Podcast appearances and mentions of peter oh

In this episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast, host Preena Shroff, a third-year student at Northwestern University, interviews Peter Waitzman, the CEO of Expedition Money and a 1999 graduate of Weinberg College with a degree in Economics.   Transcript: Preena: Welcome to Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Preena Shroff and I'm your student host of this special Weinberg in the World episode. I'm a third-year student majoring in neuroscience and global health with a minor in data science, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Peter Waitzman, who graduated from Weinberg College in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts and Economics. Peter is now the CEO of Expedition Money, a financial wellness program aiming to provide educational content and coaching to help individuals and families achieve financial independence. Peter, thank you so much for being here with us today. Peter: Well, thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here. Preena: Yeah. We are so excited to learn about your work in finance, but would love to start out with maybe how your career path was shaped by your time at Northwestern. So if you can tell us more about your undergraduate experience, what were some impactful classes, extracurriculars or mentorship experiences that you had which impacted your postgraduate career? Peter: Yeah. So as you mentioned, I came to Northwestern for economics and got immersed in that student body. So a lot of my friends were economics majors. And something similar that you and I share is that I lived in Ayers CCI at the time, which also had a lot of economics people, especially with its commerce theme. So from classwork to just the living experience on campus and even my social life were really surrounding me with people that were like-minded. And economics encompasses a lot of different things, but one of the things that I really liked that is a little bit outside the coursework right now is that it connected me with some of my really good friends who are really good friends today, but we were able to do stuff together, whether it was in classes or starting businesses on campus or doing projects together or researching or just sitting around in the lobby and kicking around ideas or reading the Harvard Business Review or whatever, just having people that share some of the same ideas. And a lot of that was some entrepreneurship. I think it was a little too early to think about that at the time. We didn't really think about starting businesses kind of that freshman, sophomore year, but it was just nice to be in that culture. And then when I started taking classes, people would turn you on to certain things. So one of the classes that I surprisingly liked, it wasn't necessarily in economics, but was the public speaking class. And I remember one of the exercises there was to take a controversial topic and take one side of it and defend it. And I really liked that because what it made you realize is that not everything is going to be a win-win-win situation for everyone. So sometimes you're going to have to take something and you're going to have to do some convincing with it. And it really impressed upon me that you're going to have to be, one, a good communicator when you get out into the real world, make the case for what you're doing, be succinct, get your point across, those types of things, and that's going to be really helpful. And then all of the economics classes that came on top of that, just to help you understand how the world works and incentives and the market dynamics and all of those types of things really was a nice way to put that puzzle together so that when you came out of school, you had a good perspective, a good base for developing what you wanted to work on or go into your career. And obviously, ultimately, I went that entrepreneurial route. Preena: Absolutely. Yeah. It's pretty cool that the residential college system was where you found a lot of those connections right off the bat starting in college. So go Ayers. My unbiased opinion is Ayers is the best residential college. Peter: One thing, it's funny you call it Ayers, because Ayers wasn't added on until I was there. So at that time, Mr. Ayers was getting involved and so we put the name on there. So to me, and for people of my vintage, it's still CCI, but I like how some people now know it as Ayers, so very cool. Preena: Yeah. So let's talk more about beyond Northwestern and what led you on the career path. So I know you talked about different econ classes that kind shaped your experience. What skills were you able to build upon that have been critical in your field today? Peter: Yeah. So one of the things that Northwestern directly led to was going in the economics world, a lot of people come out of college and go into consulting and it can kind of be a natural transition into the real world for people. And I did that for a couple years. So I did two years in consulting before I went into banking and then investment management, and then financial planning. And so the dots, the path there is actually not super uncommon. I don't know that it's a super common path, but it makes a lot of sense, I think, being naturally born out of the economics seed from Northwestern, and a lot of people who go into consulting maybe kind of branch off into different things. But I kind of still follow that financial path. And what that did for me at the time was just give me a lot of exposure to how things work. So one of the things that I realized from economics is that you get a lot of macro picture, kind of big picture, even if you're doing microeconomics, it's kind of very generalized. But when you get out into the workforce and you start working as a consultant, you kind of understand how business works and the business requirements and those things that go into big projects. But then when I went to the bank as an analyst, you really start seeing real-world stuff. You're looking at data that is moving the needle on the products or services that you provide. And then when I went into financial planning and investment management, you're starting to paint that side of the picture as well. How does this impact individuals and what are the motivations there and the incentives and what are people using, and how does the top level of banking and financial services providers fit into what the consumer needs on the front lines? And so having that broader picture really helped me then continue to move forward, and that's when I started moving away from the products and services side of things into what is generally more financial wellness. So how do we make people healthier, happier, more fulfilled, maybe chase retirement early, balance life and work better, raise a family, kind of have your cake and eat it too. Just generally be able to live and exist in life, which is very difficult. I've even said the game is kind of rigged these days. It's really hard to make the amount of money, and you may not feel it now, but we kind of live in a high inflation environment, and there's so many challenges for people. It's either earning enough money or finding a place that's cheap enough to live or having a job that's secure. The myriad of things that really plague people and things that people struggle with. And so that's why then I started to step back and actually worked... I was working for a large financial services company at the time and they wanted to launch a financial wellness project, something a little bit more encompassing, a little more general. And so I went into the home office and then we started building that and I spent a few years doing that. And then I continued the path of financial wellness and building financial wellness programs for a couple other companies after that. So ended up helping develop financial wellness companies or financial wellness programs for three companies following that, and then went off on my own and built the financial wellness program that I really wanted to build. So that's how I ended up getting there. So kind of a lot of different steps. It's not necessarily A, B, C, D, but it didn't really deviate as far away as I think a lot of career paths can or they can really pivot. And I certainly embrace that too. And for the people that kind of want to go off and do something that's very different from what they got trained in, there's never maybe the perfect opportunity to do that, so you just want to do it. Preena: Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense that you said you had a couple different jobs working in the industry before building upon your own program. So I guess I kind of wanted to ask, maybe the mentorship aspect of that, do you know if there's anyone who specifically provided a particular mentorship experience for you? Or what advice do you have for students who are looking for support along their career paths? Peter: Yeah. Mentorship has been one of those things that I think has really evolved over the last couple of years. Not even the last couple of years, but over the last couple of decades. And so when I was a student and then even when I went and left school and actually participated in the mentorship program to Northwestern students at the time, so at that time I was meeting a couple students, and this was fairly early on in my career, there's a lot of value to that. I feel a little bit like mentorship has changed in a way that on one hand, people who can be and should be mentors and have that life experience and maybe are an expert in their industry or subject matter experts are almost gun-shy about becoming mentors because they're worried about the time commitment, they're worried about, hey, the imposter syndrome of it, even though maybe they shouldn't be. And so it's harder these days I think to have formal mentorship relationships than it ever has been in the past, especially when there isn't structure. It's not part of a company, and sometimes in a company they'll have a mentorship program and they will take this person and pair them up with this person. And so one of the things that I've talked about is not necessarily putting that pressure on you, because the benefit of having a mentor is awesome, or the benefit of even just having the opportunity to do a Q&A or to pick the brain of someone who maybe has gone the path that you want to go is super valuable. In just a short conversation, you might get some insights of, "Hey, this works, this doesn't," or, "Based on your personality, I think you should try this," or, "Here's a person I want you to meet." And they can be so valuable, so important. Just that short amount of time can save you so much trial and error or so many headaches on your own. And so without putting that pressure on people, what I say is that you should just feel free to reach out. I know that we have some directories of Northwestern alumni or people that you just meet on LinkedIn or maybe even a connection somewhere else, but, hey, can you make this introduction? Can you sit down with me for 30 minutes? Can I buy you a cup of coffee? Can I just have a Zoom meeting? Can we just talk about some things because I have some questions? And even if you don't establish a formal mentorship relationship, I think just having that connection is really valuable and it opens the door later to having another one. And you actually might have a formal-like mentor relationship that doesn't fall under the category or get the label. And, actually, to be honest, even now, it's easier than ever, I think, because let's say there is someone in your industry that you want to talk to, you slide into their DMs or send them a message, or social media can make some of these connections sometimes. So just being able to pick their brain, like I said, is really valuable. And if you can have a formal mentor, someone who will stick with you over longer periods of time, awesome too. Awesome too. But sometimes it just helps to take away that pressure of that commitment over a long period of time and just start with that conversation and then see where it goes. Because honestly, sometimes you might move away from that industry or that path or whatever it might be, and there's someone else is going to help you, and not having that formal relationship allows you to feel less commitment to try to just hold onto a relationship and not go somewhere else that might get you some better information too, so kind of my thoughts. Preena: Absolutely. Peter: And just likewise, people had questions for me. I'm always happy to respond to emails or to set up a meeting or grab a cup of coffee or whatever it might be, because I really want people to get the right information. I want to be an open book. I want people to not make the same mistakes I did and have better efficiency and more fulfillment and all these other things. And obviously that's why I put together my program. But trying to get people to short circuit that, find that wormhole to their delta quadrant as fast as possible, I think that's really meaningful to people when life can be so chaotic anyway. Preena: Yeah, I think what I'm gathering from what you're saying is communication is really important, and just getting better, getting practice, talking with people, getting to know the background of other people and take from that what advice they can provide for you. Peter: And you never know what short conversation... I totally agree with you because even for you and me, we just had a short in the line conversation once, and you never know where those relationships are going to go and those connections and the conversation that you have that you might find you have a similar thread in life or whatever that might be, sometimes those things can be really meaningful and last a lifetime. So for sure. Yeah. Don't underestimate any moment. Preena: Yeah. So speaking of communication route, I know you started out as a content creator. How would you say your experiences as in the content creator back when you were starting off your career, how can that be applied to students navigating social media today? And then what challenges might you anticipate if you had started your career, for example, next year? Peter: Yeah. Man, this could be a huge all encompassing conversation. I think what I want to boil it down to today is the common denominator of the value of attention, the value of having a platform and the value of having visibility. Because it's not just about, say, marketing a product. Honestly, when a business is trying to use social media, they're usually trying to get their products and services out there, build their reputation, expand their brand, all these other things. But I think one of the things that we undervalue as an individual, and we talked a little bit about communication, that social media can be such a powerful way to expand the reach of our communication. So if we have that communication. And whether it's finding a job or raising your visibility in the industry, or making a connection for other people, or trying to make an impact on your community or your movement or whatever it is, you can have a great message, great skills, but if no one's there to hear you, it's like, does a tree make a sound if it falls in the forest? But if you can figure out how to leverage social media to expand your reach, that can be so powerful. I'll tell you what. Right now, economy's a little slow, people are trying to find jobs. A few years ago there were graduates, wonderful, talented students looking for jobs, and an advantage was to have some of your content already out there, some of the things that you wrote about, opinion pieces, papers that you wrote for school, whatever it might be, just things you were passionate about. Even if it wasn't expansive and Mr. Beast level of type of content, just having some of that could be a differentiator when you're out looking for a job or reaching out to someone to be a mentor or to get a volunteer position. And it doesn't have to just be social media. It can be a book. I've written some books in the past. Those have helped get my message out. It can be doing workshops or presentations or online webinars or whatever you want to do, but don't underestimate the power of the technology and especially these free platforms where I think because they're free, a lot of people are already using them, we say, "Hey, I want to be known for what I do," but sometimes you have to be your best advocate. You're the person advocating for yourself and putting that out there and leveraging the platform. So when I think about content creating, it's not just about trying to get attention for no reason, but what's the purpose? And then for a lot of people, I think that can be your own satisfaction. So like a charity or a cause you're committed to, but it can also be just for your professional advancement or improvement or the next position or speaking engagement or whatever it might be. Preena: Right. So for you, it was your passion for finance and helping others achieve financial wellness and also sort of helping you build your platform to engage with others. Peter: Yeah. And so I actually have a number of YouTube channels, and one of them is called Expedition Money Snacks, where it's just one-minute-long videos, very short kind of TikTok format, but here's a concept, here's an idea, maybe you haven't heard of this, or maybe it's a quick bit of news. I try to make things that are very bite-sized. And then I have my Expedition Money. That's more long-form. And those can be 20, 30 minute videos where I deep dive into a topic. So what you want to do is not necessarily put everyone into the same box. People are going to consume in different ways, and which you want not necessarily is put yourself center, but you want to put their consumption desires front and center, and you want to try to serve to them because if you're not getting the attention, if you're not getting that content in front of people, then it doesn't really matter. I can create a lot of content and no one wants to consume it, and so then it's not really having an impact. But if I can craft it in such a way that, hey, it's fun or it's interesting or it's bite-sized, whatever it is, then at least we have a chance at maybe having that deeper conversation. We might have a chance at talking about more developed or nuanced or complex financial topics later. So just trying to keep that door open and keep the information top of mind for people front and center. Preena: Right. Yeah. For sure. Okay. I think we can kind of turn or pivot a little bit to more so the expedition money side of things. I guess a couple of questions I had regarding your program is why did you decide to make your own program instead of continuing to partner with financial service organizations? Peter: Yeah, it's a really good question. It's actually a pretty easy one for me to answer, and that's because every time I was at a company, there are usually some guidelines that the company has for some reason. Maybe it's company policy, maybe it's the type of products and services that they're in, and they don't want to necessarily create content or tools that maybe aren't in their wheelhouse. And I've done it for financial services companies, I've done it for HR benefits companies, and the reasons are different. And so in many ways, every time I was building a program, there was just something out of bounds in that program. And I really felt like a true comprehensive effective financial wellness program would embrace everything. So, for example, one of the big topics and one of the topics I've talked about for years is side hustles. So if you're familiar with the term side hustle, it's kind of like moonlighting, maybe doing something part-time, something as a hobby, as a passion project in addition to your day job. But a lot of people in the industry don't like talking about side hustles because, hey, they think, well, as an employer, I don't want to believe that my people have side hustles. I want to believe that they're fully fulfilled here. Or as a financial services company, we don't want people becoming entrepreneurs because that muddies their taxes or whatever it might be. And so side hustles have been kind of a third rail topic in a lot of ways. And for the last couple of years I actually was on the speaking circuit a lot doing a presentation called Go from Getting By to Getting Ahead: Why Side Hustles Must Be Part of the Financial Conversation and trying to get financial services companies to embrace the topic of side hustles. Because for a lot of people, they're 9:00 to 5:00. The math does not necessarily equal everything that they need out of life. It doesn't equal taking care of their living expenses today. It doesn't put their kids through college, it doesn't put enough money away for savings and retirement and fun and all these things. So there's this gap, this delta that we need to address, and sometimes side hustles can do it. And so one of the things that I wanted to do was build that program that didn't have anything that was off of a reservation, per se. We could talk about anything that would help people get ahead financially, find financial independence, whether it's money hacks or rethinking, like the tiny house movement or minimalism or create a budget or whatever it might be. And so that's really why I did the program, so that I could have creative control over it and put in all these topics. And so that's the genesis of what I did. Now, not to say that any of those programs that I helped build or any of the other programs out there aren't good, because they're wonderful. And if you can find what you need in any of those programs, absolutely use them. But that's what I wanted is just something even more comprehensive and more encompassing than the programs I'd seen out there before. Preena: For sure. Peter: With that, there are a number of drawbacks. You're owning everything from A to Z. For a lot of people that are involved in, say, The Garage or trying to figure out entrepreneurial problems at school or in business, there's a lot of other things that you have to take into account when starting a business that are above and beyond just building the business. So it makes it more complex, but I think there can be a lot of reward on the back end too. Preena: Yeah. Yeah. It's really incredible that you were able to build a platform that addresses all those concerns that you kind of had when you were coming out of college and maybe starting to build your finances as well. Peter: And the reason I did was because when I came out of college, I came out of college with student debt. I know that different schools have different policies around that now, but I came out with student loans. I started working right away because I had to. I didn't come out with a lot of money and I was kind of chasing my tail, especially the first few years out of school. I was working to just have my lifestyle. And it was really at that moment that I was like, "How do I get out of debt?" So I think I had in many ways a typical story. And from that, I found these tools, and that's where one of my first books comes from, Get Rid of Debt Fast, and that was my journey on that. And then getting stability, investing in your career, figuring out how to get promoted, getting to the next level and building that career and side hustles and all these other things. So all of this is really based on my journey of what I found worked. So it's not necessarily just theoretical. I wasn't an ivory tower kind of guy, silver spoon, "Oh, here's what the masses need and I'm blessing you with my knowledge." This is really kind of lessons that I took that helped me get from the bottom rung to the middle rung. Preena: Yeah. So what are some key financial tips that you give to students like us today? Peter: Oh, it really probably depends on where students are, but one of the things that I would say is that it's, I think, really important... In some ways, you're not going to be able to avoid debt. Some students are going to come out with some credit card debt or student loans or a car loan. Some students are going to come out of school and they're not going to have any money. So if you want to get an apartment and put furniture in it and all these other things, you're going to have some debt. What I would say is that tackle the debt relentlessly because it's kind of like wading in the ocean. If you've ever been to the ocean and there's kind of even calm waves, there's always this wave action. And if you've ever been in the water and been okay and then gotten splashed with the water and breathed in at the wrong moment, all of a sudden you're kind of choking on water a little bit, and it's really hard to recover from that, even though it's not like a life-threatening thing. But all you want to do is take a pause, you want to kind of have a timeout. And the problem is if you get behind on that debt, the bills keep coming, the wave action keeps coming, and it's really hard to reset and refocus, and it can easily get away from you. So one of the things that I really work with people right now on is, all right, what do we have, and then what creative strategies can we use to get you out of these a lot faster? And in many ways, many normal debt programs say, "All right, it's going to take five, six years to get rid of this." Well, with some of these new tools, you can get out of that debt in three months or four months or 60 days or a few weeks. And so what can we do to do those things? Because those can make a really meaningful difference and get people into some breathing space so that you can focus on your career, so that you can focus on doing a good job, expanding your skills, getting out there, finding a mentor, and start getting ahead. Preena: Okay. Yeah. So would you say it's about putting money in the right places? So when you have some sort of income, just knowing where to allocate that accordingly? Or is it more of like a spending saving balance? Peter: Yeah, I'd say it's all of the above because you're absolutely right. What it comes down to is, I think for a lot of us in the typical model is I get paid, I take some of this money, I cover my living expenses, I put some of this money in savings, I allocate some of this to debt, and that can be fine. That strategy in its simplicity can work. But there are also ways to say, "Hey, mathematically, what is the best thing for me to do? Is it to allocate this money here or is it better to put a bigger slice of that over here so that I can get rid of my debt faster or slower?" I mean, it depends on interest rates and all these other things, but the idea is what is the most optimal thing I can do with every dollar that I'm bringing in? Like you said, where can I put that? As opposed to just doing things out of habit that are general rules that we've learned. And so those can make a big difference. In some cases, people have average life and kind of the typical rules work just fine, but for a lot of people, there's something unique, there's a certain way we're earning money. Maybe we have a fluctuating income or you're in sales or whatever it might be, and so how do we take what is unique to your life and then use that as an advantage to get you closer to where you want to be? And so usually you have to take a look at that, and that can be through financial coaching, you can find a professional to do that, but a little bit of help there can make a big, big difference. So a big, big difference in either paying off your house or paying off your car or putting money away. A lot of people want to travel. One of the things I've been talking a lot about is how to take a gap year. How do you take a year off from work? Maybe you work a couple years and maybe you want to take a year off, do a little travel, see the sights, have a social life, kind of get away from it all, reset, write your book, whatever it might be, Instagram 365 days of beautiful living. And so how can we practically do those things? And it can be done. But it has to have some intention. It has to have a little bit of a plan to make that happen. You can't just want it to happen and then expect, oh, look, fortunately everything I did the last year is going to make this happen, because that rarely ever works. Preena: Right. Yeah. For sure. Well, it was really great talking with you and learning about your career path and all the advice you have for students who are going through it right now. So thank you so much for joining us today. Peter: Thank you, Preena. It has been a pleasure doing this. And to all of the current students out there like you, keep pushing forward. I am super excited to see what you guys are going to do for the Northwestern community and the world in general. So keep on keeping on. Preena: Yeah. Thank you. Have a great day, everyone. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Weinberg in the World.

Peter van Hardenberg talks about Industrialists vs. Academics, Ink&Switch's evolution over time, the Hollywood Model, internal lab infrastructure, and more! Peter is the lab director and CEO of Ink&Switch, a private, creator oriented, computing research lab.  References Ink&Switch (and their many publications) The Hollywood Model in R&D Idea Machines Episode with Adam Wiggins Paul Erdós Transcript Peter Van Hardenberg [00:01:21] Ben: Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Peter van Hardenbergh. Peter is the lab director and CEO of Inkin switch. Private creator oriented, competing research lab. I talked to Adam Wiggins, one of inkind switches founders, [00:01:35] way back in episode number four. It's amazing to see the progress they've made as an organization. They've built up an incredible community of fellow travelers and consistently released research reports that gesture at possibilities for competing that are orthogonal to the current hype cycles. Peter frequently destroys my complacency with his ability to step outside the way that research has normally done and ask, how should we be operating, given our constraints and goals. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Peter. Would you break down your distinction between academics and industrialists [00:02:08] Peter: Okay. Academics are people whose incentive structure is connected to the institutional rewards of the publishing industry, right? You, you publish papers. And you get tenure and like, it's a, it's, it's not so cynical or reductive, but like fundamentally the time cycles are long, right? Like you have to finish work according to when, you know, submission deadlines for a conference are, you know, you're [00:02:35] working on something now. You might come back to it next quarter or next year or in five years, right? Whereas when you're in industry, you're connected to users, you're connected to people at the end of the day who need to touch and hold and use the thing. And you know, you have to get money from them to keep going. And so you have a very different perspective on like time and money and space and what's possible. And the real challenge in terms of connecting these two, you know, I didn't invent the idea of pace layers, right? They, they operate at different pace layers. Academia is often intergenerational, right? Whereas industry is like, you have to make enough money every quarter. To keep the bank account from going below zero or everybody goes home, [00:03:17] Ben: Right. Did. Was it Stuart Brand who invented pace [00:03:22] Peter: believe it was Stewart Brand. Pace layers. Yeah. [00:03:25] Ben: That actually I, I'd never put these two them together, but the, the idea I, I, I think about impedance mismatches between [00:03:35] organizations a lot. And that really sort of like clicks with pace layers Exactly. Right. Where it's like [00:03:39] Peter: Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think in a big way what we're doing at, Ink& Switch on some level is trying to provide like synchro mesh between academia and industry, right? Because they, the academics are moving on a time scale and with an ambition that's hard for industry to match, right? But also, Academics. Often I think in computer science are like, have a shortage of good understanding about what the real problems people are facing in the world today are. They're not disinterested. [00:04:07] Ben: just computer [00:04:08] Peter: Those communication channels don't exist cuz they don't speak the same language, they don't use the same terminology, they don't go to the same conferences, they don't read the same publications. Right. [00:04:18] Ben: Yeah. [00:04:18] Peter: so vice versa, you know, we find things in industry that are problems and then it's like you go read the papers and talk to some scientists. I was like, oh dang. Like. We know how to solve this. It's just nobody's built it. [00:04:31] Ben: Yeah. [00:04:32] Peter: Or more accurately it would be to say [00:04:35] there's a pretty good hunch here about something that might work, and maybe we can connect the two ends of this together. [00:04:42] Ben: Yeah. Often, I, I think of it as someone, someone has, it is a quote unquote solved problem, but there are a lot of quote unquote, implementation details and those implementation details require a year of work. [00:04:56] Peter: yeah, a year or many years? Or an entire startup, or a whole career or two? Yeah. And, and speaking of, Ink&Switch, I don't know if we've ever talked about, so a switch has been around for more than half a decade, right? [00:05:14] Peter: Yeah, seven or eight years now, I think I could probably get the exact number, but yeah, about that. [00:05:19] Ben: And. I think I don't have a good idea in my head over that time. What, what has changed about in, can switches, conception of itself and like how you do things. Like what is, what are some of the biggest things that have have changed over that time?[00:05:35] [00:05:35] Peter: So I think a lot of it could be summarized as professionalization. But I, I'll give a little brief history and can switch began because the. You know, original members of the lab wanted to do a startup that was Adam James and Orion, but they recognized that they didn't, they weren't happy with computing and where computers were, and they knew that they wanted to make something that would be a tool that would help people who were solving the world's problems work better. That's kinda a vague one, but You know, they were like, well, we're not physicists, we're not social scientists. You know, we can't solve climate change or radicalization directly, or you know, the journalism crisis or whatever, but maybe we can build tools, right? We know how to make software tools. Let's build tools for the people who are solving the problems. Because right now a lot of those systems they rely on are getting like steadily worse every day. And I think they still are like the move to the cloud disempowerment of the individual, like, you [00:06:35] know, surveillance technology, distraction technology. And Tristan Harris is out there now. Like hammering on some of these points. But there's just a lot of things that are like slow and fragile and bad and not fun to work with and lose your, you know, lose your work product. You know, [00:06:51] Ben: Yeah, software as a service more generally. [00:06:54] Peter: Yeah. And like, there's definitely advantages. It's not like, you know, people are rational actors, but something was lost. And so the idea was well go do a bit of research, figure out what the shape of the company is, and then just start a company and, you know, get it all solved and move on. And I think the biggest difference, at least, you know, aside from scale and like actual knowledge is just kind of the dawning realization at some point that like there won't really be an end state to this problem. Like this isn't a thing that's transitional where you kind of come in and you do some research for a bit, and then we figure out the answer and like fold up the card table and move on to the next thing. It's like, oh no, this, this thing's gotta stick around because these problems aren't gonna [00:07:35] go away. And when we get through this round of problems, we already see what the next round are. And that's probably gonna go on for longer than any of us will be working. And so the vision now, at least from my perspective as the current lab director, is much more like, how can I get this thing to a place where it can sustain for 10 years, for 50 years, however long it takes, and you know, to become a place that. Has a culture that can sustain, you know, grow and change as new people come in. But that can sustain operations indefinitely. [00:08:07] Ben: Yeah. And, and so to circle back to the. The, the jumping off point for this, which is sort of since, since it began, what have been some of the biggest changes of how you operate? How you, or just like the, the model more generally or, or things that you were [00:08:30] Peter: Yeah, so the beginning was very informal, but, so maybe I'll skip over the first like [00:08:35] little period where it was just sort of like, Finding our footing. But around the time when I joined, we were just four or five people. And we did one project, all of us together at a time, and we just sort of like, someone would write a proposal for what we should do next, and then we would argue about like whether it was the right next thing. And, you know, eventually we would pick a thing and then we would go and do that project and we would bring in some contractors and we called it the Hollywood model. We still call it the Hollywood model. Because it was sort of structured like a movie production. We would bring in, you know, to our little core team, we'd bring in a couple specialists, you know, the equivalent of a director of photography or like a, you know, a casting director or whatever, and you bring in the people that you need to accomplish the task. Oh, we don't know how to do Bluetooth on the web. Okay. Find a Bluetooth person. Oh, there's a bunch of crypto stuff, cryptography stuff. Just be clear on this upcoming project, we better find somebody who knows, you know, the ins and outs of like, which cryptography algorithms to use or [00:09:35] what, how to build stuff in C Sharp for Windows platform or Surface, whatever the, the project was over time. You know, we got pretty good at that and I think one of the biggest changes, sort of after we kind of figured out how to actually do work was the realization that. Writing about the work not only gave us a lot of leverage in terms of our sort of visibility in the community and our ability to attract talent, but also the more we put into the writing, the more we learned about the research and that the process of, you know, we would do something and then write a little internal report and then move on. But the process of taking the work that we do, And making it legible to the outside world and explaining why we did it and what it means and how it fits into the bigger picture. That actually like being very diligent and thorough in documenting all of that greatly increases our own understanding of what we did.[00:10:35] And that was like a really pleasant and interesting surprise. I think one of my sort of concerns as lab director is that we got really good at that and we write all these like, Obscenely long essays that people claim to read. You know, hacker News comments on extensively without reading. But I think a lot about, you know, I always worry about the orthodoxy of doing the same thing too much and whether we're sort of falling into patterns, so we're always tinkering with new kind of project systems or new ways of working or new kinds of collaborations. And so yeah, that's ongoing. But this, this. The key elements of our system are we bring together a team that has both longer term people with domain contexts about the research, any required specialists who understand like interesting or important technical aspects of the work. And then we have a specific set of goals to accomplish [00:11:35] with a very strict time box. And then when it's done, we write and we put it down. And I think this avoids number of the real pitfalls in more open-ended research. It has its own shortcomings, right? But one of the big pitfalls that avoids is the kind of like meandering off and losing sight of what you're doing. And you can get great results from that in kind of a general research context. But we're very much an industrial research context. We're trying to connect real problems to specific directions to solve them. And so the time box kind of creates the fear of death. You're like, well, I don't wanna run outta time and not have anything to show for it. So you really get focused on trying to deliver things. Now sometimes that's at the cost, like the breadth or ambition of a solution to a particular thing, but I think it helps us really keep moving forward. [00:12:21] Ben: Yeah, and, and you no longer have everybody in the lab working on the same projects, right. [00:12:28] Peter: Yeah. So today, at any given time, The sort of population of the lab fluctuates between sort of [00:12:35] like eight and 15 people, depending on, you know, whether we have a bunch of projects in full swing or you know, how you count contractors. But we usually, at the moment we have sort of three tracks of research that we're doing. And those are local first software Programmable Inc. And Malleable software. [00:12:54] Ben: Nice. And so I, I actually have questions both about the, the write-ups that you do and the Hollywood model and so on, on the Hollywood model. Do you think that I, I, and this is like, do you think that the, the Hollywood model working in, in a. Industrial Research lab is particular to software in the sense that I feel like the software industry, people change jobs fairly frequently. Contracting is really common. Contractors are fairly fluid and. [00:13:32] Peter: You mean in terms of being able to staff and source people?[00:13:35] [00:13:35] Ben: Yeah, and people take, like, take these long sabbaticals, right? Where it's like, it's not uncommon in the software industry for someone to, to take six months between jobs. [00:13:45] Peter: I think it's very hard for me to generalize about the properties of other fields, so I want to try and be cautious in my evaluation here. What I would say is that, I think the general principle of having a smaller core of longer term people who think and gain a lot of context about a problem and pairing them up with people who have fresh ideas and relevant expertise, does not require you to have any particular industry structure. Right. There are lots of ways of solving this problem. Go to a research, another research organization and write a paper with someone from [00:14:35] an adjacent field. If you're in academia, right? If you're in a company, you can do a partnership you know, hire, you know, I think a lot of fields of science have much longer cycles, right? If you're doing material science, you know, takes a long time to build test apparatus and to formulate chemistries. Like [00:14:52] Ben: Yeah. [00:14:52] Peter: someone for several years, right? Like, That's fine. Get a detach detachment from another part of the company and bring someone as a secondment. Like I think that the general principle though, of putting together a mixture of longer and shorter term people with the right set of skills, yes, we solve it a particular way in our domain. But I don't think that that's software u unique to software. [00:15:17] Ben: Would, would it be overreaching to map that onto professors and postdocs and grad students where you have the professor who is the, the person who's been working on the, the program for a long time has all the context and then you have postdocs and grad students [00:15:35] coming through the lab. [00:15:38] Peter: Again, I need to be thoughtful about. How I evaluate fields that I'm less experienced with, but both my parents went through grad school and I've certainly gotten to know a number of academics. My sense of the relationship between professors and or sort of PhD, yeah, I guess professors and their PhD students, is that it's much more likely that the PhD students are given sort of a piece of the professor's vision to execute. [00:16:08] Ben: Yeah. [00:16:09] Peter: And that that is more about scaling the research interests of the professor. And I don't mean this in like a negative way but I think it's quite different [00:16:21] Ben: different. [00:16:22] Peter: than like how DARPA works or how I can switch works with our research tracks in that it's, I it's a bit more prescriptive and it's a bit more of like a mentor-mentee kind of relationship as [00:16:33] Ben: Yeah. More training.[00:16:35] [00:16:35] Peter: Yeah. And you know, that's, that's great. I mean, postdocs are a little different again, but I think, I think that's different than say how DARPA works or like other institutional research groups. [00:16:49] Ben: Yeah. Okay. I, I wanted to see how, how far I could stretch the, stretch [00:16:55] Peter: in academia there's famous stories about Adosh who would. Turn up on your doorstep you know, with a suitcase and a bottle of amphetamines and say, my, my brain is open, or something to that effect. And then you'd co-author a paper and pay his room and board until you found someone else to send him to.   I think that's closer in the sense that, right, like, here's this like, great problem solver with a lot of like domain skills and he would parachute into a place where someone was working on something interesting and help them make a breakthrough with it. [00:17:25] Ben: Yeah. I think the, the thing that I want to figure out, just, you know, long, longer term is how to. Make those [00:17:35] short term collaborations happen when with, with like, I, I I think it's like, like there's some, there's some coy intention like in, in the sense of like Robert Kos around like organizational boundaries when you have people coming in and doing things in a temporary sense. [00:17:55] Peter: Yeah, academia is actually pretty good at this, right? With like paper co-authors. I mean, again, this is like the, the pace layers thing. When you have a whole bunch of people organized in an industry and a company around a particular outcome, You tend to have like very specific goals and commitments and you're, you're trying to execute against those and it's much harder to get that kind of like more fluid movement between domains. [00:18:18] Ben: Yeah, and [00:18:21] Peter: That's why I left working in companies, right? Cause like I have run engineering processes and built products and teams and it's like someone comes to me with a really good idea and I'm like, oh, it's potentially very interesting, but like, [00:18:33] Ben: but We [00:18:34] Peter: We got [00:18:35] customers who have outages who are gonna leave if we don't fix the thing, we've got users falling out of our funnel. Cause we don't do basic stuff like you just, you really have a lot of work to do to make the thing go [00:18:49] Ben: Yeah. [00:18:49] Peter: business. And you know, my experience of research labs within businesses is that they're almost universally unsuccessful. There are exceptions, but I think they're more coincidental than, than designed. [00:19:03] Ben: Yeah. And I, I think less and less successful over time is, is my observation that. [00:19:11] Peter: Interesting. [00:19:12] Ben: Yeah, there's a, there's a great paper that I will send you called like, what is the name? Oh, the the Changing Structure of American Innovation by She Aurora. I actually did a podcast with him because I like the paper so much. that that I, I think, yeah, exactly. And so going back to your, your amazing [00:19:35] write-ups, you all have clearly invested quite a chunk of, of time and resources into some amount of like internal infrastructure for making those really good. And I wanted to get a sense of like, how do you decide when it's worth investing in internal infrastructure for a lab? [00:19:58] Peter: Ooh. Ah, that's a fun question. Least at In and Switch. It's always been like sort of demand driven. I wish I could claim to be more strategic about it, but like we had all these essays, they were actually all hand coded HTML at one point. You know, real, real indie cred there. But it was a real pain when you needed to fix something or change something. Cause you had to go and, you know, edit all this H T M L. So at some point we were doing a smaller project and I built like a Hugo Templating thing [00:20:35] just to do some lab notes and I faked it. And I guess this is actually a, maybe a somewhat common thing, which is you do one in a one-off way. And then if it's promising, you invest more in it. [00:20:46] Ben: Yeah. [00:20:46] Peter: And it ended up being a bigger project to build a full-on. I mean, it's not really a cms, it's sort of a cms, it's a, it's a templating system that produces static HT m l. It's what all our essays come out of. But there's also a lot of work in a big investment in just like design and styling. And frankly, I think that one of the things that in can switch apart from other. People who do similar work in the space is that we really put a lot of work into the presentation of our work. You know, going beyond, like we write very carefully, but we also care a lot about like, picking good colors, making sure that text hyphenates well, that it, you know, that the the screencast has the right dimensions and, you know, all that little detail work and. It's expensive [00:21:35] in time and money to do, but I think it's, I think the results speak for themselves. I think it's worth it. [00:21:47] Ben: Yeah. I, and I mean, if, if the ultimate goal is to influence what people do and what they think, which I suspect is, is at least some amount of the goal then communicating it. [00:22:00] Peter: It's much easier to change somebody's mind than to build an entire company. [00:22:05] Ben: Yes. Well, [00:22:06] Peter: you wanna, if you wanna max, it depends. Well, you don't have to change everybody's mind, right? Like changing an individual person's mind might be impossible. But if you can put the right ideas out there in the right way to make them legible, then you'll change the right. Hopefully you'll change somebody's mind and it will be the right somebody. [00:22:23] Ben: yeah. No, that is, that is definitely true. And another thing that I am. Always obscenely obsessed, exceedingly impressed by that. In Switch. [00:22:35] Does is your sort of thoughtfulness around how you structure your community and sort of tap into it. Would you be willing to sort of like, walk me through how you think about that and like how you have sort of the, the different layers of, of kind of involvement? [00:22:53] Peter: Okay. I mean, sort of the, maybe I'll work from, from the inside out cuz that's sort of the history of it. So in the beginning there was just sort of the people who started the lab. And over time they recruited me and, and Mark Mcg again and you know, some of our other folk to come and, and sign on for this crazy thing. And we started working with these wonderful, like contractors off and on and and so the initial sort of group was quite small and quite insular and we didn't publish anything. And what we found was that. Once we started, you know, just that alone, the act of bringing people in and working with them started to create the beginning of a [00:23:35] community because people would come into a project with us, they'd infect us with some of their ideas, we'd infect them with some of ours. And so you started to have this little bit of shared context with your past collaborators. And because we have this mix of like longer term people who stick with the lab and other people who come and go, You start to start to build up this, this pool of people who you share ideas and language with. And over time we started publishing our work and we began having what we call workshops where we just invite people to come and talk about their work at Ink and Switch. And by at, I mean like now it's on a discord. Back in the day it was a Skype or a Zoom call or whatever. And the rule back then in the early days was like, if you want to come to the talk. You have to have given a talk or have worked at the lab. And so it was like very good signal to noise ratio in attendance cuz the only people who would be on the zoom call would be [00:24:35] people who you knew were grappling with those problems. For real, no looky lose, no, no audience, right? And over time it just, there were too many really good, interesting people who are doing the work. To fit in all those workshops and actually scheduling workshops is quite tiring and takes a lot of energy. And so over time we sort of started to expand this community a little further. And sort of now our principle is you know, if you're doing the work, you're welcome to come to the workshops. And we invite some people to do workshops sometimes, but that's now we have this sort of like small private chat group of like really interesting folk. And it's not open to the public generally because again, we, I don't want to have an audience, right? I want it to practitioner's space. And so over time, those people have been really influential on us as well. And having that little inner [00:25:35] circle, and it's a few hundred people now of people who, you know, like if you have a question to ask about something tricky. There's probably somebody in there who has tried it, but more significantly, like the answer will come from somebody who has tried it, not from somebody who will call you an idiot for trying or who will, right, like you, you avoid all the, don't read the comments problems because the sort of like, if anybody was like that, I would probably ask them to leave, but we've been fortunate that we haven't had any of that kind of stuff in the community. I will say though, I think I struggle a lot because I think. It's hard to be both exclusive and inclusive. Right, but exclusive community deliberately in the sense that I want it to be a practitioner's space and one where people can be wrong and it's not too performative, like there's not investors watching or your, your user base or whatever. [00:26:32] Ben: Yeah. [00:26:32] Peter: at the same time, [00:26:33] Ben: strangers. [00:26:34] Peter: [00:26:35] inclusive space where we have people who are earlier in their career or. From non-traditional backgrounds, you know, either academically or culturally or so on and so forth. And it takes constant work to be like networking out and meeting new people and like inviting them into this space. So it's always an area to, to keep working on. At some point, I think we will want to open the aperture further, but yeah, it's, it's, it's a delicate thing to build a community. [00:27:07] Ben: Yeah, I mean the, the, frankly, the reason I'm asking is because I'm trying to figure out the same things and you have done it better than basically anybody else that I've seen. This is, this is maybe getting too down into the weeds. But why did you decide that discourse or discord was the right tool for it? And the, the reason that I ask is that I personally hate sort of [00:27:35] streaming walls of texts, and I find it very hard to, to seriously discuss ideas in, in that format. [00:27:43] Peter: Yeah, I think async, I mean, I'm an old school like mailing list guy. On some level I think it's just a pragmatic thing. We use Discord for our internal like day-to-day operations like. Hey, did you see the pr? You know, oh, we gotta call in an hour with so-and-so, whatever. And then we had a bunch of people in that community and then, you know, we started having the workshops and inviting more people. So we created a space in that same discord where. You know, people didn't have to get pinged when we had a lab call and we didn't want 'em turning up on the zoom anyway. And so it wasn't so much like a deliberate decision to be that space. I think there's a huge opportunity to do better and you know, frankly, what's there is [00:28:35] not as designed or as deliberate as I would like. It's more consequence of Organic growth over time and just like continuing to do a little bit here and there than like sort of an optimum outcome. And it could, there, there's a lot of opportunity to do better. Like we should have newsletters, there should be more, you know, artifacts of past conversations with better organizations. But like all of that stuff takes time and energy. And we are about a small little research lab. So many people you know, [00:29:06] Ben: I, I absolutely hear you on that. I think the, the, the tension that I, I see is that people, I think like texting, like sort of stream of texts. Slack and, and discord type things. And, and so there's, there's the question of like, what can you get people to do versus like, what creates the, the right conversation environment?[00:29:35] And, and maybe that's just like a matter of curation and like standard setting. [00:29:42] Peter: Yeah, I don't know. We've had our, our rabbit trails and like derailed conversations over the years, but I think, you know, if you had a forum, nobody would go there. [00:29:51] Ben: Yeah. [00:29:52] Peter: like, and you could do a mailing list, but I don't know, maybe we could do a mailing list. That would be a nice a nice form, I think. But people have to get something out of a community to put things into it and you know, you have to make, if you want to have a forum or, or an asynchronous posting place, you know, the thing is people are already in Discord or slack. [00:30:12] Ben: exactly. [00:30:13] Peter: something else, you have to push against the stream. Now, actually, maybe one interesting anecdote is I did experiment for a while with, like, discord has sort of a forum post feature. They added a while back [00:30:25] Ben: Oh [00:30:25] Peter: added it. Nobody used it. So eventually I, I turned it off again. Maybe, maybe it just needs revisiting, but it surprised me that it wasn't adopted, I guess is what [00:30:35] I would say. [00:30:36] Ben: Yeah. I mean, I think it, I think the problem is it takes more work. It's very easy to just dash off a thought. [00:30:45] Peter: Yeah, but I think if you have the right community, then. Those thoughts are likely to have been considered and the people who reply will speak from knowledge [00:30:55] Ben: Yeah. [00:30:56] Peter: and then it's not so bad, right? [00:30:59] Ben: it's [00:30:59] Peter: The problem is with Hacker News or whatever where like, or Reddit or any of these open communities like you, you know, the person who's most likely to reply is not the person who's most helpful to apply. [00:31:11] Ben: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. And sort of switching tracks yet again, how so one, remind me how long your, your projects are, like how long, how big are the, is the time box. [00:31:28] Peter: the implementation phase for a standard income switch Hollywood project, which I can now call them standard, I think, cuz we've done like, [00:31:35] Ooh, let me look. 25 or so over the years. Let's see, what's my project count number at? I have a little. Tracker. Yeah, I think it's 25 today. So we've done about 20 some non-trivial number of these 10 to 12 weeks of implementation is sort of the core of the project, and the idea is that when you hit that start date, at the beginning of that, you should have the team assembled. You should know what you're building, you should know why you're building it, and you should know what done looks like. Now it's research, so inevitably. You know, you get two weeks in and then you take a hard left and like, you know, but that, that we write what's called the brief upfront, which is like, what is the research question we are trying to answer by funding this work and how do we think this project will answer it? Now, your actual implementation might change, or you might discover targets of opportunity along the way. But the idea is that by like having a, a narrow time box, like a, a team [00:32:35] that has a clear understanding of what you're trying to accomplish. And like the right set of people on board who already have all the like necessary skills. You can execute really hard for like that 10 to 12 weeks and get quite far in that time. Now, that's not the whole project though. There's usually a month or two upfront of what we call pre-infusion, kind of coming from the espresso idea that like you make better espresso if you take a little time at low pressure first to get ready with the shot, and so we'll do. You know, and duration varies here, but there's a period before that where we're making technical choices. Are we building this for the web or is this going on iPad? Are we gonna do this with rust and web assembly, or is this type script is this, are we buying Microsoft Surface tablets for this as we're like the ink behavior, right? So all those decisions we try and make up front. So when you hit the execution phase, you're ready to go. Do we need, what kind of designer do we want to include in this project? And who's available, you know? All of that stuff. We [00:33:35] try and square away before we get to the execution phase. [00:33:38] Ben: right. [00:33:38] Peter: when the end of the execution phase, it's like we try to be very strict with like last day pencils down and try to also reserve like the last week or two for like polish and cleanup and sort of getting things. So it's really two to two and a half, sometimes three months is like actually the time you have to do the work. And then after that, essays can take between like two months and a year or two. To produce finally. But we try to have a dr. We try to have a good first draft within a month after the end of the project. And again, this isn't a process that's like probably not optimal, but basically someone on the team winds up being the lead writer and we should be more deliberate about that. But usually the project lead for a given project ends up being the essay writer. And they write a first draft with input and collaboration from the rest of the group. And then people around [00:34:35] the lab read it and go, this doesn't make any sense at all. Like, what? What do you do? And you know, to, to varying degrees. And then it's sort of okay, right? Once you've got that kind of feedback, then you go back and you restructured and go, oh, I need to explain this part more. You know, oh, these findings don't actually cover the stuff that other people at the lab thought was interesting from the work or whatever. And then that goes through, you know, an increasing sort of, you know, standard of writing stuff, right? You send it out to some more people and then you send it to a bigger group. And you know, we send it to people who are in the field that whose input we respect. And then we take their edits and we debate which ones to take. And then eventually it goes in the HTML template. And then there's a long process of like hiring an external copy editor and building nice quality figures and re-recording all your crappy screencasts to be like, Really crisp with nice lighting and good, you know, pacing and, you know, then finally at the end of all of that, we publish. [00:35:33] Ben: Nice. And [00:35:35] how did you settle on the, the 10 to 12 weeks as the right size, time box? [00:35:42] Peter: Oh, it's it's it's, it's clearly rationally optimal. [00:35:46] Ben: Ah, of course, [00:35:47] Peter: No, I'm kidding. It's totally just, it became a habit. I mean, I think. Like I, I can give an intuitive argument and we've, we've experimented a bit. You know, two weeks is not long enough to really get into anything, [00:36:02] Ben: right. [00:36:02] Peter: and the year is too long. There's too much, too much opportunity to get lost along the way. There's no, you go too long with no real deadline pressure. It's very easy to kind of wander off into the woods. And bear in mind that like the total project duration is really more like six months, right? And so where we kind of landed is also that we often have like grad students or you know, people who are between other contracts or things. It's much easier to get people for three months than for eight months. And if I feel like [00:36:35] just intuitively, if I, if someone came to you with an eight month project, I'd be, I'm almost positive that I would be able to split it into two, three month projects and we'd be able to like find a good break point somewhere in the middle. And then write about that and do another one. And it's like, this is sort of a like bigger or smaller than a bread box argument, but like, you know, a month is too little and six months feels too long. So two to four months feels about right. In terms of letting you really get into, yeah, you can really get into the meat of a problem. You can try a few different approaches. You can pick your favorite and then spend a bit of time like analyzing it and like working out the kinks. And then you can like write it up. [00:37:17] Ben: Thanks. [00:37:18] Peter: But you know, there have been things that are not, that haven't fit in that, and we're doing some stuff right now that has, you know, we've had a, like six month long pre-infusion going this year already on some ink stuff. So it's not a universal rule, but like that's the, that's the [00:37:33] Ben: Yeah. No, I [00:37:35] appreciate that intuition [00:37:36] Peter: and I think it also, it ties into being software again, right? Like again, if you have to go and weld things and like [00:37:43] Ben: yeah, exactly. [00:37:44] Peter: You know, [00:37:44] Ben: let let some bacteria grow. [00:37:46] Peter: or like, you know, the, it's very much a domain specific answer. [00:37:51] Ben: Yeah. Something that I wish people talked about more was like, like characteristic time scales of different domains. And I, I think that's software, I mean, software is obviously shorter, but it'd be interesting to, to sort of dig down and be like, okay, like what, what actually is it? So the, the, the last question I'd love to ask is, To what extent does everybody in the lab know what's, what everybody else is working on? Like. [00:38:23] Peter: So we use two tools for that. We could do a better job of this. Every Monday the whole lab gets together for half an hour only. [00:38:35] And basically says what they're doing. Like, what are you up to this week? Oh, we're trying to like, you know, figure out what's going on with that you know, stylist shaped problem we were talking about at the last demo, or, oh, we're, you know, we're in essay writing mode. We've got a, we're hoping to get the first draft done this week, or, you know, just whatever high level kind of objectives the team has. And then I was asked the question like, well, Do you expect to have anything for show and tell on Friday and every week on Friday we have show and tell or every other week. Talk a bit more about that and at show and tell. It's like whatever you've got that you want input on or just a deadline for you can share. Made some benchmark showing that this code is now a hundred times faster. Great. Like bring it to show and tell. Got that like tricky you know, user interaction, running real smooth. Bring it to show and tell, built a whole new prototype of a new kind of [00:39:35] like notetaking app. Awesome. Like come and see. And different folks and different projects have taken different approaches to this. What has been most effective, I'm told by a bunch of people in their opinion now is like, kind of approaching it. Like a little mini conference talk. I personally actually air more on the side of like a more casual and informal thing. And, and those can be good too. Just from like a personal alignment like getting things done. Perspective. What I've heard from people doing research who want to get useful feedback is that when they go in having sort of like rehearsed how to explain what they're doing, then how to show what they've done and then what kind of feedback they want. That not only do they get really good feedback, but also that process of making sure that the demo you're gonna do will actually run smoothly and be legible to the rest of the group [00:40:35] forces you. Again, just like the writing, it forces you to think about what you're doing and why you made certain choices and think about which ones people are gonna find dubious and tell them to either ignore that cuz it was a stand-in or let's talk about that cuz it's interesting. And like that, that that little cycle is really good. And that tends to be, people often come every two weeks for that [00:40:59] Ben: Yeah. [00:41:01] Peter: within when they're in active sort of mode. And so not always, but like two weeks feels about like the right cadence to, to have something. And sometimes people will come and say like, I got nothing this week. Like, let's do it next week. It's fine. And the other thing we do with that time is we alternate what we call zoom outs because they're on Zoom and I have no, no sense of humor I guess. But they're based on, they're based on the old you and your research hamming paper with where the idea is that like, at least for a little while, every week [00:41:35] we all get together and talk about something. Bigger picture that's not tied to any of our individual projects. Sometimes we read a paper together, sometimes we talk about like an interesting project somebody saw, you know, in the world. Sometimes it's skills sharing. Sometimes it's you know, just like, here's how I make coffee or something, right? Like, You know, just anything that is bigger picture or out of the day-to-day philosophical stuff. We've read Illich and, and Ursula Franklin. People love. [00:42:10] Ben: I like that a lot. And I, I think one thing that, that didn't, that, that I'm still wondering about is like, On, on sort of a technical level are, are there things that some peop some parts of the lab that are working on that other parts of the lab don't get, like they, they know, oh, like this person's working on [00:42:35] inks, but they kind of have no idea how inks actually work? Or is it something where like everybody in the lab can have a fairly detailed technical discussion with, with anybody else [00:42:45] Peter: Oh no. I mean, okay, so there are interesting interdependencies. So some projects will consume the output of past projects or build on past projects. And that's interesting cuz it can create almost like a. Industry style production dependencies where like one team wants to go be doing some research. The local first people are trying to work on a project. Somebody else is using auto merge and they have bugs and it's like, oh but again, this is why we have those Monday sort of like conversations. Right? But I think the teams are all quite independent. Like they have their own GitHub repositories. They make their own technology decisions. They use different programming languages. They, they build on different stacks, right? Like the Ink team is often building for iPad because that's the only place we can compile like [00:43:35] ink rendering code to get low enough latency to get the experiences we want. We've given up on the browser, we can't do it, but like, The local first group for various reasons has abandoned electron and all of these like run times and mostly just build stuff for the web now because it actually works and you spend all, spend way less calories trying to make the damn thing go if you don't have to fight xcode and all that kind of stuff. And again, so it really varies, but, and people choose different things at different times, but no, it's not like we are doing code review for each other or like. Getting into the guts. It's much more high level. Like, you know, why did you make that, you know, what is your programming model for this canvas you're working on? How does you know, how does this thing relate to that thing? Why is, you know, why does that layout horizontally? It feels hard to, to parse the way you've shown that to, you know, whatever. [00:44:30] Ben: Okay, cool. That, that makes sense. I just, I, the, the, the reason I ask [00:44:35] is I am just always thinking about how how related do projects inside of a single organization need to be for, like, is, is there sort of like an optimum amount of relatedness? [00:44:50] Peter: I view them all as the aspects of the same thing, and I think that that's, that's an important. Thing we didn't talk about. The goal of income switch is to give rise to a new kind of computing that is more user-centric, that's more productive, that's more creative in like a very raw sense that we want people to be able to think better thoughts, to produce better ideas, to make better art, and that computers can help them with that in ways that they aren't and in fact are [00:45:21] Ben: Yeah. [00:45:25] Peter: whether you're working on ink, Or local first software or malleable software media canvases or whatever domain you are working in. It [00:45:35] is the same thing. It is an ingredient. It is an aspect, it is a dimension of one problem. And so some, in some sense, all of this adds together to make something, whether it's one thing or a hundred things, whether it takes five years or 50 years, you know, that's, we're all going to the same place together. But on many different paths and at different speeds and with different confidence, right? And so in the small, the these things can be totally unrelated, but in the large, they all are part of one mission. And so when you say, how do you bring these things under one roof, when should they be under different roofs? It's like, well, when someone comes to me with a project idea, I ask, do we need this to get to where we're going? [00:46:23] Ben: Yeah, [00:46:24] Peter: And if we don't need it, then we probably don't have time to work on it because there's so much to do. And you know, there's a certain openness to experimentation and, [00:46:35] and uncertainty there. But that, that's the rubric that I use as the lab director is this, is this on the critical path of the revolution?  

Having ADD or ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Hear from people all around the globe, from every walk of life, in every profession, from Rock Stars to CEOs, from Teachers to Politicians, who have learned how to unlock the gifts of their ADD and ADHD diagnosis, and use it to their personal and professional advantage, to build businesses, become millionaires, or simply better their lives. I wanna give a shout out to Skylight Frame, the official Skylight frame. They are sponsors of this episode of Faster Than Normal. Let me tell you about Skylight! So I have a daughter, you all know, her name is Jessa, she's nine. Jessa, like any nine year old, doesn't really do what I tell her to do until I say it like 4, 5, 6, 18, 54 times. And the problem with that is that when your ADHD, you're kind of forgetful to begin with. So Jessa sits there and I tell her, Jessa, change Waffles' pee pads, my dog right? [@petersdogwaffle on INSTA] Changes defense. Okay, Dad. And she goes right back to Roblox. And then two times later, Jessa change Waffle's pad? Goes, okay, Dad goes right back to robots. And by the fourth time, I've forgotten about it. She's forgotten about it. Waffle doesn't get his pee pad changed. No one's happy. And the house smells. So Skylight Frame eliminates that. It is a essentially a calendar. It's calendar with pictures. It sits on your wall, it connects to wifi, it connects to your Google calendar, and it adds your chores. So I tell Jessa say, Hey, Jessa before you leave for school, before you get in your iPad to play Roblox, before you go to school, are all your chores done? Are they green on the board? She looks. Now I gotta change Waffles pads. Change the pads, comes back. Click. Not you waffle. I, I know you heard your name, but I'm actually not talking about you. I'm doing, doing a podcast. He click, she clicks on the, click it on the, on the chore, it goes away. When all her chores are done, she gets her iPad, everyone wins. It makes life so much easier. It is unbelievable. It's a 10" inch touchscreen display. It's digital, it's gorgeous. You put all your photos in from your photo album, you can send 'em all there. And when it's not in calendar mode, you get a beautiful display of all the pictures. Totally worth it. And as always, thank you Skylight for sponsoring this episode as well as many others of the Faster Than Normal Podcast.  https://www.skylightframe.com Discount Code:  PeterShankman for 10% off, up to $30 off. Roni Weiss is the Executive Director of Travel Unity, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on increasing diversity in the world of travel through individual and community empowerment.  Roni was born in Long Island, New York and grew up in Snohomish County, Washington, north of Seattle.  At the age of 10, Roni began attending Edmonds Community College (now Edmonds College), receiving his Associate's of Arts and Science with Honors at the age of 12. He graduated from Lynnwood High School at the age of 15, then attended the University of Washington, receiving double Bachelor's of Arts degrees in Drama and English at the age of 18. Through years of world travels, Roni visited 70+ countries, including every country in Europe, six of seven continents, and taught English in Italy, France, Taiwan, and Chile, both to youth and professionals. In 2011, Roni founded RW Social, a marketing and consulting company for the travel industry and nonprofits. From 2011 to 2016, Roni worked with Africa Travel Association (now Africa Tourism Association), assisting with and speaking at ATA's events in NYC, DC, and multiple African countries. In 2013, RW Social launched the New York Travel Festival, an event focused on innovation and sustainability in the world of travel, which served as the genesis for Travel Unity, where he now serves as Executive Director. Roni lives in Westchester County, NY with his partner, Lauren, and their four children. Today we learn how travel is changing for all people including the Neurodiverse, and about some things we can do to help move forward. Enjoy! 00:40 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 02:40 - “DEI” is a term used often in this interview; it represents: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion 02:48 - Welcome and introducing Roni Weiss! Ref:  Africa Tourism Association, RW Social, Travel Unity, NewYork TravelFest  04:36 - So how do you go to college at age 12, and then high school at age 15?! 06:10 - Ref:  Saved By the Bell 07:00 - What made you focus on diversity in Travel, specifically?  Ref: Monica Drake 09:00 - Talk about diversity and travel. What you think can be changed, what has been changed, what needs to be changed?  Ref:  Travel Unity 10:45 - “Local and regional travel is as meaningful and you don't have to pay as much to do it” 10:52 - On tourism management, workforce, visitor-ship, community impact and representation 12:20 - Talk about Neurodiversity and Travel? What are you working on in that venue? 12:50 - Roni on his ADD diagnosis and in what ways it has played a role in his career! 13:01 - On being physically in pain due to boredom 14:00 - About how all people fit multiple ‘things'! 15:00 - On the ‘well, you don't look sick' stereotype 15:51 - On the importance of good listening, universal inclusion, empathy, and respect. 17:10 - How do people find out more about you?  Web: www.TravelUnity.org  Roni@travelunity.org Socials: @TravelUnity on Twitter  INSTA  Facebook and Roni is on LinkedIN and all of his info in also on his website here: http://roniweiss.com 18:00 - We are thrilled that you are here and listening! ADHD and all forms of Neurodiversity are gifts, not curses. And by the way, if you haven't picked up The Boy with the Faster Brain yet, it is on Amazon and it is a number one bestseller in all categories. Click HERE or via https://amzn.to/3FcAKkI My link tree is here if you're looking for something specific. https://linktr.ee/petershankman 18:19 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits. Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Faster Than Normal is for YOU! We want to know what you'd like to hear! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to learn about, and from them. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse! — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. mostly somewhat:  [00:00:40] Peter: Hey everyone, Peter Shankman. Welcome to Faster Than Normal. Another episode. Thrilled that you're here. As always, it's a Monday morning in New York City; recording Day as always for the podcast. What a lovely day outside. I think we're finally, finally hitting Spring! Of course now that I said that we'll probably have eight inches of snow by Thursday but it's still a beautiful blue sky day. I just came in from outside and it's, it's nice. It's a little chilly, but we're getting there. Guys… we made it through another winter! I wanna give a shout out to Skylight Frame, the official Skylight frame. They are sponsors of this episode of Faster Than Normal. Let me tell you about Skylight! So I have a daughter, you all know, her name is Jessa, she's nine. Jessa, like any nine year old, doesn't really do what I tell her to do until I say it like 4, 5, 6, 18, 54 times. And the problem with that is that when your ADHD, you're kind of forgetful to begin with. So Jessa sits there and I tell her, Jessa, change Waffles' pee pads, my dog right? [@petersdogwaffle on INSTA] Changes defense. Okay, Dad. And she goes right back to Roblox. And then two times later, Jessa change Waffle's pad? Goes, okay, dad goes right back to robots. And by the fourth time, I've forgotten about it. She's forgotten about it. Waffle doesn't get his pee pad changed. No one's happy. And the house smells. So Skylight Frame eliminates that. It is a essentially a calendar. It's calendar with pictures. It sits on your wall, it connects to wifi, it connects to your Google calendar, and it adds your chores. So I tell Jessa say, Hey, Jessa before you leave for school, before you get in your iPad to play Roblox, before you go to school, are all your chores done? Are they green on the board? She looks. Now I gotta change Waffles pads. Change the pads, comes back. Click. Not you waffle. I, I know you heard your name, but I'm actually not talking about you. I'm doing, doing a podcast. He click, she clicks on the, click it on the, on the chore, it goes away. When all her chores are done, she gets her iPad, everyone wins. It makes life so much easier. It is unbelievable. It's a 10" inch touchscreen display. It's digital, it's gorgeous. You put all your photos in from your photo album, you can send 'em all there. And when it's not in calendar mode, you get a beautiful display of all the pictures. Totally worth it. Up to 30 bucks off with code: PeterShankman at www.skylightframe.com .And as always, thank you Skylight for sponsoring this episode as well as many others of the Faster Than Normal Podcast . Alrighty, we have a fun guest today. Roni Weiss is the Executive Director of Travel Unity, a 501c nonprofit focus on increasing diversity in the world of travel through individual and community empowerment. I love that. I love when diversity is increased in any capacity, but travel is something you really don't think about. And when I booked you, Roni when I, when I got in touch with you and realized, Hey, I should get you on the podcast on my next flight, I looked around. And I was sitting in business class and was pretty much surrounded by white, middle-aged guys like myself. And that was interesting. That was the first time, I'll admit, that was the first time in my 20 something years of travel I actually looked and noticed. So you've, you've, if nothing else you opened my mind, at the age of 10, Ronnie began. At the age of 10, mind you; hear me, 10. Roni began attending Edmunds Community College, received Associates of Arts and Science with honors at the age of 12. Then he graduated from Linwood High School, laid a little backwards there at 15, and then went to the University of Washington, receiving a double Bachelor of Arts degree in job in English at the age of 18. So it's shame that he's really such a non-starter, really done nothing. He's, he's only visited 70 countries, including every country in Europe, six of the seven continents, and he's taught English in Italy, France, Taiwan, and Chile; both to youth and professionals. In 2011, he found an RW Social and marketing consulting company for the travel industry. From 2011 to 16, he worked with Africa Travel Association, now Africa Tourism Association. I think we have a very, very close mutual friend in that. And then we as in the assists with and speaks at a t a events in New York to see local African countries. In thousand 13, he launched the New York Travel Festival and event Folks in Innovation, sustainability in the world of travel, which served the genesis for travel unity, where he now serves as executive director and he lives in Westchester. He has a wife and four children, so pretty awesome. Roni, welcome. [00:04:33] Roni: Thank you. Thanks Peter. It's good to chat with you.  [00:04:35] Peter: So how the hell do you go to college at 12 and then high school at 15, then college get. 15. What the hell, dude?  [00:04:41] Roni: So I was in the challenge program, the, the gifted program in elementary school. So they, they bussed us to another place and it wasn't clear where I would go to middle school. So we looked into different options. We, we vi my mom and I visited the principal at the local middle school and my mom is immensely obsessed with education. She still is getting master's degrees and such in her. Now in her 60's. So when we went there, the principal said that middle school's about socialization, not education and she didn't like hearing that. So meanwhile, I was in sixth grade with, with a guy who said he was taking community college classes and I said, You know, I, I, I, I think I'm smarter than him, so why don't I just do that? So my parents being the sort of pushy Jews that they are went and talked to the the people who were running the community college were like, what would it take to, to get our kid in? And they're like, well, he needs to prove he can do it. So take this assessment test and I did, and at first I needed to get the approval of every teacher whose class I was in. And yeah, I started the summer after sixth grade. At the age of 10. I got really involved in the electronic music department there and for my mom, her focus was, Hey, move on to to university after this. But meanwhile, I had grown up on Saved by the Bell and everybody said like, you shouldn't miss high school. It's the best experience of your life. So I'm like, okay, why don't I go and do that? So after three years of community college, including getting associates, I went to high school and it wasn't the best experience in my life, but what it did serve as was kind of a buffer because university was one of, if not the best experience of my life, being there from 15 to 18 was perfect for me. So, you know, people treated me like their younger brother and, you know, I, I got live in the dorms and that was, that was amazing. So had I gone to university starting at 13, I wouldn't have had that experience that I got to have. [00:06:45] Peter: That's very cool. Now tell us about, so diversity came early for you in life, and what made. I mean, you were working in the travel industry already, and so was it just a natural switch to say, There's no diversity here. I mean, you, so you think travel and you think travel is a worldwide thing, and I don't think anything constitutes diversity more than like worldwide. [00:07:08] Roni: Yeah. I, I, the thing was, as you mentioned, I, I started that event New York travel festival and we were already trying to talk about things that I didn't see being discussed as much except in certain circles. So sustainability, you know, in theory is something everybody should care about, especially if you look at it at, its kind of root of what does it mean to sustain something. It means to keep it, every business should wanna keep itself going. So sustainability and storytelling and innovative ideas in tech, I wasn't seeing it necessarily as, as mainstream. So in 2015 we had a session at the festival called Traveling While Black, and it was all black women and it was at the New York Times building and moderated by Monica Drake, who's a black woman editor at the Times. And it was clear that this wasn't being discussed. And like you, when you mentioned the business class thing, I started being aware.. And it's interesting cause people like; how has this changed in recent years? And I think representation, not necessarily in the traveling public, but marketing has changed and that's kind of a problem. But years ago I would see a financial services ad, and it would be a mixed race couple with a, a banker in a wheelchair, and then the next Ad you'd see would be a destination or a property or whatever, where everybody who was traveling was white and everybody who was serving them was a person of color. And I, I, on that side I just became aware and from the work with Africa Travel Association, from talking to black colleagues who were who felt marginalized in the industry and in their own travels. And then on the other side, I'd been working with young people for many years. So the idea that I had been around all these folks through the event I was running through doing content creation, et cetera, that people get all this value for tra from travel and as we've already noted, not everybody has those opportunities. Right.  [00:09:02] Peter: That's very true. And so tell, talk about, you know, not to dive right in, but talk about diversity and travel. Talk about what you think can be changed, what has been changed, what needs to be changed, so,  [00:09:14] Roni: When it comes to the work we do, we we're doing two things in Travel Unity. One is getting individuals, especially young people, to see travel is something they can do no matter who they are in a career path. Because I, no offense to you or anybody who else who takes business class, but a lot of folks aren't gonna be able to afford that.  [00:09:32] Peter: Oh, I can't afford 'em, my clients afford it. I can't afford it to save my life, let's not.. Let's be honest.  [00:09:36] Roni: So, so, but, but my, my point there is that, that that's the vision a lot of people have of what travel is; of like, oh, I have to spend, you know, all this money and spend, go to this fancy hotel and, you know, all of that. Or that they have to get a job where They're a consultant and somebody else is paying for it. Right. However it is, there's this perception, but the reality is, you know, you, you and I both live in New York state and when I went up to Watkins Glen State falls a few hours upstate, I was personally offended. Cause like I'm like, this is an amazing spot that people would be Instagramming the hell out of it if they were overseas and they'd go out of their way and they'd be on the plane and they'd take their selfies on it, and then they'd go to that one thing and that would be the thing. But because it's in New York state, people don't necessarily seek it out as much, and that's part of the problem. And in the city, obviously in New York City, there's so much cultural experiences that you can have. When I was in Flushing Chinatown, after I had visited China, I'm like, I feel like I'm in China again. Yeah, so to be able to have these experiences of culture, nature, et cetera, you can do it without even taking a plane. And that's one of our big focuses that local and regional travel is as meaningful and you don't have to pay as much to do it. So that's on one side. On the other side we have our d e I standards for travel and tourism, which we developed with a lot of people back in 2020. And those are focused on the three different ways that a visitor facing organization. So any company, museum, destination, whatever it is that's trying to bring visitors in. What are the three different ways they deal with people? So management and workforce, the people who work there visitorship, the visitors, and then community impact. So what we're trying to do is make sure that voices are being heard, that things are being processed, and that's one of the biggest. Things that I've discovered over the past few years is that we have, you know, the culture wars and all these discussions around things, but a lot of this real core diversity, equity, and inclusion work. Yes, the identities and the communities are important for a variety of reasons, historical and present. But some of it is literally just if a visitor fills out. A complaint form or a, you know, a, a wonderful compliment. Are you doing anything with it? Right? Are you doing with a, doing anything with the information you're getting? And are you listening to all the different kinds of people who are giving you feedback and information? Because a lot of time that just gets lost in the mix, and then people don't feel like they're being heard. They don't feel like they belonged. And at the very least, it's neutral, if not negative. Whereas if you actually had processes in place, it could be positive.  [00:12:14] Peter: Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. I gotta ask the question based on this podcast, which it is, talk about neurodiversity. Are you, are you approaching that at all?  [00:12:22] Roni: So I, for you already mentioned the, the ADD stuff. It's where, one of the things that I usually mention at the the top of this, because the things about identities is they're not monoliths. Right? Exactly. Exactly. Having ADD, OR ADHD,, you might be able to draw broad strokes about the things that you always talk about, about the chemical side of things, and I'll tell you in terms of my own sort of trajectory, first. You know, I was diagnosed and I think based off of the education path, anybody who themselves is ADD, ADHD or knows people; could see how, huh, yeah, that probably sounds like who Roni is. At a certain point I felt like I had outgrown it, and what I realized was it was kind of the opposite. I had completely structured my whole life around never being bored, right? That I was always going somewhere new. I was always having constant stimulation. And now that I'm more settled than having, you know, more of a, a regularish kinda role, I'm more aware of how different I am than neurotypical people. And how I just, I literally cannot stand being bored. It physically pains me. And you know, I will be sitting there and there will be a session of some kind, a speaker, and if I can't take it, I'm gonna go nuts. Whereas other people, they can manage to get their way through. So the idea in and of itself that neurodiversity is a part of of this is when we're talking about diversity, we're talking about all the different aspects of identity community that makes some of these concerns, needs, et cetera, different. I think one of the unfortunate things sometimes, and I understand why it's the case, but is, is that there ends up being a fixation on, on race and ethnicity in this work. And the thing about that is it, it, it loses sight of things. If you were focused on getting more black or Hispanic or Asian or whatever it is, people into space, that's fine if that's your focus. But don't say you're doing diversity, equity, and inclusion broadly if you're not looking at the identities broadly because there are disabled black people , there are gay, bisexual, Hispanic people, et cetera. And I think that's one of the things that ends up being, being lost in all this, is that idea of intersecting identities. That if you're saying that somebody is just one thing, there are two problems with that. One is they're not, they're multiple things. And also it suggests that everybody's experiences within that identity are all the same. And that's not true either.  [00:14:50] Peter: Think one of the interesting things also is the fact that that which is not visible is often not talked about. Right. And, and you know, you hear this from people who have diseases that, that start off with a conversation of, well, you don't look sick. You know, and you have sort of the same thing in d e i in the respect that, you know, I, other than the fact that I probably need to lose 20 pounds, I look like a perfectly normal 50 year old. Right. I, I actually guess the fact that I need to lose 50 pounds makes me even more of a nor perfectly normal 50 year old. But, but you know, the, the fact that my, what you don't see is that my brain is racing a million miles an hour, and I've had to do 15 things this morning to keep it in check, right? And, and that, and because it's not visible, it's easy to overlook and it's easy to ignore. And I think that d e I needs to be, you know, needs to focus on.  [00:15:34] Roni: I think that, you know, this comes down to, to the empathy and the awareness thing. I, I'm a big fan of the concept of neutral ignorance. That there are just things you don't know because you haven't experienced them. And as you said, if you're not seeing them at all, then how are you going to, to be aware of them? Which is why it's so important for people to be listening to other people's stories and to, it's one of the first things that we have in our individual pledge, which is just the recognition that different people have different lives and have different experiences, and that's one of the biggest problems that I see overall, you know, if I, if I make this a little more political, is that on, on the sort of stereotypical left wing side, you have people who, who get kind of absorbed in their feelings of guilt, which makes it about them. If you go to the kind of stereotypical right wing side, it's like, well, I, you know, didn't grow up with money and whatever; it's like yeah, nobody's saying you didn't have problems growing up. The point is that different people have different things and you need to be aware of that, and it needs to come from empathy. It needs to be you seeing what it's like in other people's shoes and trying to make the results, the outcomes better for everybody as much as possible. And if you're fixating on yourself and your own experiences in any way, that's not about other people, and that's not what this work is either.  [00:16:52] Peter: Hundred percent. Hundred percent. Tell me how people can find you, because I think that this is,.. First of all, we're out of time, so I wanna have you back. That goes without saying. But tell me how people can find you. I mean, the, the, the premise of travel unity is something that's only gonna obviously grow. Right, and I'm, I'd be curious if we talk again or we will talk again to learn how it's being embraced by the travel world as a whole. But how can be able to find you for now?  [00:17:15] Roni: So, Travel Unity is at www.TravelUnity.org. You can email me, Roni at travel unity.org. You could find me on LinkedIn in, various places, but yeah, always happy to talk to folks. You know, it's an interesting sort of world that, that we're in with Travel Unity. As you said, it's already sort of growing, so the more folks we have who are interested in what we're doing, always happy to talk to them. [00:17:37] Peter: I love seeing d e i being included in all different categories. I think it's wonderful. Roni, thank you so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it. Guys, check out what Roni Weiss is doing at Travel. Unity. I think you really like it. Thank you for listening as always. The new book, The Boy with the Faster Brain, is selling like hotcakes on Amazon. Still it hit number one in this category. It's still there, I think. I am speaking at schools, I'm speaking at colleges, I'm speaking at businesses. As always, if any of you would like to have me there, I will do it for books! So buy books, get me to speak. That works for college and for universities and schools. That doesn't necessarily work for businesses but we'll figure something out. Shoot me an email, peter @shankman.com. Either way thrilled that you guys are listening. Thank you so much for taking the time. We will see you next week. Stay safe. Stay healthy. Bye-bye. — Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week! 

I realize there has not been an essay or a briefing in a while. I am trying hard not to let this newsletter distract me from writing comedy. It's coming along nicely, but at some point I will pivot back to writing more here. In the meantime, I hope you continue to enjoy these short conversations I am having with Peter and we are hitting the more interesting marketing news in any given week or two.In other news, my 1960s comic book podcast is re-branding. “Super Serious 616” is becoming “WHAT IF… MARVEL was real?”. I wrote a little about why we are making the change here. The big impedes was a big advertising push we are doing later this week that should (if all goes well) blast us to the top of the Apple Podcast charts. The hope is that after an artificial boost or two to the top of the charts, we can use the momentum to maintain that position naturally. It will be an interesting experiment. In the meantime I think the quality of those podcasts have gotten better and better. If you are at all interested, now may be a good time to jump onboard. In the latest episode we discuss just how fast Thor would have to fly in order to cross the Atlantic Ocean in three minutes, and what that means for situations like saving someone from a speeding truck.Now onto this newsletter's podcast:Full TranscriptEdward: Peter, when was the last time you saw a movie in the theater?Peter: Oh, we go every couple of weeks. Every now and again, it's a very different experience now with, the big crazy seats and having to pick your seats in advance. And it's just, it's not like it used to be, but still it's a nice getaway.Edward: Nice. So you paused during covid, but then you're back at it the same frequency there before.Peter: Actually, even during Covid we'd go a couple of times. There was one time we went to tenant. Only people in the theater .Edward: My crazy tenant story is, for a buddy of mine's birthday, I rented the entire theater so the two of us could go see it.Peter: There you go. Well, we didn't have to rent the theater, we just bought regular tickets and you still got it. Don't think or so, but during Covid when no one was going to theaters, it was like the safest place you could be cuz no one else was there. So fair it out. So we'll still do it, every now and again. But it is funny how the industry has changed and maybe not funny, maybe sad how it's changed so much.Edward: Yeah, I think it's interesting how little theaters have changed over the years, and it feels like they're changing quite a bit now. As you said they've made changes in terms of the seats are fancier and more comfortable and they're serving better food and so on. But in terms of like things like pricing, pricing has been, Hey, pay one price. Everyone pays the price to walk in and sees the theater. When you're dealing with a product that has an expiration date, like after 8:00 PM on Thursday, anyone who's not bought the ticket, those empty seats in the theater are going unsold. It's very much like an airplane, but theaters have never been priced like an airplane.Peter: I have never understood that. Yeah, they should definitely be using different kinds of dynamic pricing. And of course it's not just them. It's gonna be the same thing with sports venues and concerts and yeah. It's funny in those domains, you keep hearing a lot about it. Sometimes controversial, but movie theaters seem to be just clinging to their kind of dinosaur ways. Although I guess just now starting to change.Edward: And then even things like. Not just dynamic pricing, but even pricing by title. If you go and buy books, books vary in price. Every book you buy, I don't know what the price of the book is gonna be until I look at the price on it. And they're all over the map. Whereas when you go to see a movie, whether you're gonna see a 500 million avatar sequel, or are you gonna go see a nice little small new indie. They're all the same price.Peter: That, and that's why it's so interesting. So there's that new, 80 for Brady movie just came out and there's all this headline news about it's going to have a different price as if this is a radical. Even in the articles, it's saying this bold move just cuz they're charging a different price for movie. Yeah, they're absolutely right. That should be the way it always works. Not, this kind of one time weird.Edward: And apparently it has been done in Europe, so in Europe they have priced blockbusters at different prices than like smaller indie, lower budget movies. But in the US there's been a tendency not to do that. And I think the logic is like right or wrong, the logic has been if we price a movie at a lower amount, it will signal that the movie is flawed in some way and therefore it'll drive, even though it's almost like the idea of a luxury good. If I go and start discounting a luxury good, then maybe. Price elasticity is a negative elasticity. It might drive people away because it's considered bad because it's a lower price and it seems like that was the fear in the US if we reduce the price of the movie, people are gonna think it's a bad movie and no one's gonna go.Peter: And that's why we shouldn't teach economics courses cause people jump to these ridiculous conclusions, you know? You know, it was the same thing with professional sports a lot of major League baseball teams were saying, oh, no, no, no, no. We can't change the prices. Same issue that we don't want to devalue the product. And now they're doing it all the time, not only charging different amounts for different games. But changing the pricing as the game gets closer and even based on weather and who's pitching and so on, that's just become the rule. Now. It's just a matter of how you do it. It's just weird that some sectors, like movies have just stayed behind and just haven't gotten with the times.Edward: I went and saw, David Chappelle and Chris Rock were in town here in Seattle in December, and we went to get tickets. They like most of the seats in the house were at set prices now. Like the better seats were, better prices and so on. But the best seats in the house, it said this on the website, our top seats are dynamic pricing changing on a day by day basis based on demand.Peter: That's kind of interesting cause like go to a restaurant where they have fixed prices for everything, but then there's that, special steak or fish market price, which implies that everything else charged isn't at. Prices, everything should be in a market price and people get used to it. That's The Thing a lot of these venues hesitate to do it because of some sense of fairness or something. It's like, oh no, we don't wanna go down the same path as the airlines, but people get used to it. People understand that, as long as they're not being gouged, the fact that they bought the tickets later or they're buying better seats they should be willing to pay a little bit more.Edward: That's right. And, I think, maybe the airlines get us used to it, to a point where now it's not a big deal when it happens in the movie theaters. I remember it was probably 2003, 2004 was the first time I went to movie theater where I bought my ticket, like I bought my seat of where I was going to sit. Prior to that, I think every time I went to the movie theater you'd buy a ticket and then it was first come, first serve for where you were gonna be in the theater, of course. And it was around that time, 15 years ago or so where they said, Hey, no, you can actually buy your seat and now you can buy in advance. And now you can show. Just before the theater, just before the movie starts. And I think the concern at the time, at least what I heard prior to that was we don't want to do that because we want people to get to the theater early so we can serve them the ads. And if we start letting them buy their seat, they can show up at the last minute and they won't be able to advertise to them.Peter: Wow, that's such bad logic given how much of a premium they can make for those better seats. It's a whole lot more than putting a couple of eyeballs in front of ads. And in some way the psychological weirdness of having to choose the seat, I think is actually less painful, less cognitively taxing than the idea of paying a little bit more money because, you're closest to the showtime. It's a different kind of process and people adapt to it and become second nature just as dozen these other domains.Edward: And what's fascinating too, I think is who controls this pricing. When I was at Proctor and Gamble, we could go to the retailer and say, Hey, we want Swiffer to sell for nine 90 but we couldn't tell them that Walmart would, whatever price we told them, Walmart would put it lower and we'd be like, please don't put it lower. We're like, we want this be higher. We want this be high margin product. We want everyone else to charge more money for it. But they could do whatever they wanted. We couldn't force 'em to do anything. Now, we could rent ads on television saying, go to your local retailer and pick up your Swiffer for 9 99. But at the end of the day, the retailer decided, and it's that it's the same way with theaters. And so Paramount, you mentioned 80 for Brady. They can't set the price.But what they did is they went and spent a whole ton of market research and then put together a research pack. Basically it was a sales pitch. So they went all the big theater change and said, we did some research and it shows that the price sensitivity for 80 for Brady is really, really high. And if you reduce your price, you can fill seats with older people who otherwise wouldn't even go to the theater at all. And they had to make a pitch. And apparently, I guess that pitch. .Peter: That's great. And that's the way it should be, to get, whether it's the theater owners or again, any kind of venue, to run experiments that take chances, I think there's a real opportunity, whether it's the studio itself or some third party to come on in and start offering that, that kind of pricing expertise. Now, the next thing you gotta wonder about is will there start being a secondary market? For movie tickets. You know it's the idea is ludicrous right now, but anything's possible.Edward: Yeah. It just, it feels like, at least right now, the supply of seats is so much higher than the demand for seats. And also you have a zero marginal cost electronic product that you can just put more showings, right? So if you don't go and see it at a certain time, they can run another showing at another time. Like unlike live shows like a Beyonce show or Taylor Swift show, like Beyonce can only be in so many places at once. It can only be so many shows. They can keep showing avatar forever and ever and ever. And you're gonna get this almo, if not the same experience. Pretty close to the identical experience. No, no matter when you. .Peter: No, that's a good point. That there's not as much of a necessity for a secondary market as there is for sports or concerts. But on the other hand, there's a lot of people who are becoming accustomed to buying their tickets through the secondary market. You know, they'll start by going to StubHub or SeatGeek, and to see what's available. They, don't want to go to the primary market. Maybe it's cuz they don't trust the venues who are selling the tickets, or maybe they have a good experience with the secondary market. So I think it will emerge even if it's not quite as vital.Edward: So we've talked about this, these companies that have been very reluctant to move into this direction. Right. So Airlines did this decades ago. Hotels did it decades ago. Cruise ships have done it decades ago, like movie theaters took a long time to do it, like athletic venues like baseball and stuff took a long time to move in this direction. Is there any example of a company that started moving this direction or an industry that started moving this direction where it was a mistake? We keep talking about, everyone's like afraid to do this. They're like, oh, I'm afraid to put them, buy their seats in advance cuz they'll will miss the ads. Or we're afraid to do this cause our customers will hate us. But is there an example where they were right, where like they should have moved more slowly or not moved?Peter: Well, in terms of the overall movement, I don't think it's ever a mistake, but there's no doubt there's specific times, you know, specific games, specific sections of seats that are either gonna be priced too high or low. That's just the chance that these organizations take. I mean, let's face it, every game or movie or concert, they're never gonna get the pricing exactly right for every seat. So you just have to hope on average that works out in their favor. But, it's not an exact science, but it's a hell of an interesting science, no doubt about it.Edward: But is there an example of where dynamic pricing wasn't the right choice? That like, Hey, we had fixed prices. Oh, everyone wants us to move to dynamic pricing. We think it's a bad idea. Every example that we're talking about. It was actually a really good idea. Theaters are slow. They should have done it earlier, but is there an example where someone moved too fast and they shouldn't have donePeter: Oh, yeah. I'll tell you where the third rail is. Personalized pricing. Yeah. A lot of people mix that up with dynamic pricing. Of course, with dynamic pricing, as we get closer to the date or if it's a better seat or whatever, anybody would, would pay that higher price but personalized pricing to say, based on, given your characteristics, we're gonna charge you differently than me, even though we're coming in to buy tickets at the same time. Back around, right around the turn of the century Amazon experimented with that little bit and they got caught. They were charging two different people at the same time, different prices. And they, boy, oh boy, did they back down on that? They apologized, never again. It was just a little experiment. So yeah, that's a real danger zone. Not, to say it can never happen, but given our kind of how naive we are, even with just regular dynamic pricing. That's a step too far.Edward: Well, it's interesting you say it's funny, I remember that when that happened at the time, I didn't make the connection, but you're right, they did that. Where they got nailed, I think, was personalized pricing where some people were paying higher prices than others. We do personalized pricing where some people pay lower prices than others all the time, and no one gets upset about it. Like if rather than charging $8 for this CD for most people, but $10, if you, we knew you're like a high level, like a adamant CD buyer and you're priced in sensitive. They could have just priced it at $10 and offered $2 off coupons to a whole bunch of people. Instead of pricing at $8 for everybody and 20% of people paid 10, they could just price it at 10 for everybody and 80% of people got $2 off, and everyone would've been fine with that.Peter: That's a great point. As long as you separate out the list price from that discount from the coupon or whatever, then it's okay as long as people have to do something. But when it's just offered. And then when the face value is different for different people at the same time. And you're right, it might sound a little, hypocritical, but, that's the reality that we, haven't yet come to grips with.Edward: One thing I see on Amazon all the time now, not all the time, but fairly consistently, is I'll go to buy a product and on the main pages listed at one price, after I click through and go onto the product page, there'll be a little box and it says, Hey, click 5% off coupon, click here. Yeah. And I see that regularly. I wonder. If I imagine that's probably personalized that I'm getting, I'm seeing that coupon and other people aren'tPeter: that's right. And that again that's fine. That's totally kosher and people are good with that. It'll be interesting to see it. At what point though, do we graduate from that to just showing different prices and calling a spade a spade? I still think we're a long ways away from that.Edward: Fair enough. This has been fascinating, so think we're agreed that theaters are smart to do this. They should have done it a long time ago. The consumer backlash is going to be negligible. Theaters are just coming up with excuse, that's the word I'm looking for. It's an excuse rather than a reason.Peter: That's right. They're not willing to do the hard work. They're not willing to figure it out. And given the state that they're in economically, man, they better do some homework. They better find these kinds of revenue opportunities if they're gonna stay afloat. Cuz the old rules do not apply anymore and they get a adapt or die. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Abbie McCarthy is an award-winning TV / Radio presenter & DJ, you'll find her hosting BBC Music Introducing in Kent on the airwaves every Saturday night and also bringing great new music & fun interviews to your TV screens on 4Music and E4 Extra with Fresh This Month. Abbie is known for bringing the party with her DJ sets and this year has played at a whole host of festivals, including Glastonbury, Latitude & Knebworth, as well as playing several arena shows. Abbie is also the host and curator of popular gig night Good Karma Club, which has put on early shows for the likes of Tom Grennan, Mae Muller, Easy Life & many more and has even featured some famous faces in the crowds over the years - Alex Turner, Lewis Capaldi & Wolf Alice. Abbie's huge contribution to both the radio & music industry was celebrated when she was inducted into the Roll of Honour at Music Week's Women In Music Awards 2018. Abbie has been highlighted by the Radio Academy as one of the brightest young stars in radio, recently featuring in their esteemed 30 under 30 list and winning Silver for Best Music Presenter at the ARIAs 2020. Aside from music, Abbie's other passion is sport, which really shines through in her entertaining coverage on Matchday Live for Chelsea TV. You'll also find Abbie guesting frequently on BBC Two's football show, MOTDx and doing online coverage for England and the Lionesses football teams. How has she been so successful already, especially having just recently been diagnosed, and what advice does she impart to us? Enjoy!  In this episode Peter and Abbie McCarthy discuss:   00:40 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 00:47 - Intro and welcome Abbie ‘AbbieAbbieMac' McCarthy! 03:00 - So you just got diagnosed a year ago, so tell us your backstory? 05:51 - What rituals have you put into play for yourself to be able to get through the boring stuff? 07:00 - Do you get a dopamine release after having completed a list, or boring stuff? 07:38 - Who happens when you have to quickly adjust course? How do you balance your dopamine producers at all hours of the day and night, as various types of work demands? 10:30 - How do you handle negative criticism, and keep performing at one hundred percent even on tough news days? 12:32 - What have you had to fight through with respect to your being a Millennial, and a Female in a often-times patronizing industry? 14:23 - Americans are learning more about Premier League Football thanks to Ted Lasso. Who's your team? 14:40 - How can people find more about you?  Web:  https://abbiemccarthy.co.uk Socials: @AbbieAbbieMac everywhere:  Twitter  INSTA  TikTok  FB This was great- thank you Abbie!! Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Faster Than Normal is for YOU! We want to know what you'd like to hear! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to learn about, and from them. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  16:00 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits. — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat: [00:00:40] Peter: Yo, everyone! Welcome to Faster Than Normal, another episode. Thrilled to have you as always. We got someone fun today to talk about- Abbie McCarthy is joining us from the OK. She's an award-winning TV and radio presenter and DJ. Okay, you'll find her hosting BBC music, introducing intent on the airwaves every Saturday night, and also bringing great new music and fun interviews to your TV screen on 4 Music and Eve four extra with fresh this month. She brings the party with her DJ sets. She has played a whole host of festival. She's played Glastonbury, Latitude & Knebworth, as well as playing several arena shows and she's serious. Like, no joke. She doesn't, she doesn't fuck around. You're gonna, you're gonna like this one. She's the hosting curator of popular Gig Night. Good Karma Club. God, what else has she done? Uh, she was nominated, she was inducted into the role of honor at Music Week's, women in Music Awards 2018. She's been highlighted by the radio academy as one of the brightest young stars in radio, recently featured and their esteemed 30 under 30 lists and winning silvers for best music presenter at the Arias 2020 I. Being in PR week, magazines 30 under 30, and I'm now 50. So yeah, now I'm all pissed off. It's gonna be a shitty interview. All right. Anyway, Abby, welcome. I feel old. How are you?! [00:02:03] Abbie: Oh, I'm good, thank you. How are you? Thank you so much for having me.  [00:02:05] Peter: I'm thrilled to have you. So you came to us because you, you were reading Faster Than Normal, the book, and you identified with it, and you found yourself in it. [00:02:13] Abbie: Absolutely. I really loved it. I just loved the whole concept of it. The fact that you kind of said our our brains are like Lamborghinis. They just work faster than everybody else. But if you do the right things, you can use it quite efficiently. I thought it was a really nice way to approach it. Cause I think there's some books that you read and it's about kind of, Dismissing that you have A D H D or kind of not embracing it. But I thought that the whole approach was great and yeah, I took so much from it. And because I've only recently been diagnosed, it was such a useful book to lose myself in. I actually managed to read it in a couple of days and obviously everyone listened to this that has a D H D knows that's not always, that's not always easy. So I think it, uh, became my hyper focus for a couple of days. I really enjoyed it.  [00:02:56] Peter: Very true. We don't, we don't normally finish things like that. Um, now tell us, so, so you just got diagnosed a year ago, so tell us your backstory. Tell us about what it was like growing up before you were diagnosed. What was it like as a kid? Did you, what was school like for you? Things like that. [00:03:10] Abbie: I think I'm one of those classic people where, I was, I was, I was okay at school. I got like fairly good grades and I was always being told off for talking too much, which obviously makes a lot of sense now and I think that would happen more and more in the classes of things that I wasn't particularly interested in. Uh, you know, you mentioned at the start, I do lots of different things within music and, and some within sport as well. So I'm, I'm a creative person, so some of the more academic subjects I didn't particularly like, but I. Was Okay and, and got good grades, um, which maybe was why it wasn't picked up, I guess, when I was a teenager. Uh, but I, it's, I have this thing where I guess I. I just always felt like I was different, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why. And you know, even as I've got older and I've got to do some great things in my professional life, like being on the radio to me is my dream job. I still can't believe I get to do that. I get to go on the airwaves, pick amazing music, and connect with people and share it with them, but that's awesome. You know, it's, it's. It's, you know, you might look at me and be like, oh, she's getting to do her dream job. But then it's like, it's more like all the things I struggle with at home, I guess. It's like, you know, keeping on top of errands and, and things like that and organizing other aspects of, of my life. And I think that's the thing with A D H D, isn't it? Someone on the surface might look a certain way, but you never know what's. Going on in, in somebody's head. Do you, you know, my brain is racing constantly. Yeah. Um, but you know, I've, I've managed to, to hold down a job and I guess I'm lucky because it's , it's, it is in things that I'm interested in, so that makes it easier too.  [00:04:50] Peter: Well, that's, I mean, that's really the key. You know, we, we all have to realize, you know, there are people who, who don't have faster than normal brains who can just sort of wake up, go to their job every day, do it for 40 years, retire, get their little gold watch, you know, and, and whether they love the job or not, is irrelevant to them. I. It's a means to an end. It's a way to make money. If we don't love what we're doing, we're not doing it well.  [00:05:10] Abbie: Yeah. Or you just don't wanna do it full stop. Exactly. So I feel so blessed to be doing something that I absolutely love and I. I'm so excited to go into work every day and the, you know, what I do is really varied as well, which I think works with our brains too. Like, I'm not gonna get bored. Each week can be very, very different. Sometimes I'm in the studio doing a radio show, then it's something like festival season where I'm kind of here, there and everywhere DJing. It might be going to interview somebody, you know, on the other side of the country. It might be going to a gig somewhere else. So it, it's, yeah, it's, it keeps it interesting. It's, it keeps it lively.  [00:05:43] Peter: Tell me about, um, so let's talk about the stuff you're not that great at. Let's talk about like, you know, what is it like to, you know, running the errands, things like that. What kind of, um, sort of rituals have you put into play for yourself to be able to get through the, the, the, the boring stuff? [00:05:57] Abbie: I actually got this piece of advice from somebody on social media when I first posted that I'd got a diagnosis and they were saying the things that you don't enjoy, things like housework and errands and food shopping. It's almost like, think of it in a different way, sort of set yourself, um, a bit of a competition or like, so you're trying to do it in the quickest amount of time or, you know, you set yourself a reward once you've finished it, things like that. So then actually that those, those activities aren't just draining. You are in some way getting a little bit of dopamine and I think it's just like picking the right time in the day to do some of this stuff as well. I think now I try and get up, exercise is a big one for me and I know it's for, for you as well from, from reading your book, getting up, going to the gym, even if I don't feel like it, which I don't a lot of the time, I always feel so much better afterwards than kind of getting all of those errands and boring things out of the way and then I can just enjoy the rest of my day and I kind of don't feel the guilt that I haven't done all the, all the adult things I guess that I think I should have.  [00:07:02] Peter: Well, it's interesting because that there is a, there are some studies that say that getting the boring stuff and stuff that you don't love getting it done is actually a dopamine release. Um, once they're all, not from doing them per se, but from that feeling you get of, oh, I don't have to do them anymore because I did them.  [00:07:17] Abbie: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. You actually completed something that you set out to do, so that's gonna give you a buzz, isn't it?  [00:07:22] Peter: Talk about, uh, some times where it's not that easy. Have things happened, whether you are in, uh, you know, whether you're at work or whatever? How do you deal with the things that, you know, you're, you're going a million miles an hour, right? When you're, when you're DJing or when you're working whatever, you're going a million miles an hour. What happens when you have to adjust course, uh, suddenly when you suddenly, you know, find yourself going off track or something like that. How do you keep yourself going, especially in a high energy job like that, because there's really only so much dopamine mean you can give. Uh, to get through over the course of a day, right. At some point, you know, I know that, that if I time it right, I give a keynote, I get done with the keynote, I get into the airport, get back onto the plane, and that's when I pass out. Right. So, how are you sometimes you're doing, I, I, especially as a DJ you're doing late, late nights, right? You know, into, into the wee hours in the morning. How are you holding that up? How are you keeping yourself aligned?  [00:08:14] Abbie: I think when I am DJing or I'm, yeah, playing a big event, I get so in the zone. I get so pumped for it. So I kind of have enough energy to, to get through it. I think the thing that I struggle with the most is when I've had, you know, a really great run of work, so something like festival season or because I work in football, you know, the, the Premier League season that we have over here. I've just been getting to work on loads of games with that. When that stops and there's just naturally a tiny little lull in work, and I say a lull, it's like four days or something, and. Get really down cuz I'm like, I dunno what to do with all of this energy that I've got. I almost dunno how to, to harness it. And then I have a real low and I'm kind of waiting for the buzz and the high again of, of doing all the things that I love. And I think that's been a learning experience for me is when I have these days off. Which I really crave when I'm in the thick of it. You know, when you are like working back to back and you're traveling everywhere, you can't wait for a day where you are. You can just not think about work and relax. But when it gets to those days, I find it really hard to actually lean into them. So that's something I need to work on to be honest. Um, but the other thing that I think is a bit of a struggle in the job that I do, and maybe you'll relate to this or other people will relate to this. Do more of a kind of public facing job is, you know, the sensitivity we can have to rejection and criticism. It's very much part of my job, you know, it'll be like, I'll be presenting something or I'll send off a show reel sometimes I'm super lucky and I get the job. Sometimes I don't. That's just part of the business, but I might then be really upset about that for a little while, and I think sometimes. The emotional deregulation thing. I can f I can feel a little bit. So that can be hard. I guess if you are, you're in the fields and you're not feeling so great and then you've gotta, you know, go on air and give people a good show, give people a good time. But sometimes I imagine that's a savior because you kind of have to put on this. I thought, great, let's have a good time. And you're doing it for other people. You're doing it for that feeling. It'll give somebody else. And the connection that you have with you and your listeners is really special. So you kind of wanna keep that. So sometimes in a way it can get you out of your funk, which I think is good.  [00:10:30] Peter: That's actually a really interesting point because I imagine that, you know, especially as a creative right, you do these amazing DJ sets, you, you're, you know, on the radio, whatever, and then yeah. You know, millions of people might love it, but there's one person who posted comments somewhere that's negative and that's all we think about, right? The same thing happens to me in keynotes. Mm-hmm. , but it's a real, you, you, you gave us a really interesting point, the concept of going on stage and having to put on that smile regardless of whether you're feeling it or not. You know, you don't have a choice, right? Mm-hmm. . So I would think that, yeah, in a lot of ways that's probably very, very helpful because you know that which you believe you eventually achieve, so, right? So, so you, you put that happy face on, you give that speech or you, you do that set at the end of it, you're gonna have that dopamine regardless. So it's a nice sort of, a nice sort of, uh, I guess, cheat sheet to get out of it.  [00:11:20] Abbie: Yeah, it actually is. Yeah, cuz it kind of gets you into that mental space, even if you really weren't feeling it beforehand. It might be, you know, you've got some really bad news an hour before I'm gonna go on the radio, but then as soon as I'm on the radio, I'm there to. I'm there to give it everything and to hopefully, um, bring people great music but also, you know, some good stories and, and keep them company as well. So it can be very useful cuz it can definitely switch you into a more positive place. And like you say, access that dopamine that we are always searching for. [00:11:51] Peter: Tell us about, um, how, first of all, how old are you, if you don't mind telling us.  [00:11:54] Abbie: I'm, uh, I'm 32, so I got diagnosed when I was say 31.  [00:11:58] Peter: You're 32 and you're female, and you're in an industry that's predominantly male focused and male driven. Right? So you are coming in as sort of a, I guess, uh, what are you, A millennial, I guess. Are you a millennial or Gen Y? What are you?  [00:12:10] Abbie: Yeah, I'll be, I'm a millennial. I wish I was a Gen Z yeah.  [00:12:12] Peter: You're in the cusp of a millennial, right? You're coming as cusp millennial. Tell us about some of the fights you've dealt with and some of the battles you've fought coming in as a millennial, a neurotypical, a neuro atypical millennial, um, who's a female in this male dominated industry. Right. You've, I'm, I'm sure you've, you've had to step up several times, both in, in football as well as DJ ing,  [00:12:32] Abbie: Yeah, I feel like I feel it the most as a DJ actually to be honest, where you'll turn up to DJ at a festival and a club and predominantly a lot of people working in that industry, it is changing, which is great to see. But a lot of people working in that industry, uh, are male. And sometimes you can get a few patronizing kind of sound engineers who are like, oh, do you know how to use the equipment? Do you need any help with that? And you're like, yeah, that's why I'm here. I'm here to, I'm here to dj. I'm here to do the thing that you booked me for. Or the, or, you know, the, the place book before. So I feel like you can experience a bit of that and I think a lot of stuff like where, you know, you are doing as good a job as your male counterparts, but you're probably not getting paid the same. But I think so much is changing. There's a real positive shift in like entertainment, in music, in sport. To, to even things out. But I do, um, some stuff for, uh, for B B C sport and uh, a sport. Chelsea, sorry if you don't, or sorry if people listening don't. So I do some of their matchday live programming as well, and I, I sometimes feel most vulnerable being like a woman in sport. Cause I think often people are just looking to just dismiss what you say because that industry is still so, so male dominated. That one's probably got the most catching up to do. Um, so dealing with that sometimes, but then it's, I think sometimes you just have to, although we find it hard, it's like shut out the outside noise and, and thoughts and just have real confidence and belief in what you are doing and what you are saying. That's the only thing you can do.  [00:14:10] Peter: Shut out the outside thoughts. I love that. So I've actually been a, I've been a Premier League fan for, for years, and I can tell you over the past few years here in America, I'd say millions more people have suddenly learned about non-American football thanks to Ted Lasso. So I think that, um, people are definitely learning a bit more , um, about it. What is your, who's your, who's your team?  [00:14:31] Abbie: Uh, Chelsea. Chelsea Football Club. Yeah, I've been a fan since I was like six or seven. So the good times and the bad times, and the Inbetweens .  [00:14:40] Peter: Very cool. I love this, Abbie! This has been so much fun. How can people find you?  [00:14:44] Abbie: Uh, people can find me on socials, uh, a Abbie Abbie Mac. That's my handle on everything. So A B B I E. Um, yeah, come and say hello! You know what? Us people with A D H D are like we, we love to connect. So yeah, please do, uh, get involved. Gimme a follow and uh, shout me in the dms and thank you so much again, Peter. It's been so fun.  [00:15:04] Peter: Oh, I'm so glad to have you! Guys listen to her stuff. She really is amazing, Abbie it's pretty incredible. Abbie McCarthy, thank you so much for taking the time.  Guys. By the time this comes out, you will probably. Have already heard the news that, uh, Faster Than Normal is being turned into a kid's book. It is. I can give you a title now. It's called The Boy With the Faster Brain, and it is my first attempt at writing a children's book and I am so excited. So I will have links, uh, on where to purchase and how to purchase and how to get fun stuff like that and how to have me come in and, and talk to your schools and your kids and, and whatever soon enough. So stick to that. As always, if you know anyone that we should be interviewing, shoot us a note. Just people as cool as Abbie and all and above only. Those are the only ones we want. No, I'm kidding. Anyone, anyone you think has a great story, we would love to highlight them on the podcast. My name is Peter Shankman. I'm at Peter Shankman on all the socials. We're at Faster normal as well, and we will see you next week. Thank you for listening and keep remembering you are gifted, not broken. We'll see you soon! — Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week! 

Satisfaction from suffering? Can it be that some people also derive satisfaction from their sufferings? And if so, why? A Chan master in ancient China traveled through the countryside, from one village to the next, always along paths in nature. At a crossroads he met an old man, they greeted each other, the wanderer kept saying, "I am so thirsty, I am so thirsty"! The master gave him to drink, almost the whole bottle emptied the new acquaintance in one go. When he had refreshed himself, he said to the master: "I was so thirsty, so thirsty"! Can it be that one of the reasons why so many people suffer is that they derive satisfaction from their behavior, that they like to suffer? Could it be that some people have acquired such behavior? YES There are many different reasons to start suffering: - Already as a child the relatives had said to Peter: "Oh you poor little one, how you have it only hard, this is surely not easy for you"! Slowly it dawned on him that compassion makes many things easier. And then it became a habit, the suffering became automatic. - Mary was a little short, not exactly what you call handsome, early on she began to struggle with her fate, "I have no luck, life doesn't want me, I can't find a man", self-pity entered her life, and in this case too, suffering became an automatism. - Mr. Wu was an unimpressive man, raised as a child of drunkards, he had few chances in life. He constantly lost his job, his wife left him shortly after the birth of their child, he began to suffer, suffering became an automatism for him as well. This list could be continued indefinitely. Every person has experienced suffering in his life, the question is how he dealt with it, whether suffering became an automatism? Whether people one day began to draw satisfaction from their sufferings? Did suffering even become the main content of life? How we deal with suffering, how we process painful experiences, that is what makes up our "I", our personality. It is too easy to let the automatism of suffering into our life, very difficult to remove it from it again. According to the teacher of all teachers, suffering belongs to life! "Every life has its measure of suffering. Sometimes this very suffering brings about our awakening" - Buddha- According to Buddha, the exit from suffering leads through "enlightenment", which is possible for each of us. Never say: "I was so thirsty". Say: "I drank"! The wisdom of a person is not measured by his experiences, but by his ability to have experiences - George Bernard Shaw - Irish playwright - 1856 to 1950 Truly no one is wise who does not know the darkness - Hermann Hesse - German writer - 1877 to 1962 Copyright: https://shaolin-rainer.de (Please also download my app "Buddha-Blog English" from the Apple and Android stores) Please rate us on Apple, Google, or Spotify podcast to help us promote the show

Some quick updates:* I have an essay in progress. Will hopefully get it to you in the next couple of weeks* Stand up comedy is coming along. My first “big show” is on Tuesday. If you are in Seattle feel free to stop by at Club Comedy.* If anyone is interested in learning how to edit these podcasts and is willing and able to do fast turn-arounds, just reply to the email and let me know. It's not hard and it's kind of fun with the software I am using, but it is something I am ready to get off my plate.Quick Take aways:* Here is the article we talk about in the podcast (free link): With New EVs Arriving, Brand Loyalty Goes Out the Window* Here is the book Peter mentions: How Brands Grow* Too long/didn't listen: EVs have not changed the rules of loyaltyFull TranscriptEdward: Peter, now that electric vehicles are around brand loyalty doesn't matter anymore. It's all the Wild West. That's what the Wall Street Journal is selling.Peter: Oh man, I've heard this song before . It's the same old tuned men whether it was gonna be the internet, oh, that's gonna change everything. Or social media or covid. It's gonna totally upset the rules of loyalty. Yeah, those rules are pretty locked in and I'm willing to say same story here.Edward: So what are those rules of loyalty? What are the rules that the Wall Street Journals claiming are garbage now? Or are they just missing the entire.Peter: It all depends on how we define the rules. Where I'm coming from it coming forward it is from the top down. If we just look at actual behavior and just look at the choices that people make over time and how often they switch around and what they switch around from in two, there's some very regular patterns to that.And we could talk about it, but all if you go a level deeper and say, what are they thinking? How are they making these decisions? Sure. Maybe the psychology's a little bit different, but from a business standpoint, that's all cheap talk. All we really care about is what are people doing?And in that regard it's no different than people rolling a dye to say, which, which of these different items am we gonna buy?Edward: What they're, so let me quote from the actual article. It says that basically in the past, whenever someone bought a Ford vehicle, 58% of the time it was a Ford vehicle. Now, when they're buying the Ford Electric vehicle, 66% of the time, it's not a Ford vehicle. So there's significantly more people switching to Ford to buy the electric vehicle than we're switching to Ford to buy the non Ford vehicle.Peter: Yeah. First of all, we don't even know if it's significant or not, but second of all, it's cuz the set itself is changing. The number of electric vehicles out there is really different. It, no that's just nonsense. It's cherry picked, rubbish.Yeah. The way it's interesting that we talk about cars cuz the people who first set out these rules that I'm referring to and I know you know it well. There was a guy in London called Andrew Berg and his heir Byron Sharp at the University of South Australia.They basically say that it's you have your die. I have my die. And what drives our choices is, It's just as if random, and it's remarkable how well that story works. The do sleigh model as we call it. And there's no reason to believe it'll be any different here. Do you think So?Edward: You say it's random, but that's not entirely true. It's weighted random, right? Because if I have, if I bought, if my last car was like a Subaru Forester I think when I go buy to buy my next car, I'm more likely to buy a Subaru Forester than amped. Whatever the average of all the other market shares are. I assumePeter: you are so right about that.It's, yeah. It's not that we're all rolling a six-sided equally way to die. In fact, it's not like we're all rolling the same dye that, that there's gonna be this distribution of dice and even that is gonna be well described by again, a. Jewish lay distribution. Look that word up. And yeah, you, but you have your die.And the important point is that your die doesn't change very much over time. So whether it is covid or internet or EVs, you're rolling pretty much the same die. And there's just so much randomness around the choices that you make that it appears that there are some patterns, but there's really.Much to it. The only thing that could be going on here is that we might sometimes. what these like guys like to call a structured submarket. So it could be that though that that just as gasoline split off into leaded and unleaded, then people would move into one corner of it. Maybe we'll see something like that.But it's not some kind of fundamental change in the way that people make decisions.Edward: So again, I go back to. We're talking about, there's no, like the brand loyalty is not a thing, but brand loyalty in that example is right. There's something to, even if it's not oh, I love my Subaru Forester.It's the fact that. That I had a Subaru Forester before, I'm more comfortable. I'm the type of person who would buy a Subaru Forester the first time, which means I'm probably still the type of person who's gonna buy it a second time. Plus the fact that now that I'm used to using it, right? So I'm the, and I know it works and I know it.Presumably it operated the way I wanted it to operate. And so when I go to buy my next car, my default choice is the same car I had before. Now it could change, but the default choice is there, and that's a form of brand loyalty.Peter: But, so there, there's two pieces to brand loyalty and you described them really well.One is just that you just have this natural propensity for whatever reason, to buy some things more than others. That part Absolutely. Positively. And that's why your die might be, a little bit weighted more towards the Subaru Forester. And mine might be weighed a little bit more towards, I don't know, a Tesla or something.Edward: And is that the selection effect? The fact that I bought a Subaru Forester means that, I'm probably the type of person who buys Subaru forests.Peter: Exactly. Yeah. Cuz then the second piece to it, which is the part I take issue with is this idea of lock in this idea that my propensities get shaped by my behavior over time.There's not much evidence to that. Again, if you're a supervisor person Yeah. Then you're gonna lean towards it more than most people would. But your propensity to do it isn't gonna get higher over time. It's pretty. Maybe, but it's gonna pretty much stay at that same level no matter how many times you, you roll that die or buy a car, that's the big piece of it.We don't see that kind of lock in. We don't see that kind of learning. We don't see all of that romantic stuff that we like to talk about where the customers learn to love us and we learn to serve them better. There's not much to thatEdward: really. But I feel like. Say I'm doing, let's switch to a new category.Let's say I'm doing laundry. Let's say I moved to a new country, so now I have no brand loyalty at all. The first time I go in I, I look at the shelf and I pick one effectively at random, and I take that home and it works. I feel like the next time I go to the store to buy laundry, I'm gonna go and buy that same one.Just cause I know No, it works. Rather than trying to gamble on something that I don't know that.Peter: First of all, what you said effectively at random, there's gonna be a lot of influences on it. It could be the brand name. It could be where it's located on the shelf. It could be the colors, it could be stuff that you heard about, but you haven't even thought about, seeing ads for it on the subway or hearing people talk about it.So there's a lot of influences there that. Things look random, but they're not. And those messages, one way or another got through to you. So it might be less about the actual experience you had with the product and more about the, some of that implicit prior exposure you had to it, that's gonna drive those choices that you make.That's, that, that's the real important point.Edward: Sure. And so I, so you say, Hey, the, whatever those influences were the first. They're gonna influence me the second time, but doesn't, the fact that I used it and it worked influenced me like I feel like it does. I feel like. Once I have a chocolate bar that I like, I'm more likely to buy that chocolate bar again.Even if it was, let's say it was gifted to me. Let's say someone gave it to me rather than me choosing it. Once I have something that I know works, it feels like why wouldn't I stick with what worksPeter: well? Because of all, you might, you just might have a propensity to, to stay with that chocolate bar, but there's all kinds of reasons why it might be just variety seeking, that let's just try something different.I like this thing, but, ,Edward: that may, maybe that makes sense for chocolate bars, but I. For cleaning my clothes. You know what, let's just .Peter: But, but it could be a situational thing that, oh, my mother-in-law is staying with us this week. And, and she only likes certain kinds of things.And so there could be things that, that might be perfectly rational. Why you're switching around. But to, to me, as an outside observer, I'm just looking at that sequence of choices. And man, oh man, it looks an awful lot. , rolls of the dice. Now to be fair I mentioned all this work by Aaron Bergen Sharp, and they basically said, you have your dye, and it never changes.Now, I myself have written a bunch of papers that show that, that model's a pretty good first pass. But every now and again, people. Do throw the old die away and do start with a new one. So I don't rule out the idea of changes, what we technically call non-stationary. But the times that you do that tend to be relatively infrequent and they tend to be dare I say, random.It's not like necessary because of a pandemic or a or change in the macro economy. It's just, there's just something in your life that. Be related to anything anyone else is doing that just causes you to shift your preferences. And it doesn't happen that often.Edward: What about sampling? So say I'm a I'm a loyal, I don't know, strawberry jam eater, and I'm doing it all the time. Not because I'm loyal, but because I have a propensity to eat Strawberry Jam. And then I go into the grocery store and they give me a sample of, I don't know, grape. , does that have no influence on the chance of me eating crypto jelly?Peter: I did say that in, in fact, I'd say it's stuff like that. It's sampling, it's word of mouth. It's seeing a Super Bowl ad that sometimes we'll have people switch around a bit. It could be just a change in which things are on which shelf in this store. And and that's why to, again, to me as an outside observer, I see some switching around again there.Perfectly good reason. It's cuz someone, forced that grape jelly on me. But it makes it seem like that you are rolling a die. And so yeah, a lot of these influences will will have some impact on it. But to the outside observers, it looks pretty random and it looks relatively steady over time.Edward: But if, again, if I outside observer, if I'm the marketer who's running the sampling program, , I r I go and start sampling a bunch of these jams stuff. Can I expect that my jam sales are gonna increase and that the people who switch over to start buying that grape jelly are more likely to buy grape gel in the future? Like the impact is more than just the next purchase, but it might be like a series of purchases after that.Peter: This starts where it gets really interesting. So again, a lot of this. Great. Work by Aaron Berg and Sharp. And Byron Sharp has this book that I'm sure some of your listeners would know called How Brands Grow. And they talk about a thing called Double Jeopardy, which again, I know you know Ed, which basically says if you can get more people to buy it, if you could increase the penetration, the footprint, just the overall number of people who tried The Thing at least once. That in and of itself is gonna be associated with higher degrees of loyalty. So yeah, your point is pretty good. You get more people to buy it, they're gonna tend to buy it more often. They're gonna appear to be slightly more locked in having a slightly higher propensity to buy it. It's really counterintuitive, this idea of. Double jeopardy. But it's really powerful. It's pretty much universal. And it's something you should expect to see instead of it being the exception.Edward: Yeah. So then looping back to the wall Street Journal Electric car article sounds like they're doing the right thing by introducing the electric cars, they're getting people, so Ford introduces an electric car and it's getting people who didn't buy Ford before to be more likely to buy them now.So it's a customer acquisition play it brings and it brings 'em into the Ford fold. And then once they're in there, Ford's market share increases because they now have more customers they acquired with a electric vehicle. And then once that happens, the double jeopardy kicks in and they should. Those people who have bought those four vehicles the first time, more likely to keep buying them in the future.Peter: So you will see some of that. Absolutely. The big key is how to get that wonderful cycle going. And in other words, how do you do the acquisition? And again, going back to the great work of Aaron Bergen Sharp and others, you can't just lean on one attribute. You can't say, this is the coolest, newest electric vehicle. You gotta. Broadly appealing. You gotta really punch up a number of different attributes that, yeah, it's gonna save the environment. But you know what? It's all, it's also fun to drive and it's very safe and and your friends will like you better. So you don't lean too heavily. Don't nichey yourself.You want to make yourself broadly appealing and that's gonna bring in more people and just, implicitly get them to do to. Or to roll your side of the die a little bit more often. It, it really is amazing how counterintuitive that he did. Double jeopardy is, but you just see it it's funny to see a lot of companies stumbling upon it as if it's something new and unexpected, it's been there all the time.Edward: And what's neat about this is it does hint at that, the next paragraph in the article talks about how these people buying these $70,000 new electric vehicles it what says they're, I dunno if this is actually true, but this is what the journalist is saying. They're as likely to own a $30,000 Subaru Outback as they are to buy, as they are to have previously owned a $100,000 Porsche 9 1 1 sports car. And whether that's true or not, the idea that we should make these vehicles to appeal. Everyone rather than just some sub-segment. Sounds like a step in the right direction for the marketers anyway.Peter: Yeah, it, and it goes against the grain of so much of what we've taught and learned in the marketing 1 0 1 s. We just figure out what your distinctive attribute is and hammer that and find people who care about that instead. We're trying to say, not so much be all things to all people, but a step more in that direction.Edward: Great. Anything else to add, Peter?Peter: We just want people to appreciate that this is the way the world works, whether it's electric vehicles, whether it's soup, whether it's hotels we expect to see these kinds of patterns. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Happy new year! Expect fewer posts this year. I will keep going with this podcast, but I am shifting my time commitment to (1) get the book over the line. No more excuses; and (2) Work on developing “business comedy”. I will write more about #2 at some point, but for now enjoy the podcast, and be happy if you weren't flying Southwest the last few weeks!Full TranscriptEdward: Peter, how were the holidays?Peter: Wow. It seems like a million years ago, doesn't it? It's amazing. We had that kind of one day after New Year's adjusting and then boom. But it was great. I went down to Antarctica and it was amazing. Super fun, super interesting. What about yourself?Edward: We tortured ourselves by taking our four little children to Guatemala and Belize.Peter: Wow, that's bold. That's bold.Edward: But I think the nice thing is both of us missed the travel meltdown that happened. I think we both got out before everything started falling apart across America.Peter: It was amazing actually being down in Antarctica. where it's kind of warmer and more pleasant than it was in most parts of the us. What a mess that wasEdward: Go to Antarctica for the heat .Peter: Well, it was summer and, I think unfortunately the repercussions of that are still rippling through and it's gonna be a while before that all settles down.Edward: It's interesting. We were flying on Alaska and there's now a direct flight between Seattle and Belize City. and there were three flights before ours, and they're a limited number of flights now that go back and forth. Like they're only every couple of days. And the three flights before ours were all canceled, so we're on the edge of our seats and whether we were gonna get back on time.Peter: And between all the cancellations that were happening earlier in the summer for different kinds of reasons, staffing, and now all of the kind of Southwest mess, which is more kind of operational issues, we have a very different feeling in the stomach when we pull up to the airport these days.Edward: One of the news this week, southwest Airlines had a big, big mess up where every, all the airlines kind of had trouble, but I think Southwest had the most at one point, I think they'd canceled half their flights. It was like a huge, huge, huge.Peter: Yeah. And I guess, if you read, some of the, articles and blogs about it, it seems like it was, it was inevitable, right? That they've been on a bit of a downward spiral in recent years and letting go of some of the operational aspects that would've never happened back in the old days. But, it's a shame it had to hit. Abruptly, and it's such an inconvenient time.Edward: Well, that's what's gonna happen, right? When you run really lean, if everything's going well, it's not a problem. It's when things start to go wrong, all of a sudden they can go really, really wrong because that's when things break.Peter: Exactly. And of course, the lessons to be learned are, How not to let them break, but also how to, how to recover from it. And I still think there's a lot of lingering questions about that.Edward: I think the Wall Street Journal was just publishing earlier this week about how Southwest is now saying, sorry. They're admitting their failures. They're offering, they said 25,000 frequent flyer points so that passengers hit by the travel meltdown. What do you think of that? Like, what is the value. The passengers who are getting that treatment to get them to come back? Or is it the signaling to non passengers that, Hey, we really.Peter: It's very interesting. My, initial reactions be really, really fun to, to talk through, was not a positive one. About that move. Couple of reasons. Number one, devalues the point. It's like, we're just gonna throw some stuff at you. You spent all this time trying to get people to value points and earn and get status and all the great things you can do. But just to use it as a way just throwing stuff at you, it kind of makes you wonder about the value of that currency and what it really means to Southwest. So there's one reaction. What, do you think about that?Edward: I think they claimed in that same article they said, those 25,000 points is worth $300, which would, which you put each point at worth more than a penny, maybe it's $300 if you do it absolutely perfectly in how you use it. But I think most people value these points at less than a penny. But you're saying that the fact they're giving points at all rather than giving people the $300, in either future travel or $300 in cash, the fact they're doing it in points, what degrades the value of the point .Peter: I think it does, maybe less from a fungibility standpoint, but from a psychological one, we try to associate these points with good things and aspirations and bonuses and like, wow, look at all things we can do with it. But here we're framing it or they're framing it as, this is a way that we're covering our ass and, and making up for a problem. And, I think it taints the idea of, of what these points are all about.Edward: I'm just thinking, when I was traveling, I stayed at,, back before Marriott bought them. I was staying at Starwood Hotels and they offered points for all sorts of things, but that was their go-to for both good things for, Hey, do these things we want you to do and we'll give you bonus points., get our credit card, we'll give you bonus points, stay in our hotels, get more points. But they would also use them for when things went wrong. And I remember times where like, Hey, they messed up my hotel room. Or there was really loud noise at night. Or they had, the pool wasn't working. And in those cases when you said, Hey, you guys made a mistake, their go-to thing was, well, here's some points. And I don't think I felt bad about that. I felt, I think I felt good about that.Peter: = I think it's different. I think it's a very different situation because, I've of course been in many of those situations myself, but, when it happens on an ad hoc basis like that, it's like, look at me, you know, I was a good negotiator. Look at what I got out of them. So at that point, it seems like a bonus. , I got something that other people might not have gotten. Whereas in this case it's a blanket offer, so it's not so no one's gonna feel like that they got something that they earned it, they're being treated all the same, and it's just sort of being thrown at them. It's not the outcome of some kind of, negotiation or something like that. So I think it's the points are framed very differently.Edward: Should they have done it below the line? . So instead of announcing that the Wall Street Journal they were doing it, should they have just approached each individual independently and said, Hey, we felt really bad. What happened to you specifically? Here's 25,000 points to make up for.Peter: And maybe vary the amount of points based on what people paid for the ticket or just how much inconvenience they were. Something like that. I think if they tried to make it a little bit more personal instead of just, again, sweeping it under the rug. Here you go, people, here's your points. Now shut up and let's keep going. I think that it might have just felt a little different.Edward: Who's to say they're not doing that? Maybe, they led out with the top line saying, Hey, it's 25,000 points to everybody. Here's the Wall Street Journal article. But maybe below the line they're saying, Hey, we're giving 25,000 points to everybody. But for you, We're gonna give you 30 or we're gonna give you 40 because of what happened to you and we wanna make so special.Peter: Or maybe it opens up that negotiation where people will go back to 'em and say, 25 isn't enough. I deserve more. In which case they would feel a little better about those incremental points that they were able to negotiate for. One of the other things that I find interesting about it, and this just kinda shows our age over here a little bit, is that Southwest, unlike the other airlines, hasn't been as, Has dependent on the loyalty program. They haven't called attention to it quite as much, and for years and years and years, they actively resisted having one. They always said that, look, we're just giving you a good deal. We're gonna treat you really well. We don't need to sweeten it in the way that some of these other big evil and personal airlines do. I kind of admired that about them, but then eventually they caved in. Everyone has to have it, butEdward: now they're so much money and a credit card.Peter: They have to do it, and that's fine. It's inevitable they would, but now they're calling even more attention to the program. And again, they're doing it in a way that has nothing to do with loyalty, that has nothing to do with that good feeling. It's just another currency. And it, takes, something special out of it and makes you start thinking about Southwest in a slightly more, I don't know, commoditized way .Edward: Have you looked at cohorts like this? So, like either an airline or something similar where something really bad happens. The people who experience that really bad thing, do you see what happens to their lifetime value? Does it drop significantly?Peter: I love that. I I love that. I can't believe that you raised that before I did. We do that all the time. In fact, the most obvious example being covid. But plenty of others, you know, we'll, we'll find cases where there's some kind of either competitive entry or the company engaging in some kind of other big strategic change. Not so much the first thing to do, but maybe the most telling thing to do is to say, , what's the nature of those customers, of the customers acquired during that time and how do they compare, you know, better or worse to, to others? I think that's a really great analysis to do and ends up being, I think, much more telling about the impact of that intervention than just a lot of the kind of day-to-day moment to moment. Nonsense on social media. So it's a great analysis. Now let's press pause on that and pick it up, a year from now and it would be great if Southwest would divulge some of that data.Edward: To me there's, three effects. There's one which is Southwest did this big mess up. It's in the news. How is that gonna affect my future travel with Southwest? Like how many times was I going to travel with Southwest? I wasn't affected by it, but I heard about it. Is that gonna drive down my future likelihood to fly Southwest then? Then number two is the people who were actually affected by it. They were traveling on Southwest, they released somewhat loyal to Southwest and that they bought one ticket. How is that going to affect their future travel with Southwest and is it gonna be more so than how my, I'm affected? You can even break that down even further by. People who, people who that was their first flight with Southwest. That's their only experiences with those Southwest. Versus a frequent traveler. And then number three is what effect did the intervention have? And I think the problem with this is that, Number two and number three, we can't separate because they're giving it to everybody. Now, if they've done it below the line, they could have just given it to like 90% of the people and 10%, 10% get nothing. You're screwed, buddy. Just so they can measure the effect of whether their intervention paid out.Peter: I love that. I love that. Or at least to communicate it differently to different people. Some people it could be a more positive message like, Hey, you get a free vacation on us. Or with other people it might be a, oops, we screwed up. You know, we feel bad. So that there still could be ways that they could try to get some insight from it. I suspect they're not, I suspect they're gonna try to make it as blanket and generic and, just get it out there and forget about this thing, which of course raises another problem which is they, giving points away isn't addressing the problem. all the operational issues that have been creeping up on them. The last thing they want is to throw a bunch of points at people and to see issues like this keep recurring, even if it's not quite as severe and public as what happened a couple of weeks ago. They're gonna still have operational concerns. And this whole points thing, the fact that weren't even talking about it, might call even more attention to future problems they have.Edward: Have you seen any examples like that? Like what should Southwest expect? What should it do to propensity to fly for people like me that weren't, didn't experience it? What should it do to the propensity to fly to the, for the people who got hit?Peter: Maybe The Thing to do, you gotta give some points or money or do something. But maybe it should be more communications around here's what we're doing to fix the problems. You know, here are the new people we're gonna hire and the new systems we're gonna integrate, and the new processes that we're gonna have to try to keep people alert. Again, I haven't stayed that close attention to this, but, I'd rather hear about the issues and how they're addressing them, rather than trying to just, throw points at people and pretend it's all better.Edward: I imagine this what the investors would care about more than anything else.Peter: Sure. And ultimately that might be what matters most, cuz there's no doubt they took a big hit here and I think people are gonna be looking at 'em skeptically for a while now. They need to earn people's trust back and again, it's not clear that 25 k points, closes the chapter here.Edward: They need a new, what's their tagline? Like, flying the Friendly Skies. Is that Southwest?Peter: No, that's, United.Edward: Oh my gosh. What's Southwest tagline?Peter: Oh, geez. , we should know our airlines better here. You're look, looking it up.Edward: Lofas. Nothing to hides. That's transparency. That's their, oh my gosh. That's terrible. .Peter: Yes, exactly. And, and here they're, they're trying to hide a lot, . And again, it's not very evil. It's not a conspiracy, but they're not being transparent. They're not addressing the issues. At least through this one tactic,Edward: they can do the new tagline. We will try harder. We'll do better.Peter: and we'll throw some points at you if it doesn't work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Essay and Briefing production has been low the last few weeks as I have been spending more time on building a GPT-3 powered comedy writing tool (and writing “business comedy” with the tool). If you have not checked out ChatGPT in the last two weeks, you should really do so. It is much slower now than when it launched, but still mind blowing. If it is too slow you can just use the GPT Playground, which is powered by the same back-end. GPT itself moved from 3.0 to 3.5 right around when chat launched. 3.5 is very impressive (it can rhyme now!). Spend some time playing around! It's not often that the most interesting, most advanced cutting edge technology can be in your hands this early (and practically free).Marketing BS is on vacation the next two weeks. In early January I will be back with another podcast episode (moving to Fridays), and hopefully some more text. Have a great holiday!Full TranscriptEdward: Were you a Westworld fan, Pete?Peter: That first episode in the first season was one of the most awesome pieces of television I ever saw. I was hooked with the first season and maybe watched one or two more episodes. That was it. How about you?Edward: One or two of the first season, or finished the first season and then one or two of the season?Peter: Finished the first season, that was, must watch tv. And then in my view, it jumped the shark very quickly after that. In fact, when I saw that news that H B O is gonna give up on it I thought they were just killing the program, but I didn't realize they were actually killing the, getting rid of the catalog too. That, that's crazy.Edward: Is this the first example of hbo? So HBO has pulled stuff from their catalog before, like they, they pulled some Sesame Street episodes people were upset with, but is this the first time they're pulling their own content from...Peter: It's the first I know of and indeed, the Sesame Street thing is different because that's not their content, but for them to have stuff that, that should be uniquely associated with them and still does, and on catalog basis, we'll have some value for them to say, nah, we don't need this anymore. It does have me scratch in my head.Edward: So there's no actual cost for them, whether they put it on the platform or not. There's no cost. But what there is an opportunity cost, and I think that opportunity cost has really been ignored in the past. And now they're saying, Hey, we can take this product that we have and instead of using it on our own platform, we can turn around and sell to some, sell to Netflix, sell to Amazon, have someone else owed it exclusively instead of...Peter: But it does make you wonder, like sometimes you'll sell content outright and say, here, it's yours now. Or sometimes you'll just license content. Or access. You think about lots of examples where, I don't know where Verizon will let Comcast use Verizon's phone services as a private label kind of play. So they're not giving up on it, but they're saying, Hey, we can have other access points to it as well. I just wonder if, maybe providing broader access rather than giving up on their own access makes sense.Edward: HBO has done that before, they kept Sopranos on their system, but they offered Sopranos to Amazon as well. So you can go on Amazon Prime and watch Old Seasons of the Sopranos. But what was happening there is it was non-exclusive. It was still available at hbo, but also available at Amazon. I think what's happening here is that there is a higher value in a piece of content that's exclusively available someplace else, and HBO's gonna try to realize that with Westworld.Peter: So you think it's an opportunity play for them that they'll make more money by auctioning it off to the highest bid. you don't think a kind of a cost cutting moveEdward: No, I don't think there's any cost. The cost to have more video on your platform is as close to zero as it comes. The storage cost is you're storing it anyway. And I think this and the streaming cost, if they're not streaming, that they're streaming something else, or they're streaming a competitor and you don't want your customers to do that. That's how you churn your customers. And so there's no actual cost for them to have it on there. There's an opportunity cost where they can go to Amazon Prime and Amazon Prime may pay, I don't know, 10 million to stream Westworld or 30 million if they get the exclusive rights to it.Peter: It's all about exclusivity. But again it's interesting how sometimes, people do put a premium on it and other times they say, nah, come on we don't care what door you come through.Edward: I think what's interesting is that all these streaming services are effectively competing with each other, but they're finding ways that they need to cooperate at the same time. And so you can go on Amazon. Amazon Prime is competing against HBO and Disney Plus and so on, but you can also buy HBO and buy Disney Plus when you're on the Amazon Prime platform. If you go on Hulu that's owned by Disney, you can buy HBO on through Hulu and so they're both, what's that word? Where you're competing and your friends at the same time?Peter: Frenemies.Edward: Frenemies. They're frenemies.Peter: Yeah. And that whole thing about the these kind of affiliate acquisition things that are going on just as you described that the companies getting some kickback from the content providers for selling subscriptions to it, that's something that we as consumers don't really understand a lot of money, a lot. Here it is company like, I dunno, Comcast will pay a bunch of money to get access to the HBO content, so get paid every time they bring subscribers in. It's weird how it goes both ways.Edward: I've tried to dig into that and I don't know what they actually pay. So when you buy HBO through Amazon, you pay your $15 a month, Amazon gets paid for that. I don't know if Amazon's getting a lump sum for getting the new subscriber, or they're getting like $5 a month for one subscriber. As far as I can tell, that data has not been shared publicly anywhere.Peter: The data's not shared. And again, I think very few consumers are aware that these things go on. So when a company starts calling attention to it, like Verizon is now doing, you want, maybe you want to elaborate on that a little.Edward: So Verizon, that is they offered a new deal yesterday. I believe that if you go and use their marketplace, I didn't even know Verizon had a marketplace. Like it never would've occurred to me to go and buy my HBO through Verizon. I have a Verizon phone, but that's not how, if I wanted to buy hbo, I'd probably do it through. Go to hbo.com or maybe I'd pull up my Amazon fire television and buy it. I don't think I'd open my Verizon app on my Verizon phone to go and buy hbo, but that's what they want me to do. And if I go buy HBO through my Verizon app, the. Verizon's gonna give me Netflix for free for a year. So they must be making something from that .Peter: Oh, clearly they are. And you gotta wonder what the play is there that maybe if they can be your gateway to more and more services, then you'll consider adding others and see them as a bonafide, app store in a way, even though we're, blissfully unaware of it. Maybe that's what they're thinking.Edward: I assume that once I subscribe to HBO through the Verizon store, I'm not, I'm still using the HBO app to watch my shows. I'm not going through the Verizon app to get the HBO stuff, which I think is what happens on Hulu. I can buy HBO through Hulu and now all of my HBO stuff is available right inside my Hulu app.Peter: So in a way they're trying to build a walled garden of sorts. But it's not so much financial considerations or even exclusive access, it's just that one, once you're seeing it through gateway, you're just not gonna switch. And then while you are using that gateway, you might access other things through it. Very different than, the traditional approach that apple's taking.Edward: It's customer acquisition, right? So if Verizon can get me to go buy my HBO through the Verizon app, and now all of a sudden I'm getting Netflix through the Verizon app, I've, they've now acquired me as a customer and getting that second, the second or third purchase, when I decided to go buy Paramount, maybe instead of going to paramount.com. My natural inclination, at least my on the margin, I'm more likely to go buy that through the Verizon app now as well.Peter: That's the bet they're placing. It'll be interesting to see if people feel any kind of loyalty to one Gateway or another. And what would drive that? Is it the brand? Is it the the interface that lets you access it? It's funny that we always talk about content being king, but now it's at least the presumption is that being the gateway to content might be the king. Not a lot of evidence for.Edward: It feels like in the real world, we see this all the time, clearly, like I don't buy my tide from Proctor and Gamble. P and g might have a direct to consumer tide business, but it would never occur to me to go to p and g or tide.com to go buy Tide. Instead, I either buy it through Amazon or I. Go to my local grocery store, my local Walmart, and pick up the tide. And it feels like in the digital world, the competition is like a drive away versus in the digital world, competition is a click away and it seems a lot easier switch from one storefront to another.Peter: Exactly. And what's interesting about it I don't know about you, but I have zero loyalty to any of them. I don't look at any of the, these interfaces and say, that's a good one. If anything, especially when you're doing it through the television, you're trying to spell out names of programs by using arrow buttons. Just horrible. So it's I don't think they've done a good job of, the customer experience of being content retailers in that regard.Edward: But I think there's something to be... there is a friction for leaving somewhere. So if you are on your Amazon Prime TV or on your Roku tv and you decide, I wanna watch deadwood on hbo. One way you could do it is go to your phone or your computer, sign up for hbo and then go and link it to your Amazon Fire television. Or the other way is you go on Amazon Fire Television and say, hbo, click here, sign up. I'll bet there's a lot of people who do that ladder rather than the former.Peter: And in the case of Verizon is that a presumption that people would be consuming the content on their mobile device because it's not clear that the Verizon gateway would help you with your home television?Edward: No. I'm a bit of a loss for the Verizon model, although, yeah if the Verizon, if presumably Verizon has, I didn't even know Verizon had a store, but they had a store and you could buy other things through that store. You could imagine a lot of these guys have these discount stores. You can imagine that you go on Verizon and buy your, I dunno, your AirPods through Apple at a $10 discount if you buy it through the Verizon store. And so if you get, if you start getting used to doing that, the reason to go, the reason to buy through the Amazon Fire television is because it's convenient and it's right in front of you and you're already using it. The reason to buy through the Verizon store is there has to be something else. There has to be the convenience is not there, so they better compete on price or something else.Peter: I think it's Apple envy I think that folks just have this feeling if we build it, they will come. That we can build the same kind of walled garden that Apple has. If they could do it, why can't we? And just makes you wonder a, is it is it that easy to do? And b well, you look at what some of the pressures apple's facing, is that even the right way to go? If you can.Edward: That's the other big news we've had this week is that, the EU is now gonna force Apple to have competing app stores. So up until now they've had a monopoly. If you wanna buy something through your phone, you have to buy it through. Apple. Now there's gonna be an, in theory, there can be other stores, but again, we're gonna have that same problem of why would you, as a consumer, why would you go to one of these other stores? Unless they're competing on price or they're not gonna, it's unlikely this other stores gonna have as better a better experience than Apple. So they better just offer things at lower prices.Peter: It's another example where regulators are stepping in trying to do things that, in theory is in the consumer's best interest. But you go back to G D P R, the whole data protection thing. There, it's, great idea in theory, but now every time you're dealing with the European firm, just all the accept this, click on that. It's, it ends up being a worse experience. You know what just take my data, but leave me. And I think it's the same thing here that they'll have a million stores. You won't know which one is which, and in the end, you're just gonna end up just choosing to go to the regular Apple one and, and paying more and getting less. But it's the one you know and you're comfortable with.Edward: The one thing the law is doing so I think that this, again, I'm with you, especially eu, they've made so many poor choices and there's some pretty terrible stuff in this recent law. But one thing that I think it's doing right is it's. Companies to basically circumvent Apple payment rules. So right now, like I can't buy a book through my Kindle app because Apple is gonna require 30% payment from Amazon. Amazon's not making 30% margin when they sell the book. And so the result is it's just lock out completely and I need to go. Into my browser, go into app Amazon, buy the book, and then push it to Kindle. And not only can I not buy through the Kindle app, Amazon can't even tell me in the Kindle app how to buy a book and use this new law is going to fix that. It's going to allow people to go and make in-app pur purchases by clicking off their app. They can tell people that they can go to their website to buy. They, it's still not gonna be a seamless solution, but at least the customer communication's gonna be a lot.Peter: Here's one thing I'm curious to get your take on it. Where I think where the EU stepping in is gonna be a tremendous benefit for consumers, and that's the cables connections to your Apple devices. Pushing people to, u s, BBC or some kind of standard instead of having their own proprietary thing. I don't see any downsides to that. Curious to get your take.Edward: Oh, really? So I think this is a huge mistake. We've come to, we've come to our point of disagreement. So USB cables have improved dramatically over the last 20 years. What EU is going to do is say, Hey, going forward, you have to use this technology this way. They're basically saying that we have now mastered the USB cable and there's no further technological advancements possible until we as bureaucrats decide to change the law.Peter: Oh, I wasn't aware of that. I was just thinking of them telling Apple that they gotta get in line with everyone else, but they're telling everyone, everybody has to get in line.Edward: This is the new, this is the new standard, and the new standard for USB cables is this, and it's not changing.Peter: Oh, ah yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's that's thrown out the baby with the bathwater. That's a shame. . Yeah, because you can imagine if governments had stepped in, just how bad the technology would be today. If technology didn't decide that in a market-based way. Wow. Yeah.Edward: All right. Hey. I think we've been all over the map today. I think just I think to wrap it up, to talk a little bit about traditional retail and how, if not just these, all these streaming stores, but actual physical retailer, they've always been in this place. The stores are selling Tide, whereas, HBO is selling movies. But you also have private label stuff that you're selling on your own. And so you are in constant competition with the person supplying all of your product. 90% of your products are being supplied somewhere and you're competing with all of them while you're selling them at the same time. And I think what we're seeing. The streaming world is as it's getting more developed, it's becoming more and more similar. To what we've seen in retail for the last a hundred years.Peter: And it's great. It's great as long as we can let you know, market forces determine winners and losers. And you we're seeing quite a bit of that happening in the streaming space. It'll look different a year from now, but hopefully better both from a consumer standpoint and from a ability to make money standpoint. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Last week I published the first chapter of Peter's new book. This week I interview Peter on the book, who should read it, what the conclusions are, how it is different from his last two books, and why he is like George Lucas.If you are interested in buying the book, you can do that on Amazon, but this week it is 40% off if you buy direct from the University of Pennsylvania press. Use the code “HOLIDAY22-FM”Full transcript below.Main Takeaways:I fed the full transcript into ChatGPT and asked it for the main take-aways from the podcast. I then probed it for more, but it could not come up with anything else. I THINK that it only “heard” the first part of the podcast and ignored the rest. But here is what the AI thinks are the take-aways:Peter's third book, titled "The Customer Base Audit," is a prequel to his other books on customer centricity. The book focuses on providing insights into customer data and is considered a foundational work. Peter believes that if the book were released first, it would not have had the same impact as it does as a prequel to his other books. He believes that starting with the "sexy stuff" and then diving into the details is a better way to grab readers' attention and get them to care about the subject matter.Full Transcript:Edward: All right, Peter. We're back. We're back.Peter: It's always good to talk to you. Ed. What are we gonna talk about this week?Edward: We're gonna talk about your book.Peter: We're talking about my book. Love it.Edward: I know there's a heck of a lot going on in the world, but we're gonna take a break from fraud and we're gonna take a break from Elon Musk. We're gonna take a break from ai. We're gonna talk about your book.Peter: We promise not to mention any of those things.Edward: We told the audience that we're gonna do it. We did an excerpt from your book last week in the newsletter. So if you those listening who have not seen that, you should go back and check that out. And now we're gonna talk to the man himself. It's interesting, Peter, this is your third book, correct? I got the number right?Peter: It's crazy, but true. Yes.Edward: Okay. And so my concern always for like big thinkers when they're writing multiple books, is that the first book. The Thing that they've worked their whole career on. It's like the first Beatles album. They've worked on it for the last 20 years of their lives, and they get it down and now two years later, they have to get another album out and they just, okay, let's see what else we can get out. And the sophomore albums tend to be weaker than the first, I feel like with big thinkers like like Clay and Christensen when he releases innovators Dilemma. Earth Shattering book blows our minds on how to think about strategy. And then he proceeds to release four more books after that, that are frankly derivatives of innovators dilemma. Are you being derivative, Peter? What's going on?Peter: Actually it's a great question. Cuz this book actually comes first, and I mean that literally and figuratively that, if you look at the, of course the book is called the Customer Base Audit, but the subtitle is the first step on the journey to customer centricity. And literally it goes back to a conversation that I had with one of my co-authors, Bruce Hardy, back in 2004 long before I had any inkling of the other work that I would then write on customer centricity. So this stuff is actually much closer to the work that I really do for a living day to day with customer data and so on. Those other books are more of the the so what, like what do we do with the these insights. But this is the book that gives the insights. This is the book that if you were to read the first two and say, wait a minute, how would I know that this stuff is true? Prove it to me. This book does that.Edward: So is This is like George Lucas making Star Wars. So after he is made that then he can go back and make the movie he really cares about,Peter: It is the prequel to the other stuff. And again, in some ways it is foundational. In some ways it's really quite different. But I don't think anybody, I'm not saying everyone will like the book, but no one's gonna read it and say it's.Edward: Okay. And so which I guess if someone's coming to you for the first time, then do they read this book first as a prequel? Do they jump to the prequel? Or is it like, Hey, watch Star Wars first, enjoy that, and then read the next book to understand where that, where that song came from?Peter: Know, That's beautiful metaphor. And I actually agree with that. See, here's The Thing. I've been doing this kind of work forever. Even since, you were an MBA student 20 years ago and, 20 years before that. And for the most part, with some exceptions, like you people would ignore me saying it's all just quanti and who cares? So what, so I wrote the other books to basically say, pay attention. This stuff matters. You should care your business depends on it. And that's a great way to grab people's attention and get them to lean in and say, oh whoa, how do we do this stuff? This is the book that begins that, how do we do this stuff if we release this one first? People would've read it and said I guess that's nice, but so what? So it's nice to lead with the so what to lead with the sexy stuff and then have people roll up their sleeves and want to dive into the details.Edward: Got it. So the first book is customer centricity.Peter: Focus on the right customers for strategic advantage.Edward: And that, so that book is the why, right? This is how. Not. Not the how, but the why to do it. Why customer centric? So both the what and the how. Which is what and the why.Peter: Yeah, exactly. What are we talking about and why do we care?Edward: Cause people, I think back then, I remember talking to you and a lot of people think things like, oh, customer-centricity just means doing whatever all your customers want. Which is, that book says, no, that's not what it is. Let's redefine what customer centricity.Peter: That's right. And again, it's gotten a lot of people to pay attention and say, wait a minute, we should be doing that. Or, wait a minute, we've been thinking along those lines, but we thought we were alone. So let's start at the C level to get people to really care and to, care about, everything from incentives and organizational structure and corporate culture and stuff that I know nothing about. And then it's gonna charge the the. Quine nerdy people to to do their thing at the service of customer centricity.Edward: Got it. So number one is, Hey, yeah, buy in. We know what customer centricity is now and we think we want to do it.Peter: Yep.Edward: The second book is the Customer Centricity Playbook. Is that like the project plan to actually implement customer centricity?Peter: Exactly. It's the how do we do it. Yep.Edward: Got it. And so now we've gone full circle. Now we're back to the prequel, which is the customer based audit, which is the new book. And so that's about. I guess not. I was gonna say how, but it is it howPeter: it's first steps? It's step one of the how, which is get your data in order. Okay. Don't take our word for it. Look at your data. Let's not even run any models or forecast or lifetime value or any of that stuff, just given the data that you. Look at it the right way. And you'll notice that not all customers are created equal. And you'll get all kinds of insights about how customers change over time. Stuff that you know, I, and you to a large extent take for granted. But for most companies it's sometimes news they don't know about and sometimes it's the polar opposite of what they think they'll see when they look at their customers.Edward: Who should read which book first?Peter: See, it depends who you are. That's right. So if, so again if you're c level, as much as I'd like them to dive right into the audit I recognize its place, it would be start with books one and two again, just to be motivated to wanna lean in further. If you are someone who plays around with data, you're a data scientist or maybe you're someone in the CFO's office where you're comfortable with numbers you're, you're interested in accountability and rigor marketing often lacks. Then maybe you start with the audit and maybe after you see the patterns, then you start to say, what does this mean? What do we do about it? And that leads to books one and two. So it really does vary about, who you are and where you are in the org chart.Edward: Got it. So it, it feels like if you're the CMO and you have the authority to like make this happen, you should probably read the other two books. Probably read the first book. Read customer centricity. If you haven't been bought in on the whole thing, that's gonna get you bought, that's gonna get you bought in or you're gonna reject it, but at least you'll know what you're rejecting and so on. If you're not in the marketing department, so if you're not in the marketing department at all, if you're in the finance department, you could be as bought in as you are on customer centricity, but you're not gonna be. The marketing department to do what you want it to do instead, read the customer based audit. Now you can go and , it's right in the title. You can go and audit the marketing organization to to see what's going on with your customers. And you can provide that information just generally to the organization. And hopefully that causes things to move.Peter: That is exactly right. And really. That's a really big part of our motivation for doing this. A lot of the work that I've been doing recently, as has been this idea of customer based corporate valuation. Let's basically show the finance people that we can be their friend. We can be their partner by basically projecting revenue and free cash flow accurately and diagnostically. And again, this would be the first. Towards that. Cuz doing that requires models, projections, forecasts and sometimes people will be skeptical about that. How do we know you can forecast it? If we can look at the raw data, simple, just simple data summaries as we say in the book, unashamedly descriptive and see some of these patterns. Daring us in the face about the differences across customers and all that then it just makes you more curious, more willing to start taking that next step and forecasting things out. So this is the starting point for all that.Edward: It's more than just the numbers though. It's also how you interpret those numbers. Cause I feel like if you just come up like a chart and these are the numbers, that's one thing. But if you pull up the chart in the numbers and they look in a certain way, and you could, and you know what that means when they look that way? Then that's a lot more powerful than just having the chartered numbers.Peter: So let's talk about that. It's a really great point because yeah, just charts and numbers, eh but on the other hand, if we over interpret, if we start, getting too colorful with the interpretations and start bringing in things like you, Demographics and personality, character no. For us that next level down would be instead of just looking at overall sales, let's break it down into, were you active or not? How often do you buy, how much did you spend when you did? So let's come up with a, simple but powerful decomposition of sales and start looking at those separate drivers.And here we are, it's holiday season and every company is out there acquiring a bunch of really bad customers. Why are they bad? Is it cuz they're not gonna stick around or they're not gonna buy often or they're only gonna buy when things are on sale? It's really good to know that stuff. And then you could bring in the marketing messaging and all the targeting and all that stuff to basically, Either take advantage of or combat some of those next level patterns.Edward: So I remember even back when I was a student of yours, we talked about, you talked about how you use this the, when you go and do these analyses, these datas you see the same patterns everywhere, whether it's a long before eCommerce came around and then eCommerce companies, church attendance going to on cruise ships. It just didn't seem to matter what you were doing. You kept seeing the same patterns. I assume that's still the case.Peter: That's it and that's why doing it in this audit manner, that sounds so formal. And that's exactly the point that instead of just making it up as we go along, which is all too often what happens on marketing because we expect certain patterns to be relatively persistent, that we should be doing basically the same kinds of analyses on a persistent basis every quarter, every year, whether there's a crisis or not, whether there's a new product being launched or whatever. Let's look at things the same way, anticipating that those basically same patterns are gonna be there. And if there are differences, that's when it gets interesting. And that's when we get,Edward: So let's talk about that. So if the patterns are gonna be the same all the time, you do the audit and you almost know what your answer's gonna be before you start, because hey, this is just, it's almost like a. Let's go and measure. I remember we do these science experiments when I was a physics major in undergrad, and you do the science experiments and at the end of the day, you knew what the answer was going to be before you started because physics is what it is. And if it was wrong, you were more likely that you did the experiment wrong. Then gravity is different than it was last week. And if that's the case here where it's, hey, these are almost laws of nature, that you're gonna see these same patterns over and over again. But what are the differences in the audit? What's the gravity's not changing? What are the variables that change from one audit to the next?Peter: I love it. So we can take the, the two most obvious metaphors. One would be a financial audit. Again, you do your required financial audit from one quarter, one year to the next. And 99% of things haven't changed. But it's, the little bit of stuff that has changed is what makes the audit interesting and valuable. It's those discrepancies. Those variances, and then, Understand what happened and what we need to do about it. Same thing here. The basic patterns are gonna be the same but the, there's gonna be some nuanced differences for from one period to another. So just like we look for those variances in the financial order. The other great example would be your. Your annual medical checkup. just an audit of a sort and you want nothing to change. , you want it to be exactly the same from one year to the next. That's good. But there's always gonna be some kind of variance. And once again, we're gonna wanna understand what that means. I think it's a absolutely perfect analogy for why we do this and what we expect to see from it.Edward: And so can we get specific, are there examples that you can be like, okay, here's an audit. Or even a specific company, whether it's disguised example or not, of we did this audit, here's. The second audit, here's the third audit, here's what changed, or here's what we saw. Here's what surprised us to the, even the first audit. Let's start there. You do a company, you do a first audit. What are the surprises that you saw in a specific example?Peter: Yeah. One of them, as I alluded to before, and again, you and I have talked about endless times, is the holiday season is those customers who we acquire in q4. And again, I've gone on and on about this for years, about how those customers be acquired during that season aren't so good. And sure. Boom, we do this, you using real data set from a real company. And not only is it plain as day when you see it, but it's nice to then be able to go that next level down and say, again, as it purchased, frequency or spend or whatever. So we'll just see differences across, say, Cohorts of customers might be due to holidays, might be due to new product launch competition. Who knows what. You'll very often you will see those kinds of cross. They're slight, but they're persistent and they're important cuz it might be the case that you've overfished your waters. There are no new customers left to acquire. You're only getting crappy ones. So if you start seeing. These cohort level changes, it might tell you that your company is, your customer base is going over Cliff. So it's it's really good in that way. And the other part would be to tie it back to action, to tie it back to products. So let's, instead of just looking at which products we sell the most, let's look at our products through the lens of what's the quality of customers who buy. And to give us real guidance about what kinds of products we should be producing, developing, promoting and it's just, it's a whole different way of looking at product development, but through the appropriate lens.Edward: Got it. So the customers that bought Product A tend to churn out fast product customers that with their first purchase of Product B tend to last a long time. Therefore, we can afford to lose money when we sell Product B, but we can't lose money when we sell product a.Peter: Exactly. And I've been saying stuff like that and, General hand wavy terms for years. But it's really great to actually not only demonstrate that it's true, but to be a little bit more specific, a little bit more guided about it. Say, here's how you look at the data to see those differences and again, what they mean. And then of course, the back end is. Audit to action, what do we do about it? And that's where our third coauthor, Michael Ross comes in. Cause I'm like Hardy and me, he's a real world guy and he's been basically doing this kind of thing, again, not a formal audit like we're proposing but informal bits and pieces of it. And then talking about the, so what he's been doing that for years. And all we're trying to do is to make it a little bit more formal, make it a little bit more standardized. And I think the subsequent actions will be easierEdward: great. Excellent. So that's the first audit. So now you've done that and you've found all those low hanging fruit and you've made the changes but now you recommend what an audit every year, every quarter. How often?Peter: Yeah. It depends on the cadence of the company. For a lot of, I don't know, say a packaged goods company or a restaurant chain. Yeah. Quarterly would probably make sense. If you're selling mattresses, then probably yearly is more than enough. Really. It's not much different than how often you should be doing a financial audit. It just depends how how turbulent the company or the the ecosystem is. Could be a lot of different factors. You know what, I love that question cuz it implies we are gonna do it regularly. , you know how often I like that as opposed to should we do it at all?Edward: That is my next question, which is, okay, so going to the specific examples, we've done the audit once we've cleared up all the low hanging fruit. Now is there an example of a company who's done that and then when they do their second or third audit, they find something new and different because of some sort of.Peter: Oh yeah. Inevitably that's gonna happen. Again, it might be small. You of hope it's small, you kinda hope there's nothing. But the, but unlike physics, the world is constantly changing. There's all these forces on us, and in many cases we don't recognize the nature of the impact of that change until it's like too late and it's really showing up on the bottom line. The audit's kind of a, an early warning system about that. So again, it's fine if nothing's going on, that's good status quo, stay right on course. But when you see those little changes, then you're gonna wanna pursue them because those little things can become big.Edward: You talked about this kind of like being at the same cadence as financial statements is there any company that's sharing, is any publicly traded company that's sharing these as a financial statements or even, I guess a private company that's sharing it in board meetings privately that are doing these on a regular basis and sharing them public?Peter: We are starting to see it. And through my company, theta, there's been a couple of companies publicly traded, big, dry and publicly traded companies who have said that we want to start disclosing some of these metrics. We wanna know which ones we should disclose. We want to know what, caveats and guidance we can offer as a result of it. And then basically educate our investors and analysts to understand what that metric means and how it, it shines. A better light on just how healthy our company is. There, there's one that's about to start doing it I think in their next quarterly filings in in probably in February. And it's been really gratifying to see that again, though, I gotta admit, those companies are still exceptions and we want it to be more rural, that more companies will be doing this thing just on their own without needing us read the book and. Do it and that companies are doing it voluntarily just for, the right reasons instead of doing it because they're in trouble or they're defending against something.Edward: It almost feels more and more like this book should be targeted at finance rather than marketing. I, what I was writing my figuring out who my target audience was for, even for the newsletter, for marketing bs. And I often thought, you know what? I'm saying marketers are doing stuff wrong and people don't like to be told they're doing it wrong. When I get brought in to help out companies, it's almost always the CEO who's bringing me in or the investor bringing me in, not the cmo. If the CMO either is you know what? I'm comfortable with what Ed's doing, I don't need his help, or he's, they're like, you know what? I don't like what he's doing. Please don't help me. And so it's usually the CEO or the CFO that's bringing me in. And so I almost thought about, hey, marketing BS and having a tagline of marketing for finance people. I don't quite go that far, but this almost feels like it's that far. It almost feels like you should be going on finance podcasts and telling them all, start doing this audit, your freaking marketing team.Peter: Yeah, it's no doubt, and of course we're not doing out there to trash CMOs but you do have to acknowledge that the CEOs and CFOs do have more power and. In many cases are skeptical about, all what those customer experience campaigns or The Thing or the or, a lot of the other customer experience campaigns. What all that is buying them. This is a way to hold marketing accountable to basically say let's see, in the audit, can we see that we're getting a different mix of customers, that they're doing more stuff with us. So again, it's a very regular, accountable, rigorous way to demonstrate the impact of those marketing actions. We hope that the C'S will embrace it as well because they really are moving the needle. This would be the best way to demonstrate it, as opposed to, brand favorability, indices or customer satisfaction. Not that there's anything wrong with that stuff but the audit on these more financial metrics are kind of closer to the bottom line and therefore closer to the hearts and minds of the people who matter most.Edward: You know what I think this would be great for is a new cmo. If I'm going into a new business one of my philosophies when I started a new company is the first most important thing is getting all your metrics in order and get all your reporting done and getting that all set up. And then, and only then do you create five or six initiatives that we go after this stuff for. And then figure out if you have the team to do it, and then go and figure out your team. But this feels it's like a standardized way to go in and be like, no matter what your company is, use this format to go and get all your metrics set up. Cuz chances are when you come in, they aren't gonna be set up this way. And you need the, if you get them set up this way, you'll understand the business a lot more and you'll be able to track whether your initiatives and your team are gonna be. Moving things in the right direction.Peter: Amen. I like to give you a specific example of that. I know you like specifics. One of my favorite people who's been doing this, even if you haven't called it an audit for quite some time, is Zachary Anderson who runs all data analytics for NatWest Bank over in the uk, but in his previous gig in the same role at Electronic Arts, the gaming company, that's what he was tasked to do by the ceo, Andrew Wilson said, Zach, I want you to give me the four or five metrics that I should care. And I'm going to tie my compensation like for the next year or two to those metrics. And it was wonderful to see, first of all a CEO kind of going out on a loom like that and trusting marketing type metrics. Giving this kind of marching orders to not just one person but the entire organization and then saying some wonderful results emerge from it. So we wanna see that kind of thing happen. And once again, The metrics shouldn't be cherry picked by the CEO or any one person in the company. We should agree in advance should be a standard set of metrics, standard set of analyses that would apply to pretty much any company. And again, that's what the audit's all about.Edward: That's great. And so I think what we should do is in February when this company you think is gonna release their financial statements with this format, we should definitely dedicate an episode just to walking through those statements.Peter: I would love to do that. And of course, this is the kind of thing we're doing informally all the time. Big shout out to my former PhD student and co-founder, Dan McCarthy who really we talk about customer race, corporate evaluation. He's the man he invented as part of his dissertation and every time he sees companies talking about different kinds of customer metrics, like just last week he was talking about clear. Wonderful company and they put out some really interesting metrics and it was just really great to see Dan tear them apart in a positive way to say what it all means and what this, what light this sheds on the company that we wouldn't have known otherwise. And so then there's a lot of examples like that. And again, We just want that to become part of just the, a regular process and not this kind of one off thing that occasionally happens.Edward: That's good. Hey let's start here. So instead of just talking about Elon's latest adventures, let's when companies release earnings that have this information, or Dan releases one of his deep dives, let's make sure we talk about it on here and we can be the the heart bringers of.Peter: This is the right place to talk about Ed. Cuz not only do you appreciate and understand this stuff, but you do a great job of putting it in the right context to know where it all fits in. It's not just metrics for the fun of it. And I think it's important to get that full picture.Edward: That's right. Come here for your marketing news and your Star Wars metaphors. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Hey guys. Peter Shankman the host of Faster Than Normal here. I wanna invite you to something! I am hosting a Mastermind with 12 amazing speakers who are gonna be talking about everything from ADHD to mental health, from entrepreneurship, to just living your life better. It's gonna be on November 10th, It's gonna be virtual from anywhere in the world. Incredible, incredible speakers. The leading fitness trainer in Canada for all things. Me! A whole bunch of speakers- Scott Carney, who wrote the book which is to all about how he goes and takes ice showers every day. It's gonna be 12 amazing speakers, the CBS Early Shows' Jennifer Hartstein, really, really great people. And I'd like you to join us. Check out the link below in the show notes at ShankMinds 2022 and we will see you there. And a matter of fact, look for the discount code in the show notes as well, that'll take a hundred bucks off the cost. We'll see you soon! https://shankman.lpages.co/shankminds-virtual-2022/  DISCOUNT CODE:  SMFriends22 -- Southern California-born and bred Maitland Ward has quickly become one of the biggest stars in adult entertainment, after an-already successful career as an American model, actress and cosplay personality. After finding fame in the ‘90s on CBS soap The Bold and the Beautiful and smash ABC sitcom Boy Meets World, as well as a plum role in 2004's cult classic White Chicks, Ward decided to shake things up with racy social media content, sexy cosplay and appearing at fan conventions before making the leap into the adult film industry in 2019. The statuesque (5'10”) all-natural redhead is unique in that not only is she beautiful and built for the adult biz, Ward's talent as an actress means she can also carry dramatic and comedic scenes with ease. Her playful energy, professionalism and open sexuality earned her an exclusive performance contract with Vixen Media Group and the famous face of the brand's blockbuster studio, Deeper. In 2020, Ward won three AVN Awards for Best Supporting Actress, Best Three-Way Sex Scene-G/G/B for her work in Deeper feature Drive and Favorite Camming Cosplayer. She also won three XBIZ Awards for Crossover Star of the Year, Best Actress-Feature Movie and Best Sex Scene-Feature Movie, also for Drive.  In 2021 she scored two AVN Awards as well: Best Leading Actress for Deeper's Muse, as well as Best Boy/Girl Sex Scene for Higher Power, plus two XBIZ Awards for Best Acting-Lead and Best Sex Scene-Feature for Muse, and in 2022 she took home two XBIZ trophies for Best Acting-Lead for Muse 2 and Performer of the Year.  Ward's recent mainstream endeavors include starring and co-producing a TV series, The Big Time, taking on a lead role in psychological thriller Just for You and releasing an eye-popping no-holds-barred memoir about her wild life in the entertainment biz, Rated X: How Porn Liberated Me from Hollywood.    ——    In this episode Peter and Maitland discuss:     00:40 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 01:00 - Intro and welcome Maitland Ward!  IMDB bio 01:38 - So you're here in NYC promoting Rated X; let's talk about that! 02:00 - Despite all of your success at such a young age, you were not happy. Why? 04:00 - A lot of positive things have happened in the culture of Hollywood and beyond 04:45 - On hiding who you are, and why. A note on fear. 05:25 - When did you first realize, then decide you needed a change? 06:15 - About getting married an moving to NYC 06:50 - On figuring out that you're different 07:18 - Peter on how he explained to his father how he was quitting his day job 08:08 - When did you decide to make the switch from ‘mainstream to ‘adult' film? How did your peers react? 09:15 - About double standards 09:45 - Peter on breaking stereotypes for New Frontier Media at The Wall Street Journal 10:55 - How did it go when you started dipping your feet more into rated R, rated X Art? 12:28 - On building a fanbase in real time 14:00 - About her first full length feature and how that evolved  15:00 - How do you deal with the haters, how do you not focus on the bad reviews, trolls, etc? 15:55 - A tip about fan mail of any sort 16:55 - What's next for you? 17:35 - My how things have changed in twenty years, or even thirty! 18:52 - What do you do to get out of your head, to clear and re-center? 19:54 - Do you have any rituals or habits that must happen every day or else? 20:21 - How can people find more about you? Web: https://onlyfans.com/maitlandward Socials:  @MaitlandWard on Twitter  INSTA  FB  and @Maitlandtoks on TikTok Shout out to Brian at BSG Public Relations! @bsgpr on Twitter 20:57 - Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to hear. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  21:21 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits  — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat:  [00:00:41] Peter: So Maitland, thank you for taking the time. I know you're on a busy schedule with your book tour in New York here. [00:00:46] Maitland: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. [00:00:47] Peter: How is New York, uh, treating you so far?  [00:00:49] Maitland: It's, it's been great. It's been a whirlwind, like, meeting with everybody and like, you know, just doing all of the, the. publicity, I guess you would say. It's, it's kind of like a machine. So I, I'm really having good time, but it's been very busy. I hope to have a little more like downtime to, to little freedom to go explore. More freedom. [00:01:03] Peter: Yeah. We're, we're a good city. We're coming back. You know, Covid was a bit here, but I did not, I could have least how many people are here now.  [00:01:11] Maitland: Yeah. It's definitely came back. Cause I had come, uh, to film something like a, I guess it was a little over a year ago, and, It was pretty bad. Yeah. Things were shut down.  [00:01:20] Peter: Still in, I'm at the point my daughter's, my daughter's class, like half the kids and their parents like went to their second and third homes and all that. Right now they're all back. I'm like, I'm like you. I kind of feel like you should pay an extra 50% tax on everything because you went down, left your most right. You left us right. But yeah, we're coming back. It's nice to see the city getting, getting back into form. We're, we're a good place. Um, so you're, you're here promoting burning rated X. Yes. Let's, so let's talk about that. So you have. The majority of people in Delta Entertainment, you have backstory, you have a history. You came, um, in mainstream media, right? Yes. You started Boy Me World. Yes. And, and of course White. It's one of my favorites because my friend Marlon's in it. That's so cool. And, and you know, you, but you weren't happy.  [00:01:59] Maitland: Yeah, it was an interesting thing because I started acting very young, uh, like 16 years old. I was on a soap opera and, uh, it was, it was a whirlwind experience at the time, but I really felt like I had to be a certain way all the time in Hollywood. Like I had to be a good girl. I had to, you know, be straighten narrow, like really, you know, be nice. That was a big thing. Be nice, and it, I think that was a dangerous thing for a Woman to be taught, like make them like you be nice. So, um, so I was, but I felt like I was always denying certain parts of myself to. You know, accommodate other people and, and Hollywood, you know, I got very lucky early on that I got a lot of jobs and, and high profile jobs. Uh, especially like when I got Boy Meets World and I was, I really wanted to like please everybody at Disney and the producers and everything. And I, um, but it was weird because on the show I was this sort of, not a sex object, but she was very, The U undertones were sexual, I guess. Right. And she was always the one dancing around in lingerie.   [00:03:08] Peter: And like you spoke about that, teasing the boys,you mentioned that in the, both the concept and your articles, the concept that, you know, Yeah. Here's Disney. Right. You know, pure, pure bread, Disney. Yeah. Um, the, the, the likes of which we all all know who comes from Disney. Everyone. Everyone. Wonderful and happy. And then, Yet they were putting you in situations that today, I think if we looked at them under the eye of 2022, right. We  [00:03:24] Maitland: question. Oh, absolutely. Like, like I say in the book, how I had to go up to the producer's office to try on lingerie for my lingerie scenes. So, and like not just once. I mean, there was 20 people in there, whatever, a big group. Mostly men. Uh, pretty much all men except for maybe one or, um, and then I would have to try on all of it and like, and I thought that this was my job to do this, and I never, at the time, I didn't even 0cConceptualize that it was a weird thing or it was ski or it was anything wrong with it. But then today you look at that, if that happened today and it went on the internet or anything, people would be fired for it Yeah.  [00:04:00] Peter: . Yeah. And I think that, you know, in a lot of ways, everyone, everyone complains about cancel culture and complains that, that were too high strung. But a lot of things, positive changes have, have resulted from not only people like you speaking out, but you know, all the way back to the Weinstein and, and things like that. Yeah. But at, at the time that you were doing it again, you were under. Let's just be a good girl. Let's just do the nice thing. Yeah. I didn't wanna, like, was it, was there a fear there that if you, if you acted the way you wanted to or if you acted the way you were, the way you thought you were supposed to, you'd be gone?  [00:04:29] Maitland: Yes, definitely. Oh yeah, always. I had very much anxiety about that kind of stuff, like very much anxiety that I wouldn't do the right thing, I wouldn't be the right way, or I wasn't good enough for the situation and I.  You know imposter syndrome. Yeah. May, Yeah, maybe. Yeah. . Yeah, I guess. But it was like, yeah, cuz I had to like kind of be this persona that I can't see all the time. I was not who I was like there, but in certain parts of myself, especially my sexuality and everything. And I had to hide like, Things that, you know, how I wanted to be exact cause I thought it was wrong or bad, or, you know, weird or, or they would judge me and come down on me. [00:05:07] Peter: Fear is a great motivator. Not necessarily in a good way, but fear is a, you know, I don't wanna lose my job, I'm gonna conform despite what it's doing to your mental health. Yeah. Right, right. So as you moved on and as you had different roles and, and at, at some. Was there a, I guess was there a moment where you just said, F this?  [00:05:28] Maitland: I mean, was it, was it, did it come all at once or how did it, And it's  interesting. Back at the time, I didn't think that it was having an effect on me in my mental health. Like I didn't conceptualize that. I thought it was just like there's something wrong with me that I. Wasn't doing things the right way, but, and looking back, writing the book, I really saw that in certain situations. Yeah. Um, so yeah, it was a long time, a long journey like finding myself, and it's interesting because of all, you know, pitfalls and disappointments that I had after I had a lot of success, like after white chicks and all that, when I was really typecast and things dried up and Hollywood would, they still wanted to keep me in the box that they had put me as a, like this good girl character, this, but they didn't wanna cast me cuz I was already a typecast character. Right. So, but they still wanted me there for like, whenever they needed a certain purpose for me, like a little episodic work or something like that. Um, so that became frustrating. So then I, I actually, that's when I moved to New York for a while. I got married and moved to New York. Okay. And it was kind of like a, it was a breath of fresh air to kind of get away from the Hollywood machine. I've heard that. Yeah. Because it was like, cuz when you're there you're just so caught up. Like, Oh, what, Who's going to this party? Right? What's this audition? Did you get that one? Like, did you book this one? And, uh, so, so getting away, I really like started to really discover myself and I started writing a lot and erotic writing. And I started really discovering my sexuality and stuff of, I guess not discovering it all the way Admitting it Okay. Is more of a thing because I think I knew all along that I, I, I just thought I was different and I thought I, like I say, I, I was a bad girl maybe inside , but, but I realized, you know, I'm not bad. It's kind of funny. My husband helped me realize that really. and he was very encouraging of me to explore this path that I really wanted to explore.  [00:07:17] Peter: I imagine so. I mean, I remember, and I, I guess I can't really equate much to it, but I've always imagined the, the day that I told my parents, I, I, I had one job in my life. I worked for, for America Online back in the nineties when, when a was the internet, right? Yeah. And I came back to New York and realized, They let us work anyway we wanted, which is why I did so well. My ADHD flourished cuz I was able to do, Oh, you wanna work at two in the morning? Great. As long as you get it done. Yeah. Yeah. Then I come back to New York and start working for a magazine and, and we have 8:00 AM meetings and 9:30 AM meetings and 10:00 AM editorial boards. And I'm like, What? This is Russia? And it, I, I quit within two. Yeah. And I remember telling my Dad, um, I'm gonna start my own PR firm and if it fails, and I actually said when it fails, when it fails, oh I'll get another. Cause I was so, who the hell am I to do anything, you know, entrepreneurial. And that was like 24 years ago. And I remember that was the scariest conversation I ever had have because I said, You know, I might need you to help pay my rent for a month or I might need what I didn't thank God, but you know, I got lucky and, and things were in. But tell us about the mindset when you decided you're gonna make this switch. You're gonna go from mainstream to adult, which to be, let's be fair, adult is kind of at this point, 2022, putting mainstream. Anyway, [00:08:20] Maitland: that's why it's so weird to say both things and I know we have to differentiate kind of, but, But it is weird that we have to differentiate.    [00:08:25] Peter: Right? So tell me about, Because you, you wrote a really interesting piece that I really enjoyed about your interaction with Elizabeth Berkeley. Oh, yes, I was Right. So tell us about that. [00:08:33] Maitland:  First, It was a very quick interaction. Yeah, but it was an interesting one. I, it was right after like the news broke that I was, Doing this big porn film and stuff. And I was in the industry and everything and I was, you know, walking out of the Whole Foods. And I saw her off to the side and she looks at me like, you know, our white eyes and they got wider. And I was like, and she had, I, I don't know, I think it was her husband at the time. I don't know if there's still, I don't know the situation. It was a man with her. Right. Um, and she, she just looks at and she turns to him and like whispers something like this and he looks, and it was such a weird like, situation to have them be like, Look at me like some sort of a, you know, beast down in the wild. [00:09:11] Peter: I'm sorry. And let's just, let's just be clear, this is Nomi Malone looking at you , right? This is the girl who, who went from Saved by the Bell, then Showgirls. So I'm, I'm not sure what she's actually looking at, where she comes off looking at you, everybody. So that really kinda pissed me off when I read that. The hell is she looking at you? [00:09:25] Maitland:  But it's a weird thing because once you go- when it's deemed adult, Right. It's different, right? Like in Hollywood films like now on like streaming shows and stuff, they go so close to it, of course.   [00:09:39] Peter: But, but they didn't go all the way. In 2003, um, I, I represented a company called New Frontier Media and, uh, New out of Denver, Ca, Boulder, Colorado, and New Frontier was the, this back in for porn was free, right? Yeah. Right. And, and, and they were the largest distributor of adult paperview on cable. Mm-hmm. . And I would go, I had my, I worked for them for four years and I took their stock price from like 99 to $10 because I forced my way into the Wall Street Journal and Forbes and Fortune. Mm-hmm. explaining, you know, I have a company who I'm repping, who is kicking the ass, their biggest competitor with Playboy. Yeah. By a factor of 10 x. Like, Oh, we great. They're adult. Oh, we can't touch that. I'm like, Why the hell not, not? It's so explaining when, and I got through and, and I remember getting New Frontier Media on the cover of Forbes was like, like the highlight. If that's my epi half right now. Yeah. The first porn company on Forbes. But, you know, but it was, it was the concept of, look, you, you, you're, it's one of those things that you're. Um, secretly. Yeah. Right. You're not gonna admit to it, but meanwhile, look at how much money is being driven. Yes. You know, let's, let's, let's look at something like Euphoria. Um, great show, but not really about the acting per se. Yeah. You know, there's, there's things we're looking at on that show that we know exactly what we're looking. Go onto Reddit. You're not gonna find, uh, uh, um, uh, reviews of the acting. You're gonna find one thing on your, you know, about your for. And so, so that being said though, it's a lot easier to say that then is to sort of tell us about, like, tell us about the day or whatever. [00:10:56] Maitland: It was, the moment where, All right, I'm doing this and, and  here we go. You know what, it wasn't like one certain moment. I mean it uh, it was cuz I started like exploring stuff on my social media sexy pictures and stuff. And this was along the time, by the time Girl Meet's World has spin enough appointments coming around, right? So there was a lot of attention and social media was really starting to really boom, like Instagram, especially in like Snapchat. And uh, so I started getting followers for like doing my sexy cosplay that I loved doing and doing bikini shots and all that stuff. Uh, but then I'd eventually. They started like taking down photos. Right. Actually, cuz a lot of people would complain for no reason to like these like fundamentalist types that watch, of course that are obsessed with like boy meets world being wholesome and wholesome and good and stuff. And uh, actually a lot of porn girls though suffer from people just, [00:11:46] Peter: Oh, of course for that question. [00:11:49] Maitland: Just taking their, I mean, look at the Visa MasterCard scenario. They had match  ridiculous. Um, so I kind of, my, my fans were like, Well, why don't you just sell content? And I didn't know what content was really at the time. I mean, I kind of heard of it, so I, but I said, Well, maybe, And I said, I'll start, I'll start a Patreon account, right? It's, you know, they patrons of your art. And I was gonna do like Playboy-esque type photos. I, I started the page and I, I didn't even like, Um, announced it. I just like did it one night and I said, ah, close it. Then the next morning there was like 20 people in there and then so I announced it and by the end of the week there was like 2,800 people. I was like, What? They're gonna buy my nudes, a create content.  [00:12:23] Peter: Holy shit! [00:12:24] Maitland: I know. And it was just like, then it kind of evolved from there. Cause I, I had been exploring like my sexuality and my writing and everything like that, so I was like, Oh, maybe I'll do. Girl, girl stuff then, and let's do this. And my fans responded and it was kinda like they were watch, they really were watching my journey along the way. Yeah. Like in real time. Um, and so then I, then I was like, What? You know, my husband and I had a big moment about when we said we're gonna have me do something with guys. So I, but I was so lucky. I found two guys in the porn industry who've been there so long, they were so professional. And they really like taught me along the way, like how would to do, this was a year and like almost a year and a half period before I got like a call from Vixon to do. Right. The black scene that went crazy viral. I might, might have been of, been , but it, but then I didn't even announce that to the press. It was all kind of just a internet moment.  [00:13:21] Peter: Oh, well by that moment you'd built, you'd built the audience.  [00:13:22] Maitland: Yes, but when I did. That's why everybody thinks I made this announcement. I just was saying I'm going to porn right now when I did the film drive for deeper.com. Mm-hmm. , which is Vic, one of Vic's brands. Um, but it was because I, the black team just blew up that, on that same day, Caden Cross, who, who is amazing performer and director in, in her own right, but she had started the brand deeper, right? Not very long before she had just, they just acquired the brand like four months or launched four months before, but she was doing her first feature. For it and, um, she lost her co-star on. The day my black scene came out. Oh wow. So, but she thought she'd have to quit the movie cuz you know, there's not a lot of people who can handle a lot of dialogue fast. And so, um, she went to Vixen and said, I think we're done with, we're not able to do it this year. And then they said, talk to Maitland. She just blew up and she can act. And then, so that really was, we did that and I decided, you know what, I'm really proud of this. I'm proud of the trailer, I'm proud of the whole thing of the feature, cuz full length features complete, you know, dialogue story. It was, um, so I did announce it to the press. That's went insane. And that's when everybody thought, Oh, she just made the switch all of of a sudden. It's always a backstory. Yeah. It's kind of like when people say, Oh my God, like they have a starring rule in something suddenly and they're like, You just showed up my imdb, but it's  [00:14:44] Peter: 30 years. [00:14:45] Maitland: I know I've been here forever.  [00:14:47] Peter: The everyone's like, You last company, you started this, sold it three years. It was 17 years of crap.  [00:14:51] Maitland: Yeah, no, that's what I mean.  [00:14:53] Peter: There's so much prep involved and so much time. Let me ask you this. One of the things that we touched on, and this is what I think my listeners can really relate to mm-hmm. um, being as out there as you. Right. Whether, whether it's it's on, uh, in Hollywood or, or in adult, there is a, how do you edit that out? How do you deal with the haters? How do you deal with the bad reviews? A lot of, when you're ADHD or ADHD or any sort of neurodiverse, yeah, be imposter syndrome is huge, but also, The premise that, I mean, I'll give a keynote to 10,000 people. Mm-hmm. , right? 9,999 of them will love it. There's one guy who didn't stand up for the standing ovation. That's all that I'm gonna think about for the next two weeks.  [00:15:27] Maitland:  I know. You know, what do you do? I used to be a lot more like that. Um, like I would get very, like, especially when I started doing sexier photos, like on Instagram stuff, I'd get those, like fundamentalist haters and stuff. I got very perked by it. I guess , that's the word. Um, but now I kind of. I don't embrace it. There's always like one or two trolls that just wants to attack you. Right? But I was actually told something early on when I was on the soap opera that the fan mail that we get, and I remembered this, like I really came to play with the trolls. No matter if it's good or bad, you're making an impact. If they didn't care, they wouldn't even be there. So it's, if you're not getting any attention or any feedback from people, that's cuz think about to be a troll, you have to be pretty investing.  [00:16:14] Peter: Exactly.  [00:16:15] Maitland: You watch people getting fired up about something, you're, you're making this connection. [00:16:18] Peter: Sounds like all the people who, who, when Nike came out to support Gay Rights, uh, everyone burned their Nike clothing. Okay. So yeah, just spend the a hundred bucks on sneakers and burn. Okay, cool. Cause you know, it's not like Maggie didn't make any money from that. That's true. That's true. But no, I, I, I've always said, if, if you don't have haters, you're not doing enough to change the status quo. [00:16:33] Maitland: That's, that's exactly good. That's, that's a perfect statement really. [00:16:37] Peter: So you just sort of put it outta your head. You're like, They're there, but  [00:16:40] Maitland: I try to, it means that I'm doing something. I mean, you know what always is kind of like, of course sounds the back. It's, Yeah, I don't like it, but, you know, but I try to, Yeah. Put it out my. And I do have some wonderful fans who will attack them, like nice backers. I don't even do all the work.  [00:16:52] Peter: There you go. Yeah. So  [00:16:54] Maitland: what's. You know what? I don't know. And, you know, well I really would like to sell the book rights and stuff cuz I, I think there's really potential there and we're working on that. And it's funny because ever since I have been in the Adult industry, I've actually had more opportunities, like people in mainstream coming to me and stuff. Like I shot a sitcom pilot last year. I'm like, yeah. So, uh,  [00:17:15] Peter: It's, it's, well, I think it's good timing for you also. I think that those barriers have definitely back from when I was repping in 2003, like it's definitely changed. [00:17:21] Maitland:  It's so changed and I really think it's because people have grown up with it on the internet. Yeah. Not grown up, but you know, when they get in there maybe.  [00:17:28] Peter: So, yeah, I remember. No, I, Believe me, I remember there was a bodega, um, on the corner where, where near, I grew up in the corner, I think it was 91st and Amsterdam with an owner who did not care what you bought or what you looked at, whether it was- that's funny- Beer or nudie mags. And I, you know, like the majority of kids in my, in my grade, like 86 to 90 in high school, 85 or whatever. I think we pretty much all found it through that mess, through that pod.  [00:17:50] Maitland: That's true. Yes. I know. I think kids today, they go online. [00:17:53] Peter: You don't have no idea how hard it was. [00:17:55] Maitland:  They just go online and that's so funny. But seriously, people in their twenties and thirties now, they're like, They're so open to it. And especially women. I am so surprised by the women that come up to me and they're like, This is so cool. I'm so glad you're doing this and making this change. And I, I think they feel like they can talk to me cuz I'm, I'm in, I was in their living rooms. Yeah. And I feel a little like a bridge or something between like, they can ask me questions. And people can feel a little safer talking to me about things they're curious about in the adult industry and stuff. But they all, Everybody watches it ?   [00:18:26] Peter: No. No question about it. But they, Yeah, I could tell you, I mean, I remember when I was wrapping the company had access to all their data and I could tell you what states and what cities and what towns in those states. Yeah. Um, spent the most money. Oh really? Uh, it was, yes. You know, little spoiler. It was always a red state. Yeah. Always. A And it was like the hardest portion of course. And then the hardest core stuff. Another the one- oh, this is terrible! Right. Then they go right home. They spend a hundred bucks. Exactly. Um, that's, So tell us what you do Last, last couple questions to keep this brief. Tell us what you do to get out of your head. So do you exercise? Do you, what is your thing when you, when you're like, Oh my God, I gotta, I'm, I'm, I'm gone. See an hour, see in two hours. See you here. What do you..  [00:19:03] Maitland: I actually trained to be a yoga teacher. Oh wow. I'd never taught, but I did it for myself. And that was actually after I came back from New York and I was really, that helped me discover a lot for myself too, to really like, get like out my head and really like, you know, meditate, I guess, and like do the practice. So I do do that. I really like to do that. I like to play with my dogs and stuff; most, the most innocent fun. I think that they just don't care. They just, they like, no matter what is going on in the world, they're just happy to be with you. And I think that's, Yeah. So I think I do, I like to do that, but um, and I like to, I like to read a lot and I like to, um, you know, I listen to music and watch them try to like, and not distract myself, but like, just to calm and relax. Yeah. Because yeah, sometimes I get stressed out with everything going on and stuff, so I really need to like, Just mellow down. [00:19:53] Peter:  Do you have any rituals or, um, habits that absolutely must happen every single day?  [00:19:59] Maitland: No, I don't think so. Not every single day. I mean, does coffee count ?  [00:20:04] Peter: Yeah, coffee counts.   [00:20:05] Maitland: Okay. Coffee's right up there with exercise. Sure. Why not? Yeah. And like exercise. Yes and no. I don't always get to do that, but I, but I do. But, um, yeah, I think coffee, coffee's my ritual. .  [00:20:17] Peter: I think coffee is a perfect way to end anything. So, So definitely this interview, Maitland Ward. Thank you so much. Um, tell us how people can find you? Web: https://onlyfans.com/maitlandward Socials:  @MaitlandWard on Twitter  INSTA  FB  and @Maitlandtoks on TikTok [00:20:23] Maitland:  Oh, on all of the social media is Maitland Ward, except I do have a TikTok now which I just started,  [00:20:29] Peter: listen, it's, I'm like the only person that, that Asia's not following their, you know, stealing their, oh my gosh, stealing their files. [00:20:34] Maitland: I, I'm so good at it yet, but we're It's MaitlandTok, because somebody had my name,  [00:20:40] Peter: Ah, someone took your name, you. You can probably fight and get that back if you want. [00:20:41] Maitland:  Yeah, I actually am working on that, but Awesome. Um, but yeah, it's funny. So yeah. But everywhere else is my name.    [00:20:52] Peter: Folks, the book is called. “Rated X: How Porn Liberated Me from Hollywood”. This is a wonderful, wonderful interview. Thank you so much, Maitland Ward for taking the time! Guys, as always, thanks for listening. We appreciate you being here. This one went a little longer. Normally we cap at 20 minutes because you know, #ADHD but we went a few minutes longer and I think that's awesome. And wanna give big shout out to Maitland Ward and to, Brian Scott Gross putting us together. Brian runs the amazing PR firm, uh, BSG Public Relations He's pretty awesome. He lives out in California. A really short guy though, but really nice guy, . And anyway, , thrilled that you took the time, and really, really grateful guys. We'll see you again next week. Thank you for listening. Talk to you soon. Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week!

Katie's motto is "stop being a weenie", which speaks perfectly to her belief that anything can be accomplished with a little bravery. Katie had a lucrative - but unsatisfying career - in Sales and Marketing for years. Until one day she walked out to build the life and career she really wanted. She went on to get her training in Executive Coaching and Leadership Development at the Co-Active Training Institute in San Rafael, California. Now, she's a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach and an Associate Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation. Katie built her successful business helping mission-driven entrepreneurs get out of overwhelm and into six-figure incomes - all while doing meaningful work that they love. Now Katie spends her time between Philadelphia and Cape Cod. She loves travel, her goofy dog Luna, and celebrating her clients' wins with good champagne. Katie shares her advice on how to find a good coach, tips and tricks she uses that you may never have heard about, and the importance of time management, among other goodness, enjoy! In this episode Peter and Katie discuss:   00:40 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 01:22 - Intro and welcome Katie McManus 3:05 - You've been through it. What do you do for clients who come to you saying they are just a complete screw-up? 03:53 - Upon hearing a new client's story… 04:48 - Treasuring the benefits 05:04 - the ADHD brain is always working 06:15 - On not using neurotypical advice 06:40 - We with ADHD do not have a built-in electric water heater; we have to pump-up the good hot water for ourselves. [Which explains getting up at 4AM today]. 08:01: How listing every single activity can in itself bring a sense of accomplishment/a dopamine hit  Ref: Canva App  08:40 - What are some of the other tips and tricks you've learned over the years? 08:43 - How to do time management when you've got something at 2pm and it's already noon 10:24 - What about scheduling weekend blocks of time? 11:33 - Neon colored index cards and an elliptical machine anyone? 12:15 - What would you say to someone who wants to work with a coach, but doesn't necessarily know that it's it's right for them? 13:44 - How can people find more about you? Web:  https://www.katiemcmanus.com/  Socials: @katie.the.coach on INSTA @katie.mcmanus.leadership on Facebook and @katiemcmanusleadership on LinkedIN  14:00 - Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to hear. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  14:37 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits  — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat:  [00:00:37] Peter: Yo yo everybody what's going on. My name is Peter Shankman. This is Faster Than Normal. I'm gonna save you guys. I'm going to save you the usual spiel I give every day because today or every episode because today, my daughter went back to school and, and my daughter who sleeps in till noon, if I let her every day was up at 4:15 in the morning. Oh. Which is even before I get up this morning. And so I had my entire bike ride and everything else about an hour earlier than normal while talking to her and explaining to her that it doesn't matter that she doesn't know who's gonna be in her class because I'm sure she'll make tons of friends. And I was rewarded by bringing her to school and saying, so are you all set and realizing that she had already left to join her a bunch of friends. So feeling really loved this morning. It's. Good. Good place to be. So with that being said, meet Katie McManus. She's going to provide me the love that my daughter didn't give me. Um, Katie is a business strategist and coach, um, with a great motto or motto is stop being a weenie, which I love that. I, I say it, uh, I say it stop being a dumb ass, but it's sort of the same premise. It's like stop, stop worrying so much. Show a little bravery and get the hell out there. Jump out the plane already. She used to work in sales and marketing. Hated it. And she went on to get her training, executive coaching and leadership development and coactive training Institute in San California. She's a professional, proactive coach and associate certified coach, the international coaching Federation, all these things I didn't notice. OK. She built her successful business, helping mission driven entrepreneurs, get outta overwhelm and into six figure incomes while doing meaningful work that they love, she spends her time between Philadelphia and Cape Cod, which is just weird. Uh, she loves travel, which is cool. She has a goofy dog named Luna, which is cool, and she likes celebrating client wins with good champagne. So I'll take those and that's, that's a good enough reason to have you on Katie. Welcome.  [00:02:18] Katie: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Although the bar to be here to show you enough, love to make up for your daughter. That's pretty high.  [00:02:26] Peter: I was gonna say you got your work cut out for you. So let's get started. um, I fully expect to be loved the next, next, uh, next few months. So next few minutes. So, I mean, I, I, you know, this is a podcast for people with ADHD and then, and sort of sort of neurodiversity and things like. And so they've spent the majority of their lives. Most of our listeners spent the majority of our lives at least I have, um, you know, hearing that we're broken. Right. And hearing that, that, that it doesn't matter what we're gonna do, cause chances are gonna screw it up. Cause that's just what we are. And so, you know, you, you, you come from, you have that background, you understand sort of where that comes from. Um, you know, what do you, what are you doing? What, how are you working with clients who come to you and say, yeah, I'm just complete screw-up?  [00:03:05] Katie: Yeah. Um, well, it's interesting cuz I think there's a difference of when you are you're diagnosed. Cuz I was diagnosed when I was a kid. Right. And I lived in California and um, my parents actually sent me to a, a special school. They sent me to a Waldorf, um, which I don't know if you're familiar with Waldorf. It's kinda like summer camp all year long. Um, and they like neglect to teach you things like math. Uh, so I didn't learn like math until I was about six years old, but I don't know. I, I was able to integrate it into my workflow from a really early stage. Um, I actually didn't realize that. If, when you get diagnosed later, you have this stigma attached to you because you've spent so much of your life feeling like a fuck up and not knowing why. And I'm sorry. I, I hope we're allowed to swear here,  [00:03:52] Peter: here. Go for it by all means.  [00:03:53] Katie: Okay, great. So, um, when I'm working with my clients, it's, it's really interesting. Um, You know, they are coming to me freaking out about, oh, I fucked this up again. I screwed this up again. I'm getting this done late again. And on one side, it's like, okay, well, let's kind of deconstruct that story that you have, that you're screwing everything up all the time and that things are supposed to be done by a certain point. right. And then on the other side, like, you know, , you know, why not just make that part of your process? Why not just design that with your clients from the get, go that, Hey, I have ADHD and sometimes, uh, I'll send you emails the last minute. And if you need something from me before then just ping me for it. [00:04:38] Peter: And I think that, that framing the disabilities as a benefit. Yeah. Right. Is something that, that not enough people do. And again, not enough people do it because they've been told all their lives. It's not a benefit. It's a curse. Right. You know, you are broken. And so I think that that's a, it's a good answer. I think though it takes, it takes a lot of work to get there. Um, it's, it's hard to believe. that you have something good. Um, when, when you come from this world where it's not, yeah.  [00:05:03] Katie: You know, I have, I have this one lawyer, um, client and he's brilliant, absolutely brilliant. He has ADHD. And I can't tell you how many times he tells me that he came up with this incredible idea to win a case in the final hour because he procrastinated.  [00:05:20] Peter: You know, like no, a lot of us do that [00:05:21] Katie: . Right. But procrastination, when we think of procrastination, like, yes, we're not writing the paper. Yes. We're not doing the project. Yes. We're not doing the thing. It doesn't mean we're not working on it though. I don't know about how your process is, but I know when I'm procrastinating, I'm cleaning my house. I'm sewing a costume for Halloween in three months, I'm taking my dog for a walk. My brain is churning on that project. Right? It's it's trying things out. It's creating arguments for this. It's getting organized. I I'm not physically actually working on it. You wouldn't, I wouldn't be able to hand you anything that I've done on it, but I've already done the work in my head by the time I go and put pen to paper, if I'm writing. [00:06:03] Peter: Right. I mean, I think a lot of that also is the fact that, you know, because we work differently, right. We do that in such a way where, you know, it might look like we're doing absolutely nothing. We're surfing the web, we're doing whatever, but there's, there's a, a candle that's lit back there and it is burning. [00:06:15] Katie: Right. Right. I think also we, we make the mistake of trying to take neurotypical advice on productivity and that's something that actually hurts us more than it helps us. You know, I don't know if you're familiar with that saying like eat the frog first thing in the morning. No, of course. Yeah. I'm sorry. I don't have enough dopamine, first thing in the morning to get self water. Right. I have to. Well, and that's right.  [00:06:37] Peter: Yeah. It's funny. It's funny because that, the whole premise behind that, you know, when people think of praise being up as early as I do, uh, to exercise it's because of exactly that, that is my version of. Yep. Right. I'm getting, I don't, I, you know, everyone, like, you know, do you think I really wanna get on the goddamn bike at four 30 in the morning and ride for an hour? No, wanna sleep. How's wrong with you. Yeah. Right. But you don't, you don't do that. Yeah. Because you know, what has to happen,  [00:06:59] Katie: right. Right. It's like, it's kind of funny, you know, we think of neurotypical people, it's almost like they have an electric water heater right next to their shower, you know? And when, when someone with ADHD or who is neurodiverse, it's like the water heaters down in the basement, were on the third floor. Right. Like we just gonna have to prime the pump. We have to like get all the cold water out before we can really tackle that big thing.  [00:07:20] Peter: Wow. That's a great way of looking at it. Right. That's I love that. I'm I'm blatantly gonna steal that. That's a great way of looking at that. No, it's, it's really true. That, that concept of priming the pump- you. Uh, people wake up, you know, I remember that I always thought for years that I was in high school, that I was awesome. Um, at first period, no matter what first period was, and it turns out first period was always English. Yeah. Or social studies, the two things I always loved. Yeah. Right. The senior year it was math. Well, I'm screwed. you know, all of a sudden my, my first period class, not a good thing. Mm-hmm right. So it's that it's that, you know, that premise of it? No, it comes down to the fact that, that I was getting my dopamine for the rest of the day from the first grade class that I enjoyed, right?  [00:08:00] Katie: No, a hundred percent for, for me. I actually went into Canva and I created a list of all the things I usually like to get done in the morning from drinking my coffee, to take my dog for a walk, to exercising, to meditating, to showering, to brushing my teeth. And I find the days where I actually cross those things off as I do them, not in any particular order, um, are days that I am far more productive later. Because I've given myself credit for all the little things that I've done and I'm able to feel a little more productive and it really does get that, that dopamine dripping, which helps me get more stuff done. [00:08:36] Peter: Yeah, no question about it. So tell me some of, some, some of the other secrets and tricks that you've learned over the years. [00:08:41] Katie: Oh, man. Um, I mean, time management is a big thing for me. Um, I had a really hard time with a coach I had a while ago who I, I stopped working with pretty quickly, um, The neurotypical way of organizing a day is like do 30 minutes of this and then do 30 minutes of that. I'm sorry, that just doesn't work for me. Um, if I'm going to start working on something, I know I'm gonna get into hyperfocus and I need like a good chunk of time to be in hyperfocus because there have been too many instances where I've gotten really sucked in on a project I'm really into it. And then I missed three appointments. Right. Right. So I get this time anxiety. I can't even get into hyperfocus these days if I have something two hours from now. Right. Because I know like I'm just gonna constantly check the clock and like, I'm worried about the interruption.  [00:09:33] Peter: So, what do you, so, so, so,  [00:09:35] Katie: so what I do is I honestly, like, I, I tell my, my business manager and my, my assistant, like, you're not allowed to, like, these are my blocks for creative time and they're five hour blocks. And the amount of work that I can get done in a good five hour block is unheard of . Yeah. But I wouldn't be able to do that if I were just plugging in an hour a day, right. The same amount of time, but the way it's organized, just my brain just can't get into it in just an hour.  [00:10:01] Peter: Oh, because the end of the day, you need to give yourself, you know, cause if you're okay, I have a meeting at two. Well now it's 11. All I gotta remember. And 12 o'clock and start thinking of one. O'clock exactly. And so, so you're not giving it the full capacity? No, I, I do the same thing. I block off, I block off creative days, right? Uh, no, one's allowed to schedule stuff with me on certain days of the week and that's just, that's just me to have, have a good time and create my, whatever I'm creating. [00:10:17] Katie: Yeah, totally. Um, I also , I don't know, like weekends are really hard for. Weekends. I, I don't know. I have this expectation that I'm productive all week and on the weekends, I have to be productive in my personal life. Like I have to clean and I have to do all these things. Um, for the longest time I would just sit in terror of like, I'm a failure, I'm screwing this up. Like I'm not getting everything done for hours on Saturday morning until I actually started prescribing a Disney movie to myself every, every weekend morning mm-hmm . And it's like, there's a point at which. I don't know, there's this, this active resting thing that happens when you're, when you're watching something, that's not a lot of work to watch. Right. Where you get kinda not bored, but you're like, I'm done with this now. I've had my rest. Now I get to go do something. Right. But for, for me, like I have to be for me to turn my brain off it. There has to be a story going on.  [00:11:13] Peter: Right. No makes perfect sense. And I think that's really interesting cause you know, a lot of growing up for me, at least it was, um, my I'd always wanted, I always wanted to be listening to music when I was studying. My parents would always say, no, it can't do that. Can't do that. Can't focus when you're doin gthat. Well, it turns out obviously, you know, now that, that would've actually been perfect. Right. That would've incredibly, incredibly beneficial.  [00:11:32] Katie: Yeah. Did you ever use like neon colored, uh, index cards for studying? Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh. Any trip, love that stuff. I actually got like a little mini elliptical and I'd be with, up with my geography book in front of me. I'd have a map, I'd have my index cards and I'd just be like pumping away on this little mini elliptical.  [00:11:52] Peter: That's funny. That's funny, but no, it is, you know, again, it's what works and we didn't know .God, when I was a kid, I probably would've, I would've benefited so much from having like a, you know, a treadmill desk or anything, any of those things, they just didn't, they just weren't there. Right. I have no question about it.  [00:12:04] Katie: Or like talk to text, you know, you walk and talk and you're just like figuring out your paper. And even if it's messy, you get to go back and edit it later, but you get all the thoughts out.  [00:12:13] Peter: Yep. What would you say? Um, at the end of the day to someone who's who's, you know, wants to work with a coach, but doesn't necessarily know that it's it's right for them or, you know, they, they feel things like that. [00:12:24] Katie: I mean, honestly, there are so many coaches out there that aren't gonna be a good fit for you. I would say, just go and contact a bunch of them and have, have a discovery call. Just see if they're, if you even like the person, right. Because that's half the battle, cuz you're gonna be spending a lot of time with this person. You have to trust them. You have to know that they're on your side. Um, Like the only way to figure, figure out if you wanna do something or not is to explore it and get the information that you need. Um, and that's what I, I always invite people. Like, if you're curious about working with me, just book up call, I'm not a high pressure sales person at all. I come from sales. It doesn't mean that I utilize all the gross tricks that they teach there. Um, but it's really ..Know what it is that you wanna accomplish through coaching. Really really important, cuz otherwise it's, it's really hard for a coach to support you when you're not even sure what you wanna get out of it. [00:13:17] Peter: Um, no, I understand. [00:13:18] Katie: And, and yeah, like find someone who, you know, you're gonna be able to be honest with, so not someone that you're trying to impress all the time, because you think they're cool. Um, and someone who you, you enjoy actually talking things through with.  [00:13:37] Peter: That makes perfect sense. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Very cool. Well, I appreciate you guys taking the time. This was, this was a lot of fun. Katie McManus business transcripts. How can people find you?  [00:13:46] Katie: Uh, they can find me at my website at www dot Katie. K a T I E. McManis cm, a ns.com. Um, and on Instagram at Katie dot the dot coach.  [00:14:00] Peter: Very cool. I will have people reach out. We'll put in in with the show notes. Thank you so much for taking the time. We appreciate it.  [00:14:05] Katie: Thank you so much for having me. This is so much fun and I, I hope you feel so much love. I'm sending it to you right now. You're channeling it through your daughter and all that.  [00:14:14] Peter: That was great. I'm trying my best. Gonna go pick her up, you know, hopefully she's a good first day and, and things go well. So all good. Guys. Thanks for listening to Faster Than Normal. We'll be here again next week with another episode, if you liked, you heard leave us a review uh, stick around fun stuff coming every single week this entire year. It's a new year. It's a new Dawn. It's a new day. The summer's over. Welcome back. We'll see you guys soon.    Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week!

Skye Rapson is an academic and coach with over seven years of experience working in adult education. Skye has studied in various fields, including Psychology, Sociology, and Public Health, and is now a Doctoral Candidate in Population Health. She was diagnosed with ADHD at the start of her doctorate. Since then, Skye has dedicated her time to researching and disseminating ADHD studies, founding Unconventional Organisation in 2020 to provide ADHD adults and managers with strengths-based, neurodiverse-friendly ADHD coaching and workshops. We're learning about how and why she began, today. Enjoy! In this episode Peter and Skye discuss:   00:40 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 01:01 - Intro and welcome Skye Rapson!  Ref: Interview with Sally Willbanks, founder of ND Renegade [actually based in Australia] 01:57 - So you were diagnosed at the beginning of your PhD program? 03:00 - What changed and maybe made more sense after your diagnosis? 03:39 - Ref: Interview with Rachel Cotton, another PhD student w/ ADHD 04:00 - How did your priorities shift? 04:27 - What Skye found of from her peer group at university 05:55 - Let's talk about your “Unconventional Organization” Ref: Her podcast: Unconventional Organisation with Skye Rapson and her coaching service: https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com 06:54 - What kinds of trends did you find when you started conversing with other neurodiverse folks? 07:42 - On changing the way we get things accomplished  08:40 - What would you now tell your 15-year-old self? 09:03 - How can people find more about you? Web: https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com Socials: @unconventionalorganisation on INSTA and Facebook  09:24 - Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to hear. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  09:58 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits  — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat:  [00:00:37] Peter: Hey everyone, Peter. Shankman welcome. The episode of Faster Than Normal today is a PhD. We seem to be doing a lot of doctoral candidates lately. I don't know why doctoral candidates seem to get diagnosed, but maybe cuz they're smart enough to know that something's not, uh, normal, like other people. And they're like, Hey, let's figure that out. But either way we get another one here. Her name is Skye Rapson and Skye's an academic coach with over seven years of experience working at adult education, she has studied in various fields, including psychology, sociology. and public health and is now a doctoral candidate in population health in New Zealand. So we are a long way from home today. She was diagnosed with ADHD at the start of her doctorate. And since then, she's dedicated time to researching and disseminating ADHD studies, founding unconventional organization in 2020 to provide ADHD, adults and managers with strength based neurodiverse friendly ADHD, coaching and workshop. Skye, welcome.  [00:01:35] Skye: Hi. Yeah. Great to be here.  [00:01:37] Peter: Good to have you here. So ADHD, you know, it, it's interesting. We had, we have there's someone else from New Zealand who we've had on the podcast. Um, she runs, uh, oh God, what's the name, but neuro neuro it's line of t-shirts neuro… Oh, I'm spacing on it now. I have one of them. It's awesome. Awesome shirt. I'll remember it, but, and we'll put it in the liner notes, but yeah. Um, long way from home. So good to have you, you were diagnosed at the beginning of your PhD, uh, beginning of your doctoral research. Yeah.  [00:02:04] Skye: Yeah, no, I was diagnosed. I actually thought I had, um, dyslexia. I went in, um, postmasters. Um, so I'd done my masters and. It was good, but it was tough. And, um, right at the end, I thought I should probably go and see if I, if I might have dyslexia. I know it, you know, it's something that my family have talked about potentially having. Um, and I came out, um, several weeks later with an ADHD. Uh, you know, you probably have ADHD and a couple of other things as well.  [00:02:30] Peter: So you were surprised you were surprised at that.  [00:02:32] Skye: Yeah, it, it made a lot of sense. I mean, you wrote out, read out all the different things I'd studied, you know, tell me you have ADHD without telling me you have ADHD. I kept getting to the end of a degree and being like, well, you know, this might not be for me. I think I need to switch to a totally different area and learn a totally different subject. Um, and so, um, you know, in hindsight it made a lot of sense and I learned about ADHD, but I hadn't put the pieces together in, in. Fit my life.  [00:02:58] Peter: Amazing. What, tell me about what it was sort of like sort of the wake up call once you were diagnosed, what sort of started to make sense? [00:03:05] Skye: Yeah. So in terms of what made sense, I, I really focused on understanding why I was burning out because what I was experiencing was a period, you know, up until that point, I'd done a year generally at a time, you know? And so I would, I would study something really intensely for a year, work on it, stay up all night, you know, do weekends. And then I would burn out and I would need a break. And then I would be like, well, I guess maybe this isn't the subject for me and I'd come back and I would do something else. And that was very much how my ADHD was, was manifesting.  [00:03:39] Peter: Now I believe that we had a, another PhD on the podcast named Rachel Cotton. She was one of our first interviews and she always talked about how, uh, she thought it was perfectly normal to live on, you know, uh, 14 caffeine tablets away. Yeah. , you know, um, But no I get that. So, so talk about, um, after you got diagnosed and, and things sort of changing, what, how did your priority shift? [00:04:01] Skye: Yeah, so, so one of the first things I actually did was I, um, I created a community in my university of other people who were postgraduate, um, who were also neuro diverse. I had worked in adult education for a really long time. Um, I'd done a lot of tutoring in universities and I'd sort of told myself when I started the PhD, I'm not gonna do that. Cuz you know, I, I tended to take on too many classes and it was distracting from actually doing the writing. Um, and then when I found out I had ADHD, I was like, oh, but like, you know, one group won't hurt. And so I started I started a group and um, and started connecting with people and learning as much as possible, not just from the research, which. You know, later on writing about, but the very first thing I started to do was to talk to other people. Who'd had those same experiences.  [00:04:48] Peter: And what did you find out?  [00:04:49] Skye: I found out that people were kind of frustrated with the university system, um, in terms of, you know, how it fit and how it worked with how they worked. And I think that was really, um, really helpful for me because it meant I didn't spend too long sitting in that space of feeling like it was just me, which so many people with ADHD, I know had that feeling because I immediately was launched into the space of, oh, we're all experiencing these struggles. [00:05:15] Peter: And it was sort of one of those lessons. I remember sort of the same thing when I finally got diagnosed, everything started to make sense. Part of me was pissed off because, you know, I, I, I I'd spent so much energy. Mm-hmm over the course of my life fighting things that, that, you know, swimming upstream when I didn't really have mm-hmm I'd just gone with the flow. It would've been that much easier. [00:05:31] Skye: Yeah. Yeah, no, it's definitely, it's definitely, um, a tough thing. And, you know, there was a little bit. Sadness as well. I think to look back on my more was at that point, my twenties, um, and realize that, yeah, it had just been a different, if I'd known a slightly different way of working, it wasn't that it had to be hugely different, but just some adjustments, it could have been so much easier. [00:05:55] Peter: So let's talk about, uh, unconventional organization. Tell me about it.  [00:05:58] Skye: Yeah. So, um, I started on unconventional organization in 2020, um, after I'd, you know, worked with the universities, I started working with schools and then when, uh, COVID hit and we all had to go back to our homes. I was looking for an opportunity to keep doing what I really loved to do, which is connect with people and work with people. Um, and I found ADHD coaching. And so I started doing that alongside at that point, um, writing articles. Cause I really wanted to learn more if I was gonna do this kind of space properly, I wanted to learn about the research. And so I, um, started writing articles and challenging myself to put them up every week as a way of, of, you know, keeping myself accountable for that. And, um, those two things sort of ballooned into, into what we have now with, um, you know, people who are training to become coaches with us, um, who also have ADHD. And then also having that, um, that research space as well.  [00:06:51] Peter: And what did you, so tell me what, one of the interesting things I always, I always ask, what did you find when you started conversing with other people and being like, Hey, we share the same brain. Right? What kind of trends did you, did you find?  [00:07:02] Skye: I found that people were working a lot harder than people realize people with ADHD. I, I found that a lot of the people that I spoke to would come to me and they'd say, I'm not getting enough done. I need to, you know, and even the people that, you know, the coaches would often come to us as well. And, you know, say I haven't been, I haven't been achieving at the level that I want to, and then I'd ask them what they're doing, because that's part of coaching. We get very specific about what your day looks like and people were spending a lot of time trying to work. And, and in that way they were expending a lot of energy. It just wasn't necessarily, um, giving them the outcome that they were looking for.  [00:07:40] Peter: Right. And one of the things you learn is that, is that it's sort of a self limiting, uh, prophecy, because you wind up expending all this energy. You're not getting the results. So you try harder and it's still the same thing. Right. So you, so you, you're going down this rabbit hole and you can't win.  [00:07:53] Skye: Yeah, no, exactly. And then, and then the worst part, you know, at least for us was that people would say, oh, well then I don't deserve to have a break. I don't deserve to have fun. And so we'd end up in this sort of self-fulfilling cycle of just, you know, not getting the dopamine, working hard, feeling like you don't deserve to get a break. So you definitely don't get the Domine and you're continuing to keep trying. [00:08:13] Peter: Right. And so I guess one of the best lessons there is change the way you try.  [00:08:18] Skye: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And, and it's about, you know, we think about it in terms of experimentation. We often say, you know, if something doesn't work or it doesn't work for you, we just keep, we just keep adapting it. We just, we just check it out and go. That's interesting, that doesn't work. And then, you know, in, in the case of working with the coach, you come back and you say, Hey, that doesn't work for me. And they go, that's fine. Like we can adjust it.  [00:08:41] Peter: Right. What would you have told your 15 year old self, if you knew, if you knew that and what you know now?  [00:08:46] Skye: That's a really good question. I think I would tell my 15 year old self. It's not about finding the perfect career. It's about finding the perfect environment.  [00:08:56] Peter: Oh good. Oh, I like that a lot. That's a great quote, great quote. Oh, I like, yeah. I really, really love that. Yeah. Um, Skye, how can people find more about you? How can they get,  [00:09:05] Skye: yeah, you can find us, um, at, [Web: https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com Socials: @unconventionalorganisation on INSTA and Facebook ] um, unconventionalorganization.com, uh, with a Z or with an S depending on which country you're from. Um, we also have, um, a lot of articles about different strategies you can use on the website as well as. And then ADHD coaching as well.  [00:09:22] Peter: Awesome. Well, I love this sky. Thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate it all the way from New Zealand. What time is it over there? [00:09:27] Skye:  Um, it is 5:40 AM .  [00:09:30] Peter: Okay. So either time to get up, or time to go to bed; I'm gonna assume time to get up. [00:09:32] Skye: Time to get up! [00:09:34] Peter: Skye, thanks for taking the time guys. Thanks for listening. You know, the drill, uh, fasternormal.com. Leave a, uh, review anywhere you like iTune, stitcher or Google play, whatever I'm at Peter Shankman, we're faster, normal on Twitter, faster than normal on Instagram, everywhere. And we'll be back next week with another interview of someone just as awesome because of that is what we do. We will see you soon. Thanks for listening   Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week!

Max: Hello. Welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. I'm your host, Max Armbruster. And, today I'm delighted to welcome Peter Weddle, who is the CEO for the Association for Talent Acquisition Solution, also known as TAtech, which you can find on TAtech.org. Peter has been leading this association which gathers vendors, practitioners, and who is a real futurist as well. He has written some books on what the future holds for humanity and how to prepare our future generations for the impending rise of the machines. So, I'm excited to talk to him about some of the trends that are shaping this year and perhaps how to prepare not for the next year, but for our next generation of recruiter, how our recruiters are gonna look like, and what they're gonna do 20 years from now? We'll have a bit of a discussion on that. Peter, thank you so much for joining.Peter: It's great to be here, Max. Thanks for having me.Max: It's a pleasure. And, always love your newsletter. I love your content. So, maybe we'll start with that. What is TAtech? And, how can people get plugged in?Peter: TAtech is the trade association for the global talent technology industry. So, that means that our members span the spectrum from job boards and aggregators and job distribution companies to conversational AI solutions, programmatic ad buying platforms, recruitment advertising agencies, marketing companies. Basically, any company that uses technology to design, develop and deliver a talent acquisition product or service for employers.Max: Okay! So, there's a lot to unfold there. But we're talking about basically the cutting edge of talent acquisition. And, I… you're based in Chicago right?Peter: Actually, we're based in Stamford, Connecticut.Max: In Connecticut. All right. Great. And the…but with a membership that is global. But, I think a lot of the investment is coming out of the U.S. right? That's really the hub of the TAtech industry.Peter: Well, we do a number of things as a trade association but we're probably best known for our conferences. We certainly do one in called TAtech North America, but we also do one in Europe called TAtech Europe. And, that's for the whole EMEA region. And, I think it's safe to say that, yeah, there's a lot of investment, probably more money flowing into talent acquisition technologies and products than H.R. products largely. But, that's not only true in the U.S. now, it's increasingly true across Europe, particularly in the U.K. There's a lot of really fascinating developments of new companies springing up in Europe and in U.K.Max: Yeah! Absolutely. I think actually that when it comes to recruitment, recruitment has more domestic localized elements. And so, you know, a lot of the leaders have come from Europe or from different parts of the world and then from India, and then they eventually make it to the U.S., which is the biggest market. So, it's quite an international community, I would say. But the capital certainly seems to be coming out of the U.S. in majority.Peter: Well, we're very fortunate that we, as you mentioned earlier, we do have a global member base. So, we have the advantage of being able to look at not only new developments, but also where the current trendsetters in the industry are going into the future. And, we can look across all of those trends globally because, you know, the fact of the matter is that increasingly we have a global workforce. So, companies may be based in the U.S., but they're hiring all over the world and vice versa. Companies in India are hiring in North America and so forth. So I think it's important to recognize that, you know, geography is still important, but geographical barriers are not.Max: They're coming down. Yeah. And, increasingly now there are some behaviors that are… I mean, whether you're in India or in the US or in France, you are witnessing how fast the world is moving,how fast things are becoming, the consumerization of just about everything. And so, that's going to affect, of course, the recruitment because the way consumers behave globally is pushing recruitment in the same direction, you know, in all corners of the world. So, yeah, it's a good fine balance between these local and global trends. But before we talk about the future and those…or about those trends, Peter, how did you…how does someone end up being the CEO of the TAtech? How did you end up in recruitment to begin with in talent acquisition?Peter: Well, I was a partner in the Hay Group, so I… my roots are in the H.R. field. But, I got the entrepreneurial bug and bought a company called Job Bank USA in the early 90's. This was pre-internet but we were arguably one of the largest companies to use computers to match people in jobs. And, about five years later, I sold that firm and fell into a gig writing a bi-weekly column for the Wall Street Journal about this new thing called the Internet and in particular the employment space online. And, I bought that basically until Murdoch bought or I did that until Murdoch bought Dow Jones. So, I got to go over the shoulders, meet and interact with all of the early players in online talent acquisition. And, by 2007, it just seemed to me that the industry had matured to the point where it needed a trade association and an organization to help set standards, to help identify best practices, to make sure that customers, employers were getting what they paid for those kinds of things. So, we launched TAtech in 2007, and the first thing we did was create a code of ethics because we believe, you know, that technology needs to serve the individuals that are using it, not the other way around. So, we really focused on that first. Since then, we've developed a whole range of products to help our members do something that is very simple, make more money at the bottom line.Max: I admit to you and to our audience, I have not read the code of ethics yet but I'm going to do that as soon as our conversation is over. And, I am on board because I have read all of Asimov's work and I know that we have to set the rules early in the game before the machines take over. So, I am on board and yeah, it's amazing how far we've gone in those 20 years where…Well, 15 years you've been running the association, and to think where we were in 2007, right? Where it was basically the first SaaS companies like Taleo going IPO and success factors and early days of ATS. Do you…are you as excited today as you were back then about where this industry is going after all these years?Peter: I think it's fair to say I'm more excited. You know, Kurzweil, the head of engineering at Google, has said that we will see 10,000 years of progress in the next 100 years because the pace of technology, technological invention, and innovation is accelerating. And I think, you know, it's hard to wake up on any given day, walk into the office and not find something new. So, our challenge as a species is to learn how to leverage the advantages of this technology, this development, and also preserve some space for our species so that we, you know, lead fulfilling lives.  Max: Mm hmm. Then, there are some concerns with the pace of technology being such that people can't keep up, that the jobs that are more menial and that do not require, you know, too much thinking. The non-thinking jobs are gonna disappear and be replaced by mechanical robots and yeah, I mean, there's perhaps a concern about whether there'll be jobs for all of humanity. And, I think you addressed that in the past in some of your book. I forgot the title. Perhaps you could reminded me what the title of that book was?Peter: It's Circa 2118. So, it was written in 2018. And, what I was trying to do was to forecast the impact of technology in general but especially artificial intelligence 100 years later. So, 2118, Circa 2118 is the title of the book.Max: And, to predict 100 years ahead is an impossible task, I think. But, you show, I mean, in 2018, we felt pretty confident there'd be no more truck drivers by now. They're still around. But certainly by 2100 that jobs should be replaced or automated, right? You would think… Can you make some predictions on what the job of a recruiter might be, you know, 10-20 years from now? You know, how that might be chopped off or changed and morphed into something else?Peter: Well, if you don't mind, I'd like to begin with where we are now, because I think you said earlier and it's exactly true. We humans, all professions, including the recruiting profession, may well have surpassed our gulp rate in terms of taking all this new technology on board and using it effectively. And, I think one of the reasons that we are struggling is because we only address half the issue. You know, we are increasingly good consumers when it comes to buying tech products. We do our homework, we talk to our peers and experts in the field. We get a sense of, you know, what are the top two or three options similar to what we do when we buy a car and then we go out and we make a purchase. But unfortunately, that's where things end.And with technology, particularly today's state of the art, that's when the challenge actually begins, because integration or implementation is the single most important and difficult part of buying a new tech product. And most recruiting teams today don't have the priority. They don't have the leadership attention, they don't have the budget, and they don't have the staff to really implement these tools effectively. And when that doesn't happen, you know, you get first of all, you get the recruiters who are upset because the product doesn't work as advertised. Sometimes it destabilizes the other products in the tech stack, and that makes their job even harder. You upset the IT department because you're complicating their lives. I mean, it just kind of cascades into this really unpleasant and oftentimes disappointing situation.So, you know, I think that one of the priorities for the recruiting profession in the near term has to be how to get better at, how to acquire the skills and knowledge of technology implementation. Yeah! You want to be a good consumer about buying the stuff, but you also want to be a good implementer as well.Max: Mm hmm. Yeah. I obviously completely understand the pain you're describing I mean, basically, the harder it is at the beginning, the better I sleep at night because it means that they understand the magnitude of the challenge, because there's a lot of change management that comes with it. And, it just changes people the way people work.So, right now, we're in the middle of eliminating a lot of the first human interaction, which is the phone interview where you call a candidate and you do a first phone screen. My company is focused on eliminating that piece for the majority of the volume, and we're making progress. So, I feel like it's certainly…we're moving the needle. What are some of the other tasks besides that first phone screen that do you think are gonna disappear, you know, in the next 20 years? If you agree with my premise that phone screening will disappear.Peter: Well, I think that we will, for the next 20 years, so for all four generations that are in the workforce currently, and maybe even Gen Z coming on board because we still have some baby boomers in the workforce for all of the extant generations in the workforce, we will continue to see hybrid kinds of interactions.But for the kids and grandkids of the generations in the workforce today, I think they face a very, very different future. And, I think that recruiting is one of the fields where it's likely to be completely automated. It's not to say that what the humans are…human recruiters do isn't important. In fact, sometimes the most important tasks get automated. But, I think the fact of the matter is that technology, you know, I mean, right now, the way the paradigm is set up, you have…it's a bipolar distribution.You either believe that technology, we stick our heads in the sand, technology is going to go away. There are just some things that humans do that machines cannot be taught to do. And, then there's the other extreme, which is terminators. And my God, they're going to destroy the human race.There is a third way or a third path, and that is that we want to apply technology everywhere we can. And, at the same time, think about what kind of world that's gonna create. What are we going to do for the humans who will find themselves not only unemployed, but unable to be reemployed because there just aren't enough jobs to go around? And we need to begin thinking about that now, because it's going to cause a huge structural shift in society, in education, in the way that you and I spend our days. Well, not you and I, but certainly kids and grandkids can spend their days. Yeah!Max: Yeah! The people who are the superstars now and who are driving, you know, the content and the media industry are gamers and, you know, sort of virtual characters with avatars rather than 3D faces. And so, you know, will we need to…Will recruitment still be human-led? You're saying machines will do a better job at selecting who is right for the job.Peter: Well, what I'm saying is two things. First of all, as more and more jobs in the enterprise, let's just talk about recruiting. As more and more of the jobs in the enterprise, not just blue-collar jobs, you know, robots on assembly lines, but increasingly we're seeing machines take over huge swaths of the professional workforce. As that happens, there will be less need for recruiters because there will be no human showing those jobs. So, demand will go down. And, you know, we already have examples of machines being evaluated by humans as being more empathetic, more understanding than their human counterparts.There's a machine at a retired living community in France that goes around and attends to the people who live there. And that machine gets higher marks than the human attendance because it's there 24 hours a day. It always responds. It's been taught how to be empathetic in a way that the people appreciate, and that's a very rudimentary example of where we are going.So I think, you know, I don't know about you, but I think the prospect of losing employment, not work, that's different. Losing the requirement for paid employment to have a meaningful life is a good prospect. But it means we need to think about, you know, a basic income for all people. I mean, these are the kinds of things that we kind of shovel under the rug and we don't talk about very much. But ultimately, if we really care about the future, we're going to bequeath to our kids and grandkids. We should be thinking about that stuff now because it is virtually inevitable that we're going to get to that point.Max: I think you've taken us a little bit further than 20 years ahead, that we still have a couple of decades of, you know, filling jobs with actual humans but…Peter: Well, and that's why I begin with, you know, let's worry about using the technology where we have today effectively. Let's implement it well, let's buy it well. Let's implement it well. Absolutely. And today's recruiters have nothing to worry about. They are not going to be replaced by a machine. So, yes, that's why I called my book Circa 2118. We are that's way down the road.But today, you know, I think the other challenge that we have for people in recruiting is just being aware of what's out there. You know, it's very hard. If you'd go to an H.R. conference, the vast majority of the exhibitors are going to be H.R. Technology companies. They're much bigger, the much better funded. And frankly, H.R. pays much more attention to them. And talent technology is sort of relegated to second class status. It's sort of shoved off in the corners. And in my view, that puts the cart before the horse because, you know, you can't manage the human resources you don't have.So, the number one priority should be to buy talent technology and getting those people in the door, the talent that you need for the jobs that you have, and then worry about having the H.R. technology to manage them and develop them effectively.Max: Amen. More money for the industry. I have to get behind that. But, I would say that I imagine a world, you know, many years from now maybe there won't be companies employing humans to drive trucks or to, you know, to build machines or even to provide health care services. But, they'll be a new breed of services that will arise that will require the inventiveness and creativity and the ability to multitask and the human sensitivity and almost, you know, sort of the soul, the soulfulness of a human to do to create and deliver them. And, they'll be a perhaps recruitment software to help those tribes build themselves. But I cannot …for the life of me imagine what kind of services they will be providing. I hope we'll still be busy. That's all I'm saying.Peter: Oh, I think we'll be very busy. But you know, I've written a book since Circa 2118 called The Neonaissance. It's a play on the term renaissance. Renaissance was a look backward. It was returning to the glory days of Rome and Greece. The Neonaissance looks forward. And, what it's all about is in a world where we've done two things. We've solved what humans need to do or can do or should do in a world where technology does almost everything for them. And we solve the climate crisis.If we can address those two issues, then we are in a period called a new birth of humankind, which is how do we create fulfillment for humans, which is the one attribute that no machine and no animal can aspire to. How do we create fulfillment for humans in a world where you don't have to work for a living? Excuse me, you don't have to be employed for a living. And, you know, I think that's the future we have. I mean, I think it's gonna be a tough road getting there, but it's going to be a very exciting and fulfilling future. And, I believe in it so strongly that I'm giving that book away.So, if people want…if you listeners want to get that book, again it's called The Neonaissance. It's on a website called onestoryforall.com. You can download the book for free. It's probably more than you've ever read several hundred pages, but at the end of the day, it says, yeah, we've got a tough road ahead of us for the next period of time with getting agreement about how we're going to solve global warming, how we're going to solve the impact of technology on the workplace and workforce. But, once we get through those challenges and that's the good thing, that's the thing one thing that humans are really good at, solving challenges. Then, we have this new period the Neonaissance to look forward to.Max: I think humans are also pretty good at competing with each other And so, hopefully that does not end up in a nuclear war or in destroying all of our available resources and that we can compete on with paintbrushes or with other ends and create an artistic future.  But, I want to come back to Earth for 2 seconds and to our listeners who are in the recruitment space. And, I always ask this question, Peter. Think back to a time when you hired somebody and you made a hiring mistake. And walk us back through this mistake without giving names necessarily, but telling the audience, telling me what we can learn from that mistake and how can we avoid a similar one being made in the future?Peter: Well, I'm living, breathing proof of the findings from a University of Michigan research study done a number of years ago. But it found that hiring managers are only 4% better than flipping a coin when it comes to picking the best person for a job opening. They get it right 54% of the time. And the reason they have such a miserable track record, it's because they don't hire the person who will perform best in the job. They tend to hire the people they like the best, the person who interviews the best and so forth.  And that's the mistake I made. I hired a person that I really connected with during the interview process. I had almost a visceral reaction at this person and I were really of two identical minds, and I was really swayed by the fact that I had this strong reaction to, you know, his outlook, his vision, his way of looking at the world. And, what I didn't do is pay enough attention to his skill set and to the kinds of talent he would bring to the job. He was great, you know, was a great guy and a great, you know, individual in the workforce. He just wasn't the right guy for the job I was trying to fill. And, I should have paid closer attention to what the job actually required because what I ended up doing was putting him in a position where he could not succeed and that was unfair to him, as well as unfair to the organization that I was representing.Max:  And it makes you wonder almost whether if you'd like someone, if you could answer in the affirmative the question: Would you hang out with this person outside of work? Maybe that's a red flag, you know, like, maybe you shouldn't be the one making that decision, that hiring decision. Because if this person is likable enough to you that you would want to see them outside of work, and how could you be unbiased?Peter: Well, I know I'm going to get some pushback from the people who say, hey, you know, you want to have…you want to hire people who have sort of the same cultural mindset. And that's true. But in my opinion, that has to come second. First is, can the person do the job and perform at his or her peak? And then are there cultural fit with the organization? And, I reverse those.Max: So, you're saying the right order would be… First, can you do the job and then maybe afterwards? Yeah, the cultural fit. Somebody just gave me on this show told me that it should be going the other way. You should first establish culture fit because if you have technical fit first, you're gonna completely ignore…If for some jobs where it's very difficult to get technical fit, job fit, then you'll be too skewed to ignore the cultural misalignment. So, I guess it depends on the ratio. Like if it's very, very hard to get an engineer and they fill the job, you know, they fill the job description perfectly, then you'll, you'll look past the cultural misfit.Peter: Well, there's plenty of research that shows that would be a fatal mistake, because that person is ultimately going to end up either underperforming or leave, you know, within the first 90 days of being in the organization because they don't like it there for a whole host of reasons. But at the end of the day, I think no matter how tough it is to fill a job, you know, cultural fit is important. And, I think when somebody says, well, just focus on skills and because that's a hard job to fill, you know, kind of let the candidate slide on culture. I think what they're really saying is our recruiting process and practices are substandard and we are not adequately sourcing for this particular opening. So, I don't… I mean, look, there are plenty of… no matter how difficult the job is, there are plenty of applicants out there. Are they tough to find? In some cases, absolutely. But that doesn't mean they aren't there.Max: Yeah! You can expand the search, especially these days, is when you don't have to hire in your vicinity for a lot of these specialized jobs.Peter: Exactly.Max: Now, I would end our discussion now, but since I'm talking to a technologist and we are talking about cultural fit, which is very hard one to nail down. What are some of the technologies that you've come across that you think are gonna change the way we establish culture fit? You know, what do you think works these days for matching a talent with a particular company culture?Peter: I don't know that I have a good answer for that…Max: …Maybe that's a question for ten years from now.Peter: Well, yeah, I'm sure there are some technology products out there that help recruiters assess cultural fit, and I suspect that they are very helpful. I have found that cultural fit is a challenge in two respects, no matter what the products are. The first is, in some cases, not many cases, but at least in some cases, organizations don't have a good handle on what their culture really is. They have a culture. They have a good fit or a good fix on what they aspire to be in terms of culture. You know what the CEO says they're all about. But in terms of the genuine, authentic culture of the organization, they are too often clueless. And, that comes to the fore when you look at the distance between an employer brand and an employer's reputation based on review sites and so forth. That's where you see that play out.The other is that when you introduce technology, not all technologies, but at least some technologies, you're going to change culture or you're going to at least disrupt culture. And, you need to think through how to deal with the change in things as simple as practices and procedures, but also, you know, in sort of the role of the recruiter. I mean, we've been talking about that a whole lot. And, as technology gets introduced, recruiter roles will change and adapt over time. And, you need to think about that in advance rather than after the fact.Max: Mm hmm. Now, what is the culture you want to prepare for five years from now when your industry will be completely different? And how do you know what kind of… what's the composition of your team then? Of course, everybody who went fully remote has probably gone towards hiring more introverts, for example. And, I don't know if they did that precisely or it kind of happened organically, but probably a common trend.Peter: Really? I had not heard that. And I would have thought exactly the opposite. You know, I'm an introvert and getting in front of a camera and talking to someone that I'm having a hard time reading their body language with, it just makes it that much more intimidating. An extrovert, I think, would flourish on Zoom. We introverts kind of cringe into the background.Max: Well, I don't ask my engineers to switch on their cameras.Peter: There we go.Max: All right. Well, thanks a lot, Peter. And again, TAtech.org and the website again, the URL for downloading your latest piece of fiction.Peter: Well, fiction, in fact, it's got 180 footnotes. So, it's not as if it's not well researched. But the name of the book is The Neonaissance and it's at onestoryforall.com.Max: All right, onestoryforall.com. Thanks, Peter. Thanks for coming on.Peter: Thanks for having me, Max. Appreciate it.Max: And that was Peter Weddle from TAtech.org, reminding us that technology doesn't deliver on all of its promises in the short run unless we're very tight on implementation. But it usually goes way beyond our imagination over longer periods of time. And it's time to prepare for new generations and to think about the role of technology in an ethical context and in the future of mankind context. So, obviously I really enjoyed this chat. I hope you did too, and that you'll go check out his books and TAtech.org to become members of the association. Thanks for listening.

About PeterPeter's spent more than a decade building scalable and robust systems at startups across adtech and edtech. At Remind, where he's VP of Technology, Peter pushes for building a sustainable tech company with mature software engineering. He lives in Southern California and enjoys spending time at the beach with his family.Links: Redis: https://redis.com/ Remind: https://www.remind.com/ Remind Engineering Blog: https://engineering.remind.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamiltop Email: peterh@remind101.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Today's episode is brought to you in part by our friends at MinIO the high-performance Kubernetes native object store that's built for the multi-cloud, creating a consistent data storage layer for your public cloud instances, your private cloud instances, and even your edge instances, depending upon what the heck you're defining those as, which depends probably on where you work. It's getting that unified is one of the greatest challenges facing developers and architects today. It requires S3 compatibility, enterprise-grade security and resiliency, the speed to run any workload, and the footprint to run anywhere, and that's exactly what MinIO offers. With superb read speeds in excess of 360 gigs and 100 megabyte binary that doesn't eat all the data you've gotten on the system, it's exactly what you've been looking for. Check it out today at min.io/download, and see for yourself. That's min.io/download, and be sure to tell them that I sent you.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Vultr. Spelled V-U-L-T-R because they're all about helping save money, including on things like, you know, vowels. So, what they do is they are a cloud provider that provides surprisingly high performance cloud compute at a price that—while sure they claim its better than AWS pricing—and when they say that they mean it is less money. Sure, I don't dispute that but what I find interesting is that it's predictable. They tell you in advance on a monthly basis what it's going to going to cost. They have a bunch of advanced networking features. They have nineteen global locations and scale things elastically. Not to be confused with openly, because apparently elastic and open can mean the same thing sometimes. They have had over a million users. Deployments take less that sixty seconds across twelve pre-selected operating systems. Or, if you're one of those nutters like me, you can bring your own ISO and install basically any operating system you want. Starting with pricing as low as $2.50 a month for Vultr cloud compute they have plans for developers and businesses of all sizes, except maybe Amazon, who stubbornly insists on having something to scale all on their own. Try Vultr today for free by visiting: vultr.com/screaming, and you'll receive a $100 in credit. Thats V-U-L-T-R.com slash screaming.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn and this is a fun episode. It is a promoted episode, which means that our friends at Redis have gone ahead and sponsored this entire episode. I asked them, “Great, who are you going to send me from, generally, your executive suite?” And they said, “Nah. You already know what we're going to say. We want you to talk to one of our customers.” And so here we are. My guest today is Peter Hamilton, VP of Technology at Remind. Peter, thank you for joining me.Peter: Thanks, Corey. Excited to be here.Corey: It's always interesting when I get to talk to people on promoted guest episodes when they're a customer of the sponsor because to be clear, you do not work for Redis. This is one of those stories you enjoy telling, but you don't personally have a stake in whether people love Redis, hate Redis, adopt that or not, which is exactly what I try and do on these shows. There's an authenticity to people who have in-the-trenches experience who aren't themselves trying to sell the thing because that is their entire job in this world.Peter: Yeah. You just presented three or four different opinions and I guarantee we felt all at the different times.Corey: [laugh]. So, let's start at the very beginning. What does Remind do?Peter: So, Remind is a messaging tool for education, largely K through 12. We support about 30 million active users across the country, over 2 million teachers, making sure that every student has, you know, equal opportunities to succeed and that we can facilitate as much learning as possible.Corey: When you say messaging that could mean a bunch of different things to a bunch of different people. Once on a lark, I wound up sitting down—this was years ago, so I'm sure the number is a woeful underestimate now—of how many AWS services I could use to send a message from me to you. And this is without going into the lunacy territory of, “Well, I can tag a thing and then mail it to you like a Snowball Edge or something.” No, this is using them as intended, I think I got 15 or 16 of them. When you say messaging, what does that mean to you?Peter: So, for us, it's about communication to the end-user. We will do everything we can to deliver whatever message a teacher or district administrator has to the user. We go through SMS, text messaging, we go through Apple and Google's push services, we go through email, we go through voice call, really pulling out all the stops we can to make sure that these important messages get out.Corey: And I can only imagine some of the regulatory pressure you almost certainly experience. It feels like it's not quite to HIPAA levels, where ohh, there's a private cause of action if any of this stuff gets out, but people are inherently sensitive about communications involving their children. I always sort of knew this in a general sense, and then I had kids myself, and oh, yeah, suddenly I really care about those sorts of things.Peter: Yeah. One of the big challenges, you can build great systems that do the correct thing, but at the end of the day, we're relying on a teacher choosing the right recipient when they send a message. And so we've had to build a lot of processes and controls in place, so that we can, kind of, satisfy two conflicting needs: One is to provide a clear audit log because that's an important thing for districts to know if something does happen, that we have clear communication; and the other is to also be able to jump in and intervene when something inappropriate or mistaken is sent out to the wrong people.Corey: Remind has always been one of those companies that has a somewhat exalted reputation in the AWS space. You folks have been early adopters of a bunch of different services—which let's be clear, in the responsible way, not the, “Well, they said it on stage; time to go ahead and put everything they just listed into production because we for some Godforsaken reason, view it as a todo list.”—but you've been thoughtful about how you approach things, and you have been around as a company for a while. But you've also been making a significant push toward being cloud-native by certain definitions of that term. So, I know this sounds like a college entrance essay, but what does cloud-native mean to you?Peter: So, one of the big gaps—if you take an application that was written to be deployed in a traditional data center environment and just drop it in the cloud, what you're going to get is a flaky data center.Corey: Well, that's unfair. It's also going to be extremely expensive.Peter: [laugh]. Sorry, an expensive, flaky data set.Corey: There we go. There we go.Peter: What we've really looked at–and a lot of this goes back to our history in the earlier days; we ran a top of Heroku and it was kind of the early days what they call the Twelve-Factor Application—but making aggressive decisions about how you structure your architecture and application so that you fit in with some of the cloud tools that are available and that you fit in, you know, with the operating models that are out there.Corey: When you say an aggressive decision, what sort of thing are you talking about? Because when I think of being aggressive with an approach to things like AWS, it usually involves Twitter, and I'm guessing that is not the direction you intend that to go.Peter: No, I think if you look at Twitter or Netflix or some of these players that, quite frankly, have defined what AWS is to us today through their usage patterns, not quite that.Corey: Oh, I mean using Twitter to yell at them explicitly about things—Peter: Oh.Corey: —because I don't do passive-aggressive; I just do aggressive.Peter: Got it. No, I think in our case, it's been plotting a very narrow path that allows us to avoid some of the bigger pitfalls. We have our sponsor here, Redis. Talk a little bit about our usage of Redis and how that's helped us in some of these cases. One of the pitfalls you'll find with pulling a non-cloud-native application and put it in the cloud is state is hard to manage.If you put state on all your machines and machines go down, networks fail, all those things, you now no longer have access to that state and we start to see a lot of problems. One of the decisions we've made is try to put as much data as we can into data stores like Redis or Postgres or something, in order to decouple our hardware from the state we're trying to manage and provide for users so that we're more resilient to those sorts of failures.Corey: I get the sense from the way that we're having this conversation, when you talk about Redis, you mean actual Redis itself, not ElastiCache for Redis, or as to I'm tending to increasingly think about AWS's services, Amazon Basics for Redis.Peter: Yeah. I mean, Amazon has launched a number of products. They have their ElastiCache, they have their new MemoryDB, there's a lot different ways to use this. We've relied pretty heavily on Redis, previously known as Redis Labs, and their enterprise product in their cloud, in order to take care of our most important data—which we just don't want to manage ourselves—trying to manage that on our own using something like ElastiCache, there's so many pitfalls, so many ways that we can lose that data. This data is important to us. By having it in a trusted place and managed by a great ops team, like they have at Redis, we're able to then lean in on the other aspects of cloud data to really get as much value as we can out of AWS.Corey: I am curious. As I said you've had a reputation as a company for a while in the AWS space of doing an awful lot of really interesting things. I mean, you have a robust GitHub presence, you have a whole bunch of tools that have come out Remind that are great, I've linked to a number of them over the years in the newsletter. You are clearly not afraid, culturally, to get your hands dirty and build things yourself, but you are using Redis Enterprise as opposed to open-source Redis. What drove that decision? I have to assume it's not, “Wait. You mean, I can get it for free as an open-source project? Why didn't someone tell me?” What brought you to that decision?Peter: Yeah, a big part of this is what we could call operating leverage. Building a great set of tools that allow you to get more value out of AWS is a little different story than babysitting servers all day and making sure they stay up. So, if you look through, most of our contributions in open-source space have really been around here's how to expand upon these foundational pieces from AWS; here's how to more efficiently launch a suite of servers into an auto-scaling group; here's, you know, our troposphere and other pieces there. This was all before Amazon CDK product, but really, it was, here's how we can more effectively use CloudFormation to capture our Infrastructure as Code. And so we are not afraid in any way to invest in our tooling and invest in some of those things, but when we look at the trade-off of directly managing stateful services and dealing with all the uncertainty that comes, we feel our time is better spent working on our product and delivering value to our users and relying on partners like Redis in order to provide that stability we need.Corey: You raise a good point. An awful lot of the tools that you've put out there are the best, from my perspective, approach to working with AWS services. And that is a relatively thin layer built on top of them with an eye toward making the user experience more polished, but not being so heavily opinionated that as soon as the service goes in a different direction, the tool becomes completely useless. You just decide to make it a bit easier to wind up working with specific environment variables or profiles, rather than what appears to be the AWS UX approach of, “Oh, now type in your access key, your secret key and your session token, and we've disabled copy and paste. Go, have fun.” You've really done a lot of quality of life improvements, more so than you have this is the entire system of how we do deploys, start to finish. It's opinionated and sort of a, like, a take on what Netflix, did once upon a time, with Asgard. It really feels like it's just the right level of abstraction.Peter: We did a pretty good job. I will say, you know, years later, we felt that we got it wrong a couple times. It's been really interesting to see that, that there are times when we say, “Oh, we could take these three or four services and wrap it up into this new concept of an application.” And over time, we just have to start poking holes in that new layer and we start to see we would have been better served by sticking with as thin a layer as possible that enables us, rather than trying to get these higher-level pieces.Corey: It's remarkably refreshing to hear you say that just because so many people love to tell the story on podcasts, or on conference stages, or whatever format they have of, “This is what we built.” And it is an aspirationally superficial story about this. They don't talk about that, “Well, firstly, without these three wrong paths first.” It's always a, “Oh, yes, obviously, we are smart people and we only make the correct decision.”And I remember in the before times sitting in conference talks, watching people talk about great things they'd done, and I'll turn next to the person next to me and say, “Wow, I wish I could be involved in a project like that.” And they'll say, “Yeah, so do I.” And it turns out they work at the company the speaker is from. Because all of these things tend to be the most positive story. Do you have an example of something that you have done in your production environment that going back, “Yeah, in hindsight, I would have done that completely differently.”Peter: Yeah. So, coming from Heroku moving into AWS, we had a great open-source project called Empire, which kind of bridge that gap between them, but used Amazon's ECS in order to launch applications. It was actually command-line compatible with the Heroku command when it first launched. So, a very big commitment there. And at the time—I mean, this comes back to the point I think you and I were talking about earlier, where architecture, costs, infrastructure, they're all interlinked.And I'm a big fan of Conway's Law, which says that an organization's structure needs to match its architecture. And so six, seven years ago, we're heavy growth-based company and we are interns running around, doing all the things, and we wanted to have really strict guardrails and a narrow set of things that our development team could do. And so we built a pretty constrained: You will launch, you will have one Docker image per ECS service, it can only do these specific things. And this allowed our development team to focus on pretty buttons on the screen and user engagement and experiments and whatnot, but as we've evolved as a company, as we built out a more robust business, we've started to track revenue and costs of goods sold more aggressively, we've seen, there's a lot of inefficient things that come out of it.One particular example was we used PgBouncer for our connection pooling to our Postgres application. In the traditional model, we had an auto-scaling group for a PgBouncer, and then our auto-scaling groups for the other applications would connect to it. And we saw additional latency, we saw additional cost, and we eventually kind of twirl that down and packaged that PgBouncer alongside the applications that needed it. And this was a configuration that wasn't available on our first pass; it was something we intentionally did not provide to our development team, and we had to unwind that. And when we did, we saw better performance, we saw better cost efficiency, all sorts of benefits that we care a lot about now that we didn't care about as much, many years ago.Corey: It sounds like you're describing some semblance of an internal platform, where instead of letting all your engineers effectively, “Well, here's the console. Ideally, you use some form of Infrastructure as Code. Good luck. Have fun.” You effectively gate access to that. Is that something that you're still doing or have you taken a different approach?Peter: So, our primary gate is our Infrastructure as Code repository. If you want to make a meaningful change, you open up a PR, got to go through code review, you need people to sign off on it. Anything that's not there may not exist tomorrow. There's no guarantees. And we've gone around, occasionally just shut random servers down that people spun up in our account.And sometimes people will be grumpy about it, but you really need to enforce that culture that we have to go through the correct channels and we have to have this cohesive platform, as you said, to support our development efforts.Corey: So, you're a messaging service in education. So, whenever I do a little bit of digging into backstories of companies and what has made, I guess, an impression, you look for certain things and explicit dates are one of them, where on March 13th of 2020, your business changed just a smidgen. What happened other than the obvious, we never went outside for two years?Peter: [laugh]. So, if we roll back a week—you know, that's March 13th, so if we roll back a week, we're looking at March 6th. On that day, we sent out about 60 million messages over all of our different mediums: Text, email, push notifications. On March 13th that was 100 million, and then, a few weeks later on March 30th, that was 177 million. And so our traffic effectively tripled over the course of those three weeks. And yeah, that's quite a ride, let me tell you.Corey: The opinion that a lot of folks have who have not gotten to play in sophisticated distributed systems is, “Well, what's the hard part there you have an auto-scaling group. Just spin up three times the number of servers in that fleet and problem solved. What's challenging?” A lot, but what did you find that the pressure points were?Peter: So, I love that example, that your auto-scaling group will just work. By default, Amazon's auto-scaling groups only support 1000 backends. So, when your auto-scaling group goes from 400 backends to 1200, things break, [laugh] and not in ways that you would have expected. You start to learn things about how database systems provided by Amazon have limits other than CPU and memory. And they're clearly laid out that there's network bandwidth limits and things you have to worry about.We had a pretty small team at that time and we'd gotten this cadence where every Monday morning, we would wake up at 4 a.m. Pacific because as part of the pandemic, our traffic shifted, so our East Coast users would be most active in the morning rather than the afternoon. And so at about 7 a.m. on the east coast is when everyone came online. And we had our Monday morning crew there and just looking to see where the next pain point was going to be.And we'd have Monday, walk through it all, Monday afternoon, we'd meet together, we come up with our three or four hypotheses on what will break, if our traffic doubles again, and we'd spend the rest of that next week addressing those the best we could and repeat for the next Monday. And we did this for three, four or five weeks in a row, and finally, it stabilized. But yeah, it's all the small little things, the things you don't know about, the limits in places you don't recognize that just catch up to you. And you need to have a team that can move fast and adapt quickly.Corey: You've been using Redis for six, seven years, something along those lines, as an enterprise offering. You've been working with the same vendor who provides this managed service for a while now. What are the fruits of that relationship? What is the value that you see by continuing to have a long-term relationship with vendors? Because let's be serious, most of us don't stay in jobs that long, let alone work with the same vendor.Peter: Yeah. So, coming back to the March 2020 story, many of our vendors started to see some issues here that various services weren't scaled properly. We made a lot of phone calls to a lot of vendors in working with them, and I… very impressed with how Redis Labs at the time was able to respond. We hopped on a call, they said, “Here's what we think we need to do, we'll go ahead and do this. We'll sort this out in a few weeks and figure out what this means for your contract. We're here to help and support in this pandemic because we recognize how this is affecting everyone around the world.”And so I think when you get in those deeper relationships, those long-term relationships, it is so helpful to have that trust, to have a little bit of that give when you need it in times of crisis, and that they're there and willing to jump in right away.Corey: There's a lot to be said for having those working relationships before you need them. So often, I think that a lot of engineering teams just don't talk to their vendors to a point where they may as well be strangers. But you'll see this most notably because—at least I feel it most acutely—with AWS service teams. They'll do a whole kickoff when the enterprise support deal is signed, three years go passed, and both the AWS team and the customer's team have completely rotated since then, and they may as well be strangers. Being able to have that relationship to fall back on in those really weird really, honestly, high-stress moments has been one of those things where I didn't see the value myself until the first time I went through a hairy situation where I found that that was useful.And now it's oh, I—I now bias instead for, “Oh, I can fit to the free tier of this service. No, no, I'm going to pay and become a paying customer.” I'd rather be a customer that can have that relationship and pick up the phone than someone whining at people in a forum somewhere of, “Hey, I'm a free user, and I'm having some problems with production.” Just never felt right to me.Peter: Yeah, there's nothing worse than calling your account rep and being told, “Oh, I'm not your account rep anymore.” Somehow you missed the email, you missed who it was. Prior to Covid, you know—and we saw this many, many years ago—one of the things about Remind is every back-to-school season, our traffic 10Xes in about three weeks. And so we're used to emergencies happening and unforeseen things happening. And we plan through our year and try to do capacity planning and everything, but we been around the block a couple of times.And so we have a pretty strong culture now leaning in hard with our support reps. We have them in our Slack channels. Our AWS team, we meet with often. Redis Labs, we have them on Slack as well. We're constantly talking about databases that may or may not be performing as we expect them, too. They're an extension of our team, we have an incident; we get paged. If it's related to one of the services, we hit them in Slack immediately and have them start checking on the back end while we're checking on our side. So.Corey: One of the biggest takeaways I wish more companies would have is that when you are dependent upon another company to effectively run your production infrastructure, they are no longer your vendor, they're your partner, whether you want them to be or not. And approaching it with that perspective really pays dividends down the road.Peter: Yeah. One of the cases you get when you've been at a company for a long time and been in relationship for a long time is growing together is always an interesting approach. And seeing, sometimes there's some painful points; sometimes you're on an old legacy version of their product that you were literally the last customer on, and you got to work with them to move off of. But you were there six years ago when they're just starting out, and they've seen how you grow, and you've seen how they've grown, and you've kind of been able to marry that experience together in a meaningful way.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle Cloud. Counting the pennies, but still dreaming of deploying apps instead of “Hello, World” demos? Allow me to introduce you to Oracle's Always Free tier. It provides over 20 free services and infrastructure, networking, databases, observability, management, and security. And—let me be clear here—it's actually free. There's no surprise billing until you intentionally and proactively upgrade your account. This means you can provision a virtual machine instance or spin up an autonomous database that manages itself, all while gaining the networking, load balancing, and storage resources that somehow never quite make it into most free tiers needed to support the application that you want to build. With Always Free, you can do things like run small-scale applications or do proof-of-concept testing without spending a dime. You know that I always like to put asterisks next to the word free? This is actually free, no asterisk. Start now. Visit snark.cloud/oci-free that's snark.cloud/oci-free.Corey: Redis is, these days, of data platform back once upon a time, I viewed it as more of a caching layer. And I admit that the capabilities of the platform has significantly advanced since those days when I viewed it purely through lens of cache. But one of the interesting parts is that neither one of those use cases, in my mind, blends particularly well with heavy use of Spot Fleets, but you're doing exactly that. What are your folks doing over there?Peter: [laugh]. Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, coming back to some of the Twelve-Factor App design, we heavily rely on Redis as sort of a distributed heap. One of our challenges of delivering all these messages is every single message has its in-flight state: Here's the content, here's who we sent it to, we wait for them to respond. On a traditional application, you might have one big server that stores it all in-memory, and you get the incoming requests, and you match things up. By moving all that state to Redis, all of our workers, all of our application servers, we know they can disappear at any point in time.We use Amazon's Spot Instances and their Spot Fleet for all of our production traffic. Every single web service, every single worker that we have runs on this infrastructure, and we would not be able to do that if we didn't have a reliable and robust place to store this data that is in-flight and currently being accessed. So, we'll have a couple hundred gigs of data at any point in time in a Redis Database, just representing in-flight work that's happening on various machines.Corey: It's really neat seeing Spot Fleets being used as something more than a theoretical possibility. It's something I've always been very interested in, obviously, given the potential cost savings; they approach cheap is free in some cases. But it turns out—we talked earlier about the idea of being cloud-native versus the rickety, expensive data center in the cloud, and an awful lot of applications are simply not built in a way that yeah, we're just going to randomly turn off a subset of your systems, ideally, with two minutes of notice, but all right, have fun with that. And a lot of times, it just becomes a complete non-starter, even for stateless workloads, just based upon how all of these things are configured. It is really interesting to watch a company that has an awful lot of responsibility that you've been entrusted with who embraces that mindset. It's a lot more rare than you'd think.Peter: Yeah. And again, you know, sometimes, we overbuild things, and sometimes we go down paths that may have been a little excessive, but it really comes down to your architecture. You know, it's not just having everything running on Spot. It's making effective use of SQS and other queueing products at Amazon to provide checkpointing abilities, and so you know that should you lose an instance, you're only going to lose a few seconds of productive work on that particular workload and be able to kick off where you left off.It's properly using auto-scaling groups. From the financial side, there's all sorts of weird quirks you'll see. You know, the Spot market has a wonderful set of dynamics where the big instances are much, much cheaper per CPU than the small ones are on the Spot market. And so structuring things in a way that you can colocate different workloads onto the same hosts and hedge against the host going down by spreading across multiple availability zones. I think there's definitely a point where having enough workload, having enough scale allows you to take advantage of these things, but it all comes down to the architecture and design that really enables it.Corey: So, you've been using Redis for longer than I think many of our listeners have been in tech.Peter: [laugh].Corey: And the key distinguishing points for me between someone who is an advocate for a technology and someone who's a zealot—or a pure critic—is they can identify use cases for which is great and use cases for which it is not likely to be a great experience. In your time with Redis, what have you found that it's been great at and what are some areas that you would encourage people to consider more carefully before diving into it?Peter: So, we like to joke that five, six years ago, most of our development process was, “I've hit a problem. Can I use Redis to solve that problem?” And so we've tried every solution possible with Redis. We've done all the things. We have number of very complicated Lua scripts that are managing different keys in an atomic way.Some of these have been more successful than others, for sure. Right now, our biggest philosophy is, if it is data we need quickly, and it is data that is important to us, we put it in Enterprise Redis, the cloud product from Redis. Other use cases, there's a dozen things that you can use for a cache, Redis is great for cache, memcache does a decent job as well; you're not going to see a meaningful difference between those sorts of products. Where we've struggled a little bit has been when we have essentially relational data that we need fast access to. And we're still trying to find a clear path forward here because you can do it and you can have atomic updates and you can kind of simulate some of the ACID characteristics you would have in a relational database, but it adds a lot of complexity.And that's a lot of overhead to our team as we're continuing to develop these products, to extend them, to fix any bugs you might have in there. And so we're kind of recalibrating a bit, and some of those workloads are moving to other data stores where they're more appropriate. But at the end of the day, it's data that we need fast, and it's data that's important, we're sticking with what we got here because it's been working pretty well.Corey: It sounds almost like you started off with the mindset of one database for a bunch of different use cases and you're starting to differentiate into purpose-built databases for certain things. Or is that not entirely accurate?Peter: There's a little bit of that. And I think coming back to some of our tooling, as we kind of jumped on a bit of the microservice bandwagon, we would see, here's a small service that only has a small amount of data that needs to be stored. It wouldn't make sense to bring up a RDS instance, or an Aurora instance, for that, you know, in Postgres. Let's just store it in an easystore like Redis. And some of those cases have been great, some of them have been a little problematic.And so as we've invested in our tooling to make all our databases accessible and make it less of a weird trade-off between what the product needs, what we can do right now, and what we want to do long-term, and reduce that friction, we've been able to be much more deliberate about the data source that we choose in each case.Corey: It's very clear that you're speaking with a voice of experience on this where this is not something that you just woke up and figured out. One last area I want to go into with you is when I asked you what is you care about primarily as an engineering leader and as you look at serving your customers well, you effectively had a dual answer, almost off the cuff, of stability and security. I find the two of those things are deeply intertwined in most of the conversations I have, but they're rarely called out explicitly in quite the way that you do. Talk to me about that.Peter: Yeah, so in our wild journey, stability has always been a challenge. And we've alway—you know, been an early startup mode, where you're constantly pushing what can we ship? How quickly can we ship it? And in our particular space, we feel that this communication that we foster between teachers and students and their parents is incredibly important, and is a thing that we take very, very seriously. And so, a couple years ago, we were trying to create this balance and create not just a language that we could talk about on a podcasts like this, but really recognizing that framing these concepts to our company internally: To our engineers to help them to think as they're building a feature, what are the things they should think about, what are the concerns beyond the product spec; to work with our marketing and sales team to help them to understand why we're making these investments that may not get particular feature out by X date but it's still a worthwhile investment.So, from the security side, we've really focused on building out robust practices and robust controls that don't necessarily lock us into a particular standard, like PCI compliance or things like that, but really focusing on the maturity of our company and, you know, our culture as we go forward. And so we're in a place now we are ISO 27001; we're heading into our third year. We leaned in hard our disaster recovery processes, we've leaned in hard on our bug bounties, pen tests, kind of, found this incremental approach that, you know, day one, I remember we turned on our bug bounty and it was a scary day as the reports kept coming in. But we take on one thing at a time and continue to build on it and make it an essential part of how we build systems.Corey: It really has to be built in. It feels like security is not something could be slapped on as an afterthought, however much companies try to do that. Especially, again, as we started this episode with, you're dealing with communication with people's kids. That is something that people have remarkably little sense of humor around. And rightfully so.Seeing that there is as much if not more care taken around security than there is stability is generally the sign of a well-run organization. If there's a security lapse, I expect certain vendors to rip the power out of their data centers rather than run in an insecure fashion. And your job done correctly—which clearly you have gotten to—means that you never have to make that decision because you've approached this the right way from the beginning. Nothing's perfect, but there's always the idea of actually caring about it being the first step.Peter: Yeah. And the other side of that was talking about stability, and again, it's avoiding the either/or situation. We can work in as well along those two—stability and security—we work in our cost of goods sold and our operating leverage in other aspects of our business. And every single one of them, it's our co-number one priorities are stability and security. And if it costs us a bit more money, if it takes our dev team a little longer, there's not a choice at that point. We're doing the correct thing.Corey: Saving money is almost never the primary objective of any company that you really want to be dealing with unless something bizarre is going on.Peter: Yeah. Our philosophy on, you know, any cost reduction has been this should have zero negative impact on our stability. If we do not feel we can safely do this, we won't. And coming back to the Spot Instance piece, that was a journey for us. And you know, we tested the waters a bit and we got to a point, we worked very closely with Amazon's team, and we came to that conclusion that we can safely do this. And we've been doing it for over a year and seen no adverse effects.Corey: Yeah. And a lot of shops I've talked to folks about well, when we go and do a consulting project, it's, “Okay. There's a lot of things that could have been done before we got here. Why hasn't any of that been addressed?” And the answer is, “Well. We tried to save money once and it caused an outage and then we weren't allowed to save money anymore. And here we are.” And I absolutely get that perspective. It's a hard balance to strike. It always is.Peter: Yeah. The other aspect where stability and security kind of intertwine is you can think about security as InfoSec in our systems and locking things down, but at the end of the day, why are we doing all that? It's for the benefit of our users. And Remind, as a communication platform, and safety and security of our users is as dependent on us being up and available so that teachers can reach out to parents with important communication. And things like attendance, things like natural disasters, or lockdowns, or any of the number of difficult situations schools find themselves in. This is part of why we take that stewardship that we have so seriously is that being up and protecting a user's data just has such a huge impact on education in this country.Corey: It's always interesting to talk to folks who insists they're making the world a better place. And it's, “What do you do?” “We're improving ad relevance.” I mean, “Okay, great, good for you.” You're serving a need that I would I would not shy away from classifying what you do, fundamentally, as critical infrastructure, and that is always a good conversation to have. It's nice being able to talk to folks who are doing things that you can unequivocally look at and say, “This is a good thing.”Peter: Yeah. And around 80% of public schools in the US are using Remind in some capacity. And so we're not a product that's used in a few civic regions. All across the board. One of my favorite things about working in Remind is meeting people and telling them where I work, and they recognize it.They say, “Oh, I have that app, I use that app. I love it.” And I spent years and ads before this, and you know, I've been there and no one ever told me they were glad to see an ad. That's never the case. And it's been quite a rewarding experience coming in every day, and as you said, being part of this critical infrastructure. That's a special thing.Corey: I look forward to installing the app myself as my eldest prepares to enter public school in the fall. So, now at least I'll have a hotline of exactly where to complain when I didn't get the attendance message because, you know, there's no customer quite like a whiny customer.Peter: They're still customers. [laugh]. Happy to have them.Corey: True. We tend to be. I want to thank you for taking so much time out of your day to speak with me. If people want to learn more about what you're up to, where's the best place to find you?Peter: So, from an engineering perspective at Remind, we have our blog, engineering.remind.com. If you want to reach out to me directly. I'm on LinkedIn; good place to find me or you can just reach out over email directly, peterh@remind101.com.Corey: And we will put all of that into the show notes. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.Peter: Thanks, Corey.Corey: Peter Hamilton, VP of Technology at Remind. This has been a promoted episode brought to us by our friends at Redis, and I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry and insulting comment that you will then hope that Remind sends out to 20 million students all at once.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Pastor Tim Marshall

Perspectives - Peter Singer SHOWNOTES[00:09:00] I present to you, Mr. Peter Singer. Thank you for joining us today. Peter: You're very welcome, Sharon. It's good to be with you. Remi: Thank you. So, I'd like to get started. I'm really curious to know what you're currently thinking about and working Peter: on right now, I'm working on a revised edition of Animal Liberation.That's a book that I first published in 1975. It's never been out of print but the most recent edition really is from 1990. By that, I mean, there are, there are editions which looked like this or recent. There's 2009, when I think exactly that's, that's one of the paperbacks, it does have a new preface and it has some additional material at the end, but the basic text in between the preface and the supplementary material at the end.Is pretty much unchanged for 30 years. So that's not good, obviously. If you want to keep up with what's going on in terms of factory farming kinds of experiments that are performed on [00:10:00] animals and of course the impact of climate change and what that's done to our thinking about eating meat.We really, you know, I really need to make some changes, a lot of changes to the book. So that's my current project. Remi: Well, I wasn't going to stop it, but we will. And we'll talk about it. Animal Liberation and your book, you released it in 1975 and the landscape of animal liberation or animal welfare was very different than can you paint a scene of what it was like and what was the impetus for writing this one ended up being a completely transformational book for animal welfare around then.Peter: Well, price is one way of getting people who are listening today to see how much the scene has changed is to say that my interest in animals and my thinking about the ethics of what I was eating got started just a few years before that in 1970 to be precise. When I happened to have a conversation with a fellow graduate students.So, I was 24 [00:11:00] years old. I was, I'd been to university in Melbourne and then I'd gone to Oxford to do my graduate work. And I happened to meet a fellow Canadian who when we went in for lunch, asked if there was meat in the sauce on top of the spaghetti. And when he was told there was, he took a salad plate instead And so after we'd finished our conversation, we were having I asked him what his problem with meat was.And you know, I think this was really the first conversation I'd had with a vegetarian. Maybe he was the first vegetarian that I'd met or perhaps I'd met some Indian vegetarians for Hindu reasons, but certainly the first person who I'd met a vegetarian, who just had a straightforward kind of ethical answer to that question that he didn't like the way we treat animals and didn't really want to be complicit in the way animals were being treated.And so, you know, anybody who. Listening to that. I was been a university. You can hardly get their head around the fact that you can be 24 years old and not have met a vegetarian and not really thought about that. [00:12:00] But that's how it was. And that's pretty much how it was in 1975 when the book came out.And you know, people did find it very strange to see a sort of serious argument about why we shouldn't be eating meat based on concern for the animals. Because you know, if people thought about animal welfare at all, they thought about dogs and cats maybe about horses, but they didn't really think about chickens and pigs and calves.Remi: Yeah. Part of what you described when you talk about that book and why it came about, which I really loved was it was a very sentimental attitude in the movement at the time. And the way you felt that you could contribute to the movement was with. You didn't say clear thinking with rationality. Can you speak a little bit to that for those rare individual, listening to this podcast who doesn't know who you are or the work that you've contributed to our planet and to our thinking, what was the thinking back then that led you to believe this is where I can contribute.And maybe this will be a way to start [00:13:00] introducing consequentialism and utilitarianism and some of your other philosophical bedrock. Peter: Right? So, in terms of, you know, how I can contribute it was sort of somewhat accidental that I ended up doing philosophy. I had gone to university planning to study law and then an advisor thought.Find the law course a bit dry. And why didn't I combine it with an arts course? So, I started doing combined dance law course. Then I got to enjoy the outside of it more and I got offered a scholarship to go on with graduate work in that field Went into philosophy. I enjoyed it. I found it interesting.But you know, it, wasn't going to make a significant contribution to the world. I wasn't, you know, I couldn't say that that was my primary motivation at that time, but this was the late sixties and then early seventies. And of course, there were a lot of radical ideas around and radical political movements including opposition to the war in Vietnam, which I was part of in Australia.[00:14:00] And then there was the civil rights movement, the black liberation movement. And so, there were ethical ideas floating around and it was always more the ethics and political philosophy side of philosophy that I was interested in that was. Where, where it makes a difference, I guess, where it has an impact on the way we live directly.So that's, that's why, when, when I started thinking about this issue of animals and then as you correctly say at that time there wasn't a real animal movement or in so far as there were anti-cruelty organizations mostly appealing to people's sentiments. So, there would be cute pictures of puppies and kittens and asking you to help rescue them, something of that sort.But there was, there was nothing really saying that even if you don't love animals there are still something seriously wrong about the way we are treating animals. And I never did think of myself as an animal lover and I still don't. But I do think that there are things very seriously wrong about [00:15:00] the way we treat animals and on a vast scale.So this is not a small issue, right? When you take account of the fact that there's over 70 billion animals raised and killed for food each year, the great majority of them indoors in factory farms. It's the very major issue. Remi: One of the things I like about sentimentality when it comes to animal welfare is it can get the conversation started.So, you have a very rational and I'd love you to speak more about utilitarianism. Aspect to it, which I really admire, but I didn't get to my 18 years ago, I became a vegetarian and vegan for a while. I didn't get there because of the reasons you've given that it's the right thing to do. And it reduces the most suffering or increases the most pleasure I got there because my health suffered, and I went on an elimination diet and I needed to find recipes for a vegan.And there were barely any 20 years ago. And in reading recipes, I read about animal welfare. So, the way I got there was very indirect. So, what role do you think can be [00:16:00] played in sentimentality or in other roads that get us to the conclusions you've come to?Peter: Well, of course, a lot of people do get to these conclusions through.Love for animals in one way or another. One of the greatest campaigners in the late 20th century for animals was a man. I got to know called Henry Spira. And, and he was a great social activist working for blacks in the American south and for underprivileged people everywhere. But he only started to see animals as underprivileged when a friend who was going overseas, dumped a cat on him.And he never really thought about animals, but basically the cat seduced him. And, and, you know, more or less around that time, he came across some of my writing and that, that did help. But you know, yeah, without the cat, maybe we would have lost one of those great container campaigners.I'm not putting down a love for animals at all. I think it's a, it's a great way to get people to understand that animals are individual beings, that their lives can go well or badly for them. [00:17:00] And that we should be caring about them. We shouldn't just draw the boundaries of moral concern around our own species.So yeah, it definitely plays a good role, but you know, you asked about my utilitarianism. So philosophically I hold the view that the right thing to do is the action that will have the best consequences and by best consequences I, and the classical utilitarian's mean do the most to promote happiness and reduce suffering.So, from that it straightforwardly follows that given that animals can suffer at least many animals can suffer We ought to be including them within our concerns of, of what we do. And we shouldn't just say, well, morality is only for humans. You know, there are some people who say it, but many more people who think that, but you know,  we certainly think when it comes to humans, that even if you're not particularly rational or nevertheless, you can, we, we still think, we think humans have a certain moral status [00:18:00] that makes it wrong to do things to them, even if they lose or never have the higher cognitive abilities.But when it comes to animals, we say, well, they, you know, they don't think they're not, self-conscious, they're not autonomous, they're not moral agents, all of these things. So, so they don't really can't. But I, I think, I think that's just a mistake and it's, as I say, not something we consistently apply within our own species.So we shouldn't use it as a way of drawing lines between our species and other species. Remi: You speak really eloquently about species ism and particularly around chimpanzees. I remember back in 2014, there was an article you wrote in this book that you've written, which I love the ethics in the real world.And you're speaking about the rights of a chimpanzee and in 2014, I understand it went to court in Europe to get a chimpanzee, to have human rights. Talk about how the logic of utilitarianism arrives at that point, where we elevate [00:19:00] that's really poor choice of words to the same level as how we prize human life.Peter: Yeah, well, as I say, I think it is a critique of, of drawing the boundaries of rights just around species and it's saying. There are other things that matter. Now, now this particular case you mentioned was based on a chimpanzee and chimpanzees do have kind of capacities to, to think, and to reason to a certain extent and solve puzzles and there's research showing that they anticipate things in the future.They're thinking ahead as well, not to the same extent that we do, but significantly. So I think the chimpanzee was really taken as a kind of test case and basically challenging the courts to say, well, how is it that we're saying all human beings have rights irrespective of their mental capacities, but he is an animal whose mental capacities are clearly superior to that of newborn babies and superior to that of some [00:20:00] profoundly intellectually disabled humans.And yet this chimpanzee doesn't have rights. Why, why should that be? So, I think that's basically a way to try. Bridge the Gulf that both. Law and popular morality place between humans and animals. And I think the thinking is that if you can do that for chimpanzees, well, we'll also bring some of the other animals closer.And although the 2014 case in, in Europe didn't succeed, there are other cases going on. And right now, the New York state court of appeal, which is pretty high Cape the highest court in the New York state system is going to hear a case on behalf of an elephant. Who's been very miserably in prison.Solitary for many years in, in a zoo in New York. So that will be interesting. And I mean, it just the fact that the court has agreed to hear this case is something of a breakthrough. I think it's the, the highest [00:21:00] level court in the English speaking well anyway, to, to hear a writ of habeas Corpus which is an ancient legal writ for, you know, basically it says, give me the body, you know, show me if, if the king was holding someone who, you know why, why can't, why can't you give that person over to me?Why are you holding him? And it's it's if the court says it does apply to an animal, that would be something of a breakthrough. Remi: How do you think the animal liberation movement is doing since 1975? It's obviously come a long way. There's a lot more vegans. It's more normal conversation. Sit down in a restaurant and San vegetarian are men.What I began being a vegetarian 20 years ago, it stopped conversations and restaurants had nothing. I remember traveling Italy and couldn't find anything but rice to have. It was so strange all those years ago. That's really basic and anecdotal. How far do you think the movements?Peter: Well, it has come a long way in, in that respect and the understanding of people choosing [00:22:00] not to eat meat or even to be vegan.And what that means. People wouldn't have understood what the word vegan meant 40 or even 20 years ago. So, it's come a long way. There it's come a long way in terms of having some political influence and being recognized by governments as a group that they ought to listen to, that people do care about.But it hasn't come that far in terms of changing the conditions, which got me to think that what we're doing to animals is, is wrong and wrong on a vast scale, because there are still billions of animals in factory farms. The conditions might have improved a little bit. Might've been tweaked a little bit with some regulations in some countries.Particularly the European union has banned some practices that unfortunately still exist in Australia and still exist in much of the United States. Although there are now seven states, including California, that don't allow hands to be kept in cages. For example, so, so we're making [00:23:00] progress, but it's been a long time, you know, it's, you couldn't say it was rapid progress, unfortunately.And I'd like us to move forward a lot faster. Remi: My, if I was queen for a day, I would declare that all ever twice had to be renamed, slow to houses and had to have glasses. Peter: Well, exactly. In fact though, we could just do it with webcams. Now we really have the technology. We don't need glass walls and why not factory farms as well.You know, why not everywhere where animals has, why not laboratories? Why doesn't the public have a right to see what's going on in these places? Yeah. Remi: Al morality seems to move with proximity and morality meets. It goes up. If we approximate to the suffering, we have a view on that suffering, but the suffering this at a site where I can not having a view of, but it is the same suffering that is contributing to our choice of what we can eat or whatever.We need to close the proximity gap and suddenly your ethics will be. Peter: Yes. [00:24:00] I have, I hope so. I hope we can do that, but you're right. We, we like to look away from things that are unpleasant and we just continue doing, supporting them indirectly because essentially buying a product of the animal exploitation industry is all the support it needs from us.And we continue to do that. But if somebody says, you know, do you know what life is like for an animal and a factory farm? A lot of people would just say, no, don't, don't tell me, I don't want to know your spoil my enjoyment of my next chicken pig or whatever it might be. Remi: Hmm. Thank you, Peter. And can I also, just on behalf of my team here, who just loved that you're here.Thank you for the movement you created and how far you have fought for a cause that matters so much. It's this is going to go to three, 400,000 people, and I'm sure I speak for a lot of them saying you're extraordinary and your philosophy and the views. Put forward in the face of controversy and you still just hold the line.I think it's extraordinary. Peter: Well, thanks very much. [00:25:00] I don't see that controversy as a reason for changing your, your views. Good arguments might be, but they're not controversy, but I certainly appreciate the opportunity to communicate with your 300,000. Yeah. Remi: Yeah. I think it'll probably be more with Peter Singer.Yeah, I think that's the bottom baseline. I, what I want, we got into an, a liberation because that's the work you're working on now, but what I've been thinking about, if I was to talk to Peter singer, the question I want to ask him, which I puzzle over is how do you determine what's right or wrong or good or bad?I struggle even with utilitarianism and perhaps we can speak about it through that frame, or you can bring some themes in, but how do you think about what's good or bad or right or wrong? Peter: Well, I do think about it through the frame of utilitarianism. That's something that I, I came to obviously over a period of time and I think about it very often and you know, you're certainly not the only one who doesn't find that easy to accept.And there are [00:26:00] other very good philosophers who take different views. And of course, I listen to them and take a look at why they hold the views they do and why they don't accept utilitarianism. And that that's an ongoing debate and, and it should be, that's what philosophy is like, we don't try and enforce conformity or agreement.We encourage open debate because that's the way in which we better understand our own positions and the positions of others. But for me you know, somebody. Ideas like, like rights or duties. I want to know where they come from and I don't get good answers. And in fact, when you ask people, well, what rights do people have or what do you do and rights clash.I don't get very clear answers on that. It's not that I'm opposed to talking about rights whether it's human rights or animal rights, but I think they have to be derived from something. And when I ask myself, what can they be derived from? It does seem to me that the only possible answer is a [00:27:00] better.Better lives for all of those beings whose lives can go well or badly from their own internal perspective. And that really means being super conscious beings who can feel something, and you know, feel pain or pleasure have a good day or a bad day or good life or a bad life. So, I think we that's, that's how we should be thinking about things and we should be thinking about things, not just.For ourselves or our country, or even for our species, but for all Sandy and beings. And not just for those who are there, here and now, but also for those who will exist in future, as far as we can predict the future. And of course, to go back to what you were saying a few moments ago, not just for those who are in close proximity, tourists, but also those on the other side of the world who might be complete strangers.So, so that's the kind of framework that I use. It's it's one that's impartial between Sandy and beings, just giving [00:28:00] equal consideration to their interests. Whatever those, where the interests are comparable or similar and trying to do what you can to make the world a better place in those terms.Remi: Okay. So, I guess the reason for my question is I'm noticing there's a lot more advocacy these days for hurt feelings being worthy of stopping a message. And then I listened to what you said about. Good and bed in another interview you did. And I'm finding a conflict between the two. How do you not hurt someone's feelings?If you have a controversial idea? And if we agree that meant to be doing the least harm, does that mean we stopped saying it? At what point does this moral code kick in? How much hurts feelings are we allowed to tolerate or cause something? Peter: Well, there's no answer to how much hurt feelings in general, because it depends on what's on the other side.So certainly, we should not [00:29:00] gratuitously hurt someone's feelings. And a lot of the nastiness that you find on social media, where people do abuse each other and sling off is, is quite wrong because it's not serving any real purpose. You know, maybe people are letting off steam for themselves, but it's not serving a purpose.On the other hand, when it comes to controversial ideas, if the ideas are ones that have the possibility of. Being right. And of making a positive difference to the world then I think we should be prepared to accept a certain amount of hurt feelings. I don't think we can say that you can't express an idea that might hurt someone's feelings, because it would be hard to say anything new or different if that were the case.Right. So a lot of the things that we now take for granted, you know like let's say the idea that people were the same sex orientation, or to be able to marry that would have been regarded as [00:30:00] extremely offensive to many religious people who thought that this was a terrible perversion and contrary to God's will.And so on, you know, we wouldn't, you could imagine those people. Took the standards of today saying, well, you know, we, we have to make sure that nobody is allowed to express those views. We have to cancel them if you want to use that so that these dangerous and perverted views contrary to God's will don't get into the community.But obviously that would have been a bad thing to do. So we have to be prepared to accept that if ideas are serious ideas that have the potential to make a difference in the world and a positive difference, we have to allow, I think, ideas to be exchanged and to be argued about. And that's the way in which we find out what is right.And what isn't, Remi: the way I'm seeing it is. If we're not willing to explore bad ideas, we risk not ever getting to the good idea. Cause I don't always say what I mean the first time, as well as I want to say it when I'm building a program [00:31:00] here or something like that, but it leads to an idea of significance down the track.But if it wasn't that to flourish in the beginning, when it was very misguided or completely off base, it never would have come to fruition and touched people's lives. Surely, it's an imperative that this idea of freedom to explore different ideas that may conflict with somebody else's needs to be encouraged.Peter: Yes. I agree entirely with that. And not only do we need to have, you know, criticism and discussion to refine our own ideas and improve them, but even if somebody you know, even if an idea is correct, I think people don't really understand why it's being held, unless you allow somebody to object to it and then somebody else will respond to that objection and lay out the reasons why we hold this at it.Because if you don't have that, it's just like a dogma. It's just something. Well, this is something we all believe, but why do we believe it? You know, do we allow it to be [00:32:00] questioned and challenged? And has it withstood those challenges? If it has, then we have an answer to why we believe it. If it hasn't, maybe we don't have any.Remi: How would you describe the state of the academy right now, given the amount of controversy around controversial ideas and professors being canceled or younger people in the academy being feeling intimidated. How would you describe the state of play and what is it you would like to see? Peter: Yeah.Terrible as it's sometimes being painted, but it's certainly also not as good as it could be. And I do count myself fortunate that I'm not standing at as a young academic without any security of position in, at this particular time because who knows, I might not have gone further. Remi: So I'm thinking of one idea you may have had that came up in Germany that perhaps wouldn't have been that helpful if it was this time.Peter: Right. So you're talking about my ideas about parents having the [00:33:00] possibility of euthanasia for their severely disabled infants. Yes. That's that? That's certainly a vote, a lot of controversy and still occasionally does. Yeah. I haven't seen arguments to suggest that I was wrong, but perhaps I have come to realize that People are not always as well informed about the prospects for their disabled children as they should be.And so now when I talk about this, I encourage parents to make contact with organizations, for people with the disability that their child might have, and try to learn more about what kind of a life prospect their child may have, or. So, so I, I have learned something from that controversy anyway, even if I haven't completely changed my views, but but to get back to your question about, about the academy, I've been disappointed that some of the, he does have academic institutions have not stood up for freedom of speech as firmly as they should have and have yielded to protests and petitions and so on.When I think they shouldn't [00:34:00] I'm, I'm fortunate that when I was appointed to Princeton in 1999, there were some protests because of my views about euthanasia and abortion as well. And one. Members of the board of trustees that is the governing body of Princeton called for my appointment to be rescinded.But the president of the universities stood up strongly for academic freedom and was supported by every other trustee on the board. So I'm glad that that happened. And I'm pretty confident that that would happen again at Princeton with the president that we have today. But obviously there are some other academic institutions around the world where people don't stand up in that way.Remi: How would you like to say it other than the latest standing up, what would be the invitation that you would put out that perhaps we need to stop bringing back into academia or introduce for the first time there? Peter: Oh, so I think what we need to bring back is a greater respect for freedom of thought and [00:35:00] discussion and somewhat less sensitivity.To people being offended. I think that that has been taken too far and people have extreme stances on things that have caused offense. And that certainly wasn't, wasn't the case when I was starting out as an academic. So yeah, I'd like to see more robust discussions. I'd also like to see less political partisanship in a way.I, I have a feeling now that people. Let's say if they're progressive, if they're on the left side of the political spectrum they feel they have to adopt the whole package of positions. You know, I certainly consider myself on, on, on that side of the spectrum in many areas, but I don't feel that I have any obligation to support everything that's said.And there are some things that are said by people on that side that I will, will disagree with it. And I think it's much better to respond issue by issue than to take [00:36:00] up a whole group and say yeah, well, this is what progress is believed. So this is what I do. Remi: Let's throw religion in there. It, I would say maybe that as religion goes down, secularism comes up, nothing's changed in the human beings, desire to connect, to belong and to know what they stand for.As religious dogma decreases all the dogmas seem to increase. Do you see any parallels? Is that anything you've given thought to? Peter: I've certainly given thought to in a way, I suppose the resilience of religious belief, which you know, if you'd asked me 50 years ago whether it would be as strong today as it is, I would have said, no, I think it's, it's on the decline.And it's particularly in those nations where people have high levels of education, it will continue to decline. But that, you know, that hasn't happened. Maybe it has declined somewhat over that period and it, depending on which country you're talking about. But, but part of the reasons for [00:37:00] that resilience is I think, as you say, people have a need to belong.And the question is for some people they're a church or mosque or synagogue has been that place. And is there really something. That can replace it now. I think that's, you know, again, that does vary from country to country and the strength of your institutions that you might be part of and your group of friends, but I think it's, it's part of the reason why secular view hasn't become more or less universal among, among people with some education.Remi: Hmm, morality seems to be difficult for humans. We seem to wrestle with it. What are your thoughts on how to bring a moral frame to decision-making? How do you approach morality? What are your thoughts on it? And perhaps throw into the mix sentimentality and your thoughts on that? Because we do seem to squish them all up together, [00:38:00] Peter: right?We do. So one of the things that I think about when I approach moral issues is I try to distinguish my gut responses what you might call a yak reactions from my reason judgments. So. You know, I think we are clearly evolved beings. We have evolved from social mammals over millions of years.We have, you know, our closest relatives of the other great apes because we are also great apes. And we know a lot more now about the behavior. Great apps and of other social mammals. And we also know a lot more about what goes on in our brains. When we're asked about moral dilemmas, there've been scientists like Josh green.Who've asked people moral dilemmas while they're having their brain scanned and see what pits of their brain are active at that particular time. So we know now that we have these kinds of instantaneous responses to descriptions of certain situations [00:39:00] which, which visceral, which we might say no, that's wrong, but I think we also know enough to say these are biologically evolved.These helped our ancestors to survive and to reproduce and. Ensure that children survived for millions of years. And so they have been to some extent hardwired into a psychology, but that doesn't mean that they're the best way of approaching questions in the 21st century where things are very different.And this goes to one of the things that you said earlier about when we're in proximity to people or to animals for that matter, we'll respond much more strongly than if we're merely thinking about. Distant strangers or animals far from, and that's because for all of those millions of years, we lived in small face-to-face societies.Most people think that that humans lived in groups of between one and 200. So we [00:40:00] knew everyone in those societies. It was a lot of mutual helping, obviously, where you help them. And they helped us in times of need. And we responded to them, but we didn't really know or care in the same way for people who might be living just on the other side of the mountain Ridge of our valley.And so we, you know, when, when, when we now have much greater ability to assist people on the other side of the world and we're in, we're much more interwoven with them, as of course the pandemic shows. We didn't get the pandemic from within Australia. It came from outside. Then we, we, we have to change.We have to think on a larger, more global scale and that kind of small group morality that is still wired into us in some respects really needs to change, or we need to change the decisions we make so that they do have a broader focus. Remi: How does that reconcile with your views on border management, international [00:41:00] border management?Peter: Well, I think there are two things that I want to say on this one is that as I said earlier, my morality is quite impartial and the interest and wellbeing of somebody who comes from the other side of the world shouldn't catalyst for that reason and the interest and wellbeing of my fellow Australians.But at the same time, I recognize that that is a rational take on the issue, which. For most people is not going to be, be dominant. You know, they're, they're all capable of taking that view of it and maybe they have some attraction to it, but they also have this more visceral response that you know, strangers are not as good some way as the people that I know and associate with.There's kind of a certain element of, of xenophobia, of fear or hatred of, of strangers that I think still. Resides within many people. And I regret the fact that it [00:42:00] does, but we can't just ignore it. I think we can't just say, well, so let's open our borders that would not lead to a good situation because of the hostility of many people in, in any countries.It's not particularly about Australia in, in any countries to an influx of a large number of strangers, particularly people who don't look like them or don't, you know, have different religions or different customs. So so in a democracy anyway, I think that I, I, I do not advocate that governments take a sort of open borders stance.That seems to me to be. To be a mistake. And obviously the political parties that are more likely to do that would be the political parties that I have more sympathy with and whose policies I generally endorse. But they are not going to achieve office if they take that stance. And so therefore not only a good policy on accepting asylum seekers and refugees would be lost, [00:43:00] but good policies on climate change, good policies on greater assistance for disadvantaged people within our own country.Better policies on foreign aid. All of those things would be lost. And that's why I understand that politics is a matter about what's possible about a compromise between what your ideals are and what you may be able to achieve if you're successful. Political elections. So, so that's, that's why I don't really take the stance of saying that any, any political party that restricts intake of asylum seekers is doing something wrong.Remi: Okay. One of the comments you made in another interview I was listening to was that to let the borders come down into kind of color countries recently, hasn't worked that well, and it has it wasn't in a phobia, you addressed, it was a market decrease in the quality of living. And there was a struggle within that country to reconsolidate the amount of help they had to provide so [00:44:00] rapidly.Do you still hold that view or. Peter: I'm not sure which interview you're referring to your Remi: country in my mind. Cause I've only referred. I've only reviewed 20. We'll leave it out. That's okay. And edit out. I have that power. So one of the things I want to talk with you about is you said on Andrew Denton, and I'm going to quote you to get it correct.That if you and your wife had a child with down syndrome, you would adopt the baby out. I would love you to talk about your thinking on this from a utilitarian point of view and have our viewers understand your mind because your rationality is so clear. And I really curious about how you come to that and.Yeah, how you come to that. Peter: Right. Okay. So I think that probably is what we should do, but to be fair, since it's only me talking, I don't want to really talk on behalf of my wife. She has her own news, which don't not necessarily identical with mine. So, so let me just say that I'm speaking. [00:45:00] So I know about the kind of person I am, but I would like to have a child who I can have eventually, obviously not, not immediately when they're very small, but who I can have the kind of conversation that you and I are having now with.And I think that's unlikely with a child with down syndrome. So to me it would not, it would be a shadow hanging over the relationship. Children with down syndrome and people with down syndrome can be very loving and warm and close. But it would be a shadow over the relationship that I think I would always feel some regret about that.My child would not grow up to be the kind of child that I could regard as fully an equal in terms of thinking about issues about in the world and thinking how best to help the world and to make the world a better place. So that's why I think I, I said that now, you know, some people are probably the discussion arose from somebody asking me, given that I think that parents ought to have options of euthanasia for severely disabled newborns, whether [00:46:00] I thought that was the right thing to do in the case of someone with down syndrome But what I I'm thinking about when I'm thinking about parents having that option is children whose lives are going to be ones of, of suffering for themselves and where you're not likely to be able to find adoptive parents who would love and cherish that child.And, and I don't think Dan syndrome is one of those cases. It's, it's certainly not necessarily a situation of suffering for the person with down syndrome. They can enjoy their lives. And because as I say, they can be warm and loving children and people there generally are couples who would be willing to adopt them.And that's particularly, so now it wasn't. So before we had a test for down syndrome in utero, because during pregnancy, because. Then, of course we had a lot more down syndrome, children being born and perhaps the number of children being born my guidance at some times, and in some places being greater than the number of parents willing to adopt a child with [00:47:00] down syndrome.But, but now that we do have those tests and there are far fewer children with down syndrome being born I think you could find loving adoptive parents. And that would be the best thing to do in those circumstances. As I say, if you had parents like me, who would rather not bring up that child, but would have had another child who might be able to meet, meet the expectations that I just mentioned, Remi: the reason I asked you that question is got nothing to do with my views on that, or really your views on it.It's just, I find it remarkable that you say these views. When I see so many academics, not saying. In any way, anything controversial, they are playing this really safe phage line. And every time I listened to an interview by you, and by now in my research, it's quite a few, you speak so plainly and clearly about your views without any hesitancy.How do you get to that? Or is that question just completely redundant to you? Because of course you should speak this way. [00:48:00] If this is the truth you've come to using or philosophical, philosophical stance I'm standing here going.Peter: You know, like I probably wasn't born like that. I did adopt fuse, which were out of the mainstream reasonably early on as, as we've been talking about, including becoming a vegetarian, when that was a very unusual stance to take. And then I also wrote something else. I hope we'll get time to talk about the obligations of affluent people to give to people in extreme poverty and how best to do that.So I defended those stances and the then I got into these discussions about euthanasia, which arose, I suppose, out of my questioning of the doctrine of the sanctity of all human life, because the doctrine of the sanctity of all human life, if it doesn't embrace the sanctity of non-human life, obviously as a, a speciesism kind of doctrine, it draws this line on the boundaries of species.And I wanted to challenge that and that got me to. Fuse that we were just talking about, [00:49:00] but I felt that you know, well, if I'm a philosopher, I should be prepared to speak up and give reasons for these views that I hold and show why they're part of a coherent and defensible set of moral views. As I believe.Remi Your mind is phenomenal. And I would love to speak with you now about effective altruism. Thank you for the segue, Peter. I was looking@thewebsitegivewell.org and the philosophy behind it. Please share with our viewers what you consider effective altruism to be. And then we can unpack it a Peter: little bit.Right? So effective altruism is both a philosophical view on life and a social movement. The philosophical view on life is that one of your aims ought to be, to make the world a better place. Obviously, most of us are not saints. We're not going to divide ourselves a hundred percent of the time to making the world a better place.But I think it's reasonable to [00:50:00] ask people, certainly people who are not struggling to survive to have that as, as one of their aims and Then the question is, so how do you do that? Or how do you do that most effectively? Because if you're trying to make the world a better place and you say, well, I've made the world a little bit better by donating to a certain charity, let's say, and then someone else points out.But look, let's say you donated a thousand dollars to that charity. That's good. But don't you realize that here's another charity that could have helped twice as many people or could have done 10 times as much good with that thousand dollars as the one you gave to. And if that is the case, and that very often is the case, then it seems a mistake to donate to the charity that does less good.So effective altruism is about. Get the most out of your resources. And I gave the example of donating, cause that's an easy example, but your resource might not be money. It might be [00:51:00] time that you can put into volunteering or helping or particular skills that you have that you can develop to help in one way or another.But whatever it is, I think we ought to be thinking about how can I use them as effectively as possible. Remi: And would you like to speak about givewell.org? And I think there was another organization that you helped to establish. Peter: Is that right? Yes, certainly. Yeah. givewell.org was the original organization that started assessing charities, not just on the basis of their paperwork or whether they were well run or how much they spend on administration, but on the basis of what impact were they having?How much good were they doing? And, and give well, pretty early on decided that at least as far as charities helping humans are concerned, we can get the biggest bang for our buck by helping people in extreme poverty in low-income countries. And you know, they've done very thorough research on that.My, my only criticism of [00:52:00] GiveWell was that they were pretty narrow in a sense they were very nerdy because of the kind of research that they did. And they were not particularly user friendly or appealing to a broad audience. So, when I, after I wrote the life, you can save which the first edition at which came out in 2009, Remi: just given away.I understand. Peter: Sorry, I'd given Remi: away the book. You've just like chronically. Yeah, let's do a plug. So, the name of the book Peter: is if you can save there's a brand-new edition, well, 2019 edition anyway, very new. And I am now giving it away either as an eBook or as an audio book. And the audio book is each chapter is read by different celebrity who volunteered their time.So like the actress, Kristin bell, or the singer songwriter, Paul Simon, or the BBC personality, Stephen Fry, they all read a chapter. So yeah, you can go to the life, you can save.org and, and you can download [00:53:00] it for free. And that organization, the fact that there is a life, the life you can save.org came out of the book because a guy called Charlie Breslow contacted me after reading the book.He was someone who had a very successful business career but had never felt fully satisfied in his business career. And it always felt he wanted to be doing something that was more in accord with the values of helping people. And. He basically said that he was still working at that time, but he basically offered to retire from his business career and devote himself.I think he was in his fifties at the time to establishing this organization. And, and that's what he did. I'm chair of the board, but he was the chief executive for many years. He just stepped down to a slightly less intensive role. And we now have an Australian called Rick Vic strum as the as the chief executive of the world organization and also working in Australia.Of course. So. Yeah, as I was saying, that organization is designed to be broader than GiveWell [00:54:00] to disseminate the results of give world's research and a research by some other organizations that followed give well in doing that kind of impact related research. And we will be increasingly doing some of our own research as well, but I think it's, it's designed to have a broad appeal and to encourage people to think about their charitable donations and to go to the website and you can look at about 20 recommended nonprofits that we have there.And you can donate to them through the website and a hundred percent of your donation will go to the organization. We're just providing the service without taking any commission or anything like that. So, I hope people who are thing you've done anything well, we'll have a look at that and find the organization.You know, they like, and that suit their interests. They're all good ones. And they're all ones where unhesitating any record. Remi: And you recommended them based on a rationale you've literally studied how effective they are and getting the dollar to the [00:55:00] personal, the cause that needs the help rather than going on administration or any other costs.Peter: Yes, that's right. It's, it's, it's the value you get which might be saving the lives of children by preventing them dying from malaria, or it might be restoring sight in people who are blind and can't afford to get cataracts removed, or can't afford to treat and prevent other forms of blindness or providing surgery for young women.Who've given birth without medical assistance and have damaged the uterus and develop what's called a fistula, which means that there's a hole between the bowel or bladder and the uterus, and they leak feces or urine through that. And, and their lives basically are ruined in those circumstances unless they can get some surgery and the surgery is not expensive.It's a few hundred dollars and you can give a young woman her life back. So, there are, you know, we we've looked at all of those organizations and we're confident that they are using money. That's donated to them with very high effective. Remi: My understanding this is in the public domain, Peter. [00:56:00] But if you don't want to answer, that's fine.I did read in ethics in the real world. You believe we should talk publicly about our charitable donations. So, I'd like to invite you. Cause I think I do know how much you give to make a difference. It's Peter: phenomenal. Yeah. I'm, I'm giving somewhere between a third and a half of my income. Look, I'm, you know, I'm fairly fortunate.I'm Professor at Princeton university I'm half-time now because want to spend more time in Australia, but you know, professors are well paid there and I have some other earnings, obviously, you know, you've shown some of the books, I own some royalties and so I'm pretty comfortably off. So, you know, that's not a level that I'm recommending for everybody.That would I recognize be extremely tough for many people. What I do recommend is and it's, you can find it in the book, the life you can save. If you want to download that copy from. The website I recommend a kind of program, massive scale of giving. So, people are on fairly modest incomes. I suggest they start with 1% [00:57:00] just to be giving something.And if they get comfortable with that and feel that that's okay and it's something worthwhile that they're doing, and they build up from there. And on the other hand, you know, people who are very comfortably off, I think they can certainly get to the kind of level that I'm at. They can donate a third of what they're giving perhaps.And you know, guests, they will have less cash, but, but basically the research shows that consumer spending isn't really very satisfying. The long run, you know, people get a bit of a boost when they get this exciting new car or whatever else it might be, but it, it wears off whereas the fulfillment from knowing that you're helping people and doing something good in the world, doesn't wear off it.It gives you a kind of a harmony between your values and your life. But I think is very raw. Remi: This question may be too pointed. It may be, need to be an open question, but I, since I don't think you do pride, but it is an equivalent for you in how you live your practical ethics. So [00:58:00] completely, Peter: Look, I'm, I'm, I'm not really proud of what I do because I mean and, and, and, and, you know, I look, I could be doing better, as I said, I'm not a Saint.So it's, I use the term fulfillment, I think as well. You know what I feel I feel that I've done a reasonable amount of good in the world. I feel I've used the talents and capacities that I had a well and in a positive direction. And I'm satisfied with that. Remi: You speak of being a hedonistic utilitarian, but I'm hearing meaning is more prevalent in your decision-making.Peter: Yes. So when people talk about hedonism, they tend to have this image of the pleasures you get as being central pleasures, pledges of food or drink or, or sex or lying on the beach in the sun or something like that. You know, and they're all good. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not [00:59:00] putting this down at all.They are positive, but I think we are the kind of being that seek something additional to that, not instead of, but additional and that is a kind of fulfillment or meaning in our lives. I think that's just the kind of beings that we are. And that is a kind of pleasure as well. You know, we shouldn't think of pledges as only those physical ones.There are intellectual pleasures and I'm not sure whether you call just kind of satisfaction and intellectual pleasure. Exactly. But it, it, it is a, a sense of meaning pleasure in finding meaning. Remi: Hmm. One of the things I'd love to chat with you about as we come to the end is the general of controversial ideas, which I believe has launched.Is that correct? Well done. That's awesome. So, let's give credit to the three of you. It was yourself and two other academics that kind of helped this come to fruition. Would you like to mention their names? I've got them here, but I'm going to mispronounce. Peter: You're probably thinking [01:00:00] of Francesca Minerva is an Italian academic who has herself been subject to abuse and physical threats for articles that she's published.And I'd have to say the original spark of the journal came from her. She talked to me about it and we also talked to Jeff McMahon. Who's a professor of moral philosophy at Oxford university and a good friend of mine. And it's the three of us who are. Put this together. Essentially because we all believe that ideas are important.It goes back to what we were talking about before, about the importance of being able to put forward different ideas. It is an academic journal, so it's not for everybody to just publish something in, but we send out all of the articles we received to experts in the field and we get their reviews of those articles.And if they think that they're well-argued and rigorous, we will accept them. Sometimes I say, yes, button needs to be revised here or there. And then if the revision comes up, we accept them. And quite a lot of them we [01:01:00] reject. But yeah, we have published the first issue. It's an online open access journal.We've had some donors who've made that possible. So, you can go to journal of controversial ideas.org, and you can read the first two. You can also support the general if you feel like doing that. And the other particular feature, cause of course there's lots of academic journals is that we allow authors to publish under a pseudonym.If they're worried about being subject to abuse or about damaging their career prospects. As we were talking about before and of the, we have 10 articles in the first issue and three of those authors chose to public to publish under a pseudonym. Remi: Hmm. And the purpose of the general of controversial ideas is to provide a.Safe place a voice for ideas that have been pushed out of the mainstream that perhaps you feel and think and have assessed need to be heard or worthy of discussion. Have I captured the Peter: purpose of it, right? Yes. We want to provide a sort of way in which ideas can be [01:02:00] expressed, even if other forums are close to them.And in fact, one of the articles, not one published under a pseudonym, but one of the other articles the author put a little note there saying that this article had been accepted by a journal or positively reviewed anyway by the journal. And it looked like it was about to be accepted. And then after the murder of George Floyd and the concerns, very proper concerns of course, about racism and the editors seem to have second thoughts and Then rejected it.So it is by no stretch of the imagination article it's discussing cultural traditions involving black face involving people coloring their faces and whether those are always wrong or sometimes defensible. But you know, that's an example of something that I think is a good, well thought out article and as a site in no sense of racial statical, but something that journalists didn't want to touch after in the last year or two, Remi: how's the funding [01:03:00] going?How's it going? Peter: We've certainly got enough to publish the next couple of issues. So, we're going to be around for a while and I hope that as we publish more, we'll get more support from people who will like what we're doing. Remi: We'll include links to everything we spoke about Peter, and to all your major works as well in the show notes.So, our viewers can access more of your thinking, which I think would be just marvelous. Is there anything we haven't spoken about as we wrap up that you feel is worth mentioning or you think maybe one Peter: want to there is one more thing actually, and I'll, I'll show it to you. This is, this is my newest publication.I can't say it's exactly my newest book because I didn't write it. I edited; it's written by this person Abu Laos who lived in the second century in the Roman empire. And he wrote this really funny bawdy novel about a man who by magic gets turned into a donkey and What he experiences is a donkey.And it is, it's very funny, but it's also very empathetic to [01:04:00] animals, quite surprising for something written in the Roman empire. So, I hope that your readers will pick it up and Remi: enjoy it going in the show notes as well. For sure. Peter. Absolutely. You're so good doing that. That's so fun. Look, thank you so much, Peter, on behalf of my team who are all raving fans of you and people aren't in the building says 30 raving fans in this building.We're excited that you're chatting with us. And as I said, this is going out to a lot of people be so pleased that your voice is amongst the many and much of the noise that's going on with such clarity. And we such a beautiful Clarion call to live a life of. Practical morality. You're a good kind, man. I studied you at university last year.I read your book last year and I never dreamed I'd be. So, I'm a bit of a fan. Peter: Terrific. And congratulations to you on building up that audience for us. Thank you for what you're Remi: talking about. Keep up the great work. I will take care of the introduction in my time to not waste your time. Please go with our blessings and our kind thoughts.[01:05:00] Peter: Thanks a lot, Remi: sir. Bye bye. Bye bye

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast Mentioned in this episode: The Dancing Plague of 1518 MICE quotient The House of Untold Stories  storyenginedeck.com/demo deckofworlds.com Peter on Twitter and everywhere   Transcript (by Rekka, uncaught mistakes by Temi)   [Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.   Rekka: Peter, I'm going to have you introduce yourself—because I completely failed to have you pronounce your name for me before we started recording—and tell us how you came to stories.   Peter: Yeah. so my name is Peter Chiykowski, or at least that's how I say it. And I write, I illustrate I do some graphic design. I've designed some creative tools for writers and artists and storytellers. And I do create content for tabletop RPGs. And I write songs as well—Um mostly like comedy styled songs. But I do, I do a bunch of things creatively. And I would say that story has been a very big link between them. And definitely one of my passion areas is looking at how different creative disciplines and different like creative techniques and skillsets can combine to create story in different ways or to tell stories in different ways. Or even if like you're not doing something multimedia and you're only working in your one medium, how learning from other mediums gives you more tools for telling stories.   Peter: And I always find that really exciting. But yeah, I think like my, before I was writing anything as a kid, I loved role-playing games. I remember there was this sort of very improvised six-sided die-based game that my friends and I would play in at recess in like grade three that was, there were no rules written down. I don't think it was based on anything, but I do think that we, one of our dads had played D&D and had somehow rubbed off the concept of like rolling dice to tell a story and telling a story collectively. And there was no table top because we were not at a table. We were like out on the playground at recess, but we would like bowl these dice across the entire playground and then run and see what the number was and the story would evolve from there.   Peter: And it was all kinds of silly fantasy adventure stuff. That's the first time that I remember like really getting hooked into telling the story and getting excited about collaborative storytelling. And then it's all been downhill from there. Once, once, once tabletop roleplay gets its hooks into you you, you get, yeah, you look for any avenue to tell stories. So I've done everything from like poetry to short fiction. I've written campaigns for tabletop RPGs, like Ember Wind. I wrote a bunch of poems for a video game. That's now unintended switch called Fracter. We were trying to tell story, but also give clues for solving puzzles in this like existential platform or game, called Fracter. And I've just kind of loved playing in the story space and finding different ways to tell stories. Yeah, and that's kind of the weird mixed bag of experiences that I, I come to story with, but it's such a, such a passion area for me.   Rekka: It does seem like you're absolutely perfect for the topic that we're going to talk about today. You're the perfect person to put this together, and that is the Story Engine, which is almost a role-playing game, almost a multiplayer game.   Kaelyn: I was trying to describe this to somebody recently and I couldn't. So maybe you can.   Rekka: Yeah, well, let's, you're the perfect person because you've probably seen all the marketing. If you didn't create it all yourself for the Story Engine, what is it? And how did you conceive of it? Like, did it come out of a need or did it come out of a like 10 minute space of time where you weren't actually doing something else? Cause it sounds like you're as busy as we are.   Peter: Yeah. Yeah. I definitely wear too many creative hats and I jump from project to project, but Story Engine was something that was definitely, it was definitely filling a need that I had. I write a lot of micro fiction. Like one of my more consistent projects I've worked on is called the shortest story and it's basically, I call them postcard stories. They're stories that fit on postcards. And I actually format them in like a, as like a four by six style postcard, but it's text over an image. And it's meant to be like a little pocket universe that you, you read something from, or like a, a story that's almost an alternate life or a path you never took in your own life. That's that your you get to read. So I called them like post "postcards from alternate worlds" or "postcards from impossible worlds" is kind of like the tagline for that project. And what I was finding, I used to write longer fiction. I used to write poetry and longer fiction and submit to journals. And when I was really getting into the grind of like trying to become a creative full-time and I was working a full-time job, and then also trying to do comics on the side and publishing there was just like, I, it was so hard to maintain enough energy and to find inspiration. And there was so much pressure on the rare pockets of creative time that I would find that I'd often block myself out from creating by feeling like I'd have to optimize this hour and a half I have before work. There's so much pressure cause like maybe I won't have time for another week and I would freak myself out by, by putting that pressure on it.   Peter: And it took a lot of joy out of the creative process. And I found that I was having less and less time to create longer projects as a result, like even long short fiction, like anything longer than a thousand words. So I started creating micro fiction. And this was amazing for me because it meant that I could like pick up a project or pick something up and put it down an hour and a half later and feel like I've created something that stands on its own. That's like a contained creative ecosystem. And that I feel good about it and I can share that with people. And what I found is that I was getting a lot of the ideas from, for stories, from a combination of looking up like publicly available free-for-use photography.   Peter: So I would, I would see an image and the image would start something in my head. And then sometimes it wouldn't be the image. It would be like, I'd have a sense of a conflict coming in as a story seed in my head that like, oh, I want to have a story about somebody who has to choose between like a friend and like a dream that matters to them. And that would be kind of the story seed or it would sometimes cement like the idea of a particular character. Like I'd love to do a story from the perspective of like an entomologist, like suddenly all of an entomologist in my head. So I was paying attention to what was inspiring a lot of these stories seeds in where a lot of the stories were coming from and trying to think like, well, how can I create a tool that would help other people find stories, seeds, or build their own stories, seeds from the parts that speak to them?   Peter: And that's when I started playing with the idea of a story prompting deck and, you know, it's not the first story prompting deck. There's, there's many of these tools out there and people create them in different ways. But I wanted to create something that was really open-ended because I find that with a lot of writing prompts, they're really interesting, but sometimes the prompt is so closed as a system, but it doesn't really give you room to create your own idea. It's just kind of there to see, like, what's your take on this? And that's great, but it's hard to generate a lot of, like, it's hard for those ideas to be reusable. If the card has a really closed system where like the only thing you can do with it is this. Then once you've gone through 60 cards, the deck is is not obsolete, but like you've tapped it out.   Peter: And that's like, great from a marketing perspective, because then you can sell someone the next deck, but I really wanted to create something that was like, you could just keep using it forever. And the creative force behind it was not the idea of putting the cards, but using the cards as a space for someone to create their own idea or bring their own idea to the spread. So from there, it was basically like mixing a bunch of different influences to create a tool that would do this. So like, it was a huge inspiration from tarot. You know, this is a system of cards it's been used for hundreds of years to understand and analyze patterns and have people tell their story or understand their lives in ways that make sense. And that are like interpretable and re interpretable that you can rotate to create new meanings.   Peter: And like all of that went into the deck. Some of it was borrowed consciously from tarot and some of it was like I realized afterwards, I, oh, that's basically what tarot does. Like the fact that you can combine the cards in different spreads and patterns is like, it was very consciously tarot inspired. And then the other like influence that I like to acknowledge it that I think was really big is basically this one sentence from a Canadian novelist who wrote a lot about story and what a story and Douglas Glover wrote in a book called the enamored night that a story consists of someone wanting something and having trouble getting it. And that's such a simple sentence and I don't, I don't generally like, like reductive definitions of this is what a story is, and this is under, this is what this counts as writing and this doesn't that's, those definitions are often very artificial, but I do think that's one really helpful tool for understanding the anatomy of story and how you can combine these parts and, and slot different things in for who the someone is and what they want and what the trouble is.   Peter: And if you look at the Story Engine deck, a lot of the w five card types map against the elements in those sentence and that sentence where like the, someone is the agent card, it's that your character and the wanting is the engine card. It's the thing that motivates them. The something that they want is the anchor, usually an anchor card or another agent card. And then the trouble is the conflict card. And then the aspect cards are there to, to layer more detailed or make the story feel like more like your own. So that was kinda the other influence that, that came together to make this tool. But it's, it's hard to explain what it is cause it's very, like, it is a story prompting system, but it's very, open-ended like, you can play it like it's an RPG. You can use it as inspiration for a solo RPG. You can use it to just create character ideas. You can use it to create art prompts. Like it's, it's hard to market a multi-tool because you kind of need to tell people like a simple story about what it's going to do for them.   Kaelyn: But you did a great job marketing it because this was on Kickstarter and oh boy, did you hit your goal there!   Peter: Yeah. This, this Kickstarter took off in a much bigger way than I had anticipated. I launched it in, I think September, 2019, and I was blown away by how fast it took off. And I had thought at the time that I was launching like a new collection of my stories and then also, "Hey, this cool tool that went into creating a lot of these stories and that might help you." And very quickly it became like, okay, there's a book there. That's just going to be an add on the main thing was like, people were really interested in the deck and what it could do.   Kaelyn: And do you have how many booster packs now at this point? 6?   Peter: Yeah. So the, the, the core deck that, that, that launched off that Kickstarter was one main deck, three expansions and six boosters. So that way people can like dabble with different genres and they can kind of almost make their own like genre cocktails by combining different elements from different genres. And then the latest Kickstarter for my world building deck, the Deck of Worlds that that's introducing three new expansions for the Story Engine and six new boosters for the Story Engine, so that's going to be 12 and six. And the main deck ended up a bunch of expansions for the world building deck. So there's a lot of cards.   Kaelyn: That is, yeah, that is a lot. Wow. That's awesome.   Peter: What I tried to do with both those systems is make them so that it's like, it's about how you layer the cards. Like I think the, just the main deck, that main Story Engine deck has 32 billion possible permutations, just, just including the main deck, just in the simple prompt format where you have the five, one of each card of the five cards laid out in a certain order. And so like the extra stuff there in case you want to bring in genre elements, or you want more to work with, but like, I tried to make a system where if you just want the core deck that's gonna like, that should do you for, for, for decades of story ideas, if you personally exhaust all of the possible combinations in your deck in your lifetime, you know, I, I will personally come and bring you an expansion.   Rekka: Challenge accepted. Well, I happen to have a base Story Engine deck with me, and I was looking through it and looking through the instruction booklet and you're right. Like, there are so many ways that you could do a story with this, lay them out. You were talking about like the tarot arrangements. It's very much like that. The direction that you read your cards in, the way that you layer them, the orientation of them, turning them so that they fit your story more. But I also really appreciate how much of the instruction booklet is, like "throw out whatever is holding you back." And they're also very broad. Like I realized like a science fiction writer and a romance writer could get the same spread and write two very different books. You know, and obviously that was your intention, but it really does open it up rather than close it down.   Rekka: Like, you know, you hear the story prompt, like, "oh, if you're stuck, make something explode." Well, it, explosion is a very specific thing, but yours might be something like, you know, a possessed assassin walks in kind of thing. Like, and that works in any genre. I mean, like, you know, there's no specificity to these cards, it's that our brains do all the work of figuring out what that means for the way we write, the way we write stories, or the specific story we're talking about. What was the process of narrowing down something that you felt confident enough in to print? Because that's a scary thing for me as a graphic designer also, like when it's time to actually print the thing, you're like, okay, that means no more revisions, you know. How'd you get to that point?   Peter: Yeah. So I eased myself into it a few ways and I definitely had had help and input. I I had a brain trust that I was emailing with questions usually with more specific focused questions around like like the name for the agent deck versus it could have been called the character deck or like "what are your thoughts and how these come together?" But there were a few people who I handed early prototypes to, and just like, didn't tell them what it was and asked them to just play with it and see what came out and then got their feedback. And then within the specific questions. And definitely I got some really, really helpful feedback, like the entire system of using... When I first conceived it. I only had in mind that basic spread the story seed. That's just like basically the first page of the the guide book now.   Peter: And it was my friend Cintain, who's done a lot of tarot reading. And who's also a writer who looked at it and said actually this was we were, at the time we were doing like a Skype call or a video call. So I had the deck and he would tell me what to do with it. And he said, "okay, I want you to tell me this card and then this card, and then this type of card and this, and then do the same thing backwards." And he created what is pretty close to now, the circle of fate format. And he's like, "I want to, like, when you give me those cards, I want to play, play with it and like create different spreads and directions." And this is like, you know, tarot, once you get to advanced tarot, creating different styles of spreads can be its own art.   Peter: And that really blew my mind. And that really opened up like a huge amount of functionality in the deck because it was both like getting to create these different pre-packaged spreads that people could use and then also just trying to teach people to treat the deck as a system where like once you've learned the spreads, what I've really done is kind of given you the basic building blocks for creating your own spreads and patterns. And that's helpful not only because it gets you more use out of the deck, but it also helps you realize that story itself is malleable. Story itself is modular. You can always out a character in switch in a different character and see how that changes the particular resonances of their struggle. Or you can transfer a character's motivation from one object or character to another, and that creates a change in the story or a shift in the story. How all of these elements are things you can play with and have fun. And I think that the reason that it really helps dismantle a lot of what I, you know, we all have theories about what writer's block is and if it's real, what it, whatever it is, it definitely there - people get stuck.   Kaelyn: It's, it's real. What it's a function of, I can't say, but it is real.   Peter: Yeah. And I think people come at writer's block for different reasons and, and can solve it in different ways. But I think that one of the things that helps about this tool is that A, it brings a sense of play back to writing and to story development. And B it helps you make choices that, you know, you can undo. Okay. Cause sometimes the hard part, the, the, where you get locked up is feeling like, well, there's so many directions I can go and I don't want to go down the wrong one. And then I see what the deck, so it lets you literally visualize, like here are the choices that I've made about what I'm including in the story and what the story is. And if this one starts to not work for me, I can just chuck that card and replace it or I can rotate the card because this meaning this particular interpretation isn't quite working for me.   Peter: But if I turn that card 90 degrees, now I have a new meaning that I'm tapping and that's one that I'm connecting with. And it also limits the choices that you're dealing with. You're not dealing with 32 billion story ideas at once. You're dealing with the two to four options per card and making those limited choices that you can always redo. And it, I think it helps people get to the starting line where like, they're just having fun with the story and pass those like really pressuring questions of like, is this good enough of an idea to write about? Or where am I going with this?   Kaelyn: It's very interesting because in my experience, in my encounters, you know, with writers over the years, I, the, again, I hate the binary. I hate, you know, it's this or this, but like, I will say like there's two dominant large groups that I come into contact with people who have a story in their heads already that they just really want to write and people who really want to write, but don't have a story. And they each are coming across like gonna come across their own problems, their own conflicts in that. But you know, the people who are like, like you and Rekka like writers and creatives and are, you know, constantly coming up and generating new ideas. What I really liked about this deck was like, I think every, I think like to the outside world, we hear like, oh, a writer, like, you know, will they just come up with a story and then they write it. It's like, that is not how this works. And what's really cool about this deck is kind of, you can take all of those elements, break them out into pieces that you can see, move and shift them around, modify them, tweak them to, you know, where you want it to go. And could you do this on a piece of paper? Sure. But one, it's not as fun to, it's not as organized and three, these are colorful.   Rekka: I also think there's a certain element and probably not for everyone, but like the hand of fate, you know, that you've been dealt these cards, you've drawn them. And then you feel like this is a challenge that I can rise to as opposed to like, well, that's my crummy idea. Something else would be better.   Kaelyn: And I think that's why anthologies are such a good thing for emerging or new writers because it gives you something—it's a challenge in some regards. So it's also very good for, you know, experienced writers—but it gives you something saying, I need this. And I think that's one of the things that's so scary about. Just write a novel is it's. So open-ended, it's just   Rekka: Also long. A long commitment to an open-ended idea that you came up with in silence. Yeah.   Kaelyn: And it's like, well, what do you want me to write? And so then there's this pressure to go, well, what's popular? What's everyone going to read? Well, by the time you get this written and published, that's not going to matter. So don't worry about that. Okay. Well, what do I like? Well, I like these things. I'm not sure I can write a whole book about that and I'm worried it will ruin that thing for me. So I, it is good to either have someone give you, or in the case of the Story Engine, give yourself direction in a way to organize your thoughts.   Rekka: And that was one thing that occurred to me was like very frequently when I start getting the seed of an idea, it's a concept; it's a sentence. It's like elements, ingredients, like you said, here are things I like, I want to combine them. Do I have a plot? No.   Kaelyn: Those aren't important.   Rekka: Well, eventually you're supposed to maybe have a plot. And what I like about the Story Engine deck is that in your instructions, you say like if you know an aspect or if you're writing in an existing world, there are parts of this. You can lock in place, you can go and dig and find the cartoon to read or write it, you know, yourself or whatever or you just know that it's locked in what you're looking for are the other elements, which create a plot. And that just, I knew the Story Engine deck was for creating ideas, but I didn't realize what it could do for the ideas I already have and getting them to the point where I'm ready to write something with them.   Rekka: Cause I'll let something percolate for a year or more and just write it, write what I know down so that I don't forget it, but it can take a long time before I figure out how that fits into point A to point B to point C and how many characters and what are their desires and all the things that could be decided for me, or at least inspired for me by drawing a random card and just getting an idea. And now, do I think that writing that story from the story engine would get me the same story that I would have come up with after a year or more of letting a story percolate? Probably not, but it's really interesting. The immediate sense of, "oh, I know what to do with that." When you get a suggestion, like Kaelyn was saying an anthology theme, all of a sudden you're like, "oh. Oh, I know what to do with that."   Rekka: And a story engine deck really reads to me in a similar way that like what I have put, you know, a, a series of things together, like the cards are going to come out in whatever orientation I choose? Almost absolutely not. You know, unless I'm really being finicky and like digging for the cards I want across the entire thing. And then maybe I'm just drawing out an idea. I didn't know I had, which is also useful. It's really flexible. And I really, I, I I'm really impressed by that. There's a lot, there's a lot of brain in this box.   Kaelyn: I think that one of the things that is very, as you know—that's exactly it, there's a lot of brain in this box, but really it's just, it's just kind of leeching onto your brain and like, you know, like some little like computer chip, that's going like, "ehhhh, it's a little bit of a mess in here. Let's, let's clean this up." but I think what is good about it is it gives writers a way to provide their own prompts, to, you know, just take things that maybe they wouldn't have considered, but, or it could be interesting, engaging, advancing elements to a story that's sort of half exists in their head already. You don't need to come to this with a blank slate.   Peter: Yeah. Yeah. You can come with as much of the story as you have formed and work with what you've already got, or you can come with nothing and just it'll lay out some track for you and you don't have to use all the elements of the track that you lay out. You can swap things out, you can ignore it. Like I ignore parts of the prompt all the time, because I just wanted to get started on. I wanted to find something to be excited enough about that I just start writing. And if that's this half of the prompt and not this half, then I'm going to pretend that the card I drew was actually this, cause this works better in my head, but the rest of it, I'm going to use the conflict and I'm going to use the aspect and the the descriptive part. And I'm going to use that the story is anchored in some way on a meal. A meal between two people or something. Cause that's what I drew. But yeah, like I said, like there's yeah, the reason that it works is because the brain, the brain is not in the box. I would, I would counter that and say like, the brain is 100%.   Rekka: No, I'm sorry. You can't come on our podcast and tell us we're wrong. I'm talking about like the brain that put this together neatly and you managed to get out of the way of the end user.   Peter: That was exactly. That's yeah. That's exactly the language that I use when I talk about it. It was getting out of the way of people and letting them bring their ideas to it. Like there were early drafts of this that were more focused on like... Like one thing I love about the writing prompts subreddit on Reddit is that there's some really interesting creative prompts that are just like, wow, I never would've thought of that in a million years. But the thing that I have trouble with is that they're always very closed. Like it's almost always like write your version of this highly specific high concept premise. And so there's less mileage to work with there. And I found that I was trying to do some of the, the, like, I want to create a really dazzling idea with the writing in some of the early drafts.   Peter: And the more I tried to make that work, the more that those ideas couldn't plug very easily into A, like what the reader wanted to do with it, or sorry, what the writer wanted to do with it. The creator wanted to do with it, the end user. The more it made it hard for them to read something into it or bring their own idea to it. The more I realized those ideas aren't working and then the more trouble that those ideas had plugging into other cards and connecting to other cards in an open-ended way that also ended up being what I discarded. So I ended up like scratching a bunch of material that I thought was extraordinarily clever. But that really wouldn't have served the end purpose and like the question that I asked myself now when I'm looking at prompts and deciding like, will this work is is it going to be useful for the writer, for the end user?   Peter: And is it going to leave enough room for them to bring their own gift basically? Like it's a little bit like button soup, the story button soup, where like someone starts off and like, "oh, I'm gonna make this special soup. The first thing I need is a button and then, oh, hold on. Do you have any carrots? Do you have any...?" And you know, the, the town brings ingredients. And it's very much that, like it's, it's the, the, the deck is a button that gets you started making a soup and it's just an excuse for soup and who doesn't, who doesn't want an excuse for soup? That's my new, that's my new marketing logline. "The Story Engine is an excuse for soup."   Rekka: Yeah. And the the cleverness is, has gotta be tempting, but the, the terms that you ended up using for example, I just drawing a random card. I have these are the agent cards, the four corners, or the four sides of this card are an introvert, a dreamer, a grump, a wanderer. Those are pretty dry and pretty basic terms. And even so, whatever genre you like to write in, whatever world is, you know, your brain is currently marinating in, you've already got an idea of who each of those four people are, and they're not the same as mine. And that's, that's really nice. And that can not be easy to create that openness, like you were saying.   Peter: It took a lot of, a lot of rebalancing the cards and the, the, what was going onto the cues. One thing that I found was really important was like some of the play tests that I did early on, some of them were with writers and creative people who could like get a simple prompt and spin out this fantastical universe and they could run with it. And then I would also show it to people who work in science and they would have like a very literal interpretation of what the cards would mean. So I realized quickly that like, while the primary target is writers, there's lots of different ways to use cards. And some people don't want the open ended things. Some people want literal prompts. So for the main deck, especially the prompts are designed to be... So like the agent cards are balanced in a particular way where there's a main, very open-ended prompt. That is the prompt that faces you when the card is in its like neutral position, basically. The cards are meant to not really read as being like this way is up or down, but there is kind of a neutral position. So that that's meant to be the most open-ended generic interpretation on that card. And then the other three around the edges are different facets of that concept. Either zoomed in on, in a more specific detail or blown up in a in a bigger, more exaggerated way.   Rekka: So the neutral way is the way that has like the little portrait.   Peter: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So the healer is the generic sense. Whereas a therapist is a very specific expression of, of a healer. So if someone who was being very literal got that card and like, didn't really know what to imagine for a healer, it's too big, therapist gives them a very specific thing that they can work with. We all know roughly what a therapist does and, and that would give you a very literal way to start. And that's, I think for the other card that you drew, I think grump was the thing where like we all, literally we can understand what a grump is pretty literally. Yeah. whereas an introvert it's more generic that gives you a lot more room to operate. A wanderer is a bit more specific and active. So there was a, there was a lot of thought that went into how we balanced the levels of narrow prompt versus broad prompt, especially on the agents for the anchors bouncing those cards is more a function of making sure that every card has a setting, a prop something that's a little less non-literal and more interpretable and that all of those felt thematically linked.   Peter: So like a prison and a cage and a key are all thematically linked. And it's meant to keep things in a bit, a bit of a tight space so that people aren't, it doesn't feel like they're dealing with a huge scattershot of different ideas at the same time. Like they understand, okay, I'm thinking about introverts. And I'm thinking about what it means to withdraw from people and that's kind of a headspace you're in for the character, and they can choose different ways to express that same thing when the same balancing act went into the anchors. So yeah, again, a lot of the goal was to put my brain power and not into like making the individual cards impressive, but for removing as many barriers to the system, just working out of the box as possible by balancing things. And like the, it was interesting because for the, the world building deck, world building in some ways is a more specific and yet even more broad and open thing to do. Because there's so many ways to build what is a world and what differentiates one area from another, and what, what makes us having interesting, like there's so many different ways you can differentiate a setting and figuring out, figuring out how to balance those cards was its own...   Peter: Like I had to start again, like none of the lessons that I learned from Story Engine got to be carried over. Like I completely had to start from ground zero again. And and it took, it took a long time to get that one, right. Oh my gosh. I think like Story Engine came together fairly quickly, I think because I had a pretty intuitive model of how I wanted it to work between tarot and that sort of definition of story that has often informed my storytelling choices. But yeah, the world building one, I, that one took so many more iterations to get the balance on those cards. Right.   Kaelyn: So how did you have to tackle the world building deck versus, you know, the story and character building one? And I know it is more of the first, the first set is more of a story-building, but there's definitely some character elements to it as well. Are you going to do a character building one at some point?   Peter: I I've thought about that, but honestly, the, the Story Engine does so much character building stuff and it can be, you can, you can do informed choices with it to make so many different types of characters that I don't think there'd be a whole lot to add to it. Like, I, I, I'm not saying no to that, but I feel like the main thing does such a good job of it. And I don't like developing products just to have new products. Like I would really like to give people something that, that adds a ton of value to their creative process. And right now, I don't know how to add enough value to the character creation process that isn't already there in the Story Engine deck. So that's an idea that's like it's in my notebook, but unless I really have an aha moment where I'm like, oh, this is a way to really open this process up for people and I can justify their time and explaining why this is different from this thing I've already made. Then I'll definitely do that.   Rekka: They need a deck to help you create decks.   Peter: Oh, now that would, I would get, I would, that would be perfect. I could retire, I could retire young and and just let that work. So the, the, the concept that I'm kicking around right now in my head is an open-ended solo RPG that you play by writing. And so it's meant to be like a, almost a campaign where at the end of it, you have 50 new pieces of writing, inspired by different things. And that might actually use draws from the Story Engine deck to generate the content that you're playing in. But the goal is that you write the scene. So it's like a solo thing. But that is basically as far as I've gotten on developing it is that would be really fun and cool. And how the heck would that work? And I have not I've yet to answer even a single part of that question, but it's kicking around in my head cause the other decks have everything you need to generate the content.   Peter: And then the goal is to just give you more reasons to write. And also the thing that I think I'm really after with this idea is like the things that make us love RPGs, the things that like, that make us feel like we're advancing and we're developing a character and we're part of a story and we're... You know, also the cool stuff. Like I got cool equipment and I leveled up like all those things that, that make games easy to say yes to would be amazing if we could turn those things toward generating, you know, our, toward pursuing our creative goals. So being able to like hijack some of those, those dopamine button pushes that we get from from games and make that something that benefits the creative process, I think would be really cool. So that's, that's the that was my, my latest dog walk idea that I've been obsessing over, but not letting myself get too deep into because I have I still have a lot to of like just card rebalancing and design exports have to do with Decker worlds. And I, I like to land one plane before I take off with another one. So that's, that's on the back burner, but it's not quite a deck for making decks, but it is a deck for using decks for making ideas. Yeah. Yeah. So that'd be, that'd be interesting to see how that plays it. Yeah.   Rekka: I haven't seen the world building deck. Is it as broad as the Story Engine in that, like, it would work for somebody writing a contemporary story on Earth and they just needed the situation and that like the community level, as much as it would be for someone like me who likes to write stories where they've never even heard of earth and also I throw physics out the window? So does it work on that broad scale like the Story Engine does and how much of a challenge was it to decide and then cater to ?   Peter: What the world building deck does is create lore. And as long as you're comfortable with like your lore set in the real world being invented lower, which a lot of us are then that's totally, it works for that. It's not what I designed it for, but it definitely works for that. So it runs on, on six types of cards rather than five for the story engine. Two of those cards are almost for like assembling map pieces. So there's like a drone photography style image of different types of terrain and landscapes for the region deck, which kind of sets up like you're dealing with forest land or river land or wetland or canyons or mountains or beach, like it sets a kind of a train type up for you. And then there's a landmark deck, which gives you specific points of interest.   Peter: Some of which are I say human-made and human, here's a short form for whoever made it doesn't have to be humans, but are constructed things. And some of which are naturally occurring things. Like when you have like a, a giant rock or an interesting tree or a waterfall. So you can definitely create these interesting dynamic settings using those. And all of the cards in the main deck are things that exist normally in our reality on Earth. And then there's a namesake deck, which basically you, you pair that with either a landmark or a region. And it gives a specific nickname to that area. I find that this is one of my favorite decks because it immediately creates a sense of lore. So you might end up with you draw like a, a creation that really got sunk into my head.   Peter: Recently when I was playing around with it, it was I think I drew the card arena for landmark or an arena. And then I drew of chimes for the namesake card. So it was the arena of chimes. And for some reason I started thinking about this like a gladiatorial arena where the bones of the dead are hung as like wind chimes, after they fall. And that, I just imagined these rafters all, like, you have this pit in the middle and you have these rafters all around where every time the wind blows through it, and it was set in like a barren area without much wind cover. You just hear that gentle clinking and like the dead are speaking around you and warning you of what could come.   Kaelyn: Real quick Rekka, because I'm sure when you heard that you came up with something mentally. Cause I did too. And it was completely different from yours. I was, I was thinking more of same thing, kind of like a fighting arena, but full of like strange metal poles and like, you know, the chaos of the like bouncing off of that and like making like the screaming and the clanking of swords, you know, everything with that.   Peter: Yeah. So the chimes are those active combat sounds. Yeah.   Kaelyn: Yeah. Well, like also just, you know, like just pieces of metal will be the, you know, naturally occurring or put there sticking up like round sticking up of the ground. So yeah.   Peter: You could do so much cool choreography with that too. Right. Like the swinging on the poles and like gymnastics.   Kaelyn: Yeah. Like, you know, and then like of course like picturing like Roman gladiators, where they used to like put, you know, animals and like captured peoples in there and like have them like hunted. I've got like some weird Hunger Games stuff going on in my head now. So yeah. So, no, it's very funny because like you said that, and you went one direction, I went a completely different direction, but they still, you know, are kind of functionally doing the same thing a little bit.   Rekka: But from the same prompt yes. Which is the perfect example of how flexible this is.   Peter: Yeah. So that's those, those are three of the decks and those, those kind of create your almost like map pieces and you can assemble different shapes out of these cards by tucking them in different patterns. And you can assemble what I call micro setting clusters, and you assemble the clusters into a world map and you can actually apply a scale to it. You can explore it. And then you can use the Story Engine to furnish that world with your characters, with conflicts, with artifacts and other places of interest. But the other three card types, this was the really hard part because I didn't want to do more than six card types. Cause if you've done more than six card types, you've made something that's just too complicated to use out of the box. And there's so many different aspects of what makes a world interesting.   Peter: And it was also, it's very different how you furnish a an, uncolonized setting, like a, just a natural setting versus a space that has been either colonized or urbanized in some way. And we're using the impact of, of civilization. So like how, how do you acknowledge all the different ways that land can be used and that people can co-exist and there's tons of them. So what I ended up doing for my mental categories was coming up with an origin deck, which gives you a fixed point in the past which either is how this place was created or a significant event that shaped it or previous use that it had or some function that's, that's an anchor point in its past for the origin deck. And then there's an attributes deck, which is the current day status quo, how the space is used or what it's known for, or what lives there.   Peter: And then a advent deck, which are current changes that are happening right now that could impact the future of this place. And that category basically past present future is what I think really finally unlocked the worldly aspects because it let me cover so much more material on the cards themselves that way, rather than trying to do like a deck, that's just the politics and a deck that's just the ecosystem at a deck that's just fashion and a deck like that... That's too many decks. What this does is it lets you sprinkle out different types of world, building detail and starting points for prompts. Like it's known for a particular style of textile or it's known for its scholars, or it has an anarchic government system or they worship nature. Like there's so many different things you can bring into that.   Peter: And those all went into the attributes deck, but it lets you still create kind of a larger sense of narrative for the place that you have. And it sets up your setting as a space for story to happen because it gives you here's where they were in the past. Here's where they are now. And here's what's happening that could change the future. And that advent deck that is that change for the future is such a great entry point for telling stories because it's usually the former of a crisis or a change. And it's something where like a Dungeons and Dragons party could get involved and insert themselves into the conflict and try and do something involving it or where your main characters could. This is their inciting incident, is that there's a new tax being levied on like a staple food. That's a really interesting point for like maybe that's where your character starts to to, to become radicalized and then resisting the government, or it's what inspires them to, okay, well, I'm going to grow my own food or like, you know, there's so many different ways that you can use that as a launching point for story.   Peter: But getting to that point where I realized that like there are too many different categories of like how to differentiate an area. So to break the categories out, do that as looking at a space across time, and then it lets you cover so many different phases within the deck that took a long time to get there, like so many different iterations.   Kaelyn: It sounds like it. Yeah, but it sounds awesome. Yeah. I love that. As you know, looking at this, not establishing like a static place and people and culture, but rather like, you know, looking at this, like, what was it, what is it now? What is it going to be?   Peter: Yeah, yeah.   Rekka: Kaelyn Is a student of history. So this is really tickling all the right spots for her in that like nothing is fixed when you're talking about a timeline.   Kaelyn: I was on the train coming back from Long Island right before this. And I've been reading a lot of books about the hundred years of war in England and like the very tail end of it and all of this, these little decisions and machinations that were going into everything and where we ended up that all of this eventually culminates in Henry the Eighth.   Peter: And that magnificent portrait of him, just....   Kaelyn: It was funny because I was looking at that portrait. And at some point I'm going to print that out and I'm going to draw in where I think his arms should be and see if it actually lines up. Because I can't tell if the, the idea is like, cause you can't really see the hook of his elbow much. And it kind of looks like his arm is coming out of his rib cage, but at the same time, I'm realizing it could be the angle he's staring at and he's got this giant drapey, like half-cloak thing over him. So maybe it's it was a Hans Holbein the Younger painted that portrait and he was, he was noted for anatomical accuracy. So I don't, I don't think it was just a weird, like, you know, those medieval paintings and sketches in the books where like, you know, a guy seems to have like a leg coming out of his stomach, but   Peter: Yeah. Or like no neck.   Kaelyn: Exactly.   Rekka: Or was riding a snail. I mean, accuracy was their favorite.   Kaelyn: I, I just love that. It's one of my, you know, speaking of like culture and history and how this factors in one of my favorite things to know is that there were these monks living in, you know, giant abbeys on top of and hills, cloistered from society toiling all day transcribing these things. And they still took time to draw the occasional dick picture in the in the manuscript or, you know, doodle a cute dog that they saw on the side of it. It just, you know, it makes me go like, oh yes, those were people.   Peter: I one of the expansions for the new world building deck is the lore fragments expansion. And so it's for creating bits of in world lore. It's a very specific deck of here are different types of media that might be created in the process of like just a town existing or a world existing. And then there's a deck of flourish cards, which are additional stylistic challenges that you can add to really inform the thing you're creating, but yeah, marginalia, I love medieval marginalia. I did my masters in medieval literature. And yeah, and I it's like a combination of that and folklore and, and I love this stuff, so definitely there's a card in the deck that's entirely just about like, and it has some weird marginalia in it as one of the flourishes. Cause I just, I I love that concept. Yeah.   Rekka: Okay. So with the time we have left, I wondered if we could do a little exercise. Like I said, I have my deck lead me through and we'll just, and we'll just do the simple spread because wow. Some of these could get, you know, convoluted. Lead me through creating just a story. I've got, I've got no ideas in my head. What would you have me do with these cards laid out in front of me? And I'll take a picture and we'll post it.   Peter: Oh, that sounds like fun. Yeah. So I think what I'd do just to set the person up before they get started is to say like, we are going to assemble an idea for a story using different elements that are common to a lot of like interesting stories that have all, all the right stuff in it. And we're going to do that one card at a time. And as we each choose each card, we're going to make a choice about what we want that card to mean and how it might fit into the story. But none of those choices are permanent. We can always hit the undo key and change the cards. And then at the end of this, we'll see what we've got and see how we want to interpret it. Okay. Ubut to start, we're going to find out who our main character is, or who the story might be about. And we're going to draw an agent card with the gold border. And,uwe are going to lay that down face up and we're going to read the four cues along the outside of the card.   Rekka: Okay. So I'm shuffling that particular deck real quick before I draw anything. Okay. So I pulled one and in neutral position, we are looking at a misfit, which is perfect for me.   Peter: I love misfit stories. What else do we have   Rekka: From the same card, those you want me to read the other edges? We have a demon, a monster, and a genius.   Peter: Do any of those speak to you as like, oh, I'd like to write about that kind of character?   Rekka: I think I like the more generic misfit, honestly.   Peter: Misfit. Yeah. Okay. Well then you keep that that cue so that it's facing you and that's going to be our character for now. You can always rotate that card later if you want to change it. But let's find what is motivating this misfit. And let's draw an engine card with the little cog icon and the purple border. And we are going to figure out what might be motivating this character.   Rekka: I have "wants to let go of" or "wants to hold onto."   Peter: Do you want to do a story about someone who's trying to move past something like, oh, something or a story about someone who is like something's being taken away and they're holding onto it?   Rekka: I say the latter. So they want to hold on to.   Peter: Yeah. So we'll rotate that cue into position. And then we're going to find out what they're holding on to. Now here's a choice that you can make. Usually for the default version, you would draw an anchor card here, which is a, it's going to be like an object or a non sentient thing in the story. If you want, though, you could make it about holding onto another character or letting go of another character in that and then make it a relationship thing instead, and you could draw another agent card. We have that power.   Rekka: Let's do that. That sounds good. All right.   Peter: We're going to modify. Like we're already switching up the script a little bit.   Kaelyn: Yeah. I was gonna say, I, I feel like we're like cheating a little bit where we're getting the brains behind the operation here, walking us through this.   Rekka: For those of you following along with the MCU right now, we have just deviated from the timeline. So my new agent card is an artist who might be a musician, a writer, or a dancer. I'm going to say dancer through a misfit dancer. A misfit wants to hold on to a dancer.   Kaelyn: Do they want to hold on to dancing or do they want to hold on to a dancer?   Peter: You can choose to reinterpret the cards any way you like. I always think— I'm definitely imagining a relationship here, but that's me. It'd be really interesting to have someone who's holding up the dance cause that's important to them and why they're losing access to dance as a thing would be really interesting because it could be about physical changes. It could be about hobby time. There's like, there's a, it could be like a particular version of dance, like a dance troupe that they used to be part of.   Rekka: Competing for that position in the dance troupe kind of thing.   Peter: Oh yeah, yeah.   Kaelyn: Maybe they live in the town from Footloose.   Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have a, so, you know, the as a historian that, that the whole dancing plague in Strasbourg? I think it was Strasbourg?   Kaelyn: Yup. Well, it started there, it went other places afterwards.   Peter: I want to pitch you a, a new movie called "Footless" where I it's this hyper religious town, Kevin Bacon is dispatched to try and ban dancing from the town and end the plague. And it's a reverse "Footloose" and I just think—   Rekka: And this is what happens when you turn your cards around.   Peter: Yes, exactly.   Kaelyn: So maybe they are losing dancing because there was too much dancing and people are literally dying from dancing.   Peter: Yeah. There's there's there's we have, we have a lot of, a lot of directions we can take it, and everyone can go their own direction with it, which is a lot of fun. I, one of my favorite activities for the multiplayer uses of the deck is that you co-create a prompt and then you write whatever you want out of it, or come up, write down your story, pitch out of it. And just to see like how different the directions can go, or where the areas of overlap are. But let's draw a conflict card next. And this is going to create the, either a challenge to holding on to this. Or it's going to give us a consequence if they do hold onto it, what might happen that's bad. The price to pay.   Rekka: Okay. Shuffling. Okay. And top card after the shuffle is, "but they will likely lose their life" or, "but they will lose their life's work."   Kaelyn: It sounds like a dancing plague to me. Lose their life, I mean, come on.   Rekka: Life's work for sure. Okay.   Peter: And then just to texture the story out a little bit more, we're going to draw an aspect card, and this is just basically an adjective that we can slap on any of the other cards to give it a bit more texture or definition.   Rekka: We have harsh shadowy, seductive, or determined. Seems like determined as the dancer.   Peter: Yeah. Yeah. We could definitely do determined dancer. That's gonna, what I find is that when you draw a an aspect cards, it feels like an obvious choice. That can be good sometimes because it lets you sort of focus in and narrow things down and, and, and lock your idea in, or sometimes what I'll do, if I find like there's a first choice that happens that way, I'll reconsider and see, like, is there something that's more surprising? And that creates something that sticks out a little bit more, and that gives me either a new thing to work with, or I can always like, kind of go back to the thing and be more focused. But yeah, I, every now and then when I get the obvious choice thing I almost always end up sticking with it, but I like to give myself a moment to play with what if I did something that's like harder to work with?   Rekka: What if you didn't. Uh yeah. I don't know what a harsh dancer would be like or someone who doesn't have time for their misfit because dance is all they care about. Okay. A harsh dancer would be hard to hold on to, I suppose. Okay. So would I draw another aspect card then for the misfit?   Peter: If you want to, you can the base prompt usually is usually just one of each card or in this case we substituted an agent for an anchor, but I like to encourage people to like, it's kinda like you taste your food as you make it and season it to taste. If you're like, I want, I want to know more about who the other, the dancer, the dancer, I want to know more about this or that. You can definitely go ahead and draw another aspect card and see where you might fit it. And if you end up not with like, not finding a place for it, you can just chuck it. Yeah. Let's do another one.   Rekka: I'm looking at this one. And I'm saying, what if I switched it? Because you said I can break all the rules. So what if a dancer and we'll say, and we'll go back to determined just for ease of my sentence here. ...Is Trying to let go of the misfit ...but they will likely lose their life implying that like the misfit holds some key, that's going to save them, but they don't want the association with this person.   Peter: Oh, interesting. Yeah.   Rekka: And this could be read both directions where the misfit is trying to hold onto the dancer. Yeah. But we'll lose their life's work if they get caught up in this, you know, honest life or something like that.   Peter: Yeah. Yeah. I like that.   Rekka: And that's something I noticed is that like a lot of these, you could rearrange it and read it in both directions. And then, you know, since you said you come up with your own spreads, what I thought of since going through the instruction book and, and looking through a few of the cards was like, if you have a heist plot, like, you know you want a heist plot, so you take what you would that be the anchor card? And you have that as the center of a cross, and you have four different parties that are moving toward that object. And then you can put their stories in context, and then you have a nice, big, thick, juicy heist plot of four people in competition with each other to get to the thing. But also what's, what's the thing, holding them back or pushing them forward. It's really neat how all of this is creating stories in my head that are probably going to stick with me even after I like remove the cards from my table. So let me, before I forget, I'm going to take photos of these and then, oh, did you say we, I was allowed to draw another aspect card?   Peter: Yeah, Let's do another aspect. If you're looking for more, more seasoning let's, let's go for it.   Rekka: I love seasoning. Ah okay. We have misunderstood, gilded, traumatic, or revolutionary.   Peter: I'm I'm liking revolutionary for the missed it, because it gives her a reason for it to be hard to hold onto them. Like maybe they are a liability, maybe they're involved in like in creating change. That's like in a good way, but in a way that's disruptive.   Kaelyn: Maybe they're Kevin Bacon there to stop the dancing?   Peter: Yes! Yeah. That is, that is, yeah. That's Kevin Bacon right there. Rekka: All right. This is, this is a functioning story right here. Like there's no doubt that you could take this and turn it into something.   Kaelyn: Yeah. And by the way what have we been doing with this for like, I mean, you know, if we hadn't been going off on tangents and interjecting here, this would have been what, about five minutes? So, you know.   Rekka: Very, very short time, but I think the the, the time you spend thinking about like, which edge of this do I want to show is very valuable. You know, you hear advice sometimes like, "write down your first 12 ideas and cross out the first 11 or, you know, enter whatever number you've heard. And this one, these aren't even initially your ideas, you know what I mean? These, I mean, they're prompts and the ideas you come up with are your own, but it's still like, you skip all the obvious stuff because you don't have the option of the obvious stuff. And like maybe the aspect card is the most obvious thing that you might choose. It's impressive. I like this.   Peter: One of the things that I really like about using the deck is that it forces me to avoid the choices that I usually make for what fuels the story.   Rekka: I still got to write a misfit story. You know, like I still have my space pirates, but I never would have incorporated a dancer. You know?   Peter: Yeah. I have, I definitely have a bag of tricks that I've reached for a little too often as a writer. And so it's nice to have something that forces you to reach into a different bag. I know one of my favorite sort of sentences about breaking creative patterns is when Tom Waits described that like between albums, he would break his fingers because they would always, he'd always end up playing the same sorts of chords or the same progressions. So like one, like he would actually, technically what he would do is like pick up a new instrument and learning that instrument would change the way that he played. But that idea of like breaking your fingers and like trying to make sure that you don't always reach the same way or go for the same things.   Rekka: To be clear listeners, we do not encourage you to break your fingers.   Kaelyn: Please don't break your fingers. It makes it very difficult to type.   Rekka: I think in this case, what would it be changing keyboard layouts, like go from QWERTY to Dvorak or something like that. That would be a way to break your habits of easily using the same words over and over.   Kaelyn: Pick a genre that you previously had not been as involved in and submerge yourself in it for a, you know, a month or   Rekka: Whatever the agent who was cringing about us just recommending that their author switch genres, but you just mean reading?   Kaelyn: Yeah, just, you know, a different style, some different, you know, story elements and things you, you know, so you're not reading and ingesting or watching even. I dunno if you're maybe primarily like a fantasy writer, go binge, watch the entire MCU and, you know, see if you come away with some different ideas after that.   Rekka: Yup. Or, you know, Leverage now we get an ending. So go binge leverage. There's I would say like, if you tend toward the high literary, like go slum it with some escapist fiction for awhile or something like that. Basically change it up. I love this I'm, I'm, I know Tom Waits is not about to break his fingers, but I'm still very concerned for him. And I feel like I need to call him after we're off this recording.   Kaelyn: Well, so that was, that was a great idea of Rekka. That was a lot of fun.   Rekka: It was just a simple layout. Yeah. There are, you could go to town on this and something made me think of the MICE quotient, which I think we've covered here before about milieu, idea, character, and darnit, I've forgotten the E [ed. E is for event], But you, the more of each that you add, the bigger your story is going to get. And so if you wanted to write flash fiction, you could start with four cards, like, you know, one aspect or, you know, keep it really simple. If you wanted to plan out a series, you could really go to town, like laying out an entire, you know, 20-card kind of layout to give you the seed for a much bigger world, and then go get the world building set, and then come back and build something even bigger around that. I was hesitant to use it when I got it, because I'm like, "but I have ideas."   Rekka: And now I see how even like on a scene by scene level, like what if I, you know, I lock in my character card cause I know who my agent is going to be, but I don't know what the scene needs, you know, I can play around and all this could just be my scene, just like it could just be a flash piece. It really is way more flexible than I thought it was. For some reason, I thought either it was too broad or too specific and I was intimidated by it, but just doing this and, you know, reading through the guidebook to kind of see the possibilities I have a feeling I'm going to be using this a lot more than I expected to, and I'm going to go get that world buildin

This is a rare two-part set of free episodes of Marketing BS. My guest today is Peter Fader, professor of marketing at the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania. Peter was one of my early marketing mentors and I loved this interview. In Part 1 we talk about Peter's career as a marketing academic and how he came to his signature theories around how one understands the value of a company's customer base. Tomorrow we will dive deeper into those theories.You can subscribe to the podcast in your player of choice here: Apple, Sticher, TuneIn, Overcast , Spotify. Private Feed (for premium episodes).TranscriptEdward: This is Marketing BS. My guest today is Wharton Professor, Peter Fader. I consider Peter one of my founding mentors for helping me understand how marketing really works. His most important contribution to marketing, in my opinion, is that you can model future customer purchases by assuming that your customer base is made up of a heterogeneous group of customers—each with their own intrinsic purchase rate and churn rate. And that those same models can be used in radically different businesses and industries to create extremely accurate predictions. Most importantly, because these predictions are accurate, it should influence what your actual actions are to grow your business sustainably.Today, we're going to talk about Peter's career and his intellectual path to this important idea. Tomorrow we'll dive into the idea itself and how it can be used for marketers in practice.Peter, can you start by talking a little bit about how you first started exploring the idea of Buy ‘Til You Die?Peter: Sure thing, my pleasure to do so. It's funny because that characterizes my career. That's what I'm most famous for. But (A) it's not my idea, and (B) it didn't even come to me until long after I was a full professor here at Wharton.I've been building all kinds of different models of customer behavior. How many customers will we acquire, how long will they stay, how many purchases will they make, and all that sort of thing. All the time looking at different data sets, thinking about different business settings, and saying, what would be a story? What would be a model that could capture and then project that kind of behavior?Back in 2001—again, I had been a professor here for 14 years already—I was building a model to capture a phenomenon that we see all the time. They did a customer-slow-down as they gained tenure with the company. It's pretty universal. I built a bespoke model to capture that and it was good, it was fine. I got the thing published. But along the way, one of their viewers was saying, you want to benchmark your model against this Buy ‘Til You Die model. Something that was invented back in 1987. But it was really technical, it was really obscured, so I thought it was an unfair request.I went to the editor of the journal and said, don't make me do that. Don't make me benchmarking that old obscure thing. And the editor agreed that I didn't have to. But I wasn't sure he would. I actually did benchmark the models that I was developing against these older ones and found that the old ones were much, much better.It doesn't show up in that paper. I then decided to devote the rest of my life, or at least the next 18 plus years, to exploring that other model—Buy 'Til You Die. Why it's so good, different variations of it, different applications for it, different motivations, and different managerial stories around it. That's basically all I've been doing since then. Taking someone else's model and running with it, calling attention to it, and finding some reasonable success with it.Edward: When did you realize that it was close to a fundamental law and not something that just might explain some of the data some of the time?Peter: Because I took it and started applying it to lots of other data sets. Again, this was more out of curiosity than necessity. That's just what we do as scholars which is just try things out. I wasn't only looking at the breadth of applications, I was looking at the robustness even for any one application. The idea that we don't have to have a long data set, and even if we have a shorter and shorter data set, if there is missing data, or if we don't have the same inputs that we get pretty much the same results.It started convincing me that this is more than just a cute model. It started convincing me that this is actually reality. I know that it's not—and I'm going to lose all credibility with you and your listeners here—but I'd like to make an analogy between this. Brace yourself—the theory of relativity. We all view that the theory of relativity, E=mc2, and all that stuff, we treat it as if it's true. It's not. It's just a theory. It's just a model. But the thing is it's so robust and explained so many different phenomena, even phenomena that weren't observable 100 years ago when Einstein was putting these ideas out there. But we just keep seeing it “proven” over and over and over again that we just treat it as truth.Now, I don't want to say that these BTYD models have anywhere near the implications, the importance, the cosmic explanations as relativity. But I think they're similarly robust and people would just be better off viewing them as if they were true instead of spending so much time pushing back and saying why their situation is different, why the implications don't apply, and why the world is changing. Let's just accept it as truth and our life as managers would be much easier and much more successful.Edward: But I want to go back a little bit to the path that got you here. I have a theory that things people do when they're 12-14 years old affect them for their entire lives. Where were you passionate about at that age? How did those things affect your later career?Peter: Oh my goodness. Wow, a bunch of different things, all really nerdy. The one that was most normal would have been baseball. At that time—I'm embarrassed to admit this, you're getting all this bad stuff out of me, Ed—I was a huge Yankee fan. I've repented since then. I've seen the folly of my ways. I was really, really, really into baseball statistics. Unfortunately, this was before anyone had heard of Bill James, sabermetrics, or Moneyball. All of that stuff was still years, years later. But I was almost—I don't want to say—inventing some of those kinds of things but I was thinking very much along those lines. How can we take the game of baseball and break it down into its underlying components, understand those things, and really focus on the underlying story rather than just the overall observable statistics? I was obsessed over that as I still am today. The other thing is kind of weird. I've always had an obsession with dollar bills with interesting serial numbers. Mom would come back from the grocery store and I would immediately go through her dollar bills. I would say, this one on a 0-100 scale, this one gets a 60. This one, maybe a 40. This one here, that's a 95. I'm going to keep that one. I was just always obsessed with interesting numbers, interesting serial numbers.Finally, when the whole internet thing started, I bought the domain name coolnumbers.com, and still own it today. That's all that site does is you put in any 8-digit number like a dollar bill serial number and it will tell you on a 0-100 scale how cool it is on my own quirky, arbitrary, don't even try to figure out universal coolness index. It's surprisingly popular. There's a lot of other nerdy people out there, or at least with too much time on their hands. That's the kind of stuff that I was doing. Just looking for patterns in data, but without any particular purpose or societal benefit. I'm really lucky that I finally found some meaningful purpose.Edward: I'm glad that you're working for good and not evil because I think on the website, you can enter your Social Security numbers. I'm sure people are doing that every day as well.Peter: Well, right now you can only put on 8-digit numbers. I'm waiting for some kind of undergrad or someone else. Maybe one of your listeners with too much time on their hands to help me flesh out cool numbers. You could deal with, let's say, a Social Security number, a 9-digit zip code, or whatever else. I got the algorithms all worked out. I just need someone to do all the coding.But thank goodness, I haven't wasted that much more time on it over the last 20 years. I had better things to do.Edward: You went to college for mathematics, but then you did a Ph.D. in marketing. Why did you switch?Peter: It wasn't my choice. There are very few people who say, Mommy, I want to be a marketing professor. It doesn't come up on career day when you're in middle school. It's an interesting story by itself because I indeed was just a solid math major. All I liked doing was crunching numbers, playing around with integrals, and all that sort of stuff. I didn't know what I would do for a living. I figured either end up as an actuary—calculating risks for insurance companies, I'd go to Wall Street, or maybe I'd go work for the NSA and break codes or whatever else.I was exploring all of these different options until this one professor, this marketing professor, her name is Leigh McAlister. She's still very active today at the University of Texas now, not MIT where I first met her. She came to me one day back in 1982 and said, you ought to be a marketing professor. You ought to get your Ph.D. in marketing. I looked at her and said, you ought to get your head checked because I'm a math guy, I'm not going into marketing. But she laid out this vision—again, keep in mind this was 1982, that's like 500 years ago.Edward: That's before finance was even getting into mathematics, let alone marketing.Peter: But she laid out this picture of what marketing would become. She was exactly right. That there will come a day when we'll be able to tag and track individual customers, know what they're doing, and then get some sense of which message we should send to which customer at which time. We're going to need rock-solid math underneath all that to figure it out, to make these decisions, and to evaluate those decisions. I didn't believe her, but she was very persuasive and she forced me to get a Ph.D. She literally—I'm not exaggerating—forced me to take this job offer at Wharton. I had offers from lots of other good schools, but she said, “Wharton is the place for you. It will have the people, the resources, the culture to let you pursue your quantitative passions in this domain.” And here I am. Now, this is year 34 on the faculty, calling her up every 6 months or so, saying thank you, thank you, thank you. She did change my life by pushing me in a direction that, again, I would have never imagined, and even actively resisted at that time. But boy was she right on every one of these dimensions. My whole life is just paying it forward to her in every way possible.Edward: If you hadn't met her, where do you think you would have ended up?Peter: Either a Wall Street firm or again maybe an actuarial firm. I took the first bunch of exams that actuaries take. I did an internship with an insurance company. I could see that there was some alignment there, but at the same time, it's not an industry that lends itself to creativity.I want to come up with new models, new explanations, new stories, just new methods. Whereas in insurance, even on Wall Street, and most of these other domains, it's once you have the way of doing things. It's just shut up and do it. I would have ended up doing one of those kinds of things. Maybe I would have been happy, who knows? I like to make myself happy no matter what's going on.But nothing could make me happier than the path that I followed. To have the colleagues, the resources, the incentives to come up with new stuff, and then brilliant students, including people like yourself who have taken some of those ideas and run with them, whether in academic directions or in commercial directions. I've just been super lucky to ride their coattails academically and commercially to find success both ways.Edward: Long before Buy ‘Til You Die, your first significant research was into strategies in a generalized prisoner's dilemma. What exactly did you find?Peter: Wow. That's a blast from the past. My dissertation at MIT—very few people know this because I tend to focus on all these predictive models of customer behavior and so on. But my dissertation couldn't have been more different.Indeed, I was looking at the prisoner's dilemma. I'm assuming that many of your listeners are familiar with it already. If not, they can search for it. There's so much out there on it. There's a lot of people who have been trying to “solve the prisoner's dilemma,” coming up with strategies that would be very effective in this very simple two by two game. Do I take the temptation to rat out that person, cut-price, or do the nasty action; or will I be good?The problem with the basic prisoner's dilemma, as they just implied, is that it has two players—me against you, and only have two alternatives because each of us does the aggressive tactic or the kind of nice tactic. Solving it, in that case, is fine but not very practical because in the real world, there's going to be lots of other complications, and let's just focus on two of them.Number one, there's going to be multiple players out there. There's going to be three or more firms. In fact, just moving from two to three is a giant leap forward because all of a sudden, if person number three does the nasty thing, what do I do? Do I wait for you—the nice guy, or do I respond to the nasty one? It's very, very complicated and we start getting all confused because if I react to him, then you react to me, and you get into this downward spiral.Number two, there can be multiple alternatives. Not just do you do the thing or not, but it can be shades of gray. You can be setting prices or discounts or even oil output levels if you think about OPEC. The generalized prisoner's dilemma that I put forth had a continuous range of alternatives. It was a price-setting and three players. It generalized, it built upon all the basic ideas of the textbook, two by two prisoner's dilemma. But it added all kinds of interesting complications, yet it still lent itself to some surprisingly robust strategies. Strategies that I explored in my dissertation. We've seen an interesting range of examples in business, in sports, and in life itself, where some of these strategies do tend to play out and lead to effective outcomes.Edward: In addition to your research, you've co-founded a few companies. Talk to me about Zodiac and how that happened.Peter: This goes right back to something I was saying a few minutes ago, which is riding the coattails of brilliant students both in the academic direction as well as the commercial. It's building out this Buy ‘Til You Die model, and they're really good. They worked really well. But most of the time, I was either just working on academic stuff to try to come up with new tweaks of them or just going to companies and trying to give them the academic version saying, here you ought to use this. Here, this model is good for you. Here's the code. Here's the spreadsheet. Here's the technical note. Here are some case studies. But the problem is, companies either found it a little bit too academic, or the kinds of data they were looking at was just so messy, so complex, or so large that the academic versions just weren't quite right for them. Back in late 2014, I had a conversation with one of my brilliant undergraduates. He basically had some ideas to make the models much more practical—to be able to run faster, to be able to run just much more efficiently. Brought in a couple of other folks, and we founded this company. First, we called it CLV Metrics—Customer Lifetime Value Metrics—kind of a lame name. And then we decided, you know what, we're getting such good traction on it. Let's make it real. We brought in some venture capital money. We started hiring a whole team. We changed the name to Zodiac, and it was a wonderful success.We work with a wide variety of firms. Whether it's retailers, travel and hospitality, telcos, gaming, pharmaceuticals, or lots of different B2B applications and different kinds of services. Just applying this Buy ‘Til You Die model in a wide range of scenarios and finding all kinds of success, all kinds of interesting tactical-use cases—it was really great. But of course, talking in the past tense, because in 2018 one of our clients came along and said, we want it all, and that client was Nike. We sold to Nike in March 2018, which again, was a wonderful outcome by itself, but also a tremendous validation for the usefulness, not just the academic interest in this, but the commercial usefulness of the models.Edward: We're going to go more into the usefulness of it tomorrow on our second podcast. You later, though, founded another company called Theta Equity Partners and this was different from Zodiac, correct?Peter: Yes and no. On one hand, there's the no part which is, at the very core, this very similar set of models, this Buy ‘Til You Die model. But the motivation and the main use case couldn't be more different. Back in the Zodiac days, besides working with lots of different companies that I described before, one of our clients was a private equity firm. They weren't that interested in figuring out which message to send to which customer. All they wanted to do was to say, listen, can you come up with the projected value of each and every customer, add all that stuff up, and tell us that number because we're thinking of buying that digitally native women's cosmetics company.We figured the best way to judge its valuation isn't through the usual top-down multiple approach, but it's from the bottom-up—how many customers will we acquire, how long will they stay, how much will they spend. That's what we did—the idea of customer-based corporate valuation. After we sold Zodiac to Nike along with one of my Zodiac co-founders, Dan McCarthy, we co-founded Theta Equity Partners. That's all we're doing is customer-based corporate valuation, working with private equity firms, family offices. I'm working with a lot of companies directly just to help them understand, unlock, and fully leverage all of that customer value. It's less about the marketer. It's just less about the tactics. It's more about finance, valuation, corporate governance, big strategic decisions, and again, it's been great. The models work well. It's probably an even more receptive audience—the finance people than the marketing people. Once you go over the finance people, then it becomes very easy to win over the marketing people as well.Edward: It's interesting, 38 years or so after you left finance to go into marketing, you're right back where you started with finance.Peter: I have to admit, I feel like a fish out of water because it's not really my home. It's not my core domain. I've been learning a lot over these last couple of years and I have tremendous respect for the people in finance and more and more every day. I can bring them a tool that they don't have through these models and through these perspectives. But the ways that they deploy it, some of these are very clever, smart, resourceful things they do, you could see why they are the big dog in most organizations and why people respect, maybe even fear finance much more than they do marketing. Because my objective is to bring them together and to get marketing and finance on the same level using the same models for strategic as well as tactical purposes, and we'll talk more about that.Edward: Peter,what was the biggest failure point in your career? What's the biggest mistake that you made?Peter: There's a difference between failure and mistakes. Let me talk about one of each. Maybe the saddest moment in my career—the one night I literally cried myself to sleep—was losing the Napster case. As I've said many times now, I'm interested in a broad variety of applications. I spent a lot of time in the ‘90s and early 2000s working with or maybe fighting with the music industry—there are amazingly good patterns there. It's very predictable. It's one of the better sectors if you want to apply the models, but it's a sector where they don't apply the models.Long story short, I got caught up in the Napster case, the original Napster, an original file sharing service that changed everything. I was with the good guys. Napster is trying to make the case why that file sharing service is the greatest possible thing for the music industry and making that case why it's good and why it will bring in lots of money. I wrote this whole long statement, did all this research about it back in the glorious summer of 2000, but Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, she pretty much rejected everything I said. She basically said, the idea that file-sharing could be good for the industry is preposterous and any research that would draw such a conclusion must be gravely flawed. I think those are her exact words.Edward: Your conclusion was wrong regardless of your methods.Peter: Exactly right. In the end, it didn't really matter. The reason why Napster was shut down, it had nothing to do with whether it hurt or helped the industry. But the fact is, it was against the law. The law might be stupid, that's a whole other question, so it was shut down. But I took it personally. I felt that this was a true failure on my part. I let down the revolution. It wasn't a mistake. It's just that I was betting on the wrong horse.Edward: How'd that changed things? Did you change your strategies going forward because of that event?Peter: Not really. It just made me want to fight harder. It's actually interesting. I said, look, this is just wrong. We need to show the industry that they are making a terrible mistake. In the early 2000s, I spent a lot of time banging on the door of the music industry, saying, listen, let's go after this together. Let's do the research to show the circumstances under which file-sharing helps, hurts, or is neutral. Let's really understand it. Let's understand the business implications. Let's not just stop at music. Let's talk about TV, movies, publishing, and basically all areas of media and entertainment.I set up a Research Center at Wharton for the Wharton Media & Entertainment Initiative. That went nowhere. Then we got a donation to set up the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative, and that was very successful. That then morphed into the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative, which continues to flourish today. I spent a lot of time expanding on it. One might say pivoting from the work in the music industry to try to make a difference with models and understanding of customer data. It's just that the music industry and entertainment, in general, weren't all that receptive. It's just a matter of shopping these ideas and methods around to find a more receptive audience, which we did find a lot of success with.Edward: Tell me about the iPhone.Peter: Yeah, that was a mistake. A little bit of arrogance on my part. I was big into the BlackBerry. I mean that was a transformative device. Wow. When the iPhone came along, I staked out. I went way out on a limb staking out exactly the wrong turf saying, this device will just never catch on. Look at just how different it is. Look at all the features of a BlackBerry that it lacks. I'm never shy about my opinions. Usually, they're based more on data than just pure hunches. This case, pure hunch, wrong hunch, and I basically said that this is going to go down in history as a colossal failure. And again, I wasn't shy about it.When the iPhone celebrated its 10th anniversary of just a ginormous success a couple of years ago, people went out and found some of these—the incredibly dumb things that I said as it was being launched. I'll admit it. I'm big enough to acknowledge my mistakes. That's far from the only one. But probably the one that I got in—I don't want to say trouble, there's no trouble there—the most s**t for and entirely well-deserved. Even though I'm still not a big fan of Apple—I literally have never owned a single Apple device. Again, not that I'm against them but I just like buttons. I like to press things, whatever. I've learned better than to bet against them.Edward: This has been fantastic. We're going to come back again tomorrow to talk more about Buy ‘Til You Die. Thank you so much.Peter: Sure thing. It's always good talking to you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Sarah: So now that there's so much technology to be able to read things, do you still read things the old fashion way like newspapers, magazines, real books?Peter: Right, right. Oh, good question. I think it depends. I've stopped buying magazines and newspapers, definitely. I always access that online because it's so easy and convenient and you can read different newspapers from different countries all over the world and it's really easy to access. So I've stopped buying any of those kinds of things, magazines too. But with books I sometimes ... I sometimes still buy books that I would really like to have and like to keep. I used to collect books but I've stopped doing that too unless I really, really like the book and want it as a keepsake. Yes, and my habits of reading I guess have also changed. I use my phone to access most of the newspapers and magazines or use my iPad to do that. Yeah, it's really convenient. What about you, did you change your reading habits with changes in technology?Sarah: Yes, I definitely did. Not because I wanted to, I still like the aspect of having a real book but because I move so much, and internationally it's just not pratical to bring all your books with you, so much weight.Peter: I agree.Sarah: So I have a Kindle but I found since I got an iTouch that I tend to read all of my books from there because I always have it with me and it's light and it's portable and it holds like so many books.Peter: Yeah, I know, it's so convenient, you can just take everything with you, your whole library.Sarah: It really is.Peter: Yeah. So tell me about the iTouch. I've actually never used one but it seems to me that it's really small. Can you actually read on it and use it easily?Sarah: Yeah, well it's just like the same size as an iPhone but you can change the text size on it so if you wanted the text larger you can.Peter: Okay.Sarah: But it really doesn't bother me if the text is small because I have really good eyesight, so.Peter: Some people swear by the Kindle, so you mentioned that you used one before, why did you stop using that?Sarah: It's a little heavier, a little bigger, a little heavier and so I tend not to carry it with me all the time so therefore I don't always have it with me. If I'm in my apartment I use the Kindle but if I'm out or on the bus or something like that then I'll just use my iTouch.Peter: Yeah because it's very pocket-size really, isn't it?Sarah: Yes, same size as a phone, so very convenient.Peter: How about audiobooks, do you listen to any audiobooks?Sarah: Not really audiobooks but definitely audio, like language series so sort of like audiobooks. So when I'm trying to learn a language I listen to those a lot.Peter: Oh, okay. Yeah, I like listening to audiobooks when I'm driving somewhere especially because they make long journeys go quicker. I guess when I'm traveling on the train or airplane then I like to read and then I often like to read on paper. It's funny, I think with the glare of the screen sometimes makes my eyes really tired when I have to read using my iPhone or tablet or something then. But yeah, most of the time it's fun to take everything along and see what you can read and enjoy different things I guess.Sarah: What's the latest audiobook that you've listened to?Peter: I think I've listened to a series of comedy sketches. That's always funny because it keeps you awake while you're driving. And yeah, it's just a selection of comedy sketches and it's really entertaining. But that's the latest one I've listened to. I think before that I listened to, I think it was some kind of heavy ... some heavy linguistic topic that I was ... some book that I was interested in so yeah. And you?Sarah: I have never tried the audiobook and I'm interested.Peter: You should, it's quite fun. Yeah, yeah.Sarah: Yeah.

Sarah: So now that there's so much technology to be able to read things, do you still read things the old fashion way like newspapers, magazines, real books?Peter: Right, right. Oh, good question. I think it depends. I've stopped buying magazines and newspapers, definitely. I always access that online because it's so easy and convenient and you can read different newspapers from different countries all over the world and it's really easy to access. So I've stopped buying any of those kinds of things, magazines too. But with books I sometimes ... I sometimes still buy books that I would really like to have and like to keep. I used to collect books but I've stopped doing that too unless I really, really like the book and want it as a keepsake. Yes, and my habits of reading I guess have also changed. I use my phone to access most of the newspapers and magazines or use my iPad to do that. Yeah, it's really convenient. What about you, did you change your reading habits with changes in technology?Sarah: Yes, I definitely did. Not because I wanted to, I still like the aspect of having a real book but because I move so much, and internationally it's just not pratical to bring all your books with you, so much weight.Peter: I agree.Sarah: So I have a Kindle but I found since I got an iTouch that I tend to read all of my books from there because I always have it with me and it's light and it's portable and it holds like so many books.Peter: Yeah, I know, it's so convenient, you can just take everything with you, your whole library.Sarah: It really is.Peter: Yeah. So tell me about the iTouch. I've actually never used one but it seems to me that it's really small. Can you actually read on it and use it easily?Sarah: Yeah, well it's just like the same size as an iPhone but you can change the text size on it so if you wanted the text larger you can.Peter: Okay.Sarah: But it really doesn't bother me if the text is small because I have really good eyesight, so.Peter: Some people swear by the Kindle, so you mentioned that you used one before, why did you stop using that?Sarah: It's a little heavier, a little bigger, a little heavier and so I tend not to carry it with me all the time so therefore I don't always have it with me. If I'm in my apartment I use the Kindle but if I'm out or on the bus or something like that then I'll just use my iTouch.Peter: Yeah because it's very pocket-size really, isn't it?Sarah: Yes, same size as a phone, so very convenient.Peter: How about audiobooks, do you listen to any audiobooks?Sarah: Not really audiobooks but definitely audio, like language series so sort of like audiobooks. So when I'm trying to learn a language I listen to those a lot.Peter: Oh, okay. Yeah, I like listening to audiobooks when I'm driving somewhere especially because they make long journeys go quicker. I guess when I'm traveling on the train or airplane then I like to read and then I often like to read on paper. It's funny, I think with the glare of the screen sometimes makes my eyes really tired when I have to read using my iPhone or tablet or something then. But yeah, most of the time it's fun to take everything along and see what you can read and enjoy different things I guess.Sarah: What's the latest audiobook that you've listened to?Peter: I think I've listened to a series of comedy sketches. That's always funny because it keeps you awake while you're driving. And yeah, it's just a selection of comedy sketches and it's really entertaining. But that's the latest one I've listened to. I think before that I listened to, I think it was some kind of heavy ... some heavy linguistic topic that I was ... some book that I was interested in so yeah. And you?Sarah: I have never tried the audiobook and I'm interested.Peter: You should, it's quite fun. Yeah, yeah.Sarah: Yeah.

》》》》》》一键领取入口《《《《《《更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Sarah: So Peter, I hear that you love to read. What types of books do you like to read?Peter: I like to, I especially like to read fantasy and science fiction books. I love all kinds of reading but I guess one of my favorite books comes from that genre so I really, yeah, I really love that kind of book.Sarah: So, what's your favorite fantasy genre book?Peter: I think if I had to choose it would be The Lord of the Ring series. I read it, I think I read it back in high school and it was one of the most gripping, interesting, fascinating stories I've ever read. And I know it's fiction and it's an imagined world but I think at that time that book was really meaningful to me because it gave me kind of an escape and I could be busy with this book for weeks and weeks on end and I actually ended up re-reading the book twice or three times I think because I just fell in love with the characters and stories of adventure and fun and making friends and going through hardships together. And so it was a really meaningful book for me at the time and then when the movies came out, of course, I went to see them but somehow it never, although it came close, it kind of never matched up to what I had going in my imagination and I think because the book was so imaginative, I've kind of fallen in love with reading science fiction and books about possibilities of how life could be or imaginative lives of people. Yeah, that's ... I think that's why I really love that book.Sarah: Oh, it's very interesting.Peter: Yeah. How about you, do you read fiction or science fiction or anything fiction-related?Sarah: Not really, I tend to like non-fiction books.Peter: Oh, okay. Do you have any favorites from the non-fiction range of books?Sarah: One that I've read recently, well I like reading non-fiction because I like to read things that I can learn something from so I love to read books on culture and religion and different things.Peter: Okay.Sarah: And one of the books I read recently that I really liked was called Spirit of the Rainforest and it's about a tribe out in the Amazon and it was told from their perspective and as like foreigners came in, different anthropologists and their opinion and their views of them and their culture.Peter: Right.Sarah: It's really interesting.Peter: Wow, it sounds fascinating.Sarah: Yeah.Peter: I've heard that there are tribes that still remain undiscovered in the Amazon and, well, people know about them but they don't disturb them. Was this one of those examples or do you think it's something...Sarah: I think so, yeah. There were a few examples of people, you know, that had come in to sort of study them but they always seemed to leave, nobody seemed to stick around.Peter: Right. What was the most interesting part from it for you?Sarah: Oh, that would be really difficult to say. I can't think of anything specific at the moment.Peter: Okay.Sarah: Yeah.

》》》》》》一键领取入口《《《《《《更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Sarah: So Peter, I hear that you love to read. What types of books do you like to read?Peter: I like to, I especially like to read fantasy and science fiction books. I love all kinds of reading but I guess one of my favorite books comes from that genre so I really, yeah, I really love that kind of book.Sarah: So, what's your favorite fantasy genre book?Peter: I think if I had to choose it would be The Lord of the Ring series. I read it, I think I read it back in high school and it was one of the most gripping, interesting, fascinating stories I've ever read. And I know it's fiction and it's an imagined world but I think at that time that book was really meaningful to me because it gave me kind of an escape and I could be busy with this book for weeks and weeks on end and I actually ended up re-reading the book twice or three times I think because I just fell in love with the characters and stories of adventure and fun and making friends and going through hardships together. And so it was a really meaningful book for me at the time and then when the movies came out, of course, I went to see them but somehow it never, although it came close, it kind of never matched up to what I had going in my imagination and I think because the book was so imaginative, I've kind of fallen in love with reading science fiction and books about possibilities of how life could be or imaginative lives of people. Yeah, that's ... I think that's why I really love that book.Sarah: Oh, it's very interesting.Peter: Yeah. How about you, do you read fiction or science fiction or anything fiction-related?Sarah: Not really, I tend to like non-fiction books.Peter: Oh, okay. Do you have any favorites from the non-fiction range of books?Sarah: One that I've read recently, well I like reading non-fiction because I like to read things that I can learn something from so I love to read books on culture and religion and different things.Peter: Okay.Sarah: And one of the books I read recently that I really liked was called Spirit of the Rainforest and it's about a tribe out in the Amazon and it was told from their perspective and as like foreigners came in, different anthropologists and their opinion and their views of them and their culture.Peter: Right.Sarah: It's really interesting.Peter: Wow, it sounds fascinating.Sarah: Yeah.Peter: I've heard that there are tribes that still remain undiscovered in the Amazon and, well, people know about them but they don't disturb them. Was this one of those examples or do you think it's something...Sarah: I think so, yeah. There were a few examples of people, you know, that had come in to sort of study them but they always seemed to leave, nobody seemed to stick around.Peter: Right. What was the most interesting part from it for you?Sarah: Oh, that would be really difficult to say. I can't think of anything specific at the moment.Peter: Okay.Sarah: Yeah.

Peter: So Sarah, you said you're from North Carolina, and I've never been there before, I have no idea what it's like. Is it in the north of America or tell me more about it, I have no idea?Sarah: Well, it's funny because it has north in the name, North Carolina, but it's actually in the south, the southeast. So I usually tell people it's on the opposite end of the US, then California. And it's halfway between New York and Florida.Peter: Okay, that puts it on the map for me. Tell me, what's the weather like over there, what's the general climate like?Sarah: The weather is very moderate, it gets pretty hot in the summers and pretty cold in the winters. But it depends on where you live because North Carolina has both the mountains and the ocean as well because it's on the coast. So if you live on the coast side you get more warm temperatures and obviously no snow. But if you live on the mountainside then you get more snow and less hot weather.Peter: Okay. Why do people make a distinction between North and South Carolina, I mean what's the history behind that?Sarah: I believe it's because they used to all be one together before they were divided. And so when they divided into two states, they call it north now and south.Peter: I see.Sarah: Yeah.Peter: What's North Carolina famous for, I mean what can we look out for?Sarah: Probably the most famous thing, that is written on our license plates on the cars is 'First in Flight', because Wilbur and Orville Wright flew the first airplane in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.Peter Oh wow! Okay, I didn't know that.Sarah: Yeah.Peter: Amazing!Sarah: Yeah, we think it's pretty cool.Peter: Is there famous food from that area, anything else that is really quite popular with people in America or outside?Sarah: Southern, because it's in the south, southern food is very popular, so southern food, things like fried chicken or a kind of bread we call biscuits, also grits, which is ground corn, all these kinds of foods are very popular in North Carolina because they're southern foods that we eat in the south. Also sweet tea - sweet tea, very popular, iced sweet tea.Peter: That sounds good.Sarah: Yeah.Peter: What goes in it, what?Sarah: It's just tea - black tea and sugar and then usually we put lemon in it as well.Peter: Okay.Sarah: It's very delicious.Peter: Growing up in North Carolina and living there, did you ever wish to live anywhere else, or do you think it's one of the best places to live?Sarah: When I was growing up there I always thought other places would be better. But then when I went away and lived in many other states and countries I began to see the beautiful things about the area, the country that I come from, so.Peter: Right. I guess that's always the way with traveling and somewhere else, you realize home has got many advantages and many beautiful places.Sarah: Yes, and people.Peter: Okay.Sarah: People you love are always home.

Peter: So Sarah, you said you're from North Carolina, and I've never been there before, I have no idea what it's like. Is it in the north of America or tell me more about it, I have no idea?Sarah: Well, it's funny because it has north in the name, North Carolina, but it's actually in the south, the southeast. So I usually tell people it's on the opposite end of the US, then California. And it's halfway between New York and Florida.Peter: Okay, that puts it on the map for me. Tell me, what's the weather like over there, what's the general climate like?Sarah: The weather is very moderate, it gets pretty hot in the summers and pretty cold in the winters. But it depends on where you live because North Carolina has both the mountains and the ocean as well because it's on the coast. So if you live on the coast side you get more warm temperatures and obviously no snow. But if you live on the mountainside then you get more snow and less hot weather.Peter: Okay. Why do people make a distinction between North and South Carolina, I mean what's the history behind that?Sarah: I believe it's because they used to all be one together before they were divided. And so when they divided into two states, they call it north now and south.Peter: I see.Sarah: Yeah.Peter: What's North Carolina famous for, I mean what can we look out for?Sarah: Probably the most famous thing, that is written on our license plates on the cars is 'First in Flight', because Wilbur and Orville Wright flew the first airplane in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.Peter Oh wow! Okay, I didn't know that.Sarah: Yeah.Peter: Amazing!Sarah: Yeah, we think it's pretty cool.Peter: Is there famous food from that area, anything else that is really quite popular with people in America or outside?Sarah: Southern, because it's in the south, southern food is very popular, so southern food, things like fried chicken or a kind of bread we call biscuits, also grits, which is ground corn, all these kinds of foods are very popular in North Carolina because they're southern foods that we eat in the south. Also sweet tea - sweet tea, very popular, iced sweet tea.Peter: That sounds good.Sarah: Yeah.Peter: What goes in it, what?Sarah: It's just tea - black tea and sugar and then usually we put lemon in it as well.Peter: Okay.Sarah: It's very delicious.Peter: Growing up in North Carolina and living there, did you ever wish to live anywhere else, or do you think it's one of the best places to live?Sarah: When I was growing up there I always thought other places would be better. But then when I went away and lived in many other states and countries I began to see the beautiful things about the area, the country that I come from, so.Peter: Right. I guess that's always the way with traveling and somewhere else, you realize home has got many advantages and many beautiful places.Sarah: Yes, and people.Peter: Okay.Sarah: People you love are always home.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Peter: So Sarah, tell me, you're teaching right now, could you give me your opinion on computer use in the classroom, like using it in your classes, what do you think about that?Sarah: I think it's good when there's certain activities that are related to using computers. But when you're trying to do an activity that's not on a computer in a classroom that has computers, it's very difficult to get your students' attention because they're often distracted by doing something else on the internet, they shouldn't be doing.Peter: Oh, I totally agree, I often have that problem, it feels like I'm speaking to a crowd of ghosts. I have no idea that they're talking to me or looking at me or doing anything that they should be doing, so it's really hard. I find it really hard. But I agree also, I think computers can be so useful in the classroom, especially if you have to do a specific activity where students have to find information and listening activities where they can listen to individual listenings and things like that, you know.Sarah: Yeah. So what do you think about cell phones in the classroom, do you let your students use them? Because maybe they have an electronic dictionary of some sort on their mobile phone. So is that okay, or no cell phones, what do you do?Peter: Ah, that's a frustrating topic. I think sometimes I find it really useful if students have their smartphones with them and they can do a quick online search of something that they want to do, especially words they want to look up. So the dictionary use I think is quite useful for students. But on the other hand I always have to kind of keep a watchful eyeand see what students exactly are up to, you know, they sometimes start playing a game or they sit on Facebook and sit writing notes to their friends and messages come and go. So yeah, I'm always not sure exactly how to handle it, but most of the time my students are pretty good. So they seem to use it mostly for dictionary.Sarah: Oh, that's good, yeah.Peter: Yeah. How about your students?Sarah: Yeah, some of my students use it for ... they have a dictionary on there that they use. But I think though, most of them have a separate electronic dictionary that's only a dictionary. And I much prefer it when they use that because then I know they are really just looking at a word and not on Facebook or doing something else like you just mentioned, so.Peter: Have you ever taken cell phones away in class from students?Sarah: No, not yet, I haven't had to, usually when I walk around the room they put it away very quickly if they are doing something they are not supposed to be doing. And if they are using it to look up a word then they have no problem with me seeing what they are doing, so, end of class.Peter: I heard about a teacher the other day, he said he's got a basket that he collects cell phones with at the beginning of class, and he puts them on his front desk and then at the end of class he gives them back. But I thought, wow, that's quite strict I thought. I don't know if I would do that, how about you?Sarah: Yeah. I would be worried that some students would forget their phones and then the problem with trying to get them their phone back and all of that, it might not be worth the hassle.Peter: Yeah, I probably would agree with that.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Peter: So Sarah, tell me, you're teaching right now, could you give me your opinion on computer use in the classroom, like using it in your classes, what do you think about that?Sarah: I think it's good when there's certain activities that are related to using computers. But when you're trying to do an activity that's not on a computer in a classroom that has computers, it's very difficult to get your students' attention because they're often distracted by doing something else on the internet, they shouldn't be doing.Peter: Oh, I totally agree, I often have that problem, it feels like I'm speaking to a crowd of ghosts. I have no idea that they're talking to me or looking at me or doing anything that they should be doing, so it's really hard. I find it really hard. But I agree also, I think computers can be so useful in the classroom, especially if you have to do a specific activity where students have to find information and listening activities where they can listen to individual listenings and things like that, you know.Sarah: Yeah. So what do you think about cell phones in the classroom, do you let your students use them? Because maybe they have an electronic dictionary of some sort on their mobile phone. So is that okay, or no cell phones, what do you do?Peter: Ah, that's a frustrating topic. I think sometimes I find it really useful if students have their smartphones with them and they can do a quick online search of something that they want to do, especially words they want to look up. So the dictionary use I think is quite useful for students. But on the other hand I always have to kind of keep a watchful eyeand see what students exactly are up to, you know, they sometimes start playing a game or they sit on Facebook and sit writing notes to their friends and messages come and go. So yeah, I'm always not sure exactly how to handle it, but most of the time my students are pretty good. So they seem to use it mostly for dictionary.Sarah: Oh, that's good, yeah.Peter: Yeah. How about your students?Sarah: Yeah, some of my students use it for ... they have a dictionary on there that they use. But I think though, most of them have a separate electronic dictionary that's only a dictionary. And I much prefer it when they use that because then I know they are really just looking at a word and not on Facebook or doing something else like you just mentioned, so.Peter: Have you ever taken cell phones away in class from students?Sarah: No, not yet, I haven't had to, usually when I walk around the room they put it away very quickly if they are doing something they are not supposed to be doing. And if they are using it to look up a word then they have no problem with me seeing what they are doing, so, end of class.Peter: I heard about a teacher the other day, he said he's got a basket that he collects cell phones with at the beginning of class, and he puts them on his front desk and then at the end of class he gives them back. But I thought, wow, that's quite strict I thought. I don't know if I would do that, how about you?Sarah: Yeah. I would be worried that some students would forget their phones and then the problem with trying to get them their phone back and all of that, it might not be worth the hassle.Peter: Yeah, I probably would agree with that.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Jana: You must have traveled quite a lot around the country, right?Peter: Hmm, I think I have especially during my student days. I traveled around a lot because I like hiking and outdoor things. I really enjoy traveling around the country and South Africa is really diverse. As I said, you can travel in one day and find many different spots and different places. If you move towards the southern part of the country closer to Cape Town, you'd find a really mild climate and they grow a lot of fruit and they grow a lot of wine in that area and a lot of people live there because the climate is so mild and really no extreme temperatures so it's a really nice place, easy place to live in that sense.Jana: OK. So if I want to visit, it sounds like there are so many different places. Which one would you recommend is the best? What's your favorite area?Peter: I would say my, the best area to live would be the southern part near Cape Town or actually traveling from Cape Town to the eastern seaboard, it's called the Garden Route in South Africa and the name comes from the fact that it looks like a garden almost. It's really, really beautiful. Beautiful plants and trees, forests and it's all, you know, relatively high rainfall so everything grows. It just grows. It's really beautiful and it's not too hot, it never gets too hot in summer and never too cold in winter but recently because of, perhaps because of global warming we have seen quite a lot of changes in South Africa. More snow interestingly enough and I believe some of the hot areas have recorded even hotter temperatures so it becomes even more interesting I guess.Jana: Great.Peter: Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention if you like to travel around, there's a really beautiful place that you can visit close to Cape Town. It's one of the world's, I think they call it the Floral Kingdom and it's a heritage site that you can visit because of all the different species, different species of plant life. Scientists from all over the world come to study it and many tourists come to see it. I think all the species combined in that tiny area and I think it's not even twenty square kilometres maybe, have more species than the whole of Eurasia combined and it's a fascinating beautiful place to visit because of, you know, the natural occurrence of so many different species.Jana: Yeah, it sounds great. I hope I can get to visit one day.Peter: I hope so too. It would be really nice.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Jana: You must have traveled quite a lot around the country, right?Peter: Hmm, I think I have especially during my student days. I traveled around a lot because I like hiking and outdoor things. I really enjoy traveling around the country and South Africa is really diverse. As I said, you can travel in one day and find many different spots and different places. If you move towards the southern part of the country closer to Cape Town, you'd find a really mild climate and they grow a lot of fruit and they grow a lot of wine in that area and a lot of people live there because the climate is so mild and really no extreme temperatures so it's a really nice place, easy place to live in that sense.Jana: OK. So if I want to visit, it sounds like there are so many different places. Which one would you recommend is the best? What's your favorite area?Peter: I would say my, the best area to live would be the southern part near Cape Town or actually traveling from Cape Town to the eastern seaboard, it's called the Garden Route in South Africa and the name comes from the fact that it looks like a garden almost. It's really, really beautiful. Beautiful plants and trees, forests and it's all, you know, relatively high rainfall so everything grows. It just grows. It's really beautiful and it's not too hot, it never gets too hot in summer and never too cold in winter but recently because of, perhaps because of global warming we have seen quite a lot of changes in South Africa. More snow interestingly enough and I believe some of the hot areas have recorded even hotter temperatures so it becomes even more interesting I guess.Jana: Great.Peter: Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention if you like to travel around, there's a really beautiful place that you can visit close to Cape Town. It's one of the world's, I think they call it the Floral Kingdom and it's a heritage site that you can visit because of all the different species, different species of plant life. Scientists from all over the world come to study it and many tourists come to see it. I think all the species combined in that tiny area and I think it's not even twenty square kilometres maybe, have more species than the whole of Eurasia combined and it's a fascinating beautiful place to visit because of, you know, the natural occurrence of so many different species.Jana: Yeah, it sounds great. I hope I can get to visit one day.Peter: I hope so too. It would be really nice.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Jana: You mentioned snow. I had no idea it snows in South Africa.Peter: Yeah, maybe I should qualify that. The central part of South Africa actually there's a range of mountains that run straight through from the northern part of South Africa right through almost to the southern tip of Africa called the Drakensberg and around these mountains and obviously on top of these mountains, you can find snow during wintertime. Actually it doesn't compare with snow in the Northern Hemisphere where you really have deep snow and things like that but it gets really cold during winter and temperatures would be far below zero for most of the time up in these mountainous areas. So, yeah, it's not enough snow to ski in but it's pretty cold.Jana: Hmm, that sounds interesting. I always thought South Africa is really wild and rugged and hot. Are there any such areas?Peter: Oh, yeah, right. Actually South Africa is very diverse when it comes to areas. Like there are many different climate zones, different landscapes and actually, if you travel around the country, you'd be really struck by how the vegetation can be so different within a morning's drive or an afternoon's drive. You could be in a completely different landscape and different vegetation, animals around you, different plant life. On the western side of the country, it can be really hot. It's almost got a desert type of, well it does have a desert type of landscape, very sparse vegetation, very little rainfall, not many people, not many animals, very beautiful. It's really a place I recommend people to visit because you can hear silence and it'd be quiet around you and yeah it's really beautiful but almost a bit strange, strange to be confronted by so much raw nature, I guess, if you can put it that way.Jana: Wow, it sounds really interesting. What about, are there any tropical areas?Peter: Hmm. I think on the eastern side of the country, close to the seaside, it's really hot and tropical most of the year. Winter, it's a bit cooler but especially the northeastern parts of the country lush tropical vegetation, wonderful fruit of course, but really, really hot. Temperatures of forty-five, forty degrees Celsius every day and ninety percent humidity. Yeah, like really, really hot.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Jana: You mentioned snow. I had no idea it snows in South Africa.Peter: Yeah, maybe I should qualify that. The central part of South Africa actually there's a range of mountains that run straight through from the northern part of South Africa right through almost to the southern tip of Africa called the Drakensberg and around these mountains and obviously on top of these mountains, you can find snow during wintertime. Actually it doesn't compare with snow in the Northern Hemisphere where you really have deep snow and things like that but it gets really cold during winter and temperatures would be far below zero for most of the time up in these mountainous areas. So, yeah, it's not enough snow to ski in but it's pretty cold.Jana: Hmm, that sounds interesting. I always thought South Africa is really wild and rugged and hot. Are there any such areas?Peter: Oh, yeah, right. Actually South Africa is very diverse when it comes to areas. Like there are many different climate zones, different landscapes and actually, if you travel around the country, you'd be really struck by how the vegetation can be so different within a morning's drive or an afternoon's drive. You could be in a completely different landscape and different vegetation, animals around you, different plant life. On the western side of the country, it can be really hot. It's almost got a desert type of, well it does have a desert type of landscape, very sparse vegetation, very little rainfall, not many people, not many animals, very beautiful. It's really a place I recommend people to visit because you can hear silence and it'd be quiet around you and yeah it's really beautiful but almost a bit strange, strange to be confronted by so much raw nature, I guess, if you can put it that way.Jana: Wow, it sounds really interesting. What about, are there any tropical areas?Peter: Hmm. I think on the eastern side of the country, close to the seaside, it's really hot and tropical most of the year. Winter, it's a bit cooler but especially the northeastern parts of the country lush tropical vegetation, wonderful fruit of course, but really, really hot. Temperatures of forty-five, forty degrees Celsius every day and ninety percent humidity. Yeah, like really, really hot.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Peter: So, Jana, we were talking about academic life in different countries but how about daily life for students? Did students also have part-time jobs and where did they eat? Did they eat at home or in dorms or did they go out?Jana: Right. So my life in Prague was quite different because I was living with my parents but obviously I would go to university for the lectures or seminars and yeah, I think most of my classmates had part-time jobs or even full time jobs and they would study sort of in their free time and in the Czech Republic usually students go to university in their city so they stay at home with their parents but if they choose to go to a different city then they would stay at dormitory. So some of my classmates who were staying, who were living in dormitory, I felt like they had more social life than I do because that's where all their social events happen.Peter: Right.Jana: I have actually never lived in a dormitory so I don't know what it's like.Peter: How about student life in Sydney?Jana: Yeah, in Sydney...Todd: Actually can we have Spain.Peter: So how about student life in Spain?Jana: Yeah, I suppose again it depends on the students. Maybe local students and international students might have different lifestyles but I was living with a host family and they cooked for me once a week. That was really nice. Every Sunday we had a really nice meal but apart from that I would eat at the cafeteria or cook at home and I didn't have a part-time job but I think a lot of my classmates did. It wasn't so easy for international students to find work so...Peter: Really? So what was the typical lunch in Spain for you?Jana: Well, there weren't that many options at the university so basically what you can buy at the cafeteria is like a sandwich, kind of snack food so I would often bring my own lunch and heat it up in the microwave so that's what a lot of students did to save money too.Peter: OK. So you could actually cook at home and bring lunch?Jana: Yes. They had a cafeteria and like a diner where you can bring your own food as well.Peter: Oh, OK.Jana: So I thought that was quite convenient.Peter: Yeah, yeah. And then you moved to Sydney? How did that change things for you?Jana: Well, Sydney was a lot of fun. There are so many international students, so many different cultures and it's a big part of education actually. International education in Australia is a huge business as well.Peter: Really?Jana: So there are so many international students. In fact, in my class, I think there were maybe two Australians.Peter: Wow.Jana: And the rest were from all over the world.Peter: Hm. I also had a friend who studied as an international student at, in Sydney and he told me it's quite expensive for international students to live there. Is that true?Jana: That's right. One, you have to pay the tuition fees but also, depending on where you come from, you need to apply for a student visa and often one of the requirements is you need to show that you have enough funding for the whole course.Peter: Right.Jana: And the actual living costs might not be that high. It depends where you live. A lot of students share houses.Peter: Right.Jana: Or work part-time as well.Peter: So part-time work is allowed then?Jana: Yes. You can work up to twenty hours per week.Peter: OK.Jana: While on a student visa.Peter: Right. So you can have some income at least to support yourself?Jana: That's right, yeah, but a lot of the students study really hard so there isn't really much time for part-time work but yeah you need to try to juggle it somehow.Peter: Where did you live in Sydney and did you have a share mate or somewhere like that?Jana: Yeah, I lived in a share house with other students. It's a really common thing to do in Sydney because the rent is so expensive.Peter: Oh, really?Jana: So not only students but even working adults often share apartments. Yeah, I actually moved maybe five times while I was there.Peter: It sounds pretty hard actually.Jana: It was fun to try living in different areas and with different people.Peter: Great.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Peter: So, Jana, we were talking about academic life in different countries but how about daily life for students? Did students also have part-time jobs and where did they eat? Did they eat at home or in dorms or did they go out?Jana: Right. So my life in Prague was quite different because I was living with my parents but obviously I would go to university for the lectures or seminars and yeah, I think most of my classmates had part-time jobs or even full time jobs and they would study sort of in their free time and in the Czech Republic usually students go to university in their city so they stay at home with their parents but if they choose to go to a different city then they would stay at dormitory. So some of my classmates who were staying, who were living in dormitory, I felt like they had more social life than I do because that's where all their social events happen.Peter: Right.Jana: I have actually never lived in a dormitory so I don't know what it's like.Peter: How about student life in Sydney?Jana: Yeah, in Sydney...Todd: Actually can we have Spain.Peter: So how about student life in Spain?Jana: Yeah, I suppose again it depends on the students. Maybe local students and international students might have different lifestyles but I was living with a host family and they cooked for me once a week. That was really nice. Every Sunday we had a really nice meal but apart from that I would eat at the cafeteria or cook at home and I didn't have a part-time job but I think a lot of my classmates did. It wasn't so easy for international students to find work so...Peter: Really? So what was the typical lunch in Spain for you?Jana: Well, there weren't that many options at the university so basically what you can buy at the cafeteria is like a sandwich, kind of snack food so I would often bring my own lunch and heat it up in the microwave so that's what a lot of students did to save money too.Peter: OK. So you could actually cook at home and bring lunch?Jana: Yes. They had a cafeteria and like a diner where you can bring your own food as well.Peter: Oh, OK.Jana: So I thought that was quite convenient.Peter: Yeah, yeah. And then you moved to Sydney? How did that change things for you?Jana: Well, Sydney was a lot of fun. There are so many international students, so many different cultures and it's a big part of education actually. International education in Australia is a huge business as well.Peter: Really?Jana: So there are so many international students. In fact, in my class, I think there were maybe two Australians.Peter: Wow.Jana: And the rest were from all over the world.Peter: Hm. I also had a friend who studied as an international student at, in Sydney and he told me it's quite expensive for international students to live there. Is that true?Jana: That's right. One, you have to pay the tuition fees but also, depending on where you come from, you need to apply for a student visa and often one of the requirements is you need to show that you have enough funding for the whole course.Peter: Right.Jana: And the actual living costs might not be that high. It depends where you live. A lot of students share houses.Peter: Right.Jana: Or work part-time as well.Peter: So part-time work is allowed then?Jana: Yes. You can work up to twenty hours per week.Peter: OK.Jana: While on a student visa.Peter: Right. So you can have some income at least to support yourself?Jana: That's right, yeah, but a lot of the students study really hard so there isn't really much time for part-time work but yeah you need to try to juggle it somehow.Peter: Where did you live in Sydney and did you have a share mate or somewhere like that?Jana: Yeah, I lived in a share house with other students. It's a really common thing to do in Sydney because the rent is so expensive.Peter: Oh, really?Jana: So not only students but even working adults often share apartments. Yeah, I actually moved maybe five times while I was there.Peter: It sounds pretty hard actually.Jana: It was fun to try living in different areas and with different people.Peter: Great.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Jana: So, Peter, you mentioned treasure diving. How did you find out about this?Peter: Oh, well, I had this friend and he actually used to work for the government but he was diving just for pleasure at that time but then he met, I think while on a diving excursion, he met another guy who was into treasure diving and he, they formed a company and they've actually become, I guess, professional treasure divers and it's, I think I mentioned about the sunken treasure around the tip of Africa because of the ancient sea route but I think my friends have now moved off to other parts of the world that are also known for sunken treasure spots. I think one of the areas are close to Florida in the United States because there used to be an ancient shipping route between Europe and the United States and, yeah, they go diving for treasure around that area.Jana: There must be a lot of mysteries under the sea?Peter: I think so too and I think it involves a lot of dispute possibly because it's, it can become a political issue I guess in some ways if the treasure is found and who does it belong to and the countries that originally sent the money or the gold or the treasure or the whatever and the country that it's found in now and also by the guys that find it. Is it finders keepers or is it a matter of dividing up the discovery and of course I think there's a lot of historical value involved with the find as well. So, yeah, I think it's an interesting, fascinating kind of adventure story.Jana: It would be quite an adventurous hobby to have.Peter: I think so too. Yeah, I kind of envy his lifestyle. He seems to go from one grand yacht in one very nice area of part of the world and goes to the next treasure area and yeah that's what he does for a living.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Jana: So, Peter, you mentioned treasure diving. How did you find out about this?Peter: Oh, well, I had this friend and he actually used to work for the government but he was diving just for pleasure at that time but then he met, I think while on a diving excursion, he met another guy who was into treasure diving and he, they formed a company and they've actually become, I guess, professional treasure divers and it's, I think I mentioned about the sunken treasure around the tip of Africa because of the ancient sea route but I think my friends have now moved off to other parts of the world that are also known for sunken treasure spots. I think one of the areas are close to Florida in the United States because there used to be an ancient shipping route between Europe and the United States and, yeah, they go diving for treasure around that area.Jana: There must be a lot of mysteries under the sea?Peter: I think so too and I think it involves a lot of dispute possibly because it's, it can become a political issue I guess in some ways if the treasure is found and who does it belong to and the countries that originally sent the money or the gold or the treasure or the whatever and the country that it's found in now and also by the guys that find it. Is it finders keepers or is it a matter of dividing up the discovery and of course I think there's a lot of historical value involved with the find as well. So, yeah, I think it's an interesting, fascinating kind of adventure story.Jana: It would be quite an adventurous hobby to have.Peter: I think so too. Yeah, I kind of envy his lifestyle. He seems to go from one grand yacht in one very nice area of part of the world and goes to the next treasure area and yeah that's what he does for a living.

Andrew and Peter explore the world of Thai magic and occultism. Talking about the importance of meta, self cultivation, personal growth and how they all relate to the intense practices of Thailands indigenous magic. Think about how much you've enjoyed the podcast and how many episodes you listened to, and consider if it is time to support the Patreon You can do so here. If you want more of this in your life you can subscribe by RSS , iTunes, Stitcher, or email. You can find Peter on FB here and at his website here Thanks for joining the conversation. Please share the podcast to help us grow and change the world.  Andrew You can book time with Andrew through his site here.  Transcript  ANDREW: [00:00:00] Welcome, everybody, to another installment of The Hermit's Lamp podcast. I am here today with Peter Jenx. And for those who don't know Peter Jenx, he is the author of a massive and intriguing tome, called Thai Occult. And it's really interesting to meet with somebody and talk with people who are involved in non-western [00:00:30] cultures and other ways of practicing magic that don't kind of come out of, you know, say, the Golden Dawn, or Wicca, or these other things, which are all lovely, but I think it's really interesting to get a dive into, you know, other kinds of worldviews and magic and all of those things. So really, that's why, you know, when Peter and I connected, I thought he'd be a great fit for being on the show. But for those who don't know you, Peter, who are you? PETER: And ... [00:01:00] Well, I'm an aging Englishman stuck in Chiang Mai at the moment. I've been here, been living in Thailand, since 2002, but first visited here in 1991. Which is kind of before its main economic explosion and everything else. And then, come from a musical background, working in music in Manchester, worked a lot with gigs, run rather interesting [00:01:30] night clubs in Manchester, and also been a practitioner of Tai Chi for like 20 years. So, I think everything's always pulled me East, which is why I really ... the first … on the first visit, I kind of knew I'd end up living here. It fits. ANDREW: Yeah, it's interesting how that works, right? You know, I was talking with somebody yesterday about, you know, I come from a Scottish background, [00:02:00] even though I was born and raised in Toronto, and they're like, “Oh, well, have you've been to Scotland?” And I'm like, “No, I haven't.” I mean, I'm curious, but I find I'm much more drawn to the East, you know? And I spent a bit of time in Thailand and a chunk of time in India, and you know, I was in China last year, and every time I return to the East, I always have this sense of ease that emerges that's quite different than what I experience, you know, living in Toronto. It's like, [00:02:30] that there are these places and cultures that are suited to our nature in ways that we might not even be able to explain or understand, you know? PETER: Well, I think it's working. I think at first when we come here, we are given space. And it's a space that we're not necessarily given in the West. Also, what I experienced when I first came here was a realization that what I'd always felt, regarding nature and regarding what [00:03:00] I perceive as magic in the West, was correct. It … Because here it is expressed in a much deeper way than it is in England, in particular. I don't know … And also, I think, you know, we need the strangeness to grow. Yeah, and sometimes part of any growth, as far as I'm concerned, is the process of change and [00:03:30] if you go to an alien culture, you are constantly challenged to change, and that can be astonishingly refreshing for us. And .... ANDREW: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I can see that, for sure, and also that that idea that, you know, I mean, there are other ways of looking at the world and nature, you know, I mean this … the word animism has been, you know, being kicked around a lot and sort of gained a lot of ground as sort of a word [00:04:00] for some of the kind of world view that we might be talking about. And you know, I think that that's, that's both part of it. You know, for me, going … they're going to other places, and you and my involvement in and initiation in Afro-Cuban Lukumí, there is this sort of world view at play where plants are alive and have energies and consciousness, and you know, there's this interconnectedness between everything that [00:04:30] isn't really common, even amongst magical practitioners, at least in my experience, kind of growing up. PETER: Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those … [sigh] You know, the funny thing is … Okay. I had to act like myself to do this book. I have not been able to read other but … other magical books at all. Otherwise, it would have kind of diluted or influenced what I was going to do. The whole time I've spent here has been really a time to learn how not to [00:05:00] think and influence what is around you, and if you do that, you gain the natural focus that comes with the occult practices of this land, and that allows the nature to come through. But I always perceived this as just the Thai occult. Everybody else calls it Thai animism. [laughing] So I'm just getting used to the fact that it is probably animism, but everybody … all the people I deal with [00:05:30] all refer to it as an occult practice, but as an animist practice, it dates back thousands of years and it is uninterrupted now, that's quite rare in the world, as far as I know. I haven't studied anything else in depth, deliberately. And because of that, the depth of what I've been able to write about and the depth of understanding that is available is really off the planet as far as I'm concerned, you know. ANDREW: Yeah. Yeah, [00:06:00] I mean, there's such a difference between, you know, living practices that date way back, you know, you know with the Buddha, Afro-Cuban Lukumí stuff in Orisha tradition, it's one of those things where … When we start talking about divination in those systems, often people are quite astounded, and I know I was really astounded at the kinds of things that are included in the wisdom and specificity and all of these kinds of things. And, [00:06:30] you know, it's … In the end, the explanation is simple. You've had a lot of very deep, intelligent, mystical people pondering the human condition and connecting to the spirit world for thousands of years and passing on that information and allowing it to accumulate. And it provides such a deep insight into human, you know, human nature and human problems because you [00:07:00] know, although the nature of the problems changes with modernity and, and so on, the nature of being human really doesn't, I don't think. PETER: Well, that actually depends on the culture, though, because if you look at the Thai system, the things that it offers are the things that people, because of this region require, right? So, you know, this has been a very dangerous region over the thousands of years, and [00:07:30] they've been lucky enough to have the influence of Buddhism, which always overrides ancient animist practices, so, things can … They can remain who they are, while attaining higher spirituality, if that makes sense.  And really because of, you know, the rough nature of the living in the wild, and the constant wars in the region, most of the things that they have worked out to offer, and create, for their devotees are [00:08:00] related to protection in many forms, impenetrable skin, invincibility, ways to bounce back black magic, ways to change your fate, ways to attract people, ways to become popular, ways to gain good fortune, and it's all about, at the core of it all, it's actually all about the person as well, because they're being given an advantage that [00:08:30] they've got to work with. So, it's not just abracadabra, like wham! Okay. Now you're popular. Yeah, they might give you the attribute of being popular. But if you're a bit of a twat it's not going to work. Right.  So everything that they create is all about the development of the person themselves, being given an advantage that they have to grow into, which is typical of what we were talking about earlier, whereby the constant process [00:09:00] of change is also, can be -- we go backwards sometimes, can be the process towards either becoming a better person or more magical or however you want to see it. Yeah? And throughout the thousands of years that they developed it here, they've discovered what is actually supernatural in nature, and they have their own versions of it. Which, how the hell did they discover that? I don't know, but you know, special people discover [00:09:30] special things. They discover what human products they can use for rather powerful spells, they discover all the plants independently, often, of other approaches. So, the odd time, I've shared a picture of a tree .... [ringing phone] ANDREW: Oh! Now the phone's going to ring, just let it finish. It's not gonna … [00:10:11] I think I can make it stop. All right. You know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to unplug the phone. How about that? Problem solved. PETER: [laughing] Yeah, that's easy. So, you need, you need, you need that stick I showed you earlier. ANDREW: I know right? You know, I do. Yeah, before we started, let's just continue. PETER: So I'll go back in … I'll let you edit that out later. I'll just go back into where it was. ANDREW: Yeah, perfect.  PETER: So like one time, I posted a picture of a particular tree that has, that produces a particular wood [00:10:41] that the Thais use in many magical amulets, called amudam. I mean there are legends, it's the tree that you'd climb to get out of hell, because it's impossible to climb, because of huge spikes on the trunk. And it was possibly … There was a fantastic discussion ensued, because it was also a magical wood in pretty much every other system that I was in contact with at that time through the Facebook page. And the incredulity [00:11:11] of that between everybody was really rather wonderful. You know, it kind of just pulled everybody together. And … ANDREW: That's animism, right? That's the tree telling you what it wants to do, right? You know, and  telling everybody like the same thing. It's like, hey, I can help you with this thing. You know, if you work with me, you know, and that's what's really profound about these things, I think. PETER: Yes, very much so. It's … And [00:11:41] the more kind of I've learned about things, you know, I just, we were discussing about a person earlier, about lightning, and how lightning can make things magical. And, you know, I was chatting with a particularly learned ajahm from a very old lineage called Ajahm [?], Ajahm Tiger. With the help of my partner, of course, and he was telling me, really, if a lightning strikes [00:12:11] a tree, its use depends on the effect of the lightning on the tree. Like, if it blows off the bark in the middle, that area is used for the handles of magical knives; if it strikes another area of the tree, it's used for something else. So, depending even on how a supernatural occurrence like a lightning strike hits something, it can produce all [00:12:41] sorts of different results. And they … At the time we were having this chat, it was really rather mind-blowing that people have spent generations upon generations studying the effects of these supernatural occurrences.  ANDREW: Well, and I think that … It's so foreign to people living in cities, you know, but I mean, when you start spending time in nature and start consistently spending time in nature, [00:13:11] you know, it really, it really can start to speak to you after a while, right? You know, I spent … There's a site where we used to go and do ceremonies, every month, for almost two years, and kind of towards the end of that time, I did a 10-day retreat by myself where I just hung out in the woods and fasted and did my own rituals and stuff like that. And the amount of things [00:13:41] that I learned from that land and from the plants and the kinds of things that got revealed to me ... and even just like sort of unexpected beautiful things, you know.  There was this cherry tree and you know, I knew it was a cherry tree, we'd seen the flowers, it was beautiful, and so on, but the thing that was amazing, because I was there all day, every day, for that period of time, when I [00:14:11] was there, the sap was coming out and so there were these little reddish golden amber blobs on the tree from the sap emerging, and the tree was in the west from where we ... where I usually was, and when I looked up, toward sunset, all of those were glowing like a stained glass window, right? And so there are these moments of profound beauty and profound transference of information, [00:14:41] and where those plants can speak to you, and if you're around them all the time, then … and you're paying attention, then you get to notice them, right? But ... PETER: Well, it's the attention. That's the thing.  ANDREW: Yeah.  PETER: And this is why, I think, in the modern world, governments are terrified of nature, because it calls people away from what they want to do, the people to do, you know, and to be a good little drone and all the other sayings that we [00:15:11] can come out with rather pithily. But, you know, it's ... and even the medical community is now turning around and saying look, you know, to fight depression, just go and walk in the hills, go and sit in the forest. You know, but this kind of … You know, I'm lucky enough to be of an age where it was more of an actual world at the time, and this is, you know, it makes me kind [00:15:41] of put my head in my hands that people are having to be reminded to do that. You know, and the beauty that is available, the wealth that is available is astonishing. Since we moved to Chiang Mai, me and my partner have been round looking at various, some of the interesting spiritual caves in this region. And you know how, if we have time when people visit, I might take them to one or two, but there's one that I've already decided, I [00:16:11] think there's only one or two people I'll take to that particular one. It's too wild. And if … You know, if we spend the time like you have, to be able to still the mind, and treat ourselves to a little bit of solitude, we start to see these things, you know. And maybe they become more special. ANDREW: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, and I also think that we really need to understand and [00:16:41] respect, you know, like if we're really going to going to go into the real wilderness, you know, or real spots in nature, you know, it's something quite different, right? You know, in … Again, in my tradition, the real woods, you know, like not just like a couple plants around your yard or the park but the actual forest is a place that's somewhat feared by practitioners, not in a ... that sounds wrong. It's a place [00:17:11] that's deeply respected because it's known to be a place of power, and because it's a place of power, it's also a place of danger. You know, and so you make offerings to make sure that you're protected while you're there. You make offerings, maybe when you leave, to make sure that nothing you didn't want comes with you, you know, you make … If you're going to take anything, then you make offerings to the plants that you're going to take from, you know, and you know, it's so rare for a lot of us to have contact [00:17:41] with that deep wilderness, you know, it's something completely foreign and it's astounding, right? PETER: Well, it's … Usually at least once or twice a month, I end up going off with an ajarn, often to graveyards for graveyard ceremonies. And … Which I'm starting to document more fully. And, you know, watching, the ajarn go into, I always [00:18:11] call it ajarn world. ANDREW: Yeah, and by … What's a good translation for ajarn? Is … practitioner? teacher? Yeah. PETER: Teacher … The ajarn is a higher teacher. Yeah, but it's more than that. Yeah. It's an occultist, really. And, and watching them deal with what is there, and become open to what is there ... And, you know, I asked Ajarn Su and I've also asked Ajarn Apichai. You know, [00:18:42] often they go there to choose a ghost to do a particular task, and, to which Ajarn Apichai would, you know, often say, “Well, we've come to this graveyard, because it's a graveyard where there are many soldiers and police.” So, I normally … He said he normally tries to choose a good-natured ghost, so they don't come home with you, even though he has strong protection. And the deal is made, you know, to [00:19:12] reward the spirit when the job is done. And he knows, he can tell, within five percent, really, how effective that particular spirit's going to be. And sometimes he will go back and repeat, or just say “No, it's worked.” You know? ANDREW: Mm-hmm. PETER: And then you go with Ajarn Su, and the same questions will be, you know, Ajarn likes to choose what are called Phi Thai Hong ghosts. And, which [00:19:42] are the ghosts of people who've died violently, before their time. And again, he said--some of them are really quite lovely--and you know, we were standing just in the graveyard, doing a love ritual, pulling a separated couple back together. And he's called, and he slaps on the side of the cremation pit. It's just two walls that focus the heat in to be [00:20:12] able to burn the body fully, in the open, in a thin, a bit of a wood, and he's calling ghosts. And you know, it was the time of year when leaves are on the floor--the leaves shed up here, some trees--and you could hear the ... something walking towards us, you know, from a particular direction.  So, he called that ghost over and came to a deal, and he said, “Oh, it's been successful and I'll come back in a [00:20:42] few days and bring the offering that I promised, and I will donate merit.” And merit is something we gain. It's a Buddhist, Thai Buddhist principle where we gain merit through good deeds, helping people. A basic form of it would be giving to charity, and, you know, these Phi Thai Hong ghosts need to collect merit to get out of hell. Eventually try and rise towards rebirth. [00:21:12] And Ajarn Su is very careful about the ghosts he chooses, only, he never forces them, he requests, he is very gentle. Otherwise, they can hurt you. Yeah. And then when we get back, both of the ajarns will always bless water, splash on feet, hands, top of head, back of neck, just to make sure nothing has been clingy, you know. So, I mean they all follow similar [00:21:42] patterns, where, you know, and if anything's taken, you request it to be taken and if you're going to work with anything, you're asking permission, and it's extremely similar all around the world except for the cultural differences. And the influences, like in this region, with Buddhism has been a particular influence. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. So, I have so many questions, so many questions! [laughs] I guess one of my, one of  [00:22:12] my questions, though, coming out of what you just talked about … We talked about … You mentioned somewhere along the way, changing your fate, right? And I'm really curious about the idea of fate as it as it exists in this practice, you know, can you ... Can you just answer that small question for us? Tell us what that's like. [chuckles] PETER: Okay. Well, the idea of fate is … Without, I don't study horusat, which is Thai astrology. [00:22:42] Okay, but what I would say is, that I think the Thai occult corresponds to people's state of mind. Yeah? And help to get people out of the state of mind to improve themselves again, as well as realigning their faith, there's a dual motion going on here. We are given a Qatar. We have to make offerings. We [00:23:12] have to take care of something. We have to structure our lives around it. We have to take the five precepts, which are the basic things. Don't kill anybody. Stop shagging around. Don't lie, you know, etcetera etcetera. And often, besides the help of something like Rahu, which, the Thai Rahu is not the same as the Indian one, but, we praise it in a different way, which really annoys the Indians. And we [00:23:42] gain his help now, if … to do that we have to order our lives around it. So, I think it's a dual road of choosing a better path, choosing the help of somebody who is smart enough and spiritual enough to help you, and then structuring your life in a different way, and the Rahu is considered to raise your general level of good fortune. ANDREW: And Rahu is [00:24:12] what exactly? PETER: Rahu is the god that eats the sun or the moon from Indian mythology. Yeah? He's the god of eclipses. In India, they do not praise him, they're trying to get rid of him. Hmm. Yeah. They think it's horrific that the Thai people praise Rahu but usually they often consider that a period of very bad fortune is sometimes, Rahu coming into somebody's lives and influencing it without being [00:24:42] asked to come in. So, by praising him, you're going to offer your foods, the correct foods, which always have to be black. They need the numbers of seven, nine, or 15, depending on the ajahm. Different black foods, usually on the four quarters of the moon, with the full moon being the most important. Normally, it's advised to wear the Rahu on the full moon when in which [00:25:12] case it kind of feels like he's bouncing around on your chest like going to a disco. He can't … he's extremely rewarding; many ajarns swear by Rahu, but he takes a lot of work. So, I think it's a dual, being very honest about this, I think it's a dual combination, whereby we get our shit together, and then the help offered by the Rahu offered by the ajarn, will start to improve the life. ANDREW: And when we're [00:25:42] talking about fate here, are we talking about … We can be a little simplistic too, maybe for the conversation. Are we talking about it as a sense of karma, like consequences for our actions, this life, other lives, or whatever? Are we talking about like a destiny or a thing that we're ... sort of came intact from somewhere or that we need to try and achieve maybe in our life. PETER: Well, we always [00:26:12] have influence. Actually, there's three forms of influence on the brain. Okay, there's three forms of influence we consider to be three forms of influence from life. One is an astrological influence. Astrology influences the person without any doubt at all. Yeah? The second one in Thai is the influence of ghosts. Yeah? And spirits directing your life without you knowing about it. And the third one is the influence of the mind and all the silly things that the mind does can [00:26:42] be destructive. Yeah? If you … Everybody goes through periods of bad fortune, but they can have very very different reasons. Sometimes even in the Thai practices, you know, we can have a real crash of fortunes, but I was just seeing it as, it's just a part of life, man. It can't be good all the time. Yeah? It's a readjustment of yourself and of your … the way you deal with yourself. I don't like to involve things [00:27:12] like karma. I'm very practical in that respect. It's about living an open and happy life and sometimes shit goes wrong. Yeah? Through bereavement and through everything else ... ANDREW: So, go ahead. PETER: And through bereavement and through everything else, but that period then we have to kind of realign ourselves. I think focusing in on what has actually caused the problem is one of the things that we need to get away from [00:27:42] and just deal with the fact that we're in the shit. Yeah? Yeah, so that also immediately stops all the stuff that goes around in the brain or at least helps with it. Yeah? So. ANDREW: Yeah. Yeah, in Lukumí divination we have kind of negativity, which we call Otonawa, which means … roughly means, that which you brought with you from heaven, and it's like, it's like, yeah, this is a thing that's, [00:28:12], you can't do anything about, maybe it's part of your destiny, maybe it's just come from, come to a place where the various forces in your life make this inevitable. But now you need to just, you know, appease it, ease it, support yourself, and get through it, and then, you know, but there's no making it go away, right? You know, like there's no perfect road, right? Where we never see these things.  PETER: Well there can't be, otherwise we get so spoiled that the smallest pebble on the road would become an absolute nightmare [00:28:42] if it got into our shoes. Right? You know, we need it. We need these things to happen in life, in my opinion. Otherwise, we don't have any understanding of what life is or can be about. ANDREW: And I also … I also think it's really interesting that ... the idea of easing the mind by stopping, asking why, and looking to explain it. You know, I think that that's a place where a lot of people ... you [00:29:12] know, I mean, I read cards for people, and you know, there are certainly folks who come in for card readings who are just like: “but why, why did this happen, why did this happen?” It's like, at a certain point, why does it matter? How about you do this to make it better, you know, and yeah, it's that practicality that I think is sometimes very unsatisfying to people in certain situations, you know? PETER: Well, it's a Western thing, you know? Our minds are way too busy. You know? I live, you know, one of the core elements of [00:29:42] Thai culture is samadhi, which is [? 29:45]  that is gained through Buddhism. It is an open and clear focus whereby we're trying to separate ourselves from the mind, so you end up in a position where you can watch your mind being a bastard. Yeah? Or being a bit barmy one day. Yeah? So, eventually when you actually … You know, but I always ask people what is watching the mind? Yeah? [00:30:13]  So in my opinion, what you are doing and what you are going to learn to do, is to find out who you are, which is not often what your mind is? You know, even in our … Even in our culture, we have sayings like, what does your stomach tell you? It's not the same as what does your mind tell you? They will say, what do you think? Yeah. So, one of the aims is to eventually secure yourselves and then when you get to that point, you can start to [00:30:43] see or feel astrological influences. You can have an idea about whether you're being influenced by something else. And you can watch your mind and attempt to behave and try and calm it down, so, it doesn't cause which as much trouble. Yeah? And all these are core practices within Buddhism and Eastern philosophies. ANDREW: Yeah. For sure. Yeah, that ability to step back [00:31:13] from what's going on in your head and basically be like, oh, take a look at that. My brain is … my brain is doing this thing in the same way that my stomach might be doing another thing in my … You know, my knee might be acting up or whatever. It's like, I'm not even those things, right, but sort of tuning down the emotions and the mind to kind of a place of somewhat lesser value or more specific value than the sort of overriding quality that we often associate with them. You [00:31:43] know, that's not easy, right? That's ... for a lot of people, especially Western people. PETER: You know, if you ever visit, an example of one of the wonderful things to do is to go and see someone like Ajarn Su, who was a monk for 18 years. So, this guy's got focus. Yeah? And recently, we went along with somebody who wanted a head tattoo. A head young [not sure if this is right? at 32:08] for metta. Yeah, for loving-kindness. Higher, the highest of the high Buddhist-style tattoos. You know, head tattoos [00:32:13] hurt. ANDREW: Yeah, I can imagine. PETER: This is done with a gun. Ajarn Su can only use a gun because he's got an arm that won't do as it's told, and, you know, the lad doing it had great difficulty controlling the screaming. And I was … I was helping out, being a bit of an assistant. And I was watching Ajarn, and he just went into his quiet place and not thought, but [00:32:43] no thinking, he was just chanting Qatar while he was doing the inside, while doing, while performing this tattoo, which took way longer than the recipient really wanted it to, and he pretty much screamed all the way through, so when we let … And then the worst thing was that if you have a tattoo with Ajarn Su, he will then give you his Yant Kru, which is, it gives … Everybody he gives tattoos to and it's a line [00:33:13] of script going along the front line at the bottom of the palm, and man, it's painful. Yeah? And as soon as, as soon as he said to me in Thai, “Oh, just hold his hand,” I thought, “Oh my God, he's really going to scream now.” And, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He did. He really let go. Yeah, and then when, and then when we left Ajarn, after about 10 minutes, the guy just lit up, and he got the sun inside his face. And [00:33:43] he actually said, “Wow, now I know why I've had it done. I wasn't so sure for the last half an hour,” and it looked amazing, and we were actually leaving. But then once we left, Ajarn's neighbors from across the road came over to see him to make sure everything was okay. [laughing] ANDREW: Right? PETER: And Ajarn is such a sweet man. He kept stopping and going, “so [00:34:13] soo,” which means, you know, “you have to fight a little bit,” but doing it in such a cute way, it was like an anime, you know. And watching him not be drawn into somebody else's pain, not be influenced by somebody who is having difficulty, and retaining his own presence was a lesson in itself. It was quite astonishing, it was an amazing 30 minutes.  ANDREW: It's [00:34:44] such a … I mean, I hear in that story what I would call a profound sense of compassion that doesn't match what we normally, you know, people might go to as a sense of compassion, which is, a sense of that deeper purpose of what's at hand, a loving acknowledgment of the struggle, and a commitment to the outcome that was what was meant to ... like what was agreed to, as opposed to an avoidance of a kind [00:35:14] of suffering for that person, right? PETER: Yep, that's exactly right. And also, when he finished the tattoo, Ajarn told him, instead of keeping the five precepts, he only has to keep one. He said, “But you keep this precept,” and when he told him the one, I'm not going to say which one it is, I'm not going to divulge anything about what he said, but he said, “How does he choose the most difficult [00:35:44] one he could possibly choose for me?” I said, “Oh, he always does that!”  ANDREW: Of course.  PETER: I said, “Otherwise what's the point?” And the guy just fell around laughing? You know, he said, “How does he know?” I said, “He's an ajarn, my friend.” ANDREW: Yeah. PETER: “He probably knew as soon as you walked in.” And it was again one of those comical moments when we realize how much we have to grow in the situation we are in. But the [00:36:14] levels of metta, loving-kindness and the beauty of what they are trying to do is, it's just breathtaking. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. So, I mean I guess, let me ask this question, and I imagine there might be a few different answers to it. But, how does, how does a person become an ajarn? PETER: In the usual route.  ANDREW: [chuckling] PETER: Okay, those … From what I can see at the moment, and this is going to change over time, as [00:36:44] the more time I spend with them, but basically everybody starts off as being some sort of devotee, using their amulets, learning the Qatar, becoming kind of known as somebody who makes an effort towards those spiritual practices. They might go off and do a few weeks, or a month, or even three months as a monk. Yeah? Which is all [00:37:14] set up within the community, and most times men will be a monk at some point in their life, for a short period of time, and then they may start helping the ahjan with rituals and helping the people who visit the samyat, which is the place of work. It's like his spiritual shop, his temple, yeah? And then, the [00:37:44] studying begins. Now the studying, we discovered, has actually got levels. And each level, it's a bit like going and getting different degrees. Each level has got what is called the khan kru associated with it and the khan kru is a construction of various objects. Like sometimes swords, sometimes flags, and [00:38:14] they're always quite different, a lot of betel nut, flowers. It depends on the lineage of the ajarn that's giving it and there are various levels of the khan kru, depending on what you study. So, the earlier levels tend to be directed towards satyam, the Thai traditional tattooing, after which you tend to learn about sunay sunay magic, which is the magic for attraction. [00:38:44] Eventually … I'm trying to remember the levels. It's something like the 8, 12, 27 but it ends up at 108. There's men. There's about eight different levels of the khan kru, and at each level you attain a certain understanding, but the khan kru is actually considered to be alive. It's considered to have life, and it helps you teach [00:39:14] you, and it can also knock you back if you're not studying enough, or being erudite enough, or not trying enough or you're just getting it wrong. Yeah? So, I … it's weighed like everything in this system. The book kind of introduces the subject of the khan kru, but the khan kru in itself could probably be a book on its own.  Ajarn Su holdes the khan kru 108, which [00:39:44] is the full witcha, which comes from a similar root word as Wiccan, by the way, the witcha is the knowledge, and a very famous monk called Kru Badung Dev, still alive, but he's bedridden and 105 and his witcha collection, his book collection is really quite something, it's off the planet and his knowledge to go along with it. When he was a monk, he had the khan kru 227, [00:40:15] which only monks can have, and then you go back to the 108, when you stop being a monk. So, often you're going to see … In Ajarn Su's samyat, there's one khan kru and it's a 108, everything, and there are a certain color to show that his teacher is still alive and they change the color when he dies.  In other samyat, you go and they'll have like five or six khan kru [00:40:45] for different subjects from different ajarns. Yeah, so you have some that stick to a certain lineage and some that go around collecting different witchas, almost like create their own lineage to start their own path, which then they can help other people along as well. It involves learning at least three scripts. It involves learning an enormous amount of Qatar, understanding the Qatar, [00:41:15] and it involves practices such as various meditational practices, like the 32 parts of the body practice for which you need a teacher but there's a brief outline in the book of it. We're about … we get to know our physical body by traveling around it. And it's split into 32 parts. There is also various meditational practices [00:41:45] towards cutting four elements within the body, but all these kind of roll along through the different levels of study. ANDREW: And so, is the title conferred by the teacher then at some point? Is that the …? PETER: The teacher decides when you move to the next level. To become an ajahm, you know, you can say, I could now turn around and say, “I'm ajarn, I'm [00:42:15] an ajarn,” but I'd be a bit of an idiot to do so, because it's really obvious that I'm not, right? Yeah. Yeah, in the same way as mastership in martial arts. You know, you always get … there's always a number of [pillocks? 42:26] who call themselves a master and they have to go through the very painful process of being beaten up by an eight-year-old at some point. You know what I mean? Yeah. Similar, you prove yourself by being good at your ajarn. ANDREW: That's interesting. I also … I'm also really fascinated by … I mean, we were talking about nature [00:42:45] earlier. Do the ajarns, like, are there any living, like do they practice in Bangkok in the center of town? Do they out in the woods? PETER: Yes, woods. Yeah. Yes. They did. There is … There are some remarkable magicians in Bangkok. Normally, they will deal with the things that people who live in the metropolis need, will help them with the promotion at work, will help them find a lover. Yeah, and [00:43:15] be more attractive, and there is those … One ajarn called Ajarn Weaver Ted [? at 21:32] who's now very famous. He's the first photograph in the book. And he's got very rich clientele, that he does spiritual work for, whatever that may entail. Yeah, some of it will be aggressive. Some of it will be protective. Some of it, you know … because in Thailand basically, [00:43:45] it's really the rich and the poor that use magic, not necessarily the middle classes. Yeah. And there's also people like Ajarn Samat, [43:57] who is one of the most remarkable satyan ajahms I've ever met. Man, he has it. He has it. Yeah? And for me, he's the best satyan ajarn in Bangkok, but he's difficult to see, he has a mostly retired clientele. His work is not beautiful. It's very old [00:44:15] style. It's very ancient witcha, but man, he has it, whoo! You know, so all these things are available for people who need it, finding the very traditional Thai ones will only be done by the Thai people, but then there are other ones who become famous outside the country as well. ANDREW: So, let me ask you this question then. So, where does where does morality fit in these kinds of practices, you know? PETER: [00:44:45] In what respect?  ANDREW: So, if someone's coming to have work done to bring a relationship back together, is that … is that seen as both people should be there and consent? Is it seen as one person who wants this to happen can do the work and that could work? You know we talked about defense and aggression and these other kinds of things. Is there a morality in [00:45:15] there? Or is that sort of purely a Western question and not even relevant? PETER: Well, it's, well, there's a morality in everything in life. It just depends on your personal standpoint. And, many ajarns nowadays, a lot of the really heavy stuff has gone back in the cupboard, because it's not needed anymore, yeah? So, but I'd say Ajarn Cau, who's a particularly lovely ajarn who I got along very well with in towards [00:45:46] Doi Saket, the mountains to the east. He only pulls lovers back together who were already married, and they have to prove it to him. Yeah, he will ask them for impossible things to get. You know, if they can, the skin off the bottom of his foot or her foot, depending on which partner wants the other partner to come back, and, and he will help them get back together, because that is an act of metta, he [00:46:16] is helping keep the couple together.  At the same time, he will basically attempt to get the person who is bringing the ... paying for the ritual to understand that all the ritual does is bring them back. It's not going to fix your relationship problems. So, if you turn around and be angry, it's not going to keep them there. This is not making a slave out of somebody, [00:46:46] yeah? So there isn't really anything aggressive within that. I mean, really, you know, people often ask the question: What is black magic in Thailand? You know, yes, then you get a different answer from everybody, but when they ask the same ajarn, the ajarn always said, well, you know attraction. He said, I might use part of somebody's skull for attraction. Esanay, [47:12] we call it, and he said, but it's just an air magic. It's not … it's [00:47:16] not black magic. He said, you're just attracting somebody, where's the harm in that? You're not kind of turning them into a slave. You're just attracting them. ANDREW: Right? If the work isn't … The work isn't geared towards removing people's free will. The work is geared towards providing opportunity, and that opportunity, especially sort of based on what you said in the earlier part of the conversation too, that opportunity is both access [00:47:46] to the opportunity of that thing and also the opportunity to grow as a person to embody that thing. PETER: Exactly.  ANDREW: Yeah.  PETER: Yeah. So, you know other people think the use of any human materials is black magic in itself, which I don't, I don't consider it to be. There's all sorts of … We'll not get into the Thai thoughts about death, because you know, everybody does … they're not … well, you know, it's just part of life. And generally, most … some ajarns [00:48:16] think that anything with human materials is black magic. Some ajarns only think that anything that is forceful is black magic, anything that is cursing is black magic, and they really try not to do it nowadays. ANDREW: Hmm. PETER: Yeah, they will do something called a kong ritual, which is a ritual. It's like a controlling ritual you do in the graveyard and it's to rebalance [00:48:46] some sort of relationship. A work relationship, your boss is being a bit of a bastard to you, etc. You'll bring a kong ritual just to slap him down a little bit, slap him down for a few months, let the relationship become better between you, and then it wears off. And they are extremely effective, these. But then, you know, you get people coming forward wanting people hurt or dead or [00:49:16] forced into bankruptcy or something serious and to be honest nowadays, yes, it can be done, but most ajarns will say no. And the only … And there's some very knowledgeable people about cursing in this city. Terrifyingly knowledgeable, but they just choose not to do it unless it's for the right reason. Yeah, because you know, they're bringing … They're forcing something, they're bringing something [00:49:46] difficult to themselves. Everybody nowadays is now trying to strike the correct balance. ANDREW: Hmm. And do you see that shift as coming out of a shift in cultural values, or is it a shift in the difference in the quality of life now versus in the past? PETER: It's both, you know, the government's also … 10 to 15 years ago, they started clamping [00:50:16] down, they started stopping people who had died violently being buried. Yeah? Originally …. Only anybody who died a difficult death, which basically reflects like a really bad karma was buried, everybody else was burnt, right? So, these ground … And they're exactly the people that the ajarns want to use the [00:50:47] products from, yeah? And they basically stopped doing that 10 to 15 years ago. So, slowly but surely, that source is being exhausted. You know, Thailand is becoming a very developed country, access to the human materials is becoming extremely difficult, and, you know, it's not as wild here as it used to be, people need more, less protection in many ways, more metta, [00:51:17] more senay, … Because now you know the times have changed. Gone are the days where they could just chop a corpse's head off and leave a watermelon. You know, now they believe that a better protection is to have so much metta that somebody doesn't want to hurt you anyway, is to be such a lovely person that attracts other people, it makes you difficult to attack, you know, so as cultures develop the way they use [00:51:47] their magical knowledge develops, which is actually the sign of any living form of magic, isn't it? ANDREW: Well, it reminds me of martial arts practice, right? You know, I mean, a lot of people start off in you know, something a little harder like karate or whatever, and you know, they want to fight and use their muscles and whatever, and as you, you know, hopefully as you age and get a little wiser, you know, you move to something more circular and more soft and you know, like, you know, nothing … Not that you can't, you know, throw [00:52:17] that punch if you need to but it's often more like, oh, I can just redirect this and just flow with things in a completely different manner and therefore I won't have that problem any more. PETER: Oh, I always recommend running away. It's fucking great for avoiding problems. ANDREW: Yeah, exactly, right? Exactly. [laughing]  ANDREW: Just don't be there in the first place, right? PETER: And also … Exactly, the greatest defense! I mean, this is not counting somebody who comes up being an absolute idiot. In which case, finish it and then run away. Yeah? I mean, [00:52:47] I've [? 52:49] done martial arts for about 20 years. But really, it should just be about happiness, physical comfort, you know, nothing more difficult to attack than somebody who's happy, you know, and that relates to what we were just saying about the magic as well. You know, it's … As soon as you're aggressive, it gives people something to hang onto. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. Well, and possibly puts you off balance, then, right? PETER: Well, [00:53:17] everything goes to your head.  ANDREW: Yeah. Mm-hmm. PETER: And if what you're trying to do is not to let it go, though, because that raises your center of balance as well, and you become slow and you tense. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. Yep.  PETER: So, it's all … they're very interrelated in many respects, actually, you know, and just retaining that open clear mind rather than being pulled by your emotions all the time, you know. It's … and in many ways, to get the martial arts, is one of them. Meditation [00:53:47] works. You know, what have you found works, Andrew, for you? ANDREW: Yeah, I mean meditation. I did martial arts for a long time. Martial arts was a good road for getting over being angry, to me. You know, I sort of worked through my anger there in an environment where I could sort of explore power dynamics very openly. And yeah, just, you know, returning, you know, returning my attention back always to like, I [00:54:17] don't know how to put it. So, there's you know, there's that transcendent sort of samadhi kind of loss of attachment to yourself and your daily life. You know, so that piece of it combined with just very practical cultivation of self and a sustainable life, right? Like just, what do I need? What do I need to do? Where am I showing up? Where do I feel I'm lacking? Why do I feel I'm lacking there? Is [00:54:47] there something I actually need and just, you know, kind of cycling through those different patterns of, I guess, growth-orientated questions. And, you know, it's … It does wonders for removing unhelpful hungers and, you know, and sort of recognizing the own … my own internal bullshit for what it is, which, then, allows me to show up more, right?  PETER: Well, there's nothing like … Yeah, there's nothing like a good bit of bullshit within ourselves as well, you know? There's [00:55:17] many things that we can pull on.  ANDREW: Yeah. PETER: You know, there's many, many, there's many advantages to these things, but it's just knowing what they are … ANDREW: Mm-hmm. Yep. PETER: … Is the difficult thing and not being led by them, you know, and I'm sure you'd agree that when we get, you know, when you get past the monkey mind, as they call it here.  ANDREW: Yeah.  PETER: You know the relation … Your relationship with time changes, your relationship with people changes.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm.  PETER: You know, the way you can [00:55:47] sit with people changes … ANDREW: Yeah.  PETER: The way, you know, the joy of life changes. ANDREW: And the way in which people receive you changes.  PETER: Completely.  ANDREW: Right? Because when you … When you show up and you're genuinely present with other people, they feel that, you know, and if you have, you know, if you want to call it metta, it's not really a word I would use, but you know, but you know, compassion or you know, those … That sort of openness to other people and seeing them for who they are without judgments or overt attachments. That's a [00:56:17] completely different dynamic, right? That goes to a completely different place than, you know, when you show up and you're just like, oh my God, I so need this or that or whatever from you. Right? PETER: Well, it's also, I mean, I'm very lucky to be able to go anywhere in Thailand, literally, anywhere. You know? My partner's family, we were there a few months ago, and I said, “oh, I'm gonna go to Surat Veree [? 56:43] because I want to photograph this particular shrine for the book.” And I said, “Where is the bus [00:56:47] go from, the minibus? She said, “Oh, from there.” And so, I've got up at like 4:00 o'clock, I got the 5 o'clock bus, I was there by 6, and the driver dropped me off as close as he could to the temple. Ten seconds later, a motorbike boy came up, took me to visit the temple. We had a quick bit of breakfast together, which I paid for, of course, it was very nice. Then I did the photographs, he waited for me, he drove me back. I jumped on the next mini bus which arrived seconds later, and I rode back up to Bangkok and back to [00:57:17] family home in about four hours, three and a half hours. And the response was, “How have you done that? How?” Yeah, I said, well, it just kind of happens. If you just connect to people, you know, he's not the driver of a minibus. He's a man who's having to get through a day and hopefully support his family, you know? He is not just a motorbike guy, he might be an older [00:57:47] man who's had a very interesting life, and you treat him with some respect. You know, if you look, you look people in the eye, you make those connections, you open your heart. ANDREW: Yeah. Well when I was in India, I wanted to go to Bodghaya, where the Buddha was enlightened? Or, I'm sorry, where the Buddha first preached the dharma, right? And, you know, and I went … So I wanted to go to these places, but there's [00:58:17] nothing there, right, there's just temples. It's just a city of temples and a few restaurants, things to support people, but nobody … I don't think people really live there or whatever and there's definitely no trains or whatever. So I arrived in the nearest city and--which wasn't that far away--but there was this huge strike there that day, and I was trying to find somebody who'd be willing to take me, 'cause I was only there for a day because I left it to sort of towards the end of my trip, [00:58:47] because I was trying to kind of hit a couple of important places, and two things happened, which remind me exactly of this conversation.  So, one was, I was walking down the street, and it was a long street with a big park and government building, I think, on the other side, and it was just this huge fence that ran along this massive park all the way along. There's no easy way there, no gates, you would have to climb it and it was all houses on the other side and all the houses were basically [00:59:17] attached and there's no roads or alleys or whatever.  And I'm like mid-block, and then I hear this huge ruckus and the people who are protesting are coming down the street, and there's this mob of people, with sticks and signs, and they're yelling and screaming and whatever, and I look at the crowd and I turn around and I look and there's this gentleman standing in his door, and I just look at him and I point at myself and I point inside his house and he's just like, yes, [00:59:47] like just, waved with his hands, like yes, come in my house [laughing], and so we go in his house. He closes the door. We wait for everybody to pass. And he had no English, you know, my Hindi is not particularly, you know, I knew a few things like hello, and thank you, and whatever, and we just waited in his house and stood there and looked at each other very pleasantly and peacefully and whatever. And then you know, when it was obvious that this, the sound had passed and the people were gone. He opened the door, and looked out, and then he gave me a pat on the back [01:00:17] and you know, sent me on my way.  And then a few minutes later, I ran into this guy who was driving a, like one of those cycle rickshaws, this really older gentleman, and I got … I just like looked at him and I'm like, “I want to go here,” and he's like, “sure!” And so, he took me and we rode this bicycle through the countryside and stopped at a couple farms and all these amazing things. And then, when we got there, on top of paying him for his time, I also bought him lunch. And we just [01:00:47] sat there. He also had, you know, basically no English and we just sat there eating together and looking at each other and smiling. And you know, there's such a connection that can happen when you're open to those things, and like I say, when you're going for a purpose and when you go in with a certain way, that road can just open for you, right? You know? PETER: It just happens … and it really happens because you're not thinking …  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. PETER: And by not thinking, you're taking away the barriers that people can come, [01:01:17] that generally stop people relating to you… ANDREW: Yeah, for sure.  PETER: You know, it's a remarkable period of time here, you know, but, especially this last few years, going through the process of doing all this work, because it just, it just happened. Just, it was just, doors kept opening and things kept telling me what to do next, and you [01:01:47] know, and then we got to the point where this, you know, we managed to finish this work. ANDREW: Yeah. PETER: And yeah, there were bits where it wasn't easy, but it's still found a way to be done.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. For sure.  PETER: And you know, it's … Even my partner sometimes says, “How have you done this?” [laughing] ANDREW: Mm-hmmm.  PETER: You know. “How have you done it?” Well it kind of just gave me the opportunity to do it and then it kind of did itself.  ANDREW: Yeah. They meet you [01:02:17] halfway. You know? Or more than halfway sometimes, right? Yeah.  PETER: Yeah, they do. And also, I've really been wanting, you know, I've kind of resisted it for the first, God, 20 years of coming here … ANDREW: Mm-hmm. PETER: Because that was apparent when I first came over.  ANDREW: Yeah. PETER: And kind of waited until I was ready to kind of do it. ANDREW: Yeah. PETER: You know, it's been quite old and extremely rewarding and rather wonderful. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. It's [01:02:47] fantastic. Well, I mean, maybe, we've been on the phone for a long time here. Maybe we should wrap this up, because I could talk to you all day. This is a wonderful conversation. So, first of all ... PETER: It'd be nice with a cup of tea and a biscuit, wouldn't it? [laughing] ANDREW: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Well, you know, I'll let you know when I'm going to be in Bangkok or Thailand, some time. And we'll make that happen. For people who want to check out this book, and you know, if this stuff really interests you, and you're, you know, you really should [01:03:17] check out the book. It's quite a, it's quite an amazing work. Where do people find you, and where do people find your book? PETER: I'm easy found in two places. One is on Facebook through the Thai Occult book page, and the easiest place to click on the book to get the Timeless editions would be through the Thai Occult.com, all one word.  ANDREW: Perfect.  PETER: I can't … And there's [01:03:47] two book pictures on the front cover, one from the Sak Yant book and then the new one on the Thai occult. Of the … to be honest, I'm very very very proud of the new one, the Sak Yant book and yes, we have some superb interviews with the guys, some of the makers in there, but having just produced something really good, I'd love to go back and rewrite it. ANDREW: Isn't [01:04:17] that always the way, right? Isn't that always the way? PETER: Though to be honest with you, I don't think I'm going to do … I don't think I'll be in that position, with the new one. I don't think I could have made a much better job, to be honest. There's always more, it's going to come up, but as a broad taste as a buffet of the Thai occult, I don't think … It'd be difficult to do a better job than this, in my opinion. ANDREW: Perfect. Well, go and check it out, and support [01:04:47] Peter's work and you know, thanks for being on, Peter and thanks to everybody, as always, for listening. PETER: It's been lovely. Thank you. 

欢迎订阅微信公众号“老虎小助手”，点击右下角进入“会员中心”，收听全套英文启蒙课程。亲子英文（7）The school bus is waiting for you.校车在等你喔。在欧美国家，因为学校与住宅区的距离较远，所以大部分的学校都有提供校车的服务。Is waiting for you这句话的意思是指在你等。The school bus is waiting for you.意思是校车在等你哦。换句话说，我们也可以说The school bus is coming.表示校车来了。通常妈妈这么说的时候，还会再多说一句催促孩子的动作快一点。Hurry or you'll be late for the bus.意思是快点，否则就要来不及上车了。看看Peter和Mom怎么说的吧：Peter: Mom,I'm ready for school.Mom:Don't forget to come straight home after school.Peter:I know,mom.Mom:Have you got everything?Peter:Oh,my jump rope.Mom,can you get it for me?出门时宝贝们也可以说：I'm leaving.我出门咯。Don't forget别忘记Have you got意思是你有带…?例如Have you got your school bag?你带书包了吗？有时候遇到喜爱发问的孩子，妈妈也可以俏皮的说I'm ready for your questions.我准备好回答你的问题了。既然说I'm leaving.是我离开了，leave是离开的意思，alone是独自，放在一起是让我一个人好吗？Leave me alone,please.不知道妈妈有没有仔细看过孩子的书桌上都仿写什么文具用品？还是都是摆放他的玩具呢？我们今天来一起复习一下文具怎么说哦：Pencil case铅笔盒Lead铅笔芯Pen笔Pencil铅笔Drawing pins图钉Ruler尺Mechanical pencil自动铅笔Eraser橡皮擦Lamp台灯Pencil sharpener 削笔刀Scissors剪刀Staple订书钉Cutter刀片Stapler订书机Drawer抽屉

欢迎订阅微信公众号“老虎小助手”，点击右下角进入“会员中心”，收听全套英文启蒙课程。亲子英文（7）The school bus is waiting for you.校车在等你喔。在欧美国家，因为学校与住宅区的距离较远，所以大部分的学校都有提供校车的服务。Is waiting for you这句话的意思是指在你等。The school bus is waiting for you.意思是校车在等你哦。换句话说，我们也可以说The school bus is coming.表示校车来了。通常妈妈这么说的时候，还会再多说一句催促孩子的动作快一点。Hurry or you'll be late for the bus.意思是快点，否则就要来不及上车了。看看Peter和Mom怎么说的吧：Peter: Mom,I'm ready for school.Mom:Don't forget to come straight home after school.Peter:I know,mom.Mom:Have you got everything?Peter:Oh,my jump rope.Mom,can you get it for me?出门时宝贝们也可以说：I'm leaving.我出门咯。Don't forget别忘记Have you got意思是你有带…?例如Have you got your school bag?你带书包了吗？有时候遇到喜爱发问的孩子，妈妈也可以俏皮的说I'm ready for your questions.我准备好回答你的问题了。既然说I'm leaving.是我离开了，leave是离开的意思，alone是独自，放在一起是让我一个人好吗？Leave me alone,please.不知道妈妈有没有仔细看过孩子的书桌上都仿写什么文具用品？还是都是摆放他的玩具呢？我们今天来一起复习一下文具怎么说哦：Pencil case铅笔盒Lead铅笔芯Pen笔Pencil铅笔Drawing pins图钉Ruler尺Mechanical pencil自动铅笔Eraser橡皮擦Lamp台灯Pencil sharpener 削笔刀Scissors剪刀Staple订书钉Cutter刀片Stapler订书机Drawer抽屉

Oh SNOW you ditint!! I am SNOW sure this global warming thing is real I am going to make an executive decision and tell all of our followers and LIVE attendees of our Kehilla that we will NOT be in person on Sunday, but WILL still be LIVE on the air at 5:30pm EST!!! Tune in here! You can almost always find Kefa or as he is known in English Bibles, Peter, before the crucifixion. He is usually the “man with his foot in his mouth, or the man who wants to call down fire on someone or cut someone with his sword!” The incident at the foot-washing may reveal many of the reasons he was such. Now for my 2 cents. I've always liked peter's passion. I've never seen him as not submitting to Jesus' lordship –  [For the rest, tune in from your warm toasty house at around 5:25pm EST!] For MORE on The Ninja Pastor!  Click Here!    

Peter: Hi Liz, are you just about ready? Liz: Yep. Thanks again for giving me a ride. I appreciate all your help. Peter: Oh, don't mention it. Anything for my friends! Liz: You're so sweet. Peter: So, your dad will pick you up at the train station? Liz: Yes. She'll be in her aerobics class, so she won't know that I'm arriving. We'll pick up three more people, plus the birthday cake, and get back to the house before she comes home. Everyone else will be waiting there. Peter: Oh, I love surprise parties. Liz: Me too! Click the link for the Android app // //   //   //