Podcast appearances and mentions of peter one

This week, we travel back in time to revisit a show that brought Hurray For The Riff Raff to eTown Hall! This show features a special acoustic duo version of the group consisting of Alynda Segarra and accompanying guitarist Johnny Wilson. Sharing the stage is Peter One, originally from Africa and now located in Nashville. Nick also has a sit down with members of the Green Grad Buffs who share their ideas about re-purposing a defunct coal-fired power plant in Denver. That's all this week on eTown! Visit our Youtube Channel to see artist interviews, live recordings, studio sessions, and more! Be a part of the audience at our next recording: https://www.etown.org/etown-hall/all-events/ Your support helps us bring concerts, tapings and conversations to audiences while fostering connection through music, ideas and community. If you'd like to support eTown's mission to educate, entertain and inspire a diverse audience through music and conversation, please consider a donation: https://www.etown.org/get-involved/donate-orig/.  

The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time. . . . — John 21:17 Jesus' questions parallel Peter's three denials. On the night Jesus was arrested, Peter was asked three times if he was associated with Jesus, and each time Peter said no (John 18:15-18, 25-27). Now Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” And while Peter is obviously hurt by this, no doubt Jesus was hurt by Peter's denials as well. The rebuilding of Peter's relationship with Jesus was important. Jesus needed to hear that Peter still loved him. Jesus still had a role for Peter to fill in his growing kingdom. And Peter needed to know he was forgiven and still welcome in Jesus' kingdom work. In fact, Peter might have thought he wasn't welcome to follow Jesus anymore after his denial—and that might have been at least partly why he went back to fishing so soon after Jesus' death and resurrection. Whatever the case, Peter needed to know that he was still welcome. Nothing Peter could do would separate him from Jesus' love. The same is true for us (Romans 8:38-39). We might deny Jesus and turn our backs on him in any number of ways. But Jesus never does that to us. He is always waiting for us, asking us if we love him, and giving us a continued purpose in his kingdom. Jesus' love never fails. This is a promise we can depend on every day. Jesus, thank you for the gift of forgiveness and for continuing to call us to follow you. Thank you for providing us with salvation and a new life with you! Amen.

Unfortunately, this recording ends abruptly.

As Black country music is having its moment, Hana has always wondered why her Sudanese mom loved Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton. You can hear country music playing in cafes in African capitals. There is a love of American country music among our African elders, many say they grew up with it. While for many, country music is associated with white culture and isn't relatable, for many African elders it holds a very special place in their hearts. Why? We explore the surprising histories and the appeal, and follow the story of legendary Ivorian country music duo Peter One & Jess Sah Bi.This ain't Texas. It's Africa.

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.

Pastor Scudder resumes his series through the book of Acts at the Quentin Road Baptist Church.

Pastor Scudder resumes his series through the book of Acts at the Quentin Road Baptist Church.

This week, we're welcoming Hurray For The Riff Raff to eTown Hall! This show features a special acoustic duo version of the group consisting of Alynda Segarra and accompanying guitarist Johnny Wilson. Sharing the stage is Peter One, originally from Africa and now located in Nashville. Nick also has a sit down with members of the Green Grad Buffs who share their ideas about re-purposing a defunct coal-fired power plant in Denver. That's all this week on eTown!   Visit our Youtube Channel to see artist interviews, live recordings, studio sessions, and more!

This week we dive into the many lives and evolving music of much-respected singer and troubadour Peter One. Coming from humble beginnings in his native Ivory Coast, One became a folk hero for creating a new type of African roots music that was the backdrop for Nelson Mandela's fight against apartheid and gained him a following around the globe.  His partnership with longtime friend Jess Sah Bi created the 1985 classic (and newly reissued) Our Garden Needs Its Flowers and at their height, saw them playing stadiums across West Africa. The two mates from Abidjan were equally inspired by Ivorian village songs as Simon and Garfunkel, Dolly Parton and American soul titans like Otis Redding - creating a unique fusion while singing in French, English and Gouro (a Mande language). Escaping the unrest of his home country where he was a history teacher, One finally came to the United States and worked as a nurse for years before diving back into his original passion for music.  At the age of 67, last year One put out his heralded return LP Come Back To Me on Verve Forecast, featuring the golden-voiced harmonies and Ivorian country-folk songs he does best, with new forays into blues, French love songs and more - featuring his old partner Jess Sah Bi and new collaborators like Allison Russell. Co-produced by Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell, John Prine) with contributions from members of Wilco and Calexico, the record shows that even as he nears seventy, One is only just getting started. Last year he even made his debut at the Grand Ole' Opry. 

"Come back to me"

This episode was recorded on January 14th, 2024 at West Virginia Uinversity's Canady Creative Arts Center in Morgantown, WV. The lineup includes The Steel Wheels, Leslie Mendelson, Buffalo Wabs & The Price Hill Hustle, Upstate, and Peter One.  https://bit.ly/3J5W2BK

The Le Random team met up to celebrate a year since our public launch. thefunnyguys, Zack Taylor, Peter Bauman and Conrad House discuss: -One year of LR: Our favorite collected pieces 36 Points by Sage Jensen & seeds of seeds by Entangled Others Polygona Nervosa by Golan Levin RGB Elementary Cellular Automaton #1 by ciphrd Mondrian by Herbert W. Franke -One year of LR: Our favorite editorial pieces Demystifying Generative Aesthetics by Peter Demystifying Generative Art by Peter AGH on Glorifying the Computer by Peter Il(Lumina)ting Marfa by Nathaniel Stern Zach Lieberman on the Resonance of Generative Art by Peter -One year of LR: Our favorite moments -Our current thoughts on the market -Questions from the audience

Series: First ImportanceScripture: 1 Peter 1:1-2We hope you enjoyed listening to this message! If you'd like to stay updated on what God is doing at Citylight Council Bluffs, be sure to follow us:Citylight Council BluffsFacebookInstagramCitylight Council BluffsSunday Gatherings at 9:00 & 11:00 AMLivestream at 9:00 AM2109 Railroad Hwy, Council Bluffs, IA 51503Support the showSupport the show

Featuring a Best of 2023 edition of the show feat. music from Brazilian artist Tagua Tagua, Dutch ensemble Zuco 103, the Ivory Coast's Peter One + more!

Episode 252: The story of Peter One is as warming as his music. As a young man in his native Côte d'Ivoire, he latched on to folk and country music more than most of his peers, until he met collaborator Jess Sah Bi, with whom he formed a celebrated, socially conscious duo in West Africa. Both had to leave the country due to political turmoil, and Peter One started over in the US, first in Delaware then in Nashville where he moved for a career in nursing. A rediscovery and reissue of his best African record reignited a music career that had been interrupted for 30 years, and this summer he's everywhere from the Opry to Newport Folk Fest. I spend an hour with this kind and fascinating songwriter/guitarist.

2 sessions live entre carnaval pop et contemporain & country-folk ivoirienne. Notre 1ère invitée est Lucie Antunes pour la sortie de son 2ème album Carnaval.Armez-vous d'un sifflet, de tambours, de cloches et de plumes, il y a urgence à remplir le parvis. Demain, vous défilerez à nos portes aux yeux du monde. Demain, c'est Carnaval. Février de cette année-là, Lucie suffoque et avec elle, on a du mal à respirer. L'épidémie s'infiltre comme une épine sourde qui nous traverse. Blessés, nos corps s'épuisent et nous lâchent par manque de souffle au pays de l'inertie. Lucie se souvient qu'elle a toujours été cette lumière qui résiste, feu follet incandescent, au service du mouvement et de la transe. On raconte que les jeunes percussionnistes choisissent le marimba, le vibraphone ou les timbales pour se faire entendre, pour être visibles, enfin audibles. Alors en février de cette année-là, Lucie se tient fièrement debout, baguettes aux poings et synthétiseur en bandoulière, décidée à briser l'isolement et le silence à coups de rythmes débridés. Elle se trouve une chambre dans la maison Deman à La Rochelle. Face à la mer, elle défait sa valise. À l'intérieur, il y a l'envie d'en recoudre et de broder des morceaux avec sa voix, ses percussions virtuoses, des boucles de bribes vocales trouvées sur Google, des sons électro qui vibrent sous la peau jusqu'à en retirer l'épine. Lucie a prévu de composer une fête pour nous guérir. Ce deuxième album est un remède. Carnaval sonne le temps des réjouissances et des jours charnels. Pour Lucie, la diète a assez duré, elle prépare son sifflet et ses cloches et les pose sur la table de chevet. Dans la poche de sa valise, il y a la bande son des Sparks composée pour le film « Annette » de Léos Carax. Les voix du film, par leur audace guident la compositrice vers un chœur libérateur. Carnaval célébrera un chant extatique qui nous rappelle d'autres sirènes comme Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, Charlotte Adigéry, Agnès Obel. Sous hypnose, Lucie Antunes avance, tambour battant, marchant sur ses peurs. La crainte d'avoir un bébé, la peur de la maladie, de ne pas réussir à braver la mort, il faut conjurer le sort. Elle s'enferme dans une bulle, tombe, se cogne, se redresse, cherche la rupture et des morceaux plus courts, toujours à l'affût des timbres et des motifs qui pourraient nous sauver. Elle en fait trop, elle épure à nouveau, chante tout haut, sous l'eau, scande de nouvelles prophéties répétitives, martèle sur sa boîte à rythmes et forge un autel carnavalesque en matière brute. Elle reprend de la distance et sa respiration, et au loin elle commence à apercevoir une boîte à musique sous un chapiteau coloré. Un rituel de poche est le né, véritable kit de survie de la fête. Pour danser à deux, Lucie va chercher la musicienne Léonie Pernet. Ensemble elles accordent leurs fragilités, leur voix, leurs pouls. « Tout est là, devant toi », lui dit Léonie. Rassurante, complice, Léonie va s'employer à faire beaucoup avec peu et aider Lucie à produire les onze séquences de ce Carnaval en forme de mini free party. Ça cogne à nos fenêtres, on l'entend, elle arrive de loin cette batucada dégingandée. Au signal des cloches timbrées et du sifflet, on se joint au défilé à Cuba, à Rio, à Paris, à Bali. On invite Steve Reich, John Cage et on carillonne sur des rythmes frénétiques, on s'enivre d'effluves tectoniques, on tape sur des cloches tubulaires, on tourbillonne sur des contrepoints au marimba, on prie à haute voix, on se serre fort dans les bras Réveillez-vous, vous êtes vivants, la fête commence maintenant.Titres interprétés au grand studio- Yagé (radio edit) Live RFI- Faites-vous des bisous, extrait de l'album Carnaval- Mais Live RFI.Line Up : Clémence Lasme, basses, voix, percussions ; Franck Berthoux, traitement du son en temps réel, synthés modulaires ; Lucie Antunes: vibraphone, batterie.Son : Mathias Taylor, Laurie Plisson.► Album Carnaval (InFiné / CryBaby 2023).voir le clip  It's amazing. Puis nous recevons PETER ONE pour la sortie de l'album Come Back To Me.Originaire de Côte d'Ivoire, Peter One a été une star en Afrique de l'Ouest, au sein d'un duo avec son partenaire d'écriture Jess Sah Bi, qui ont ensemble créé un album folk séminal, Our Garden Needs Its Flowers en 1985. L'album a pris de l'ampleur dans toute la région. Peter a joué pour des présidents, des premières dames, des foules adulées à guichets fermés, et a même joué la bande-son de la libération de Nelson Mandela en 1990, comme en témoigne la BBC. Il s'est ensuite installé aux États-Unis dans les années 90, en raison des troubles politiques dans son pays d'origine, pour tenter d'y poursuivre sa carrière musicale. Cependant, en raison du coût de la vie, il a été contraint d'abandonner et a travaillé en tant qu'infirmier, d'abord dans le Delaware, puis dans le Tennessee, pendant la majeure partie des 20 dernières années, jusqu'à aujourd'hui.   En 2018, la réédition de Our Garden Needs Its Flowers a relancé l'attention sur Peter One, avec une couverture médiatique de Pitchfork et Rolling Stone. Aujourd'hui, Peter revient sur la scène musicale avec un mélange unique d'afro-pop et de bandes sonores country-folk influencées par les années 60 et 70. Peter One nous offre une collection authentique de chansons folk chantées en anglais, français et guro, racontant des histoires de divorce douloureux, d'amour et de perte. Il nous propose des réflexions sur les concepts du pouvoir de guérison de la musique, de la diaspora, de l'immigration et de la patrie. Quiconque entend les premières notes de Cherie Vico sur le nouvel album de Peter vous le dira certainement : Peter One est de retour, et a apporté avec lui un ensemble de chansons qui pourraient bien transporter ses auditeurs vers de nouveaux horizons car elles sont finalement le reflet du propre voyage imprévisible et surprenant de Peter One.    Titres interprétés au grand studio- Kavudu RFI Live- African Chant Jess Sah Bi & Peter One, extrait de l'album Our Garden Needs Its Flowers (1985)- Chérie Vico, extrait de l'album Come Back To Me voir le clip- Sweet Rainbow Live RFI. Line Up : Peter One, chant, guitare ; Agustin Escalante, claviers.Son : Jérémie Besset, Mathias Taylor.► Album Come Back To Me (Verve Forecast 2023).

This week, host Isaac Butler talks to musician Peter One, whose recent album Come Back to Me is his first in more than three decades. In 1985, he and musician Jess Sah Bi released the album Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, which was a big hit in Peter's home country of the Ivory Coast and bolstered his reputation around the world. In the interview, Peter discusses his songwriting process for Come Back to Me and explains what it's been like to re-connect with his fanbase and to find new admirers of his work.  After the interview, Isaac and co-host Nate Chinen discuss the role of intuition in creative work.  In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Peter talks more about the events that led to his career revival.  Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675.   Podcast production by Cameron Drews.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you'll also be supporting the work we do here on Working. Sign up now at slate.com/workingplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, host Isaac Butler talks to musician Peter One, whose recent album Come Back to Me is his first in more than three decades. In 1985, he and musician Jess Sah Bi released the album Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, which was a big hit in Peter's home country of the Ivory Coast and bolstered his reputation around the world. In the interview, Peter discusses his songwriting process for Come Back to Me and explains what it's been like to re-connect with his fanbase and to find new admirers of his work.  After the interview, Isaac and co-host Nate Chinen discuss the role of intuition in creative work.  In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Peter talks more about the events that led to his career revival.  Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675.   Podcast production by Cameron Drews.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you'll also be supporting the work we do here on Working. Sign up now at slate.com/workingplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, host Isaac Butler talks to musician Peter One, whose recent album Come Back to Me is his first in more than three decades. In 1985, he and musician Jess Sah Bi released the album Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, which was a big hit in Peter's home country of the Ivory Coast and bolstered his reputation around the world. In the interview, Peter discusses his songwriting process for Come Back to Me and explains what it's been like to re-connect with his fanbase and to find new admirers of his work.  After the interview, Isaac and co-host Nate Chinen discuss the role of intuition in creative work.  In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Peter talks more about the events that led to his career revival.  Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675.   Podcast production by Cameron Drews.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you'll also be supporting the work we do here on Working. Sign up now at slate.com/workingplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, host Isaac Butler talks to musician Peter One, whose recent album Come Back to Me is his first in more than three decades. In 1985, he and musician Jess Sah Bi released the album Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, which was a big hit in Peter's home country of the Ivory Coast and bolstered his reputation around the world. In the interview, Peter discusses his songwriting process for Come Back to Me and explains what it's been like to re-connect with his fanbase and to find new admirers of his work.  After the interview, Isaac and co-host Nate Chinen discuss the role of intuition in creative work.  In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Peter talks more about the events that led to his career revival.  Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675.   Podcast production by Cameron Drews.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you'll also be supporting the work we do here on Working. Sign up now at slate.com/workingplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It has been a long road for Peter One from his humble beginnings in Ivory Coast, where he grew up not far from the administrative capital, Abidjan, all the way to Nashville and the stage of the Grand Ole Opry and The Ryman.  Having picked up a guitar at 17, then joining up with a schoolmate and fellow musician, Jess Sah Bi, Peter released his first album in 1985, Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, and shortly thereafter became a national sensation in his home country, playing for the President of Ivory Coast and regaling massive stadium crowds with his brand of Afro-pop and Americana-influenced folk. Packing up that success in a suitcase full of dreams, Peter left for America, landing in New York City in the mid-90s where he began a new life there working as a nurse and eventually moved to Nashville, all the while quietly making plans to rebuild his music career -- and that he did!  With the re-release of "Garden" in 2018 thanks to the small indie label Awesome Tapes from Africa, and thanks to glowing reviews from both Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, Peter began to regain a level of popularity and begin his Second Act. Now, almost 40 years after his debut effort, Peter's sophomore album, Come Back to Me, has just been released on Verve Records. Triumphantly, but not unexpectedly, Peter eventually found himself playing big stages in the U.S. and even opening at The Ryman for Jason Isbell, who explained, "he's a natural performer; you feel like you're seeing someone who is a legendary singer."  This is an amazing comeback story, and one of patience, perseverance and determination; one that is loaded with Peter's lowkey and confident vibe, all the while infused with his firm belief in himself and what he knew to be true about the power of his own creative expression and what he has to offer the world. Join us on Roadcase while Peter talks about the long road from Ivory Coast to Nashville on this week's episode.  It's a great one!!For more info about Peter One:https://www.peteronemusic.com/For more information on Roadcase: https://linktr.ee/roadcasepod and https://www.roadcasepod.comContact: info@roadcasepod.comRoadcase theme music:  "Eugene (Instrumental)" by Waltzer

Peter One's story is incredible in itself. Peter is from Africa's Ivory Coat. In the 1980's he released an album that was very successful in Africa and had him touring the continent. In the 1990's he came to the United States to make music, but found himself in a much more stable career, nursing, here in central Tennessee. And in his mid-sixties he released his second album, “Come Back to Me” in May. But an incredible music story would be nothing if the music didn't back it up. “Come Back to Me” stands up on it's own without the story. It's a warm cup of coffee on a slow Sunday morning kind of record. There is a kindness in his voice that makes you realize why he made a profession out of caring for people. You can hear the softness of his soul. Webpost

Most people who go to prison eventually get out. As difficult an experience as that can be, re-entering society afterward can be just as challenging as life on the inside — and in some ways, more so. What is it like to rebuild a life after spending years, or even decades, behind bars? What resources are out there to help? We talk with people who have experienced life in prison about their hopes for themselves and others, and with representatives from two organizations working to support re-entry. But first, Nashville Public Radio's senior music writer Jewly Hight joins us to talk about Peter One, Nashville Artist of the Month over at our sister station WNXP. This episode was produced by Steve Haruch. Guests: Chantel Kimble, former insider Sedrick Booker, former insider Reisha Kidd, case management and community outreach at Tennessee Prison Outreach Ministry and Reentry Center Rico X, CEO of Project Return Related reading: Gov. Lee allows ‘truth in sentencing' bill to become law, but says he favors re-entry programs Hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans can't vote because of a felony conviction. They are challenging state law to have their voices heard. Tennessee's 51-year life sentences Special thanks to Rahim Buford, Kelsey Hall and Tasha A. F. Lemley.

Featuring music from Ivory Coast singer/songwriter Peter One, the new Bela Fleck / Zakir Hussain / Edgar Meyer / Rakesh Chaurasia collaboration, South African musician Bokani Dyer's new album + more!

Ivorian singer/songwriter Peter One released his first album, Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, with Jess Sah Bi in 1985. A 2018 reissue in the U.S turned it into something of a country-folk classic, and now the Nashville-based artist is out with his major label solo debut, Come Back To Me. One joins us to discuss the album and perform in the studio

Melissa Finkelstein is a New Jersey- based author, lawyer, and proud mom of three. Melissa has been writing and rhyming since she could form words. After graduating from Fordham Law, she began her career as a litigator in Manhattan. Because rhyming has always been her passion, she created a custom poetry business, Designer Rhymes so she could maintain that creative outlet. Once she had her son (7), and twin daughters (4), each with unique personalities and needs, the stars aligned for Melissa to publish her first children's book. Picky the Panda and the Tickly Tail is the first book in a series of three to come from author Melissa Finkelstein. Picky the Panda is a heartwarming story about a highly sensitive panda, which shares lessons of embracing sensory differences, practicing empathy, and recharging when overwhelmed. Picky the Panda was inspired by Melissa's daughter Skylar who has sensory processing disorder. Picky the Panda is now available on Amazon and in select children's bookstores. Enjoy!  In this episode Peter and Melissa discuss:   01:20 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 01:39 - Intro and welcome Melissa Finkelstein! 02:48 - So from Law to Children's books; tell us your story! 05:40 - Isn't it amazing what kids teach us. Are you finding that people are familiar with the topics in your book? 06:57 - What led to getting your daughter diagnosed? 09:30 - How old is she now and have all of your children read the book? 10:15 - Do you think that she's beginning to, (or will), benefit some from advances in awareness, research, etc? 11:18 - What's been the reaction and feedback to your book outside of the family? 12:00 - Is the book being used to explain to your daughter's classmates about Sensory Processing Disorder? 13:30 - On possessing supercharged senses 14:25 - How can people find more about you? Web: Everywhere fine books are sold Socials:  @melissafinkelsteinbooks on INSTA 14:45 - Thank you Melissa! 15:02 - 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!  15:41 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits. — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat: [00:00:34] Peter: Hey everyone, how's it going? My name is Peter Shankman and this is Faster Than Normal. I wanted to see if you expected me to say it, try to shake things up a little bit. Okay. It is a Thursday here in a very cold New York City. We have to say a fond farewell to fall, which lasted about. Two and a half days, and we are most certainly into winter. It's about 34 degrees outside right now, sunny, but cold as hell. So I am inside with a sleeping dog and with Melissa Finkelstein. She's actually in New Jersey, but we are talking today because Melissa is a New Jersey based author, lawyer, and proud mom of three. She's been writing and rhyming since she could form words. Her words, not mine. After graduating from Fordham Law, she began her career as a litigator in Manhattan. She created a custom poetry business called Designer Rhymes. So here she is as a litigator. Did you, I, I gotta ask you later, remind me to ask you if you actually rhymed during court cases. Cause that would've been awesome. Mm-hmm. . But why are we talking to her today? We're talking to her. She has a son who's seven and twin daughters who are four. They each have unique personality and needs. That's where she decided to publish her first book called her first Children's book called Picky the Panda and the Tickly Tale. It's a first book in a series of three and Picky The Panda is a heartwarming story about a highly sensitive panda who shares lessons of embracing sensory diff differences, practicing empathy and recharging when overwhelmed, and I think we can all relate to that Picky The Panda- on Amazon and everywhere you get children's books. Welcome Melissa. Good to have you.  [00:02:15] Melissa: Good morning. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for that intro [00:02:18] Peter: And just in case you ever think that nothing good comes out of divorce. Melissa came to me through my ex, let me get this right, my ex sister-in-law.  [00:02:32] Melissa: That's right.  [00:02:33] Peter: My ex-step sister-in-law. Right. [00:02:34] Melissa: I think you're stuck with her. I think she's just your sister-in-law still.  [00:02:37] Peter: Yeah. My sister-in-law, she reached out to me and said, you know, hey, have a guest for you. I'm like, I didn't even know you knew I had a podcast. So good to know . Anyway, it is great to meet you, Melissa. Thank you for taking the time. So from law to children's books, tell us your story!  [00:02:52] Melissa: Sure. So I've always been a writer and a rhymer, um, as I said, and that's really been my passion and that's kinda how I wound up in law. Um, I thought, you know, I'm really good at writing. I'm good at. Reading and problem solving. My skill sets seem to fit. I'm gonna go be a lawyer. It sounds pretty fancy and you know, I can have all this success and, um, I did have some fun and, you know, some fulfillment doing it, but I really missed like the joy and the whimsy of my childhood, to be honest. Um, so I toyed with the idea. Maybe I would be a preschool teacher. I know that couldn't be more opposite from being a litigator in Manhattan, but I really just wanted to use my creativity. My fun, you know, happy go lucky personality and doing like corporate insecurities litigation really didn't bring me that kind of joy. Um, as you might expect. And, you know, my life was all about disputes and I, I'm all about making peace. I'm like, what am I doing? Why am I fighting for a living? So this, this isn't bringing me joy anymore. Um, so all along, as you mentioned, while I was litigating, I had my little side gig, which just really was. You know, a passion project and bringing me happiness and it was creating custom poems for people for, you know, milestone occasions and that kind of thing. And I loved making others happy through my words. And so once I had my kids, I thought, you know, this is perfect. They're all so different. You know, they're, they learned so much from children's books and I think this would be a great outlet for me to use my words and. You know, I, I'm starting a series of three books, each of which are inspired by my three kids. So they're like my little muses at this point. Um, and in doing so, I'm focusing on what, you know, one of their biggest personality, um, pieces or struggles or challenges are to, you know, try to reach children like them. And in doing so, I wrote and published my first book, Picky The Panda and the Tickly Tale as you mentioned. And it is inspired by my little girl, Skyler, who has sensory processing disorder. And I didn't realize that by sharing her story, um, you know, I actually have become kind of a sensory processing disorder advocate and someone who is working. My butt off at this point to bring awareness to this condition and to what children like Skyler and um, like so many of your listeners might be experiencing. And that has been one of the most beautiful things to come from pivoting into my role as a children's book author.  [00:05:22] Peter: It's interesting because, you know, I mean, first of all, I had some nursery school teachers who definitely could have been litigators, but, but that's neither here nor there. Um, , it's interesting, you know, you made that switch. Kids do that. They, they, they have this uncanny ability to take whatever you think is your thing and just completely flip it on its head. Um, the concept of sensory processing disorder much like ADD, a ADHD executive function disorder. Not a lot is known. And so bringing, I, I'm assuming one of the reasons you wrote the book was to bring awareness to sensory process. Absolut, what are you finding, um, when you tell people about it, what percentage would you say understand, oh yeah, of course. I've heard of that. Or, or, you know, is it, I mean, are you, are you, is it a constant battle with the teachers? Is it, how, how, how are you finding that to be? [00:06:14] Melissa: It's becoming a much more wide spread. Um, you know, thing that people are aware of right now, but I think really the book shares this Panda's experience as being a highly sensitive, um, individual and what she goes through. And I think people are really relating to her experience more than they may have known or been aware of a diagnosis or a condition, um, called sensory processing disorder. So that's really been beneficial to me. Um, so yeah, I would say. I, I don't know. It's a smaller percentage than I would like for people to be aware of because it is a very real condition and you know, a very intense experience for those who go through it.  [00:06:57] Peter: How did you discover that your, how did you get your d daughter diagnosed? What was, what was sort of the key takeaways that, that made you say, Hey, we should look into this?  [00:07:06] Melissa: So she was in, so she's a twin. I'll start with that. So, um, I was constantly seeing her right next to her twin sister, and, you know, all kids are different obviously. So she was having a very different experience as a baby, a child than her twin sister was. So I think that helped make it more apparent to me that she was going through something and she was in an obvious discomfort and, um, just kind of unsettled a lot of the time. And, you know, I knew there wasn't anything medical going on with her because she, she was doing okay medically, we were bringing her to the pediatrician. Everything was fine, but I could just tell that she was uncomfortable. And my son at the time was in occupational therapy for a different issue that was going on. Um, and so I brought Skylar when she was one years old to this pediatric occupational therapist. Who I've come to know and trust and had her assessor and right away she said, this is something sensory going on. And to be honest, I was a doubter at first. Um, I didn't really know very much about sensory processing disorder or sensory sensitivity or any of that. And, um, I can tell you later that I've come to realize that I actually have a lot of sensory challenges myself, which I've learned through my daughter. So anyway, this pediatric, uh, occupational therapist evaluated her and right away she knew it was something sensory. Um, I watched the evaluation and I was like, you know, I don't know. I'm not really seeing it because she was, um, exposing to her to certain sensory, tactile, um, you know, things like sand and foam and, you know, different manipulatives that she could touch, and I thought she was fine. I'm like, you know, I see her getting her hands messy. But all along there were these little cues that were going on that she was able to pick up on. So just for one example, she showed me that while Skylar was, you know, digging into these Orbis, which are these like liquidy beads that children can play with, she was actually salivating and had like, Drool coming out of her mouth while she was doing it because her sensory system was just so overloaded, um, that while she was willing to do it, her system actually couldn't handle it. So that's just one example of how, you know, we came to be aware of it and then, you know, all the cues and clues just sort of lined up after that. And occupational therapy has been one of our greatest tools for her so far,  [00:09:22] Peter: I'm sure. How old is she now?  [00:09:24] Melissa: She's almost five. Okay.  [00:09:26] Peter: And has she, has she. Do you read the book to her? [00:09:30] Melissa: Yes. Yes. I, all my children have read the book and they love it. And my other two children wanna know when theirs are coming out and they are in the works. ,  [00:09:39] Peter: One of the things that I've discovered, um, uh, about sort of, ADD & ADHD when you're talking to kids about it, and so I'm assuming the same thing is, is truly is, it's all about how it's framed When I was growing. Um, you know, a ADD didn't exist. What existed was sit down, you disrupt in the class disease. And, and so I, kids our age, um, if they eventually got diagnosed had also had to overcome the stigma of 30, 40 years of being told they're broken. are you seeing with kids your daughter's age because of advances in research? Advances in, uh, awareness? They're not going through the whole concept of you're broken, they're not gonna have to heal from that. They can start looking at what they have as, you know, a difference as opposed to being broken.  [00:10:36] Melissa: Yeah, I really hope that's the case, and I agree with what you said. Um, and one of the purposes of this book is to frame heighten sensitivity or. Sensory challenges as a gift. And I know that that's something that you like to speak about, um, in terms of adhd and I absolutely agree with that. Um, so in terms of heightened sensitivity, you know, yes, it can present struggles and challenges, but it can also be your greatest gift. It can be, you know, the way you use your imagination and can be creative the way you are compassionate and empathetic and can show love. So it can really be a strength. And that's one of the things that I'm hoping to share with children who may feel like Skylar, um, as term in terms of their sensitivity,  [00:11:18] Peter: What's been the reaction or the, what's been the feedback to the book or the reaction to the book, um, outside of your family?  [00:11:25] Melissa: Oh, it's been wonderful. I've been hearing from so many families saying, you know, we have a little picky at home. Um, you know, my daughter like, wants to read it every day. She feels like Pickalina so it, that's been the best part of this. When I set out to become an author, I just wanted to use my words to make children and families happy and, you know, provide them with a good bedtime story. I actually didn't have these higher goals of, you know, bringing such awareness. and acceptance to children with differences, but like that has become the greatest gift. And the thing that I'm most proud of and most excited about in my journey so far. [00:12:01] Peter: Is the book being used, um, as sort of a way to explain to your daughter's, classmates about the different, because I imagine that much like ad although ADHD manifests in different ways, I imagine that sensory processing disorder must manifest itself in some ways that would make the kids go, what the heck's that all about? [00:12:20] Melissa: Absolutely. So there's a page in the book where Picky the Panda um, has become so overwhelmed that she's feeling dysregulated and she's hiding under the table in her classroom, and she is rocking and crying because she is so overwhelmed and her body feels such big feelings. And the students. Who are her animal friends gather around her and they yell Picky. It's ok because you know, they're just trying to be kind and they're like, come outta the table, everything's great. But for her, everything's not great at that moment. So that, you know, that doesn't work for Picky and it takes different strategies to get her to be able to recharge and calm her body down. So I think, you know, empathy and understanding and realizing that we are all different is definitely one of the biggest messages. So, yes, to make children, um, and classmates who encounter kids like Skyler or who have other differences to be accepting and empathetic.  [00:13:12] Peter: I like the concept of supercharged senses in the book because, you know, adhd, I consider it a superpower and I try to frame it as a superpower. So the concept of supercharged senses sort of seems very similar in the respect that you just have to, you know, if, if when I talk about adhd, I talk about the fact that. You know, most people are given Honda Accords for brains and we're given Lamborghini's, and so that's great, but you have to learn how to drive it, or you're gonna crash into a tree. You know, anyone could drive a Honda. You need training to drive a Lamborghini. And so I'm assuming it's the same premise with supercharged senses. I really love that term.  [00:13:46] Melissa: Yeah, thank you. And absolutely, I agree with that. Something we have to learn to adapt to and adjust to. But like I said, it, and like you always say, um, it can really be seen as one of our biggest gifts. Very cool. So my daughter can, she's, you know, the first one to smell something stinky or she can see something a mile away. She can hear that train coming, you know, 10 stops away. So, you know, she really does have supercharged senses, but it also can lead her to feel very overwhelmed and heightened at certain times. [00:14:15] Peter: Very cool. How can, so I'm assuming, yeah, it's available on Amazon, it's available everywhere. Um, how can people connect with you? Are you on Instagram? Are you on Facebook?  [00:14:24] Melissa: Yes. So I am on Instagram at Melissa Finkelstein books. Um, and that is a great place to follow me. I'll have information about Picky the Panda um, sensory processing awareness and about my forthcoming books, um, the next of which will be out in early 2023.  [00:14:42] Peter: Very, very cool. Melissa, thank you so much for taking time to be on Fast Than Normal today. I really, really appreciate it.  [00:14:47] Melissa: Thank you so much. It's been wonderful.  [00:14:49] Peter: Awesome guys. Check out the book. It is a lot of fun. Picky, I love, I love, I love the title Picky, the Panda and the Tickly Tale, talking about sensory processing disorder as supercharged senses. I love it. We back next week with another interview. This is Faster Than Normal. God, talk.. I mean fast- talk about fast, right? The entire year it's, it's almost Thanksgiving here next week in New York, it's gonna be Thanksgiving and I have absolutely no idea how that happened. And it's Christmas and it's New Year's and yeah, it's essentially summer already next year. So I dunno how we got there. But we will see you next week with another interview. Thank you so much for listening. Remember that neurodiversity is a gift, not a curse. And we are all on this train together. Talk to you guys soon. Stay tuned. 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!

“Increasing human freedom and economic freedom around the world is just a mission that I'm really passionate about,” says Peter Smith, Founder and CEO of Blockchain.com. That mission has remained at the heart of Blockchain since its inception in 2009. When still a graduate student at the London School of Economics, Peter became interested in the intersection of economy and technology, long before they were attached at the hip as they are now. Today, digital money is the greatest example of this intersection, and the Internet is the world's largest GDP.  One major misunderstanding that persists is how long it takes to adopt new technology. Success requires being in it for the long haul, and Peter says that too many entrepreneurs want too much too soon. He shares examples of companies that have finally found major success, but only after years of struggle and even ridicule.  Being a CEO comes with a great deal of responsibility, stress and fluctuation. Hear Peter discuss the best approach to dealing with it all, and why all entrepreneurs have something wrong with them.  Quotes: “It's actually a common misconception that people don't know about the image of Bitcoin, which is that there was a 10-year plus period of attempts to create digital cash.” (7:24-7:40 | Peter) “It's really important to us that we build tools that enable people to hold their assets themselves, but their own key. And you know, this is our original slogan, be your own bank.” (12:56-13:05 | Peter) “One of the things I miss most about early crypto, was that it was not a business. It was a mission.” (16:19-16:25 | Peter)  “When I got into crypto, it wasn't it wasn't to make money. It was like, wow, if we pull this off, really cool. We can build a financial system that lives on the internet that anyone can be part of, and I can honestly look back and say, I spent my early adult life doing that, no matter how it works out. It's like a regret minimization framework. I could spend the next five years reinventing some enterprise SAAS tool, which is probably more likely to be successful, especially in 2000, and exit a lot faster. It's really hard to exit crypto businesses. But when I look back on that life, I'm not going to be proud of that.” (19:45-20:40 | Peter) “You have to be very rooted in reality as a founder. And I think anytime you're not, anytime you're too optimistic, you're just waiting to get lucky. That's a very dangerous mode to be in. But you also have to realize as a founder that not everything is under your control.”  (33:14-33:29 | Peter) Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926    Connect with Peter Smith:Website: Blockchain.comTwitter: @justonemorepeterFacebook:@justonemorepeterInstagram:@justonemorepeter Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm  Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Peter Matthew Bauer - "Skulls" from the 2022 album Flowers on Fortune Tellers. With The Walkmen still on hiatus, multi-instrumentalist Peter Matthew Bauer continues their anthemic style of indie rock on his latest solo LP, Flowers. On today's Song of the Day, he displays the ways he's developed musically since the band took a break. "'Skulls' was inspired by a new style of guitar playing that I stumbled on," he told Under the Radar. "In all the years I'd made music, I'd never figured out a way to take a guitar solo before. I started using a distortion pedal and a space echo, playing these kind of waterfalling guitar riffs over some farfisa chords. It felt really loose and brought me a lot of joy. From there, I tried to write a very joyous melody to match it. There's a record by Peter One and Jess Sah Bi, it's a kind of 1980s country rock record from the Cote d'Ivoire. I feel like their style of melodies really inspired me throughout this album. Just the rhythm and the way they're both laid back but really letting go." Read the full story at KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the Sweet and Sour Variety Hour, the single greatest audio achievement I've ever created; a montage of my favourite renditions of the Corn Kid (young man named Tariq) that blew up on TikTok. What a beautiful world it is when we can collectively marvel at the cuteness of one child enjoying his corn. That's at the very end of the hour. Broadcasting to over 40 coastal communities on 101.7fm CHLY on Wednesday August 31st, 2022. It has the juice. The List: Spirit, The Other SongThe Mermen, The GoodbyeJess Sah Bi & Peter One, Clipo ClipoEtran de L'Air, Agrim AgadezDaniel Lanois, FrozenJr Thomas & The Volcanos, Burning FireExtra Golden, It's Not EasyOsees & Thee Oh Sees, Said the ShovelPhilip Glass/Kronos Quartet/Michael Riesman, Osamu's ThemeThe Petch Phin Thong Band, Soul Lam PlearnThundercat, Walkin'KAYTRANADA, At AllTikTok on the Radio (details to come) It's CORN montage (with young Tariq, @Schmoyoho and others)

Today we're catching up with Peter en route to Northern Italy where he and his girlfriend Gabriella have recently spent a few days away. We're allowed a candid peek into their serious relationship, and of course how ADHD plays it's part too. This is a good and fun one, enjoy! [Editors note]: It is not lost on their sound engineer that G&P are so ‘in the moment' that the windows of their vehicle remain down during the entirety of this recording. We'd like to say thank you for excusing the wind tunnel background ;-)  In this episode Peter and Gabriella discuss:   00:45 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 01:00 - Welcome to my wonderful girlfriend Gabriella Ribeiro! 01:44 - So why don't you tell us where we are, where we're heading, and what we just survived? 02:15 - Would you say it's more the journey or the destination? 04:00 - Why do you think my brain is doing what it's doing since we've been together; the good and the bad? 05:20 - The ADHD trouble w/ wanting the grandest of the very best, always for those you love 06:00 - We hate making mistakes and we assimilate to our surroundings in funny ways.. 08:00 - When you have ADHD you're your own worst critic, but by waaay much more than most.  09:00 - You can scroll to hear Gabriella's episode about Iceland's Evolving Seven Wonders here!  Ref: Gabby's photo @theexplorateur on INSTA 10:54 - So, [jokingly], is there anything good about dating someone with ADHD? 11:31 - A little about dopamine hits 12:00 - There is no accurate nor perfect matchmaking system for those of us with ADHD 13:33 - Some honest, important information for you about relationships, dear listener. 15:04 - One of Gabriella's greatest, if not most important moments with Peter 15:54 - One of the problems with ADHD that we're trying really, really hard to change is… 17:00 - How not to break-up in the Frankfurt airport 17:40 - A short story on ‘using your words' 19:26 - Gabby, what advice do you have for anyone listening to this podcast who's dating or about to date some with ADHD? 20:45 - How can people find more about you?  On the Web: The X8 Podcast also https://www.gabbyribeiro.com/about Socials: @theexplorateur on INSTA and Twitter and aka Explorateur Journeys on FB Buy her book “I'm Just Saying...: Real advice for real girls in a real world. From a real Mom” on Amazon  21:15 - Where are we going anyway? En route to Monterosso 21:16 - On trust 21:41 - Thank you! Guys, as always, we are here for you and we love the responses and the notes that we get from you so please continue to do that! Tell us who you want to hear on the podcast, we'd love to know.  Leave us a review on any of the places you get your podcasts, and if you ever need our help I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via 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!  22:27 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat:  Hello everyone Peter Shankman and welcome to another episode of Faster Than Normal. This one is interesting. I am recording this live from, um, a car, uh, in, uh, just outside Milan Italy, where I landed about feels like about three hours ago cause we. Uh, for two hours through immigration? No, it wasn't two hours felt like it, but, um, I wanted to have, I, I wanted this interview for a while. This is gonna be an interview with me and my wonderful girlfriend, Gabriella Ribeiro um, Gabby and I have been together now about three years. And, um, I don't know why I have no idea why she, why she continues to, to, to, to stay with me. Um, but she has, she has watched and, and, and in some cases, been a victim of my ADHD for the longest time and, um, I'm very fortunate that she's still here, but I thought it'd be interesting to talk to her and ask her no holds barred, sort of what it's like to, um, uh, love someone with the level of, of, of ADHD that I have. So Gabby welcome.  [00:01:42] Gabriella: Thank you. Good to be here.  [00:01:44] Peter: So why don't you tell us where we are and, and where we're heading and, and what we just survived?  [00:01:49] Gabriella: Oh, we survived a minor line, but to you, it was a big deal. And I understand  [00:01:53] Peter: it wasn't a minor line. It wasn't, it wasn't so much, that was a line. It was a line that kept, uh, we we'd be waiting in line. And then for some reason, 20 people would pass us cuz they were directed by someone else to go there. That's the part that frustrated me. [00:02:07] Gabriella: I understand that, but we pushed our way through. So actually we're going hiking for two days in Italy and that's kind of what we do, you know, we, we go on these short trips and that I think is, is what helps ground you. To talk about ADHD? I think that's one of the core things that I notice about you is that even though we're always on the move, you feel most grounded when we are actually are en route.  [00:02:26] Peter: I think a lot of that has to do with, well, the airplane, obviously being on a plane, you know, the, the, the place where you're most confined is really the most freeing for a lot of people. I think the, one of the things that you and I have in common is that we both enjoy the journey. The journey is the destination. As much as the destination is. You know, eight hours on a flight to, to Italy for two days of hiking. Most people think it's crazy, but it's perfect for us. It, it keeps us, uh, not only grounded, but it, it, it resets us. It resets us, resets our brain. Now that being said, travel, uh, is a huge part of your life. It's what you do for a living as well. Um, but it's also, you know, a huge part of what we do and we, how much we enjoy it and, and really, um, embrace, uh, the world as our playground. For lack of a better word. Now, there are times I think, and she's she has, she's laughing her ass off about this, but there are times when, when, um, for whatever reason, the, the, uh, travel goes awry or we wind up in certain situations. And I think one of the things that I've learned most from you is I don't have to control everything. You know, everyone I've traveled with previously, I, I was in charge, right. I was telling where we're going here, we're going this, we're doing that. And what I've learned is that when you're with someone who actually also knows what they're doing, it's okay to relinquish control. And I, I love that you're just, you're just it hysterics over here, cuz I'm sure you're thinking of many of those stories. So, so, you know, sh shared not only some of the funny stories, but also, um, sort of why you think my brain works the way it does when, when I sort of in the past have had that need to sort of take control for good or for bad. [00:04:08] Gabriella: Well, I think you've allowed yourself, like, you know, to, to enjoy and to be happy. I think, you know, and that's, that's a huge part and I think you've allowed, you've seen what can happen when somebody, when you trust somebody, maybe that's what it is. Maybe you trust me, maybe you trust, I don't know, expertise in, in what I do for a living, that kind of thing, but that's a huge thing. And I think that, you know, maybe it's part of your ADHD, but I don't think you trust easily. I think it takes a while. It took a while maybe for us to, and I think when you start to see things unfold the right way and you actually let yourself enjoy them, even if you didn't control them, you start to see things in a different way. That's what I think. But I think also one of the things I love most about you is that you always want things to be perfect for me. And sometimes things just, it, it's not even that they will be perfect for me, but in your eyes, they're not the perfect that you envision, whether we're getting lost in an airport or you're leading me out of security and back in, cause you're insisting, you know, one way and I actually know the other, but I don't fight with you. I just kind of let you do your thing. But I, I think it's, I think that's part of, of the way that your head works is that, you know, you, you have this design in your head and you want it to be like that, but you want it to be like that for me, most importantly, which is amazing, but I think it's, um, you know, sometimes. Have to just let things be, you know, there's air perfect.  [00:05:24] Peter: There's definitely an ADHD factor there in that we do. When you have ADHD, you want the grandest of grand, right? You want that, you know, and that, and that's one of the biggest problems is, is, you know, a random Tuesday could be the most incredible experience you've ever had when someone, you know, something shows up at your home or whatever, but it, it also. Um, it, it, you have to fight that sort of how to let other people take control sometimes .The incident she's referring to, we were in Frankfurt airport and, um, I was totally sure I knew the way to get to the lounge, uh, waiting for our connection. And it turns out I took us out of security. Then we had another 45 minute, wait to get back into security. And then I was just angry, but the irony was, I was angry at myself, right. I was angry at myself because I screwed up and I made the mistake and I hate that. Right. And, and of course I took it out on you. Um, but you know, it was one of those that was a learning moment for me. Like today we spent 45 minutes in line trying to get through immigration. And I just didn't say anything. I let you control it. I let you direct it. And we were there and eventually I wound up cursing at a cop, I think, in, in Italian, but, or Spanish, Spanish, whatever. Japanese, but that's one of the interesting things is also is that when you do travel with someone who's ADHD, they wanna immerse themselves in every aspect of where they are. Um, but their brains don't work as fast. So it is not uncommon to to see me go into a country and start speaking a completely different language than what is in the country. True. [00:06:48] Gabriella: Uh, true. And I think it's, it's part of like, I think you wanna impress me, you know, so you've got like a. A few like core words that you use no matter where we go, like in Iceland, you'll say Ola , you know, and that's, that's perfectly fine. But I think one of the, you know, I would say, you know, you said you wanted like no holds barred. One of the most frustrating things I think is when you get something wrong and we all do right. Cuz I get things wrong all the time, but you get really mad at me when you get something wrong. And I you've said that that's an ADHD thing. I don't know. I think we, you know, it's, it's been a, I. wouldn't say a challenge, but you know, it's something I've had to understand about you. I've had to come to understand. And I think it's, it's okay. You know, we all deal with it in different ways, but I noticed that that is a recurring, recurring thing. [00:07:33] Peter: Like I've been working on it. [00:07:34] Gabriella: You have been, that's what I'm saying, you know, you definitely have, but I do see, you know, it's, I, I see yourself frustration and something that is, is totally okay. On my side.  [00:07:46] Peter: One of the interesting things, I mean, there's a reason for that .When you're, when you are ADHD, you know, you do, like you said earlier, you're doing everything to be perfect. And when things aren't perfect because of something I've done, right. Because of a mistake I've made, I am my own worst critic by everyone is, but when you're heavy ADHD, you're your own worst critic by a fact of a million. Right. So you're sitting there and I'm like, okay. The one thing I had to do, I managed to screw up and I've ruined the whole, in my mind, the whole vacation's ruined, [00:08:09] Gabriella: but it's really not. [00:08:11] Peter: I, well, it's obviously not, but you know, in my mind, I didn't get this one thing right, now we have to wait 45 minutes to go through security again, I'm the worst. I'm terrible. She's gonna leave me. This whole thing. Right. And, and, and I think to. compensate or to make up for that. I just get angry. And, and unfortunately the person I direct the anger at is, is the person closest to me, which would be you. Um, it's obviously not, I'm obviously not angry at you for my mistake, you know, , I do remember thinking, uh, as we're waiting online to go back into security and in Frankfurt a couple years ago, I'm like, why didn't she stop me? This is totally her fault. Why didn't she stop? Totally. And, and the thing was you tried to, but then I'm like, no, I know where we're going. So you didn't really have a choice in the matter. Um, you know, and it's, I think it's also the, the, there is that aspect of wanting to impress the person that you love. Um, and when it doesn't work for whatever reason. Um, you, you, you, you, the ADHD sort of takes over, um, I'm remembering Iceland. Um, we had a chance to see the Northern lights you have understand in Iceland, they wake you up at one in the morning with like some alarm, like, like, like the Nazi's are coming to like steal the silver and, and, and you, they wake you up in the middle of the night and, and you have to rush out, get your clothes on, rush outside to see the Northern lights which prolly only last for like 12 seconds. And so I, I brought all my camera gear and everything like that, and I go outside and I, I can't get, I get nothing. I get absolutely just black images of, of black skies, nothing. Gab Pulls out our iPhone, like click and gets this, this like national geographic quality photo. I was so pissed it sucked. Tell, tell me how I handled it.  [00:09:42] Gabriella: You didn't handle it well, but it's okay. You know, I, I know you now. But again, you, you got really mad at me. You said, oh Gab, how nice, lovely shot on your iPhone 12? Or like, something like that. I don't know what the snarky voice and that's okay. Cuz, but I think also part of maybe it's the ADHD, but I think I've been seeing you definitely change on this is that sometimes you just have to get away from the phone. You know, use the phone a lot. I, I know that that's also part of, of being with you. You're on the phone a lot. Um, a lot of, you know, looking down, I think sometimes you have to let go of things and just enjoy, you know, like we did that. We went to South Africa speaking to travel and you were so in the moment and it was wonderful. You put down the phone, you were stopping taking pictures and watching lions and things like that. Sometimes you have to not always capture it, you know? So I think some of our best moments happen totally off of social media.  [00:10:36] Peter: What's something that... And by the way, I went out a couple hours later and tried to get their Northern lights again and totally failed again. Um,  [00:10:44] Gabriella: oh, and it got mad at me again. Yeah.  [00:10:46] Peter: what, you know, everyone's listening to this, like my God, why is she with him? And I, so, so that being said, tell, say, say a good thing about dating someone with ADHD.  [00:10:54] Gabriella: You asked, I just told you, I think you are so attentive. You want the world for me, you support me. You will give me opportunities. And I think that what I love about you is that you're just so creative. And I, I grew up with a prankster dad, right? So you spend your days. . Like either pranking me or, you know, you, you won't let one single day go by without making me smile or laugh. You send me things you think of me. And I think that's, that's maybe that's part of your focus too, is I love that you are so much focused on the relationship and you want it to work. And I, I love that about you. [00:11:31] Peter: Well, there's part of, part of ADHD is, is the constant quest for dopamine, right? And, and getting you to laugh or anyone to laugh and specifically the person you love; getting them to laugh is a dopamine hit. I'll get. dopamine and serotonin adrenaline out of that. And so, so as much as I enjoy doing it for you, cause I know you enjoy it. It's, it's a rush for me as well. Um, you know, the, the, one of the first things I remember one of the first pranks I ever played on you is I put, I put a roach on your suitcase. Yeah. Uh, at the airport. I don't know where we're going, but mal uh, Maldives, I put a, I put a roach your on your suitcase and, and I just re you know, you don't realize it's such a high, right. Watching you, no.  [00:12:10] Gabriella: oh yeah.. It's total high.  [00:12:11] Peter: You, you hated it. But, you know, [00:12:12] Gabriella: I loved, I loved it actually. And I said, Peter, you make me lose my shit every day. and that is, I would say one of the main reasons why I'm with you. [00:12:21] Peter: I mean, it's, it's not easy dating someone with ADHD without question and look, I mean, at the end of the day, your ADHD can only, only be blamed for so much. You have to take control of, of, of what you're doing. And I think I've, I've, I've been working on doing that. You know, my social acuity was never as strong to begin with, so I I've learned a lot, uh, from you and with you, but there's definitely, um, I couldn't, I don't think I could be with someone who couldn't accept a practical joke or something like that, just simply for the, the chemical high that gives me. Right. Makes me a better person. I mean, I, I prank you. I'm cracking up for the next six hours. And, and I'm the happiest person in the world, which is what you want. You wanna be with someone like that. So you definitely, you know, when you're looking to see who you're gonna date and your ADHD, think about the person who will understand, uh, the way your brain works and understand that, you know, they're not putting a roach in your bag or a rub. It was a rubber Roach, by the way, I should mention that not putting a rubber Roach in your bag to, uh, to annoy you or to bother you, but because they know if, if they. can make you laugh that's, that's happiness for them as well. It's, it's no different than when I was a kid and I would, I would speak out in class and make the kids laugh and, you know, get in trouble for it. I was trying to get dopamine to learn.  [00:13:33] Gabriella: I think when you date someone with ADHD, you also have to embrace that. There's certain things that, that they need to do. And you've always told me this, I need this. I need X in order to do Y and you've always been very straight up in the, you know, and since the beginning, I need to exercise in order to feel okay to get on a plane. I need to have a half hour to myself playing a game before I can go out to dinner or, you know, whatever it is and you have structure. And I think it's important that to have a, a partner, I would say, you know, from my vantage point and what you need to, to allow that, you know, and not to make too many demands on things and just say, okay, you know, yes, I know he needs this, or yes, we're we're out, but he needs to step away from a crowd for a half an hour. That's okay. You know, and I think, um, it's understanding all of that and embracing it that helps make a relationship successful.  [00:14:24] Peter: Think, I mean, I, I like to think there's, you know, the, the, the positives outweigh the negatives in that regard. Um,  [00:14:31] Gabriella: Absolutely!  [00:14:31] Peter: That, you know, we have, when we're together, we do have a blast, we have fun and, and we do support each other. I've always wanted a partner who would support me and who I could support as well. Um, you know, in life that's super couple as it were, um, that I think we are. Um, but yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't necessarily wish, uh, me on anyone. I think that know . I think that, that, you know, it takes a special person to understand someone with, with the kind of brain that, that, that faster than normal people have. [00:15:04] Gabriella: Well, one of my greatest moments with you and I'll show I'm gonna out you. Cause it was just so beautiful is that you, we were, I think we were in London. We went to go see a musical. We went to go see Back to The Future to and something happened where I think you, you, you took my watch charger overnight and I really needed to charge my watch, but you took it and you tried to convince me that my watch was already charged, which it wasn't, but you needed your watch chargeed, so that's fine. And then you sort of got on your knees the next day and said, why are you with me? I'm I'm ridiculous. I'm I'm this, like, you were beating yourself up so much, but to me it was just like, we share things. So it was, it was okay, but you, you always are questioning. And I, I, you know, just me to you, I wish that you wouldn't because to me, I think you're perfect and we're perfect. And we, we find our quirks. I think we find the, the beauty in our quirks. I have them too.  [00:15:54] Peter: One of the problems with ADHD is, and I'm hoping this is one of the things I'm trying to change with the podcast, with the book and everything and my activism is that, um, people with ADHD are told they're broken for years for their entire life. And it's when you come across someone who doesn't see you as broken, but sees you as, um, special and not like short but special, but special. Like, you know, as in, as in wow, this, this guy is really amazing. Um, it's hard to believe that. Right. And, and you're sure that every day you're gonna do something, you know, that is going to, they're just gonna be like, this is ridiculous. He's not special. He's a moron. What the hell am I with him for? Right. And, and despite your protestations, no, I I'm having fun with you. I'm enjoy that. It's, it's hard to, um, sometimes it's very hard to believe that, Or to allow yourself to believe that. And, and that's one of things, you know, the constant, my, my, my, my constant, why are you with me type thing, isn't like a, a ploy for sympathy or a ploy for, for a compliment. But rather it's, it's a real question, you know, it's, it's like, you know,  [00:16:59] Gabriella: I saw that, that day. I know [00:17:00] Peter: you've seen it many times. I mean, you've seen it, uh, you know, when we were waiting. To go back at the airport after I took us outta security, stuff like that, you know, it's like my God, why? And of course, because I'm mad at myself, cuz I know this is the moment you're totally gonna leave me. Right.  [00:17:13] Gabriella: I Yeah, in the middle of the Frankfurt airport,  [00:17:14] Peter: I wanted getting mad at you. Yes. Right? The, the classic favorite airport story ends with us finally getting back in and going to the lounge. And we had just gotten off a, a red eye flight to, to Europe. So we're waiting for a connection and we go to the lounge and, and they have showers and the, the woman looks at us. And she was so angry. She goes, do you want a, a suite, a shower suite for the both of you? And I go, I want my own suite . I took my own shower suite because I was so angry at myself and couldn't, and couldn't, uh, I had a, had a friend once who, who worked with, um, uh, high functioning, autistic children and like very young, like 2, 3, 4 years old. And her job was, she spent an entire year in school with them, trying to teach them to explain how they feel instead of hitting, instead of getting angry. And she tells this great story about, um, towards the end of the year, a kid was obviously upset and obviously angry at something. And she spent like five minutes saying, okay, Andrew, use your words, use your words. How do you feel? How . Are you feeling? What is the, what is the action that you're feeling right now? And he looked at her and he got really red in the face and he goes, I'm happy. right. And it's, it's literally how I feel. Sometimes it's like, I mean, like I'm so angry and I'm so happy that you're still with me.  [00:18:19] Gabriella: That is so you, but I think one of the things you don't notice so much about yourself is how, just how funny you make everything. And I think I'm just so I'm grateful because I that's, the person I needed is that every single thing is funny, no matter what, like we always find the humor and things. And I, I, I don't, I don't think that's an ADHD thing, um, necessarily, but I think, um, you know, I think the world should know if they haven't noticed that about you already. [00:18:45] Peter: It definitely comes from.  [00:18:46] Gabriella: You make everything fun.  [00:18:47] Peter: It definitely comes from our families and our, you know, I mean, my dad was, was all about using humor to deflect everything growing up and, and, and so was, I, you know, it's  [00:18:54] Gabriella: no, but you embrace it now. It's not as much of a deflection I, that I, I love when you, like, we were just laughing in this car right now until we were crying. Cuz you know, we rolled up and we're in Italy. So you should, you know, the driver's here and you should say chow and Peter goes Ola!! Like with the, with. The biggest sense of pride. Like the barrel chested, Ola, you know,  [00:19:11] Peter: but that's, that's classic. That's classic me, like, okay, I'm in Italy, let's for some reason speak Spanish and you know, but on the flip side, I once convinced you that I understood Japanese and got you going for like 20 minutes. Um, and you were totally convinced. I, I understood Japanese. So in the end, um, what do you want people are, who, who listen to this podcast? A lot of them are in relationships with people at ADHD and they, they they're frustrated. They don't understand, you know, why is this happening? What, what advice would you give someone who's who is either dating or about to date someone they with ADHD you're about take that plunge. What would you say to them?  [00:19:42] Gabriella: You have to open your mind and you have to talk, like, I think one of the things that saves us is that we talk about everything good or bad. And I think you have to be willing just, just like, you know, none, none of us are perfect. Right. And we all have, you have things that you have to adapt to about me that you necessarily don't like what you deal with. Um, you know, and I think that it's, it's a question of not getting so frustrated because what you think the person is doing is on the surface this is not what you believe it to be. Like. There are so many times where I see Peter frustrated, for example, and I immediately think it's me, he's got a problem with me. He's doing something, you know, whatever. And I think it's the understanding that you have to wrap your head around. It's not always about you and in a relationship that's really important. So you have to get to the core and also figure out what it is that helps them get through the day and embrace it, allow it, um, I hate that word, but you know what I mean? It just to let it be, yeah. And not get. so worried all the time that it's, that it's a reflection on you because that person needs to do that in order to be the best them for you. [00:20:44] Peter: Definitely. How can people find you? Cause you have actually a really interesting life apart from me, uh, even more so, even more interesting than, than just when you're with me. So how can people find you? What's your, what do you wanna get me Instagram or what.   [[ On the Web: The X8 Podcast also https://www.gabbyribeiro.com/about Socials: @theexplorateur on INSTA and Twitter Buy her book “I'm Just Saying...: Real advice for real girls in a real world. From a real mom” on Amazon ]] [00:20:54] Gabriella: Sure. I'm the @theexplorateur on Instagram um, I do a little bit of everything in tourism, but I,  [00:20:59] Peter: we host a podcast together as well.  [00:21:01] Gabriella: We do! Called the X8 and we'll be back in the fall with that.  [00:21:03] Peter: So that's a travel and a podcast where we travel around the world to beautiful locations and, and, and report on them. But awesome. Gabby, thank you so much. I mean, what the hell is she, you gonna do? We're in a car at 9:30' in the morning in the middle of Italy , trying, you know, driving to where are we going?  [00:21:15] Gabriella: uh, we're going to Monterosso  [00:21:16] Peter: Awesome! That's the other weird thing is that I have never been in a relationship before where I don't sometimes know, I don't know where we're going. Like there are two types people in the world. There's people who like plan everything out. And the people who wake up in the morning go, oh, what's the name of the hotel? Or, you know what airline? And, and it's, it's very strange to, to, to, to relinquish that control, but I'm starting to enjoy it. I'm starting to, I'm starting to like it. And, uh, at the end of the day, I'm I still have the, I still have the control over the airline. So that's, that's my thing. She can, Gabby can handle all the hotels. Guys thank you for listening, Gab thank you for taking the time to do this. Um, I'm at Peter, Shankman all the socials. As you guys know, we're at faster normal, um, you can file Instagram, Twitter everywhere. If you like what you hear, uh, drop us a review. If you have guests that you think might benefit from being on the podcast, let us know. We have a big shout out to Steven Byrom, our producer, who is gonna be so angry at me because I'm just recording the string in an iPhone 20 minutes of car sound. He's gonna have to delete, uh, he's gonna, he's gonna be, he's gonna be it's he's it's not gonna be good. He's gonna need therapy from this stuff! Steven, we love you. Thank you. [Love you too man! Hope this was at least legible!]  Opening, uh, words performed by Bernie Bernie Wagenblast. Opening and closing theme composed by Steven Byrom, [he says thank you too], and we will see you guys next week with another interview. Thank you so much for listening. Stay safe. Stay well 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!

We're celebrating the new year, by talking about the last one! This week on the podcast we discuss Spider-Man: No Way Home in our second week of our look back at 2021 month! All while drinking this month's cleverly named cocktail, New Year, New Drink!!!  Look out for new episodes every Monday, follow @poppourreview for all updates, click around  our website www.poppourreview.com, and for drink recipes and exclusive content become a member of our Patreon at patreon.com/poppourreview !!! We do not own the rights to any audio clips used in the podcast.

5:35 - Rich: I think we can all agree now that it's essential to our planet. We know there's a problem that we have to fix and the technology side is just a massive opportunity. As humans we're good at innovating when we have to, and now we have to.   11:00 - Peter: There is the technology mantra of "move fast and break things" but in cleantech you don't necessarily want to actually have incumbents doing that because in the cleantech industry entrepreneurs are working with technologies and systems that quite literally keep the lights on. So we really need to educate our technology communities so they understand that the customers they are working with are often very risk-averse customers coming up against very disruptive technology. 12:30 - Peter: I wish investors were more understanding of some of the challenges cleantech companies are up against. This friend of mine said to me, 'Well Peter, to me they've got long development cycles, long sales cycles, lumpy revenue, I wanna run in the other direction'. So I'm looking forward to our investors embracing some of the unique characteristics of cleantech. But customers are facing disruption. So my hope is that customers become aware of that and embrace it. 13:30 - Peter: One way to make investors feel more attracted to cleantech is  through some de-risking mechanisms. So one thing we promote at Alacrity is pilot funding. Once investors or clients see a project that has been successful in the field the stakeholders then see that a lot of the risk has been removed from the situation. We also really need to help the companies scale up. Very few cleantech solutions are very stand-alone, so there are often multiple actors who need to be coordinated. 14:50 - Cec: A lot of costs over the years have come down as more actors enter cleantech you get economies of scale. We're also looking for opportunities in industries that we hadn't really previously thought of bringing cleantech into, so there are more solutions being offered by cleantech. And as each segment of the industry grows economies of scale are bringing costs down and making cleantech more competitive with 'old-tech'.16:20 - Rich: There was a lot of scar tissue left in the investment community after the pain that many early cleantech investors experienced in the early aughts as the sector really came into being. So when I started working more seriously in cleantech in 2015/2016 none of the investors really wanted to talk about it. But that has really changed. It still is predominantly courageous investors taking the big risks, but I think if we look back on this time we'll see that there were some amazing returns achieved. 18:30 - Burak: This plastic fund that we helped implement at the start of this year really helped to create commercial value especially in small communities. And that is really one of the key benefits of cleantech and of our program. The capacity it has to generate really high value jobs across geographic and economic regions.22:20 - Peter: In the mid-2000s there was the Tech Wreck and a lot of investors flooded to cleantech. But cleantech generally speaking turned out to be much more complicated to implement than those investors thought. It turns our that integration and adoption for cleantech is quite difficult. 24:50 - Rich: Cleantech is actually very measurable. So you can't fake it in cleantech and that's something people need to get over a bit. It's also important that people have ways to demonstrate and pilot their technology using funding, especially government funding, because if you don't do it in real life in the real environment then you'll always lack credibility. So you need to see these technologies and projects actually working, especially the bigger customers. They can't just depend on what worked in another area of the world.26:50 - Peter: The biggest threat to cleantech is execution risk. It's back to that customer unhappiness. These are conservative customers and if you stumble, they're not coming back. 28:50 - Rich: The biggest threat to cleantech is the status quo. If people aren't forced to make changes sometimes they don't. But if there's continued risk aversion and lack of funding at an investor level and government level then that's the biggest threat to the industry growing in a meaningful way.31:30 - Cec: Really understanding their product and their market. Really to succeed you need to spend more time up front really understanding who your early adopters are. How you're going to get your product to market to prove and showcase what you do.33:50 - Peter: The vast majority of customers are not easy adopters. They need to have an easy path to adoption.33:30 - Rich: I would say that commercialization, marketing and sales are the biggest issues. And the things that we need to get right more often in order to succeed. Part of that is because a lot of these cleantech companies are really heavy technology, heavy science companies. But you need to go and find that help and bring in those skills. If 40% or 50% of an organization isn't related to sales and marketing, if 90% of your team is still working on the R&D side then you can assume that you're not going to be growing revenue in a meaningful way. So many companies have amazing technology but it doesn't go anywhere if they aren't able to build meaningful revenue. So I can't say enough how important it is to focus on sales and revenue.38:25 - Burak: Firstly, you really need to get intercultural communication right, especially when you're looking to start selling on the international stage. Secondly, you need to work on your communication of your value proposition, and thirdly, develop a good sales cycle so you know what customers are asking for. And don't fall in love with your own idea/solution.

Gladson Peter is India's first and only one man band. He plays over 40 musical instruments and can play upto 14 instruments simultaneously. Listen in as he shares his journey with us on how he navigated an unexpected health diagnosis and how God eventually led him to the dream that He had downloaded in his heart when he was just a child.

In our final message on 2 Peter, we'll discover that the end is near, and judgment is coming. How we will stand before the judgment seat is impacted on how we live in the present. Don't buy into the lies that are being told around the world that “You've got all the time you need. So, live it up, and satisfy your desires, there's plenty of time before Christ comes again, if He's really coming.” Instead, you ought to live a life of holiness, righteousness and peace.

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Episode 8 of Campfire Songs.  Featuring The Swimming Pool Q's, Terrible Truths, The Regents, Roky Erickson, Macha, Sam Baker, Takka Takka, Jess Sah Bi & Peter One.

Peter Conti is the founder of Realty-Estate-101, an internet training program that provides straightforward step-by-step guidance for commercial real estate investors. He's the co-author of Commercial Real Estate For Dummies and currently lives in beautiful Chesapeake Bay in Annapolis, Maryland. Peter Conti went from an auto mechanic to a self-made millionaire in 3.5 years by using his creative methods to profit from both residential and commercial real estate.Peter's innovative investing strategies have made it possible for thousands of people all across the world to make the transition into the exciting world of commercial real estate. He currently encourages and guides people who want to profit from real estate but who have limited time to find or manage real estate deals. He is also focusing on commercial lease options which involve acquiring commercial property using owner carry and commercial master lease terms combined with an assignment contract to create sizable up-front paydays.Listen in as they discuss:The commercial real estate modelFinancing component of commercial real estateThe lease option methodRisk factors associated with commercial real estateAnd, more!TIP OF THE WEEKMark: My tip of the week is the best tip of the week, Peter has been kind and generous enough to offer us a free book. Just go to petersfreebook.com, read the book and start learning about these options and how you can profit from it.Scott: Check out this website called Elocance. What it does is it takes your reading list, it turns whatever you want to read into a podcast like an audio version of it.Peter: One of the skills that I teach my students and has been very helpful to me in my 30 years of investing is being able to create a connection either with brokers or property owners, to quickly create rapport. There's a book available called Instant Rapport by Michael Brooks, I believe it's still available on Amazon. Great little study guide on how to get up speed on creating rapport quickly. The other thing is, right now is an amazing time to get going investing in Real Estate whether in commercial properties or investing in land. Let's face it when you're in quarantine and you're home you got a lot of time to focus on something new. People right now are at home and available to answer emails and phone, it's easy to get hold of people. Get out there, pick a strategy or method of teacher and start taking some steps.Isn't it time to create passive income so you can work where you want, when you want and with whomever you want?

Playing pinball with the Truth. Gavin begins a series exploring the beauty and accessibility of the disciple making movement.

One-on-Ones with Jesus, week 3

I've met Rebecca (Linkedin) at the smind conference in Ljubljana Slovenia and I really enjoyed her presentation. She and the company she works for, look at e-commerce websites and learn from what works and what does not work (if nothing else, go and check out the FREE blog). The presentation has a couple of great ideas on how to minimize checkout abandonment. Here is the link for the mobile cheat sheet. The transcript of the podcast: Rebecca: 23% of users in one of our studies cited that a too long or complicated checkout process was a reason for abandoning the site. [music] Peter Mesarec: This is Time4Marketing, the marketing podcast that will tell you everything you've missed when you didn't attend the marketing conference. Hello, and welcome to the Time4Marketing Podcast, the podcast that brings you the best speakers from marketing conferences all around the world. My name is Peter and I'll be your host today for the episode number 29 as we're slowly ending the 2019 year, the second year of this podcast. Before I introduce you to an excellent guest that we have tonight, please go and subscribe to the podcast if you like it, and of course, rate the podcast in your favorite podcast listening app. We now have a website, it's called time4marketing.com. The number four is a number. That sounds very logical. On the web page, you can also subscribe to the newsletter so we'd send you interesting information about the podcast and marketing conference. Now, we go to our today's guests. We have with us-, I'm very glad to have Rebecca Hugo. Hello. Rebecca Hugo: Hello. Thank you for having me, Peter. Peter: Very glad that you are here today. I saw you speaking at the Slovenian Conference e-Commerce Day sMind conference. You are the UX auditor at Baymard Institute. What is it, what do you do and what do you do there? Rebecca: Baymard Institute are an independent usability research company. We specialize in helping other sites improve their e-commerce givings to their users. We do all of independent research. From there, we distill a lot of our findings. We found, I think it's 11,000 I think is our current number of individual issues that all users have come across when they're testing various sites across all industries. From there, we distill those down into-- We're over 750 guidelines at the moment. The number's still growing because we have a couple of research studies on at the moment. Those guidelines look to the design patterns that either positively or negatively are reacted to by the user. That is anything from a product detail page layout, to how filtering options are presented to the user, to how the checkout is or is not optimized, depending on the site. From there, my role as a UX auditor, our clients will come to us and say, "Could you look at our site?" Basically orders us, "Let us know what we are or are not doing well." I suppose it's almost like taking your car in for a service. It's, "Your oil is a little bit low, your windscreen wipers need tightening up, but the leather in your seats are fantastic." We'll do a similar thing with the order. It can be anything from just looking at a single section, doing the entire site, or even doing prototypes. It gets really quite exciting in an odd way, looking at how different industries present essentially the exact same information to their users and also the nuances thereof in those instances to really create a great experience for that user. Peter: I do a lot of SEO audits. When I begin my SEO audit, there's always the one thing that I'm going to go and check if it's done right, that's the canonicals and the language alternates. When you start such an audit, you probably have a workflow that you have to go through, but what is the one thing that you think that companies are forgetting about and shouldn't be forgetting about? Rebecca: That is a ridiculously hard question, Peter. [chuckles] It's so specific. Because depending on the industry for a start, so if you're looking at a gifting website, one of the core aspects of that is going to be wildly different from a heavy text-back website or anything. For example, selling a laptop or even a fridge, mass merchants and so on. One thing we can fairly consistently find that is still an issue with all the sites that we look at is their search. Their search is predominantly quite poor. That's anything from the varying types of search, your exact search, your feature search, you have slang, you have abbreviation, you've got thematic. All of these aspects across the board, the search for majority of e-commerce sites is still surprisingly weak. There are a great deal of users who just prefer to use search. Knowing that if your search is particularly weak, then not having a particularly good category taxonomy to back that up, it can cause just so many issues for that user. It's still consistently interesting to find and look at what the search landscape looks across the majority of sites regardless of industry. Peter: One of the SEOs on my LinkedIn feed was showing a couple of examples of, I believe UK e-commerce retailers who had no results when he searched for Black Friday on Friday. It seems that search is something that people are forgetting about or just using the default settings over whatever their search is. This is something that we often see. Very right. I've mentioned that I've invited you for this podcast because you had a very interesting presentation at the Slovenian sMind Conference. That was called the 6 Findings from Testing the World’s Leading Checkout Flows. Before we go to your presentation, how is-- That's a weird question because I live in Ljubljana. How was Ljubljana and how was the conference for you? Rebecca: Ljubljana was-- It was beautiful. I sadly didn't get as much an opportunity as probably deserving of such a beautiful city to really look around it. One of the representatives from e-commerce sMind was so-- Sorry. e-commerce-- I can't even say it now. Shopper's Mind e-Commerce Day was kind enough to actually take myself and another speaker around a little bit one of the evenings, so we did get to see some parts of it. It's such a beautiful city. I would really like to visit again. The day itself was great. The atmosphere was fantastic. Everyone was so kind. It was wonderful having just people being comfortable enough to come to you for feedback for a start. You never know how these go unless someone actually tells you exactly what they have or have not been able to take away, any improvements and so on. It was a lovely crowd. It was really well put together. It's a real testament to what Ljubljana, Slovenia, and obviously the Croatia side of things as well and what the company has been putting together. I felt very touched to be able to have the opportunity to come and speak. Peter: Excellent. All right. Let's go to your presentation. 6 Findings from Testing the World’s Leading Checkout Flows. Rebecca, here are your five minutes. Rebecca: Okay. Obviously, the checkout is such an integral part of any e-commerce store. If you can't purchase online, it's not really e-commerce. Having a robust checkout that's really going to perform well for a user is so important. What we really found over a lot of our data studies was that 70% of users who put something in their cart would end up abandoning it. That's two-thirds of users we're going through all the trouble of finding a product that they liked, added it to their cart, but they'd still ultimately not purchase it. If you took away all of those users who were simply not ready to purchase, which is completely fair, there's only so much that a site can do about that, but when you look at the reasons that were left, so many of them could be improved with relatively simple checkout optimization. Some of the core things that we were particularly interested in, one of which is checkout length. 23% of users in one of our studies cited that a too long or complicated checkout process was a reason for abandoning the site during a checkout process during their checkout flow. Our most recent 2019 checkout UX benchmark, which is something that Baymard does, we look at 60 top-grossing US and European sites and use those to take a look at what the landscape looks like for e-commerce UX, we found that the average e-commerce site in 2019 has 12.8 form fields within their checkout flow. This may not seem like a lot, but considering you could actually essentially half that number, sites could get that number down to six to eight form fields for a guest checkout. 12.8 is actually quite a lot. There's such a disproportionate amount of time that users will spend with any open-text form field. Increasing time, causing issues, causing errors, that being able to minimize the amount of form fields, essentially the amount of tasks a user has to do can really create an improved performance and improve experience for the user. The other thing that we found really quite fascinating, at least I know that I did, was the perception of site security. Because the perception of site security can be just as, if not even more impactful than the actual site security that is present. 17% of users in the same survey, they abandon the checkout process because they just didn't trust the site with their card information. Users, we found we're believing that part of a page, so if you feel the box and area in [unintelligible 00:10:46] were more secure than other parts. Even though from a technical standpoint this doesn't make sense, the page is either encrypted or not, the fact that we were aware of this fact from our users, we can then leverage this misconception. Creating a visual robustness, leveraging the importance of site seals, and also what sites seals are more beneficial. A fascinating thing, we've found that some large companies were not given the same weight as just a simple padlock because that's something that users recognize. Knowing about these particular instances and how users react to that information can be so powerful in how we're able to create a comforting and a secure experience, as well as a good experience for our users. Finally, just a simple factor of mobile keyboard optimization. There are still issues across so many sites that are simply just not optimizing the mobile keyboard for their users during the checkout, and with the occasional even dire consequence. In fact, granted that dire is quite a drastic term, but that is exactly what it feels like for a user who doesn't receive their package. Anything from it needing to be for a big event or a wedding or a birthday, not receiving something that you're so looking forward to can be really quite detrimental. We're finding that even something as simple as not disabling the autocorrect feature for fields that don't benefit from it, name or address fields, that can result in the dire consequence of not receiving a package. It's something essentially simple. Our data is showing that 79% of mobile sites are not disabling autocorrect for those fields. On top of that, it's just needless friction from not finding or utilizing the optimized keyboards for email addresses, telephone numbers, credit cards and so on, the alphanumeric, numberic, the @ symbol and so on. Even on top of that, doing it consistently. 25% of mobile sites weren't consistently evoking optimized keyboard. For example, credit card came out with numeric, fine. As soon as you entered security code, it'd go back to alpha. Again, it just really comes down to this needless friction. When the companies really pay attention to that and how you can alleviate it, it can just make such a difference to the site. Peter: Thank you. I have a couple of questions coming here. I've listened to your presentation and the idea of thinking about the number of fields and the checkout compared to the idea of the number of steps for the checkout was something that was enlightening for me. I was like, "How did I ever not think about that?" Of course, I went home and started minimizing the number of fields on my website. I came down to, I think what was six fields. The question that I had then while watching the data coming in was, "Did I go too far?" I would like to hear your thoughts about that. I feel that customers are a bit used to having a bit bigger number of fields where the post number and the city are two different fields, and maybe name and surname are two different fields. I somehow felt that people are now misunderstanding my checkout fields. Is this something that you also see in your tests? Rebecca: Things like it will come up occasionally. It's part of the reason for a good placeholder text, good tooltips. Whenever a user does encounter something, not unusual, but something they're not necessarily used to, it can immediately be a little bit jarring. Microcopy is such an important aspect, especially within the checkout. I think a lot of sites don't necessarily pay attention to their microcopy the way that they should. There's a reason why UX copywriters are becoming such a big career choice within our industry. I think it's so important and something that's just not paid attention to the way that it should. There are multiple reasons for anything, [chuckles] sadly. If users are used to seeing 12, suddenly seeing 6, it can be jarring. That's not to say that it's a bad experience because it's jarring, it's just a new experience. There will always be a little bit of habituation time, but it's knowing that what you're able to actually offer the user is that improved experience. Bolstering the microcopy, bolstering the placeholder text, bolstering the tooltips if appropriate. It's also just determining what is actually useful for your particular site. If your site is niche in any way, six to eight is the average for "a typical e-commerce site". It's ensuring that you don't overly assume anything to be typical. If you're a gift predominant site, then changing your address fields or matching your billing to shipping address by default isn't immediately beneficial. If you've got something very important for an industrial site, then yes, you might need company details over just having a standard address. That is the nature of heuristics, heuristics are a rule of thumb. We are finding that, more often than not, these are the best situations to be and these are the best patterns to follow. However, never ignore the niche that you're in if you happen to be in a niche. Peter: The workflow is go and check out the expert findings that you have on your website, then change it on your website, but still measure the impact and see if it can be directly used on your website or not. Rebecca: Yes, in a great deal. Not only look at we're suggesting but why we're suggesting it. With all of our data, we try and back up with what the issue is, why it is an issue, so what we're seeing during all of our research to lead us to the conclusion that X is happening, therefore implement Y should alleviate. Because the other side of it, and it's something that we will do during auditing is mark something as issue resolved. The site may not necessarily be doing what we have specifically recommended, but they are circumventing the issue through another implementation. It's bearing that level in mind as well, whether what we're suggesting of the 774, 767? We'll eventually keep track of that number. There will be a great deal of these that just simply won't be applicable to your industry or to your site. There's always going to be a little bit of a pinch of salt because that's the nature of heuristics, but that's not to say don't pay attention to what we have found. Peter: Especially in e-commerce sites that feel that search engine optimization is important for them, we can usually see people starting to add category descriptions to their category landing pages. Whenever people start adding that to their e-commerce sites, the question comes up, should we have content above the products or should we have the content below the product? Should we have the content hidden and "read more" button or should we not? Do have any data on how that content can influence people coming to the category pages? Rebecca: Our data at the moment and our research findings, we don't have anything specific with category descriptions. What we do find is what that page looks like. For example, the filters on the actual main list are out of line, or if something looks too much like an advertisement or a promotion rather than actual benefit or actual product, it can mislead or distract users the same way that banner blindness will just mean that they pay absolutely no attention to it. With a lot of the information, and UX can often stand not in the way of SEO, but they're not always aligned with their needs quite often, that it's very important to essentially just understand what is the user needing to get from that page. Anything that a site therefore needs to do from a company perspective, is it stopping that user being able to do the fundamental task that they're looking for? If that is needing to filter and needing to understand the amount of products on a page, needing to create a visual comparison against products. Whatever the size or company needs to add from, again, a company perspective, as long as it doesn't stop the user being able to complete their task, then it really is a design preference. Anything too large that pushes down the content of the page-- Because many users, they're are not adverse to scrolling when they've determined a purpose, so going through, say 100 products on a visual push site like apparel, that's fine. Users are quite accustomed to that. If it's taking them a disproportionate amount of time to understand what the page is actually doing or selling them, then that could be off-putting. If that category description is particularly long and showing that above the fold, then that could possibly-- Again, we don't have any hardcore data to say it will, but that could pause the user or hinder the user from being able to understand exactly what it is and what is the page they've landed on. Peter: All right. You spoke briefly about the mobile keyword optimization. I'll just add the link to you. If I remember correctly, you have a page where you gave examples of how mobile fields should be optimized on your Baymard website, is that right? Rebecca: Yes, we do. It's on our little cheat sheet. You can just find all of the code snippets and the attributes to establish and actually implement the best way to optimize these keywords. Some of them like card filled for example, they don't have a direct code phrase as it were to trigger numeric, you have to do it slightly more manually. Peter: All right. Excellent. Rebecca, I think that's it. Where can people find you? Do you have conference plans? What are the social networks where people can find you and your company? Rebecca: You can find us on LinkedIn. You can search for Baymard Institute and you can search for myself, Rebecca Hugo on LinkedIn if that's your prerogative. At the moment, we don't have any specific conference plans for Europe, but if you are interested in getting any of us in the company to speak, please don't hesitate to be in contact. If not, we've also got Twitter. Baymard Institute, we're also on Twitter. We love a bit of a chat. You're more than welcome to contact us there and we look forward to speaking with anyone. Peter: All right. Excellent. Rebecca, thank you very much for being on the podcast and talking about the UX of e-shops. Next time you're in Ljubljana, we definitely can meet and [inaudible 00:22:31]. Rebecca: Fantastic. Thank you so much for having me today, Peter. Peter: Have a great day. Rebecca: You, too. Peter: Bye.

On the October 4, 2019 episode of /Film Daily, /Film editor-in-chief Peter Sciretta is joined by /Film managing editor Jacob Hall and writer Chris Evangelista to debate Martin Scorsese's recent comments about superhero movies.   The Topic: Martin Scorsese Doesn't Like Superhero Movies and the Internet is Really Mad About It While doing press for The Irishman, Martin Scorsese said the following about superhero movies: “I don't see them. I tried, you know? But that's not cinema. Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn't the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being."   The Question: Is Martin Scorsese belittling superhero movies and those who make and enjoy them?   The Rules: Only one person can speak at a time. When the speaker is out of time, they must stop talking. Personal insults are not allowed! We are all going to be friends when this is over.   Opening Statements: Peter (One minute) Chris (One minute)   Round One: Peter: Scorsese is insulting the thousands of people who work to create this form of art. (Two minutes) Chris responds (One minute)   Round Two: Chris: Scorsese isn't even saying superhero movies are bad. (Two minutes) Peter responds (One minute)   Round Three: Peter: Scorsese's remarks come from a place of ignorance, not informed intelligence (Two minutes) Chris responds (One minute)   Round Four: Chris: The comparison to theme park rides is actually apt. (Two minutes) Peter responds (One minute)   Closing Statements:  Chris (One minute) Peter (One minute)   Other Articles Mentioned:   All the other stuff you need to know: You can find more about all the stories we mentioned on today's show at slashfilm.com, and linked inside the show notes. /Film Daily is published every weekday, bringing you the most exciting news from the world of movies and television as well as deeper dives into the great features from slashfilm.com.  You can subscribe to /Film Daily on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the popular podcast apps (RSS).  Send your feedback, questions, comments and concerns to us at peter@slashfilm.com. Please leave your name and general geographic location in case we mention the e-mail on the air. Please rate and review the podcast on iTunes, tell your friends and spread the word!  Thanks to Sam Hume for our logo.

Another speaker from the Mozon conference, Paul Shapiro is the person behind one of the most important SO subreddits, /r/bigSEO, he has a very unique blog on Search Wilderness and runs a Technical SEO conference. Here are his slides from the presentation, and you should go and check out his blog post, where you can find all the code that he talks about in the presentation. Redefining Technical SEO, #MozCon 2019 by Paul Shapiro from Paul Shapiro Here is the transcript of the podcast: Paul Shapiro: There are four types of technical SEO. [music] Peter Mesarec: This is Time for Marketing, the marketing podcast that will tell you everything you've missed when you didn't attend the marketing conference. [music] Peter: Hello and welcome to the Time for Marketing, the podcast that brings you all of the information from the marketing conferences that you have missed or were not able to attend. This is episode number 23. We are big into our second year of podcasting. My name is still, from the beginning to the end, Peter and I'm your host for the podcast. If you love the podcast, of course, go and subscribe. If you would like to be on our newsletter or mailing list, you can find it on our website timeformarketing.com. All of that just to start off because we have to go directly into our content. We have a great guest here with us today. Paul Shapiro, hello and welcome to the podcast. Paul: Hi, Peter. Thanks for having me. Peter: Paul, you live in or around New York. How is living in one of the best, biggest, and other great things, cities in the world? Paul: It is the best. It's the best to be living in the best city. [chuckles] Actually, I just moved from Boston although I'm from the area originally. It's nice to be home. Peter: Do you people from New York regularly take a stroll down the-- I just forgot the name of the giant park that you have down there. Paul: Central Park. Peter: Do you just daily go there or is that another thing and we just only feel that Hollywood movies show that to us? Paul: It's not that close to where I am currently. Growing up as a child, I used to always go to Central Park. It was definitely a place where I spent a lot of time. New Yorkers certainly go to Central Park and it's been fine there. Peter: One of the best things that I've thought about New York is that you are in probably the greatest metropolitan area, but you can take the subway, Paul, where you call the local train directly to the beach and you can go swimming. It's very close and this is a really great thing. Not a lot of big cities have things like that. Paul: That's true. I think I probably take enough for granted, but it is nice. Peter: Paul, right now, people probably know you. You've done a lot of great things on the internet, especially people that like to work on and about SEO. There is a nice quote they found about you on the internet. It says, "In a world filled with shitty blog posts that rehash the same info in different ways, Paul's articles are always a treat to read." You are the partner and head of SEO of the catalyst agency and you are the founder of the big SEO subreddit. Tell us a bit more about how you got into SEO and why do you think that SEO is if you do think that SEO is the best channel in the world. Paul: I got into SEO by no spectacular means. I think a lot of people in the industry have much more impressive stories than I do. It was the job that I got into right after university. I'd graduated, had a mild interest in marketing, and actually was looking to get into social media marketing and couldn't find any jobs. At least no companies were willing to hire me for such a role. It just so happened that in my formative years in high school and earlier, instead of working a typical retail job or McDonald's, I did freelance web design and development. I didn't even know what SEO was when I graduated, but I applied to one SEO job and I got that one. I was educated afterwards why it was such a great fit for me. I've been working in the industry ever since. Peter: All right. You are known for a separated big SEO. It has become one of the important parts of where people go to find SEO-related questions. Do you think that reddit as a community has an added value compared to other maybe Slack communities or Telegram communities or even just websites? Paul: Yes. It fills an interesting need. I'm on a lot of Slack communities and private chat rooms. They're great because you're only talking to certain people. It's completely private. That information is not going to be shared around. It serves its purpose and then there's much more public channels and there is reddit, which is in between. It is both a public platform. People can see what you're saying. A lot of people tend to anonymize themselves. They don't use their real names. They use pseudonyms. They create new accounts just to ask a certain question. There's a level of privacy. People could be a little bit more real in a way while still making a public statement or asking a question in public. I think we've done a good job and we still try to make big SEO a place where we can have someone to facilitate that communication in the industry. Peter: Yes, that is all true. Let's go to the topic at hand. You spoke at MozCon 2019. You're actually the second speaker for MozCon in row. I just spoke actually a couple of hours ago with Luke Carthy. He is the episode before you, the episode number 22. How was your experience of MozCon? Was this your first time at-- Paul: Yes. MozCon is a fantastic conference. It's one of the few in the industry that I would recommend. The other being in the conference that I founded TechSEO Boost. It's a conference dedicated to technical SEO. It was my second MozCon. I've been to MozCon once before back in 2015. I always had this yearning to come back. It was a pleasure for me to be actually asked to speak and present on technical SEO at a conference that I truly respect in the industry. Peter: Okay. Your presentation was really finding technical SEO. Here are your five minutes so that you sum up your presentation and then we'll talk about it. Paul: The presentation was redefining technical SEO. Started out painting the picture of the SEO, but we've been taught of having three different pillars, being we're catering to relevance, which is content strategy catering to authority, which is link building, link development, digital PR. There's this third one, which is "technical SEO." That traditional definition of that technical SEO is things that pertain to basically crawling and indexing, which in some ways is a limited definition and a definition that sometimes creates a schism in the industry. You have people that gravitate toward a creative content side of things and your people that gravitate towards the technical side of things. This results in some fighting. You have articles. One of the bigger ones that came out was this technical SEO is makeup by Clayburn Griffin on Search Engine Land, which was quite inflammatory. It was making the point that it's not too hard to get technical SEO to a point that is good enough, but content is in some ways more difficult to achieve. I don't disregard that. I don't think it's wrong. I think the reason why people come to that conclusion is because they are defining technical SEO wrong. In my conference, we had speaker the first year, Russ Jones from Moz. He had a definition for what technical SEO is. I don't have the quote right in front of me, but I'll summarize it as, "The application of a technical skill set to other facets of SEO." Clearly, this definition encapsulates a whole lot more. I posit even further that there are four types of technical SEO within that. The first one is what I called checklist technical SEO. This is things that pertain to crawling and indexing but are automatable. There are tools that can help get you there. In some ways, you can completely automate the task. There's general technical SEO which, again, are things that pertain to crawling and indexing, but they're little higher skill, less automatable. For instance, finding a bug in the CNS that is hindering crawling. That would be an example of a general technical SEO versus checklist technical SEO, which would be checking the box. Does this web page have a canonical peg that's properly formatted? The third bucket is what I call blurry lines, technical SEO. There are series of jobs that often fall to us as SEO practitioners. They're somewhat technical, but they're not necessarily meant to be the job of the SEO. I could easily fall to someone who works in content web development. I'm talking about things like page speed optimization, web performance optimization, advanced analytics implementation. Again, things that fall with a SEO practitioner but aren't necessarily a SEO and they're quite technical in nature sometimes. The last bucket, which I focused most of my presentation on, which was what I call advanced applied technical SEO. This is really the application of those technical skill sets to all areas of SEO. I went through a series of examples of how you could write a computer program to do a natural language processing analysis to enhance on-page copy. Doing on-page SEO is not inherently a technical SEO task. When you start applying concepts like data science and other areas of engineering and these technical skill sets, it could be a technical SEO task. I went through the gamut. I went through link building, how you can automate things with Wayback Machine and the Moz API and pull insights for content variation and apply machine learning, and when you start to look at technical SEO this way as being a source of talent and skills applied to all areas of technical SEO that it becomes much more important and certainly as a makeup. Peter: All right. That was excellent, especially the last point of the three I think is very important for people. Every SEO should obviously, from what we had in your presentations. be a bit of a programmer. The main question usually is how much of a programmer should I be? Where should I go and how much should I learn to be a great SEO? Paul: I would say this. There are some clear advantages to knowing some programming. By all means, I don't think it's necessary to be an expert programmer. Working an SEO, I do think it will help you if you are. What I do advocate for is understanding computer programming a little bit, understanding the underlying logic, being able to write very, very simple programs. There's clear advantages to having that as a skill. One is that you'll understand how all the puzzle pieces fit together. When you're working with an engineering team or a developer on a website, you understand where they're coming from. You could communicate to them better. They'll have more respect for you. They're more likely to take you seriously. You'll make better suggestions and you'll be able to do some more of these more sophisticated things. Furthermore, getting these very, very basic skill sets is not that challenging. There's a million in one places to learn this online and, honestly, get the basics done in probably a 30-minute YouTube video. That's my position. Peter: Of course. A lot of the things, you can just program with Google Docs and Google Sheets with a bit more of a technical knowledge that you need to go and check all the boxes in [unintelligible 00:14:46] to do your technical audit. Technical SEO is usually seen as something that is really important with big websites, especially e-commerce websites that have millions of URLs where crawl budget is important, et cetera. How important do you see a technical SEO for companies that have smaller websites, especially for B2B companies? Paul: Well, I think it's quite logical when you look at it from a larger website perspective. You have all sorts of crawling and indexing issues that can emerge due to scale. When you look at that broader definition that I presented in my MozCon presentation of being the application of technical things in other ways, I think it's quite applicable to small pages. If you're writing a better web page, whether you have five pages on your site or a hundred or 10,000 or a million, being able to enhance what you're doing there, for instance, it doesn't matter how many pages you have. You're doing better work. Peter: All right. Can you give us a couple of places where people can go and learn technical SEO? Of course, one of them is your website Search Wilderness. The subreddit, big SEO. What are the other places? Paul: You can check out my MozCon presentation on SlideShare. My blog searchwilderness.com is littered with examples. There is an upcoming Whiteboard Friday on Moz where I talk a little bit about this topic. Lastly, I've mentioned my conference. My conference is free. We only have a limited space in person, but we make everything available online to these streams and all past recordings are also available. Check out that. Peter: All right. This is our 17-minute mark and we should be wrapping it up. Paul, tell us where can people find you and what are your future conference plans so that people can come and listen to your presentations. Paul: Yes. My personal blog is searchwilderness.com. The agency I work for is Catalyst. It's catalystdigital.com. My twitter account is by fighto, F-I-G-H-T-O. I'm posting there all the time. In terms of conferences, I am speaking at UnGagged in Los Angeles in November. In Europe, I am speaking at SMX Advanced Europe in Berlin and We Love SEO in Paris. They're both end of September and beginning of October. Peter: All right. A couple of times, you're coming to Europe. Well, my next task is to go and check out all of the presentations or recordings that you have from your conference. I must say I haven't really heard about your conference in the past. I'm from Europe, you're from up there, so it's a big place. That's it. Thank you very much for being on the podcast and I hope to see you around. Paul: Yes, it's my pleasure.

Jess Sah Bi & Peter One, musicians from Côte d'Ivoire in West Africa, recall hearing the harmonies and guitars of Simon and Garfunkel and Cat Stevens for the first time and how that impacted their music from that point onward. In our conversation they take us through the creation of their landmark African-Country-Folk inspired album Our Garden Needs Its Flowers from their initial search for a producer to now the recent reissue, 30 years later, by Awesome Tapes From Africa.   Here’s an external link to every Musical Mention in this episode: 7:01 Simon & Garfunkel 7:08 Cat Stevens 8:19 Jimi Hendrix 8:29 The Beatles (Hey Jude, Let It Be) 9:49 Paul Simon 11:29 James Bond Theme 14:53: Amédée Pierre 15:00 Bob Marley (No Woman No Cry) 18:19 Don Williams 20:51 Don Williams 20:42 Alpha Blondy 25:14 Premiere Chance 30:47 Rosemary Gurg ?? 33:11 Badmos 33:19 Ernesto Djedje 31:51 Georges Tai Benson 36:27 Monique Séka 36:39 Anet Roger 40:08 Gouro 40:27 Our Garden Needs Its Flowers (album) 41:03 Burkina Faso 41:04 Togo 48:50 Brian Shimkovitz

Haut lieu de bucolismeIci, ça germe, ça porte ses fruits...Sous un arbre, sur un banc, allongé dans l’herbe...Jazz Atlas vous ouvre les portes d’un lieu parfois… très secretPassport (Allemagne)Garden Of Eden (Dawn) (Garden Of Eden, 1979)George Moustaki (France)Il Y Avait Un Jardin (Il Y Avait Un Jardin, 1971)Pekka Streng (Finlande)Puutarhassa (Kesämaa, 1972)Antonio Carlos Jobim (Brésil)Stone Flower (Stone Flower, 1970)Georges Benson (Etats-Unis)Octopus’s Garden (The Other Side Of Abbey Road, 1970)Philippe Katerine (France)Le Jardin Anglais (Mes Mauvaises Fréquentations, 1996)Yusef Lateef (Etats-Unis)In A Temple Garden (In A Temple Garden, 1979)Elia y Elizabeth (Colombie)Se Oculta El Sol, Muere Una Flor (!Alegria !, 1973)Buena Vista Social Club (Cuba)Dos Gardenias (Buena Vista Social Club, 1997)Branford Marsalis (Etats-Unis)Royal Garden Blues (Royal Garden Blues, 1986)Al Jarreau (Etats-Unis)Roof Garden (Breakin’ Away, 1981)Arat Kilo feat. David Neerman (France)Nouvelle Fleur (Nouvelle Fleur, 2016)Jess Sah Bi & Peter One (Côte d’Ivoire)Our Garden Needs Its Flowers (Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, 1985)Hubert Laws (Etats-Unis)Wild Flower (Wild Flower, 1972)Talking Heads (Etats-Unis)(Nothing But) Flowers (Naked, 1988)

TRIBALISTAS, JESS SABH BI & PETER ONE, ALEXEY LEÓN QUINTET, SEDAA... TRIBALISTAS, JESS SABH BI & PETER ONE, ALEXEY LEÓN QUINTET, SEDAA... TRIBALISTAS, JESS SABH BI & PETER ONE, ALEXEY LEÓN QUINTET, SEDAA... TRIBALISTAS, JESS SABH BI & PETER ONE, ALEXEY LEÓN QUINTET, SEDAA...

An in-depth chat with Wellington-based broadcaster, DJ, writer, publicist and promoter Martyn Pepperell. We talk through his life and career as a person concerned with music: occasional radio host, regular club DJ, writer and promoter of shows...most recently he has assisted with the reissue of "Our Garden Needs Its Flowers" by Jess Sah Bi and Peter One on the Awesome Tapes From Africa reissue label. We also talk about the very recent death of his father Bryan Pepperell. Bryan was a long-serving Wellington City Councilman. Get full access to Sounds Good! at simonsweetman.substack.com/subscribe

An in-depth chat with Wellington-based broadcaster, DJ, writer, publicist and promoter Martyn Pepperell. We talk through his life and career as a person concerned with music: occasional radio host, regular club DJ, writer and promoter of shows...most recently he has assisted with the reissue of "Our Garden Needs Its Flowers" by Jess Sah Bi and Peter One on the Awesome Tapes From Africa reissue label. We also talk about the very recent death of his father Bryan Pepperell. Bryan was a long-serving Wellington City Councilman.

Nick Bollinger discusses a lost country classic - from West African duo Jess Sah Bi and Peter One.

Jess Sah Bi & Peter One In Conversation with Mark McNeill This week Mark McNeill welcomes Jess Sah Bi & Peter One onto the dublab airwaves to share some insights into their album, Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, reissued by Awesome Tapes from Africa. The duo’s 1985 debut album is a soulful country-folk treasure. Created in Côte d’Ivoire, it caused huge ripples throughout Africa upon its release. About Jess Sah Bi & Peter One: In the 1980s, Abidjan’s Jess Sah Bi & Peter One became one of the most popular musical acts in not just the Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire), but broader West Africa, eventually performing with a full band to stadium-sized audiences at home and throughout Benin, Burkina Faso and Togo. Although they’d been popular radio and television performers for several years prior, the catalyst for Jess and Peter achieving this new level of stardom was their debut album, Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, recorded and released in 1985. In contrast with the heaving funk, disco and reggae sounds of the day, Our Garden Needs Its Flowers was a lush fusion of traditional Ivorian village songs and American and English country and folk-rock music. Jess and Peter sang in French and English, delivering beautifully harmonized meditations on social injustice and inequality, calls for unity across the African continent, an end to apartheid in South Africa and the odd song for the ladies, all set against lush guitar riffs, rustic harmonica and rollicking feel-good rhythms. In Conversation is produced by dublab. Sound editing and music are by Matteah Baim. Due to rights reasons music from the original broadcast has been removed. To hear more, please visit dublab.com

Peter didn’t write much. No surprise here. As you will hear in this week’s PODCAST, the hyperactive-apostle could not sit still long enough to put pen to parchment. There is one of the four Gospels credited to Peter—but even that he could not write himself. Peter employed Mark to record his recollections. And no surprise that in reading what could-well be entitled, The Gospel According to Peter as Told to Mark, the one word that jumps out at us in Peter’s fast-paced, out-of-breath memoir is the adverb “immediately.” (Mark uses it 42 times). All of which is to say that on the rare occasions when Peter did park himself at a desk to inscribe his insights (only twice—1 and 2 Peter!), we should sit up and take notice. Case in point: 1 Peter 3:15. “If someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it. But do this in a gentle and respectful way.” Words, BTW, that define for us a biblical approach to personal evangelism—AKA witnessing, soul-winning, sharing your faith. When they ask, we explain. A principle that Peter learned, and learned well, here in Acts 10. The asker—Cornelius. Explainer—Peter. Problem was—and it’s a HUGE problem indeed—Cornelius was an unclean Gentile centurion living in the unclean pagan city-capital city of Roman occupation of Peter’s land. This was for Peter One.Huge.Problem on multiple spiritually-threatening, faith-testing levels. In order to understand, I need to put you into Peter’s sandals. And in order to put you into Peter’s sandals, I need to alert you to what has historically been the Greatest.Single.Threat to Judaism, and BTW, to us. Now, allow me to lay out dots, and then connect these dots. This entire discussion centers around one divine injunction, repeated several times in the Torah. Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play. God bless you richly as you listen.

"Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted be courteous; not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing." 1 Peter 3:8-9 (NKJV) Click the play button above to listen, or watch the video version.

Kelly interviews Peter Weinstock, Partner, Hunton & Williams, Dallas Office. They talk about bank M&A deals and minority shareholder actions to gain control of bank management. Peter Weinstock’s practice focuses on corporate and regulatory representation of financial institutions. He is Practice Group Leader of the Financial Institutions Section and has counseled institutions on more than 150 M&A transactions, as well as provided representation on securities offerings and capital planning.   Kelly Coughlin is CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C-Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-Suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover rewards. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly: Hi, this is Kelly Coughln from the BankBosun. Hope everybody’s doing fine. I’m going to do an interview today with a deal guy. He’s with a law firm in Dallas, Texas. We’re going to talk about the types of deals that are getting done. Are they P&A deals? Are they stock deals? There are distressed deals out there, there are strategic ones, and what is he saying in terms of M&A activity in the banking sector. With that, we’ll get Peter Weinstock on the phone, from Hunton & Williams. Let’s talk about deals, Peter. I have kind of a basic question on general trends. In bad banking economies, it seems that we have a lot of P&A deals, where I think the seller is normally the FDIC, correct? Peter: Right. Kelly: We must have had a lot of those in 2008, 2009, possibly up to 2010. Peter: Yeah, I agree. For really almost a four, four and a half year period, there were more deals sold by the FDIC than there were private sector M&A transactions. Kelly: Then today, better economy, better banking environment, we don’t see many of those, correct? Peter: Very few. Kelly: Would you say that the number of P&A deals is a leading indicator, lagging indicator of economic conditions of banks in general? Peter: Yeah, it’s certainly a lagging indicator, just like capital as a protection is a lagging indicator because what tends to happen is asset quality issues or concentration levels or interest rate risk, some of those other factors, the metrics indicating those issues are becoming problematic kick in long before capital starts declining and capital starts declining generally long before or moderately before problem banks are looking to sell or the FDIC takes over. The number of P&A transactions, which again, we’re down to very few, are more reflective of the fact that the economy seemed to turn sometime in 2012 and we’ve had now three full years of, even though it’s not a great recovery, we’ve had some recovery. Kelly: How many P&A deals have we seen in three years? Peter: I think we’re only up to two so far this year, where we were, in 2009 through 2011, we were having dozens and in one of those years over one hundred bank deals. Kelly: The two this year, are they in, say, oil patch regions that are struggling economically or somewhere else? Peter: That’s an outstanding question because the answer is, it’s not. That’s not to say that the oil patch or the commodity price areas are not under stress. Certainly, the ag economy is under some stress, but again, it gets back to your first question about lagging indicators. The banks that are failing now are banks that have been circling around the drain for a long time now. They’ve been shrinking to maintain capital ratios, but they can’t get recapitalized because of the legacy assets that they have from the downturn, so we still have a significant number of banks that are undercapitalized and unless something happens, they could fail because they have elevated problem asset levels and those problem asset levels are what would bring them down. At December 31 there were 78 banks that were still somewhere undercapitalized or only adequately capitalized, which is down from, at one point, the problem bank list was over 600, but the 78 institutions that are adequately capitalized or worst, as of year end, are ones that are suffering from the last downturn, rather than the next one. Kelly: All right, you mentioned 78 that are undercapitalized. What’s the metric that you use? Peter: These are banks that are not well capitalized, so they’re adequately capitalized or lower, which is they have to have a leverage ratio of 5% in order to be well capitalized. Then you have the Basel III metrics. Right now, you’re talking about a total risk-based capital ratio of under 10% and total leverage ratio of under 5% to be adequately capitalized or, in that case, undercapitalized. It’s not an incredibly high bar that they’re not able to chin, so these 78, you would think that they would be able to recapitalize themselves, but the big challenge that they have is their elevated asset quality levels. Kelly: You have these 78 banks. Are brokers out there, investment bankers out there trying to get them to sell? You guys probably don’t do that. Lawyers don’t hustle for business like that, I don’t think, right? You’re not making cold calls? Peter: We’re purist, man. We would never do such a thing. I’m sure that all 78 of them have been shaking the trees and have talked to anyone and everyone who they think could be an avenue for capital and for addressing their problems, but at some point, if you’ve got capital of 5 million but you have problem assets of 15 or 20 million, at some point the numbers don’t make sense for an investor and that’s why these institutions are still on the list, some of them. Kelly: Let’s talk about the good side of the market, not the problem areas. Let’s say last year, you being a proxy for the market, how many deals were related to distressed banks and how many were for strategic acquisition reasons or market expansion? Peter: I would tell you the vast majority of them were strategic and few were problem bank acquisitions. What I mean by strategic isn’t necessarily that the seller was in great shape and they sold for a very high price. What we’re seeing is a number of sellers are kind of giving up the ghost because in this interest rate environment, with anemic loan demand, very competitive loan pricing, there are sellers that look at their compliance costs and their IT costs and their personnel costs and they’re saying, “We’re not big enough to do a deal. We’re not big enough to survive on our own and make our shareholders a fair return, so we need to look at doing something else.” The something else is not necessarily selling for cash and going on down the road. One of the biggest trend lines we’ve seen in the last two, three years, is the willingness of sellers to take illiquid stock, stock from a privately owned financial institution. Kelly: In the acquiring company. Peter: To take illiquid stock from an acquiring company, that’s another community bank like they may be, sellers are much more willing to do that than they ever have been before in my 30+ year career. I think the biggest driver of that is that on the operational standpoint, the challenges of being a bank are such that skill matters and then on the shareholder valuation standpoint, I think they recognize that this may not be the greatest pricing time to sell out, so they look at doing some kind of strategic combination to be part of a bigger, more profitable organization, even though the stock is illiquid. Kelly: Let’s say, in those situations where you’ve got a reasonably healthy bank, they see that if they don’t do something they might be in part of the 78 again, but they might go down that way, so they’re proactive. As a part of that, they have to lock up some of their good producers, right? Their good credit officers and those things. One of the thing we do in our business is help with non-qualified plan benefits to try to use that as a way to lock in good senior management. Do you see much of that going on as part of the deal criteria? Peter: It surprises me that more banks that are potential sales candidates don’t do more. In community bank America, it almost doesn’t matter how big you are, you’re a potential target. I’ll give you an example. One of my clients is a $5 billion bank in California and they merged with an $8 billion bank in December, they announced it. The reason is because our client, that’s $5 billion, felt that they needed to get bigger in order to compete. The $8 billion bank felt like they needed to be bigger to compete, so now they’re going to be $13 billion. If you’re not an $8 or a $5 billion bank, if you’re smaller than that, you might say to yourself, I don’t need to be bigger to survive, but my efficiency ratio sure as heck would improve if we got bigger. I would tell you that almost every bank is a candidate to be sold, they’re a candidate to buy and they’re a candidate to be sold. KPMG did a survey in 2014 and it indicated that over 50% of the banks thought they would engage in an acquisition, but 3% of banks thought they would sell. The numbers wound up in 2015 being something like 4.4% of all the banks sold. Every bank out there, it seems, is thinking about doing an acquisition, but every bank and community bank America is a potential candidate. A long way around to your question is because the banks are all potential merger candidates, then they really should look at putting in place protections for their employees and really locking them up, but when they’re doing that, they also need to think about not hurting shareholder value. The way you could hurt shareholder value is you provide some kind of agreement, let’s say a change in control agreement, that provides on a change in control the employee gets paid if they leave the bank. Now we hurt shareholder value because the buyer knows that they could lose that person because there’s an incentive for that person to leave. Really, it takes somebody like you to think through not just how to protect the person, not just how to lock them up, but also to do it in a way where it creates or at least preserves shareholder value because the buyer is not looking at that contract and saying that that contract harms me because I’m going to lose a valuable producer. Your question is a good one and I would even go further and I’d say what exists gets paid. If people want agreements to be in place, they need to put them in place because if they exist they’ll get paid, where if you wait until a potential acquisition, then what’s going to happen is the acquirer is going to say, “You can do that, but if you do that it comes out of the shareholder’s purchase price,” and I don’t think you want to be negotiating those types of agreements with another person with their elbows on the table. Kelly: I’ve got a lot of experience in other financial sectors like financial advisors and broker dealers and the common theme with them is you’ve got much more highly paid execs, but the notion that the assets go down in the elevator every day. It’s more or less the same thing with many banks and not locking them up one way or another in an acquisition, it always kind of surprises me. Let’s talk about surprises in an acquisition landmines. It seems to me that when we’re talking about banks that are not a huge footprint, a community bank that’s got 1 to 15 branches, isn’t it a fair statement to say that more of the acquirers or interested acquirers are going to be a current competitor of that bank and doesn’t that always present a bit of a due diligence challenge or problem, where you’re going to release sensitive, confidential information to your competitor? Peter: That is absolutely correct that that’s a possibility. The reason for that is because most financial institution mergers are driven by cost savings. Where do you get the most cost savings? In a market deal or an adjoining market deal. It is very likely the party that can pay the most is going to be an existing competitor. That absolutely presents challenges in terms of protecting your employees and your confidential information. Obviously you’re going to negotiate the heck out of the non-disclosure agreement, if that’s likely buyer, if you’re the seller. The other thing is you’re probably going to want to hold back on when you deliver information until there is an agreement on all of the relevant terms and then the due diligence becomes more in the way of confirming diligence than it does in terms of setting the price. You’ll release some key information, including whether there’s a termination fee as a result of the transaction on your data processing agreement, changing control agreements with employees, give all of that pricing type information, but you might hold back the loan review and the customer review until the deal is essentially set. Kelly: The customer name is withheld until the deal is a little more mature. Peter: We’ve also done it where you redact the customer names, but in an in-market deal it doesn’t take a lot of information for the buyer to know who that player is. Kelly: Yeah, right. Back to my other question that we started on. Surprises? Peter: I’d say the biggest surprise to buyers is that the seller’s compliance issues could infect them. I’ll give you an example. When MB Financial was acquiring Cole Taylor, Cole Taylor had a major compliance issue and the transaction was held up for about a year, while the regulators got comfortable with the resolution of that compliance issue. Similarly there have been a number of red-lining cases and BSA cases where the compliance issues of the target have held up the deal. I think that’s a surprise for a number of buyers because if you’re engaged in a potential transaction, you’re locked into that transaction. You’ve agreed to try to get that deal closed. If you wind up with an extended regulatory approval time period, that could prevent you, preclude you from going after a deal that becomes available six months, a year later that might be a better deal for you. Similarly for sellers, even in cash deal, if there’s a surprise that the buyer’s compliance issues can be such a hold up and what we’ve seen is we’ve seen AML, BSA, KYC issues that have held up approval of deals for two or three years in UDAP and some other consumer compliance issues that similarly have held up deals. As a seller, you have to perform some reverse due diligence, some extensive reverse due diligence on the buyer, even in the transaction that’s a cash deal. For a lot of sellers, that’s a surprise to them. Kelly: Do regulators hold up the deal or does the buyer intentionally hold that up? Peter: Generally it’s the regulators because from the buyer standpoint, they become aware of the issue and they adopt a plan of remediation for the issue. It’s one thing for a private sector party to get a handle on an issue and have a plan of remediation and feel good that they can implement it. It’s a whole other thing for an agent, say, to get their arms around it in a time frame that seems reasonable. The Federal Reserve has two analysts in Washington who handle compliance issues with regard to applications. Kelly: The buyer would just haircut the valuation. At the end of the day it’s a contingent liability, right? They would just haircut the valuation on it. Peter: If it’s a known risk and it’s one that they have presumably priced in. If it’s not a known risk and they become aware of it, then they may go back to the seller and say, “We’ve got all of these costs related to it, we need to reduce the price,” or if it’s significant enough, they could decide to walk the transaction. Kelly: In terms of surprises, known compliance issues and I suppose the ‘know what you don’t know,’ whatever that term is. You know those issues, it’s the unknown compliance regulatory issues. Any ideas on pre-detecting, early detection of those things? Peter: That’s really you just have to engage in some pretty thorough diligence of the other party to really understand where the risk areas are. Kelly: I suppose you look at their internal controls and their timely filings or substantiation and all of those things on the control structure. Peter: You do. Something that I like looking at as a starting point for diligence is nowadays banks have to do risk assessments. Seemingly a banker can’t walk out doing a five-page risk assessment. Those risk assessments are the other party’s self-confessing, if you will, where they see their own challenges or concerns. The beauty of that for the other party is that gives them a roadmap of things to look at in diligence. Kelly: I was director of risk management for asset management subsidiaries of Lloyd’s Bank out of London, and this was many, many years ago. Regulatory issues and compliance back then just didn’t quite get the importance. They actually did in the UK, but things have ramped up in the US quite a bit, that it’s probably more on par with what it was with the British banks back then. Peter: If you parachuted back, if you were Mr. Peabody and you got in the Wayback Machine and went back to 2000 and you had a full-time, dedicated BSA officer, and how many banks had full-time, dedicated compliance offer and how many banks had a full-time, dedicated risk officer, and how many banks had a full-time, dedicated IT person, and you compare those numbers to the way they are now, it’s just shocking. The bigger the acquisition, the more you want to look at areas that you might not want to spend the money on if you’re a smaller institution. In a bigger deal, you absolutely want to evaluate IT exposures and make sure that there have not been or in place potential breaches. Kelly: Why don’t you give us parting thoughts you’d like to give. Speak to both buyers and sellers. Peter: One thing we’re seeing for banks that may not want to be a seller is there is a lot more activism. We had six private banks in the fourth quarter that had proxy sites, tender offers. One even had a TRO, a temporary restraining order, filed against them. That’s continued in the first quarter of 2016. One thing is to put in place protections and recognize that your risks can be from your existing shareholder base or people who buy in. The world’s awash in money and people out there know if they could buy stock of a bank at eight-tenths of book or book and then wrestle control of the board and get control, then the bank on the sale might be worth book and a quarter or book and a half, book seven, where they could potentially even more than double their money, buy the stock and flipping it in a control situation. We’re seeing activism creeping down into the community bank, into the private bank sector, and that’s something clearly you want to watch. Kelly: You’re not talking political and social activism. You’re talking about business acquisition, venture capital, investment activism. Peter: Absolutely. We’re talking shareholder activism. Then just another thing that we’ve seen on the buyer’s side is buyers tend to be most focused targets who are of sale who sent them books. We talked about some of the compliance challenges of the application process. Just because somebody sends you a book and the book says, “We’re for sale,” doesn’t mean that they’re the greatest candidate for you to buy. What you want to be careful about is being locked up on a deal in the regulatory process that is somebody who doesn’t really move the needle for you. It’s got something that obviously is worthwhile, but maybe it’s really not consistent with your strategic focus. We’ve seen potential buyers almost shift their strategic focus just because an investment banker sends them a book on a potential target. Kelly: Two good points. I always like to finish with two things: Your favorite quote and the stupidest thing you’ve either said or done in your business life. Peter: There are a lot of the latter. Upon the former, I like the Warren Buffet quote, which it really resonates when you’re talking about shareholder activism. He said, “I prefer to manage my business for the shareholders who want to stay in and not the ones who want to get out.” I may be paraphrasing it, but that’s the thought. I like that quote a lot because that’s actually directors of the bank. Those are the people they have a duty to. The second one is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my career? Kelly: Yes. Peter: One thing that I learned a long time ago not to do is something that’s emotionally gratifying because in business it almost always is a bad decision. Early on in my career I would get testy with regulators and that’s never a good strategy. Gray hair and maybe even the loss of hair and some experience, I’ve learned the wisdom of working together with regulators a lot more than trying to beat them up. Kelly: Can you recall one that you said something to? Peter: I remember when I was a third-year lawyer, I went to a meeting with the Federal Reserve and I’m not exactly sure what I said at the point, but this person with the Federal Reserve got up and it wasn’t quite Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table, but he was animated. Kelly: All right, Peter. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. I wish you the best. We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced by Kelly Coughlin, Chief Executive Officer of BankBosun, LLC; and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination LLC, with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. Kelly provides bank owned life insurance portfolio and nonqualified benefit services to banks across the United States. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any other way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier of Kelly Coughlin.