (09:46):Yep, a hundred percent.Chase (09:48):... because I remember... Was the PDA article you wrote the first article that you had written?Brian (09:52):My first thing I did, I think this was either late August or early September, I just said, I'm going to make a really basic app, like a voting app on Solana, something that everyone's made before, but I'm going to use Anchor to do it. I think, at the time, Nader Dabit had just published his first article, so I was kind of using that as a reference. But, there really wasn't a whole lot about the intricacies of how Anchor related to Solana development, in particular. It was hard for me to wrap my head around the account model, which I think is the biggest thing for most people coming into the space, especially if they're familiar with Ethereum. I had just done a very basic, put a key pair on a node server, spin that up, something you would never want to do in a production app. It worked until the Herokuv server crashed, and then it just was a joke of an app.I couldn't really sleep well. I had written up my experience, but I couldn't really sleep well knowing that that's as far as I got. That's when I dug into PDAs. I really started to understand the account model better on Solana, what that was. I just wrote about that experience, really, selfishly for me just to have a memo on that. Then, I just put it out there, but I found out that a lot of other people were simultaneously going around the same sort of journey. I think that was the article that I really started to get connected with a lot of people in the space.Chase (11:09):I mean, it's pretty typical for a lot of these guys to be documenting their journey. A lot of times that really sparks a revelation for people that I've noticed. It's like, wow, this is super valuable. Then, I want to do it again. It's like, if this is helping people, I'm going to keep deep diving these things. But, it all started with Armani being like, hey, I'm going to make this easier for everybody, and he did. Now, he has a massive community of supporters that are just building on top of Anchor. Was the accounts model in the PDAs... Typically, it is, but, for you, is that specifically was, until you got past that, Solana was pretty hard?Brian (11:47):Yeah. In my mind, I thought it was going to be Rust, especially being a front end dev. It's just the total different world, but-Chase (11:54):The syntax is disgusting when you first look at it, at least in my personal opinion.Brian (11:58):Yeah, you can kind of understand. But, I mean, it really is. If you've never touched Rust, it's not bad. It was nothing that, really, three or four hours worth of just looking over stuff. You can understand the gist of things, which is as much as you really need to get your first app up, which I think is the best way to learn, just by doing. For me, it really was the mental shift of just how does Solana work in the account model because I think everyone's so used to... I have Ethereum address. It has all these coins directly related to it. Then, there's this Ethereum smart contract, and it has its state. It has a counter, and it can do these things. It's really weird to, one, you're already saying, I'm going to go away from this ecosystem. I'm going to look at Solana.But, then, two, a lot of what I have in my head as a mental map doesn't carry over. That seemed like a scary drum. That probably was the hardest thing, but, it's really that account model. I think that once you have a pretty good understanding of that, that's 80% of the work. The rest of the 20% of the work, you'll get over time.Chase (12:58):I mean, if we're talking about Rust Native, and then we're talking about Anchor, Anchor also hides a lot of these issues. You don't have to really worry so much about the serialization piece. Honestly, I don't know very many people that actually even know how to really do that efficiently and effectively in Rust. It's a huge pain in the ass to make that work. Have you done any of the serialization in Rust Native?Brian (13:26):Yeah. I've played around with Borscht a little bit now. I think as far as the whole Anchor versus Solana Native debate, speaking anecdotally, I definitely thought it was easier just to go with Anchor. It lets you focus on what you're building. You don't have to worry about all this stuff like serialization. But, then, I think once you do build something to actually really understand how it works, and if you ever were to actually put any money, your own, let alone other people's money in it, you absolutely should understand how Anchor relates to Solana Native, and why it's doing the things it's doing, what each trait and macro is actually doing under the hood. Then, that just makes you really understand, I think, Solana, all the better.Chase (14:03):There's a couple types of people there. There are the type of person out there that's like, no, I want to start with a base, and then I'm going to work my way up. Those people tend to be the more thorough, take their time, whatever. But, then a lot of others are like, I want to push out an MVP because I want to write code right this second, and then they do it. Then, just general curiosity over time when you feel like you understand a language like Anchor, and you're like, okay, I got this. This is great. Now, I'm actually curious how this works under the hood, so you just go in the reverse direction.Brian (14:38):This is, again, anecdotal, but for people like me, and probably if you're a front end dev, actually, it's really nice to have something tangible where it's like you built this. You can show it to a friend, and they can connect the Devnet Wallet to it, and they can use it. Then, you kind of really understand the tangible value of this new platform that Solana is. Now, you're innately curious of, okay, well how does this actually work? I saw that Anchor does this in less than 50 lines of Rust, but half these lines are macros that I'm not quite sure what they do under the hood. It's very natural, your learning path from there, if you can just get the first project done.Chase (15:15):Have you, to this day, written anything in Rust Native. Have you written any programs?Brian (15:21):No. I've transitioned over more to the web3.js side of things because that's what I'm more comfortable with.Chase (15:28):Okay.Brian (15:29):As you know, recently, I've been spending most of my time on more conceptual stuff like the Solana Cookbook, and I dug in some stuff as well about retrying transactions during network congestion and all that. That's a little bit more, conceptually, how the Solana blockchain works as a whole.Chase (15:42):If you guys didn't know, Brian just released a PDA section to the Solana Cookbook, so check it out. Also, the retry portion. That was actually requested by the Solana core engineer team. They were like, there's a lot of people that don't understand how to manage failed transactions and how to retry them properly.Brian (16:04):Yeah, totally. That's kind of what drew me in to this space is that I had seen people like the core engineering team there, Trent and what Anatoly's built, obviously. But, there's all this amazing tech that these guys have built and they've been so focused on building that no one's really there to tell the story and to help make it more relatable to devs, maybe Web 2.0 devs who are coming in. I've seen a lot of people, and I have friends who maybe aren't full-time crypto who are just like Solana just doesn't work, unplug it and plug it back in kind of a deal, like what's going on there because it's very different from Ethereum.But, in my mind, it's an incredible piece of technology that's been built, and there's reasons why certain things have hiccups at certain times, but it doesn't mean it's a bad design. It just means that we're testing in prod. We're moving this thing pretty fast. What I wanted to do is help shed light what is actually happening because as I learned about it, it gave me more confidence in Solana as a whole, the platform, understanding what the growing pains actually were under the hood.Chase (17:02):Whether people like to admit it or not, every blockchain, in its infancy, has suffered very, very similar problems. They're continuously working to improve this with QUICK and other different options that are going just make this more sustainable. The best thing we can do is be honest about it. We have Solana Docs. They're highly technical documentation. They're not necessarily developer experience friendly unless you're a very specific type of learner with a very large brain. The first time I read it, I probably absorbed 10%. The next time I got another 25%. Then, it took me five or six or seven times before I grasped everything that was happening in there. It serves a very specific purpose. Most of that documentation, the brunt of it, was written years ago by the co-founders. It can use some improvement, but, at the time, we're like let's move fast. Let's get the community contributing and kind of get the Cookbook built out.It turned out really great. It has a half a million page views, just short of half a million, which is insane since that just goes to show you how valuable it is, and how valuable your contributions are. The same reason why we have these little developer advocacy teams that join weekly meetings with us, so they can know what's going on and just help. The goal is to get some experience, and then eventually get hired by whoever you want to get hired by. Luckily for you, that seems to have worked out and that's amazing.Brian (18:25):No, the Cookbook's been an awesome experience, and, definitely, shout out Jacob Creech and Leesam [inaudible 00:18:31] and Loris and Colin and all those people who are working hard on it. It's been very organic, and I think that's kind of true of the whole Solana developer ecosystem as a whole is that it's an aptly named podcast, Chewing Glass. But, there's a reason why people are dedicating their free time outside of work to this because it's really awesome. The Cookbook, in my mind, is the best way if you're sort of on the sidelines, or you've maybe built a small project, and you don't really know how to go from here, getting involved with that is definitely the best move I think you can make. Contributing to the space, as a whole, helping other people learn. The best way I've ever learned is writing for other people. Then, once you do do that, it's really easy to connect with others who are building in the space. There's so much to do that you'll get picked up by somebody, for sure.Chase (19:12):It's kind of crazy. When that Cookbook just exploded, also, shout out the SuperteamDAO for actually helping solve [crosstalk 00:19:20].Brian (19:19):Yeah, totally there.Chase (19:20):They really crushed it. Watching that organic just inflow of people that are like, hey, I'll do this thing. I'll do that thing, and they just did it. For a ghost chain, we actually seem to have a lot of developers in the ecosystem.Brian (19:32):Anecdotally, I've seen just an explosion of people who've reached out to me saying, hey, I read your stuff and I want to learn more. What's the best way to get involved? I think that gut feel of the developer buzz and people who are spending their nights and weekends trying to wrap their head around this. I think that's the best kind of indicator you can really have because, at the end of the day, there's a lot out there. But, if you can get people who are actually interested in putting in the sweat to actually learn about this thing that's not always easy right off the bat, but even if they're just interested in it's going to take mind sharing. That's how we can better.Chase (20:08):Yeah. Every day, I'm blown away, but I don't have to reach out to anybody. It's just all people reaching out. Obviously, I love to hear that they're reaching out to you and everybody in the ecosystem has their DMs open. If you write an article, expect for people to come and ask you for advice, and that tone has been set. It started with Anatoly with this whole openness thing, and him and Raj with their DMs open, went down to me, and then to the community. Then, it just keeps spreading and spreading, and everybody's really just trying, out there, to help each other. Without that sort of kind of vibe, you and I wouldn't have met. We wouldn't have worked together. None of these things would've happened.Brian (20:45):I think that's definitely the most important thing is keeping that vibe set because I could have just as easily gone away, but I hopped in an Anchor discord right when it was just getting started. There's people like Armani, but then others like CQFD and Don Diablo and other people who are in those channels taking time out of their day to help me out. Once I learned it, I felt like I had to pay it forward or wanted to pay it forward really and connect with more people. I think as long as we can keep that momentum going, that's a good thing.Chase (21:18):For sure. You talked about, you were doing some Web 3.0 stuff. You saw that the token program was completely rewritten in TypeScript.Brian (21:25):Yeah. Pretty cool.Chase (21:27):Have you touched that yet? Have you played around with it.Brian (21:28):I played around with it a little bit. Haven't done a whole lot there, but I definitely plan to. I think one of the things that I was most interested in when I came here was Web 3.0, web3.js because it's just so simple. It's like an NPM package or a yarn install. You can get up and running with that. I had an idea of making a little site that was a little bit interactive where you could have a snippet of code, say how to send a SOL to somebody, and then you click that. Then, on the right, it's actually rendering and showing what that actually looks like. But, I think the Cookbook has done a pretty good job. My idea kind of started right around when the Cookbook launched, so I've focused my efforts there, on the Cookbook, but I would say that should be a focus of mine and a bunch of other people who are interested in contributing. It's just improving the developer experience on Web 3.0 right now. There's a lot documentation-wise that I think we could improve.Chase (22:22):Even some of the Solana Program Library, for instance, the Solana Token Program JS library, which they dot bindings in the documentation, that doesn't exist for every program. You would, literally, just have to write your own custom transactions and instructions to be able to use it. We are adding that to our little roadmap. I'm sure there's additional components and extensions we can add to these things. We're working on it.Brian (22:51):I think it's the right time to be contributing towards that kind of shared resource like that. Another one that I found that isn't Solana Native programs, but the Saber team has done a great job with their Saber common repos. I think they've set a really great example for other projects that if they want to win, they got to have the whole ecosystem win. They got to grow the pie, open sourcing code and sharing what you know with people. Everyone I've interacted with across all projects has just been awesome so far. I would really love to see that continue.Chase (23:20):I do this every episode. I'm going to put you on the spot and just kind of ask you, give some advice.Brian (23:27):I thought about this. I'd seen your two other episodes, so I pulled a tweet from Armani, which if I can read here because this is what had actually, finally got me kind of off the couch and contributing. This is September 2021. He says, "For every new technology, the pace of innovation exceeds the pace of education. If there's tons of examples to copy and paste, you're late. If you're confused because there's no docs, good. You've discovered a secret that is yet to be revealed to the rest of the world."I saw that right when I was kicking around the idea of maybe I should make an Anchor thing. Ah, I'm busy. I got all this other stuff. If I got a puppy, all this kind of stuff to take care of. But, I would a hundred percent agree with what he tweeted there. I think that's a legendary tweet. If it's confusing, good. Just keep at it. Then, I would say make a really simple project about as simple as you can. For me, it was an app that basically said, do you like crunchy peanut butter or do you like smooth peanut butter? You connect your Phantom wallet, and you vote for an option. The program records it. It's still live to this day. You can check it out, PBvote.com.Chase (24:32):Nice plug.Brian (24:33):Nice plug for the peanut butter there. I'm not sponsored by any peanut butter companies. But, that, for me, was really what got me going. I had set a deadline. I'd said, okay, I have to have this live in two weeks. I think giving yourself that deadline is actually the most important thing because so many people come in. They say, hey, Solana is cool, but then they get distracted by something else because there's something new happening in this space every day. It's easier to watch the price of things, but sticking to a deadline, and even if you fail, but knowing why you failed.If you're under pressure, and you can get something out in two weeks or less, just write about your journey. Just say this is what I built. It's simple, but it's live. Here's the source code. Here's the link, and this is what worked for me. This is what didn't work for me. This thing sucked. This thing was great. Just create a Twitter and tweet about it. I guarantee if you do that, people will reach out because you've probably touched some piece of code that someone else has written and they want to hear feedback on how that was. Then, you have your own experience you can write about, and maybe you can share something that helps other people build in the space. It's all about contributing really. Once you contribute, other people really want to reach out.Chase (25:39):It really just becomes this perpetual cycle of contributing, sharing. Somebody else uses it, and feels the same way, and it just keeps going you going. That's all we want. I'm just there screaming on Twitter to fuel the fire. You made a great point. Nobody's made that one yet. Bravo to you, not about the peanut butter, but about the fact that set a plan because all of us as engineers, in our past, have been like, I'm going to do this thing. You set no timeframe. You start on it, and then you never get back to it. Then, you have about 500 things that you've started, and then you never touch any of them, so really writing that down, setting that timeframe, setting that goal. You got to find a way to hold yourself accountable.Things I've done in the past, starting Chewing Glass, about starting this show. I didn't ask anybody at the company. I just tweeted, "I'm going to start a podcast." If I didn't, people would start asking me about it later, and then I would look like a liar. I had to do it, so accountability can really come from just tweeting because if people follow you, they're going to throw it in your face one day, and nobody likes that.Brian (26:43):I'd say if you're still listening this podcast, if you've made it this far in Solana, you're interested enough to build something. Build it, and then tweet about it. You probably are interested in following people like Armani, people like Chase, people like Anatoly, and share it. If you build something, people will see it, and then you'll have kind of innate sense of accountability because you'll be connected those people, and you won't want to let them down. It'll just totally consume your life. But, it's awesome.Chase (27:07):By the way, if you build something really cool, or you write something really cool, tag me in it. I'll share it so other people can find it, and then you can inspire other people to-Brian (27:18):Join a hackathon. Win some money.Chase (27:20):Exactly. Anyways, Brian, this was awesome. I'm so glad we got to have this call. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for talking to me. Any last words?Brian (27:31):Thank you, Chase. I mean, this whole past couple months has totally exceeded my expectations, and there's real opportunity in this space. I think if you're listening to this, reach out to Chase, build something. He's a man who knows everybody. He can connect you to the right people, and he can teach you a lot. I'm super thankful for knowing him, and I'm super thankful for this space.Chase (27:51):All right, man. Have a good one. Cheers.

Happy New Year! How do you feel about resolutions? This week Charlie and Frankie are discussing the January tradition and asking: is 2022 the year we should rethink the entire thing? Plus, Frankie shares her revelation on anger and Charlie realises she might well be people-phobic. Also on the agenda: PDAs, pasta, the UK's best book shops and the staggeringly fabulous return of Cher. To hear more from us, sign up at TheWingwoman.co.uk to receive our free newsletter. Or get in touch with any questions or feedback at thewingwomanofficial@gmail.com. Links from the episode: A Loving Defence of New Year's Resolutions - Michelle Ruiz, Vogue.co.uk The Modern House podcast with Margaret Howell An A-Z of Pasta: Stories, Shapes, Sauces, Recipes

Profiling, PDAs and Dom-top energy.

With highway fatalities up by 8% compared to the same period in a non pandemic time, whereas vehicle miles travelled has come down, here to discuss what we can be doing as individuals, as companies, as a society, to combat these alarming trends, is Robert Sumwalt, retired NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) Chairman. “The NTSB is a federal agency charged by Congress to investigate transportation accidents, to determine the probable cause, and issue safety recommendations to keep those accidents and crashes from happening.”How external influences, i.e. handheld mobile devices, PDAs etc are distracting drivers and causing crashes, what teen driver safety initiatives parents can implement to improve the chances of a teen driving safely, the noteworthy trends in road safety that are alarming Robert, his thoughts on driverless cars and why they will have a profound effect on improving safety and improving efficiency on the roadways, and his sobering words around the human toll from transportation accidents: “Part of my responsibilities as chairman of the board, before we go into a board meeting to deliberate a particular accident or crash is to meet with family members within hours of the tragedy, their emotions still raw. And one thing that I take away is that life is so precious, and we see how easily it can be snuffed out.”Don't miss Robert Sumwalt on this episode of Global Road Safety.On today's podcast:The mission of the NTSBHow human factors influence driving accidentsTeen driver safety initiativesWhy highway fatalities are up 8%Why driverless cars will improve safetyThe human toll of transportation accidents Links:NTSB

This week we're talking about mindset and how it impacts our marketing. Why do we get in our own way with our marketing? I've seen it over and over again. I bet that right now, you know what to do for your marketing. You have great ideas that would work...If only you put them into practice. So why do we do that – hold back from taking actions we know would help grow our businesses? Today we're focusing on three specific patterns of thinking that allow us to get in our own way, and some new ways of thinking about ourselves and about marketing to help challenge those thought patterns.I want to help you get visible in your community so you can help more people with acupuncture. Let's move through some common limiting beliefs so you have confidence in your marketing and can reach more patients!Show Notes:Acupuncture Marketing School (15 PDAs, NCCAOM)Fiverr.comUpwork.comSupport the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/michellegrasek)

Welcome back!------- Before we dive in, I want to share that Marketing Ethics for Acupuncturists (2 NCCAOM PDAs in the Ethics category) is on sale this week for 30% off!>> Click here and use code ETHICS30 to save!My goal for this course was to make it:1) Quick and easy to complete! 2) Interesting and fun, with info that we don't usually learn in an Ethics class. I know Ethics PDAs can be pretty dry, so I did my best to inject some fun into this one! We even watch a short Monty Python skit in the "Ethics of Email Marketing" chapter.This is a pre-recorded online course, so you can go through it at your own pace. If you need to get your Ethics PDAs out of the way, this is a great choice!-------Let's talk networking. If you're an introvert like me, you probably don't LOVE networking events. But there ARE steps you can take to make them easier, more comfortable, and more productive. And that's what I want to share with you today.I've noticed that, at least where I'm located, in-person events are slowly making a comeback. My local Chamber of Commerce hosted an in-person networking event this month, for the first time in over a year.But my marketing students who identify as introverts have let me know that they're not exactly prepared to dive back into networking events - they're out of practice!I'll be honest - I feel the same. It doesn't matter how long I've been in business or how long I've been teaching marketing, networking isn't my strength. So I use these five tips myself to make networking more comfortable and help me get visible in my community.I think they're going to help you a ton. Enjoy!Show Notes:Acupuncture Marketing for Introverts (2 PDAs)Save 30% on Marketing Ethics for Acupuncturists (2 PDAs) with discount code ETHICS30 (Expires 6/28 at midnight PST)Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/michellegrasek)