Podcasts about Piccadilly Circus

The end of the Second World War in Europe came on 8 May 1945, after more than five years of conflict.British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that people could allow themselves "a brief period of rejoicing". Crowds in their thousands gathered outside Whitehall and Buckingham Palace.BBC correspondents, including Richard Dimbleby, capture the scenes of joy across the city - from the East End to Piccadilly Circus.This programme was produced by Simon Watts using material from the BBC Archives recorded on VE Day in 1945.It was first broadcast in 2020.Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic' and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy's Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they've had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America's occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.(Photo: VE Day in London. Credit: Getty Images)

Terence Bendixson was the Guardian's planning correspondent in the 1960s when he wrote a piece that propelled him into walking campaigning. In 1969 he joined Living Streets (then the Pedestrians' Association) when he and its founder hit it off.Foley, a London-based journalist, founded the Pedestrians Association in 1929, when motor vehicles were proliferating; he was concerned about the dangers they posed. In 1939 Evelyn Waugh described Piccadilly Circus as 'still as a photograph, broken and undisturbed'.In its early years the charity shaped road safety law, including the introduction of the first Highway Code and the driving test, 30mph speed limits and pedestrian crossings. Post-war 'The Peds' were involved in the first zebra crossings and the new offence of drink driving As TransportXtra reports.Terence Bendixson was part of the hugely successful Homes for Roads movement, as told by Steve Chambers, of Transport for New Homes https://planningtransport.co.uk/2020-03-08-homes-before-roads.html. Bendixson's book, Instead of Cars, is 50 this year:On Living Streets' pavement parking campaign; on CEO Catherine Woodhead being appointed in April 2024.Ben Plowden joined in the late 90s; he and Bendixson applied to the Esmee Fairburn Trust for £69,000, which paid for premises, staff and a rebrand. Plowden became CEO of CPRE in 2025.Dr Amit Patel: https://www.dramit.uk/; On removal of the Leicester flyover .For ad-free listening, behind-the-scenes and bonus content and to help support the podcast - head to (https://www.patreon.com/StreetsAheadPodcast). We'll even send you some stickers! We're also on Bluesky and welcome your feedback on our episode: https://bsky.app/profile/podstreetsahead.bsky.social Support Streets Ahead on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Come As You Really Are 15 February – 27 April Hetain Patel is a London based artist and filmmaker. His films, sculptures, live performances, paintings and photographs have been shown worldwide in galleries, theatres and on iconic public screens, including Piccadilly Circus, London, and Times Square, New York. His works have been presented at the Venice Biennale, Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing and Tate Modern, London, to Sadler's Wells. Patel's work exploring identity and freedom, using choreography, text and popular culture appears in multiple formats and media, intended to reach the widest possible audience. His video and performance work online have been watched over 50 million times, which includes his TED talk of 2013 titled, ‘Who Am I? Think Again'. Come As You Really Are 15 Chwefror a 27 Ebrill Mae Hetain Patel yn artist ac yn wneuthurwr ffilmiau o Lundain. Mae ei ffilmiau, ei gerfluniau, ei berfformiadau byw, ei baentiadau a'i ffotograffau wedi cael eu dangos ledled y byd mewn orielau, theatrau ac ar sgriniau cyhoeddus eiconig, gan gynnwys Piccadilly Circus, Llundain a Times Square, Efrog Newydd. Mae ei waith wedi cael ei gyflwyno yn Biennale Fenis, Canolfan Celf Gyfoes Ullens, Beijing a Tate Modern, Llundain i Sadler's Wells. Mae gwaith Patel sy'n archwilio hunaniaeth a rhyddid, gan ddefnyddio coreograffi, testun a diwylliant poblogaidd yn ymddangos mewn amryfal fformatau a chyfryngau, gyda'r bwriad o gyrraedd y gynulleidfa ehangaf posib. Mae ei waith fideo a pherfformiad ar-lein wedi cael eu gwylio dros 50 miliwn o weithiau, sy'n cynnwys ei sgwrs TED yn 2013 o'r enw, ‘Who Am I? Think Again'.

Es ist Mittwoch, der 19. Mai 1915. In London eröffnet das größte Hotel Europas mit 1.028 Zimmern: das Regent Palace Hotel. Wer hier übernachtet, zeigt Stil und Status. Heute sind die Hotelzimmer längst Geschichte, doch das Gebäude hat nichts von seinem Glanz verloren. Es beherbergt einen der angesagtesten kulinarischen Hotspots der Stadt: die Brasserie Zédel. -- Mitten in London, direkt am Piccadilly Circus, trifft britischer Charme auf französisches Lebensgefühl: Die Brasserie Zédel ist eine Hommage an die goldenen Zeiten der Pariser Bistros. Unsere England-Abenteurer Alexander-Klaus Stecher und Claus Beling haben an diesem legendären Ort tatsächlich einen Tisch ergattert – Glück gehabt, denn ohne Reservierung? Keine Chance! Die prunkvolle Inneneinrichtung mit ihren klassischen Art-déco-Lampen und imposanten Marmorsäulen wurde vom Magazin “Architecture Today” als „die wohl beste und authentischste Art-déco-Serie der 1930er-Jahre“ bezeichnet. Doch was verbirgt sich hinter der langen Treppe im Zédel? Welche Verbindung gibt es zur britischen Königsfamilie? Und ganz praktisch: Wie schmeckt das Essen im Zédel wirklich? Alexander und Claus liefern Antworten – mit kulinarischen Anekdoten, historischen Details und persönlichen Eindrücken. Doch London ist weit mehr als nur ein Ort für glamouröse Restaurants: Es ist eine Stadt der kulinarischen Vielfalt, in der Geschichte und Genuss aufeinandertreffen. Und so endet dieser Abend in einem der schönsten Pubs der Stadt: dem King's Arms. Dunkles Holz, gedämpftes Licht – eine Atmosphäre, wie man sie nur in England findet. BRITPOD. England at its Best. -- WhatsApp: Du kannst Alexander und Claus direkt auf ihre Handys Nachrichten schicken! Welche Ecke Englands sollten die beiden mal besuchen? Zu welchen Themen wünschst Du Dir mehr Folgen? Warst Du schon mal in Great Britain und magst ein paar Fotos mit Claus und Alexander teilen? Probiere es gleich aus: +49 8152 989770 - einfach diese Nummer einspeichern und schon kannst Du BRITPOD per WhatsApp erreichen. -- Ein ALL EARS ON YOU Original Podcast.

Picture it: London. December 2024. A trip 30-some-odd-years in the making. And one that will never be forgotten. Join CH this week as she reflects on her first-time visit to London, and the soul-stirring connection she felt within the city despite never having set foot in it prior. From iconic moments in Piccadilly Circus and Notting Hill (yep, THAT Notting Hill); to taking in the holiday splendor of Regent Street and Trafalgar Square; to the unexpected gift of connecting with jazz singer Emma Smith; to heartfelt visits with friends out in Worcester and up in Holmfirth. If you love London, or want to visit one day, or just appreciate sharing of a life story with a unique connection to a place and time, CH paints a vivid picture of her journey in this episode - one that truly captured her heart, and now has her affectionately referring to London as her soulmate city.   Show Notes Some of the locations, services and establishments CH mentions and of which were a key part of her trip: Regent Street || Piccadilly Circus || Trafalgar Square || Trafalgar Theatre || St. James's Square || Harrods || Camden Town || Dr. Martens Flagship Store  - Camden Market || Primose Hill || Hampstead Heath || Notting Hill / Portabello Road || Big Ben || Covent Garden || Abbey Road / Abbey Road Studios || Warner Bros. Studio Tour London - The Making of Harry Potter || King's Cross Railway Station || Paddington Railway Station || London Underground Lock & Co. Hatters was the favorite hat shop CH mentioned. It is the oldest hat shop in both the world and Britain, having been founded in 1676. (And yes, CH really does wear a hat every day.) The two cities outside of London CH traveled to during her stay were: Worcester (West Midlands) Holmfirth (Yorkshire) The jazz singer CH had an opportunity to see perform twice during her visit is Emma Smith. For those interested in learning more about her, you can visit her official Web site: EmmaSmithMusic.co.uk. The two venues in which Emma performed were: Brown's Hotel The Crazy Coqs Some of the British TV shows CH grew up watching were: 'Keeping Up Appearances'; 'As Time Goes By'; 'The Thin Blue Line'; 'Prime Suspect'; 'Absolutely Fabulous'. Previous episode mentions Episode 39: Spirit of Place Episode 58: Life at the Midpoint

Fluent Fiction - Spanish: Love's Unexpected Turn: Romance Amidst Piccadilly's Chaos Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/es/episode/2025-01-14-23-34-01-es Story Transcript:Es: El aire de invierno soplaba sobre Piccadilly Circus, llenando el lugar de pequeñas nubes de vapor que escapaban de los puestos de café.En: The winter air blew over Piccadilly Circus, filling the place with small clouds of steam escaping from the coffee stalls.Es: Entre las luces brillantes y la gente apurada, Esteban y Valeria se abrieron camino.En: Among the bright lights and the hurried people, Esteban and Valeria made their way through.Es: Valeria, la aventurera, miraba con ojos brillantes cada rincón, admirando la mezcla de sonidos y colores de Londres.En: Valeria, the adventurer, looked at every corner with bright eyes, admiring the mix of sounds and colors of London.Es: Esteban, siempre organizado, revisaba su itinerario mentalmente.En: Esteban, always organized, was mentally reviewing his itinerary.Es: Tenía un plan preciso para cada día del viaje.En: He had a precise plan for each day of the trip.Es: Sin embargo, había un plan secreto que ocupaba más espacio en su mente: proponerle matrimonio a Valeria.En: However, there was a secret plan occupying more space in his mind: to propose marriage to Valeria.Es: La fecha estaba cerca de San Valentín, y deseaba que todo fuera perfecto.En: The date was close to Valentine's Day, and he wished for everything to be perfect.Es: Sin embargo, todo cambió en un instante.En: However, everything changed in an instant.Es: Mientras se detenían para tomar fotos frente al famoso cartel de luces, Valeria se llevó una mano a la cabeza.En: As they stopped to take photos in front of the famous light sign, Valeria brought a hand to her head.Es: "Todo da vueltas," murmuró antes de caer al suelo.En: "Everything is spinning," she murmured before collapsing to the ground.Es: El corazón de Esteban latió desbocado.En: Esteban's heart raced wildly.Es: Se arrodilló junto a ella, rodeado de curiosos transeúntes que radio sus miradas por el momento inusual.En: He knelt beside her, surrounded by curious passersby who cast their looks on the unusual moment.Es: "¡Necesitamos ayuda!"En: "We need help!"Es: gritó, tratando de mantener la calma.En: he shouted, trying to stay calm.Es: Un momento después, Valeria fue llevada al hospital, y Esteban no soltó su mano ni por un segundo durante el trayecto.En: A moment later, Valeria was taken to the hospital, and Esteban didn't let go of her hand for a second during the journey.Es: Sentado en la fría sala de espera, sus pensamientos se llenaron de ansiedad.En: Sitting in the cold waiting room, his thoughts were filled with anxiety.Es: Todo su itinerario bien planeado había colapsado, pero eso ya no importaba.En: All his well-planned itinerary had collapsed, but that no longer mattered.Es: Lo primordial ahora era Valeria.En: The most important thing now was Valeria.Es: Pasaron horas que parecieron eternas hasta que un médico salió con noticias.En: Hours passed that seemed eternal until a doctor came out with news.Es: "Valeria está bien," aseguró, "solo fue un leve mareo, quizás por la falta de desayuno."En: "Valeria is fine," he assured, "it was just a slight dizziness, perhaps due to the lack of breakfast."Es: Esteban soltó un suspiro de alivio y una risa nerviosa.En: Esteban let out a sigh of relief and a nervous laugh.Es: Entró en la habitación donde Valeria ya estaba sentada, luciendo mucho mejor.En: He entered the room where Valeria was already sitting, looking much better.Es: "Lo siento, arruiné el día," dijo Valeria con una sonrisa tímida.En: "I'm sorry, I ruined the day," said Valeria with a shy smile.Es: Esteban negó con la cabeza.En: Esteban shook his head.Es: "Nada está arruinado," susurró mientras sacaba un anillo del bolsillo de su abrigo.En: "Nothing is ruined," he whispered as he pulled a ring from the pocket of his coat.Es: "Valeria, la vida me enseñó hoy que los planes cambian, pero mi amor por ti es constante.En: "Valeria, life taught me today that plans change, but my love for you is constant.Es: ¿Te casarías conmigo?"En: Would you marry me?"Es: El brillo en los ojos de Valeria superó al de las luces de Piccadilly.En: The shine in Valeria's eyes surpassed that of the lights of Piccadilly.Es: "¡Sí, mil veces sí!"En: "Yes, a thousand times yes!"Es: respondió emocionada.En: she responded excitedly.Es: En ese pequeño hospital, rodeados por las paredes blancas, Esteban descubrió que la espontaneidad podía ser hermosa.En: In that small hospital, surrounded by white walls, Esteban discovered that spontaneity could be beautiful.Es: Su corazón, finalmente, abrazó la libertad de un amor que se adaptaba a cualquier circunstancia.En: His heart finally embraced the freedom of a love that adapted to any circumstance.Es: Y así, en el lugar menos esperado, comenzó el capítulo más feliz de sus vidas.En: And so, in the most unexpected place, the happiest chapter of their lives began. Vocabulary Words:the winter: el inviernofilling: llenandothe stall: el puestothe adventurer: la aventurerathe itinerary: el itinerarioprecise: precisothe proposal: la propuestato collapse: colapsarthe passerby: el transeúntesurrounded by: rodeado deunusual: inusualanxiety: la ansiedadto sigh: suspirarslight dizziness: leve mareothe waiting room: la sala de esperathe trayectory: el trayectoto shine: brillareternal: eternothe hospital: el hospitalshy smile: sonrisa tímidato ruin: arruinarto propose: proponerthe coat: el abrigoconstant: constanteto surpass: superarto embrace: abrazarthe journey: el viajespontaneity: la espontaneidadcircumstance: la circunstanciathe chapter: el capítulo

Introduction As per Wikipedia, the phrase “You can never tell a book by its cover” was popularized when it appeared in the 1946 murder mystery, Murder in the Glass Room, by Lester Fuller and Edwin Rolfe: So let's talk about books today from a designer's lens. For this episode, I have, Multiple award winning designer, Ahlawat Gunjan. He is Head of Design at Penguin Random House, India. Ahlawat has a master's degree in graphic design from The Glasgow School of Art, UK. Previous to that he spent a semester at Indiana-Purdue University, USA, focusing on design thinking, innovation, and leadership. At the core, he is from NID, Ahmedabad. What goes into making a book cover design? Secrets of Book Publishing, what goes into making a book, the future of physical books in the digital world, and a few tips if you wish to get into editorial design or publication.  Questions They often say, “Don't judge a book by its cover” Although the metaphorical meaning is different, but how does that feel to you as a designer? How true it is in the world of Book Design? What are the fundamental principles of effective book cover design? How is the balance achieved between telling a story through the cover, aesthetics, and shelf presence to grab a potential reader's attention? How does cover design differ across genres? (literary fiction vs. Children's book vs. Biographies and oh… there are endless categories) What role does audience research play in cover design decisions? Beyond the cover, what design elements go into creating a cohesive and reader-friendly book experience (typography, layout, illustrations, etc.)? How does the design team collaborate with authors and editors throughout the publishing process? Can you walk us through the entire process from penning it down to finally in the reader's hand? What factors influence the size and dimensions of a book (content type, target audience, printing costs, etc.)? With the rise of digital reading, how is the role of design evolving in the publishing industry? I recently was in London and went to Waterstones. They have multiple stores. The one at Piccadilly Circus was 4 4-story huge building. The sections/categories they had were crazy. Each airport has a bookstore. What is the future of books in this digital age? What design trends do you see shaping the future of printed books? How can one be a book designer? What advice would you give to aspiring book designers? What are some of the most iconic book cover designs in history, and why are they effective? Any that you designed and felt nice about or had a good recall? Reference reading https://www.ahlawatgunjan.com/about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLT_nLTtyPc https://books.google.com.sg/books/about/Slow_Is_Beautiful.html?id=nMLFzwEACAAJ&source=kp_author_description&redir_esc=y https://www.instagram.com/ahlawat.gunjan/?hl=en https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahlawat-gunjan-8b866015/?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&originalSubdomain=in https://www.penguin.co.in/book_author/ahlawat-gunjan/ https://www.amazon.in/Slow-Beautiful-Ultimate-Journal-Mindful/dp/0670095265 https://booksfirst.in/2023/02/01/ahlawat-gunjan-i-always-try-to-strive-for-simplicity/ https://scroll.in/article/1041022/with-easy-to-use-prompts-visual-designer-ahlawat-gunjan-teaches-how-to-see-reflect-and-create-art https://www.joinpaperplanes.com/ahlawat-gunjan/

Teresa del Riego's work was a staple of early Prom seasons but the anthem she premiered for the suffrage movement in 1911, at the Criterion restaurant Piccadilly Circus, which had 1,000 copies of the song distributed around the country, has not been heard recently. Naomi Paxton shares her research into the compositions of del Riego (1876-1968) and the music making of the suffrage circle. Singer Lucy Stevens performs The Awakening (with lyrics by American poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox) alongside Elizabeth Marcus at the piano. Naomi Paxton is a BBC/Arts and Humanities Research Council New Generation Thinker on the scheme which helps early career academics share research on radio. You can find her more of her work on suffragette history as Arts & Ideas podcasts, Sunday features and Essays on BBC Sounds. Lucy Stevens and Elizabeth Marcus have recorded Songs and Ballads by Dame Ethel Smyth and rehearsed this del Riego song especially for The Essay recording. Producer: Lisa Jenkinson

This week on the podcast, 2004's Creep. A woman en route to a party finds herself stuck overnight at the Charing Cross tube station in London, near Piccadilly Circus. A dark, stinky, atmospheric horror which stars Franka Potente (Run Lola Run).

Dassault Systémes is a €4.5b tech company that's highly successful in multiple markets but is remarkably little known outside its core customer segments and home nation of France. In a bid to change that, VP of marketing Victoire de Margerie has embarked on an ambitious marketing program focused on its sustainability credentials – including a high-profile takeover of London's Piccadilly Circus digital billboards (equivalent to New York's Times Square). But in this episode of the B2B Marketing Podcast, she explained to Joel Harrison, that this is much more than just an out-of-home campaign, and part of a complex strategy.

Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube! Our guest this week, Steve Poikenon can be found at his website here.  FULL TRANSCRIPT: Dr Leon (00:00): Now, usually I start this part of the show with a question or a few questions, but today I have to make a statement. After 13 years of either being held up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in Britain, or being in Belmar Prison in solitary confinement, Julian Assange walks free. Why does this matter what led the Biden administration to finally come to its senses and accept a deal? Why should this matter to you? Announcer (00:42): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Dr Leon (00:49): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between the events and the broader historical context in which they take place. This enables you to gain a better understanding and to analyze events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode. The issue before us is what's the significance of WikiLeaks and what's the impact on the freedom of the press? My guest for today's conversation is the host of AM Wake Up and Slow Newsday, which you can watch live on Rock Fin and Rumble, and you can listen anywhere. Podcasts are served. Steve Poin and Steve, welcome. Steve Poikenon (01:51): Thank you very much, Wilmer. It's good to see you not on the radio, Dr Leon (01:57): Man. Well, I have the perfect face for radio from what they tell me, and it's great to see you to be able to put a face with a voice. We've been talking for a couple years now, and it's finally great to be able to put a face with a voice. So footage tweeted by WikiLeaks, I think Julian Assange's wife showed him walking up the stairs onto an aircraft bound for Sipan in the US administered Mariana Islands. He has agreed to plead guilty to one count under the espionage act of conspiracy to disseminate national defense information. Steve, what were your thoughts when you first heard the news that Julian Assange was free? Steve Poikenon (02:44): I was a little stunned. This is something that we've discussed on and off over the last couple of years, and certainly in the last couple of months there have been substantiated rumors that the Biden Justice Department was preparing some sort of plea deal, whether or not the Assange team was going to accept it. That was the thing that we didn't have any certainty about whatsoever. They obviously have gone forward with accepting the deal. He should be, at this point, touching down or walking into the courtroom in the Marianas Islands says a lot about the state of the US empire that we even have a district courthouse in the Mariana Islands. That's just wild to me to begin with, but from the best that I can tell, and Wilmer, you may correct me if I'm wrong, from the best that I can tell, there's nothing in the initial plea agreement that says Julian won't be allowed near a computer or won't be able to access the internet. (03:51) Can't give speeches or interviews or can't have documentaries made about a situation. So by all accounts, up to this point, it appears that when he walks out of the courtroom later in the next couple of hours, he will be a legitimately free human being, and that is a win in and of itself. I'm a father. I can't imagine being taken away from my kids for making the US government angry and then having to know that they're growing up without me. And so the ability for him to take part in raising his own children, I think is the biggest godsend out of all of this. And then we can get into the implications and the impact that this is going to have on press freedom and citizen journalism and everything else going forward. But the huge win here is that he's no longer an inmate in the Guantanamo Bay of the United Kingdom where he was being held with the worst criminals on the island, having never once committed any crime of any sort of significance that would warrant that cell. Dr Leon (05:12): Do you have any idea in terms of why the Mariana Islands other than is the closest space that will enable him then to go from there to his home of Australia? Steve Poikenon (05:25): I think that was the ultimate deciding factor was proximity to Australia. It's not like the US can't construct a kangaroo court anywhere, and it's not like if they didn't have a different provisional, different courthouse, they wouldn't be going through the same sort of performative motions in the eyes of the Biden administration. I think the guilty plea is the thing that they were looking for, something that they could make at least a political, if not a legal for, and then also to not have it be an election issue going forward. Dr Leon (06:04): And from what I understand, this is not precedent setting because this was the result. This is the outcome of a plea deal. This did not actually come as the result of a trial. Steve Poikenon (06:17): If they would've gone to trial and evidence presented and a conviction was rendered and then upheld by a judge, then it would establish a legal precedent because he pled and pled out to time served for what he'd already done. The only thing that it can be used to set a precedent for is politically, or I guess emotionally or spiritually, where people are more hesitant to approach national security reporting or classified information, talk about it, disseminate any of that. And that is I think the real ultimate goal of not just the Biden administration, but the Trump administration and ultimately the Obama administration from where all of this stems is to redefine journalism in the future. Dr Leon (07:10): I want to read from the paragraph from the Washington Post as they reported out this story, Julian Assange's plea deal, sparks global celebration and condemnation reactions were divided as WikiLeaks. Julian Assange heads to a US Pacific territory to cement a plea deal that could soon set him free. WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange's tentative plea deal with the United States, which could soon bring an end to his years long international legal legal saga, drew celebration and criticism reflecting the divisive nature of his role in obtaining and publishing classified military and diplomatic documents. A couple of things. One is the condemnation side of this. The only folks that I can see that would be condemning this deal are people that are tied to the Trump administration, people that are tied to the Biden administration. I don't understand where they get this idea that there's all this divisiveness and condemnation. Steve Poikenon (08:23): There were the usual, the people you just spoke of, but Mike Pence was one of the loudest. There have been a number of former Trump administration officials and a number of former Obama administration intelligence apparatus and national security apparatus officials who have expressed distaste. This now and again, realize that to be opposed to this means you wanted to see a 50-year-old man, 51-year-old man get effectively tortured to death in a US prison for the rest of his life. That's what being in opposition to this effectively means. The reasoning behind it though is because information is currency. Assange and WikiLeaks were a broker of this information that wasn't part of the sanctioned club, and so Pompeo called them a hostile rogue intelligence agency, non-state intelligence agency. If you are viewed like that amongst the apparatus that's making the national security decisions, it doesn't matter what the end result is, if it's not your wholesale destruction, they're going to be displeased. Dr Leon (09:43): There's another paragraph. While Assange supporters saw him as a courageous whistleblower of government misdeeds, his critics saw him as a self-promoter oblivious to the harm that his leaks might cause, oblivious to the harm that his leaks might cause. There has not been one shred of evidence presented to show that any harm other than embarrassment by Hillary Clinton and some of the other government officials who were identified through these WikiLeaks releases, maybe their egos were damaged. But short of that, there's been no harm. WikiLeaks publication of the Afghan War logs did not obscure the names of Afghan civilians who provided information to the US military and omission that dismayed human rights groups and national security officials. Who are they talking about? Steve? Steve Poikenon (10:49): Okay, so when they say that the harm that they're talking about, it's not just their ego, it's their ability to continue to spy on their friends and allies that was harmed. It was the harm that was done by letting people know what the US government is doing with our tax dollars and our names. But Wim Dr Leon (11:07): Steve, it's not as though the allies did not know that they were being spied on. Remember what happened with Bill Clinton and Angela Merkel's? I think it was the Clinton administration and Angela Merkel's cell phone. I mean, it's not as though we don't know. We don't know Israel. It's not as though we don't know that Israel is spying on us. I mean, it's the game that they play. Steve Poikenon (11:31): It is the game that they play, but we're not supposed to know. And the rest of the diplomatic core is all that operates on the pretense and the fiction that it's not happening. That everybody's there to politely try to sort out the ills of the world and that all of the espionage going on in the background is never to be brought up. It doesn't have to stop. You just can't talk about it. If you bring it to light, then the whole operation gets blown up. And that's why WikiLeaks is parent company is called the Sunshine Press. The whole point of it is to bring it into the daylight, that kind of stance from a political point of view, from a journalistic point of view that's going to get you targeted, which is as we saw exactly what happened leading to 13 years of illegal and arbitrary detention. (12:29) Just one quick point to what you were talking about though, when you see major press outlets come out now in defensive Assange, these are, and you had mentioned it, I think even this morning, some of these instant outlets that are reporting on it are outlets that shared the same information. Are these guys then going to look at the plea agreement and go, golly, if Julian Assange isn't being charged as a journalist, does that mean that everyone who has ever shared a piece of classified information can be charged under the Espionage Act? Because Wilmer, I don't know about you. When I read the plea, when I read the plea deal, they're charging Assange as a private citizen. They're not charging 'em as a publisher. They're not charging 'em as a government contractor or a government employee. And those are prior to this, the only people that could get a charge for conspiring to disseminate classified information in this manner. So is that saying that Nick, the janitor or Dan the trucker or whoever your English teacher is now susceptible to Espionage Act charges? Dr Leon (13:48): Well, I think one of the reasons why they're not charging him as a journalist, because that was one of the issues that was being presented in his defense, is that as a journalist, he has the right to disseminate this information. So if they charged him as a journalist, then I think that would probably throw a wrench in their own argument. But to your point, one of the ironies here is when you read the Washington Poll story and the New York Times reporting out on this is that they were complicit in disseminating the information that he made available. Hence during the Obama administration, they called it the New York Times conundrum, and many say that the reason the Obama administration didn't charge him is because Barack Obama didn't want to open up that can of worms. Steve Poikenon (14:45): Well, certainly the idea that the Biden administration would try to with less competent people than were in the Obama administration is somewhat ridiculous. The only reason they could get a plea deal out of the guy is because they'd been torturing him for five years on top of the seven and a half, eight, almost eight years of being confined to one and a half rooms in the most spied on building in London, which is saying a lot because London has more cameras per capita than any other major city. But more cameras were pointed at the Ecuadorian Embassy than anywhere else in London for a very long time. That kind of constant surveillance is going to wreak havoc on an individual. And I got to tell you, Wilmer, it really did surprise me seeing the video, the very brief videos that we have seen of Julian, the last I had heard, he had been in very poor health. He had suffered a stroke or a mini stroke 18 months ago, 20 months ago, something like that. So to see him moving that rapidly, being able to stand walking Dr Leon (15:59): Up the stairs to the plane, Steve Poikenon (16:01): Being able to stand that upright when we had all been told that his back was wrecked and stuff like that, I'm really, really taken away by that. And I can only hope that he remains in that good of health or gets a little bit better shape from here on out because I was imagining the worst I was. And we haven't seen that. So that's very heartening. Dr Leon (16:32): This some will say is a very obvious question, but I think it still needs to be asked and answered Why this deal? Why now? Because when I look at, when I read the plea, when I see what the Biden administration got out of this, could have done this five years ago, he's out on bond. They could have allowed bond five years ago. He could have, instead of being tortured in solitary confinement in Belmar prison, he could have been walking the streets of Piccadilly Circus. So why now? Steve Poikenon (17:14): There's a number of different factors, and one is that it does get eliminated as an election year issue. Trump, regardless of the reality that he's the guy who had Julian arrested was able to successfully run on, we love the WikiLeaks. Have you seen the WikiLeaks? Can't get enough of the WikiLeaks. He was able to gain a lot of ground with that. So it is popular among Americans to want to at least think you have some sort of transparency with your government or think you might be able to have some sort of citizen accountability with your government, which is one of the benefits that WikiLeaks provided. So that's off the table, the Biden administration, because people have goldfish, brain can try to spin it as well. Donald Trump's the guy who had 'em thrown in jail and we're the guys who let him out. Well, you didn't let him out. (18:11) You made him plead guilty to something he didn't do after torturing him for five years and threatening every one and everything that he held dear, that's coercion. That's not a liberation. That's coercion. That's not a victory in any way, shape or form. And I've seen some on the progressive left already try to be like, Hey, man, Trump locked him up, bite him, let him out because he forced him to plead guilty to something that he didn't do. I think we all just need to keep circulating that last part until it sinks in. But we discussed for a number of years on the critical hour how it is a huge problem for the Biden administration or any administration to have Julian Assange on American soil even if the trial takes place behind closed doors in the Eastern District of Virginia, because then you are really putting the press on trial in America for everyone to be forced to pay attention to. And that's something that not Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, definitely not Merrick Garland is capable of dealing with or quelling in a manner that doesn't look like a total brutal dictatorship. And that's what it was going to turn into. Dr Leon (19:35): We have been saying for a couple of years, the one thing, the Biden, for all of the discussion about extradition and all these appeals and the United States sending attorneys to London and going through the barrister and all of that stuff that they were doing, we kept saying, they do not want this man on American soil. They were trying to kill him through the process. Let's drag this thing out for as long as we possibly can and hope the man dies in Belmar prison. We were saying the last, in fact, I remember having a very extensive conversation with you where I was saying, I think the time has come for the Assange Camp to flip the script and take the deal. Tell Merrick Garland, we want to come to the United States. Please extradite us. We want to be on American soil. And we kicked that around for a while. Steve Poikenon (20:41): Yeah, you're absolutely right. And the last thing that any government wants to deal with is having all of its media suddenly turn against it. And in the US, even though the mainstream media is a wholly owned subsidiary of the state, there are people who are allowed to operate with a little bit more freedom. And those are the people who usually command the largest audiences because they're allowed to show a little bit of authenticity on mainstream airwaves, and people are desperate for that. So they don't want their press turning on 'em. They don't want free Assange banners every time they pan into the crowd at a sporting event. They don't want free Assange banners signs every time they go do a man on the street interview. They were in the worst possible position you could be having to make up your case entirely. And having a still somewhat engaged public to where they could mount not just a resistance, but a real jury nullification campaign and a real on the ground, real time education of exactly what their government is trying to do. Via the prosecution of Julian Assange, again, under the Espionage Act of 1917, we're going to take an Australian citizen with a publishing company, publishing outlet, registered in Iceland, give him fake charges in Sweden, imprison him in London and have a Icelandic FBI snitch, make up a whole bunch of stories about him, then recant his testimony. I think Aile, because that's the thing that happened. Pedophile. Yeah, a convicted, convicted pedophile. Dr Leon (22:40): And you haven't even gone through what we did as it relates to Ecuador and what we did in terms of the Ecuadorian election to be, now I'm drawing a blank on the president. Steve Poikenon (22:51): Lennon Moreno was more Moreno. Yeah. Dr Leon (22:55): We didn't even go through what the machinations that the United States went through to get Assange out of the Ecuadorian Embassy. Steve Poikenon (23:05): Yeah. Or touch on the security company that was there at the embassy, uc Global, which was hired first by the Ecuadorian government to provide security then by the CIA via a spook convention effectively at one of Sheldon Adelson's casinos, who was one of Trump's biggest donors at the time, where the head of the security company wound up getting arrested, trying to flee the country after it was discovered that he had had this double dealing with the CIA. And then it was revealed that because of the illegal spying equipment morales's company had placed in assange's rooms at the embassy that led to a planning session with the American CIA where they were plotting out how to kidnap and murder Julian Assange. That was Mike. Dr Leon (23:56): They Steve Poikenon (23:56): Came to, Dr Leon (23:57): That was Mike Ell at the time. And so what folks, and you laying this out, what folks really need to understand is this is not some tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. All you got to do folks is Google it. It's there in mainstream press that this is what the United States went through trying. These are the illegal machinations that the United States government went through in order to try to get this guy. Steve Poikenon (24:28): Absolutely. And people feel certain ways about the gray zone or what, you don't have to read the initial reporting that Max Blumenthal did based off of the reporting that the Spanish outlet El Pais did. Michael Isikoff, two years later, 18 months later, Michael Isikoff through Yahoo News, did the same story, picked it up and took out some of the more poignant points so that he could fit it into a Yahoo story and put out that version of it. But it's there in several mainstream outlets everybody should know. Mike Pompeo tried to have a journalist and publisher assassinated or kidnapped and then assassinated just to prevent him from being able to testify in his own defense is all you can really assume at that point. You're trying to take him out while you have him basically captured. You want to make sure he never works a day in his life again, and you damn sure want to make sure that he doesn't testify because then it becomes part of a court record and then somebody can sue to have that court record or it'll be public Dr Leon (25:40): As a wrap up to this part of the conversation. So I never thought I'd see, this day I thought Julian Sal was going to die in Bell Marsh. What do you see as being the more immediate impacts to this as it relates to press freedom and journalism and some of the longer term impacts? And some of that, I know we won't really know until we hear from him, but your thoughts, Steve Poikenon (26:10): I hope it inspires people to kind of see where the new limits are, because most journalists have just been not necessarily holding back, but the amount of leak based journalism has basically vanished the amount of journalists truly going out there and trying to bring to light some major problems. Boeing comes to Dr Leon (26:35): Mind. Investigative journalism. Steve Poikenon (26:37): Yeah. I want to believe that Julian Assange breathing air again will be a beacon to people to do investigative journalism more often, better than they have been, however you want to frame it. I want that to be a spark that pushes the current boundaries and hopefully pushes 'em back a little bit because it's been relatively restrictive over the last several years. Dr Leon (27:08): There's another issue related to this. It was in consortium news, help us fight theocracy Psychological operations or PSYOPs are operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations and groups and individuals. William Casey, the CIA director under Ronald Reagan said, we'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false. And what happened with Julian Assange, I think is a perfect example of this type of behavior by the American government. Steve Poikenon (28:02): It is. And if you look at the amount of government shenanigans that have occurred in the last four, five years since they yanked Julian out of the embassy, there we're seeing more and more lawsuits being brought against major pharmaceutical companies for vital information that they withheld during the last several years were we found out that a lot of what we were originally told about the January 6th incident, and a lot of what happened then was not necessarily true. There's been multiple court cases that have kept political parties from taking part in the American political process. They've kept, Lawfare has been levied against everyone from the aru, the Aru fellas, Dr Leon (29:07): Mali. Yes. Steve Poikenon (29:09): Yeah, I can never, I know, yes. Ella is something that is just not chambered for me. It's not. But from those guys to, like Alex Jones has been a victim of lawfare. Donald Trump has been a victim of Lawfare, and the entire time there hasn't been a really adversarial reporting outlet with the international foundation that WikiLeaks has with the international audience, that WikiLeaks has to mount a citizen and open source intelligence challenge to any of this and the myriad ways, not just through the restrict Act or the new antisemitism bill or a number of the different laws in Europe and Europe, has the internet been shrunk down significantly? But Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter stating that he wants to turn it into WeChat where your entire internet based existence is on through this one app. I would imagine that Julian Assange would have a lot to say about what Elon Musk has been up to. (30:24) He'd have a lot to say about what happened with the WHO or the NIH over the last several years, but we haven't had that opportunity. And that to me is something that the US government can put as a Big W in their column. That's something that MI six could put as a Big W in their column and really goes right back to those forward documents where they were outlining the plan for what they wanted to do with WikiLeaks. They didn't get to scatter the organization to the winds the way they necessarily described 14 years ago. But when's the last time we got a WikiLeaks drop? Dr Leon (31:07): Well, and for folks that may not understand the significance of this, of course, it was the shooting of the civilians, the murder of the civilians in Iraq and the journalists in Iraq that were shot during the war. And WikiLeaks put that footage out for everybody to see the war crimes that were being committed. So if WikiLeaks had been allowed to continue to operate, I would think our understanding of Ukraine would be different. Our understanding of what's being done in Taiwan would be different. Our understanding of what's being done or trying to be done in North Korea would be different. We would have a lot more insight and information into the illegalities, whether they be international law, whether they be American law, whether they be war crimes, that the United States and its allies have been engaging in these various engagements around the world. Steve Poikenon (32:15): You're correct. And let's also recall that WikiLeaks and WikiLeaks alone disclosed the transpacific partnership. They were the outlet that that agreement came to. They published it, people looked at it and went, no, you want to do what? No, no. And those kinds of trade agreements being disclosed that were done in the dark, away from the eyes of the American public with zero opportunity for public comment or any sort of pushback that made WikiLeaks more dangerous in my opinion, then disclosing video of something that according to even the guys in the helicopter was like a three times a day event in Iraq. And it's something that people in the military kind of shrugged off like, well, yeah, that's what we do. But to the average citizen, it's shocking and horrifying, but not as shocking and horrifying as the United States government wants to set up a corporate court, and it will be a couple of CEOs that determine your future. And if you say something untoward about them on the internet, then they're appointed magistrates from the corporation will decide your faith. That's what the TPP was promising. And any outlet that is going to disclose information like that is suddenly become the most dangerous organization on the planet. Dr Leon (33:49): And when you said that, that I'm drawing a blank on his name, the attorney that sued ExxonMobil in Brazil, Steve Poikenon (33:58): Steven Inger, Dr Leon (33:59): Steven Inger, and how Mobil ExxonMobil was able to use a judge. I mean, they just flipped that whole thing. Don Zinger on behalf of the Indians in Brazil, sues ExxonMobil wins an ungodly amount of money, and he winds up going to jail and ExxonMobil because of what they were able to do with the judicial system in New York, it was criminal. So when you talk about a corporate magistrate, Don Zinger is what popped into my head. Steve Poikenon (34:42): And it was because of an agreement that happened during the Trump administration that that was even possible. And they basically dismantled the TPP, they put certain parts of it into different trade agreements and provisions, and then they got the quasi corporate court because the judge, I believe had been a former Chevron attorney. Correct. And that's how that may even be how he got his judgeship was Chevron bought his way into the judgeship. And that is kind of ordinary corruption, but it's ordinary corruption that also has multinational trade agreements codifying it. And again, in the absence of a WikiLeaks or an organization like it, disclosing these kinds of agreements on the regular, you're not going to get the rapid dissemination of that information amount, a successful pushback in time to stop it. You're not going to be able to get people on the same page understanding it because there's no trust with a number of these. (35:48) All of these other outlets are so disparate, nobody's really consolidated in a way that will lend the immediate mass public trust in what you're doing. Like Lit WikiLeaks had built up over a number of years to the point that when 2015, they disclosed the tpp, people from all over the world held rallies immediately, and there were people out in the streets immediately, and it became an election year issue and it wasn't. And people had to change their tone on it and say to the point where Donald Trump even won a lot of people over by saying, it's a bad deal. It's bad. I don't want to be any part of it. Hillary Clinton had to answer for it. They all had to answer for it. On that debate stage back in 2016, it became a real issue. And so if we don't have these kinds of things moving forward, we're going to be in a significantly less informed spot than we were a decade ago. And in the internet age, that should not be how information is progressing. Dr Leon (36:51): And final point here, and I want to go back to this William Casey quote, and this is the former director of the ccia A and Ronald Reagan will know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false. And that takes me, you've heard me say this too many times, Edward Bernas and the book Propaganda folks, you need to get a copy and you need to read Propaganda by Edward Bernas because that's to a great degree what Bill Casey was talking about. And this whole idea, the whole idea of psychological operations, PSYOPs and the PS ocracy. Steve Poikenon (37:47): Yeah. And fifth generation warfare is an asymmetrical warfare conducted on the citizenry, and that's conducted via all elements of propaganda. We're 12 years into living in a reality, a post Smith month modernization act reality. When the Smith Modernization Act passed and went into effect, government propaganda, military propaganda, and government analysts and experts became part and parcel of the media the better part of a halfway through a generation's worth of 24 hour, seven day a week asymmetrical warfare where the vast majority of the people walking around don't even know that they're at war, let alone with their own government, nor that their own government openly declared war on them. That's how good the propaganda is. Everybody should study Bnes. Everybody needs to internalize that the United States is the most propagandized country on the planet. And the only way that we can get out of that is if we understand the landscape that we're standing on and we start to look at how not necessarily individual people that make up that landscape operate, but the institutions that allow for those people to move freely on that landscape operate. And those institutions, we've been shown over and over and over again to be untrustworthy, to be acting not in our interest, to be acting at the behest of not even people in their own country. And yet for some reason, we still get Berna back into thinking that you can vote your way out of an oligarchy Dr Leon (39:44): And so quickly am wake up slow news day. Where do people go? What do they get when they listen to it? Steve Poikenon (39:50): You can go to am wakeup show.com for absolutely everything. We are live Monday through Thursday from 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM Pacific us. There's content on the channel pretty much all the time. We stream out live on Rock fin and Rumble, and then you can catch them pretty much anywhere and everywhere else. And yeah, just thank you so much for having me on. I really have always enjoyed our conversations. Very glad to do your show. Dr Leon (40:22): Well, I got to thank you my guest, Steve Kin, for joining me today. I greatly, greatly appreciate you giving me time out of your schedule, and I always look forward to the conversations that we have and look forward to having many more with you here on Connecting the Dots. Thank you, Steve. Steve Poikenon (40:37): Thank you, Wilmer. Dr Leon (40:39): And thank you so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon, and Steve mentioned the Smith Mut Act, M-U-N-D-T Act. You all can Google that. Look it up. But simply put, for about 60 years that act prohibited the United States Department of State and the broadcasting Board of Governors from disseminating government produced programming within the United States over fear that these agencies would propagandize the American people. However, in around 2013, Congress abolished the domestic dissemination ban, which now has led to this big heated debate about the role of the federal government in free public discourse. Folks, stay tuned for new episodes every week and follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, make a contribution. We would greatly, greatly, greatly appreciate it. Doing this every week is not an inexpensive venture. Your assistance is greatly appreciated. Follow us on social media. You can find all the links below to the show. And remember that this is where the analysis of politics and culture and history converge talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Woman Leon. Have a great one. Peace. I'm out Announcer (42:20): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Arnd und Philipp sind schon im EM-Fieber und reden die deutsche Leistung gegen die Ukraine zumindest so schön, dass wir am Ende zumindest Geheimfavorit sind.Außerdem rekapitulieren die beiden Herren natürlich auch das Endspiel in Wembley, die gelben Busse am Piccadilly Circus und den etwas unglücklichen Abschied von Marco Reus. Tja, wären die beiden Herren mal zusammen hingefahren, dann wäre die ganze Chose möglicherweise anders ausgegangen.Außerdem im bunten Themenstrauß dabei: ein Witzebuch von Norbert Pflippen, eine vorläufige Würdigung der Gesamtkarriere von Toni Kroos, täuschend echte Trikots aus dem Internet und das Phänomen, dass es bei Brüdern im Profifußball heißt: „Warte mal, der kleine Bruder ist noch viel besser!“ Stimmt oft gar nicht, klingt aber gut!Bevor ihr nun fiebrig in die neue Folge reinhört, noch mal fix der Hinweis, dass wir, während der EM täglich zu hören sind. Das wird ein wilder Ritt! Ihr habt Fragen oder Anregungen? Dann schreibt uns gern an podcast@11freunde.de +++Lasst uns zusammen den Pott holen! Hier geht's zur Abstimmung für den Deutschen Podcast Preis.+++ Alle Rabattcodes und Infos zu unseren Werbepartnern findet ihr hier: https://linktr.ee/zeigler_koester +++Eine Produktion im Auftrag der Audio Alliance.+++Hosts: Arnd Zeigler und Philipp KösterRedakteur: Tim PommerenkeAudioproduzentin und Sprecherin: Henni KochSounddesign: Ekki Maas+++ Unsere allgemeinen Datenschutzrichtlinien finden Sie unter https://datenschutz.ad-alliance.de/podcast.html +++ Unsere allgemeinen Datenschutzrichtlinien finden Sie unter https://art19.com/privacy. Die Datenschutzrichtlinien für Kalifornien sind unter https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info abrufbar.

Show Notes and Transcript Jaco Booyens joins Hearts of Oak to discuss his journey from South Africa to the U.S, becoming a citizen and focusing on anti-trafficking work.  His organisation prioritizes prevention, inspired by his sister's trafficking experience.  Jaco highlights the prevalence of human trafficking in the U.S, especially within families, tells us of the destructive impact of the pornography industry on exploitation and criticizes the church for not actively addressing these issues. Despite facing opposition from Big Tech, Big Pharma, and the pornography lobby, Jaco encourages engagement, education, and support for anti-trafficking efforts and tells us how we can all get involved. With 29 years of fighting trafficking, Jaco Booyens is the leading voice in America addressing the entire ecosystem that feeds human trafficking. His team collaborates with 170+ anti-trafficking organizations nationwide, as well as local and federal law enforcement agencies. JBM is consistently tracking the evolution of this crime in real time. This intel allows us to conduct a global gap analysis to best advocate for the needs of the anti-trafficking community on all fronts (legislation, awareness, training our first responders and government officials). JBM sees early and is able to sound the alarm - warning the American public about what's happening to their children. Jaco Booyens Ministries is an anti-trafficking organization led by the Holy Spirit to redeem the lives of children, victims, survivors, and those creating demand for sexual exploitation.  They support real-life rescues and save children BEFORE they need to be rescued Connect with Jaco and the Ministry... WEBSITE           jacobooyensministries.org X/TWITTER       x.com/BooyensJaco INSTAGRAM      instagram.com/jaco.booyens Interview recorded 29.5.24 Connect with Hearts of Oak... X/TWITTER        x.com/HeartsofOakUK WEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/ PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/ SOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connect/ SHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop/ *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com and follow him on X/Twitter x.com/TheBoschFawstin TRANSCRIPT Hello, Hearts of Oak. I'm delighted to be joined by a brand new guest that I had the privilege of meeting over in my trip in Texas, and that's Jaco Booyens. Jaco, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you. It was great to meet you in person, and thank you for the kind gesture of having me on your show. Not at all. It was wonderful meeting you and then meeting you again later jumping on with you on your show and I had not actually known about the work you're doing. I've looked into it and and it's a phenomenal work you do and i'm hoping that we can share that with our viewers and listeners, but of course first of all people can obviously find you there's your twitter handle which is on the screen or X and this Jaco Booyans Ministries.org is the website that is on the the twitter handle at the top when you go on to Jaco's profile and also everything is in the description. And you describe yourself Jaco as as an anti-trafficking organization led by the Holy Spirit which we'll delve into that point in a moment which is alien for UK viewers certainly but to redeem the lives of children victims survivors and those creating demand for sexual exploitation. We support real life rescues and save children before they need to be rescued. So, we want to delve into the work you do, the vital work you've done for nearly three decades. But before I start with that, can I ask you about yourself? How does a South African end up in the US and becoming a US citizen, legally becoming a US citizen? You know, that's the question today is what's legal and what's not legal, because we still have legal immigration in the US, you know, there's still and as you do in the UK, there are laws on the books, it's whether those laws are actually upheld or not. That's the question of the day. You know, Peter, when I was 18 years old as a South African, born and raised in Johannesburg, with a tremendous, you know, love for England because all our sport are the same. Our school system is built on the British school system. Our legal system is British law. I mean, there's such an intertwinement between the UK and South Africa, right? I was destined to play professional rugby at that time as an 18-year-old. My sister was 12 years old. We were on the brink of civil war. This is 1994, South Africa, Nelson Mandela's coming out of prison. I mean, it is just a melting pot of change, right? And in that year, 1994, when my sister Ilonka was 12, she was trafficked. Now, we're from a single-parent home. Father was not in our lives. I'm a senior in high school, or a matriculant in high school, as we'll call it. But on my way to the military, because it's last class of military, mandatory military service, I'm also on my way to play professional rugby, which both happened. But then also my sister is trafficked. And it was a six-year journey. Of this 12-year-old girl being trafficked until she was 18, my sister, so for me from just about turning 19 to 26, 25, 26, it was this process of not knowing exactly what has happened, what is happening to our sister. And by God's grace, I was there the night she was rescued. And in that process, none of us knew what human trafficking was, but in that six-year process, there was this agreement by the family, my mother, myself, my brother, that when Ilonka was coming home, and we believed that God had her, that she was safe, that we would immigrate to Nashville, Tennessee, because music was our love. Music is, in fact, the industry she was trafficked through. We didn't know it at the time. And so once that happened in 2001, we immigrated to the U.S. We came as visitors and started the process of becoming legal U.S. Citizens, came in legally and worked the process. And for me, it was a 14-year process of becoming a citizen, because I was a visitor and then I became a professional athlete in the U.S., which changed my visa status. And you start over every time. And then I lived in Canada for two years playing professional football in Canada, football, not British football, American football. Which changed my legal status again. And so I had to restart three or four times. And hence the reason it took 14 years before I was sworn in as a U.S. Citizen, you know, and very proudly so. Where was that? Which city, which area was that you were sworn in? Did most of my work with the Memphis Office of Immigration, but I actually was sworn in in Dallas, Texas, because we moved to Dallas 2011 and 2014, sworn in as a U.S. citizen. So, I've been a citizen now for nine, ten years almost. It was such a proud moment, Peter. You know, I love South Africa. That red dirt never gets out of your system. I love my people. I love the country. But we're called here for the fight. We're in fighting human trafficking. We're called here. And standing in front of an immigration judge, I say this to a lot of U.K. residents would understand this. When you have migration and immigration into a country, into the U.S., you are asked to assimilate. You're required. I had to write a written English exam, verbal exam, understand the branches of government. An exam, I argue, most American citizens, naturally born, will fail. They'll fail that test. Same here. Same situation in the U.K. And so pass that exam, then you go through a bar. Then you go through an immigration federal judge, you get questioned. You get all your biometrics taken, they check your background, et cetera, et cetera. And then finally, you stand in front of a judge with your friends and family, and you hear, welcome, newest citizen of the United States. And you pledge that allegiance for the first time, and you sing that national anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner, for the first time. And what a moment, you know, what a moment. Incredible. Had my daughter there with me, my firstborn and she was witness to that. And so, you know, we honor that process, although it being a very expensive and a 14-year process, I honor it. Jaco, you touched on your sports background. You're an entrepreneur. You were in the media industry, which you refer to what happened to your family. That seems a lot on. Why jump into this issue whatever you've got your hands filled with so many other things. Yeah, you're right look I was I was born and raised on the stage. I mean my mom was a theater professor so my first memory we're doing the musical, the student prince I was three years old so I was raised in the entertainment business which ended up being the business that trafficked my sister. And so at the time, at 18, as I'm going to professional sport, the military, you've got a sister that's under duress. And so it takes precedent. Six years in, when Ilanka was rescued, by God's grace, I was there that night. Peter, I'll just tell you my story. I heard God's voice say, not another one. And although I didn't quite know and understand what trafficking was at the time, this is 2001. 2001, I knew that this, this had to end through her eyes in the US after we arrived in Nashville, she called a family meeting and unpacked for us in detail, what men had done to her and how, and you know, you can't, you, your brain disconnects. You don't want, you don't want to hear it, but you're hearing it because it's your sister. And so everything I knew in the beginning, I learned from Ilonka. That led us on this journey of fighting for every child and which led us to 2010 to realize that the United States is the leading nation in the world demanding the exploitation of people. That's a fact. It's sadly so, but it's a fact. We're demanding the highest demand on pornographic content, producing pornographic content, the distribution of CSAM, child sexual abuse material. We lead the world in social media and app development, which has become the platform on which this is prolificated, right? It's just, it's exploded since the age of social media. And so since 2010, although we do a lot of work in other countries still, our organization has a hyper focus on the 50 states of the United States. And thank you for the quote early. We believe we can save a child before they need to be rescued. And what we mean by that is predators look for vulnerabilities in children. If there's not a vulnerability, they'll exploit a potential vulnerability like love and belonging, care, shelter, food, community, identity, you know, and they'll explore what sticks and then they'll dig in. And, you know, remember, it's a crime. Human trafficking is such a broad term. There's labor trafficking, debt bondage, sexual exploitation, sex trafficking. But the crime of human trafficking by definition, which we had a hand in help write, is the exploitation of persons through the mechanism of force, fraud, and coercion. And so those are the mechanisms predators use. The bully uses force. Fraud, coercion is so effective when you combine it with sexual exploitation, so for us we just learned how to use our relationships in media which is still ongoing and active. Proud member of the blaze network with Glenn Beck. We produce feature films. We produce a lot of content and music and television. We utilize those platforms now as sounding boards and awareness campaigns to drive all attention attention and focus to end the sexual exploitation of children. That is our main focus, is to end trafficking. Now, with that being said, our organization has four key pillars, of which one is policy and legislation. Where we are unbelievably active in policy and legislation. We've got great leaders of that in our organization, where we write bills for individual U.S. States, U.S. Senate, the House. We consult. We are even busy with a bill for the House of Lords to speak into how do we protect children in a community by us identifying the vulnerability, vulnerability securing the vulnerability before a predatory force gets to to exploit. Tell me about the early days of starting the JBM, Jaco Booyan's Ministries? Yeah, what were those kind of early days, because this is a huge issue and has got much worse there's so many facets where you can tackle this. And you talk about media and legislation? There are so many angles that you can start on. And it seems as though this is something which actually is just too big to tackle. And I'm sure a number of people have tried to look at this and walked away by the beast they see in front of them. But tell us about those early days, how you started and how you grew in those first few years. Yeah, what a question, man. This is what makes you such a great interviewer, Peter, and congratulations on all the success of the show and the impact you're making. It's because of questions like this. That question is actually also the answer to the big problem. You know, I came full circle, 30 years is a long time, Peter. I mean, 30 years in, I now know that where we started is actually the solution to the problem. We started by focusing on one child in one family, understanding that if the family breaks down, the child is vulnerable. And so the solution to this multi-headed dragon monster that you're addressing is actually where we started. We focused on one child, my sister, her story, her voice. How did this happen? Learning about where we were vulnerable and we didn't know as a family, because we have a mother that worked three jobs, actively engaged in every aspect of the lifestyle, but yet it's not a sound, stable family. It's not. And that's not to frown upon single-parent families. They're to be celebrated, but they are vulnerable. We have to understand how they're vulnerable. And so the early days was very tough because when Ilonka, first of all, when she went through trafficking. The word human trafficking wasn't even socialized. Law enforcement deemed it a runaway right away, quickly, as is happening today. There was no policy and legislation. We didn't have a definition for human trafficking in the US until 2015. We didn't have laws on the books specific to child sex trafficking in the United States until 2015. And so the early years from 2001 to 2015 was a desert. You couldn't raise funds. You couldn't get anybody to repeat the word. Nobody wanted to even know. You couldn't talk about sexual exploitation and really child rape. Rape it was it was just a taboo across the board and and there was these prayers of could we just see a day when people would at least want to talk about it. Could we not just us but other amazing organizations that have championed this with us the problem was in the U.S. at that time and really still today to be honest on the heels of the Sound of Freedom movie. Great film, we consulted on it know the guys well, but it still paints a misconception of really what's happening, is it paints this picture to the American population that the problem is elsewhere. The problem is in Cambodia, it's in the Philippines, it's in Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, in the Congo, and then they tie the problem directly to poverty or displacement, right? Right. Sure. Poverty and displacement plays a big role, but that's, in fact, no longer a driving factor. You know, the fastest growing form of human trafficking globally and in the U.S. is what's called familial trafficking, where it's family members trafficking their own children, where the child is not homeless, is not a runaway, is not in the foster care system. So, for years we fought to say, hey, wait a minute. It's not just over there. It's here. It's in the U.S. And that's still a battle we face today. So we come full circle because we thought for a time period around 2010 through 15, we started saying to law enforcement, look, you're arresting the wrong people. You're arresting the victims and the Johns. The bad guys are walking free. The pimps and the predators are walking free. You know, so we said, could we just get laws on the books? And then we did. And then we thought that we could arrest ourselves out of the problem. And you realize you cannot. Then we thought we could legislate ourselves out of the problem. And we realized, as you do in the UK at the moment, just because the laws on the books doesn't mean it's adjudicated as such in the court of law. And so you're not going to legislate yourself out of the problem, although we need great legislation. So, how then do we fix this? We heal the nuclear family. That's how you fix this. The fight starts at home. Each parent, every child, you don't wait until a child is destitute. Or, I mean, it is a constant bombardment, a barrage of attack on our Gen Z culture of misinformation, lies, deceit, and sexualized content, normalizing absolutely absurd behavior. And so the law is tossed aside for social norm. So, once we realize that, okay, we started with, bonding one family together around one child, we come full circle and realize the only way to stop child sexual exploitation is to educate one family at a time for them to take ownership. Over the problem, which means accountability, fortify that family, and do not allow any of the crazy that you fight and I fight into the family. Don't allow them to radicalize the school system, the education platform, driving the church out of the home, bringing radicalized ideology through different religion, as you are literally living in every day, into the conversation because it disfranchised the strength of a family, which then renders that family completely vulnerable to predatory forces. I want to get on to the demand you talked about, and there are all different points on the website that people, the viewers, listeners do need to go to and absorb some of that information, to realize the scale of what you face and how you're working towards a solution for this. But the industry, you talk about kind of, well, people talk about industries, the lobby power of Big Pharma or the war industry or the food industry. But the sex industry, the pornography industry, and then the people trafficking kind of coming together, that sex industry, that must be a powerful industry with their tentacles in governments, not only in the US, but worldwide. Have you seen that? Yeah, it's because of the nature of it, you know, Peter in my in my Ted Talk, I say I open my ted talk I believe with every single human being can be trafficked. If I know your greatest vulnerability and your greatest need you can be trafficked well. Finance is a mechanism of vulnerability. Finance. The desire to be loved and understood and seen as every human being. So, every human being is a sexual being. So, when you take sex as a concept and you corrupt it, you're going to devastate and destroy. Absolutely so, now you're seeing that sex, in fact, a drug in pornography, 100%, right? It's actually very effective. So, you'll find that when we work with law enforcement in the U.S. and there's a drug raid. There's not always sex involved. There's not always guns smuggling involved. There's not always money laundering or people smuggling involved. It could be drugs. Where you fight sexual exploitation, all of the above are involved. Every single human trafficking case has illegal weapons, money laundering, people smuggling, drugs, crime, homicide. It's the one thing that begets all of it because it's the ultimate moral compromise. Once you go to that level where you are willing to look the other way or be participant in subjecting a child to exploitation, all the rest is fair game. So evil will play that card. And so when we talk about the size of that industry, we are in this year going to surpass the illegal drug trade in the U.S. With sexual exploitation. It will become the number one crime in the U.S. Now, in 2023, it was a $152 billion U.S. crime, sorry, international crime. $52 billion of the $152 billion was domestic, was U.S. So, a third of the world's human exploitation by dollar value is in the U.S. When you would consider sexual exploitation as a for-profit enterprise, publicly traded, it would be a Fortune 100 company in the US. This is tax-free, which makes its EBITDA close to probably $5 billion, right? Because it's all for gain and for profit. But it's not just money, Peter. It's the corruption of power. I'll give you an example. Were deep into this conversation and investigation in the Sean Combs P. Diddy case, like we were in 2007 and are currently in the Jeffrey Epstein case, Ghislaine Maxwell, Harvey Weinstein. Why it's prevalent at those levels is the following. It's not just money. It's not that they're making money through sex. Yes, they do. It's power and position. It's compromise, it's throwing a freak out party. P. Diddy's party inviting a bunch of people, positioning activity that's illicit in front of everybody. Compromising everybody at the party. Filming people. Get a knock on the door going, hey, you were at the party. You're in a photograph with a minor. You didn't talk to the minor. You didn't touch the minor. You didn't engage in the basement. None of it. But you are compromised. And it's a tool, unbelievably prevalent tool in politics to sway votes, to move people, to move judges, to move. Look, you've got a member of the royal family implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein case. There is no level of society as low or high where you cannot use sex to compromise an individual for power, position, or finance. And that's why it's so prevalent. It's effective, highly effective, because it speaks to the moral compass of a man or a woman, the fortitude and the spine of saying no, even if it costs you everything. And so when you take desire for political position, right now, one of our top things we're doing with the United Nations in the UK, and I shared this with you, is looking into premiership soccer, premiership football. The amount of Premier League players that had been trafficked from Africa, right? It's, again, there's a young talent. How do you control that talent? You compromise the talent, take passports, visa, you compromise them sexually, you hold something over your head. This is an effective tool that's in business and in public and private sector alike. Is part of the problem under the demand issue, and you touched about a moral compass, you've also got an innate sexual desire compass. And when that gift of sex is abused by society, by media, then we see the end result. Adult, but you've got men in positions of power and pornography and masculinity, sadly, have become mixed and therefore, and it's also seen as a non-victimless activity. It's seen as actually, this is fine, this is natural and these women, I'm sure they've made this decision to enter this career. You kind of come up against that of men in positions and why would any man in a position who enjoys pornography, why would you want to stop this? It's kind of seen as normal and natural and yet you're giving a different message which hits at it from an angle of truth that people don't want to accept I assume. Yeah, look. Taking accountability and personal responsibility for anything, as a father, for you as a father, right? Staring your faults and your mistakes in the face and say, I own them. That human nature shies away from that. Even if it's not sex, just making a mistake, saying, hey, that was me. I own it. I'm going to fix it. I'm going to do better next time. By nature, people don't want to do that. When it is sexual compromise now it's secret in my world it's secret it's private. It is their self-condemnation most of most men if they're honest they'll tell you right after they watch porn they feel guilty, they feel empty, they feel void, it does not fulfill them, and it will not, it cannot, because they've objectified a person where that where there's a dissonance, you know, there's a disassociation with nobody is being harmed. Let me give you some statistics real quick, okay? Over 80% of what the world deems prostitutes, over 80% of those women have filed rape charges. And you would say, well, how is a prostitute able to file a rape charge? It's easy. All she has to do in the moment is say, 'no.' It's not consensual. Well, you're branded a prostitute, so it must always be consensual. No, there's no irrevocable consent, right? Over 80%, get this number, 87% of what the world today classifies as prostitutes, we're talking about adult women now, right, had been sexually exploited as minors. So are they prostitutes? They're actually, in fact, not prostitutes. Because you have to understand the human behavioural science, the mind, the psyche, what happens to sex hormones in the brain, puberty, what actually happens to a human being with sexual encounter and interaction. It's chemical. It's metaphysical. It's physical. It's biological. It's not just a feeling. There's real reaction and there's bonding and tearing, bonding and tearing. This is why divorce is so detrimental. This is why having multiple sexual partners, there's a tearing because it's a bonding agent. It's the most vulnerable, most intimate moment a human being will ever be in. Complete exposure, nudity, nakedness, heart, emotion. So, it's this constant bonding, tearing, bonding, tearing. When you normalize that, you decimate culture. Here's some statistics. There's not a single civilization recorded in the history of mankind that embraced sexual exploitation that survived three generations, not one. Rome fell because of this. The Mayan culture fell. The Greeks fell. The Asian culture fell to where the Chinese have outlawed pornography completely. They'll give the US TikTok with porn and the UK TikTok, but porn is illegal in China. Why? They understand that it will kill their culture. Porn is the most destructive weapon on the face of the earth because it seems normal. It's sex. Here's another thing. Do you know that in Nevada, the state of Nevada that has legal brothels, and it's not on the Vegas strip, by the way, there's not a single legal brothel on the Vegas strip. The areas in Nevada that has legal brothels. Most of those women have pimps. Most of those women perform pornography because they're not making enough money to make their quota on general sex trafficking on the Vegas Strip. Most of those women in organized porn are intoxicated, are manipulated. What I want men to understand is when you objectify a woman or a man, the violation of privacy. What if it was your daughter? For young men, your future wife. The violation of privacy by observing porn, just observing it, watching it, you are creating demand for another human being to be exploited. And it is exploitation, whether they understand it or not. Remember, most victims don't self-identify. So, we are asking for human beings to be exploited, while we are frowning upon racism and all these things. There's more slaves today, sex slaves, than ever before in human history, ever before. We are dealing with a cataclysmic problem here in society where now we're looking at it and go, well, if we normalize it, there's Germany two weeks ago legalizing the possession of child. Pornography. Okay, I hear you. How did the individual obtain the child pornography? A child was exploited. So, you could say it's legal to possess it, but then you're saying it's legal to create it. So, the child has no defence. The child is a sitting duck. That culture, you mark my words, the German culture is going to implode. It will implode. It'll be decimated at the core because it's the ultimate moral compromise. When you have a situation in the UK where you have rape gangs, when you have a situation in the UK where there's no go zones, where you have a situation in the UK where a doctrine that does not frown upon sex with children becomes normalized. You're going to lose the culture. You'll be decimated like the Romans. You will lose it all. There is no way around this. If you cannot protect, for me as a Christian, it's a mandate, Peter. But even if you're not a Christian, let me tell you, if you cannot protect the vulnerable of your culture, the most vulnerable children, you don't have a future. Forget about them standing up for freedom, for liberty and justice, for our constitution, your constitution, for be kind to your neighbour, be a good citizen. You are having a Gen Z class. That is the most self exploitive class in human history. They sell their own bodies on OnlyFans. The girls in, and I've been on many UK campuses, go talk to them, ask them what's their body count, what's their sexual partner relations like. They've lost count. They've lost hope and they're empty. So pornography in any form, hentai, animation, porn, pornography is the entry drug into human exploitation and human trafficking. Speaking, I've never met a single paedophile, child trafficker, convicted trafficker that was not a porn addict that has not told me it started with pornography. And the drug no longer sustains the dopamine requirement. So, it has to go to harder core porn than it goes to purchasing sex from an adult. That doesn't satisfy. And the ultimate end goal is prepubescent sexual encounter, which is where you see Germany going on a bullet train. I agree. It's a massive concern watching that legislation. Jaco, you talked about your faith right at the beginning. And on the website, you say you're led by the Holy Spirit. Tell me where the church fits into this, because we've seen the church in the UK shy away from any major issues, and as long as they can have their Bible study on a Wednesday and their service on a Sunday morning, they've ticked those boxes, and we see a church withdrawing from society. What's it like for you as a high-profile individual on this huge, horrendous, dark issue that needs to be addressed and that no one really, if you talk to anyone in the street, no one would disagree with anything you say. Then you get down to actually them doing something that's a different issue. But where is the church in this? Where are Christians in this, especially over there in the US? You know, earlier, and I can't be a hypocrite. And I told you this before, every morning I start my day in the mirror asking myself if I'm part of the problem. Do I look the other way? Do I see something and not say something? Am I in some way, you know, demanding for some human being to be exploited? And the answer has to be absolutely not. So as a non-hypocrite, I'm going to tell you, the church has been nowhere in this conversation, because the church has believed the separation of church and state, and the church can't speak into societal issues, and the church is not supposed to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I'm now speaking to the church, and I'm speaking to all denominations, not just Catholicism that's very prevalent in the UK history. I'm talking to the Protestants, you know, all of them, right? The Anglicans, you know, the non-denominationalists. Our faith is not a faith of gathering, tapping each other on the shoulder and saying, hey, let's have Bible study. The greatest commandment of our faith to the one we serve, Jesus Christ, is go into all the nations and disciple, which means bring solutions, kingdom solutions to earthly problems. He tells Peter, pray on earth as in heaven. Heaven, our Father who art in heaven, on earth as in heaven, meaning bring heavenly, Holy Spirit-led, divine, scriptural, foundational solutions to great earthly problems like foster care and abortion and racism and whatever conversation you want to have. If the church does not actively engage with solutions in love, not in hate, in love, but with truth, which is the word of God in the public square, the church is in fact abandoning their watch post on the wall. That is, Peter, Ezekiel 33, 7 says, if the watchman on the wall, which by biblical precedent is the believer, the Christian. If the watchman on the wall does not warn society of an injustice that it sees, meaning speak into it, speak biblical truth, not a fluid biblical worldview, not a watered down false gospel, the gospel. If a Christian, each individual, does not actively speak with their mouth into that injustice, then the blood of is on the hands of the watchman. If that watchman, the Christian engages in culture in these conversations that you're having with Brexit, with the parliamentarians, the house of lords; what's happening. If they don't engage in election conversation from a biblical worldview, if they don't preach it from the pulpit, right? They're in fact the watchman with the blood on their hands. You can't as a Christian stand and say well look at Joe Biden, what is happening to America? We are, we're having drag shows for kids. We are losing our culture. My question immediately is where was the church when they drove you know prayer out of school? Where is the church when we say: hey we're going to show up at a drag show for kids and say this is not okay. They don't show up. So, the role of the church, in fact, the Messiah we follow, Jesus Christ, didn't even have a home, Peter. Didn't have a building, met under trees and went town to town to do what? Meet need, feed people, heal people, right? And spread a different message, a gospel that's a gospel of love, but correction, accountability, take ownership, wait for the British Parliament to save your family. You've got stewardship over your family, over your community, your child's school, right? And so Christians have abdicated their social responsibility because we've made the gospel just about me and my salvation. And now it's private. And now I'm not even a contributor to society. I'm just hoarding faith. But the Great Commission is go and spread this news. So, the church is complicit, 100%. When we are told Jesus went around doing good, destroying the works of the enemy, that verse is enough to live by until our dying day. Jaco, let me finish off just on the opposition you face on this issue. You talk about legislation. I'm sure there's opposition there. I know you're heavily involved in the media and I had the privilege of you showing me around the Blaze studio. And I felt a little bit of envy rising up as you were showing me around the facilities you have. Where does the opposition come from? Is it the political? Is it the media? Or is it lobby groups? Because again, publicly, no one will reject your message. But privately, there must be opposition to what you're doing or else we will see this situation eradicated. I agree with you. You know, the people in general, if we go into what I love, and I'm just going to say this, I love walking from Piccadilly to the West End. I love that walk all the way to Waterloo Bridge. I love that city, right? And when I stop people, I'll never forget, there was a group of kindergartners that were connected with a yellow vest, a bright yellow vest, and their teachers were all around them. And they were protecting them, walking through on a field trip through Piccadilly Circus, right? And there was an immediate reverence by the people they made way. In general, the public's gonna agree. Look, when they look in the eyes of a child, yeah, we've got to protect that child. The problem comes in when they abdicate their voice to government and they abdicate their voice. Well, this parliamentarian, this member of the House of Lords will speak on my behalf. They will not. They will not. They've got a different mission. Their mission is to stay in office. Their mission is to stay in power. The Uniparty, the globalists, their mission is to not have their own personal faults exposed to the world, to not lose position. So, the problem comes with general society agrees, but general society doesn't speak up and general society doesn't hold those who have been elected accountable. So now by default, we're forfeiting power to organizations. And so our biggest opposition comes from political parties on both sides of the aisle in every country. The Republicans, the Democrats, there's as much opposition sometimes in the House of Lords to a subject like age verification for social media websites. The second I bring that up, they go, wait a minute. Okay, well, hold on. Or when you bring up freedom of speech should not protect pornography to children. That's not a right, right? And that's what Germany grappled with. Do I think the German culture on the ground in the countryside want to see pornography children? Absolutely not. But they lost their voice. They've given it over. So in the U.S., our top opposition is big tech. Think how well they're funded. Big pharma. Absolutely. Big pharma as making a radical push for gender modification, puberty blockers, you know, sexual alteration of children, massive push, and they throwing money at politicians to sway votes. We have now an official pornography lobby, not against porn, for porn on K Street, over a hundred million dollar funded porn lobby that knocks on the doors of politicians every day and coerce them to legalize porn, child porn, to lower the age of consent. We've got a gigantic opposition in the non-faith community. We have a massive fight with radicalized Islam. It's just a fact. It's just a fact because societally in that religion, they don't frown upon. Activities we frown upon as an American culture. I'm reminded in the last Soccer World Cup, I was asked to work with the Qataris on an anti-trafficking campaign. And I said, I cannot, because you guys don't frown upon having eight-year-old child brides. That's the trafficking, the selling of little girls. And their response to me was, well, would you help us to say trafficking of boys is frown upon? I said, this is asinine. It's insane. Which FIFA stepped up and said, hey, we're against trafficking of all sorts. But culturally, when you abandon your core culture as a nation for a foreign entity to come in, and you're not asking that entity to become British. And I'm not saying they got to love bangers and mash, you know, but culturally who what what is the fabric and the fibre of of of Great Britain. What is what is an American what is the we do not consent with the exploitation of children in this country we do not agree with hate or racism we do not agree that that you shouldn't have freedom of speech, a first and second amendment. You cannot come to this country from a Joseph Kabila regime in the Congo and think that you can come cut people's limbs off. That's not okay. And the second culture loses its voice that we don't agree. You have people speaking on your behalf, but they're not speaking on your behalf. They're speaking on their own behalf and on their own compromise. And you lose your culture. Jaco, I really appreciate your time. I'm intrigued and excited at the work you're doing and for the viewers and listeners maybe you haven't come across your mister before how do they how do they partner with you how do they support you? I know you've got a shop on the website. I'm sure you've got a donate button. I mean how do people become part of what you're doing? Yeah, thank you. Our number one social platform we use is is Instagram. We're on X and Twitter but But there's massive censorship of our voice on some of those platforms. Please go to HelpJBM, Juliet Bravo Mike, Help, Jacobooyens Ministries, Help JBM.org. Number one thing I want your viewers to do is to get educated on our website, how to protect their own families, how to have a conversation with their teenager. How do predators talk online? Is your child already engaging with a predator on DMs, on social media? Secondly, they can help us for a nominal fee save lives period to rescue children from trafficking, fortify them, partner with us in donations but they can also partner with us by by becoming ambassadors in their community; distributing truth and educating families on how to how to protect men, women, and children from sexual exploitation. Jaco, thank you so much for saying that I know the viewers and listeners will really want to go delve into the website and support you in any way possible. So, thank you so much for coming along and sharing the work you're doing. Appreciate you, Peter. God bless you.

"My friends, an American Diner has just magically materialised in the middle of Piccadilly Circus." We're back with a crossover episode! Midnight Burger is a wonderful Sci-Fi comedy podcast about a time-travelling, dimension spanning diner that can appear at any time, anywhere in the multiverse. In this crossover episode it appears in London, not far from the Amelia Project offices. You're about to find out what happens when our two worlds meet... Created by Joe Fisher, Finlay Stevenson, Oystein Ulsberg Brager and Philip Thorne. Produced by Imploding Fictions and Business Goose Media. Featuring Alan Burgon, Hemi Yeroham, Julia C. Thorne, Julia Morizawa, Anna-Maria Everett, Siouxsie Suarez, Neal Starbird, Julie Cowden-Starbird, Tom Moorman. Website: https://ameliapodcast.com/  Transcripts: https://ameliapodcast.com/season-5  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ameliapodcast Donations: https://ameliapodcast.com/support Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/the-amelia-project?ref_id=6148 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ameliapodcast/ Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ameliapodcast X: https://twitter.com/amelia_podcast Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/theameliaproject.bsky.social  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Spencer and Kevin cover chapters 7 and 8 from the Masters of the Air book. The boys start to talk about some pretty dark stuff. Hamburg gets bombed to high hell with children and civilians being burned alive. Kevin and Spencer discuss the ethics and morales of the American's decision to kill innocent Germans. Our boy LeMay comes to the radical conclusion that maybe nighttime bombing wasn't the best idea the Americans had at the time. Pour a couple fingers of bourbon, pop a top, light a spliff, and enjoy some Battle Buddies. PLEASE RATE and REVIEW our show. If you like it, share it, it means the world to us. Links to our Patreon, Mailing list, Merch Store, Website, and social media are all below. (0:00-3:24) Introduction (3:25-17:11) The Horror of Hamburg (17:12-27:22) Sky Scorpions (27:23-44:51) The Double Strike (44:52-55:30) East Anglia September 1943 (55:31-1:02:55) Piccadilly Circus (1:02:56-1:06:07) Conclusive Comments Patreon https://www.patreon.com/BattleBuddiesPodcast Mailing List https://mailchi.mp/788c3299059d/battlebuddiespodcast Merch Store https://37bd21-5.myshopify.com/ Our Website https://battlebuddiespod.com/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/battle_buddies_pod/ X https://twitter.com/BattleBuddies4 --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thebattlebuddiespod/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thebattlebuddiespod/support

A long time ago, CheapShow was sent an unusual 7” vinyl record called The Sounds of London. The record contained an audio snapshot of the sounds of Britain's capital in 1967. It's a fascinating collage of iconic sounds and environmental background noises, offering a unique peek into the past. Rather than talk it about it on a Silverman's Platter segment, Paul & Eli decided to go out into the centre of London to try and recreate it instead! This week, they'll race around with their portable recording kit and try and collect as many modern takes of the original vinyl as possible. The Cheap Chaps will zip from Trafalgar Square, to Waterloo, back to Piccadilly Circus and on towards Fleet Street grabbing all the sounds they can! Will they be magnificently successful or will they completely cock it up? It's a walkabout adventure that takes in bird dirt, arguments with elevators, a lucky break with the bells of St. Clements and a grotty plan to abuse a street performer! It's the Sounds of London 2024 in the only way CheapShow knows how. Thanks to @vorratony for the special art this week! See pics/videos for this episode on our website: https://www.thecheapshow.co.uk/ep-369-the-sounds-of-london-2024 And if you like us, why not support us: www.patreon.com/cheapshow If you want to get involved, email us at thecheapshow@gmail.com And if you want to, follow us on Twitter/X @thecheapshowpod or @paulgannonshow & @elisnoid www.thecheapshow.co.uk Now on Threads: @cheapshowpod Like, Review, Share, Comment... LOVE US! MERCH Official CheapShow Merch Shop: www.redbubble.com/people/cheapshow/shop www.cheapmag.shop Thanks also to @vorratony for the wonderful, exclusive art: www.tinyurl.com/rbcheapshow Send Us Stuff: CheapShow PO BOX 1309 Harrow HA1 9QJ

Ian and Dick return to Rome to begin their mission. The ancient historical sites and unique atmosphere of the 'eternal city' swiftly makes them realise that it is a million miles away from Times Square or Piccadilly Circus.  Coins are thrown in the Trevi fountain for good luck as Ian searches for love.  A temporary membership of the lavish Aniene Club sees our boys now dealing with the rich and powerful of Roman society. “Pecorino Romano is the only allowable cheese for the Amatriciana sauce” Written & Presented by Ian McAlister Read by Richard Greenwood Edited by Stu Smith & Nigel Heath with Jamie Allen Original Music by Stu Smith Production Music from Epidemic Sound Recorded and Produced by Tom Allom & Nigel Heath at La Cucina Studios for Xacutti Productions Special Thanks to Jamie Allen and Mike Hanson

And The NFL is back and feeling incredibly 'Christmassy' with the lovely Andre Dixon and Phoebe Schecter joining her from the Hard Rock Cafe in Piccadilly Circus. The trio get stuck in with Flag Football chit chat; will we see Phoebe take to the Olympic stage in LA in 2028? What is on their Christmas NFL Wishlist? Who should be in the running for MVP this season... And... what it is like for Phoebe working in the sporting world. Catch the full episode now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In Part 1/2, your favorite sister duo discusses Buckingham Palace, the Royal Family, and whether or not they are team Meghan. You'll learn why the Royal Guards wear those black fuzzy hats. They also give their top 3 favorite movies/shows that are affiliated with London, and discuss locations in and around the city that are featured in major films. Stay tuned for Part 2 next week!London Favorites:Royal Family buildings: Buckingham Palace, Westminster AbbeyHarry Potter film locations: Millennium Bridge, Leadenhall Market, King's Cross Station, Borough Market, Piccadilly Circus, Australian EmbassyNeighborhoods to visit: Notting Hill, KnightsbridgeOther sights to see: Big Ben, House of Parliament, Harrods, Churchill Arms (pub)For all of the Love It There content: Visit our Website!Follow Love It There Podcast on Instagram: @loveittherepodPrefer video podcasts? Watch on YouTube! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Synopsis: Mina is concerned about how worn out and emotional she has felt lately. She visits with Renfield, by request, and he wishes her well. Mina asks Dr. Seward to mix her a sleeping remedy so she might get a better rest, but wonders if sedating herself is wise. Jonathan receives Smollet's letter containing Sam Bloxam's address, and, after some confusion as to spelling, eventually finds his way to Sam. Sam describes moving nine of the boxes into a house in Piccadilly, and from his description, Jonathan deduces that the Count had helped him move the boxes before possibly mesmerizing him. Jonathan visits Piccadilly Circus, and discovers that the house sale had been handled by a company called Mitchell, Sons, and Candy. When Jonathan meets with the representative, however, the man is unhelpfully tight-lipped about the sale. Ultimately, Jonathan works the man over by dropping Arthur's title, and the representative agrees to send a letter to Arthur with the details. Back at the asylum, the men ponder how to get into the Piccadilly house, deciding that they can't easily break into such a public house the way they did Carfax. Seward asks the attendant about Renfield's movements last night, and determine that the attendant had fallen asleep. Just as Seward is settling in for the night, he hears a terrible scream and is told that Renfield has had a terrible accident. Mitchell, Sons, and Candy write to Arthur telling him all that they know about having sold the house in Piccadilly Circus to a foreign man going by the name Count De Ville. Follow us on Twitter.com/CryptiCanticles, Facebook.com/DraculaRadioPlay, and at crypticcanticles.com

Emma and Christy look at Alfred Gilbert's sculpture Mors Janua Vitae (c. 1905–1907) at the Royal College of Surgeons, London — a life-sized bronze which houses the remains of the couple Edward and Eliza Macgloghlin. We talk relics and transi tombs; Victorian atheism and the history of unbelief; cremation, miasma, and lead-lined coffins; books bound in human skin; Victorian sex (and free love!); affairs between artists and patrons; Welsh druids; paganism; birth control and the throuple; infidel feminism; and abolishing the family. CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE IMAGES WE DISCUSS, as well as complete show notes, references, and suggestions for further reading. MEDIA DISCUSSED Alfred Gilbert, Mors Janua Vitae (c. 1905–1907) Henry Weekes, John Hunter (1864) Etruscan couple tomb: The Sarcophagus of the Spouses (c. 530–510 BCE) Alfred Gilbert, Mors Janua Vitae detail: panel Alfred Gilbert, Mors Janua Vitae detail: 'baby angel' Examples of G. F. Watts paintings: She Shall Be Called Woman (c. 1875–92); Orpheus and Euridice (exh. 1890) Photograph of the lobby of the Royal College of Surgeons, from Artistic Possessions at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (1967) Alfred Gilbert, plaster (and wood) version of Mors Janua Vitae, exhibited 1907 Alfred Gilbert, The Virgin (1884) Relic example: the bones of St Valentine, Basilica of Santa Maria, Rome Relic example: the Veil of Veronica (cloth said to have wiped Christ's face on the way to the crucifixion), Vatican version Nineteenth-century mourning jewellery made with hair of the deceased Case containing William Morris's hair, by Robert Catterson Smith and Charles James Fox (1896–97) Transi tomb example from Boussu, Belgium (16th century) Victorian garden cemeteries example: Norwood cemetery (1849) Alfred Gilbert, Mors Janua Vitae detail: mushrooms or people? Spiritualist painting referencing 'Mors Janua Vitae' (written on the book on the floor): Evelyn De Morgan, The Hourglass (1904) Joseph Noel Paton, Mors Janua Vitae (1866) Photograph of Dr William Price (1884) Alfred Gilbert, Anteros, in Piccadilly Circus (1893) CREDITS This season of ‘Drawing Blood' was funded in part by the Association for Art History. Follow our Twitter @drawingblood_ ‘Drawing Blood' cover art © Emma Merkling All audio and content © Emma Merkling and Christy Slobogin Intro music: ‘There Will Be Blood' by Kim Petras, © BunHead Records 2019. We're still trying to get hold of permissions for this song – Kim Petras text us back!!

Fresh off his first ever set at Lollapalooza on August 6, London artist Bakar met up with Vocalo's Nudia Hernandez for an exclusive backstage conversation. They discussed his music video for single "Alive!" where he stopped traffic in Piccadilly Circus, plus his collaborations with Chicago icon Virgil Abloh and his new album 'Halo,' which he says listeners can expect soon. This interview was conducted by Nudia Hernandez. It was edited and produced by Morgan Ciocca. To keep up with Bakar, follow him on Instagram @bakarrrr.

In this episode of the Inspyre Podcast, we had the pleasure of speaking with Midge Gillies, the author of *Piccadilly: The Circus at the Heart of London*. Midge is a prolific non-fiction author, having written ten books on a variety of topics.During our conversation, Midge discussed the history of Piccadilly Circus and what made it such a popular destination for entertainment. We also delved into the circus's cultural impact and its influence on art and literature.Don't miss this fascinating conversation with Midge Gillies on the Inspyre Podcast! Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to stay updated on our latest episodes.Midge Gillies:Twitter: https://twitter.com/MidgeGilliesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/midgegillies/https://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/https://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/course/mst-creative-writing https://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/course/undergraduate-certificate-creative-writing-fiction-and-writing-performance-cohort-1https://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/course/undergraduate-diploma-creative-writing-advanced-fiction-and-writing-performance-cohort-2-1Socials:Twitter - https://twitter.com/inspyreuk?s=21&t=rg7lx-1ptHW_Q0tdGy7wpAInstagram - https://instagram.com/inspyreuk?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@inspyreuk?_t=8d06fC4KWo9&_r=1YouTube - https://youtube.com/@InspyreUK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Inspyre Podcast, we had the pleasure of speaking with Midge Gillies, the author of *Piccadilly: The Circus at the Heart of London*. Midge is a prolific non-fiction author, having written ten books on a variety of topics. During our conversation, Midge discussed the history of Piccadilly Circus and what made it such a popular destination for entertainment. We also delved into the circus's cultural impact and its influence on art and literature. Don't miss this fascinating conversation with Midge Gillies on the Inspyre Podcast! Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to stay updated on our latest episodes. Midge Gillies: Twitter: https://twitter.com/MidgeGillies Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/midgegillies/ https://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/ https://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/course/mst-creative-writing https://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/course/undergraduate-certificate-creative-writing-fiction-and-writing-performance-cohort-1 https://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/course/undergraduate-diploma-creative-writing-advanced-fiction-and-writing-performance-cohort-2-1 Socials: Twitter - https://twitter.com/inspyreuk?s=21&t=rg7lx-1ptHW_Q0tdGy7wpA Instagram - https://instagram.com/inspyreuk?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA== Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@inspyreuk?_t=8d06fC4KWo9&_r=1 YouTube - https://youtube.com/@InspyreUK

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT A lot of digital out of home media is marketed mainly on the basis of reach - essentially the scale of the aggregated network and the audience reach that's realized. It's more about math than science. But the UK out of home media company Ocean Outdoor is very much interested in the science of advertising, and over the last decade, Ocean has commissioned a series of studies that measure brain activity and how people respond to the visuals of advertising and other mediums like social media. While a lot of audience measurement is about counting people and characterizing behaviours, Ocean has commissioned five studies that take participants into a lab, put something like an electrode cap on their heads, and measure how they respond to campaign visuals. The newest study, called Digital Out Of Home: The Vital Ingredient, looks at how digital out of home optimizes the use of social media. The research found that using socially amplified digital out of home, changes how brands are perceived, and the value of their role in the media landscape. I got a rundown on the background and the findings of this research from Steve Bernard, the Head of Insight for Ocean. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Steve, thank you for joining me. For those people who don't live in the UK and maybe aren't in the media business, can you explain what Ocean Outdoor does, its footprint, and that sort of thing?  Steve Bernard: Of course. So Ocean started its life about 15 years ago, and we exist in the UK out-of-home media industry. So what that means is that we are selling premium digital screens to a range of advertisers across the UK. As I said, the business started back in 2008 with just a handful of sites, but in the period between then and now, we've grown our portfolio sites significantly. We now have well over 600 locations in total, and that's largely digital out-of-home screens. So some of those are static digital screens that show static imagery on them. Some of them are moving images so we have the ability to display moving images to the public, and whilst many of those screens exist on what we call roadside locations, so typically to the side of roadways and also on pedestrian pavements, that kind of thing, sidewalks, we also have several screens within internal environments so shopping malls are one of our big sort of environments that we exist in and what marks Ocean out as different from its competitors is that it's very much focusing on selling to advertisers that premium network of digital out-of-home screens.  And indeed, the environments in which those Oceams screens are located, for example, those shopping malls I referred to a moment ago, are often the most premium environments that exist in the UK. So, for example, we have a contract with Westfield, which is one of the largest shopping mall brands globally, and they have a significant footprint in London. So we have the advertising space on the external side of Westfield's locations: two locations in London, one in Stratford and one in White City, and we also have screens in the Edwards and James Mall, which is a premium shopping mall in Edinburgh in St. James's quarter, and we also have a footprint at Canary Wharf Mall. So Canary Wharf, for those who don't know, is quite a key business environment within London which typically has financial businesses. So by having our advertising screens in a location like that, we know we're reaching a very high-end premium audience. And very quickly we have just started putting screens in Battersea power station which is again, another new premium shopping environment in the heart of London. So what works us out differently is our premium in inventory, and it's very much about digital out-of-home screens. We're talking primarily because your company has put out neuroscience research, and I'm guessing at least that one of the re reasons you're investing in that level of research is because you do have premium properties, and you're selling your advertising at a premium so there's probably a higher demand for proof of impact and proof of audience on all those things. Is that accurate?  Steve Bernard: Yes, very much so. We always need to identify different methods to measure the effectiveness of premium digital out-of-home. One of the things about the out-of-home universe, if I may call it that, is that it's fairly varied in terms of the formats, in terms of the size, in terms of whether they're digitized or whether they're static posters. There's a variation in environments as well, and so we know that not all out-of-home sites are the same in terms of the kind of impact that they deliver, and because we specialize in the premium end of the out-of-home universe, yeah, we need a methodology, which not just marks us out as different from our competitors who use more conventional, if I can call it that, research methods, but also something that is going to truly measure the impact of that premium out-of-home space. So with neuroscience research, what are you doing? I realize that you're not doing it and that you're commissioning a third-party company, Neuro-Insight to do that work, but what's involved?  Steve Bernard: So ultimately, what we're trying to elicit is how people are thinking and feeling about a stimulus that's presented in front of them and to move that into the out-of-home context, what we're fundamentally trying to show is that by running premium digital out-of-home prior to other media channels for any given brand or any given campaign, that primary effect, that first impact is going to have a profound outcome in terms of how the audience discerns those other media channels. And we call that the priming effect, and during the course of the neuroscience studies that Ocean has run over the last decade or so, it's always been about trying to elicit that priming effect of premium digital out-of-home on other oot-of-home formats, for example, which was the neuroscience one or on other media channels completely like television or mobile campaigns. That's ultimately what we're trying to show is that by leading with premium digital foam, a brand is able to ensure that how people take away the message on the other channels that they've run is fundamentally different compared to if they weren't running that premium digital out-of-home beforehand. So what happens? You're not taking people who are participating in the research out on the street or anything like that. This is in a lab or something, and you're putting a brain or a skull cap on of some kind? Steve Bernard: Correct. These studies are largely done in laboratory settings and controlled settings. And yes, as you've described there, the participants are made to wear these kinds of headsets, which are able to measure the various cognitive functions that are coming to the fore, as I say, when that participant is exposed to a particular stimulus or stimuli, be that digital out-of-home advertising or a brand in digital out-of-home advertising or seeing a brand in another context entirely so a TV advert or other out-of-home campaigns or indeed social media campaigns, which will I'm sure I'll come on to in a moment.  So what did you learn? Did it validate assumptions, or has the research surprised you guys?  Steve Bernard: I think we've always had this view that the effect of premium digital out-of-home and not just, can I say pre premium digital out-of-home, but also iconic out-of-home. One of the sites we also have in the UK is Piccadilly Lights. So that's at London's Piccadilly Circus. It's like a mini version of. Times Square in New York, if you can imagine Times Square in New York, Piccadilly Circus is a sort of a version of that, and we've always had this sort of expectation and this view that those kinds of sites are clearly eliciting different emotional outcomes for brands advertising on those platforms versus other more conventional formats. As I said earlier, it's a very varied sort of universe. But clearly, the way in which someone consumes a message displayed on Piccadilly Lights, for example, or any of these other premium digital out-of-home sites that I'm referring to is gonna be different from how they consume that message on a bus shelter poster, for example, or a more conventional roadside billboard. So we've always, as I said, had that expectation of difference.  So the research is validating. But I think in respect of the lace neuroscience study that we've just launched in the UK and in some of our other European territories, which Ocean is based, we're able to show actually quite an interesting relationship between digital out-of-home and social media and a relationship, which I think for advertisers has yet to be fully realized, and hopefully, with this study, we are drawing attention to the closer relationship that these two platforms have. Digital out-of-home on one hand, and social media on the other, and as a result, getting advertisers and their agencies to think more about how they plan these two media channels together. Can you give me an example of how they, how the two mediums intertwine, and how digital out-of-home primes social media channels or social media interests? Steve Bernard: Absolutely. So to set the context a bit on this, typically within the advertising industry, you can put different media channels. So traditional media channels like television or radio, newspapers, magazines, and out-of-home and newer media channels such as mobile advertising or social media, you can have those on a sort of access, and you can look at that access based on how strong those channels are delivering what's called performance. So highly measurable, highly targeted on one side, and the sort of more intangible effects, so branding effects, brand equity awareness, fame, consideration on the other end of that spectrum.  So you have performance on one side and branding on the other, and you would typically see social media at one end of that spectrum on the performance side, and digital out-of-home and out-of-home are widely on the branding side of that spectrum because the view has always been that they do very different jobs. One is highly measurable or highly targeted, and the other is about reaching huge numbers of people in a public space. So one to many versus one to one.  What we have noticed over the last two years, it's probably been going on for longer, but over the last couple of years, is more and more examples of famous people, if I could put it that way, celebrities, influencers on social media, et cetera, promoting out-of-home content on their social media channels. So you'll typically see examples of famous actors or pop stars or musicians generally Tweeting or Instagramming a picture of themselves on an out-of-home canvas. That could be a banner site, or it could be a digital out-of-home screen. but very much promoting themselves on that platform, and we would contend that they wouldn't necessarily do the same thing if they saw themselves on a magazine page, or even in a television advert because a television advert is overtly a marketing function. Whereas the interesting thing, the unique thing about the digital out-of-home and home more widely is that its public furniture, I guess you could say, it's a public message in a very public space, and so I think that's why there's this relationship between known public figures and communications in the public space and that's the out-of-home space. So that was happening over the last couple of years, we really wanted to explore that more deeply. On the other end of that is that more and more advertisers themselves are promoting their content, their out-of-home content, I should say their brand from a digital screen, on their social channels and we've seen examples from Amazon and Meta and a range of other advertisers who are who are increasingly looking at these kind of really exciting executions that they can deliver on the digital out-of-home space, and rather than sharing on their social feed, on their Twitter or Instagram a conventional advertising message, they will utilize that out-of-home content within the social media space. So you'll get Amazon Prime Video, when they're advertising a certain program, they will have performed an execution on an iconic site or a premium digital out-of-home site, and then they will tweet or Instagram the out-of-home campaign on their social channel, and that's really interesting because that represents a significant step change for our industry. It's not necessarily just about reaching all of these people who walk past our sites on the ground every week, every month, et cetera. But the opportunity for that advertising to be seen much more widely by people who have not encountered the advertising on the ground, and that leads to all kinds of interesting questions about what is the true reach of an out-of-home campaign and like I say, that's very unique to our industry, given its greater level of creativity that's at our disposal now, given the greater proliferation of high impact digital out-of-home sites, and given the proliferation of a greater level of technology, which enables us to bring these campaigns to life in new and exciting ways. There's a lot going on there, and so wrapping all of that together, because of this idea, this concept of sharing the out-of-phone campaign on the social media channel, fundamentally, there is a strong relationship between the two. Again, this is something that we've wanted to explore for some time, and we felt that neuroscience, given that it elicits precisely how people think and feel about something that they're exposed to, versus another sort of research technique, like a survey or a focus group, we felt that neuroscience is the perfect way in which to measure the impact of this type of concept that I'm describing. There's also this interesting phenomenon that's bubbled up in the past couple of years where you have brands commissioning motion graphic designers to create a digital out-of-home ad, usually some sort of anamorphic illusion of some kind on a building where there isn't actually a billboard, but they design it in such a way that it makes you think that there is a billboard there and those seem to get one hell of a lot of social media shares, even though they're not actually physically booking a digital out-of-home campaign.  Steve Bernard: Yeah, that's absolutely true, and again, it's this idea that as an industry in the out-of-home space, we have a unique opportunity to capture the imagination of the audiences that encounter the various creative executions that we deliver. And it's no surprise when you look at how welcomed and trusted different media channels are, out-of-home quite often appears at the top of those kinds of lists when they're ranking different media channels, which as TV and radio and online, et cetera. Out-of-home does really well in terms of being more welcomed and more trusted versus other media channels. And I think that's because we have, as I say, just a really strong opportunity to capture the imagination of people as they're going about their daily business in an unobtrusive way. It's also the idea that out-of-home generally is one of the most venerable media channels in existence. There were people putting up painted billboards and painted communication on buildings a long long time ago, and that venerability is everlasting. People will always want to see things in the public space, and seeing them in the public space gives an inherent notion of trust. In a way, we would argue that isn't necessarily the case with one-to-one communications and certainly not online communication, desktop ads, et cetera. We know that brands who are appearing in the public space are trusted because they're in the public space because it is seen as a public medium. So yeah, we have a lot of opportunities to capture the imagination in welcome unobtrusive ways, and as I say, there's now an opportunity to take all of the benefits of using out-of-home in the physical space, moving those benefits into the online space. Were the rationale and the budgetary argument for doing this kind of research different a decade ago than it would be now? I assume that a decade ago, digital out-of-home media companies had to work a lot harder to sell the medium itself, there was still a degree of skepticism, and a lot of it was just being sold on gross audience impressions and not a hell of a lot else, versus today where there is all this level of sophistication. Steve Bernard: I think that's an evolving story. Fundamentally, the medium is still traded very heavily on reach, how many people any given campaign reaches, the frequency of encounters, and ultimately the number of impacts or impressions that a campaign is delivered, and that's chiefly how it's valued really.  I think one of the great things about this study and any series of studies that Ocean has done with neuro insight over the last decade is that with each of these studies, we are communicating to the wider industry the value of neuroscience., which has a very unique value. Now the company we work with on these, Neuro-Insight, they're a global neuroscience business. Still, they started their life in Australia, and it's very interesting that in Australia because this is not the case in the UK, in Australia, they incorporate what they call a neuro impact factor into their audience currency. So how they value outflow medium in Australia factors in these types of techniques, so it's not just a case of looking at reach and frequency and impact over there, there is implicitly this role of neuroscience coming to the fore, and the data that you see for different out-of-home formats and environments over there, and this is something that here in the UK, we're yet to do with our own out-of-home audience currency, which is called root. But the long-term ambition would be for this type of methodology, this kind of study to at some point be incorporated into the out currency because, as I say, the out-of-home currency is very robust in that there, there's an awful lot of heft that goes into its methodology and an awful lot of inputs, data inputs there. A variety of sources. As I said earlier, there is clearly a different role played by sites such as the Piccadilly Lights or premium digital formats generally versus more conventional out-of-home formats, which are traded really on reach. There's a fundamental difference in these different parts of the industry. An advertiser would be able to buy a thousand bus shelter posters, for example, or 2000 billboards on the side of the roads, up and down in the UK, and the value of that is in the reach, in reaching literally millions of people in any given period of time. Where this kind of study differs and focuses on is the unique sort of relationship that a relatively small number but high-impact sites have with an audience, and these kind of sites, these unique sites enjoy strong reach. Still, really their difference with more conventional standard out-of-home performance is that there are relatively few of them. Therefore the impact, if I can use quotations of how it's making an audience think and feel is very unique compared to more conventional out-of-home formats, which are traded purely on reach. They're not differentiated from each other at all. So a bus shelter is a bus shelter. The same in London as it is in Manchester or Birmingham or et cetera. This is very much about showing the value of these more unique sites, more premium unique sites.  Do you have to invest the time with media planners and with brands to explain this methodology and. what's coming out of it, or do they inherently understand it?  Steve Bernard: No. It's very much the former. We spend a lot of time explaining how we put these studies together. They're complex studies. There are lots of different elements within neuroscience here in the UK. It's growing. It's a developing research study. One we've pioneered at Ocean Outdoor within the out-of-home context, but we do have to spend a lot of time explaining the methodology, there is always a great deal of interest when we go out to present these agencies or out-of-home buying specialists, et cetera, or when we go to clients directly here in the UK because it's quite a unique method because it doesn't have, at this point, a more widespread adoption, I guess you'd say. So that means its uniqueness means there is an awful lot of interest to hear what we have to say. But it is always an interesting experience, kind of communicating the different elements of the methodology of neuroscience. I mean with the social media study, the vital ingredient, as we've called it, is us looking at the priming role of digital out-of-home on social media channels. There are an awful lot of moving parts to this. All that always relies on that always requires a lot of expectation. Fundamentally what we're measuring, the outputs are cognitive functions, as I've mentioned earlier. These cognitive functions are a mixture of engagement and approach towards a brand, memory, emotion, attention, et cetera and it's these kinds of outputs that we show uplifts for when we're presenting results. But again, it requires constant explanation because these are not elements you could describe them as, which are talked about a lot in research. A lot of the time, when we're communicating, out-of-home research, it's very much in looking at the effect of a campaign on brand awareness, or brand consideration, that kind of thing, and those kinds of terms are much more widely understood on the part of the advertising industry. But these kinds of outputs, like I say, cognitive functions, attention approach, engagement, et cetera, require a lot more explanation.  Is it a differentiator? In other words, would you have a circumstance where a media company, not Ocean, but a competitor Decaux or whoever is seeing planners, and would they actually say, okay, where's your neuro research, or what does your neuro research say? And they would say, well, we don't have any.  Steve Bernard: So neuroscience study within the out-of-home context in the UK is still relatively rare. It's something, of course, as I've said, that Ocean has pioneered because it's particularly about measuring sites, which fundamentally it's harder for the out-of-home currency to measure. So the value of neuroscience to us at Ocean is that we need unique methods to measure the effectiveness of what we would call unique properties.  Our competitors would be less likely to involve themselves in this type of study purely because our competitors here in the UK have a much wider portfolio in terms of volume, right? So in some cases, thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of different out-of-home formats because they're selling scale, reach.  Fundamentally, they're selling size, and they're selling the idea that reaching so many people in any given period of time has an inherent value, which, of course, it does. But as I say, neuroscience is a complex methodology. Still, one which is particularly useful when measuring unique properties and Ocean Outdoor of any outdoor media owner here in the UK has the unique properties, high impact, and famous premium locations, which makes this the perfect sort of methodology to use to measure their effectiveness. You've done five of these studies over the pace of 10 years, is there a cadence to it? Are you doing one every two years, or are you done now?  Steve Bernard: That was a really interesting question. Each of the neuroscience studies has focused on the priming effects of digital out-of-home on another type of advertising format, from Neuroscience One, which looked at the priming role of premium digital out-of-home on wider outer home campaigns, and Neuroscience Two looked at the television, and we've over the years looked at things like mobile and the effects of priming digital at home on mobile.  I think it's hard to say, but there's been one every, as you say, every two or three years when the time is right. We felt that with this study which began its life last year, we felt that because social media channels were playing much a much more significant role within the advertising industry generally, and not just in the UK obviously but globally, we felt that there was a particular value in looking at the relationship between our own medium and these platforms. Where do we take this next? That's a really interesting question. This study has already garnered a lot of interest here in the UK amongst agencies and clients. It's also something we have communicated to our other Ocean Outdoor locations. We have offices in Sweden and the Netherlands and across Scandinavia, and there's a lot of interest there. My colleagues and I have been presenting this study at events in Europe. So because of the level of interest that this is generating again, not just here but internationally, I think there will be a lot of ideas that come from this, focusing on areas that we want to explore further. Things that we weren't able to pick up necessarily in the study that we launched last year, but looking at more specific elements within them. So it's hard to say exactly where we'll take this next, but I think there will be a lot of ideas being discussed with us as we take this more widely  For people who have been listening to this and thinking this sounds interesting, I'd love to see the data or see the findings or whatever. Is that accessible, or is that something that you only share with your customers?  Steve Bernard: So it's something that we will always share with our customers first. It allows us to have quite in-depth discussions with them about their media planning generally. So that's the first aim. We always ensure that the findings are displayed on the Ocean Outdoor website. So if you go on the Ocean Outdoor website now, you will see the findings from the previous four studies and they're readily accessible, and this study, of course, in due course, will be communicated on the website. It's something that we're sharing a lot on our social media channels, as you might imagine on LinkedIn, Twitter, et cetera.  We're always happy to talk to people face to face or on an online forum about the study in more detail. In terms of the data itself, we've found some really interesting things in this study, as I said, these are two platforms, digital out-of-home, and social media, which, in the perception of advertising planners, exist on different sides of the advertising spectrum. But we've proved with this study that there is a significant priming effect of digital from digital at home on what advertisers are already doing on social media. For example, we've seen significant effects on dwell time. So that's the time people spend with an advertiser's brand post. That increased by 32% when the campaigns were primed by digital out-of-home. Where we've seen a really really interesting finding is what happens when the digital out-of-home content itself becomes a social media post. So rather than an advertiser doing a conventional brand post, they can display the out-of-home campaign on their social channels. We saw, again, a 54% increase in dwell time. So again, that's time spent with that social communication cause of the primary effects of that socially amplified content we've seen increases in emotional intensity, and we've seen increases in a specific cognitive function called approach, which is ultimately or essentially people becoming more positive towards a brand when they see the campaign begin on digital out-of-home, then on social media. So what we're really saying is that digital out-of-home is making campaigns online more approachable, making the brands more approachable. They're pressing the emotional buttons, which emotion is key in turning attention into long-term memory. We're enabling more time to be spent on social media communication. That's a key role of the priming effect and, most fundamentally, at this point. Finally, it is the fact that if you see the campaign, so let's say you've got an advertiser who uses out-of-home and puts that on their social channel, there is a tangible benefit from doing that for that brand versus if that brand was to just do a conventional brand post on Instagram or TikTok without the participant having seen the campaign in the physical location. A lot of what I've described here is about the priming effect. But if you take away that priming effect if you just look at an audience who hasn't encountered the digital focus screen and you just compare how they felt about seeing it, seeing that phone campaign, on their social feed in sit versus if they just saw that brand, that same brand doing a standup brand post. There is a tangible benefit for that brand in terms of approach, a 21% increase in approach and a 3% increase in memory. That's really exciting because that suggests a much wider audience out there for campaigns that go viral, and that's the raw power we have as a medium, we can make social content more appealing to that audience. We can do that for a brand. We're not just giving a brand the great benefits of the physical location, but we are also making a social media campaign for that brand more positive. I'm a part of the audience. It's really exciting, and lots of different layers to this study. So like I say, the results will be fully available for people on our website, but we would also welcome the opportunity to discuss it further at any given time. All right. Thank you very much for spending all this time with me. That was terrific.  Steve Bernard: Thank you very much.

On this week's episode, the boys right a major wrong: in over 150 episodes, they've never done an episode on London for first-timers! England's capital city can be overwhelming—world-class museums on every corner, historically significant architecture left and right, churches and zoos and gardens and parks and theater and libraries! What is a tourist with limited time to do?? This episode tells you. Things we talk about in this week's episode: Obscure Musuems of London Episode https://outofofficepod.com/podcast/episode-141-obscure-museums-of-london-part-1-return-trip/ River Thames https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-long-and-winding-history-of-the-thames-139049496/  Handy Guide to Neighborhoods of London https://www.huffpost.com/entry/48-london-neighborhoods-a-quick-reference-guide_b_7557148  Planning your public transportation https://tfl.gov.uk/maps_/tfl-go  Taxis and “The Knowledge” (NYer article was behind a paywall so here is a NYT) https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/t-magazine/london-taxi-test-knowledge.html  Westminster Abbey https://www.westminster-abbey.org/  Saint Paul's https://www.stpauls.co.uk/  Houses of Parliament https://www.parliament.uk/visiting/  Tower of London https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/  Buckingham Palace and Changing of the Guard https://www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/event/8725947-changing-the-guard  Hampton Court Palace https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/#gs.ysui4s  Shakespeare's Globe https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/ West End https://officiallondontheatre.com/london-west-end-guide/  British Museum https://www.britishmuseum.org/  Tate Modern https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern Tate Britain https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain    Victoria and Albert https://www.vam.ac.uk/   V&A David story https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-story-of-michelangelos-david    Natural History Museum https://www.nhm.ac.uk/    Churchill War Rooms https://winstonchurchill.org/visit/churchill-war-rooms/    British Library https://www.bl.uk/discovering-our-collections    John Soane Museum https://www.soane.org/    Trafalgar Square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafalgar_Square    Piccadilly Circus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccadilly_Circus    Hyde Park https://www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/hyde-park    Kew Gardens https://www.kew.org/kew-gardens/visit-kew-gardens  We love Rick Steves's London guide for first-timers and, for those who are looking to get way off the beaten path, Jonglez Publishing's “Secret London.”  

Est-ce parce qu'on est particulièrement sensible à l'ambiance et à l'énergie des lieux ? Est-ce parce qu'on ne veut plus se laisser enfermer dans une vie dont on n'a pas envie ?Le parcours de Charlene Geffroy y est une bonne illustration du processus qui mène quelques-uns d'entre nous à parcourir le monde tout en travaillant. Fille unique, Charlène grandit dans un petit village normand. Elle s'y ennuie beaucoup et rêve de fête, de paillettes et de l'hyperactivité des grandes villes. Elle fait ses études sans conviction jusqu'à entendre parler de la vie londonienne et de son ambiance électrique. Elle décide rapidement de traverser la Manche pour en faire l'expérience. Elle débarque non loin de Piccadilly Circus. Sa foule grouillante et ses écrans lumineux l'accueillent. L'énergie de la ville l'emplit instantanément. Commence alors l'une des périodes les plus épanouissantes de sa vie.N'ayant pas d'argent, elle commence au bas de l'échelle. Elle sera serveuse dans un café londonien, avant de gravir les échelons jusqu'à décrocher le poste de ses rêves. Pendant ses 10 ans à Londres, sa vie sera une fête. Elle y découvre une mentalité, un esprit de liberté qu'elle n'avait pas côtoyé jusque-là. Là-bas, personne ne subit son sort professionnel. Si un job vous ennuie, vous le quittez. Aussi simplement que ça.Des raisons personnelles l'obligent à rentrer en France. Elle y retrouve le rythme plus lent et l'ambiance convenue d'une capitale où tous les gens qu'elle fréquente se ressemblent. Elle s'ennuie à nouveau.Son emploi, pourtant prestigieux et bien payé, l'intéresse peu. Elle ne voit pas l'utilité de ce qu'elle fait. Elle tente alors de trouver une respiration par une vie sociale intense après 19 heures. Mais cela ne lui suffit pas. Consciente qu'elle se laisse enfermer dans une vie qui ne lui plaît pas, elle se souvient de ce qui l'avait marquée à Londres.Au fond d'elle, elle est convaincue que sa baisse d'énergie est due à son inadéquation avec Paris et son rythme.La crise sanitaire est, pour elle, un déclencheur. Elle pose un congé sabbatique, lance son activité professionnelle et entame sa vie de nomade. Ce sentiment de liberté lui plaît. Au gré de ses envies, Charlène voyage de régions en régions en alliant travail et découverte.Aujourd'hui, Charlène aide les gens à reprendre le contrôle de leur vie personnelle et professionnelle. Elle s'inspire, pour cela, de l'esprit de liberté qu'elle cultive depuis son séjour anglais. Pour elle, ne plus subir est une décision, un état d'esprit qu'elle transmet à ses clients. Si son aventure ou ses conseils vous tentent, posez-lui des questions. Elle vous répondra. Il vous suffit d'écrire à Charlene Geffroy.Soutenez ce podcast http://supporter.acast.com/les-deviations. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

For our 60th episode we discuss the John Landis horror classic! We question the geographical nonsense of sending someone injured on (clearly) the Yorkshire Moors all the way to London, the fantastic Rick Baker practical effects, David's very overly-trusting nurse, an incongruous Frank Oz cameo, inappropriately titled pubs, the absolute carnage of Piccadilly Circus and the surprising cost of day-time adult movies in the 80's!

“Look at me, here I sit in a porno theatre in Piccadilly Circus talking to a corpse.”   This week the boys try to stay on the road as they have a look at An American Werewolf in London, this horror comedy from 1981 has a beloved following over 40 years on so what does it look like now?   Grab yourself a drink and join Darren and Matt as they venture into this John Landis classic and see what they think of the film.    As always feel free to get in touch using the links below.    Follow 80s Adventure on facebook   facebook.com/80sadventure   Follow 80s Adventure on Twitter    twitter.com/80sadventure   Check out the website   80sadventure.com   Email 80s Adventure   podcast@80sadventure.com   Support 80s Adventure on Patreon   patreon.com/80sadventure   Buy the boys a beerko-fi.com/80sadventure80s Adventure Merchandise   shop.80sadventure.co.uk  

En este episodio estaré hablando de la serie documental MH370: The Plane That Disappeared y Luther: The Fallen Sun. Ambos proyectos están en Netflix. Suscríbete en Patreon con solo un dólar: https://patreon.com/10a15?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator Sígueme en la redes sociales: https://linktr.ee/angelest.pr Disclaimer: Cuando hablo de la escena de Luther: The Fallen Sun que transcurre en Piccadilly Circus, me equivoque y dije "Paladius Circus". Mil disculpas por el error.

When you wish upon a star, does it come true? It hasn't for me, so far. I'm only asking to test the "makes no difference who you are" hypothesis. I mean it'd be a *bit* annoying if we've all been sucked in by an international wish-granting scam. But it'd be absolutely galling if I was the only sap diligently facing his wish mat towards Orlando and NOT getting his fondest wish granted. (My fondest wish, in case you were wondering, is to see a punk help an old lady cross the road in Piccadilly Circus, like they used to in the '80s.). If you HAVE had a wish granted on a star, the Kilroy team would like to talk to you. In this two-boy lesstravaganza, Steve has had his nail bit to shreds by a friend's dog, and Log has noticed a very old song leaves uses frustratingly vague language with regards to the villain of the piece: to wit, who left that cakey boy all out in the wet wets? It's his hackiest bit yet! (I'm allowed to say that, I am him) Meanwhile, If you want to read a blog written by a Christian in 2010 that posed precisely the same question as Log, but without using the phrase "f**k the mush with your winkle", check out "Nagging Questions: MacArthur Park" on the AnotherThink blog. NO I WON'T LINK IT

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT I spent a few days in London, UK ahead of Integrated Systems Europe - in part to break up the trip and flights, but much more so to meet with several companies and see some projects that I'd only been able to see in photos and videos. The one I particularly wanted to see was Outernet London, a very ambitious, multi-faceted development in the city's center that has, as its visual centerpiece, a huge set of wall and ceiling LED screens that are fully open to the public and positioned in such a way that they can't be missed as people flow from a main exit of the busy Tottenham Court Road Underground station. I assumed, wrongly, that this exists primarily to run Digital Out Of Home advertising and compete with big screens like those in nearby Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus. But there is much more to Outernet, as I learned walking and talking with the developments Chief Commercial Officer, Ben Maher. The audio may be a bit hit and miss, as we did this on the go and in the crowds that were there even on a chilly January afternoon. Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS TRANSCRIPT Ben Maher: We have this incredibly famous set of assets on this side of the district, which is Denmark Street. So as a business, we've been a landlord on Denmark Street for over 25 years looking after the music stores and we've made, as we said, a huge number of acquisitions, meaning that we own nearly all of the property there by Parcel two or three, and we run a baker for Baker Policy. So if we lose a music store, we replace it with music because we wanna maintain it, sorry, I don't know how familiar you're with Denmark Street, but as an asset, we wanna maintain this as one of the nice, iconic music streets in the world.  The first music store opened in 1911, Charlie Chaplin wrote the song, Smile here in 1926. The Melody Maker was founded here in 1954. The Enemy was found here. The owner of the Enemy went around the street with a ledger of all of the music that was sold, and that became the first-ever music chart, which was compiled on this street. Elton John had his first job as a runner here, and it was the home of the labels, the writers, it was the home of the lawyers, and the management, so people would hang out here in the hope of being discovered. But importantly, talent would wanna be discovered and they'd hang out in the cafe here, this was called the Gioconda Cafe and you'll see Tim Hannaly, the home of British music. But importantly it would be people like Marc Bolan, it would be Jimmy Hendrick, and David Bowie moved and converted an ambulance onto the street and lived here. So it really was an incredible, authentic crucible for music. We've maintained the music stores. We put in a 55-room luxury hotel residence, so you stay in the rooms where Frankie Fraser, the Richardson, the Gangland fame, their bar, which was called the Pannaly Bar. Number six Here, out the back is the News House that Malcolm McLaren rented for the Sex Pistols. So you can now stay in that, that's the Anarchy Suite. It's complete with their original graffiti.  Did big pressure wash it down?  Ben Maher: No. For better or worse, it's there and it's good. It has a great two listings on it now, but again, in a building like this, incredible history, and Hypnosis were based here. They were the world leading album cover designers. So they created album covers for the likes of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon was created in that room. When you stay in the rooms, they have names. Like Hypnotized for that room, and then Kiss the Sky is the name of the room where Hendrick used to jam. This is the store where Bob Marley bought his most famous guitar, which was destined for a dustbin for a car mechanic from Essex. This is where the Stones did some of their first-ever recordings and people recorded here all the way through to the likes of the Brit Brats, Adele, and other incredible artists. So all of this is part of the district, and as I said, we've not tried to Disney-fy this area. We've tried to preserve it. The area dates back all the way to about the 7th century when the church was created to support the Hospital. But once you build infrastructure, communities develop, so this became one of the first slums in London. It was home to 3000 residencies, and over 500 distilleries and this is where Hogarth depicted the Gin riots. So when you see things like that's where that occurred, and this is where it's depicted. You have elements like Dickens who live down the road in Bloomsbury, wrote Oliver Twist here, and Robert Stevenson. There's incredible history to the area. That is all really important when you're creating platforms and telling stories so that you understand the context within which you exist, not just the recent history. I'll come to some of the other music venues. So now we're going to enter the district. Importantly, we have 30,000 square feet of offices, we have 18 retail units, we have popups. We have 13 bars and restaurants and we obviously have screen-enabled spaces. So this first space is the arcade, The Now Arcade. As you can see, it's a full-screen enabled, three-mill pixel-pitched laden environment. All are equipped with acoustic audio. So we have venue-quality audio in all our spaces.  And the audio is on the bars down below?  Ben Maher: The district as a whole, through all the spaces, is made up of 230 million pixels. It has 192 kilometers of CAT6 table enabling this and I think it is really important, we have positioned this as a canvas. We've positioned this as a storytelling platform, and that's really important to start with content first so that you can establish the context and the interest of the audience to allow you to tell better brand stories and deliver brand messages. So that has always been the ethos of what we're doing. We don't stand with one editorial voice or polarizing thought around what we say. We try to democratize access to the platform. So we try to provide as many different interest groups and users to create for the platform because, in all honesty, screens are relatively cheap against the cost of actually feeding them, and creating environments that remain interesting all the time is the biggest challenge we have. So again, one of the things we want to do by using multi-sensory environments is to hand back some of that control to the audiences, not only to create for the platform but also to control their experiences. So although we start with audio-visual, we're on a sort of a technical journey on a path to bleed out new technologies and ensure that people can then interact and control generative experiences for themselves.  All of the spaces have cameras in them, for example, which will allow for interactivity. So you can come into this space, you might receive a standing ovation or trigger a Mexican wave. The joy of technology as it stands at the moment, and you won't hear talk of Covid. But the reality is people now understand better the reasons to be utilizing QR codes. So these screens can become a launchpad or anything: to commerce, obviously AR experiences, or anything else that we wanna leave. It makes data exchange a much cleaner and more natural sort of methodology. So really important for us to be able to control all of those elements. As we head down, this provides a queuing function for our venue as well, we have a 1500-person capacity music venue underground, which is the largest new music venue built in central London in the 1940s. This is load in, load out, for the venue. So again, we've configured the streets so that we can have a clean, easy ecological load in, and load out so vehicles can come and jack power straight from the main rather than running their engines and things like that, which is smart. As we come into the district now, you'll see that we have what was a very traditional maze of News Street. So this was Denmark Place, and we've got here the ability to gate and control the environment so we can create all sorts of experiences and fields and allow people to have events or dress a district in any interesting manner. So five different egress and ingress points across the district. On this side, we've got 14 more hotel rooms because the residences are based in 16 different buildings. So a really different unique point for the hotel.  Here we have what will be the Denmark Street Recording Studio which will be a pro bono recording studio, again, adding to the ecosystem that we have, bringing people and rewarding talent, just as Denmark Street always did. This is the more historical and music side of the district. This is the more modern screen-enabled place. On the rooftop here. We have an 8000-square-foot modern Chinese restaurant called Tattoo. We have another restaurant on the fourth floor, which will open later this quarter that's called Cavo. They have a rooftop garden here which is joined by a glass bridge, which leads over to the fourth-floor restaurant. So what you'll see here is we have 2600 LEDs across the runway here. So when we create a red carpet leading to the venue, we can light it up through LED color hues so that we can control those environments.  So you've got show control, so you can orchestrate the whole thing? Ben Maher: Brand colors, mood, you name it. We've obviously lifted up causes such as Holocaust Memorial and also for the Ukraine crisis and things like that, that's really important. We understand our environment, we understand the mood.  If you think of the context of certainly out-of-home and. storytelling, smart cities, and IoT play a big part in city planning now, and our environment should be able to adjust to those needs and requirements. We shouldn't just be screaming at audiences. We should be creating dialogue and also understanding the context within which we sit. So for example, or within GDPR, if somebody comes in, I know if they're looking for WiFi, where their SIM card originates. I know what their default language is. I don't need to invade their privacy. But I can assume when the 50th Dutch person or the 200th Canadian crosses the threshold, I might play the national anthem and change the color of the district. So that creates incredible surprise and delight.  And that would be data triggered?  Ben Maher: Completely. We can utilize a custom stack, which controls all of the programs for the district, and that proprietary technology allows us to configure different environments, to configure the different spaces, either in unison or alternatively to have them operate autonomously. And I think it's really important, our point of difference is having that versatility of space. It doesn't just do one thing. We do four core things. We can hold events in our spaces, so that could be a private or public events. We have 32s spots in our spaces, which is, essentially a standard TVC, monetization. We can do sponsorship. BMW has been a sponsor of our art program. We've presented our wellness program in association with Panadol and importantly, this new stage is gonna be about branded content, telling stories in a slightly longer form in an audiovisual sense in the public domain, and I think it was one of the most incredible moments I've had since being here, reaffirming that we've got an environment that has that versatility and what we wanna do is bring that longer storytelling moment to the form because brands are doing things with brand advocates, with talent. They're doing things based on purpose or the craft that they create. So we've had driving stories. We've had the launch of the Beatle's actual master Revolver album, the videos that went with that, and again, that creates a different environment. It creates a different context. We've done interactive games, so again, as I said, what you don't wanna be in any environment is a terrible magician. If you do your best trick on the first day, or second day, it's diminishing returns. You're not doing anything innovative or different.  That's a mistake made over and over again? Ben Maher: Yeah, and I think it's also quite been quite cathartic knowing that we don't know everything about this space because no one's ever done this anywhere in the world. So to say that we don't fully understand how the public reacts to work, we have to embrace versatility. So knowing, for example, on the left here we have popup two. On the back corner of the building, we have another popup, which is about twice the size. These spaces are fully screen-enabled and audio enabled as you see here. If they're not being used for an event, they'll be programmed with our content so that they're relevant. TMP, for example, Take More Photos is a grassroots creative collective. They release briefs on social media and people can submit their photographs and then it curates an exhibition based on the brief. So they do one on Welcome to London. So this one's Welcome to Love in London. They'll do one for International Women's Month, or they'll do one for Black History Month. They did one for the World Cup, for example. Now these are organizations that don't have budgets typically. So this is pro bono stuff, right?  Ben Maher: Very much, but again, it exactly comes down to what I said before, which is we want to give access to the platform. We wanna hear different voices to be representative and inclusive of our communities. Was that part of the pitch as well to Westminster Town Council or something like that? Look, we're building, but it's going to have all sorts of community involvement?  Ben Maher: Good question. So importantly, when we were talking before, when I showed you everything in front of us, that's Westminster, the road here literally the line down the middle is Camden. So Camden has a very different approach to Westminster. They're just different borrows and it's what you expect, different councils. So we were applying to Camden for our licenses. This area historically had a number of late licenses and bar licenses for the different premises that were here previously and have historically been a musical district. So again, it's quite an entertainment-based space.  Yeah, I was gonna say they'd be in the mindset anyways for this.  Ben Maher: Importantly, they have embraced what we're doing, but they have also gone on the journey of understanding what we're doing. Because it's very new. So that is always a challenge. The building and its main purpose of it though is an interesting public space. So if we had created a new private, totally private and shut environment, I don't think we would've been received in the same manner.  If you've got a second, you might want to stop for a second only because we're gonna watch the Summer Palace and it's about two and a half minutes long and you'll want to see this, but this is a good example of our house content. Something we commissioned to play in the public domain, which allows brands to sit alongside incredible experiences, and as you can see, people naturally get their phones out to record. I'll tell you the story about how it began. So we ran a camp home for Italian Airways before Christmas, they were one of the first brands to use the space for a commercial message, and they made us nervous. We didn't know what was gonna come cause no one had we've got best practice guides. We've got creative specs, and they created an experience where planes fly over the head of amazing landmarks in Italy and people applauded. For somebody who's worked for 25 years in advertising, yeah, that's an incredible thing to be able to say, quite a lovely experience. But this was part of the commission that we did or RFP that we did for people to create for the space, and it's an ethereal journey through space-time. But interesting it uses the ceiling as the main communication plan.  I'm a big fan of these kinds of environments where you look at it and there will be any number of people here who will assume that that's real. Ben Maher: Oh yeah, and the joy is we're using a 3mm pixel pitch so you can create that depth of illusion. The total resolution size here is about 6k, so it's not without its challenges, and we have found it unforgiving for things like raw photo footage because it's just so unforgiving on talent so then we can use templating and things like that to accommodate lower resolution assets, but still have them looking credible in the space. The use of negative space. So not always trying to fill every pixel is also incredibly powerful, so we're trying to utilize that as well. For this, I used to present this in VR, so people are presenting on teams and zoom in VR during the lockdown, trying to explain what we're doing because it's one. It's one thing explaining a new ad format, but it's a different thing explaining a new environment altogether.  Yeah, I'm somebody who's been around this medium, if you wanna call it the technology for 20+ years now and not seen something like this before, particularly the way it's stitched together with everything else, quite honestly, not just, here's this big screen. Be excited! Ben Maher: Yes, and I think we have to create, as I said, multipurpose and interesting use environments because cities deserve them. You've got, as I said, as many on the weekends as 350,000 people coming through this area and it is becoming an attraction. You, we have six to eight hours of free art programming in this building on a Sunday. And people email and go, can I see this? When is this happening? And that I think is a good testament to doing things the right way. It's new. We are learning. When we first opened the now trending space, which is the smallest of the spaces, that silver Line proved an incredibly challenging threshold for some people. Because it was like an anthropological experiment. They didn't know whether they could step in. They didn't know what the transaction was. Because they'd never seen a free public entertainment space like that, and as you'd expect children and people who'd had a drink were the first ones to cross the threshold. But then interestingly put seating in there and people act completely differently. So the psychology of the spaces is also important. Another thing that may be of interest is that this hero screen here on the south wall and the east wall here is permanent deployments, as you can see the slight lines between the wall here, these screens on the north and west are on rails and they can completely retract ah, and the building can open up. So it's one of the first buildings in the world with kinetic staging built in.  You do have doors too, so you can close the area off for private events?  Ben Maher: You can see better with the white there. You can see the slacks between how they work. So we'll be bringing new appointments to view to city centers where you'll come with a real-time of day to actually see something happen. You can see, in fact, these ones are usually completely closed and they've been open today for windows. The small area here can operate as a retail unit. It's been a trainer store for Puma. It was a classroom for Mercedes F1 MG with Toto Wolff. It was a studio for the photographer ranking. It was a red carpet zone for Sky. It's been a party for Apple, and NBCU. So again, having addressable spaces that can do a lot, this pixel pitch at 3mm is akin to what they use in the Unreal Engine SFX studios. So that's essentially the backdrop that they shoot. White, shiny floor shows content. The resolution there, as I say, is 3mm-5mm pitch on the outside here because up higher which is still the highest resolution out of in Europe currently certainly at that scale.  Yeah, I've heard a few 6mm in New York, but not 5mm.  Ben Maher: So we're really pleased with it. But at that resolution, it's interesting. We do need higher-quality content. Because of that pitch, it can be unforgiving. You'll see Netflix is doing an incredible job. They're a very frequent client of ours, but the animation on here will always look incredible cause it obviously scales infinitely almost. But they produce beautiful output and the resolution is incredible.  That space, is it also leasable for if BMW wanted to launch a new electric vehicle or something, you could block off this? Ben Maher: Absolutely. So we held the launch of the new FIFA 23 there and did the FIFA Women's Summit. We've done live boxing with DAZN and Matchroom, so we've held boxing there. We've done events for UNICEF. We've done events for Mothers of Gucci, which is a Gala event. So yeah, we can do private things, but the best way we like the district is having the public in because the more spaces that you privatize, the less inviting the world is, and we want people to come in, experience things free, be entertained, and create moments that ultimately they wanna share and create a destination In the cities we're in. What would you do if there was a big England football match and I remember Lester Square got kinda destroyed, would you just close this off? Ben Maher: So we face the challenges that any public destination would face, and we have to manage the environment. So we do risk assessments on anything. We have a really good security team and we do all of the listening and monitoring of those feeds to know what's happening. We get advice from our partners like TFL, which are local. We've got Camden, and then we liaise with the greater London authorities and also the Emergency response services. So we got a good understanding of what's happening. But yes, we'll make a call based on what's going on to decide how we manage the district because we wanna keep people safe.  How many people work on this, setting aside security and all that, working with the canvas, and everything else? Ben Maher: So the Outernet team as a whole is around 80 people. So that'll divide up between everything from the scheduling to the sales teams to the data and center people, creative teams, et cetera. When did it open? Ben Maher: Officially, the arcade and the trending spaces opened around late August, and what they're now building came online from midday each day in November. So it's not been open for long, we're still very much in our infancy but it's nice as I said, to see the behavior of the public and have been here just over four years, to see it come to fruition is very rewarding.  Did it go through a lot of revisions?  Ben Maher: Yes, in terms of what you were good at? I think there were about 11 years of planning before I was even anywhere near this, and then once the planning is in place, you have to then reinterpret it as an experience as a platform, both for how stories are told, how stories are configured, how content is rendered out, how content is served and then how it can be taken to market for brands, storytellers, creators, you name it. So yes, a lot of revisions, and we're still revising.  There's a number of businesses, operating hotels, everything else. Is this element of it or its own business unit with its own P&L? Ben Maher: Outernet is a media business, and we control the screen-enabled spaces that you see above ground here.  I'm gonna assume that you're not plugged into programmatic or anything like that because it's a very distinct kinda canvas. Ben Maher: That is correct. We're not plugged into programmatic. It's not to say that we would never do it, but the reality is the way that the content needs to be served today, it is very unique. As I said, it's a proprietary stack. It uses lots of familiar techs but it's more programmed like a channel like a traditional broadcast channel as opposed to a media. There's a little bit of rendering that's required, let's just say.  I assume you know who was the LED supplier? Ben Maher: The screens are from AOTO. We went and did an analysis globally of the best screen providers and for what we needed AOTO had a great product, and this is certainly the biggest one of the first in, certainly the biggest deployment that they've done of this product. We're running one triple GPS and are now building a load. We did go as far as doing a sort of quality assessment. We visited factories. We even went as far as looking at where raw materials were mined, because of the importance of having single-batch silicon on a canvas of this scale to ensure that you didn't get that different, particularly obviously on the reds within this car, within this canvas was really important. Another important thing about the LEDs, we degrade panels at the same pace that they are running, so that if we need to replace them, we're replacing them either from our own environments or right into the environment. So again, they're in the same life stage of the panels to ensure high quality.  You have a pretty big spares pool, I would imagine? Ben Maher: We try our best, it's a revolving. If you look at this, this is a drone shoot done by one of the Wrigley Scott Associate directors that we met, and he shot it on an Icelandic beach and it is a music video. But if you look at how some of the B rolls so creating doesn't need all new assets, it can come from existing architecture. The supplier of this kind of creativity told you, here's what we would like you to do with it, or do they give you a license to say, look we'd like to do an edit, this is how it's gonna look?  Ben Maher: It depends on the creator, and it depends on where they are with them. If they're shooting for us, then we'd say, this is the brand kit and this is what you need to produce and this is how you need to play it out. We're always updating our learnings. We get new challenges and new opportunities and we learn from those. But as we see these mega canvases across the world. These sorts of fantastic pieces become more relevant because they'll play out across networks. Across other major cities. I think one of the questions you posed was, is London a model for elsewhere? It is, and we're in discussions in New York, LA, the Middle East, and Asia, at launching these networks and then sharing experiences, interestingly, might always be this exact look and feel. This was put together over 26 years across a horizontal plane. If you go to Manhattan, you're probably gonna have to use a vertical plane, and so it becomes a completely different onboarding process and journey. So it's gonna be interesting how we take our learnings and then we utilize those in other environments.  If you're gonna take this to other locations, does it have to be multifaceted in the same way, and that there's a retail component, there's a hospitality component, there's a restaurant component? Ben Maher: Every case is different. So if you look at environments creating a campus or a district in other cities, particularly New York, or more challenging real estate payment tables or even the planning commissions. So we have to look at them in each case often partnering with other established institutions is wise. We're lucky enough to have a huge foot here. In places like Manhattan, you have those big footfalls. In the other cities, you don't necessarily have this natural footfall. So you have to create a different style of destination or with another key destination to ensure the right sort of, so yeah each case on its own and understanding the needs and nuances of those cities and audiences as well. Yeah, because there are a lot of immersive attractions popping up now. They're almost all projection, but they're very much ticketed locations and it's programmed and it starts at this time and you're there for 45 minutes and exit through the gift shop.  Ben Maher: We're very happy to have you exit through the gift shop here as well. And don't get me wrong, there is some incredible projection technology out there. We've looked at it in our venues and in other places. We have other locations with theaters and other things and, we would certainly consider projection there, but for the kinda canvas and certainly some of the gaming engines and things and future-proofing, we wanted to do this pixel pitch to create a very unique and beautiful canvas that to be fair, I don't think we could have achieved in the same way with projection.  Yeah, it's very interesting. I've written about it and but it's so much more interesting to see it in person, but I think more than anything else, to kinda understand the macro idea as opposed to, oh look, a very big set of screens.  Ben Maher: What are these guys doing?  Why did they do that? Ben Maher: Which again, isn't a difficult question always, and I think just seeing the way the public interacts with it has been enough of a validation that cities deserve these interesting cultural spaces and they deserve to be free and in the public domain.  We're early in our journey. We need more brands coming and telling their stories as well, but telling them in a way that will ingratiate themselves to the public and, out-of-home has done an incredible job at providing public utility forever, in major cities. If we can this model out, certainly for multisensory spaces delivering that as well, I think it sets a good precedent for other cities and other developers across world. Are you affected at all by energy conservation requirements or requests?  Ben Maher: Yes, of course. We are obviously subject to the rising costs of energy as anyone naturally would be, but we have developed the most energy-efficient product that was available on the market. So the sort of coolness and the control of the environment, importantly, isn't prohibitive to doing this. We're not creating a huge carbon footprint that we cannot manage. We have all the relevant ESG scorecards. We're working with the ISO qualifications for energy and for our social corporate responsibilities. But it's also this sort of magnet or those people who are concerned about all the voice energy on these things, do they really need them versus other stuff that's drawing way more energy, but it's not anything you think about? Ben Maher: I think the fact that we're providing a storytelling platform and we're not just screaming at people in the public domain. We're supporting arts and culture everywhere. We have a charitable foundation that donates time, and money for different projects. So we've done projects around sustainability with Unger. We're doing things around social mobility. We've done things for AIDS charities, so we work with lots of different interest groups to provide them with platforms. We even audit the popups so that when we're looking at the brands we're working with, we're not just working with the same generic brands that you get on every high street in the world, right? We wanna ensure that these spaces are different and unique. So whether it's non-white owned businesses, whether it's LGBTQ+ owned business, female-owned, sustainable business, so again, being a conscious member of society, we don't just wanna be a bastian for people who want a big ass billboard.  So I think we've gone around things in a very different way. There is some incredible landmark out home structures in the UK and across Europe. But I do think we have good USPs and we do complement what is already in the market but with enough points of difference, yeah. We wanna attract people to this space and not cannibalize out-of-home budgets by sticking the same offering up. So if we can get more AV budget and that encourages people to do better and more in out-of-home, then that's a fantastic thing.  That's very impressive. Obviously, people like it.  Ben Maher: We're getting there. There's a piece called Heaven's Gate that is the new art exhibition and it is on Sunday and it was absolutely crackers in here, it was just crazy to see how people enjoyed it and it just says conceiving something and then seeing it come to fruition is such a unique and pleasurable thing to be able to do. So we're very proud of what we've done here.

From the BBC World Service: Twitter stands accused of skipping rent to King Charles III. The Crown Estate in the U.K., which manages property belonging to the reigning monarch, has filed court proceedings against the firm for arrears on its headquarters in London’s famous Piccadilly Circus. Plus, questions are being raised over Ticketmaster and whether it has a monopoly. We look at what U.S. regulators could maybe learn from Europe. And we hear more on those plans for a common currency in South America.

From the BBC World Service: Twitter stands accused of skipping rent to King Charles III. The Crown Estate in the U.K., which manages property belonging to the reigning monarch, has filed court proceedings against the firm for arrears on its headquarters in London’s famous Piccadilly Circus. Plus, questions are being raised over Ticketmaster and whether it has a monopoly. We look at what U.S. regulators could maybe learn from Europe. And we hear more on those plans for a common currency in South America.

We're celebrating our 100th episode of Break Out Culture by talking about hope to Josef O'Connor, the young Irish-born artist and curator who's on a mission to use art to spread a sense of optimism globally. In October 2020 Josef launched CIRCA (the Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Arts) as a platform to showcase digital art with a purpose in the public sphere, starting with Piccadilly Circus's famous lights screen. Every night at 20:23 throughout 2023, Piccadilly Circus, and other screens around the world, will show newly commissioned work by artists on the subject of hope. The film will change every month. January's film is slightly longer, at three and a half minutes, because it contains a recorded message from the His Holiness the Dalai Lama– which you too can hear by tuning into the podcast. He talks about the oneness of humanity in turbulent times and a three-minute animated film has been made with CIRCA to accompany his message. £150 buys you a screen print of ‘The Art of Hope' by the Dalai Lama till the end of 2023 and proceeds go to Tibet Hope Centre and to the #CIRCAeconomy. What we also discover on the podcast is that subscribers to CIRCA will receive an original framed print monthly for just £1,000 a year. Listen in to find out how Josef O'Connor is radically changing the way art can be distributed and hear about the success he's had so far, working with artists ranging from Ai Weiwei and David Hockney to Patti Smith and Yoko Ono.

Information on the National Network of Abortion Funds here. *See end of description for content warnings. AWOOOOO, and welcome back to The Fright of Your Life Podcast! Join us as we dive into the werewolf movie to end all werewolf movies, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. Seriously, we dare you to find a better wold transformation in any other film. And of course, play along at home as we uncover the 42nd scariest movie moment of all time. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter @FrightYourLife Individual Twitter Accts: @RileyCassidy1 @TaraEllwood *CW: mentions of suicide

E137 - We catch up over Christmas break while Joelle's in Idaho & Julianne's in San Diego editing our documentary. Hear about snowy plans, Poway bandits, Red Riders & Home Alone. We made this year's https://www.AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com calendar, talk crappy kids in photos & Mouse finally gives her London recap. See tourist recommendations from a Brit Pod Scene podcast below & hear Number One Rerun's deep thoughts on Harry Potter. We discuss when to scrub social media for work, & then get right into Weens' viral banana video & Hairy Pants song! Speaking of clickable, listen to Julianne's stories about the real personalities of Jack Black, Michael Shannon & Keanu Reeves. Do they have Brad Pitt's face blindness? Do you forget how you know people like Mouse does? We jump into the gutter for a while to discuss monorchidism & the female body part that rhymes with Horace, chorus & taurus. And finally we discuss Elon Musk's comedy career, finding out what politics, the Rachel Maddow Ultra & BagMan podcasts, & cat-sitting have to do with each other. We bring around the episode talking boobs, mammograms, & gallows humor. Then Weens redefines social work, throws out some gross words & ends questioning her solitude and dislike of crowds these days. Who relates? Write in! mouseandweens@gmail.com or DM any socials @mouseandweens https://facebook.com/mouseandweens is a good spot too! Watch this episode on youtube.com/channel/UCgeuFSExQ2EaHYSG-s4sgZw ►Thank you to our patrons - our family! Join the fun, get free swag & bonus content - like deleted scenes from this ep! https://www.patreon.com/mouseandweens ►Credits: "Mouse and Weens" theme song, "Hairy Pants", "Love of My Friends" by Julianne Eggold https://www.julianneeggold.com Voice actor: Matt Thompson ►Our network: Podfix https://podfixnetwork.com ►Sponsor: Dream Dinners! Quickly make homemade meals stress-free. More QT for you & your family! Dream Dinners is nationwide. If within 25 mi of Poway or San Marcos MOUSEANDWEENS99 for $99 off 1st order! Link on https://www.mouseandweens.com ►Please follow, subscribe, talk: Socials @mouseandweens | https://linktr.ee/mouseandweens | mouseandweens@gmail.com | 858-319-1089 ►Number One Rerun Podcast: https://NumberOneRerun.podbean.com and their London tourist guide based on Joelle's teenagers: "We reckon places they may like to visit: Junkyard Golf, Flight Club (go to Shoreditch one as Junkyard Golf is there too), London Eye, Sky Garden, Tower Bridge (walk over glass floor). If you want to get the tube to North Greenwich you can see the O2 - has outlet shopping, restaurants, etc & Toca Social (a virtual football/soccer place). Cable cars there too so nice views & if you want to be mega adventurous you can walk up the O2 as well. Shopping: start at Marble Arch & walk up to Oxford Circus & turn off into Carnaby Street (you can come back out & head past Tottenham Court Road towards Leicester Square (also cool & near Piccadilly Circus) to see Denmark Street on the way if into music (though not hip hop!) For restaurants/cool shopping - Covent Garden or Borough Market (you can see the Shard near there too). Good coffee chains Oree/Joe & The Juice/Ole & Steen/Peyton & Byrne). There's Harry bloody Potter things everywhere so you won't miss that little sod. Plus obviously for you see Buckingham Palace, go on a London bus, etc - lovely." Links Mentioned: ►Buy an Awkward Family Photo daily desk calendar - https://www.amazon.com/Awkward-Family-Photos-2023-Calendar/dp/1524873586 ►Michael Shannon doing comedy - https://youtu.be/IdeFYWX5nuk ►Face Blindness - https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/brad-pitt-interview-2022 ►Salon's "The Onion" article - https://www.salon.com/2013/10/22/were_the_onions_anti_semitic_slurs_fair_game ►Rachel Maddow's podcasts: https://msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra and https://msnbc.com/bagman

London is a world of museums – as well as being a museum itself.

EPISODE NOTESSkip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese. Download the Rubber Cheese 2022 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the first digital benchmark statistics for the attractions sector. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.  If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast Competition ends January 31st 2023. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.   Show references: https://www.convious.com/https://twitter.com/MrTicketeerhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/andypovey/ https://blooloop.com/technology/news/convious-consumer-pricinghttps://blooloop.com/technology/news/convious-digital-trends-webinar/ Andy Povey joined Convious in November 2021 as managing director for UK and Ireland. Andy has worked in the attractions industry since the early nineties when he began as a ride operator at Chessington World of Adventures. He stayed with the Tussaud's company and later Merlin Entertainments for another 18 years, working in a variety of operational jobs at Rock Circus, Madame Tussauds, and central support, where he was responsible for the group's ticketing systems. After Merlin, he worked for Gateway Ticketing Systems for ten years, opening and then overseeing their UK operation, before transferring his experience to the Convious team. Outside work, Andy enjoys visiting attractions of all shapes and sizes with his family. Transcriptions: Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in, or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world. In today's episode, I speak with Andy Povey, Managing Director, UK and Ireland for Convious. Andy shares with us the five key digital trends attractions shouldn't miss out on and research into dynamic pricing for theme parks and tourist attractions. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue.Kelly Molson: Andy Povey, it's so lovely to have you on Skip The Queue podcast today. Thanks for coming on.Andy Povey: Thank you. It's my absolute pleasure.Kelly Molson: And I know you've been a bit poorly. So let's just state now, poor old Andy has had COVID, and he's got a little bit of a cold today. So be kind to him.Andy Povey: It's man flu.Kelly Molson: It's always man flu, Andy. Right. As ever, we're going to start with icebreakers and I've got a really good one for you. So how would you describe your job to a three year old?Andy Povey: Oh, to a three year old? Well, I've got eight year old twin girls. So as far as they're concerned, daddy gets to go to zoos and theme parks without them, which is not brilliant. But no, I make computers work, I suppose.Kelly Molson: Make computers work for cool attractions like zoos and theme parks. I think that's perfect.Andy Povey: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: Good job, Andy. We'll talk more about that later. Okay. What one thing would you make a law that isn't one already?Andy Povey: That's a really difficult one.Kelly Molson: They're always difficult, Andy. It's always.Andy Povey: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're being mean to me. Yeah. Oh, I'm in our office in Amsterdam at the moment, so I'm traveling a bit. And I do have a theory that you should never, ever fly from an airport where people feel it's appropriate to turn up in flip flops.Kelly Molson: Well, even if you're traveling back from holiday and it's a bit warm.Andy Povey: So the law would be, if I'm at the airport, and I'm waiting in the back to get to Carousel, you need to get out of my way.Kelly Molson: I think that's fair. Everyone goes a bit savage at the airport. Don't you think? You know when you go into London, and there's a certain way that you act on the tubes to get to places. You've got to walk really, you've got to be very determined, haven't you?Andy Povey: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: That's how I feel when I go into London. I've got my London walk on. And I feel it's a bit like that at the airports as well. Everyone's all in it for themselves. They don't care about anyone else around them. It's all just-Andy Povey: No, no. Get out of my way.Kelly Molson: Yeah. It's a good law, Andy. Right. Everyone has to get out of Andy's way at the airport. That's the law. Nice. Okay. And this one, I've asked a few people this one. Because I really like this one. What would you buy as you exit through the gift shop?Andy Povey: I'm not really into things. I'm much more of an experience kind of person. So if there was another experience, or something to enhance the experience, then it would be something like that.Kelly Molson: Okay. Good answer.Andy Povey: Yeah, something to enhance the experience.Kelly Molson: Good answer. I like that, Andy. And we'll talk about that a little bit more later as well. What would your twin girls pick? What would be their things from the theme park?Andy Povey: Oh, cuddly toys. You must be the same. Shelves and shelves and shelves of these things in the house.Kelly Molson: My daughter is doing incredibly well from all of the visits though that I have been on recently. Yeah. Let me tell you the gift shops, I've been [inaudible 00:03:28].Andy Povey: Squish 'em alls.Kelly Molson: To the gift shops. Yeah.Andy Povey: What do they call them?Kelly Molson: Squishy animals, all sorts of stuff. She's now got from various attractions that she's never been to that I'll have to take her to, to say thank you.Andy Povey: No, when mine were the same age as your daughter, I went to Orlando a few times for IAAPA. And I would buy them Mickey Mouse and Mini Mouse cuddly toys, and bring them home. But because they'd never seen anything to do with Disney, these were just referred to as Boy Mouse and Girl Mouse.Kelly Molson: Oh, bless them.Andy Povey: They didn't know what Mickey Mouse was.Kelly Molson: Oh. And I'm sure they do very well now.Andy Povey: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.Kelly Molson: All right, Andy, what is your unpopular opinion? What have you prepared for us?Andy Povey: I actually did a poll of my colleagues in the office, because I was looking at something to do with Eurovision, and actually trying to work out whether my opinion was unpopular or not. And unfortunately it wasn't. So Eurovision massively overrated is my opinion of this.Kelly Molson: Gosh. So-Andy Povey: I knew we were going to fall out over this.Kelly Molson: Well, it's not just me. There's a lot of listeners that you are going to make very unhappy about that statement, Andy. Not to mention Rachel MacKay, who, if she hears this, I don't know how she's going to feel the next time she sees you. So that is for you to feel awkward about.Andy Povey: You asked for an unpopular opinion.Kelly Molson: Okay, let's put it out there. How does everyone feel about Eurovision? I feel like this is definitely going to be an unpopular one, Andy. Thank you. Right. Okay. Andy, so you have got over two decades in the attraction sector, self proclaimed attractions industry nerd. I think that's fair. Tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up working in the sector.Andy Povey: A colleague did tell me the other day that it's actually 30 years, and I was trying to hide away from this. Yes, I am old. So many, many years ago, started a temporary seasonal job at Chessington World of Adventures, having left college without a clue about what I wanted to do when I grew up. My first job was driving the train around the park at Chessington, and absolutely fell in love with the attractions industry. And then stayed with Merlin or The Tussauds Group, which then became Merlin Entertainment for about 18 years, and doing all sorts of different jobs. So that's how I fell into it. And I've never looked back.Kelly Molson: It's a really common theme actually, from guests that come on who've gone to work in a theme park or an attraction as what they probably thought would be a temp job for a while. And then absolutely loved every minute of it, and then have just risen through the ranks. Whether they've stayed in one group or they've moved around. But they've just continued to learn, and learn, and learn, and progress. And that comes across so frequently with our guests. It sucks you in.Andy Povey: It absolutely does. And it's a great industry. And I love the fact that you can build a career within our industry from starting right at the bottom, and just work your way up. I think it's a testament to the industry.Kelly Molson: What kind of roles did you work in then as you moved your way up?Andy Povey: So I did four years at Chessington as a ride operator. Then went to Rock Circus, which was a subsidiary of Madame Tussauds in the Trocadero and Piccadilly Circus in Central London. It was there for four years, and we were told that someone from head office was going to come and install the till system and tell me how to make it work. At which point I went, "Oh, maybe not." So I went and became that person.Kelly Molson: Oh, you were a tills man?Andy Povey: Yeah, I was. It was a tills man. So I started in ticketing before the internet.Kelly Molson: Yeah.Andy Povey: Before anybody really knew what the internet was, and then moved to Madame Tussauds for a short period of time, and then to what was Tussauds Group head office in Tottenham Court Road looking after all of the till systems for the organisation. And then did that for about 10 years, and then left, went and joined the supplier that we were using, Tussauds, so gateway ticketing. I was with them for 10 years. Basically convinced them to set up a UK office, and I ran the UK office for 10 years. And then after COVID, decided it was time to go and do something else. So came across Convious, the company I work for now, and whose office I'm sitting in today. And that's it, really. That's a very brief summary of Andy's career.Kelly Molson: Excellent career. I'd like to hear a little bit about Convious. So I am aware of you, and I think that most people at the moment would be aware of Convious. They're everywhere. Convious are everywhere.Andy Povey: Yeah. We're bright pink, and we shout a lot.Kelly Molson: And they're pink.Andy Povey: Don't know what they do.Kelly Molson: You have fantastic stands, events that we all attend. But I think there's something really different about Convious. Can you just tell us a little bit about it?Andy Povey: So it's not just what Convious are doing. There's something going off in the whole world of technology that the sales force are referring to as the fourth industrial revolution. And so competing with third industrial revolution from sort of 1949 to 2010, the fourth industrial revolution's all about data. And five years ago everyone was talking about big data. That was the buzzword that was everywhere. So we were just storing loads and loads of information. The fourth industrial revolution we're seeing now is actually doing things with that data. Because there's no point in just paying for a load of storage somewhere, if you're not going to do anything with it.So what we're doing at Convious with that data. It's really sitting on top of our partner's websites rather than being a page that you go off to, and gathering as much data as we possibly can. So we pull in long range weather forecasts, we're pulling in all sorts of information about how people are interacting with the website. And ultimately just using it all to drive sales and increase sales for our partners.Kelly Molson: I know that the weather thing is a really small thing of the system. It's a tiny thing, but it's the thing that sticks in my head the most. Because I just think it's blooming genius. I know. It's such a small thing, but it's such a clever thing to have.Andy Povey: It really does affect attendance at so many attractions. And I love Dom Jones when he was talking to you. I love his take on the weather, of actually, if you're going to blame the weather, you should also give the weather credit when you have a great attendance.Kelly Molson: I agree. Yeah, I love that quote from Dom. So it is really interesting in terms of what Convious do. Because I think that one of the things that attractions could be better at is using the data that they already have in more sophisticated ways. And the Convious platform allows you to do that really easily. Because let's face it, marketing teams are overstretched in attractions. And they can be quite small at times as well. We had Danielle and Ross on from Drayton Manor a few weeks ago. And the two of them pretty much head up their department. And I know they're a head of marketing as well. But that's a small team for what is a significant attraction.Andy Povey: Yes. Yeah, yeah.Kelly Molson: So anything that we can help to put in place for those teams is ultimately going to make it easier for them, and make it better. And they'll be able to understand better what their customers are actually doing.Andy Povey: And ultimately it's about making it easier for the customer. There's a whole focus on personalization at the moment, again, across the industry. So rather than it being one too many, it's one personalisation. And looking at, if we know something about the customer, so take me for example. I buy family tickets, and I love industrial heritage. So Google knows that about me, and Google will tell every website that I go to, that's who I am. So if we've got a family offering as an attraction, then let's promote the family offering. If you've got an industrial heritage offering, let's promote the industrial heritage offering to the people who've identified that they are. Ultimately it's about giving people what they want.Kelly Molson: And that's the really smart bit, isn't it? That the system can identify the person that's coming, and show them the things that are more relevant to them from that attraction. Then the standard things that they might like, they might buy. But actually this is the one that they really want, because that's connecting with them at a completely deeper level. That's some of the stuff that I want to talk about today. So one of the things that's good about Convious, and I'd like to hope that Rubber Cheese are aligned in this way as well, is that when we think about talking to attractions, we're giving them things that are useful. I think, that ultimately from any marketing perspective is how useful can you be? This content that I'm putting out, what value does it bring somebody? And how can they engage with it? And is it helpful for them?And that's what I feel Convious does really well. And I see a lot of your articles on Blooloop for example. And a month or so ago there was an article about the five key digital trends for attractions as we roll into 2023. And I think that this is a really good time to talk about these things. Because people are doing a lot of planning at this time of year. They're in Christmas, which this year feels very busy, because it's the first Christmas people can-Andy Povey: It certainly does.Kelly Molson: It's the first one though, if you think about it, that people can actually go out and feel comfortable that the things they're going to book, they can actually do. Last year we still had that Omicron. Do we do big groups? Do we just stay inside a little bit longer? But this year feels busy. And I think that attractions will get through Christmas, have a brilliant Christmas. And then January will be that time when they go "Right, what are we doing? This is what we need to focus on now." So this is very pertinent. It comes at a great time. One of the key trends that you just mentioned was personalization. So you talked about making things relevant to your audience. Really, really relevant. Are we talking about exclusive here as well? Because we talk about that quite a lot. Exclusive events and things that they can only get at certain places.Andy Povey: Yeah, I think so. And I think that's one of the things that, not just around digital, I think it's one of the things that the attractions world will do to really weather the economic storm that we're going through at the moment. Generally what we've seen over the past 12 months is that if you've got a short event, or a short-term event, it tends to sell out. So looking at what you as an attraction can do that creates that exclusive event. So if you are a park, can you get Peppa Pig on site for two or three days? Can you get Paw Patrol there for a couple of days? So giving people their incentive to come, and come again, and come again. So not just being, this is the six weeks of the summer at my theme park. This is the Peppa Pig, fortnight, although two days. And this is the Paw Patrol for two days. So improving that repeat visitation.Kelly Molson: And what you talked about data, I guess that comes back to really understanding your audience.Andy Povey: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: So you need to be collecting the data to understand what those people want in the first phase to then be able to tailor your offering to what they like.Andy Povey: 100%. 100%. There's no value in creating a Peppa Pig experience if none of your visitors have got kids. A great way to waste a load of money.Kelly Molson: I don't need to see Peppa.Andy Povey: No. No, no, no.Kelly Molson: You can keep Peppa. So you talked earlier about what you like, and that Google knows that about you. How do attractions tap into that? I guess through advertising, right?Andy Povey: Well it's not just advertising. It's actually looking at... And you did the survey a few weeks ago about the attractions, and understanding Google Analytics, that kind of stuff. It's free. You do not need to pay to get Google Analytics data. It's there for you. And there are so many venues, and so many prospective clients that I'm talking to now, that don't have access to it. It's almost criminal. There are still vendors out there that don't share this information. So I suppose to come back and answer your question is, go and look at the data that you've got. Google Analytics will give you a view of everybody that's coming to your website.Kelly Molson: Find out who they are, what they like, and then give them what they want.Andy Povey: Well, yeah. But tailor something for them. So if you've got a large foodie audience, then look at your catering.Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's really good advice.Andy Povey: Can you put on a Heston Blumenthal event, or a Jamie Oliver event?Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's really great advice actually, taking it to that deeper level. The second key digital trend was about online and offline, which we're talking a lot about online and offline as well. So this isn't just about digital, but I guess one of the things that was mentioned was about digital experiences. And I guess you can talk about that from a pre-visit perspective. How do you engage people digitally before they turn up at your event? But also, once they're at your venue too. So digital experiences that deepen or extend the experience that you were already giving them. Can you think of any really good examples of that, that we could talk about from an attractions perspective?Andy Povey: That's really difficult. The reason that we go to attractions as human beings, is because we like doing physical things. We want to be with our friends. We want to be with our family. Particularly after COVID, it's has been difficult to go and see granny, and whatever. So it's safer to go and visit a park, or to visit a garden than it is to possibly all sit around in the lounge, having a cup of tea. I can give you an unusual example, I suppose. The Forestry Commission did something a few years ago with The Gruffalo, and it's an augmented reality thing.Kelly Molson: Yes.Andy Povey: So as a parent, you could sit your child on a tree trunk and hold up your phone, and the augmented reality would superimpose an image of the Gruffalo sitting next to your child. They pulled it within six months, because the parent is having this experience of looking at their child through a phone. Whereas the child's sitting there going, "Well, mummy and daddy's just on their phone again."Kelly Molson: "Where's the Gruffalo?"Andy Povey: "Mummy and daddy's just on their phone again. What are we doing?"Kelly Molson: Yeah.Andy Povey: So in that situation it's about getting back to reality, rather than being digital. So it's a really fine line. At what point does an app, or a park map, or something like that, at what point does it enhance your visit, versus intruding on your visit?Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's a really good question. It's really funny, because when you mentioned that, I was like, that's a perfect example of this, how digital interacts with nature. But you're right, aren't you? Because the child doesn't interact with it. They just see you pointing a phone at them again, or you interacting with your phone and not with them. I hadn't considered that, and what message that actually sends out to them while they're outside in nature as well.Andy Povey: Yeah. And so I'm not a [inaudible 00:18:44] who's going, no, no, digital should be nowhere near your experience. It should be there, and it should be enhancing. But actually really understand that it is enhancing. So if you talk to the guys from BeWILDerwood, I know there was a podcast with Hannah. They delight on the fact that you can't get a mobile phone signal in Norfolk. Because you should put your phone away. You're here to have a day out with the kids.Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's a really good point. I actually quite like it when I can't get any mobile signal, because it means that I'm present.Andy Povey: Yes, absolutely.Kelly Molson: It means I'm not worrying about having to check something. I'm actually not even that concerned about, oh I needed to get this picture for the gram. I just forget about it if I've got no signal. It's just not going to happen. One thing that we do have to think about though, from an online perspective, is about bookings. So what we have seen, and again we've seen this in our attractions website survey that we've just published, is that bookings are increasing on mobile year, on year, on year, on year. So we do have to think about that pre-visit, and how easy we make it for people to book tickets. So actually, someone asked me this question on LinkedIn yesterday. What's one of my top infuriations with attractions websites?And I said for me, I'm often on my mobile phone when I'm doing things, because I'm out and about and I might be booking my tickets on a mobile phone. And I really hate when you're forced to create an account before you can actually buy anything. And I'm like, "God, I've got literally five minutes before I get off the train, and onto the tube. And I've got no signal. And I've got to get this ticket. I don't want to be creating an account right now."Andy Povey: No, no, no.Kelly Molson: Just give me the ticket. I might get an account afterwards, but just give me the ticket.Andy Povey: That was one of the things from your report, wasn't it? The account creation is a massive turnoff to conversion. And for me, I never remember any of those passwords. So every time I go back to their store, I'm having to reset my password, because it's just an absolute pain in the butt.Kelly Molson: I'm with you. So there you go.Andy Povey: Don't do it.Kelly Molson: Top tip from this podcast. Don't make people do that.Andy Povey: Yeah. Don't do accounts.Kelly Molson: Two very angry consumers here.Andy Povey: Absolutely. 100%.Kelly Molson: All right. So number three on our digital trends list is increasing loyalty. Now this is a big one, isn't it? Right? So again, it's interesting. So from a personal perspective, again, I was asked about memberships. We have a National Trust membership, it renews in January. I'll absolutely be renewing it. It's great value for money. It gives us so many places locally that we can go to. It's not a free day out, but it's a great day out, and we can take quite long.Andy Povey: It feels like it.Kelly Molson: It feels like a free day.Andy Povey: Yeah.Kelly Molson: Yeah. But do attractions need to think a bit more about that now? So should attractions be rewarding loyalty? So member perks for example? Or just small things that members get for being a member, that you couldn't get unless you were a member?Andy Povey: Absolutely. It's almost those money-can't-buy experiences. So it doesn't necessarily cost the attraction anything to do these things. And you can go have a member exclusive event to walk a coaster track, or to a behind the scenes tour of something. But yeah, all right. It might cost you a couple of hours for a member of staff to put it on. Again, as we came out of COVID, the first people that came to your rotation, were your most loyal customers. They've come to see you as the first thing they can do. So as an attraction, you have the opportunity to harness that loyalty, and turn these people into advocates. And that's going to be your best marketing resource, where they're recommending to people to come along to you. So if you can deepen that relationship by rewarding, by sharing, then absolutely you should do it.Kelly Molson: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's understanding what they want as well. So when we talk about delivering what they want, should attractions be surveying their members, and finding out what more they can give them? And again, it comes back to the data thing again, doesn't it? How well do you know your audience? From a member's perspective, are you actually giving them what they want?Andy Povey: No, absolutely. And surveying's great, but there's so many other ways you can capture information about members and what they're doing that isn't actually going and asking them a question. It was interesting when we did the dynamic pricing consumer research. The responses that you get from people when they're answering a survey aren't necessarily what they're doing in real life.Kelly Molson: Interesting. Give us an example.Andy Povey: There was, 30% of people believe the airlines aren't charging dynamic prices. And I'm looking at this going, well, this can't be right. This is obvious. But actually, if you dig into it a little bit more, and we did with the guys from Baker Richards. And it's actually, the consumer's not looking at the price changing. The consumer's interested in the price they're paying for the date and time that they want to get on the plane. It doesn't matter that the price changes. It's how much am I paying today? What's my price now? That's a very long winded way of answering your question about the value of surveys.Kelly Molson: Yeah. No, it's really important, isn't it? So how else do you get to know your members? If surveys are giving us not quite the full picture, what other ways can we find out about-Andy Povey: So if you are looking at app, then obviously you are tracking, or you have the ability to track where people are going, how they're engaging, that kind of stuff. I was at IAAPA a couple of weeks ago in Orlando. And there's guys there with a new product that's actually harvesting location data from 200 different apps, and bringing all that, and presenting it back to you. Which I'm not a hundred percent sure that it is GDPR compliant, or [inaudible 00:24:44].Kelly Molson: Is that okay though? I'm not sure about that.Andy Povey: Yeah. But there it's looking at where people are going, how long they're staying there, and that kind of stuff. So that's one example. Going back to what we do at Convious, we don't capture addresses, postal addresses. Because we're not interested in old school CRM. We're not going to produce a mailing, a physical piece of paper and post it out to somebody. So why are you asking them to fill in all those fields with their address on?Kelly Molson: That's interesting. So even from a geographic perspective, it's not always relevant to understand where your customers are traveling from.Andy Povey: You can get all of that from the IP address that they're coming from.Kelly Molson: Sure.Andy Povey: So obviously it's really important to understand whereabouts in the country, and how far away your customers are from you, and that kind of stuff. But there are other ways to gathering that information, rather than traditional filling in. Back to your comment about filling in my address on the phone. Yeah, I've got fat fingers. I'm not going to type my address in on the phone.Kelly Molson: And I'm busy.Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah.Kelly Molson: It's not going to happen.Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.Kelly Molson: All right. Yeah. No, I like that.Andy Povey: Make it as simple as you possibly can for people.Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely. And the data's already there, so just gather it from the right place without giving people something else that they need to do. Good. Okay. All right. Well, our next one is about engagement, digital engagement. So digital engagement, from a marketing perspective, I always think about user generated content at this point. Because you're asking your visitors, from an offline perspective, you're asking them to engage with something that's at your physical attraction, but then you then encouraging them to share that digitally. So you're getting that double exposure and, you're also generating content from your users, which is invaluable for your marketing team. So that's the thing that I always focus on from digital engagement. What other things can we ask attractions to focus on?Andy Povey: A story someone told me many, many years ago was that their marketing guy actually ran a training session at this attraction, I can't remember which one, for staff on how to take the best photos.Kelly Molson: Oh that's great. Yeah.Andy Povey: You see a family, and mum or dad's taking a picture of the other parent and the kids, obviously the member of staff is going to offer to take the photograph for them. That's just human nature. That's what we do. But if you've already identified the most memorable background to put these people in, then the member staff can just move them slightly. And it improves and increases the rate of those photos being uploaded and shared.Kelly Molson: That's such a small thing, isn't it?Andy Povey: Isn't it?Kelly Molson: But again, that's genius. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get a better picture for people. They're more encouraged to share it. I love it. That's so clever. I hadn't even considered that. But again, that comes back to the people. People make places.Andy Povey: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: So you empower the people to make those things happen better for those guests. I love that. Yeah, great one. Okay. And then I guess reviews is something that's really important about engagement. And how do we encourage people to leave reviews about the venues?Andy Povey: It can be as simple as your post visit survey. Standard. Everyone's doing them.Kelly Molson: Ah, are they though? Are they though?Andy Povey: Well, yeah okay. Everyone should be doing them.Kelly Molson: Okay. Should be.Andy Povey: Everyone should be doing them. And then you can have some intelligence sitting behind it, that if you get a lot of high scores, whatever, then direct the consumer over to the review site at the end of the review. If you're getting some negative scores, then direct them to your customer service team and do something about it. As human beings, we're happy to share this kind of information, as long as we're getting something back from it. It's a transactional relationship at that point. So we talk a lot about harvesting data. But morally, you can't do that if you're not giving the consumer something back, and giving them a benefit for doing it. Back to your comment about accounts. What's the point of me creating an account? What's my benefit of doing this? There isn't one. I'm just going to get annoyed about it.Kelly Molson: This is the thing, actually. So most of the time when I've had to create an account to get my ticket, there hasn't been any further interaction other than someone's whacked me on their mailing list. And I'm probably going to unsubscribe from that mailing list, because I'm annoyed that I've had to make the account in the first place. So what is that benefit? Yeah. Think about if you are going to force people to do something, at least make it worthwhile for them than a newsletter. Just sticking them on the newsletter list is not going to cut it.Andy Povey: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And then for a long time I was on the Encore Hotels mailing list. I get an email from them a couple of times a week. And it started, Dear Povey, you-Kelly Molson: Dear Povey.Andy Povey: Dear Povey, you have got that so wrong. You cannot. Your CRM is so bad.Kelly Molson: Can I tell you though? So sometimes when I have to sign up for stuff and I have to put my company name, I get emails to Dear Rubber. That's not okay. I'm quite used to it, but it's still not okay.Andy Povey: No, no, no, no. So yeah. We're talking a lot about examples of how not to do it, than how to do it better.Kelly Molson: Well I think this is important, right?Andy Povey: It is.Kelly Molson: There may be attractions listening to this, going, "Oops, we might have done that. We might need to change that." So it's all relevant.Andy Povey: Oh no, on a positive. I got an email from Father Christmas yesterday. It's from an attraction we took the kids to last year to go and see Santa. And it's the first mail I've had from that venue since visiting, so 12 months. So I'm not getting spammed. And you see Father Christmas arrive in your inbox.Kelly Molson: Oh, that's nice, isn't it?Andy Povey: It's a very special moment. So that was very well done. Very well done.Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's really smart, isn't it? If you're just going to send one email a year, make sure it's from Santa.Andy Povey: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.Kelly Molson: Right. Let's talk about pricing, because that's our number five key digital trends for attractions. Now pricing's really interesting. We've talked quite a lot about pricing recently. So we had Dominic on from Mary Rose, talking about pricing. We also had Simon Addison from Roman Baths, talking about pricing.Andy Povey: Yes.Kelly Molson: Let's talk about dynamic pricing, because it's something that we touched on just earlier when we were talking about the airlines and the surveys. So airlines use something called real time pricing. When a plane's almost full, the airline company's going to bump their prices up. Because they know they're going to sell out, and they know that somebody really wants that ticket, because they have to get somewhere on a certain day at a certain time. So it's a bit of a no-brainer for them. Is that something that attractions should be doing?Andy Povey: I think so. And as an industry, we've talked about dynamic pricing for the past 20 years. And when I was Madame Tussaud's, we implemented what then was peak and off-peak pricing. And so we changed the price of the ticket three times during the day. And actually, because we were very explicit about what the price was, we were stuck at this 1995 price point, and had been reluctant to change for a while. We actually increased our ticket yield by about 30%, whilst also increasing our value for money score, which seemed counterintuitive. And actually what was happening there was that the consumer was choosing how much they were going to pay.So rather than being told what the price was, the consumer chooses. So naturally we are more comfortable about a situation, where we feel that we've had some choice. Dynamic pricing does that. Real time pricing, which is where we sit at Convious just makes that run much more efficiently, much more quickly. So a lot of dynamic pricing consultancies out there at the moment will talk about changing prices every day, which if you think, generally people are buying tickets to an attraction three to five days before they visit. They're only going to see three to five different price points. Whereas the way the modern world is going, or the way we are is, we're changing prices, or we can change the price as a result of every single transaction.Kelly Molson: Does that make it more difficult from an operational perspective, if you're constantly changing your prices though? Is it harder to do your forecasting, for example, if that's your price strategy?Andy Povey: If you are forecasting on individual ticket price level, yeah, absolutely. So don't do that.Kelly Molson: Good advice.Andy Povey: Yeah. So every attraction that I've ever worked in and around has a target yield, or a target ticket price to achieve. And we've been doing variable pricing through all the coupons that get put out on all the leaflet racks that you see on every motorway service station. So you can't control how many of those coupons are coming back, and how much discount you're going to get. So having much more control makes it easier for you to manage that, and get the computer to do it. Obviously if you're sitting there changing the prices all the time, then yes, it's going to be a nightmare.Kelly Molson: Nobody wants that job.Andy Povey: No. And the other thing on dynamic pricing is, we still get hooked up on the idea that dynamic means increased, and it doesn't. If you're doing it properly, then it doesn't mean the price is going up necessarily. Obviously you get a better yield. But the guys at Pleasurewood Hills down in Lowestoft, they have a very transient market. So there are loads and loads of holiday parks in their area. So Mondays and Fridays are change over days. So their total addressable market on a Monday and a Friday drops by 50%, because people are packing up and going home. So if you drop the price on a Monday and Friday, or drop the price on a Monday and Friday. Someone who may have come on Wednesday, is now going to come on Monday or Friday, have a much better experience, because venue's not full. And so it smooths their demand. So there's a lot of science behind it.Kelly Molson: Yep. And that all comes back to data, what we started talking about, right?Andy Povey: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: Knowing-Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.Kelly Molson: Knowing where people are coming from, what they're doing, how you can change their mindset about things just from the data.Andy Povey: Yeah. And actually watching what they're doing. So we have an artificial intelligence engine that sits behind what we're doing. And it can monitor in real time what's happening about your conversion rate. So if you put the price up by a pound and then your conversion rate drops by 5%, you've probably gone up too high. So drop it down a little bit. So just manage it better, I suppose, in summary.Kelly Molson: I think that's good advice for life in general, isn't it Andy?Andy Povey: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Kelly Molson: Just manage it better.Andy Povey: Just manage it better.Kelly Molson: This has been a great chat, Andy. Thank you. I think there's loads to take away from. So what we're going to do in the show notes. So there will be links to all the blog articles that we've mentioned today about the digital trends. And I believe there is a webinar that you ran about dynamic pricing as well. And I believe that we might have a link to that too that we could share, which would be great. But Andy, we always end our podcast by asking our guests to share a book with us, something that they love or they've really enjoyed that they think our listeners would also like.Andy Povey: So I've pondered this for a while, and I know that some of your previous people you've spoken to have got away with two.Kelly Molson: Yeah.Andy Povey: So I've got a request for two books.Kelly Molson: Oh, God. Okay.Andy Povey: One's a business book. Really simple, about a half hour read. It's called Who Moved My Cheese?Kelly Molson: Good book.Andy Povey: It's one of my favorites when I first read it 20, 25 years ago, something like that, it really gave me a different way of looking at change. So I really recommend that. And the other one is actually a book I love reading to my kids, called Oi Dog!Kelly Molson: Oi Dog! Great.Andy Povey: Oi Dog! Yeah. So there's a child in all of us. And that for me really just tickles all of my childish bones. Yeah.Kelly Molson: Oh brilliant.Andy Povey: So it works pretty well.Kelly Molson: Well, both of those books are right up my street. So Who Moved My Cheese? Unsurprisingly within a company called Rubber Cheese, you won't be surprised to know that somebody bought that for me when I set up the business. And that was nearly 20 years ago. So that was one of the first business books that I think that I ever read. And it did make a big difference about how you deal with change, and how you compartmentalise it into an easier way of dealing with. But Oi Dog! sounds right up my street. I'm going to put that on my list too? Right listeners-Andy Povey: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: So as ever, if you want to win a copy of Andy's two books, then if you go over to our Twitter account, you can just search for Skip the Queue, and you retweet this podcast announcement with the words, "I want Andy's books." Then we'll enter you into a draw to potentially win them. Andy, thank you. It's been lovely to chat today. I've really, really enjoyed it. I'm sure I will see you out in events soon. And if I don't see you-Andy Povey: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: Before, have a wonderful Christmas.Andy Povey: And to you. Thank you very much, Kelly.Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned.Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.. 

Sometimes you meet a person and know they have a story that should be shared. And that's what happened with me and Dan MacQueen. I hesitated to put resiliency in the title because the word has been almost ruined due to the hyperbolic nature of our click-bait world. Organizations preach “resiliency,” but it's more of a “barrel forward” rather than a “be strong and bounce back” type of resiliency. Dan has real resilience. We THINK we work hard. We THINK we have problems. We THINK our challenges are insurmountable and frustrating. But sometimes, when we hear a story like Dan's, we recognize that we have things pretty good. Dan's got gems. From his commentary on accountability to “post-traumatic growth;” from constructive optimism to screaming, “Can't you see I'm learning here!?” – there is much to think about and translate to your world after hearing his story. This is more than just a change in mindset. I'd say it's a change in being. Hopefully, the lessons you can pull from this episode can make change without having to go through trauma like Dan's. More from Dan MacQueen Web www.macqueendan.com Instagram @macqueendan Twitter  @macqueedan LinkedIn Daniel MacQueen Your Title Goes Here Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings. Click here for an unedited transcript of the podcast. I'm Jim Frawley, and this is Bellwether. Welcome to Bellwether. Thank you for joining us this week. This week we have a guest and I like to bring on guests. And I think if you look at all the guests that I have, they're always extremely valuable guests because I vet them out for you. I know that they have something valuable to give to you, and this week is certainly no different. As we get into the holiday seasons, as we get into all of the, the craziness of the world and everyone's very stressed and, and we hear about all the things we're supposed to be at work, we hear about all of the things like resiliency and all these buzzwords. 1:00 Um, they bother me because I don't feel like they have the proper context and, um, they don't really hit the mark in the way that they should. And so this week's guest is going to teach us in a very real way what resiliency is. And I think it's gonna be a fantastic level of perspective and a lot to learn. I've had a, a couple quick conversations with him. I've learned a lot already. 1:24 I'm very happy to have here today, Dan McQueen. Dan, welcome to the Bellwether Hub Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. So I want, Dan's got a story, which is unlike stories you've heard before. So Dan, I want you to cue everything up. We're gonna start with the story, share your story so that we can then pepper you with questions afterward. But we need that context because it's, uh, it's pretty wild ride. 1:49 So I'm gonna turn it over to you. Please tell your story. Thanks Jim. So, hello everyone. My name's Dan McQueen. Uh, until recently I was living in London, Jolly old. I moved back in September, but the story kind of takes place in 2014. I was having these headaches that got worse over a few weeks. I went to Annie twice. For those of you don't know, Annie is accident emergency in the uk. 2:13 You know, thinking these headaches were kind of serious. I should get them checked out. And I was told, Oh, no, no, they seem like they're vertigo. We've gotten some tests, they don't seem that serious. We'll send you home. They gave me some pills and they sent me home for that. But they told me on the way out if my headaches continued to get them checked at an optometrist, she's like, Okay, sure, whatever. 2:34 So the headaches persisted. They were getting real bad and I decided, You know what, I'm gonna get my eyes checked at an optometrist. Midway through the exam, he stopped it, which is not a casual move. He gave me a sealed envelope, also not a casual move, and told me to go directly to Morfield Hospital, which I did. Sort of, I stopped at home first to grab a book, Jack Richard book, actually by Lee Child. 3:00 Uh, my phone charger, some food I want somebody to eat and some supplies. But I was determinated to the bottom of what was happening with us. So Morefield Hospital turned into tear. Cross turned into, I was having brain surgery the next day because I had a non-cancerous cyst in my brain that needed to be operated on. So zero to 60 in, in a matter of hours, I'm deciding that I'm having brain tomorrow. 3:28 You know, I, I call my manager, message your friends, like, Hey, I'm having this tomorrow. Guess I won't be in Monday. Messaged my mom and she just retired. So she was able to come to London. So on June 21st, 2014, I was on the operating table. My mom was in the air flying to London, Something went wrong and had a massive bleeding. The brain of brain hemorrhage. I think the cyst burst when they operated. 3:53 So my mom lands and finds them in critical condition. I was in a coma for four weeks. What was in and outta consciousness for months after that, when all was said and done, I was learning how to walk, talk, and smile again. So, needless to say, this kind of rocked my world and rocked my family's world. Um, I remember waking up in the hospital with my brother, mom and dad around me, and, and I go, I can't talk. 4:20 Cause I had a breathing tube removed and I couldn't talk. And I go, Gimme a pen and paper. I write down, I point at my brother, I go, You point down. And I write down the pen and paper. I go, Get me out of here to my brother because I didn't think I had any insurance for this stuff. And I was thinking, you know, he'll bust me outta here. Let's get outta here. 4:43 So needless to say he didn't, and thank goodness he didn't. Cause I was in the hospital for months after that. But that's how things all kicked off for me, Jim, which is, so I could take this in many different directions. Um, one is the perspective on, obviously you didn't plan for this and obviously this kind of jacked up whatever plans you had eight years ago, and that's one, right? We never know when something like this could potentially happen. 5:16 But two is the recovery, right? I mean, uh, a bleeding in the brain, learning to walk, learning to talk, learning to smile again, and being able to then build a business, get back with your family, build a life, do all of these things after. I wanna talk about both of those. Um, where do you want , where do you wanna start? Talk to me first about the recovery, because if you're sitting in the hospital for months, um, obviously this is a, so you're in a coma for a month in and outta consciousness for months. 5:50 Recovery has to be intense. Talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah, for sure. So, you know, I was, my leg frozen at an angle in the icu, the intensive carry unit. So my left leg was essentially jacked up and I couldn't use it. I couldn't go ahead and walk. I was in a wheelchair, right? So getting in from the bed to the wheelchair took 30 minutes, then 25, then 20 and 15, then then 10, then seven and six and eight, then 10, then five. 6:20 Everything was difficult. Everything was hard. Earned wins. And it took forever to end that bloody wheelchair. But you keep chipping away at this. And then I was transferable to the Wilson Rehab Center. I remember telling my dad when this happened, you know, I made a few thoughts in my head, like strategies to how I'm gonna recover. And the first one was speed. And that was one that I identified earlier is like, this is crucial. 6:41 I need to go fast if I'm gonna go far. I told my dad, you know, you have to apply for these rehab centers. I go, Hey dad, make this happen. Thinking like, I don't know, he's gonna like grease the wheels. I make something happen. Like, get me in this rehab center asap. Cause I want to get after this rehab as clearly as I can. Now, I don't think you did, but I got into Wilson Rehab Center, which is great. 7:05 Uh, but when I first got to Wilson Rehab Center, I couldn't walk right? I know to walk in. So they were doing this experimental, I dunno if it's experimental, but they were doing this, this rehab where they inject your, your muscle with Botox, like the stuff you put in your lips and face for women, it kinda relaxes the muscle and allow to stretch it back to normal. So they use this needle. 7:26 It was probably about, well it's probably about this big to be honest, but it felt like it was a sword going in the back of your leg. And then they would give you this, um, I word this splint every night. Splint was like a cast, and now it was horrifically painful and I never whinged about anything in the hospital, but the splint, I would be like, Oh, this, this fucking splint. Um, I hated the splint because it was so bloody painful. 7:48 And I always say it's painful. And everyone goes, Okay, sure dad. I'm like, No, no, no. You have no idea how painful this was. I'll share a story with you now. Jim kind of talks about how painful the splint was. So the first time I wore the splint all the way through night, no issue, no stress, this will be easy. I thought this will be easy. I'm looking forward to, this will be great. 8:07 I'm stretching in the day and the nighttime, and then rehab during the day. The second night after 20 minutes, it was painful. After 30, it was dreadful. After 40 was unbearable, we took the splint off. But we decided to do one hour a night with the splint, because I wanted to walk, I wanted to get back to walking. And how I get back to walking was stretching the leg. So the third night they wrapped splint up, They gimme the clicker. 8:32 We set the time on the phone for one hour. Now the, the ward of the Wilson's in L shape, so small on this side, long on this side, okay? And after 10 minutes, it's painful. After 20, it's dreadful. After 30, it's unbearable. And I'm thinking, we're doing this for an hour. This is insanity. What was I thinking? An hour. This is ridiculous. I start passing the clicker back and forth to distract myself from the pain. 8:58 Now I have double vision, which means I can't see anything. I'm feeling this and I miss one of my tosses and it crashes on the floor. Shit. I look over the edge of the bed, I see the clicker on the floor, the solution to my problems on the floor. The only problem is I'm splinted up. I can't move. And the floor is about three and a half feet on the ground. Help help by yell. 9:22 Wilson Rehab Centers, this and L Shape, they're on the far side of the ward. They can't hear me. No one's coming. We're 30 minutes on the board, which means they're gonna come back and maybe, well, maybe 30, but maybe 40, maybe 50. They might have gone to heating for all I know, Jim, they might have gone forever. I don't know where they're gone. The solution to my problem's right there. The only problem is it's three and a half feet on the ground on the Oleum. 9:42 If I drop down under the bed, I, I, I did some quick mass in my mind, not my strong suit. I'll be honest with you, Jim and I decided that it's about a 50 50 chance, me breaking my arm, a 50 50 shot. So, but if I break my arm at least can click the clicker, get the splint off, and then they can fix my arm. If I don't go for the clicker, I'm stuck here waiting for them to come back and hoping kinda like a metaphor for this whole thing. 10:08 You can't wait for someone to come save you. So I decide to risk it and grab the clicker. I crash down in the heap, I flip the coin and the arm holds. I hammer the clicker click, expect them to come burst into the room to come to my rescue. Nay, they kind of strolled in five minutes later. What are you doing on the floor, Dan? Well, let's not worry about that right now. 10:29 Let's get the leg off, bleed the split off my leg and get me sorted out there. But I learned some lessons from this. Uh, the first being don't pass the clicker back and forth with double vision. That's a bad idea. That's a good lesson, That's a great lesson. Uh, I really recommend that. The second being do the splint up at the hip, not at the ankle so I could undo it. Should this happen again? 10:50 Luckily it never did. But like things like that, that you're always kind of learning and iterating on this, just as in life, like you, you realize like, I failed at this process. Let's do it better next time, better than yesterday is one thing that I always try to exhume or like to try and portray and like demonstrate. And this was a prime example of let's, you know, let's not make the same mistake twice or at least not three times, maybe twice sometimes. 11:18 But that's to show you how painful display was. I was willing to risk breaking my arm, flipping a coin for the arm 50 50, shot a break of my arm to get the splint off my leg because it was so painful. But it was, it was very much a grueling rehab process. Like I moved from the splint to walking on the Zimmer frame, which is a four post thing that you kind of lurch forward on. 11:40 And every step you take, Jim, it reminds you you're alive. I'll tell you that much. I had a grim on my face. There's a great photo I've got. I can pass it to your team afterwards. I've got this, like this, this scowl on my face where I'm just walking and trotting on. I moved up to the Ferrari, which is, um, a four wheeled walker that you kind of walk fast on, you can kind of waddle quickly on this. 12:04 And I moved up to Naked Walks. Now Naked Walk was walking without support, raids, just notice like gamification here. Like I'm kind of having fun while I'm doing this. And I kind of progressed the walking space, right? Like it was quite a, quite a progression there. But that should give us something to chat about there. Jim, is there anything that catches your eye? Well, yeah, it's, so one, people forget about how long an hour is right. 12:30 An hour takes forever when you're in an excruciating pain. And you know, I get annoyed when I have to sit and watch the kid for 10 minutes and they're yelling. But this is, you know, this is kind of a different element. But what's what I take away from that is, um, what you said, you can't wait for someone else to help you, right? When you calculate, you have to know what you have to do there. 12:51 There's a little bit about knowing what it's gonna take to get what you need, but there is an efficacy and accountability aspect in terms of, you know, I'm ultimately responsible for my comfort or helping myself in this moment. I'm ultimately responsible for this and this is my current situation. And, and now it's up to me to do this. Um, talk to me about how you're almost going for, you know, it goes beyond that. 13:16 It goes beyond falling outta the bed. It goes into now up to the Ferrari kinda walker, and it goes into the naked walks. Ultimately, this is you and you had to gamify and come with it in your mind. Talk to me about your mind process a little bit. Yeah. So it's not your fault, but it's your responsibility. It's not your fault, but it's your responsibility. So it's like, well, the drop from the record was probably my fault to be honest, but either way it's my responsibility to fix the solution. 13:44 Like, I gotta kind of resolve this. And the mindset was so key because your mindset's everything, right? Like, I'll share another story with you, Jim, that I think you're kind of, you're, you're teaming me up for. Here is something I call constructive optimism. And this is learning to walk and tune Broadway. This kinda goes to showcase the mindset that I've adopted this process soon to walk in tune Broadway, from the naked walks to the Zimmer frame, to the, to the naked walks, to walk in tune Broadway. 14:11 Now tuning Broadway, for those of you that don't know is in South London who they call up and coming, which means it's on the verge of like sketchiness. What kind of like sexing up that like developers can call it up and coming, which means like, like 10 years time will be popping, but it's been up and coming for 10 years. So you never know. But needless to say, it's a bit of a difficult place to learn to walk again. 14:34 I'm walking with a cane, I'm walking with an eye patch. I'm a unit out there while I'm Bambi Ice, to be honest, I turn the corner on Broadway the first time and get bumped and by someone pretty hard, stagger back and okay, cut off by someone else or someone bleeding on the sidewalk beside me. I'm like, this is wild place to how to walk. People kept bumping into me, crashing past me. 14:55 This is the worst place to learn to walk in the world. Can't you see? I'm trying to learn here. Can you see, I'm trying to walk here like, gimme a freaking slack, man. I was so frustrated and dejected by this because I'm trying real hard here and you guys aren't giving me any slack. But I was like, and I was like, this was days that I was dejecting, like,Oh, I gotta walk Broadway. 15:15 This place sucks. This is the worst place I'm gonna walk in the world. And then one day my perspective shifted. This isn't the worst place to learn how to walk in the world. This is the best place. Because if I can walk here, I can walk anywhere, bumping me, crash past me, bring it on, I look forward to my walks, I look forward to that contact because that's teaching me in the best place to how to walk in the world. 15:37 Now, tune Broadway didn't change, right? It's still tune Broadway, but it went from the worst to the best in my head. And my mood reflected that I began looking forward to my walks bumping into me, crash fasting, bringing on this is all I want. That's like an example of like how my mindset adapted to this process. Like if I'm, if I think about it differently, the outcome will be different. And I knew that, like, I think how I came up with this mindset shift was how am I gonna think through this problem? 16:09 I'm frustrated by walking into Broadway. How can I make it less crap in my mind, this is the worst place started to walk in the world. I'm like, well, why is the worst? Cause it's the most difficult. People bump into you, crash past you. Like, well, couldn't that also be the best? Because that way you're stress testing isn't the best place to walk in the world. I was like, well, maybe it is. 16:28 And then I started bringing out that mindset. And when I did that, my whole world changed. Like I, I began looking forward to those walks and, and when you look forward to what you're doing, it makes all the bloody difference. And I think that's through this whole process, I began shifting my perspective on like, well is this the worst or is this the best? And like, don't get me wrong, I'm not in delusions of this is like a good experience, but it's the experience you're in right now. 16:54 And like I said, it's not your fault, but it's your responsibility. So like I have the responsibility of learning to walk in and I can choose it for it to be the worst, or I can choose for it be the best, but I choose that and I want to choose it the best because then I can adapt this and take it on board. Hope that answers your question, Jim. Well it does. 17:13 Yeah. And it's, you know, it goes back to the responsibility, right? It's not your fault that you're learning to walk there, but it's your responsibility to do it. And you, I would say your mindset is part of that responsibility. We often talk about responsibility and accountability in terms of getting things done, but the way that we approach getting things done is also our responsibility as well. And you said something nice in there and you know, nobody would cut you slack. 17:38 And I also love where you say, Hey, I'm learning here, right? So if you were to take this out of the context and put it in anybody else's context in terms of learning a new role or learning something new, it's a vulnerable moment. It's a difficult moment and say, Hey, I'm learning here. Nobody's gonna cut you slack regardless. But it's still your responsibility to learn. It's still your responsibility to change that kind of mindset. 17:59 Do you have any, I mean, that sounds good. We hear people about positive mindset all the time and you just have to change the way you think. Um, any tips on what, you know, what made it easier for you to do that? Right? I like to give people the tangibles. Is it, you know, knowing that it's gonna get easier or knowing that this is the hardest and you're gonna find cooler places to go? 18:21 Or how do you find the way to enjoy something that you absolutely didn't look forward to? Well, thank you Jim. That's a great question. I think like I'm, I wouldn't say I'm an like an academic at all, but like I do think about things quite a lot and quite in my own mind. And I thought about this like as I mentioned, like this is the worst. Well, why is it the worst? 18:44 Break it down for me. Why is this the worst place? And I mention those reasons, like, well, people bump into you, they crash past you, it's crowded, it's dirty, it's busy, it's hectic. I'm like, well, if you're learning to walk again, wouldn't you wanna learn to walk in the, in that kind of environment? Because that's stress testing you in this difficult situation. You wanna be fed, spoon fed this stuff, You wanna be stress testing this in the worst environment in the world. 19:06 So in fact, it's not the worst, it's the best. I really made a conscious effort of thinking through this process and I knew that like, look, there's been a number of peaks and valleys in this process, Jim. And, and I knew that like my mindset was gonna be so key for all this, the way I thought about it is so huge. Like, there's a great quote from epics that I use quite a lot a through line in my talk. 19:26 As a matter of fact, it's not what happens to you, but how you react to it in the matters. It's not what happens to you, but how you react with the matters. And with the brain hemorrhage, that's like a, a big blow. It's like, okay, but it's not a death blow. And how can you react? How can you learn from this? How can you like stress test yourself to like pick the stuff on board? 19:48 Um, I guess to answer your question, like how would you reframe this? Like when you're lying in the hospital bed for hour than end and you got lots of time to think and I just thought about how can I beat this? How can I gamify this and make it more fun to, to accomplish these goals and walk? And like you mentioned, the Ferrari, the naked walks, like, I'm having fun here. Um, which is a big part of this process. 20:09 Like how can I make this fun to do? And I kind of reveling, like, I think like my friend introduced me to this, this concept of posttraumatic growth. I don't mean to jump ahead here, but I'll mention this briefly. And that's like, you know, this posttraumatic stress, which is like when you are, let's say you're in Afghanistan or something, like a night like a bomb goes off and you're, you carry that with you for years and, and it haunts you for years. 20:38 Posttraumatic growth kind when something bad happens, but you kind of raise up to the challenge and beyond that, so like now every time something bad happens, I raise up to it. So for instance, this past summer I got let go from my job at Hootsuite, which I was at for nine years. I got nothing but love for sweet, don't get me wrong, but losing your job is never a good vibe. Right now the stages of grieving are like five stages. 21:04 I've managed to kind of condense this down to like feeling shitty acceptance. Went for a booie lunch that afternoon. I went to the Apple store, I got a new computer cuz the next day I was hammering the speaking gig. What a great opportunity is for me to get my speaking career, going to speak organizations and companies about my perspective and mindset, how you can use this to be better than yesterday. I gave myself a lunch to feel bad and down. 21:31 And then I was like, you know what? We're getting afters tomorrow. We're getting s today. Like I went to the Apple store that day and the stages agreed have been kind of been condensed to like feeling bad and acceptance is at the bottom. And I kind just fast forward to acceptance because you can wish something didn't happen, but at the end of the day, it doesn't move you forward. You can wish all you want, but wishings not gonna do anything. 21:53 Wishing the brain hemorrhage didn't happen is not gonna do anything. Wishing the setback didn't happen is not gonna do anything. Wishing the job loss isn't gonna happen, isn't gonna do anything. I could be wishing this for like a year and then at end of that year I'll still be well at square one when I could have been taking steps to progress myself if you accept it and move forward, like everything's, everything's on me. 22:12 Everything's my fault, or at least my responsibilities. I mentioned like, it's not, my father lost my job, but it's my responsibility to do something about it now and now I get to pursue my speaking career that afternoon. So it's like the mindset's so key for this because if you believe it in yourself and you believe it in your soul, like your body will follow. And I'm not saying this as like lip service of like, you should do this and you should have this positive mindset of great vibes. 22:42 Like no, it's not, it's not woo-hoo on you. It's like this is how I live my life. This is how I progressed and navigated these situations. And they weren't easy, but it was simple to kind of navigate it because once you made that mind up, it's like, oh no, I'm not going right here. I'm going right around the corner. It's right around the bend. You kinda understand the road, you can kind of see the map and showcase where you want to go. 23:08 That's a rant and a half there, Jim. But I hope that gives you some context what I'm thinking about. No, it does and I love posttraumatic growth. It's, um, and it almost goes hand in hand where it's for anything, right? Whether it's a new venture, whether it's a job you hate, whether it's going to a networking event, it's how do I make this fun? How can I actually enjoy myself today? Because we've got to judge a mindset going into these things of misery and difficulty. 23:31 And, but logically it's, you know, you are an individual that was before, now you are an individual that had a brain hemorrhage, so it doesn't change anything. Um, but I almost feel like, you know, post-traumatic growth is almost like tolerance. The more you meet it, the more you're able to handle and the more you do it, the more you're able to, It's part of growing and learning after it. Would you agree with something like that? 23:57 A hundred percent. And also it's important to know the hardest thing you've ever been through is the hardest thing you've ever been through. So when I do my talk and it's like, well, I'm not gonna have a brain hemorrhage, so like I don't need to know your talk because that's not it. It's like, well sure, like a job loss and a brain hemorrhage is not the same thing, but the mindset you use to adapt to a brain hemorrhage can be used on someone who loses a job or loses a loved one or gets a diagnosis. 24:21 The adversity and resilience you need to fostering yourself to navigate this is the same, same steps. Like to understand what it is and to get that acceptance piece. Because the faster you can get to acceptance, the faster you can progress. Acceptance doesn't mean it's fair, doesn't mean it's even, doesn't mean it is justified, but it means it is what it is. Don't worry about what you can't control. Control the controllables. It's something that I always say. 24:45 And if you worry about stuff you can't control, you're not gonna get anywhere. You can just spin your tires forever and ever and ever. I just punt that if I can't control it, I punt it. I give zero zero f's about it. Like, I'm not worried about stuff I can't control. Can I influence it? Yes. No. If no, zero zero f's with that, if yes, then I worry about this and I and I take on more would I can do, um, I've lost track of your question now, Jim would hopefully that offers some perspective. 25:11 No, it does. Yeah. And it's, you know, as, as we think about the responsibility you have, we've talked before this about, you know, feeling sorry for yourself, right? And I feel like that's a step in between of situation happens. And then you've got the acceptance in between. There's the feeling. Sorry. Do you eliminate that or how do you overcome that? I mean, it's, it's one thing to say, Oh, we'll just have fun so I won't feel sorry for myself, but people deal with, you know, traumatic events, which shouldn't be skipped over. 25:41 I mean, what happened to you was a traumatic event and yet you're not feeling sorry for yourself, right? You're, you're flipping this into an opportunity, so how do you, and that, that's difficult. I guess everybody does it differently, but talk about feeling sorry for yourself I think would be something very relevant and you'd almost get the agency to do that where people would say, Yeah, I get it. Talk to me about, you know, feeling sorry for yourself. 26:03 Do you ever, and and how do you change that mindset? Well, I'll give you like the example of the lowest I've ever been in my life, Jim, which is, so the setback happened, I got back to walk and got back to work, um, for two months and then I had a second setback that happened. I was found unconscious in my flap by my mom. The sh that's in my brain had blocked leading to hydrocephalus or water on the brain. 26:30 It resulted in an ambulance ride, another bad haircut and a new medical alert bracelet. So I had traumatic brain surgery because the shunt blocked. And I woke up in the hospital for the second time here in the beeping of the, the, the heart rate monitors. Not the respirator this time, but the heart rate monitors is what, what happened? What happened? Like, well, Dan, you had a second setback, you need emergency brain surgeon. 26:53 Like what do you mean? He's like, Well, you're back in the hospital. This happened two days ago. You're working on getting back to normal. Like, so this happened again. Yeah, it's very rare. It happens less than 10% of case. And like, okay, and na was I low like all my progress, I just got back to work. And you're telling me that's ripped away from you. Like,like overnight I was, oh, talk about a pity party, man. 27:22 I was woes me for a couple days, couple of days of straw. Like, well this isn't fair, this isn't fair at all. Like, it's not fair. You're right. And where's that thinking gonna get you? Like I could be woes me poopy pants the whole time or I could just, you know what, I know how to build back better. I know how to do this. I've done this once before, this time I can walk so I'm not in the same position I would before I can get back to work and progressively build back towards whatever I'm doing. 27:51 I already been through rehab, so I wasn't entitled to go through rehab again, which is a big knock. I use all my own at home through like phone conferences or like in person meets at my home flat. Like that was tremendously low. And I gave myself a few days to feel bad and low, but I knew that at the end of the day, like I said, it's not my fault, but it's my responsibility. 28:13 No one, no one's coming to save you. Like if you want to get outta this hole, you're gonna have to chop wood carry water is what I say, which means like, get to work, like progressively get to work, chop wood, carry water, put the work in and get your perspective right to like build back up. Like it's not, And that was like, that was pretty low, Jim, I'm not gonna lie to you. 28:36 That was like, everyone's against me. Why is this, why is this happened to me? This isn't fair. And that's wrong, it's not fair, but at the end of the day, it's not gonna get you anywhere. I can say it's not fair to the home. Right. Bless you. Doesn't change anything. How about this, talk to me about, I didn't know you before this, obviously. Yeah. Um, how has this entire experience, cha, I mean, we know it changed you, okay, Yes, obviously, but how does it change your belief system? 29:12 Has it solidified one in, in your mind? Do you feel like you have a new perspective on responsibility? I'm sure you do, but you know, would you say that you're capable almost of more now than you were before based on mindset? Talk to me a little bit about your belief system and, and what's changed over the last eight years now? Thanks Jim. That's a good question. I think before this happened, I was really happy to go lucky guy. 29:38 I still am, but everything came easy to me, or at least I made it seem like it did. I kind of figured out a way to work things like with, with life, with work with girls. Like everything just kind of came easy to me. And then this brain hammer happenss and everything's stripped away and nothing's easy. You know, getting into a wheelchair takes 30 minutes and 25, then 20, then 15. Like, it's like every ounce of me is going into this. 30:06 And like, I really made effort not to show that I was trying before this happened. And after it happened, I want show that I'm trying because I am trying, I'm trying my damage to make this happen. My perspective's changed dramatically, Jim, it's like everything on me now. I, I've read this book, um, Extreme Ownership by Jaco Will, I'm not sure if you've read that one. Essentially it goes everything on me. Everything's my responsibility. 30:30 Everything's my fault. Everything's in my power to control and improve. And I'm kind of a self-help junkie. I, I love improving myself and, and finding little hacks to make things better and easier. So I've got a great morning routine. So I'll, I'll wake up early, go for exercise workout, go for a meditation, go for cold shower, like have these habits that I put in place to kind of make myself be better than yesterday. 31:00 So my perspective's changed tremendously, Jim, and it's been because of this experience, because I've had to navigate this, I've had to navigate this. If I didn't, I would wouldn't be here. I believe that I'm, I am where I am today because of the habits I put in place and I am where I am today because of the mindset I put in place to allow me those habits. Talk to me about your hacks. 31:21 Um, you talked a little bit about constructive optimism I think is probably a hack. You've got your morning routine and the habits, which is setting yourself up for success. Do you have any favorite hacks that you could share with people that you'd wanna, you know, is one of those your best or, or what would you wanna, what would you wanna share on that? I got one that I'll share with you, Jim, and one that I mentioned earlier, I think, uh, is called ice icebreakers, icebreakers. 31:48 So when you're walking with double vision and you're like, fatigue is a big thing with me and I'm seeing two, like I see two of you right now, right? So my brain's processing two and the mind the wheels are spinning. It's a lot of bandwidth and energy to like do this. Any chance I can say bandwidth, I do that because it allows me to be better for longer. I say that like I'm walking around at 75% battery and I wake up every minute. 32:14 I wake up is like 74, 73, 72. When I get below 50, I'm a less pleasant. Below 30, I'm a bit of a prick. I need to meditate to recharge and refresh that. But icebreaker is one thing that I use to like walking in a busy city. So you're from New York. I used to live in London. So the circuses in London are just out of bloody circus. Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Circus, Chaos. It's madness. 32:41 I founded this hack called an icebreaker. So what you wanna do is find the fellow pedestrian walk in your direction and walk behind them in their slip stream. And they're wake in their, in their ice break wake. If you would let them face the oncoming traffic and you walk behind them and that saves bandwidth because you're not dealing with the frontal abrasive walking through, you're getting the wake of their walking like an icebreaker would. 33:03 So like you just followed behind the icebreaker and this seems like a stupid hack and it is stupid, but like, it, it saves little bits of bandwidth and allows me to be better for longer. Because if I don't do this, if I'm the guy breaking the ice, it just drains your battery more. And that battery's so important to me now that I wanna protect it at all costs. And it's a fun way of me to identify these when I'm walking through the surfaces in London, like a, um, a stroller or a pram, a great icebreaker because it takes a lot of space, like a couple walking root iceberg. 33:36 Think about space, you walk behind them and let them take the frontal impact. I've also got another one, Jim, that I'll share with you is, um, timer on the phone. So, or alarm on the phone. Let's say if you remember something you wanted to do, you set the alarm on your phone, let's say, I don't know, it's 10 30 my time in Vancouver. So I set it for like three o'clock and writing on my phone saying, emailed Jim speaking assets. 34:01 That's alarm three 30. And then I, when the alarm goes off at three 30, I check my phone to know that, oh, I gotta email Jim the speaking assets and I would've forgotten that otherwise, or timer on my phone if I'm, you know, scrolling Instagram or, or uh, YouTube at nighttime before bed. I'll send my time for 10 minutes for 15 minutes when the timer goes off time to bed. Like I use the phone to help me be better and to remind me to keep on track. 34:31 So it's a way that I've kind of hacked my life because I need those hacks now because things aren't as easy as they used to be for me. A lot of work to keep this on the, on the tracks, right? And if I don't do those things, things slip and I don't wanna be slip. I'm trying to, trying to keep myself looking a certain way, presented a certain way, being a certain way. 34:52 Yeah, and it sounds, I mean if you were to take that metaphorically, it's almost your icebreaker could be your social network, your, um, use of technology in a way to keep you focused rather than distract your focus. Um, and it's just being intentional with all of the actions because right, we, everyone's got a drain battery. Um, and it's important to keep that focus and, and, and keep it at its max. What's, um, so you said before speaking assets. 35:19 Talk to me a little bit about what's next for you, How anything anyone could do to support you. I know you're, you're big on the speaking circuit now. Talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah, thanks Jim. Uh, I'm going into speaking full bo like I'm, I'm trying to make a difference and share my perspective and change your team's perspective. Like I've got like a whole treasure tro full of assets and hacks and mindsets and perspective that I can impart on your team to help 'em shift their perspective and, and shift how they view things. 35:52 I've identified a few problems that I can really help address regards to retention, helping your team understand, you know, what they've got, their perspective where they're at and help save you retention. Also culture. Uh, I really think I can impart someone into culture and understand what they've got and just how do they view things differently. That perspective of like the worst to the best help you impart that. In the last one, I think it really pairs the sales training. 36:18 Uh, we've spent a lot of money on sales training these days. See these big booms after the sales training, but after, after a few months, it reverts back to medium and it dips down. What's missing is the perspective and the mindset. You wire the house properly. Let me show you how to turn on the switch. If I can give your team the tools, the assets, the perspective needed to be better than yesterday, maybe that stays higher, longer, above the median. 36:42 But my passion speaking, Jim and I really wanna share the lessons learned because it would be a shame to leave these lessons learned on the sidelines of life. I paid for these in blood, sweat, and tears and I've fallen down seven times to get up eight and I'm busting my ass to make this happen. And I've, I've paid for these price, I've paid steep price for these and I paid them by touching the stove Nova Hot. 37:05 And sometimes I forget that it's hot and I touched it. Again. Let me tell your team that, uh, I want to, you know, I'm really driven to do this because I wanna make a difference and I wanna make, impart the lessons I've learned with your team. I think that's something I'd love for your audience, you know, feel, please feel free to reach out to me as a speaker. I've done a lot of online and in person speaking opportunities. 37:32 Uh, as I mentioned, the job loss this summer was a knock but not a death blow and a good opportunity for me to get the speaking going on, on as a full-time gig now. So that's the best way I can imagine Reju and that's, you know, best done over LinkedIn or websites can be uphold the next week. And that's queen dan.com. Perfect. Very good. So McQueen dan.com, find 'em on LinkedIn. We, we usually wrap these up, Dan, with book recommendations. 38:02 Uh, I got two for you man, and I got two questions for you afterwards, if you don't mind. Of course, you can ask away. I know you told me that before we started recording and I'm very nervous about what your questions are going to be. So I had two books for you. One fiction, one non-fiction. The first is a nonfiction. You heard of this one No Spark. So it's like a Myers Briggs test, but it's like a more modified version. 38:25 Help you identify what lights you up in work. So for instance, my work sparko type is the sage or the advisors, the my type and the sage is my shadow. And the essentialist is my anti type, which means like I get drained by doing like admins, but I get, I get really fired up by offering advice or, or listening and offering some perspective on both elements of that. So that's my nonfiction, which is good that you're getting into speaking now, by the way. 38:55 Very good. Exactly. Yep, exactly. It's a good fit, right? Yep. And my fiction is actually a book my dad wrote. Oh, nice. Called Hero Haters. This came out recently. It's a, it's a, it's a thrill book based on, um, a gripping tale of uh, an author who gets, you know, part of the hero medals. They start disappearing. There's a big mystery around, this is his first book. He was a journalist for his whole career and his first publish book. 39:27 He is getting a lot of good reviews on this. You can buy this on Amazon or Good Reads or Indigo in Canada, but it's called Hero Haters. And I really recommend this. I haven't finished it myself. I'm working my way through it, but it's a great book. I will read it. That's perfect. Uh, Jim, can I ask you a few questions? Do it. You ready for this? You've been ready. Um, so question one, if you could go back in time, you go back in time and ask your younger self or tell your younger self some hacks or truths about podcasting before you started this, what would they be? 40:07 From what you know now, um, truths about podcasting you've learned about podcasting With what I've learned about one, number one is just get started because nobody's gonna listen to it at the beginning. So you can always make your practice ones that if you don't like it, you can delete it. But as long as you take the effort to put it in and you get the practice down, eventually you'll put it out. 40:33 That's one too. When you do put it out and people do listen to it, nobody's gonna give you the negative feedback you thought you were gonna get. Right. And people are incredibly supportive and that's great. Um, and so I guess if I were to wrap that up is do it. Take that risk and don't worry what other people are doing because it's not a race. Build your own. That would be my advice. 40:57 That's a good question. See a pretty easy question. Pretty easy question. Second one. Yeah. Um, you've spoken to a wide variety of guests around a wide variety of subject matters. What are some lessons you've learned yourself from these interviews that you like hold dear to your heart and you kind of take on board with your, in your everyday life? Um, everyone on the planet has something interesting to share and it's, um,you know, if you look at my guests, the majority of my guests, uh, are normal people in extraordinary circumstances or with really good just things that we don't really focus on, right? 41:45 All the way back to my first episode on, uh, a guy who does lean, he's a good friend of mine in a bank, how he implemented lean processes into his house to keep the family organized. I thought it was super awesome. Um, friends who are public speaking coaches giving their advice, people like you who have had incredible things happen to them and how they're resilient in a real resiliency way and have come back and could share their wisdom. 42:09 Um, everybody on the planet has something excellent to share would be my my one thing to say to that. Um, and that's probably what I take away from all my guests. Jim, that's fantastic. I hope I answered them okay. No, those was a very good question. Thank you. Very good answers. Thank you. I think they're really good to know because you've had the experience of speaking with so many people. I was really curious to see what Latin with you and what was a big takeaway. 42:34 That's good to know. Everyone's got something interested to say. I like their laugh. They do. Yeah. It's, you know, they just don't know to say it. Um, or they don't necessarily have the opportunity. But Dan, you had the opportunity today and I appreciate it. This is, um, this is, you know, it's an incredible story and it's an amazing lesson. And as things go so quickly, if anything it'll make someone hear this reevaluate what's important, reevaluate their own particular situation, get some good perspective on, you know, the difficulties that, that we could be facing and everything else. 43:10 If I made Jim, Yeah, life happens for you, not to you. Mm-hmm.. And I believe that with all my heart. Like, I get up every day and I'm like, I get to do this. And you know, stuff can happen to you that kind of sets you back and it's like, you know what, You get to do this, you get to navigate through this difficult time. And now I feel not invincible cause that's the wrong word, but like, what are you gonna come at me with, man? 43:38 Like, what, what is the world gonna throw me that's gonna be so shocking and, and perplexing for me not to navigate? It's like, well, I'm losing my job this summer. Like, well that was a, that was a blow for sure. That's a heart blow. But like, compared to what I've been through, that's like a very minor blip on my radar. And like when you start addressing this difficult stuff, you start dealing able to realize that you can navigate this in a better way. 44:02 One hack, one more hack I wanna share with your team here. Jim, is cold showering? Yes. Sounds off putting. Sounds gross. I know I was a bit of an apprehensive guy myself back in the day. Now I shower and I had cold every day for two to three minutes and I had hyperventilate and I forced myself to go into a stressful state. And I get outta that shower and you're still warm from the shower, but you get little, little sleeve of cold on and you just feel invigorated and, and take on the day. 44:34 But you're making yourself go into that hardship every day on purpose. That one you face in real life. You can navigate this in a much more pragmatic and thoughtful way. I'm telling you this, try the cold shower, Jim, have you tried this cold shower before? I I do a cold shower every morning. Absolutely. You start I started it during the pandemic, I start warm and then at the end I turn it to cold.

A people's history of Piccadilly: London's bustling meeting place for over a century. There's nowhere quite like Piccadilly Circus. From the moment they emerge, blinking from the underground station, visitors to Piccadilly Circus face a sensory onslaught. Its streets and alleyways merge into an intoxicating thoroughfare, with the power to propel an individual onwards to adventure, romance, or something more sinister. Ever since its iconic Eros statue appeared in 1893, the junction has been a vibrant meeting place, attracting visitors and pleasure-seekers from all walks of life: political plans and theatrical careers were hatched at its restaurant and café tables, lovers met below the statue of Eros, and to this day tourists pour out of its historic Tube to experience the bright lights of London's nightlife. Piccadilly explores how the area has been shaped by social and historical events—from female suffrage to world wars to technological advancements—and by its colourful cast of characters—from flower girls, shop assistants and sex workers, to film stars, Bright Young Things and conmen (and women). For many, the Circus has represented both a home from home and a brave new world, as campaigners, revellers, opportunists and romantics have all been drawn to Piccadilly's bright lights. This is the story of why Piccadilly Circus continues to mean so much to so many.

Today's missive comes to you from the Galapagos Islands out in the eastern Pacific, where two stories of noble energy initiatives reflect the broader realities of energy policy around the world. We tell these stories with a specific question in mind: how much gas, so to speak, is left in the tank of this energy bull market?The Galapagos population is only around 30,000, but, as a fully functioning society, the same dynamics observed in this small ecosystem occur elsewhere, even if less visibly, so it serves as a useful case study.So we come to the first of our two stories.Not so green transport in GalapagosIn order to limit traffic, protect the environment in this most ecologically delicate of places and protect the taxi industry, the local government made it extremely difficult to get a vehicle licence. All sorts of problematic bureaucratic hurdles had to be jumped, and most people ended up using bikes or public transport.But then in 2016 the powers that be, with a brighter, greener future in mind, decided that anyone could get a licence to own a vehicle, no permit required - as long as it was an electric vehicle. There was just one condition. The buyer had to have a family. Given that most people on the islands have relations, that was a pretty easy condition to meet, even for the single folk. There was a great deal of PR and fanfare about this new initiative: clean, green, sustainable - all that stuff - and a blind eye was turned to the increase in traffic, or of roadkill to the many tame birds on the streets of the island (this is a major problem).At this point it's worth reminding ourselves that there are, around the world, three main areas of energy consumption - transportation, heating and electricity. While cleaner forms of energy, such as nuclear or wind, might be increasing as sources of electricity, 84% of global energy still derives from the burning of fossil fuels, as the graphic below from Our World In data shows.Even electricity, despite its green credentials, still relies on fossil fuels. The burning of the fossil fuel may be out of sight and, therefore, out of mind, but over 60% of global electricity still derives from it, as our second graphic shows. Wind and solar between them account for barely 10%.Sign up to The Flying Frisby.As we are all now discovering to our cost, despite many years of considerable investment, some might say over-investment, in green energy, there have, simultaneously, been many years of underinvestment in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, nuclear power (the use of which in electricity has, on a relative basis, been declining since the 1990s) and public grids. Hence the current energy shortages especially in Europe. The Galapagos Islands followed the international trends in this regard - which is one reason this story makes for such an interesting case study.Here on the Galapagos Islands, the majority of electricity, despite what you may read, is produced by burning diesel. And at this point we deviate to story number two.The Galapagos wind turbines.There were, once upon a time, some wind turbines built by a consortium of overseas energy corporations, looking to advertise their green credentials to the world. Said corporations conducted a one-year study of wind on the island and concluded that next to the airport (where they would also conveniently be seen by everyone arriving at and leaving the islands) was the best place to erect the turbines. The turbines were duly installed, the publicity was had - here is the world's first airport that runs 100% on wind and solar, all that stuff - and the energy companies retired back to their nation states.It turned out that year of the study had been an outlier for winds, and they hadn't built the turbines in anything like the windiest spot. Then the wind turbines stopped working, but nobody on the islands knew how to fix them. Nor was it clear whose responsibility they were. Ever since, the turbines have sat there, stuck - even when the wind is blowing up a storm. Ask a local for the story, and you'll get a wry shake of the head and a smile at the stupidity of it all. Lord knows how much fossil fuel was burnt mining the necessary materials, manufacturing the turbines, transporting them to the islands and erecting them, only for them not to work, but that is, despite the good intention, what has happened. There they remain, motionless, like statues from a fallen empire. But how now to get rid of them?The episode is neither clean, green nor sustainable.Tell the world about this amazing articleSo back to story number one and the attempt to make the islands greener with electric vehicles (EVs). With the easing of regulation in 2016, the locals who had previously wanted a vehicle but couldn't get one (a lot) piled in and bought electric vehicles, much to the benefit of the EV manufacturers.But as diesel is the major source of electricity on the islands, so more diesel than ever was now burnt. Again, neither clean nor green. In fact so much diesel got burnt, and so much electricity was consumed, that the shortcomings of the grid and the lack of investment therein were exposed. Power outages soon followed. Multiple and regular. The power outages got so bad that just three years after the EV fanfare, in 2019 a moratorium on electric vehicles was discreetly declared - no fanfare this time - and the islands went back to their old ways.I can't help thinking that the West is travelling a similar path. As consumers,, encouraged by the green credentials, adopt more electric vehicles, has there been a concomitant investment in power grids to meet the new demand? In many - dare I say most? - countries there hasn't. What proportion of this rising new electricity demand will entail more burning of fossil fuel, coal especially? Will there be power outages as a result?It's stupid to expect us to consume less energy. As civilisations progress, they consume more energy. They also get better at consuming energy. A civilisation that consumes less energy is a civilisation in recession and decline. We should not be advocating the consumption of less energy, but advocating the better and more efficient consumption of energy, and that means we have to invest in the exploration and production of fossil fuels. How else is the developing world to pull out of poverty without the benefits of fossil fuels? The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecast in 2020 in its World Energy Outlook that growth in global oil demand will only end in 10 years and that “global natural gas demand growth might stop around 2040”. Those two landmark years - 2030 and 2040 - are not when we stop using oil and gas, just when the demand for them stops increasing. (And they are probably optimistic forecasts).That means that, to meet demand, not only do we have to maintain oil and gas production at current levels, we have to increase them - or prices will go a lot higher. That means greater investment in coal, oil and gas is required. And that means this bull market is far from over.The whole narrative needs to change, as it is slowly starting to do.There have been at least ten years of underinvestment in coal, oil and gas - partly because of the excesses of the last secular bull market and partly because of the powerful anti-fossil fuel story. That now needs to be corrected.There is also now a strong case for a reversion to traditional auto manufacturers, as opposed to the likes of Tesla. But that's a subject for another day.The Flying Frisby is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Interested in buying gold? Check out the Pure Gold Company.If you are in or around London on November 24, wearing my comedy hat, I'm doing a gig with the Gilets Jaunes - that's my band - at Crazy Coqs in Piccadilly Circus underneath Brasserie Zedel. It's a fantastic venue for this kind of thing. It's going to be a great night. Please come on down.Thank you for reading The Flying Frisby. This post is public so feel free to share it.This article first appeared at Moneyweek. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Matt & Eric take a riotous rampage around Piccadilly Circus with AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON! Plus, A true Witcher Switcher (as Geralt is recast), Friday the 13th gets a prequel series (from Bryan Fuller), and more!

The highest form of charity, argued the 12th-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides, is when the help given enables the receiver to become self- sufficient.But our systems of state charity - aka welfare - have too frequently had the opposite effect: they have actually created dependency. It is time to re-think the way we help people.I suggest something that may be heinous to some, but it's this: welfare would be more effective, more varied, more widespread and affordable if there were no state involvement.People instinctively think that without a welfare state, the poor and needy would not be looked after. At such an unacceptable prospect, people then become fervent in their defence of state welfare systems. You can see the passion people feel about this erupting all over the Twitter and the blogosphere.Before we start, I want you to get your head around one thought - suggesting that the welfare system is not working and that we should do away with it is not the same as suggesting the poor and needy should not be looked after. Not at all - in fact, quite the opposite.The provision of care is a delicate, complicated and unpredictable process. Sometimes money might help the recipient towards self-sufficiency, but sometimes not. Giving money might lead to a temporary lessening of suffering, but often it can lead to greater dependency and less self-reliance. Sometimes something local is required, sometimes something practical, sometimes something psychological or emotional, sometimes something specific to the individual's circumstances - sometimes what's needed is a proverbial kick up the backside. Different circumstances require different forms of care.The dignity of the recipient also needs to be considered. It can be demeaning to receive charity. On occasion anonymity might be required - but on other occasions it might not be.How on earth can anyone hope to design a top-down, one-size-fits-all, system of state welfare that can meet all these varying needs consistently over time?Then there is the matter of the giver. He or she must also be considered.Compassion, care and the giving of charity and care are essential human functions - they are a part of human nature. People need to give as much as they need to receive. You just need to see the pleasure children get from giving as evidence of this. Even perhaps the most ruthless, murderous drug-trafficker that ever drew breath, Pablo Escobar, was a prolific giver. He built houses, churches and schools in his native city of Medellin on a scale unmatched by the Colombian government.In the charitable process, the giver has needs too. Sometimes the giver wants to be anonymous - sometimes they want recognition. Sometimes he or she likes to be involved with the recipient in some way, sometimes not.But, in the process of state care, the giver's needs are not even considered. Taxes are taken and that is it. We are given no real say in how the money we have earned is spent, bar a vote of dubious effect every five years. Often the giver is morally opposed to what his taxes are being spent on!The forced giving that is taxation actually destroys the altruistic satisfaction that people get from giving voluntarily. To help others and to share with them is part of humanity. But, in a world in which government is responsible for the care of the poor and needy, that compassion is removed from life. As a result, the state now has a near monopoly on compassion!if you find this interesting, please share .In fact it is even more bizarrely specific than that: the pro-large-welfare-state left wing has the monopoly on compassion. Anyone who doesn't agree with the concept of a large, generous welfare state is deemed heartless and selfish.While you have to pay the government through tax to provide welfare (or heathcare or education) your ability to provide any of these things for yourself or your family is reduced, because you have less money. After taxes are taken from you, you often you can't then afford to pay for your children's school, your doctor, your hospital, your home, or your charity to others - so you find yourself depending on the state help in some way. And so more and more people, in some way or other, are caught in the ever-growing dependency net.What's more, if the state is providing care to the needy, you are then absolved of the responsibility to do so.Meanwhile, government welfare, as well as being inflexible, is expensive . The large organizations, such as the NHS or the DWP, through which care is administered can be inefficient and wasteful. Worse yet, they are be prone to corruption and rent-seeking (people gaming the system in some way).If you look at food, clothing or technology - essential human needs that, largely, are not supplied by the state - we have, over the last thirty of forty years, seen dramatic falls in price and dramatic improvement in quality. Competition has driven costs lower. Yet welfare has not experienced the same improvements. Why not? Because, thanks to the state's near monopoly, there is no competition.The idea of competition in welfare is offensive to many. But we need it if we are to improve quality and lower costs.The greatest expense in our lives is not, as many believe, your house or your children's education, it is in fact government. But imagine a world with minimal state. Suddenly that expense is removed. Without the cost of the state, we have more capital to spend and invest. People are empowered. Our ability to help others is increased.In a world with no state, what's more, suddenly our responsibility to help others is also increased. If the state is not helping people, you must. Simultaneously, thanks to competition, the help we want to offer is cheaper and better in quality - organizations are competing with each other to offer better help at a lower price.The result will be more affordable welfare, more widespread and diverse welfare, more flexible welfare that can provide for specific needs, more effective welfare, more onus to provide welfare - ultimately, better welfare.Without a welfare state the poor and needy won't be looked after, you say? I suggest they will be - to a much higher standard than they are today.The Flying Frisby is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.If you are in or around London on November 24, wearing my comedy hat, I'm doing a gig with the Gilets Jaunes - that's my band - at Crazy Coqs in Piccadilly Circus underneath Brasserie Zedel. It's a fantastic venue for this kind of thing. It's going to be a great night. Please come on down.Thank you for reading The Flying Frisby. This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Money evolves constantly. Every day there is some tiny new fintech development, but it's only when you take a step back and look at the ten-, twenty- or thirty-year  picture that you realise just how much things have changed. What is money today is a far cry from what was money when I was a child. Digital technology barely existed back then. We used cash and these things called cheques. You've probably heard of them.It's not just what we use as money that evolves. How money is created - that changes too. And just this decade there has been a major evolution. That's what I am going to talk about today.Thank you for reading The Flying Frisby. This post is public so feel free to share it.The creation of money and debtOnce upon a time you would create money by mining gold and silver. But debt-based money systems have also existed since the dawn of civilization, when clay tokens representing valuable items such as barley or sheep would be baked inside clay balls. When the debt was settled the clay balls would be smashed open.Humans, being the ingenious folk they are, especially when it comes to money, soon found that it was quicker to simply inscribe the clay with pictures of said items and so did the first systems of writing develop - hieroglyphics. Coins came along, and then the printing press, both remarkably long-lived technologies, but behind it all there was always metal.Western Europe abandoned gold in 1914 so it could print the money to pay for the First World War, and the United States did the same in 1971 amidst spiralling welfare costs and the conflict in Vietnam. Both years were landmarks in the evolution of money creation.This became the fiat era, when money became debt. Some physical cash was printed or minted, but money for the most part was created when loans were made. You borrow a thousand pounds to buy a house, the bank created that thousand pounds using the house as collateral and suddenly there was a thousand pounds in the housing market that wasn't previously there. That's why houses kept on rising in value - the constant introduction of newly created money through mortgages. Introduce debt into a market and prices rise. If houses were cash based, they'd be a lot cheaper. Something similar happened in the bond markets and the financial markets with the use of leverage. Leverage is just a fancy term for debt.There were occasional moments of credit tightening, but the broader trend, especially as economists and governments became obsessed with what they call growth, was for ever expanding credit.Human beings, being the greedy folk they are, especially when it comes to money, took the whole thing too far, 2008 came along and the bubble went pop.Then a whole way new to create money was invented: Quantitative Easing. Central Banks now started creating money, and they bailed out the financial system with it. Then they started using the money to buy government bonds - so they effectively printed money to pay for government spending. They also bought other financial assets. And so lots of newly created money went into the financial system and from there to the expensive houses in which many of those who work in finance live, and we got another decade or more of rising prices.But because all this newly created money went into financial assets and housing, it didn't show up on the inflation numbers. Central bank inflation measures don't include houses or financial assets. So they said there was no inflation. Then Covid came along. Central banks could now print money and it doesn't create inflation, they thought. They forgot about the sleight of hand that was their inflation measures. So they printed more money and the government handed it out to people. That money made its way into the real economy and now we have inflation. And they are all scratching their heads and blaming Vladimir Putin.But the nature of money creation has changed. Now money is not just debt. Governments are creating it to fund their activities. And when central bank digital currencies come along, they are going to do that even more. As a result governments, are going to play far greater role in where capital gets allocated. We turn to the wise old owl that is financial historian Russell Napier. “By issuing state guarantees on bank credit during the Covid crisis, governments have effectively taken over the levers to control the creation of money”. They said it was temporary, but, to quote the great Milton Friedman, “nothing is so permanent as a temporary government programme”.We now have the War in Ukraine and with it spiralling energy costs - another emergency. How to deal with it? Keep with the programme. Lend money and guarantee loans. Russell Napier again: “By telling banks how and where to grant guaranteed loans, governments can direct investment where they want it to, be it energy, projects aimed at reducing inequality, or general investments to combat climate change. By guiding the growth of credit and therefore the growth of money, they can control the nominal growth of the economy.”It's a huge win for the unelected technocrat. Nobody designed this, nobody planned it, they have just discovered they can do it. And who was at the heart of it all in the UK? Our new Prime Minister. Perhaps, among other things, it means that the age of the all-powerful central bank is coming to an end.“This is a shift of power that cannot be underestimated,” says Napier. “Our whole economic system of the past 40 years was built on the assumption that the growth of credit and therefore broad money in the economy was controlled through the level of interest rates – and that central banks controlled interest rates. But now, when governments take control of private credit creation through the banking system by guaranteeing loans, central banks are pushed out of their role. We are moving from a mechanism where bank credit is controlled by interest rates to a quantitative mechanism that is politicised. This is the politicisation of credit.”Inflation is often accompanied by high unemployment. It was in the 1970s. But we are in an era of low unemployment. Many are struggling to get the staff (at the price they are prepared to pay) - this isn't a Brexit thing. It's happening across Europe and the US.Many government spending programmes will be popular. They'll create a lot more employment. We'll probably get a load more “growth”, which means higher levels of inflation will be more acceptable (and long-lasting).Government is about to get a whole lot more involved in the economy - and in our lives. It ain't getting smaller.How to navigate it all?We turn to our man Russell once more. “First of all: avoid government bonds. Investors in government debt are the ones who will be robbed slowly. Within equities, there are sectors that will do very well. The great problems we have – energy, climate change, defence, inequality, our dependence on production from China – will all be solved by massive investment. This capex boom could last for a long time. Companies that are geared to this renaissance of capital spending will do well. Gold will do well once people realise that inflation won't come down to pre-2020 levels but will settle between 4 and 6%.”Gold is in a downtrend. But we like it. It's even more permanent than a temporary government programme. But the nature of money creation has evolved once more.The Flying Frisby is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Interested in buying gold? Check out the Pure Gold Company.If you are in or around London on November 24, wearing my comedy hat, I'm doing a gig with the Gilets Jaunes - that's my band - at Crazy Coqs in Piccadilly Circus underneath Brasserie Zedel. It's a fantastic venue for this kind of thing. It's going to be a great night. Please come on down.This article first appeared at Moneyweek. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Shirin Neshat is the world's foremost Iranian-born artist. Best known for her black and white portraits of veiled women, often with hands and faces overlain with intricate Farsi calligraphy, she works primarily as a photographer and filmmaker. A winner of one of the biggest international arts prizes, the Praemium Imperiale, she has shown art in galleries all round the world - except in Iran, as she has lived in exile in America since 1996. As human rights protests continued in Iran, a huge artwork by Shirin, called Women Life Freedom, was shown on billboards at London's Piccadilly Circus where a rally was staged in support of Iranian protesters. Shirin Neshat tells John Wilson about her upbringing in an artistic, liberal family who lived amidst the conservative and religious Iranian city of Qazvin. She recalls how she was studying art at the University of California, Berkeley, when the Islamic Revolution took place in 1979. With new restrictions imposed on women, including the mandatory veil, she decided to remain in America. Returning to Iran for the first time in 1990, she was shocked by the changes and began to make artworks in response, primarily exploring the theme of power and oppression in two series of works entitled Unveiling and Women Of Allah. Shirin also reveals the huge influence on her work of the Iranian poet and filmmaker Forugh Farrokhzad, who was killed in a car accident in 1967 aged just 32. Producer: Edwina Pitman Extracts from The Wind Will Carry Us by Forugh Farrokhzad, read by Shahrbanou Nilou

On the 16th of September, 2022, Jina Amini, a young Kurdish woman, was tortured to death in Iran by the so-called ‘morality police' for not wearing her hijab in accordance with their theocratic laws. Her murder has sparked protests in East Kurdistan (North West Iran) and throughout Iran, with large numbers of people marching on the streets and rising up to demand justice against the clerical system, and women demanding freedom and democracy.The slogan, Jin, Jiyan, Azadî (Woman, Life, Freedom) has become a popular chant amongst protesters across Iran and the world. It has gained international recognition and has been recited within the European Parliament, displayed in Piccadilly Circus in London and has appeared on Balenciaga's Instagram - without credit to its radical roots and history of active struggle. But what exactly is the meaning of the slogan? Where did it come from? And why is it important to recognise its revolutionary Kurdish roots? Joining us in this episode is Dilar Dirik. Dilar is an activist, political sociologist and writer. She is currently researching and teaching at the Refugee Studies Centre at the university of Oxford, and is the author of her new book “The Kurdish Women's Movement: History, Theory, Practise”.Follow us on Instagram and Twitter. Subscribe to our mailing list!

The boys are back with their 30th episode  to discuss the finale of Series 2. Andy finds fame by association with Jonathan Ross and is bolstered to give Darren an ultimatum. Darren is trying his best but its like bloody Piccadilly Circus in here!!

Episode 132: Convert to Islam: https://untoislam.com Podcast: https://untoislam.com/podcast About Us: https://untoislam.com/about-us Contact Us: https://untoislam.com/contact-us Live QA Session: https://untoislam.com/live-qa-session Sponsor|Donate|Support|Help Us: https://untoislam.com/donate Host: Adee Simon Macdowell. Guest: Grant Miller. Today we speak with Abdur Rahim (Grant Miller). He's a new revert (11 months) and reverted after a two year study and comes from a Catholic background, being a Eucharistic minister and member of the Knights of Columbus. About Grant: Converted in 2021 (July 10th) 59 years old Born in USA, Pittsburgh, Caucasian, grew up in Los Angeles. I was in foster care since I was 9 years old. Currently lives in Charleston, South Carolina Some topics discussed: Paedophilia in the church and how it push him away from Catholicism Growing up in a foster family The son-ship of Jesus The feeling of betraying Jesus when he started thinking about Islam Suspension of disbelief as apposed to critical thinking and making mental decisions and being open to all faiths The feeling of having a 'returning of faith' after leaving the church Researching about Islam and 'Jesus in Islam' The pamphlet he read, "My Great Love of Jesus Led Me to Islam" How his wife accepted his looking into Islam The day of conversion Grant states: My journey to the faith started in London. It was a Friday evening sometime in March, 2019, and I was returning to my hotel from work, it was around 8pm, and I passed by a table somewhere near Piccadilly Circus, where there were a few brothers and sisters with Qurans and other materials. At that time I was experiencing a crises in faith. Having been a lifelong Catholic, I was shaken to the core by the priest scandals and to be honest I was ready to just give up on religion. My depression led me to drink heavily, give up on God and religion, and do things that are considered immoral. I stopped by the table because I had always been curious about Islam and wanted to pick up some materials. A brother started talking to me. He asked if I was a Christian and I said yes, but at the moment not practicing. Then he asked if I believed in God, and I said yes. Then he asked if I believed in the Trinity, and I believe my answer surprised him, because I said 'No'; Honestly, he was a stranger, it was how I felt, and I just replied plainly. He then asked if I believe that Jesus was God, and I replied no again. I felt strange about this, being a Catholic they believe in the Trinity and Jesus being part of it. However, I always felt that Jesus was 'infused' with God, that He worked through Jesus. But with the crises I was going through, and the priests doing what they did, and they were supposedly devoted to the church and Jesus and look what happened. So in my heart I just could no longer accept any of it. The brother gave me a Quran, a booklet "My Great Love of Jesus Led Me to Islam", and other materials (which I still have to this day!), pointed out that I should start at Fatihah and then said something to me which sticks to me: "Promise me that when you get back to the hotel that you will pray openly and sincerely to God" He did not know what I was going through, nor did we even talk about anything personal. So he was not aware of my depression or anything. I was quite taken aback. I followed his advice. And when I got back and started praying, I literally began to sob and cry and poured out my whole heart, and asked God to help me, that I was so lost.I guess I can fill you in on the rest during our talk. More about Grant: Job/Expertise: I am consultant with the Oracle NetSuite Financial platform/ERP specialising in administration and programming. I have been in information technology all my working life, starting with the old IBM AS400 systems. I was an adjunct professor for MIS at Penn State University for a number of years, and have been a contributing author (Sybex, Coriolis publishers) and technical editor on a number of books dealing with Windows Server technology. Hobbies/Interests: I have written a number of books on martial arts history that can be found on Amazon, both published and also self-published (search for author Grant A. Miller). I play a number of instruments and was in the 'pit' for musicals (high school musicals). Passionate about: I do charity work for helping the poor (housing, education). I was formerly in the K of C that sponsored a number of projects. Work directly related to Islam/Muslims: I support my local mosque and Imam with communications/supplies for brothers that are incarcerated. I am also in charge of our "library". Personally I am finding that I may also dive into developing a support network for new Muslims coming from a Christian background with questions that revolve around this area. I find that having spent a lifetime in a particular Christian theology and then having the cart completely flipped over is not only a challenge but also untangling all the indoctrination and lingering feelings is something that is best tackled as a group. This is the book about Jesus that Grant mentioned: https://untoislam.com/book/great-love-jesus-led-islam About the Becoming Muslim Podcast Do you have questions about Islam? Are you looking for a new direction in life? The Becoming Muslim podcast at https://untoislam.com is made for those who are in the midst of researching Islam. It also suits newly converted Muslims. Our podcast offers a wide variety of audible resources. From captivating stories of converts to discussions on day to day Islamic practices, Unto Islam allows for each individual to cater to their spiritual needs. Find out: (1) How to convert to Islam (2) What it means to be Muslim (3) Why Islam has helped others As Muslims do not engage in missionary work, our site is only here to help those who want to know more about our faith and creed.

Jessie and Bebe are getting ready to give a talk at the big Waterstones in Piccadilly Circus about the paperback launch of jessie's debut novel Sunset. They need to decide on the right topics and not spend too much of the time bitching about people.   enjoy!