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In this episode we talked about: Covid Effect Listing work US Investing Rent Control Real Estate Market Outlook Useful links: Book “How the world works from the economic perspective” https://www.instagram.com/jessefragale/ https://workingcapitalpodcast.com/ Transcription: Jesse (0s): Welcome to the working capital real estate podcast. My name is Jesper galley. And on this show, we discuss all things real estate with investors and experts in a variety of industries that impact real estate. Whether you're looking at your first investment or raising your first fund, join me and let's build that portfolio one square foot at a time And more broadly, just the forecast or outlook on real estate for the next year or two. So if any of those topics are of interest, I think you're going to really enjoy the episode for those that want to reach out.   I've got a number of different messages and emails, just with questions as it relates to real estate, you can always send me a message. Jesse, at working capital podcast.com or you can just go to www dot, working capital podcast.com. So happy to discuss those. And I think the next episode we do have in the pipeline is kind of a deal analysis of a purchase that we did in Orlando, Florida. So anyway, so without further ado, enjoy the show.   Jonny (1m 1s): What's up guys, and welcome to another episode of the investor relations real estate podcast. I'm your host, Johnny Katani and I am joined today by Jesse for galley. Jesse is a commercial real estate broker and investor as an investor. Jesse specializes in multi-family acquisitions as a broker in both office leasing and investment sales transactions is also the host of working capital, the real estate podcast. Jesse, welcome to the show.   Jesse (1m 24s): Hey John, how's it going?   Jonny (1m 25s): Doing well, happy to have you you're up in Toronto, we were just talking offline, had a few Canadian guests, which is always a treat to get kind of a different perspective on the U S market from, from outside. Before we get into that, kind of give us the reader's digest version. You know what you're doing before this and, and how you got into real estate.   Jesse (1m 47s): Yeah, no problem. First of all, I want to say I didn't put the two and two together from Johnny Katani. That is an amazing name. He has like Jonathan Katani, Johnny Katani. Yeah, man. Well, first of all, I appreciate you having me on, I guess, you know, I give you, like you said, I'm just a condensed version of how I got into the industry. Like you mentioned before I work as an investor and, and a broker or commercial realtor up in Toronto, the way I initially got into the industry was I started investing in oh 7 0 8 when I was in my second year in college for first to second year.   And it was basically student rental properties. I was playing football at a school called Lauria Wilfrid Laurier university. It's a in Waterloo, it's kind of like our silicone light area where there's a lot of startups, a lot of tech. And I went to school at there and basically I was living with a couple of guys I played ball with and one of the, one of the friends of mine, his dad and him owned the property that we were renting out. It was kind of like that light bulb moment of, you know, I'm giving, I'm paying a buddy of mine and he owns the property and that's kind of the first foray saw into rental properties from a student rental perspective.   My father entrepreneurial guy, he's a, you know, him and his brothers had an automotive shop and he really good friend of the family. One of my dad's friends had a number of rental properties. I think something like 30, 30 something, single family rental properties. So I basically picked his brain at that time when I saw that my buddy was renting this place out and from there just started looking for, for properties. And at that time, you, you know, you have all the energy in the world, but you don't have the money. And I always, anytime I tell this story, you know, you hear online, people are like, I bought this, I bought that.   And you're like, yeah, you were 14 and you did this. But you know, the reality is people have to get the financing from somewhere. And I basically went to my dad with a business plan. I said, you know, this is how much it's going to make. This is a great property. He summarily dismissed that and said, you know, he's encouraging. But he said, absolutely not. So I, my parents were divorced. So first thing I did was go to my mom and be like, ma dad said no. So basically what I needed at that time, I had, it was a $250,000 asset.   And it was a five bedroom. I think it was a 10% down or tender. Yeah, I think it was 10% down at the time. And I had enough for half of it. And then what I needed was somebody to guarantee, to sign on a loan, to come, come up with the rest. And that's where I got the magic signature from my mom. And that's initially how I got into it. And then from there, you know, the rest is history to a certain extent. I started to acquire other properties, specifically student rental in that area. And then it got to the point where, you know, I had five or six student rentals finished university.   So came back to Toronto, tried to manage them at a distance hour and a half, but I always say anything over an hour, you might as well be in the next state or next province because you know, you're not going to go over there for a bunch of work if you're actively managing it. So from there, I sold a number of the properties and started acquiring properties in Toronto. And, you know, kind of takes us up to where I'm at today and how we've kind of moved into the multi-room space and, you know, happy to happy to jump into any of that.   Jonny (5m 15s): Awesome. I love it. That's a, that's a cool story. I love the dad said now.   Jesse (5m 21s): Yeah, that was, you know what, it's, it's funny though, too, because the next one I did, it was kind of a proof of concept, right? Because you can kind of go to whoever it is, does it, you know, if you have family friends, whatever way that you get in the door, or if you're at the point now where you're, you know, you have a number of properties, you still have the lenders that you're trying to satisfy. And once you have one, you have that proof of concept that you can actually show that other banks in my case, my father, but whoever it is, it's basically kind of showing that, you know, you had a plan, you executed it and completed it.   So yeah, it was a, it was a good learning lesson and yeah, that was kind of, that was the kind of start of it. And I always say like zero to one is really the tough part in anything you do and getting that first one realizing it's possible. And then, you know, rinse and repeat.   Jonny (6m 9s): Absolutely. Yeah. What do they call it? The art of the first deal or, or whatever it is, because it's just like, all of a sudden just goes, because typically you do have, you know, especially in your close network, especially now social media, you have people kind of watching and being like, oh, I wonder what's going to happen. And then you're successful. And they're like, Hey, I want to get in on this. So, but you got to do that first deal and kind of, and kind of prove that, that you can do it. So this was in Canada, did, did oh eight hit Canada, the way that it affected the U S in terms of housing,   Jesse (6m 41s): We were actually, we weathered it quite a bit better. A part of that is, you know, if you look at like the economic history of even the, the depression from the U S and Canada, basically the, the banking laws, at least as far as I know, and this is something that I've kind of been a nerd about for, for a long time. And part of it was branch banking. You know, we have branch banking in Canada, so we, our risks are diffused. So we kind of spread the risk over multiple different areas, but we have five major banks, but with multiple branches.   So if one bank, you know, one branch has, has an issue, the system, you don't have that systemic risk. That being said, we still had a recession. And it was still a very good opportunity for real estate and detrimental to, to businesses. And I think as, as you know, in the states, the real challenge at that time was credit dried up and you had, you know, companies on main street not able to get credit. So, you know, it's very interesting time now that we're kind of coming out of the last year or two w with a very different type of recession, but yeah, it'd be interesting to see how, how things unfold.   Jonny (7m 54s): Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. That's, that's good perspective. So you're a broker in an office space. Talk about what that has been like coming out of COVID. Are you, are you guys headed back to the office and that kind of stuff?   Jesse (8m 9s): Yeah, so I, I always tell like younger individuals now that, you know, you're seeing like the next crew of brokers come in the early twenties, mid twenties, I always tell them that office leasing or industrial leasing or multi-racial leasing to, to that extent. And retail is a great way to learn the business because at the end of the day, the value of all of our properties is predicated on a lease. That that's just the, kind of the easy version of understanding valuations, right? The covenant of the tenants. So for us, working with different companies is really, it's a treat because I can see various industries do my job and my job repeats.   So whether you're a tech startup in software, and then you're dealing with a law firm, so you see a lot of different type of companies, which is, you know, from my perspective, I think a lot of people in our industry are similar to me, or I'm similar to them in that, you know, I, I, if I did one thing every day, I'd probably lose it. And so the fact that there's this like creativity, I think investors understand that too. They like, you know, different projects to your question about how it's been impacted without a doubt office was impacted by COVID.   I think, you know, taking the four major food groups of real estate, industrial, multi Rez, retail, and office, you know, industrial, I think most people know it was on fire, continued to be on fire with COVID multi Raz, also very, very popular asset class retail. If it was grocery store anchored, if it was essential services, I always say, if there was like Mike's TaeKwonDo and Jenny's nails, those places didn't do as good, that kind of tertiary stuff. Long story short, you get to office office was in this kind of weird space because we're shut down in a lot of areas in north America and people are wondering what's going to happen and what they're going to do with their office.   I think now that we're, the dust is settled to a certain extent. The takeaways were that office is a important part of most businesses in terms of how they build culture, how they build their, their teams. I think leadership has acknowledged that, but also in the same breath, we acknowledge the fact that you can have hybrid work models without the business suffering. And you you've learned certain businesses is actually are really, the makeup of the business is really set up well for that type of that type of environment and some not so much.   So I'm very bullish on the office, obviously I'm biased, but we've seen huge upticks since the beginning of this year, 2022 to now versus last year. It's, you know, it's tremendous how many companies, even if it's just to come out and say, like, what's going on because leaders in, in these companies, they want to make sure that they're ahead of the curve.   Jonny (11m 0s): Yeah. It makes perfect sense. And there are certainly some businesses, like you mentioned, like collaborative businesses, like you think of like law firms, CPA firms, you know, certain businesses like, you know, tech doesn't really require you to be in the office. Certainly the collaboration piece of it is, you know, useful, but you can have a smaller office, you know, downsize, but there are certainly some business models that really do need that, that office space in order to, to be successful.   Jesse (11m 31s): Yeah.   Jonny (11m 32s): So have you seen a change in the, the target businesses you're going for in terms of leasing   Jesse (11m 40s): To a certain extent, like for us, we do, I'd say 30% of what we do on the brokerage side is listing work. So our clients are these larger landlords, well, private and larger. So pension funds, real estate investment trusts, and then private, and then the balance of that is tenant rep. So then, you know, we're dealing with companies and, you know, part of it in our world is where somebody is in their lease cycle, whether it's five, 10 year deals. And you find, you know, in terms of BD, if they're not already a client, it's about finding them in, you know, a good spot in their lease or being able to say like, okay, you're coming up to an expiry, you know, have you thought about it?   The one good, positive thing. I think for tenants in our market, we're very similar to LA and New York prior to COVID in that office, vacancy was like 2%, 2.7% ridiculously low to the point where tenants had no negotiating power where now we're starting to see a little bit more of a balanced market, but yeah, that's a, that's kinda what we're working on now. And then, you know, on my partners on the other side, you know, we're continuing, continuing to look for acquisitions on the investment side.   Jonny (12m 50s): Awesome. I love it. Yeah. That makes, that makes perfect sense, especially right, right. In the heart of the city like that. So you mentioned that you also invest in the U S what is your investment thesis for, for us investing and what is it like investing, you know, from, from Canada, essentially? Like what other red tape or hurdles that you have as a foreign investor, I guess, so to speak.   Jesse (13m 14s): Yeah. I was going to say, when I say invest in the U S I have bought my first property in the U S so I'm definitely not an authority, but it was, it was something that was kind of on my 20, 22, you know, new year's resolution, whatever you want to call it in that, you know, by, by an asset, in, in the states. And what happened was I had a buddy of mine that actually does residential real estate up here. And he basically had a sister company that works in, in Florida, and they do a bunch of condos, townhouses, single family homes in Orlando, Miami, some in Fort Lauderdale.   So basically got, got him to look at this one pre construction. It was a townhouse in Orlando. I was thinking of doing the short-term rental aspect of it in Miami. I decided to go with this. It seemed like a better investment. So in terms of the actual hurdles, I think it's important that when you're looking, if, whether you're in Canada, investing in the states where you're in the states, investing in Canada, I think what's important is that number one, the structure of, of how you invest.   So talking to a CPA, talking to a lawyer, it's a little bit of money and cash out first, really, if you want to get good advice, because any investor knows that basically any CPAs or lawyers AF they don't give free advice very often, and you want to get good advice. And I'll just give an example, a lot of Canadians, they listen to these late night infomercials about investing in the U S and they say, put it in an LLC. And, you know, that's the structure you should use. And we don't have that in Canada. We don't have an equivalent to the LLC. Well, we have something similar, but there's no LLC.   So there's no limited liability company. So what happens is Canadians go to the states, they put an investment in an LLC and the Canadian government says, Nope, that's a corporation. And now they're subject to double taxation. So just stuff like that, of understanding how to invest when you're buying properties down, there is one of the first steps. We have a number of very solid tax treaties between the U S and Canada. So one of the other piece to keep in mind is withholding tax so that when you're getting rental income acknowledge, or have to understand that the IRS will have a withholding tax, which can be ameliorated.   If you fill out the right forms and you can get it taxed on the net instead of gross, because any investor knows that if you're getting 30% tax on your gross income, like a lot of investors right after you depreciate it, there's no, there's no 30% of gross income. So it's little things like that. I think the, the other really big one is understanding the debt side of things. U S individual that's domiciled in the, in the states for tax is gonna have a hard time getting a mortgage in Canada and vice versa.   So for me, the IRS doesn't know me. They don't know they don't have an identity for, for me. So for me to get credit, I have to build credit in the UK. So was the first investment. The mortgage is going to come from Canada. And one of the things you can do to try to bridge the gap, and if you really want to start building credit in another country, is you, first of all, utilize a bank that does cross border, you know, that has locations in both the states and Canada. So for me, CIVC or TD north, that kind of thing where we can have both in Florida is great for that because a lot of Canadians live in Florida.   And then I think, lastly, sorry for the long-winded answer. I was, we were just talking about this in the office, but lastly, I think it's like understanding your strategy. So I mentioned that, you know, if you're in a certain place in Arkansas, maybe short-term rentals, isn't, isn't the way to go. If you're in Miami, okay. Understanding the, what type of strategy you want to actually employ. Is it Burr? Is it wholesaling and, and making sure that the geography, your pick is conducive to that. So, yeah, that's high level. What I I'd say there.   Jonny (17m 9s): Interesting. Okay. Wow. A lot of fascinating things that I'm learning for the first time. One I want to touch on is this LLC. So do you only have one structure that you're allowed to create and in Canada?   Jesse (17m 22s): No. So what happens again? Like, so our corporation there's one type of corporation. It would be most similar to your C corpse. I know you have escorts, NC corpse in the states, the limited liability company, you know, for any listeners that don't know him, I'm sure most do that. What you're trying to do is have a pass through, right? You have ownership of something, but it's a pass through entity. We do have that, but we do it in the GPLP structure, general partner, limited partner. So if you and I, for instance, we're the general partners and we went to buy something in the states and we had a number of different limited partners.   They would be like members in an LLC, if you use that context. Right? So I think member, you know, member and investors is the equivalent. It's just important to know that, you know, you start using a structure in a country that your country doesn't recognize there's implications for that. And a lot of times we're when you're in investing, you know, it's so good to get a tax lawyer, because if you talk to an accountant Mo you know, it's a blanket term, but I think it's, it's true. Most of the time accountants are trying to protect you from a tax perspective and lawyers are thinking liability.   So you might get a lawyer that says, don't put it in personal, in your personal name. You might have an account that says now the personal name, fine, just get, you know, more insurance or vice versa. So just getting the right information, I think is really helpful. And I actually had a, there's a, I think she's a flirting by, I think she's from Florida, but she worked up here. It's Lauren Colon. If you just type that in type in cross-border and Google, she's got a lot of good information. I ha if I had her on my podcast about if you're investing in Canada or if in you're investing in the states.   Jonny (19m 0s): Interesting. Okay, cool. Yeah. That makes perfect sense. You know, obviously the, the connections that we have, of course sharing a border, you know, there's a lot of things I would imagine that they want to make it as simple as possible to a certain extent. I know that there's this underlying thing that Canadians don't like Americans, Americans don't like Canadians, but I've never had any problems.   Jesse (19m 25s): And I love, I love Americans. Like a lot of my family when they immigrated, they are went in through Ellis island. So in New York and New Jersey, so I love the states. It was a blast being there over COVID to get away from the lockdowns here.   Jonny (19m 40s): So they let you leave. Huh?   Jesse (19m 42s): Yeah. Yeah. I got out of here, you know, in certain windows we went into harder lockdown semi-hard and yeah. So it was nice being able to travel. One last thing I would say, I forgot to mention is one of the best things you can do is find a partner in the states or in Canada, because then you can kind of do the real estate thing of, you know, if I'm going to be the operational guy or gal, and you're going to be the one that guarantees the debt, then all of a sudden, you know, if you're 50, 50 on a property and you go to a us bank, the banks like, okay, we don't really know this guy, but we know this person.   So, you know, it opens the door for a little bit more ease of transaction. And it's also great. You know, you make connections in a new city, in a new state.   Jonny (20m 26s): Absolutely. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And, and while you were explaining it, I was kind of thinking in my head, I was like, okay, if I wanted to do this, I would probably just partner with someone who is already up there and gets it. And so that makes perfect sense. So along those lines, what is the market like, if there, do you guys have rent controls across everything? You know, what does that look like in terms of rental increases and different aspects of the business?   Jesse (20m 51s): Yeah. We have a, it is a, it's a shock for most people when they're investing in the states and then come to Canada because we have rent control, which, you know, the fancy term for rent control these days is rent stabilization. I did a podcast with, with this gentleman, Richard Epstein. Who's fantastic. He's like, he's a lawyer at NYU and kind of gave a history of rent control and rent stabilization is basically rent control with an allowable percentage. You're allowed to raise it every year.   And the percentages is very low. Like, it's kind of, I was going to say, it goes with inflation, but inflation is pretty high right now. It was like 1.8% last year. So yeah. So the other thing is what we have is rent decontrol. And it's a lot of like confusing terms. But what that means is that when somebody moves out, I can mark to market the rent. So if you're paying 500 and it's really worth a thousand, once you move out, I can charge you a thousand. But as you can imagine, just like in New York, what do people do? They don't leave. So you're really stuck.   And in Canada, it's not like, you know, like pictured Texas, you're, you're done you're, you're in Dallas, you're done your lease. Your landlord's like, I want you out. That's, you know, that's the breaks that landlord wants you at Canada. You cannot evict somebody. What happens at the end of the fixed rate? Sorry, a fixed term tenancy is that it reverts to a month to month and you can't kick somebody out with like two, there's only a few circumstances. If you're moving in personally, which you have to live there for at least the guidances a year, you can be fine, $25,000 if you're doing substantial renovations.   But even if you do that, you have to give the property back to them after the renovations. So what happens in our market is I'm going to call them incentives. People pay tenants to leave. And in Toronto, the going rate for buying tenants out, it can vary from anything from 15,000 to $50,000, basically, just to say, you know, can you leave and agree to sign this? And I, I don't know, one landlord that likes doing that. I don't. And obviously there is a meeting of the minds for two people to agree to that.   And there's a lot of people in the press here. That's a, you know, it's taken advantage of tenants. I disagree with that, but I'm a biased landlord. And I think when you hand somebody $25,000 and they accept it, you know, I get that there's a power imbalance, but that's kind of what happens in our market. But when I tell them my American friends, as I say, like that, it's not necessarily a bad thing with any challenge in a market is going to create some opportunities. So somebody that can, you know, have a protocol for this market, just like there are successful investors in, in Maryland, in New Jersey, Washington, where there are different versions of rent control.   So I think for us, it's just a matter of, yeah, it's a little bit more challenging in that sense. And I'll say this, this is where student rentals to me are very interesting because you don't have to force kids to leave. You know, after three years they're like, see you later. Like, it's very rare that you get somebody that's, you know, going to, going to school and then stays there. So you can mark the market, the rents every three years, you just have to deal with maybe a little bit more on the maintenance side.   Jonny (24m 3s): Interesting. Yeah. That's a very awesome perspective and a, a good kind of find there as well as, you know, anything like if you were close to a hospital, maybe like traveling nurses or something too, I'm not sure if traveling nursing is a thing in Canada.   Jesse (24m 16s): Well, that's, that's like, so the Orlando property that I bought was right beside the name escapes me, but it's a, it's a massive, it's a massive hospital. And it's kind of the same idea where you have nurses that if you have shorter term rentals, you can utilize that.   Jonny (24m 32s): Awesome. I love it. Yeah. So, and that was a really great point that you made where the opportunities are there. You just have to be willing to do that. So does that keep, I guess, like less, less investors, less people trying to get on deals because of these sort of hurdles that you have to deal with, or is it still a lot of people?   Jesse (24m 54s): The problem is like, yeah, we still have the Canada, like, like the states, I think in general, we are extremely supply constraint. Despite with people say like, oh, real estate prices. Like it's, it's not a supply issue. It is 100% of supply issue. We have the majority of the, of the multi-family rental stock in Canada is, is extremely old, like circus, seventies and, and older. So what we what's happened in our major cities, whether it's Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal is the condo development market has basically picking up the slack for the multi Rez and multi and single family.   So what is created is you'll hear the term of shadow a shadow market, and it's basically condos like you and I owning a condo and renting the conduit rather than some developer building a large purpose-built development. And that is kind of the concern because investors, at least there's been legislation where 2016 or 2017, where there isn't rent control for buildings built after that. But I think a lot of investors there, they're weary of building a lot of these projects because they don't know if the government's going to say that you can or can't raise rent.   So bottom line is that we don't get enough of this type of property built. And I think the other piece is a regulatory environment. It's very similar to California where, you know, you can, you can fix the issue if you just loosen some of the regulations where you have the ability to kind of rezone this idea of nimbyism that, you know, you can't build in my area or banana. I don't know if you've heard that the new   Jonny (26m 28s): Ones, that one   Jesse (26m 29s): It's build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.   Jonny (26m 35s): So   Jesse (26m 35s): It's like, you can't have it both ways if you're left of center politically and you're like, no, there's, we have to have all this regulation. Then you can't be that that's chewing kale in your town. And then, you know, a lower income individual wants to live in there. And you're like, ah, next town over, like, we need to democratize, I think to a certain extent where you can build and what you can build and all he had off my soap box right there.   Jonny (27m 0s): Thanks so much for coming to the Ted talk. I was just having this conversation about affordable housing here in the states and how the president Biden administration is trying to roll out all these things, but they're getting in their own way. They're like, yeah, we want to make more affordable housing, but it's going to take you two years probably before, you know, you can turn a property into affordable housing, you know, like, okay, well then why would I even do it?   Jesse (27m 27s): Yeah, yeah. You guys have a, you guys have some interesting things happening right now, even with energy. Like you, you know, you're a lot of these policies, even with the fed where like the top of the agenda is, is systemic risks for climate change. And it's like, you're talking to the fed. They're like inflation should be the thing that you're talking about with them. Like not to say that's not important, but it's like, you know, pick, pick your lane in terms of, in terms of who you're talking to. But you know, at the end of the day, I still think it's such a great country to invest in.   And whether you're in Canada or the states, we are spoiled in terms of the re the tax framework, as you know, most of your lists listeners will know that you guys, especially, and now I think you guys, do you still have the bonus depreciation that you can take on properties.   Jonny (28m 16s): Yeah. So, yeah, we'll have it for a while actually, but it's going to start going down by 20%. So this is the last year of a hundred percent next year is 80, 60, so on and so forth rumors that that could change for sure. But so you do not have that in Canada.   Jesse (28m 34s): We have a depreciation, but bonus not exactly like that. The other thing is, I think we can do it similarly, but for, you know, those that in the states you use cost segregation or cost sag, where you can kind of itemize your, your depreciation schedules. I think that's something that you have, and we don't don't quote me on that one, but I think the other main, one of the big, main differences with your market as opposed to ours is we don't have 10 31 exchanges. There is no such thing as that. So we are a very buyin hold type of market, not, not completely, but that is a large part of what happens.   Whereas, you know, if somebody told me, okay, you can buy a likened kind of asset, I roll it into this one. You know, we would probably have more velocity in our market, but for us, you know, clients say like, you know, well, if I sell this, I'm going to, I'm going to pay a bunch of taxes. It's like, well, yeah, yeah, you did make all that money though. So that's, but yeah, we don't have the ability to kind of, to roll things over into other properties.   Jonny (29m 35s): Interesting. Okay. Yeah. So definitely definitely some differences. There, there are certainly a lot of, and I've done episodes on this with lawyers and CPAs. We have a lot of incentives for real estate because ultimately you're dealing with, you know, a need an essential need for, for humans, which is, you know, a place to live. So, so yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Awesome. Well, as we wind up here, we've got five questions to ask all of my guests, it's the final five.   So we'll get to that. What's the best advice you've gotten from a mentor,   Jesse (30m 10s): The best advice that I've gotten from a mentor, I'm thinking of something recently that I've had. I, you know what I think for me, it's, it's cliche, but it's not having a limiting belief in terms of, of what you can do. And part of, one of my mentors, when I was younger, it basically said if there's something that you want to do, like go out and, and do that, do that thing that will kind of lead to that. So for, just give an example. When I bought my first property, I had no business buying properties, but the idea of calling a realtor saying, Hey, you know, here's a list of houses that I want to go see as 19 year old or 20 year old, and actually going in there and kind of experiencing that.   And I think it's been said before by a number of people, but once you do that process, it sounds kind of, you know, very abstract, but you're going in there, you're talking to somebody you're seeing space, you're immersing yourself in something that was only a possibility before and suddenly it's becoming a reality. And I think I've done that with other things in my life where if there was an opportunity to get into a certain area in real estate, it's like, just go to that event or go to that in that environment, link up with people that are doing what you want to do in that environment.   That's always been something for me that I've gotten value out of. And it's always scary at first, especially, you know, if you're the new person in that area, but really is about kind of getting in there and immersing yourself.   Jonny (31m 34s): Absolutely. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And, and that's what holds people back so much is that starting kind of circling back to what we said, the art of the first deal it's so it's so intimidating, right. Because you know, someone's up on stage who has a billion dollars in assets and you're like, I could never have a billion dollars in assets, but then you break it down or even, you know, I've talked to those people and they're like, yeah, there was a day where I had zero. Right? Yeah. I started where you started and then you start to realize those kinds of things. You're like, okay, like, I can be that person too.   Yeah. I'm is there a lot of education available? Like is one thing I love here in the states is this is a sector where everybody tries to help everybody. Is it, is it the same up there as well?   Jesse (32m 17s): Yeah. I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine. I think this is, you know, I assume other industries are similar, but you know, working with a number of different companies that there's definitely different variations, but I found like real estate investors want to help out other real estate investors, especially when there's an age gap. I don't know if you've noticed, but when you have somebody that's like in their fifties, sixties, and they see a young kid in their twenties asking for help trying to add value to them, you know, don't just go and say, you know, help me with this and that. But there really is I think, a want to help that person because they see some of themselves in that person, if they've been an investor.   So yeah, a hundred percent, I think that it is, it is an area that, where I see a lot of that. And then the other thing too, is everybody likes their ego stroked a bit. So, you know, for them, it's kind of validation that they've done well in their career and they're kind of, you know, handing down knowledge to like the next, the next generation of investors.   Jonny (33m 16s): Awesome. Yeah. That's, that's a great perspective for sure of that. What is it about your career that makes you feel like you're fulfilling your why? Okay.   Jesse (33m 24s): It's definitely the relationships. It's the fact that I'm exposed to people that are smarter than me, stronger than me, better at, you know, certain aspects of the business than me and the ability to do that. I think it just makes you a better investor, probably a better person in general. And having those doors open to those different facets, I think is something that fulfills my, why, which is, you know, to constantly be trying to grow, whether that's a portfolio or you interpersonally, I think that's a big thing, developing the relationships and continuing to do that.   And who knows, maybe my next cool partner is going to be in Orlando. And you know, that's just another example of kind of expanding the, the network of people you have, but doing it in what I think is a meaningful way.   Jonny (34m 12s): Absolutely. Yeah. It's a, it's so true. How sort of the five people I surround myself with has changed and is more focused on, you know, we all have the same mindset, same goals. And then you know, that once that energy gets going, man, you just feeding off each other and it's really awesome. Favorite non real estate or investment related book.   Jesse (34m 37s): I would say a basic economics by Tom soul is probably, I mean, it's slightly related to pretty much everything, but that is one of my favorite books on just how the, how the world works from an economic perspective. Thomas, SOL's probably one of my favorite economists or economist historian in general. Yeah. That book is, yeah, it was a huge book for me that, that I got into when I was well, not too long ago, but yeah, that's a good one.   Jonny (35m 9s): Nice. Love it. If you could have any superpower, what would it be?   Jesse (35m 13s): Super power and visibility.   Jonny (35m 15s): Nice. There you go. Don't get that one too often. Slightly   Jesse (35m 19s): Creepy.   Jonny (35m 21s): Yeah. I mean, it depends how you use it for sure.   Jesse (35m 26s): It's like, what did they know that could have had them at 20 mill that could add them at 20 mil? And then you can just go in there, hear different real estate conversations when you're putting APS as in   Jonny (35m 36s): Like go listen on a seller and be, you know what, yeah. They're like, yeah. You know what? We would actually take a lower price, then all of a sudden you just come in. You're like, Hey, would you guys take it for this price?   Jesse (35m 46s): You know, I said, I should've said time travel. I'm such a Saifai fan. That, that seems like the better one, but that's what you do the fast five   Jonny (35m 53s): That's right. Final five. Awesome. And last one, what's the best way for people to get ahold of you and learn more?   Jesse (35m 60s): Yeah, sure. I mean, you can go to Instagram, Jessie for galley, F R a G a L E. You can pretty much type that into YouTube or Instagram. You can check things out there. If you're interested in the podcast, working capital podcast.com or working capital, the real estate podcasts, anywhere on Spotify or apple or wherever you watch your stuff we interview, you know, not dissimilar to you. We interview people that are investing in real estate, but also, you know, professionals that surround our, our industry.   So CPAs lawyers, et cetera.   Jonny (36m 34s): Awesome. I love it. Jesse. Thank you so much for all of your insight and perspective. I had a lot of fun,   Jesse (36m 40s): Johnny Katani thanks, man.   Jonny (36m 41s): Absolutely.   Jesse (36m 50s): Thank you so much for listening to working capital the real estate podcast. I'm your host, Jesse for galley. If you liked the episode, head on to iTunes and leave us a five star review and share on social media, it really helps us out. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram, Jesse for galley, F R a G a L E, have a good one. Take care.

Guest:Marc Bell - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founderhttps://terranorbital.com/Hosted By:Austin WillsonMichael O'ConnorIt's Marc Bell, chairman and CEO of Terran orbital. How are you doing today, Marc? I am doing great. And so thank you for having me. Great to have you we'll first off the bat. I would love to just learn a little bit about Terran, like the name, the stories around it before we jump into too much long-term stuff.I just want to know about you guys. Terran orbital started, I started in 2013 and I started as a vehicle. To acquire companies that were working in space. I'm a lifelong Trekkie. So there was 10 years old, always fascinated with space, always wanting to go to space. At some point I realized they weren't putting middle-aged overweight Jews into space.So I decided to go ahead and start buying companies that I could build things to put into space that don't include myself. And it's been a dream come true. It is, we are now building satellites and we're solving problems from space. And we're the guys who helped invent the cube set. So we're all this whole new space revolution that everybody talks about.It's all our fault. And so all these new startups and everything else, they're all there because of the technology that we created, a company we bought called tie-back because was about. Austin has a question too. It sounds but I right off the bat, the first question I can think of which you touched on already, like the go space revolution since you guys are right in the thick of it, you've started it.When did this begin? Because we see at least for me, and I think other people in my generation, we see videos of the space shuttles, and that, that kind of felt like the big thing. And then things seem to sleepy for awhile, but it seems like there's been so much going on in the background to make everything that's going on now actually happen.What's been going on. Two guys, a guy named Dr. Jordan pug Suare who was a college professor and Bob Twiggs called professor about 13 years ago, invented educational demonstrator called the cube set. This was a satellite. You can hold in the Palm of your head. And the point was to demonstrate that you don't need to build big satellites to do big things.And if you think about it, you mentioned the space shuttle, your iPhone or Android phone that you hold has more computing power than the space shuttle did. And so things have changed dramatically. And so what used to cost a billion dollars to build? You can outdo for 10 million, but that was the only part of the chip sets costs a lot less.So cubes. Open the door, but you still had to get these things to orbit. Then came along space X and space X made it affordable to go to space. So between us making payload, making the satellite sheep and space X, making the rideshare. A whole revolution was created of small sets. And now that you hear people talking, the government talks about how 50,000 satellites are going to get launched over the next 10 years.And if you put that in perspective, you may be have like 14,000 thousands of satellites launched over the past few. Wow. Those are some impressive numbers. That's a lot of, that's a lot of stuff flying up into space around us is is that gonna be a problem? That's my one question. The good news is there's a lot of space in spaceyou have on earth. You have 40% of the planet is covered by land the, of. You have 3.2 billion cars and on a single plane in space, you have 43,000 miles of Y that 40,000 miles of planes. You have a lot of highways, a lot of roads of space that you could travel. And then what times objects tend to hit each other is when it's intentionally done.When people want to demonstrate how smart they are, that they can create space junk and. And for those of you who are listeners, if you look at the TV show quark from 1977, you'll get a good laugh, but that was a space, garbage truck. And that's what we need today to clean up all this trash that these guys created.But there is a, is it everyone says, oh, this is a problem. Not really a problem, a space situational awareness, which is what's called tracking space. Garbage has a fancy name for it is become a bigger thing. And the us, government's doing a very good job of tracking what's in space. And now there are technologies that we're developing that are similar to what airplanes have.Airplanes have today, something called T cast or traffic collision avoidance system. So you sit in a cockpit and if you're, if something's coming out of the planes going at you, it goes traffic, and then it tells you what to do, what to go, pull up. And if you ever hear the words pray, you're, it's all over, but no one would ever hear those words.But the goal is on a satellite it'll move. It'll be a lot. We use a lot of AI, so sell it. We'll know something's coming. It'll move out of the. It will calculate the trajectory and then I'll move back to where it's supposed to be and do it all on its own without human interaction. Like we have to do today on the.That's interesting. Okay. Yeah, because I had heard some concern, of course you gotta have the YouTube sensational videos, so I had, I'd seen one floating around and talking about, oh my gosh, we're going to be shrouded in a trash, trash blanket over, over Earth's atmosphere and the next 10 years.And I thought it was pretty sensational. So I figured I would bring that up and ask a real expert because I'm sure if anyone would know it would be the guy launched and all that. Spy satellites into space. So that's a reassuring answer to, to hear there's solutions to avoid exactly that, that issue.I, I do want to ask though about the name as well of the company Terran or orbital. Is there any, anything behind that name? I know has some some connotations. With any company I've started, I've always had a naming scheme of, for lack of a better term. And this case, I went for a science fiction, schema, Taran.Isn't our fire word for earth earthlings. Terror, I think is the basis of the word are these either the Latin or Greek or something for earth. And so we picked Heron in the, in StarCraft, they use the name terrines and it's moving to the typical Teranova TV show. And there's lots of reference Saifai references over the years.And prejudice. Our constellation that we're building was Remington will be predator. So predator that it gov trader predecessor. So we try to have some fun as we named things. And, but you'll see, like our stock symbol is LL AP live long and prosper. And we were very excited to do your second exchange, gave it to us.They wouldn't let us put Spock's hand on the side of the New York side, but we thought it was pretty funny. And and it's it's just, we try to make it, we're, we do very serious work here at orbital and we work mostly for the DOD and the IC community. Though we do some civil work and some commercial work, but we want our people here to have fun and enjoy working here.Yeah. It's also a good way to to get the suits on wall street to just loosen up a little bit. I give a little live long and prosper hand signal there on the exchange. So that's good. It probably brings some levity to the situation. It does. It does, especially with things going on in this world with Ukraine and everything else.And we've been very active over there helping the Ukrainian government. We are thrilled to bring a little bit of smile to people's facesAustin, by the way. I think he's. We might be frozen. It looks, he's looking frozen. So we'll just, we'll we'll let Ashley edit this little chunk out and then I'll continue and he should be able to hop back.So a follow-up to that, the idea of it seems like space travel, at least in my opinion has always been this this thing that gives hope to humanity. It's this thing. Sparks curiosity. And it's just, it's something that people from countries all over the world, cultures all over the world, love and love to see and experience and think about.And like talking about things like the Ukraine and everything, there's so much, there's so much bad, bad press all time all the time. And. But it seems like space flight is one of those things that just gets everyone excited. How did you first get into the industry? Was it a curiosity thing from a young age?Was it like just the thing that built? Cause it seems like something that everyone would love to do. I got very excited about space when I was a kid. It really started when I was 10 years old and got stuck somewhere in a hotel with my dad and it was raining outside and ended up watching a 24 hour star Trek marathon.And years later, I had a company called Globex or my first comedies and we ran 28,000 miles of fiber around the world as part of the original internet backbone. And we were the world's largest logical. And we were the second largest owners of data centers in the world. And we hosted some of them, we hosted some of Microsoft's original websites, Walmarts, regional websites.We hosted about half of the fortune, fifties, original websites back in the day. And but we couldn't reach, we, and by being the largest logical pier, what I mean is we connected to more networks than anybody else. So we connected to over a thousand ISP around the planet, but we couldn't reach ESPs in Eastern Europe.So we started building ground stations and buying satellite transponder space. And that's how we started connecting all these Eastern European ice IPS onto the global internet. And it was very a, and that was my first exposure into a space. And I've been enamored ever since. It's just been exciting journey.Yeah, definitely get that. What was that? What was that like transitioning to. In an industry setting in a practical setting, transitioning to using space to, to solve a practical issue. Cause it seems like there's so much talk around. I've heard skeptics be like, oh, we're still decades away from, I don't know, being able to colonize Mars and all those things.And that's fair, but it seems like there's some people who are just. Pessimistic about space being able to solve real issues in general, but it does. What's your kind of take on that. Look at all the things that have been invented that came out of space. Everything from God, perfect.Ball-bearings certain kinds of glass. There's this, all these man missions to space have CIF created all these technologies that we use today on a daily basis. How they're part of our society and and so it helps us innovate, innovating, and you are right people aspire and dream of going to space.They dream of it. We see movies and TV shows everything you're fantasizing about it. And it gives us hope, like you said, but there are ponds we can track globally global warm. We can watch icebergs in real time and we come and we can measure the depth of them and measure the decrease them day by day, hour by hour.If we choose you, can't do that with drones. You can't do that with planes. It's too big. A but you can do it from space and you can do it economically from space. You can measure crop yields from space globally. If you want to figure out where your there's going to be famine ahead of time and where you're going to have to move food suppliers around because you'll know in a wheat field, how hydrated.There's some amazing technologies that just are not economical to do from the air from airplanes, with drones, but our economical space, but also helps with things like insurance fraud. And, we can map out Florida the day before hurricane the day after hurricane and see whose roofs were missing before the hurricane using AI.So you, there's a lot of things that are good. A lot of good comes out of space and, human space travel is a desire and colonization of the planets and the moon and Mars and beyond is a desire. And you, we have to, you have to imagine there obviously, Other planets, like earth Goldilocks, planets around the universe.We're not the only ones. I'm sure if the other ones found us, they ran long ago, they went to Washington and they saw they left. They got scared, in general, there's a lot of a lot of dreaming to go on there.Definitely. And that's, I think that is something that so many people. I have, like you said, have aspired to, to go to space, to see earth from space, to, see the pale blue dot. And to the curiosity, like we've already talked about that, that inspires. Where do you see, we've talked a little bit about the past.Where do you see the long run of, we're in the long run show. We're always talking about the long run. Where do you see. In the long run. Even the medium term, I'm really curious even just about two to five years, but certainly 10, 20 years of where Taryn is going and where the industry is.Yeah. So we look at Taran, I don't want to be in an industry unless we can be the number one or number two player. And if you look at all the businesses, we visit my fifth unicorn, all the businesses we started in the past with rare exception, we've been able to be number one and number two.And we strive to do that. We want to do it right. We want to be the best. We want to be different. We want to create barriers to entry and what we do, and this case we're innovating, becoming Tulloch technologically superior to other people. And we're building something for a very well used to close to a billion I could build for 10 million and I can deliver a higher quality product for phenomenally less money.And so it's not evolutionary, but it's revolutionary, but we're working on become revolutionary, was creating the cube set that we did here at Tyvac evolutionary is what we're doing today tearing and going ahead and creating products that will continue to get cheaper and smarter and better.And we're going to see more and more applications with space today. You're going to see 5g, there was saying that's something everyone's talking about. Cell phones. You go, you're going to see it. You see a lot of internet things, Starlink, everyone's getting, everyone wants to buy the internet bandwidth for space, but you can see that bandwidth is starting off slow, and then it's going to get very fast.It's just like today. I remember when Globex, we used to sell up 1.5, four megabit connection for $999 a month to companies today, I got 2.5 gigabits of Google fiber in my home for $99 a month. It's a whole different world, and you're gonna see that in space. The images today you get from space are they're great and they're going to get phenomenally better.You're going to see more and more interesting images and more detailed. And eventually you'll be able to just take a selfie from space. You both to look up, say, take a picture of. You're sitting in the football game and I'll take a picture of you and it to your phone. That's technologically very doable.It's just about, as somebody wants to spend the money to do it, but that's something that's totally doable. Those are some wild applications there. Mark and I, it brings up some interesting questions for me. I, if you haven't noticed yet, Mike tends to be of the two of us a bit more on the the.Positive. And I tend to be a little more skeptical most of the time. My, my trash comment earlier, and then also I have another one coming up here, a question for you and in almost more than negative light. But with that excuse that I guess is my preface there. But with all that, This basically mapping of the earth.And you're just at being able to take a selfie from space, which is a crazy idea. What are the kind of Issues from a privacy and ethical standpoint that you have to think through when we're talking about taking pictures and mapping, people's property, because obviously we have the rules where your property lines don't extend vertically upward.But they only go up so high. So where's the privacy kind of layer come into effect. I know we've seen some interesting situations with drones, but satellites has just, that's a whole nother. On the other level, it seems because you have a lot more, ability to see things you may not be able to see in any other way, which again, not saying Teran is out to do bad things, but there are plenty of bad people in the world.So how do we think about this kind of moving forward as we map earth from space, we work for the good people in the worldthat, you bring up a very good question. There are lots of laws out there to what we can and can't. And when we can, and can't image a, there are lots of laws today that perk to protect us citizens. Not necessarily global citizens but it is a as they control resolution. So the resolution we can image and the resolution we're allowed to sell are two different things.So we can sell, we can image super high resolution. We, we can, but we can't sell that to the public. So they learn and that's when national security. Otherwise we'd just be reading the text on your phone as you type. And so it is a it does bring up some interesting questions on privacy.I have or I have friends who accidentally got taken a picture of. From a satellite of him laying on his backyard. And so we started a picture, we laughed very hard and he was almost laughing. And it's it is going to be, does more and more of these imaging satellites go up there.Then it's going to have to be some sort of regularly. To protect your privacy, because if you're out in your backyard, sunbathing, and let's say you were going for new 10 lines, you don't want that picture. And then you hop on Google and but I'm trying, I'm sure everybody would be imaging every pool in Vegas if they could do that.So there are privacy issues abound, and it's going to be, there will be somewhere where regulations, I think drones right now are the bigger problem because you can't get the go over your property. Shoot them down. You can't take them down. You can't shut them down. He came and put a drone net up, you can't.So it's a real privacy issue of having that, having drones over your property. And now, right now it's a much bigger issue from space then from space and listen. I see drones buzzing around all the time where I live and, we don't like it, but there's nothing we can do about it right now.Yeah, it is interesting. It's when we get into these new spaces and this is what we've talked about this in crypto, Mike and I have, it's just interesting, like you get into a space where humans haven't really had to think about these problems before. We haven't really been able to just hover above someone's property before it's it presents these interesting interesting problems to, to think through.But on the positive side, like you were saying, it also presents solutions that we. Ever imagined like the whole crop issue and being able to predict, okay, we're going to have a, have an issue with supply of food over here. Let's move some food around. Let's make sure that this country sells to this country to make sure they're taking care of that.That's something where I think it seems like the positives could outweigh the the cons, even though I am somewhat skeptical sometimes or can be less positive than a than Mike, I do think in the long run, we're, our human ingenuity is pretty astounding. And the fact that they took a satellite, made it into a cube that is a little bigger than a large Rubik's cube.Kind of wild to me, so I'm sure we can solve these issues. I believe, I always tell people, who privacy issue does come up a lot. And I tell people just don't do anything wrong. Don't do anything you don't want to see on the cover of the New York post. And you're doing okay. And as long as that's my metric and that's why I lived my life as long as I don't care, if it ends up on the cover of the New York post it's.Okay. And so you want to make sure that whatever you're doing, you do the right thing. And that, that is cause there's no reason why you should be doing something wrong and just live your life.A lot of freedoms in this country, you should have. Touching off of that. And we've mentioned a little bit of, the situation that Ukraine right now, but that for me looking at space and go individual privacy and the individual's perspective zooming out to, we've never really, at least since, since decades, at this point, we never really had as intense of a possibility of conflict.Between two space powers, astronauts from both Russia and the U S and the ISS. So it's like what do you think is there the capability for space war in the future? It's all scifi and everything, but it's something that definitely seems to be interesting, especially now that conflict is a little more sadly normalized.I don't know. What are your perspectives on the future of space? Defense, he's a space wars person. You said space defense. So we'll tackle it from both sides, and we have a very sophisticated military. That's doing some very sophisticated things and we live a very blessed life here in the United States.Because it's all the things that don't happen that you never read about that you never hear about is what allows you to live your life. Because if you knew everything that was going on, you'd never go to a shopping mall. You never go to a restaurant and you probably would leave the country for the rallies because of the phenomenal job that the U S government does in protecting us is that we are able to leave the life that we.And that's on the defense side on the worst side, I'm sure there's somebody somewhere that even the Pentagon building, trying to figure out how to build a death star. I totally see it happening. It's just know somebody's gotta be creative enough to say, Hey, we just build a battleship in space and that's it.But the reality is nobody wants to do there's no such thing as winning. Everybody loses at the end of the day, both sides lose because those are things as a winner, no matter what the outcome is, war everybody loses. And and what's going on right now is incredibly unfortunate in the Ukraine because there really was no need for it.And, and all these people are dying for no reason and it's not making the world a better place. It's just destroying. And and that's that's the problem. And, but, we have, we will, I would like to think the human race is becoming more evolved, but obviously not. And the space is becoming a contested domain, just like the Chinese are building all these islands in the south Pacific and it's taken, the Ukraine has taken away.China and Taiwan conversation, if you know that you're, if the Europeans, really got their act together and cut off north school, And bit the bullet and cough Russia's supply of cash. Then all of a sudden, there'd be some real economic sanctions with some real power who are still, they're still paying billions of dollars a year to the Russians in funding, or they're a military attack cut off their money and they'll stop.And, but the U S the Germans don't want to do that. And they can't cause they. And so the true lined off, because it's winter time, the waiting the summertime in order to stop a war, which is ridiculous. We have in the U S the Chinese economy relies on us, but the Chinese are, I've never really, I've never been aggressors.So you had a peaceful handover of Hong Kong, there could be people arguing about freedoms. But overall, it was a peaceful handover in the military. All of the lease expires for the British and the Chinese moved in, but that was their island. They were able to do that Sydney with Macau Taiwan is a different story.But I'm hoping that will be a piece of resolution at some point in the future and not a conflict which would decimate the island. Yeah. It's interesting. You were, you're saying. To think that humans are more evolved and it is an interesting hole to run down. But you mentioned earlier that, even if we are or are not, that's a totally separate question.If there were other. Life forms out there on other Goldilocks planets, and they found us first. You think that they would just run away and hightailed away. I tend to agree with you. I think maybe Mike would have a different opinion. What's your opinion? Ever the optimist, maybe I am, maybe I hope they say hello or something that I guess will.Yeah. If I was smart enough to travel light years, And I found this shit, the shit storm going on, I go right back there. There, there are better planets to go visit. So my question is underlying that people are always asking this question. Are there other earths out there? And you seem, you hinted.You seem to think there are. It could be very intelligent lifeforms up there as well. I am super open to the possibility. I would love to think that there's aliens out there we could interact with, I don't know if they would want to interact with us, but what is your after launching lots of things into space and studying space, what is your kind of thought process on that?In whole it's pierced, it's pure odds. It's like going to Vegas and gambling at a rillette table. There are only so many numbers, you're going to win. There are so many planets, so many. I only need to apply in at a certain distance from the sun to have you a Goldilocks planet, to have the right heat temperature for things to be able to grow.Now, keep in mind, earth is very young compared to the rest of the universe. And as a civilization, we're very young. So they're going to be civilizations that are millions of years old, that hyper sophisticated or ones that never got sophisticated for. There has to be somebody in other people that are out there.And they're not just going to come here and bring us. That's an old Woody Allen joke from years ago, but they are there is a it's just statistically speaking. There has to be other things going on. But, be careful what you wish for. They could bring a calm, their common cold could be a deadly virus to us.They could be the friendliest people on earth when they, we always make movies that they're always hostile because that's what sells tickets. You never have a movie that they're all friendly and happy go lucky. And they don't have, they have utopia, that would be nice. And they're just happy go lucky people that just want to hang out and have fun.But then again, we and then when, again, and again, I go back and, I look at what goes on in DC and I'm like, oh, they're already here. Andyeah, I think that's what I could agree with a lot of wild characters out there. That's for sure. Sometimes they feel a foreign to our planet too. Yeah, it's interesting. I always think of, I always think of. Twilight zone episode to serve, man, have you seen the Twilight zone where it's there?All the aliens come down and they're very nice and leave. All of these ways to just fix society. And then everyone's all the people are going to the alien planet and they're all getting eaten. That's a cookbook, the whole Sony pictures did a great short called the Chub chubs. If any of our listeners want to download, it's got four minute video, but these little parties, but furry, little funny creatures that just eat you.And but they're very cute until the youth. And so it's a very funny. Too funny. So I have to bring it back down to earth here to use it, to use a good punter. She'd never that one, mark. So you guys just went public and I believe it was through a SPAC. Is that correct? We did. We did. We decided there are three, as there are three ways to go public and do an IPO.A direct listing or a spec, and we've done it. And I did this back before my spec was in 2007 called enterprise acquisition. So $250 million back, we deice back to 2009 with 90% redemptions into a company that today is armor ARR in the New York stock.And I'm with art with AMR on a $25 million beginning equity base. That's what we started off. We've paid out over $1.8 billion of dividends and and returned on the $7 million PO or promote reparented return to significant portions of promote. So it was a hundreds of millions to promote it. So we did.We created a very good structure that was good for everybody and showed us a house backs can work and there'd be prop and work out. So in our case, if we had tried to do an IPO on February 24th, we would have had what's called a market out. Meaning all the books would have impacted. We've had that happen.I want to try to price a deal on the day of the Greek debt crisis. And we had a market out that day and didn't go public. And we wanted certainty of close. We created a unique $250 million exit financing arrangement with Francisco partners between capital industrial, Lockheed Martin and others that allow guaranteed.And we would have a positive back, which is what. And now we're no longer a spec and we never want to hear that four letter word again. They have a very bad rap but I keep reminding people it's just because they bought bad targets. It's all about the company they're merging with and has nothing to do with the vehicle.Interesting. Yeah, you were doing specs and you said 2007 was the first. Yeah. So you were doing them way before they were cool. They were cool in 2020 and 2021. And that was the hip thing to do was, oh yeah. We're going to go public through a spec and clearly it can be done and it just needs to be done.Correct. And w it's all about the target? So the, oh, they're all these companies that are emerging into specs that never should have gone public, especially all these new space companies that don't have a re don't have real revenues. They don't have a real backlog. Don't have real management. They don't have a real pipeline.They don't have real customers. They just have an idea that's called venture capital. And they should never have been allowed to emerge into a spec. And of course they're all missing their numbers. They're all there. They're being investigated. The FCC rightfully they are, it's just, they never, this should've been rules to allow companies like that.In our case, we announced our over $200 million. We are we are, we announced, reviewed our numbers for last year. I think we're the first space back to we actually beat their numbers. And so we are continuing to continuing to fly ahead on our work speed and we're doing exceptionally well.And and we continue to build our business at a rapid pace. What do you think? Is it that sets apart? The successful space companies. Cause it's it. I think it was mind boggling for me to see the rise of space X, how it went from an idea to real in there. It seemed like a very short time, especially if you look back at, very old legacy, Lockheed Martin, like you mentioned or the other companies that have been in aerospace for a long time, it's amazing to see companies come into the space realm, which is this incredibly capital intensive.Space and succeed. What do you think is what separates the ones that do succeed from the ones that, don't get the numbers. So let's take space sex as an example. So what seems like a short time flies Ilan started 20 years ago. It is 20 years in the making and everyone forgets in the early days of space.A lot of things used to blow up and a lot of things used to crash, but he stuck with it and he innovated and he kept building. So then I look at turnover. We started with young over 10 years ago and we stuck with it and we kept innovating and we kept going. And so we are, it's you learn from your.And, we're not to the end. You hear all these startups and he's still private and people aren't, people would always tell me that I should have stayed private and I should have enjoyed the being private, but we are in like Ilan we're in a capital intensive business. But because of our business that we're in, it's not very sexy in terms of.Talking about our customer programs, talking about what we do, because we do a lot of work for the national security. So it's not like we can tell you, oh, we're building this really cool satellite. And and I can see you laying in bed and every new Orleans had been with you kind of thing.You can't do stuff like that. And so we're trying very hard to we've taught the public markets, give us a better, easier access to capital to continue to expand. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I also wanted to ask you, I know you mentioned, and I don't know if it was when I was researching beforehand or if we'd talked about this before, but you mentioned that you're the ones building the satellites, right?The keeps hats. And then we don't reduce that to anymore. We haven't pulled the cube setting. Those are okay. Got it. Okay. So you're building the satellites though. Not now. I'll start with that. We build satellites now, the size of your refrigerator in your house. That's got gotcha. But you're not though.You're not actually building the rocket that launches that into space. Is that. No Eland does a very good job of that. So he builds the rockets. We build the satellites. It's a very symbiotic. Gotcha. Okay. So the question I was going to ask is when it comes to launching other things, I know this is not necessarily specific to what Tara is doing, but just with your experience, when it comes to launching other things like human beings, we've seen a lot of human launches that.Super they didn't go very far into space, but they were definitely, out into space through blue origin, through space X, when it comes to those types of things, just space travel for humans, not necessarily launching technology up there. What do you think about the kind of the long run outlook for, say Mike or I hop it on a hopping on a space shuttle and going up and.Looking down at earth. What do you see, do you think that's just going to remain this elite class thing? Or do you think that's going to become a little bit more democratized? Do you think it could? The numbers are hard. I think. Space travel. The cost will continue to decrease.So it'll become more accessible people, but we say travel, right now. And you're on the road to nowhere because you don't. So they need to build like a restaurant in space or something cool like that, where you can get out, go have lunch, then come back. This is the. And rallies it's going to happen.Someone's going to build a space station, a private test-based station, and some guy, then you're going to get David Grutman from Miami. He's going to build a restaurant on it cause you're already down. So he's going to go build the rest of the restaurant is on a space station and he's going to make it happen.He's going to put a nightclub in there too, and then you're going to have a roof. Then you're going to have a real party. They'll let live Miami. And we were trying to, but it's going to be, it's going to, those are probably things in the realm of reality the realm of, going to the moon for vacation, that's a long way away.And to Mars or vacation, that's probably not in our lifetime. But in orbit. Yeah, I think it's the Costco. You'll see people spending money and you're seeing your wealthy people like Elan, like bayzos on others are able to afford and fund building private space stations, and then they got to figure out how to try to turn it into a revenue generator to sustain.I think that's a great point to bring up because it seems like. The idea of colonizing or, I think, like you said we're pretty far away from, cause I think people forget just how far even just the moon, how far away the moon physically is from the earth and Mars, especially as it is very far.And I think people can fall into a tendency to forget just how much potential there is enormous. That seems like a really, maybe an overlooked untapped idea. Is that kind of what you sense from a lot of people? Yeah. I use a lot of opportunity in space, but you also to remember spaces, dangerous, the odds of you coming by you, the odds of you coming back are not great.And that is that's the scary. Space is still a very dangerous thing. They haven't made, it is not as dangerous as you recall. I still more dangerous in your car. It's Niagara. And if you go to the drive to the airport is more dangerous than getting on the plane, even though everyone thinks flying is dangerous, right?You have a better chance of dying on the way to the airport, the fly on a plane. You're going to space is very dangerous. It's going to come down. It's going to become less than one, the written with more and more risk-free, you're still, strapping yourselves to audio, a few million pounds of fuel.And as far as lighting a match and you're wishing yourself luck that's a risk. It's a, it's quite a ride, but still it's your, the beginning. And sometimes they go, boom. But they will make it safer just like they made cars safer and they will, it's going to happen. And and then that's when things started getting really exciting.Yeah. It seems like there's a lot to look forward to as far as the long run of space and a lot to think about too, as far as, how do we. Work through some of the problems we talked about. And also what are the amazing possibilities that seems like they're almost endless, I'm sure there's some end point to some of these, there's a lot of solutions you can provide by getting essentially eyes in the sky, but more eyes in the space, so for our listeners who are looking at this area of the capital markets, obviously it's. Hot topic. It's always fun to talk about space and space travel, but for our listeners, how should they be thinking? Obviously this is not, we don't give financial advice here, but we like to think, okay, how could we be thinking about space, travel about space businesses?Like you said, it costs a lot of money. Just to put someone and, or something up into space right now. So it needs to be, there needs to be some sort of, from a business standpoint, there needs to be some sort of revenue driver there. And you guys are doing it from the defense side. It sounds like a bit, but there's also, other companies looking to do to supplement what you're doing.Elon Musk is building the rocket. So there's a lot of different ways to create revenue. How should we think about that from a business perspective, this whole space area? Part of it is yo, the innovation from space, things like scratch resistant lenses, ear thermometers, shoe insoles, and visible braces for your teeth, cordless tools, tap water filters, memory foam.Now satellite navigation all came about. From things in space, there was a company called maiden space that we had invested in that was on the ISS that actually made things in space, so there is lots of things in space that come out. Engineering-wise, there's lots of opportunities to build things in a zero G environment that you can't build in a gravity environment.Like I mentioned earlier, perfectly. No gravity, certainly there's certain things. You've been manufacturing space. That's easier and cheaper to manufacture on earth. It's just getting it back and forth right now is the expensive part where they'll fit up. That cost will come down eventually. It's, there's lots of innovate innovation and there's a science, basic science or learning more about our planet, as we're able to watch our planet in real time, we'll learn a lot more about what.We'll learn a lot more about global warming and how it's affecting us. We build more and more kinds of sensors to study our earth. And the goal is to, stop famine, figure out when storms are coming, sooner to do better weather tracking. It's, the list is endless, what can be done from space.And that turns into dollars for businesses. You have people like us that are creating businesses that are we're enabling companies are enabling the governments to go ahead and solve problems from space that you couldn't do before economically. Yeah, it sounds like there's, again, a lot of possibilities.I didn't even think about manufacturing in space. That would be totally different than manufacturing with gravity. That's just blowing my mind right here. Zero gravity would be a completely different you'd be able to build completely differently. And I'm sure, probably like you said, things that you couldn't build here on earth, where you have to deal with gravity because that has to be factored in everything.That's very interesting. It's great to hear that that you have such a positive view. You keep saying it's going to get cheaper. The costs are going to come down and I have to agree with you. It seems like just what we've seen. At least in my lifetime, and I'm not that old. What we've seen is just spectacular as far as the ability for.Things to be gotten into space and come back. Sometimes they blow up, like you said, but most of the time not. And that, that sort of long run optimism, I think can definitely help with this innovation here. It's pretty mind boggling to think that not, just flight in general is so new.I've ever seen a chart, like showing human progress and it's like the Wright brothers. And then it's oh, first space launch is like very shortly after in the grand scheme of things, which is mind boggling. And I I think I'd say as we're running a little bit low on time here, I do have one question that I really want to ask, which is I've heard a lot of people draw comparisons.To computing and how, we've seen computational technology gets smaller and more powerful and I've heard people say, okay, the space is going to be similar. It's going to go on this. This upward trajectory. Do you see that as a good analogy or is it different? Is it is it more complex?It's going to take longer to move up that slope? I think you're not seeing things moving at a very rapid trajectory because people are in governments are investing a lot of money to make them. Before there wasn't a lot of investment that went on to make things change. Everybody was happy for 50 years with the status quo.Now it's, everything's changing and everybody's everyone realizes you can actually do a lot more, a lot cheaper and a lot faster. And we're seeing, I visit a time when you'll literally be able to order a satellite on Monday and get it on Friday. And that, that is, so that is a desire of many to have satellites on.Wow. That's incredible, mark. Thank you so much for infusing. At least me and I think you Austin, as well as some optimism on the long run of space, and it's just incredible to even just think about it. Thank you very much for having me today, gentlemen. It's been the longer end show with Mark Bell, chairman and CEO of Terran orbital, go check out tearing and all the amazing stuff that they're doing.This is Michael O'Connor and Austin Wilson from the long run show. We'll catch you next time. .Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-long-run-show/donations

Overview Paul is a musician, runs a recycling business and lives with his wife and kids in California. He has spent 5 years tweaking this book to get the right blend of humor and sci-fi goodness. PAUL BAHOU is the author of Sunset Distortion: The Pyramid at the End of the World. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Cal State University Long Beach with a minor in music. He began his career writing grants while playing in his rock band, eventually moving out of music and into the sustainability sector. He lives in Southern California with his wife Melissa, daughter Sophie and son Harrison. He writes fiction, music and the occasional dad joke in his spare time. His Book https://www.amazon.com/Sunset-Distortion-Pyramid-End-World-ebook/dp/B08T3G8HWB?&_encoding=UTF8&tag=mindarchitect-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=fc1cf6c6464322afb1457754c6d37684&camp=1789&creative=9325 Lazer is an almost made it, middle aged guitarist who plays in an 80'shard rock cover band at a Sunset Strip dive bar. While not quite a rockstar, he plays to a packed house nightly. His blissful inertia is disruptedone night however when he is abducted by aliens and given a strangeimprint on his hand: A key which will send him on an intergalacticjourney in search of an artifact that gives its possessor "infin ite life."With the help of his new friend Streek; A timid floating octopus creaturewith an English accent, Lazer will have to survive encounters withmonsters, robots, alien pirates, inter dimensional brain leeches andmuch more. Will Lazer get back home What does 'infinite life' actuallymean? And why does everybody in space speak English? All answersawait at the pyramid at the end of the world. Website https://paulbahouwrites.com Favorites https://www.amazon.com/Slaughterhouse-Five-Novel-Modern-Library-Novels-ebook/dp/B000SEGHT6?&_encoding=UTF8&tag=mindarchitect-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=171429fae26c2c3d5acf46937bb8e87a&camp=1789&creative=9325 YouTube https://youtu.be/6tDM9tTdMnk Transcript [00:00:44] Stephen: Hello, welcome to episode 1 0 8 discovered. Today I have Paul bow, who he's a, from California, we bonded as musicians. It seems a lot of authors are musicians, which I think is great. [00:01:00] Uh, so he and I had a little discussion about that, but he also is the author of humorous Saifai and, uh, we had a good talk about that. He mentioned, um, Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. So, you know, it's gotta be good if that was one of his influences. So before we get DePaul again, anybody, if you're listening, if this book sounds good, go pick it up. Go read it, leave a review for it. If you have other books you've grabbed and read, please help those authors out, leave reviews for them. And if you do like the podcast, Like that we get all sorts of new authors, a big variety, have some good talks. Good interviews, please. If you're thinking of podcasting, if you're thinking of doing your own, uh, thing, uh, like this, uh, click on the links, check it out. Uh, the links are affiliate links from the site in the show notes. They don't hurt. [00:02:00] Uh, when you get something, but they helped me out a little bit. If enough people did it, it helps support some of the costs for the show. So before I go any further, why don't we just turn it over and let's talk about. Let's go. Alright, let's go. So Paul, welcome to a discovered word, Smith. How are you doing today? [00:02:19] Paul: Just PG. It's a beautiful day. My son just turned one all as well with the universe. [00:02:24] Stephen: Yeah, that's a good thing. Good fun time. Birthday cake tonight. I take it. [00:02:28] Paul: Yeah. And he doesn't know he's won it just, he still eats random things. He finds on the floor. He doesn't, [00:02:35] Stephen: it'll be fun for you guys. Yeah, that's [00:02:38] Paul: right. [00:02:39] Stephen: Paul, before we get, go and talking about your book,

Overview MT attributes much of his long term success to being in a good group. Community and hearing from other authors is critical to long term success. An aspect that is difficult is getting feedback or getting criticized. MT has some words of wisdom for this and we talk about how authors can use groups to improve their craft. YouTube https://youtu.be/tTA5KUmOPRE Transcript [00:00:48] Stephen: All right. So let's roll into some author stuff because I love talking to people that have been writing. My goal is to talk to authors that aren't know and help get word out, which you fall [00:01:00] into that category where you started off before the whole self publishing thing and you've rolled into it. So what have you learned from when you first started to now, especially with things being so digital, what have you learned that you're doing different? [00:01:17] MT: Yeah, I'm doing different. Excuse me. The one big thing is nine out instead of. Writing out my pencil on paper, on the college rule paper, I do everything. I do everything direct into a Scribner. That's the program I use. It's a great program. That was one of the best things I bought was a little $19 Bluetooth keyboard. So I can just sit. And that was a big change. Yeah. Other than that, you just, you gotta get up and write and do it just all the time. And then beyond that, like we were talking earlier trying to build a community people, editors, and [00:02:00] you know, other authors and things like that to spread out because we're all loners. It's not really a group activity. So we belonged in the Cleveland writers. And that's pretty valuable because Dave is focused on the marketing end of things. So once you have a book and getting it out and promoting it and getting it sold, that's a huge prospect besides just putting together a book so that, so that's valuable, they're coming up with different ideas to promote it. And then I'm in another group called the west side writers group, which is a small. I think there is five or six of us and we get together the third Saturday, and it's a critique group, which you put out about three or 4,000 words, and then you get a critique on it. That's really important to, you know, to hear what other people perceive about what you're [00:03:00] writing like mysteries. I know that I know the ending, so I can't pull myself. But you get important feedback about what they think is going to happen. What are the red herrings what's working? What isn't and that's pretty valuable too. [00:03:17] Stephen: So doing this for a while, I assume checked out other groups or they've come and gone. Why choose these particular groups and stay with [00:03:26] MT: them? Like I said, most of the other writing groups I was involved with were critique group. Like the west side writers group, some of them were, their focus was like game of Thrones stuff. That's all they wanted to read about. And so I don't fit that. So I just moved on. Whereas with the west side writers group, it's all different genres outcome does Saifai and I do mysteries. What kind of a. [00:04:00] Yeah, I get to see him twice a month when we get together. So, you know, so there's a wide variety. There it's a small enough group that you can consistently get critique. Cause it gets tough to join a group critique one month and then you don't get critiqued for another three months. So I've been able to run, oh, probably 1, 2, 3, I'm on my fifth book that I've run. And that feedback is just great consistently month in and month out getting the feedback. So that's why some of them [00:04:34] Stephen: dropped off because not all groups are critiquing groups, not all groups are about marketing and stuff. Some really are just to maybe hone the craft, but have somebody to talk to. I've been in several different groups, but it's also. I guess the overall feel with everybody because I, there were some that I'm like, yeah,

Overview MT - who goes by Mudcat - has been writing for years in his current, and other, series. We live near each other in Ohio and attend the same monthly writer group (which we discuss in the 2nd half of the podcast.) His books are a combination sci-fi thriller and police procedural drama. His Book https://www.amazon.com/Motherless-Children-Artificial-Intelligence-Techno-Thrillers-ebook/dp/B0B14169PQ?&_encoding=UTF8&tag=mindarchitect-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=e0c1ae2c1e55b178e96510edb638b072&camp=1789&creative=9325 Website https://mtbassauthor.wordpress.com/ YouTube https://youtu.be/ypmzUN7Er7w Transcript [00:00:47] Stephen: Welcome to episode 1 0 6 of discovered wordsmiths. Today. I have empty bass who goes by mud cat. He's someone I actually know and have met in person, which isn't always the case. When you do a [00:01:00] podcast like this, and you're talking to people not only from all over the country, but all over the world. So a lot of times you don't get to meet them face to face, unless you happen to run into him at a conference or. So it's nice to have someone that I've talked to physically in-person sat at the same table. We know each other through a community that we are a part of up in Cleveland, finished publish, polished, publish. We used to meet at the old airport, the Burke front, small airport, I should say. And now they meet in a barn, but we've been doing it mostly remote. Mudcat has an interesting series of books that are murdered by Munchhausen and their Saifai. And he's been writing them for awhile and he's got other books, but just the murder, but Munchausen always captured my interest because that was such an interesting series focus. So anyway we had a good discussion about his books and we have a good discussion in the second part about. [00:02:00] Community. So check that out. But also if you've been listening to the podcast, please go find these authors, go read their books. That's why we do it. That's what they want. And these books are wonderful. There's a lot of good authors go to the website, find other books that you may not have heard the. And also if you're at the website, let me ask you to click on our sponsored links. If you are going to be trying to do a podcast or you're looking for any type of services, I'm adding some of these sponsored links, just to help defray some of the costs there's costs with hosting there's costs with sometimes getting a quick. And it takes some time. So this just helps me to keep doing this, to help all the authors and help people find great new books. It's a win-win for everybody. It doesn't cost anything to click one of the links. It is just something that if you sign up and like a service. You'll get sometimes a discount, but I get a few pennies back and over time with all the people [00:03:00] clicking, it helps it builds up. And I appreciate it. But even more importantly, give us some likes, give us some reviews, do the same for the authors. You don't know how great it is to get some reviews to get. Likes on your book. It helps way more than you may think. And unless authors are getting their books sold, they're not going to write anymore. So if you like an author, whether they're on my podcast or not, please go do a review, go like their book, wherever you get it from, it will help them a lot. So anyway, I'm done battling let's hear from us. Mudcat welcome to discover word Smith officially. How are you today? I'm doing [00:03:37] MT: great. Thanks for having me [00:03:38] Stephen: on enjoying the nice weather that went from snow to downpour. [00:03:43] MT: We got a little bit of downpour, but now it's getting cold. It went from 55 down to 36 while I was I wasn't about today. [00:03:51] Stephen: Yeah. We're probably going to get more so great. Yay. Good. Yeah. I know you a little bit from a group where in [00:04:00] together, which we'll talk about later,

Overview Edward lives in Canada, though he did grow up in Texas. Not only does he write, but he is the editor for a sci-fi series, which we discuss on today's show. Edward has been writing full time for almost 30 years and has won several awards and has his own publishing company. His stories range from sci-fi to fantasy and non-fiction. Edward also runs a podcast and has gotten to talk with many well known authors. Many of these authors have had stories in the sci-fi anthologies that Edwards edits. His Book Shaper of Worlds Website https://shadowpawpress.com/ Favorites Six of Crows YouTube Sponsored by: I use Dreamhost for the website: https://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?2152744 I use Draft2Digital for most of my publishing https://www.draft2digital.com/r/Re1DJR Transcript [00:00:46] Stephen: Hello, welcome to episode 1 0 3 today. Have a special treat for you. Instead of an author that has just gotten started. We have an author that has been doing this for almost 30 years. Edward Willett. He writes Saifai, but he [00:01:00] also compiles and edits compendiums of scifi with some of the best Saifai authors out there. And we talk about the latest book that's coming out. Uh, he also does a podcast where he interviews. Authors. And that's what part B is for talking to authors about podcasting and interviewing guests that are, um, bigger names, guests that, uh, everybody's heard of. We talked about how that might be different. We had to talk about what it's like to compile and edit short stories for other authors. So it's. Interview a great conversation. We did this, uh, in the snowy Christmas time, which I find interesting because here it is mid April for me and I'm looking outside and it is still snowing. So, uh, it was kind of a bookend here for that episode. Also, a lot of people have said they love the podcast and I think that's great. I try and get them. Interesting authors and talk to them with interesting topics and good books. And one of the things that would be great is [00:02:00] if people left reviews, left some stars, some thumbs up, uh, to help out the podcast, the more people that listen the better it is for everybody, me as the podcast, uh, creator and the authors who are writing these great books. But also if you would really like to help, uh, My time, I spend money for the hosting. I spend money for the publishing of the podcasts. There's various fees and costs to do this. Uh, what would be great is I'm including some sponsor links in the show notes and on the website. So if you're going to use one of these services, That I use like blueberry or using WordPress or hosting with DreamHost. If you're going to use one of these, go click on that link and then sign up for it because it doesn't cost you anything more. And it would give me a little bit that could help defer the costs for all the episodes. So you've probably heard that spiel before, uh, it's uh, rings true everywhere. So check out my sponsored links. Give me a [00:03:00] shout out. It would help a lot. So here's. Edward. I want to officially welcome you to a discovered wordsmith podcast. How are you doing this morning? Thanks for having me on. Yeah, it's great. We got the connect kind of last minute. So it fills into time. That's perfect. So before we had started talking about your book, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you like to do, where you live that. [00:03:22] David: I live in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, but I've not from here originally. I was born in silver city, New Mexico, where Billy, the kid shot his first sheriff at Baron. Like, uh, and then we lived in Texas and I moved up here from Texas as a kid. I've lived here ever since, started my career as a newspaper reporter photographer for a weekly newspaper. And then at the ripe old age of 24, I was the editor, the news editor of that newspaper. And I did that for a few.

Intro: Boz did MDMALet Me Run This By You: Will Smith and Chris RockInterview: We talk to Katharine Scarborough about The New School, Ron Leibman, Robert LuPone, Casey Biggs, the Actor's Studio, Neil Labute's Fat Pig, Harvard's A.R.T., Shakespeare & Company, Moscow Art Theatre, Biomechanics, Michael Chekhov technique, Michael Chekhov Theatre Festival, Ragnar Freidank, Mabou Mines, Dixon Place, The Brick Theater, JoAnne Akalaitis, Big Girl web series, Jean Taylor, clowning, clown burlesque, improv culture, Bridesmaids, Melissa McCarthy, actor branding, cultivating a good relationship with agents, One on One NYC.FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited):2 (10s):And I'm Gina Kalichi.1 (11s):We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand.2 (15s):And at 20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all.1 (21s):We survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet? So I think the main thing I just want to say is like, I took drugs, but we call it the medicine. Right. Everyone's like in the ma so I did, and I won't, it's still illegal because it's still in third clinical trials, but I took MTMA with a trained MTMA guide. Who's also a therapist whose name I shall not say so that she doesn't go to jail for some weird reasons. And I'm going to tell you, and you probably already know this from your, from, I know you have some like knowledge about psychiatry or about psychedelics in terms of medical use and stuff like that.1 (1m 12s):Not that you've done them, but you know what I mean? I know you, whatever the point is, I think it's going to change psychiatry. Like it's going to change2 (1m 21s):A hundred percent.1 (1m 22s):I had. Okay. First of all, I was scared shitless. So MTMA is the pure forum for people that don't know of, of ecstasy or Molly, but it's, it's, you know, pharmaceutical grade and it's whatever, it's very, you know, whatever, it's a, it's a legit medicine, but I was scared. I was like, I'm going to die. I'm going to take this. This is where for someone that has anxiety more than I have depression, I think now anyway, in my life, the fear was I'm I'm doing something illegal. This is wrong. And I'm going to suffer for it also, like that was the moralistic fear. And then the actual fear of what the fuck is going to happen.1 (2m 3s):So for people, you know, just so people know, like you're in this person, rented a house and Airbnb and had a beautiful, I was, it was just me and her and a beautiful, like, amazing bed. That was that she brings in. That's like a foam, a memory foam. It's not as shitty thing. It's like really great. And I even thought that before I was on drugs, right? Like I was like, this is a really good setup. The house was a neutral house. Meaning she picked a great thing, which was there. Wasn't the, the family of the people's art on the walls. It was like pictures of surfing and stuff and like water.1 (2m 44s):But like not a lot of people, there were no mirrors. Like I was like, is this made for this? And she's like, no, I just found this. There was no, no, the house was clean. So it felt really good. Right. But not sterile. So that was great. And she had flowers and stuff and there was like a table set up. So then you go in, you bring objects and, and pictures, if you want. And there's two kinds of MDM assisted therapy, right. There's talk therapy you could do with two therapists. I did not. This, this practitioner does not do that kind. She's a firm believer in like letting the client lead their own experience.1 (3m 26s):And at first I was like, oh, I hate that. I want you to take care of me. Like I was like, I want all the therapists in the room. Right. It was like a real, and then I said, you know, no, I'm gonna, I'm an adult. Like I can it's. Okay. And also when you have two therapists in the room, they, they, they use the music less. So what I will say is the music was, I would say 90% of what was amazing about this. I don't even like music really. Like, I'm not a music person, but you, you literally have your headphones noise, canceling headphones with th with curated music from MTMA musicians.1 (4m 7s):So people that have scientists have worked with psychiatrists and doctors to develop music specifically for psychedelic MTMA journeys it's and it's timed with the medicines. So, because they know, because they've done studies, they know the trajectory of the journey in terms of what you're going to be, what kind of thing is going to be maybe happening. So they time this music. So you put on these headphones and there's like blankets. And I brought my own blanket. And it's you do like beforehand, you say a prayer and like, not a prayer, but like, yeah, like, like a, like a meditation tension.1 (4m 47s):We said, I, and believe me, this was not something I took lightly in terms of, I for weeks have been committed to doing it. So then there's a workbook beforehand there's sessions with the therapist beforehand. So it is not a party. This is not, I cannot say this enough. It is a journey and not a party. So meaning that it's a whole thing. It's like a process it's it's therapy. It's it's medical treatment is what it is. Okay. So you have this headphones on and also the music is playing in the room as well, the same music. So that even if you take your headphones off, you hear it and okay. And you have total blackout shades on, on your eyes.1 (5m 31s):So a mask that is comfortable and soft, but really dark. And I was like, oh my God, I'm going to die. Like, this is, this is it. This is how I die. And then I was like, you know what? You have so much, like you you've done so much research. You've watched the videos, you know, this is not gonna, they're gonna kill you, but you're scared. Okay. But I just took the pill. I was like, okay, here we go. So I took the pill and then you lay down and you're like, okay, it's not working. Like none of it. And by the way, I've never taken equity in my life. I've taken throughs and I'm taking acid and obviously marijuana I've smoked and stuff and edibles, but never that. So I was like, nah, it's not working.1 (6m 12s):And then the music, okay, well, all I can say is it becomes a party for your body and the notes I will share with you in an email that she took. I said some of the funniest things that I've ever said, and also you're like still aware that you're you. So it's not the feeling because for someone like me who has trauma and panic, the big fears that you'll disappear, I will disappear. I won't have an identity and no one will take care of me. And I will, I will totally decompensate to the point of death. Like that is really the thing, this drug, this medicine, you know, you're still you like, if, if, if a police officer, God forbid came up and said, what's your name?1 (6m 57s):And you could answer all those questions. It's just, it literally turns off the part of your brain that is super judgy. So I knew what was happening sort of, but then the music, I was like, okay, this is not working. And all of a sudden, Gina, the music becomes the most beautiful music you've ever heard in your life. Like, you can't believe that humans made the music. Like I was like, this is, and I, I kept saying, this is like watching a movie with your body. So you're. Yeah. So you're like, and then, okay, so you feel, I felt great. And like, you're underwater, you can breathe under water and there's some visuals, but you're seeing nothing.1 (7m 40s):I mean, there's no, there's black, but you're seeing it. So you are kind of hallucinating. But the thing, and the thing that happens is with MTMA is that the whole principle is that inside of us, that these MTMA psychiatrists and therapists believe that there is an inner healer drive to live person who knows better inside of all of us before the trauma happens. Right. It's moved that we access that part of ourselves during the MTMA journey and you, and that's why they say trust the medicine. And I'm like, that is, fuck you. Trust them like beforehand. I was like, but you, and don't get ahead of the medicine, all these things they say.1 (8m 21s):And you're like, what? But you, you know what it means once you do it, you're like you is the most. So you're feeling good. I felt like you just feel relaxed and, but it gets you in that state. So then you can look at your trauma, so,3 (8m 38s):Oh, okay. Like making everything, just so PR conditions being perfect. Yeah.1 (8m 44s):And then you're like, oh, this is a hard song. So it feels like, oh, this is a hard song. And that's how I started to feel. This is going to be a song. And it, and I can only tell you that, like I worked through some it's, it is, it's like 12 therapy sessions in six hours in a, in a, in a, in a wonderful way in that I looked at some stuff, some crazy stuff, but it is not, we're not when we're on MTMA we're not attached to the trauma. So it's like watching a movie, but also you're feeling it.1 (9m 27s):Like I could feel fear and panic come up. So it wasn't like I had a good time all the time, but I wasn't, you can go towards it without feeling like you're going to be annihilated. I didn't think I was ever going to be annihilated by my trauma in the, in the medicine. I felt like I had the resources and I knew there, and I was curious about what the songs and the music and the drug was going to show me rather than petrified. And I have to get the fuck out of here. And like, I don't care what I do.3 (10m 6s):Did you ha did you remember things that you hadn't remembered before?1 (10m 10s):No. It was like, well, no, no. It was like different. It does it in a way that is like, not you. So the things I worked through, I can say it was like a song and the music is timed. When you're at the peak of the medicine for this, it was like some crazy, like intense, you know, soundtrack to a scary, not a scary movie, like, like, like a war movie. Right. And you're like, oh God. And at least that was my experience. But then what happened was I had a nine 11 situation where I was in the burning building is so crazy. This is nine 11. And I'm in a burning building on the 94, but I'm not panicked. I'm like, okay, this is what's happening.1 (10m 52s):And I go to a man and a woman who are dressed in business clothes, and they're sort of tattered. And we've all been through this horrible crash. And I say, you guys, we have to jump now. And they're like, fuck, you know, way to a man and a woman blonde lady. And I say, listen, I know you're really scared work on a jump together. We're together. And this is the last conscious choice we get to make as a group to do, to take, to take our lives in our own hands. I'm going to ask you now to take my hands and we're going to jump and they're like petrified and I'm like, we can do it. And then, and I'm here watching Jen, the observers, like what is going to happen, but not like I got to get the fuck outta here and clawing at my skin.1 (11m 38s):No, no, no more like we, I knew that we had to do this. And so I took their hand and we jumped and then we started flying. We flew away. So I like helped them to, and it's really me helping me. Right. So like, I get that now. But like, and so I wasn't like petrified. So that was a huge moment. But the other moment was none of the people I didn't want to come in, came in. So like your inner healer knows, like I didn't want to see my parents and I didn't want to see my sister. And I didn't. I saw my dad in the, like a field and he was young and happy. Great. We like, that was great.1 (12m 18s):But in the song, there was a, like a Tibetan song nothing's in English, which is great. So like, if there are words and lyrics, it's not an English, which is great. Unless you speak those languages, then you might know what they're saying, but I did not. And so there was a Tibetan, like guys scream, like screaming, singing, like chanting. And in my head, I was like, oh, this is the reckoning song. This is where he makes other people atone for their sins against me. He's yelling at them, all the bad things they did to me. So I don't have to do it like stuff like that comes forward where you're like, holy fuck. So, and then the other thing was the name.1 (13m 1s):And I will say this, and I will not say the name, but the name of someone I think like sexually abused me as a child came forward. And it just said, the name of your perpetrator is, and then there was the name and it wasn't scary. And it was at the end of my journey. And it was sort of like, this is just the name and it's the name I knew. And it's a name that I had questions about. And I was like, oh, okay. And it was like, not a dun dun dong. It was like, this is3 (13m 33s):Okay. Okay. Oh my God. I make so many feelings.1 (13m 37s):Oh God. Yeah. So, so that is my, so my takeaways are still, I have many sessions afterwards. I'm gonna meet with her tonight on zoom. And we it's an ongoing process. I don't know if I'd ever do it again. They say like, you just do a maximum of three, three sessions for any person, unless you have like severe, severe trauma. And then sometimes they mix it with mushrooms and ketamine and they do all kinds of things for like combat veterans and stuff like that. Or just people that are really stuck for years that are on like 40 meds. And like can't. So I will say that it's changing psycho, like it, because you are self fricking guided.1 (14m 21s):It is, I didn't make the experience about anyone, but myself and I was able to take ownership over. Like it was parts were scary. Parts were lovely. Parts were fun, but it was my experience. So like, you don't lie.3 (14m 40s):You're the protagonist in a story.1 (14m 42s):And I didn't make the therapist, the leader, or I sh she was there as a witness. So what I'm saying about MTMA therapy is if you are committed to it is one it's just like fucking having a dog or getting married or anything else. If you don't really have to, or need to do it, I would say, don't do it. But if you are someone who is in therapy, working on your shit and you feel stuck, or you feel like there is a trauma that you just refuse to touch in there, talk therapy or whatever MTMA is, is the thing. But, but I really recommend, like I took a shit ton of supplements before a shit ton of supplements after HTP, all things you can get at whole foods because your body does need to.1 (15m 29s):And I got a massage, you got to do it the right way. Like this is, I tell people it's not a party, but it's also, it's like a journey. And it's also a huge self care thing. It's like, it's all the all, and they say, the minute you commit to the medicine like that, you're going to go on a journey. The medicine starts working. So like stuff will come up before then you're on. So all this to say, what are your thoughts when you hear this?3 (15m 55s):Well, I mean, I'm, That's what I would be scared of this Learning something new about my past.1 (16m 12s):Right, right. I know. I know. It's3 (16m 17s):Afterwards. How do you feel about that?1 (16m 20s):I, I feel like she not first want to say, like, I totally get that. I was petrified and I, The worst in our life has already happened to us because we were children and we could not do anything about it. That is the worst part of the whole thing is that we were little and had no resources. That is the crime that was committed against us. Not that it, it was that we were resource lists. The thing about MTMA and how I feel. I never felt resource lists.1 (17m 0s):I knew3 (17m 2s):If I'm prepared1 (17m 3s):And in the journey, even while I was like, oh, this is going to be hard, but I never felt like D I was in danger and I never felt like a child. So trauma robs you of your adult hood. Right. So it tells you you're still five and you're still in the situation and nobody's going to help you. You don't feel like that on MTMA. I don't know about, I feel like on other drugs you might, but MTMA is like really renowned for people feeling in somewhat in control. Like I could have, I wouldn't want to drive a car, but if like I needed to, I could have been like, oh, Hey, let's get out of the house now, but I hear you.1 (17m 43s):But it is so evident in my journey that like,3 (17m 51s):We w it really helps to grow you up. Let me run this fine. Everybody has trauma that they need to look at. And that leads us into what we definitely have to run by each other, which is th this thing that happened at the Oscars and talk about trauma. And, you know, all I could see in that moment was two little boys. I saw Gina.3 (18m 30s):Exactly. I thought, oh, they're so hurt. So deeply hurt. I have no tools right now to it, especially for will Smith. It's like, he, he short-circuited somehow. And was his trauma was unable to stay under wraps and it came out in, on a public stage. And that's all I could see too, because that's my framework. That's my, that's my paradigm. Yeah. And, and, you know, of course in the information age that we're in and the, in the social media age, the, the, the, the second something like that happens, all anybody can think about is like, what are the hot takes going to be on Twitter?3 (19m 16s):Right. Okay. Well, there's a variety of takes, but they all seem to be mostly focused on who was wrong or what was wrong, you know, which to me is like, not the point, you know, like it's, who's hurt, who is hurting and what are they going to do about their hurt? You know, I said, yeah. I said, these people, all of them involved need help and support. Absolutely. They need help need shunning. They don't need, you know, I mean, and, and I don't really hear too many people talking about Chris rock, but I mean, I hope his people are checking on him because he gave his help to television.3 (20m 1s):And I just, I know that that has happened to him before. Right. I just felt like this is such a redo of his child that I don't know that it must be. And he said, you know, he's talked about everybody hates Chris. That was a joke. And he talks about getting him, getting in trouble with his mouth before, but I don't know, man. It was just so raw. And I kinda think they just, I guess they had to air it, but, and it's sort of live or whatever, but I don't know. I just, I wish there had been, I wish the grownups had come in. Well, what we need all I was telling my therapist yesterday, we need referees to say, wait, time out time, like psychological referees that are like, this is actually going into a territory.3 (20m 43s):That's not okay. So like, let's stop and regroup, but nobody, you know, it's1 (20m 47s):Capitalism and money. And nobody cares about psychology.3 (20m 49s):It's like, oh, good ratings. You know, this is getting before,1 (20m 52s):Like, fuck them. They're rich. So who cares about them? Or fuck that.3 (20m 55s):I hate that. I, that argument just really is just so tired. Like, oh, if you have money, then you're not allowed to have any other problem for life.1 (21m 4s):Well, the other thing I think is like, if we, if we live in a capitalist world, which we do, and basically the rich people run things, I want my rich people to be healthy.3 (21m 13s):Amen to that. Yes.1 (21m 16s):Yeah.3 (21m 18s):And talk about tools and resources. I mean, they, they that's, that's the one thing I will say, if you have those resources, you have a responsibility to make use of them in a way that contributes not detracts from the world and yourself and the people that you love and who love you, you know? Yeah. So it was sad. And, but at the same time, I was happy. There was theater back in the Oscars. I was happy about all of the firsts that happened. I was, I, it, it looked to me to be the most inclusive orange show I've ever seen in terms of what they talked about and hoop in the symbolism.3 (21m 58s):And I really, I really get into the symbolism, you know, when people wear certain things and do certain things, and this rep, you know, I'm sure if we could talk to the set designer, we would, we would learn a lot about what the symbolism was of the set. And so I thought that was interesting. I was wondering where they were sitting around these tables because it's not like the golden gloves are not eating meals. And then when, when these dancers got on, I thought, oh, this is for this. And, and it just felt like theater. And I just thought, yeah, okay, good. We need this. Anyway. We need, we need to get back to like, something more pure about why we all went into this because Yes. And visceral, because the other thing that occurred to me is like, wow, I never heard about this before, but it must be so tense to be at the Oscars,1 (22m 46s):Like horrible.3 (22m 48s):You're either tense about what you're wearing tense about whether or not you're going to win tense about what speech you're going to make tense about what I noticed people. I feel like I could read people's body language when they were dissatisfied with where their seat was. You know, I just felt like everybody was, everybody comes to that night with who are you going to tell me? I am. Oh,1 (23m 10s):Right. That's right. And am3 (23m 11s):I, is that going to be acceptable to me? And it's a very narrow definition of what's.1 (23m 17s):Yes. Well, yeah. It's like, yeah, it's teeny, it's impossible. It's impossible. So I think you got to go, like, I now know why, like Frances McDormand goes and she's like completely stoned or like, or like just crazy people do because it's too much pressure. That's the other thing I'm real I saw was with the, with the will Smith thing, was that the amount of, like you said, tenseness, you know, the amount of pressure they, everyone looks like ready to pop. They're so anxious and stressed out and understandably it's. So I, I know now why people don't go to those things. Like I always thought it would be so fun, but now that I'm looking at it, I'm like, that seems like a lot of work and also real tense,3 (24m 3s):Real, real tense, but that doesn't take away from the beautiful, you know, I heard some beautiful speeches and overall I think overall I hope everything that happened at the Oscars is indicative of like things moving in a better and better direction, but we're also very far away from a lot of things, a whole lot of things.1 (24m 26s):And, and then there's this, you know, and we don't really have time to talk about it this time. We're going to talk about next time maybe, but like this whole thing of like, okay, so a lot of, you know, like who gets to have a take on what went down? So like, people are, are saying, you know, I've seen members of the black community saying, you know, like no white people should talk about this. And, and frankly, I didn't feel the need to talk about it as a half white, half Latino or as a human. I also, my, I thought, I thought, oh, my framework is I come from a place of like, we're all traumatized. So like, that's what I, and I'm trained in that. And that's what I can chime in about if somebody asks my goddamn opinion, like you and I ask each other's opinion, but nobody's asking my goddamn opinion.1 (25m 13s):So I don't keep my mouth shut. If you want to ask me what I think, then we talk about it on our podcast. You know what I mean? But like, I don't need a platform Twitter to talk about will Smith and Chris rock, they, plenty of people are doing that3 (25m 25s):Where people1 (25m 26s):Covered3 (25m 27s):It's covered. It's well-covered yeah. Oh, I just have a very quick update about my fascination with those tick talks with the, the women and1 (25m 36s):They're getting ready and the coming home,3 (25m 38s):I found out they're all infomercials1 (25m 44s):For the products in there for all the products.3 (25m 47s):Yeah.1 (25m 48s):So it's actually nothing about there. They don't really do that.3 (25m 52s):I mean, who knows,1 (25m 54s):How did you find that out?3 (25m 57s):'cause my kids stole they're like, I mean, and they were, they weren't saying mom, you know, that's just infomercial. They were like, yeah, you can get all those products. If you just click on the thing you can see. And I was like, oh, so the whole thing is a commercial. And they were like, yeah, what did you think it was?1 (26m 12s):You're that it was a day in the life of a lovely lady with very many gadgets and outfit.3 (26m 19s):And it was just one of those moments like, oh, I, so1 (26m 24s):I have those all the time. I have those all where I'm like, oh, I'm truly an eater.3 (26m 29s):I'm truly so dumb. I deserve, I deserve to waste my money on these products and they don't want to get my money completely work. I did in the end, only buy one thing. Oh, you1 (26m 42s):Actually did buy what you3 (26m 43s):Buy. I bought it a egg cooker. You can, you can hardball eggs in the microwave.1 (26m 50s):Well, that's pretty good. Okay.3 (27m 9s):Today on the contest we were talking to Catherine Scarborough. Catherine is an award-winning New York city-based actress and writer. She got her MFA in acting from the new school for drama. And she's also trained with the Moscow art theater and the people's improv theater. She has a lot of interesting stories and she has a fantastic web series called , which you can find on her website, Catherine scarborough.com. So please enjoy our conversation with Catherine Scarborough.6 (27m 51s):Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Okay.3 (27m 53s):So congratulations, Catherine, Catherine Scarborough, you survived theater school and your first new-school alone. So I I'm really intrigued by the way, by your intro here, he says, can be interesting conversation. Does that mean you had a mixed bag of a time?7 (28m 10s):Well, first of all, thank you. I, yes, it was definitely a mixed bag. It's an interesting program. Yeah. I mean, I, the training, my professors were really great. I had a lot, I really am happy with my artistic training. It was the business side of things1 (28m 32s):That7 (28m 33s):I, we went out into the world completely unprepared.1 (28m 36s):Okay. When did you graduate? You look so young.7 (28m 39s):20 13, 20 131 (28m 44s):Is recent. So we graduated and fricking long, long time ago. So, so like, like, yeah, nineties. So, so at 2013, the new school didn't really prepare you business wise. And I mean,3 (28m 59s):When did these people get,1 (29m 0s):When are we going to get prepared,7 (29m 4s):Please schools do it, to be honest with you. I think that if it's a name, if it's a school that you can walk into an audition room and they're like, oh, you're a Yalie. You're NYU. It's a different story. But like, to give you an idea, and I got my MFA, it was not a BFA program. It was an MFA program when we were getting ready or we had done our showcase maybe. And then we were doing, you know, reaching out to agents and managers, this spreadsheet that we were given, some of the people on it were dead1 (29m 44s):Or in jail or in jail7 (29m 46s):Dead. I mean, one of my classmates came back, oh1 (29m 48s):My God, these people,7 (29m 52s):They were like, I'm sorry, this person has passed away.1 (29m 60s):That's3 (29m 60s):Crazy.1 (30m 1s):I really, I really applaud that. Person's tenacity. They were like trying to get repped by a ghost. They will do like, I'll take anyone, give me the ghost, even3 (30m 10s):The ghost ghosted me. Okay. So, so you weren't prepared, but what about the straight training side of it? Like7 (30m 20s):You,3 (30m 21s):Presumably you went there saying I'm going to be a famous actress. Give me all I need to know. Did they fit the bill in that way?7 (30m 30s):Yes and no. I mean, it was, you know, again, once again a mixed bag, I had some fantastic professors. I, I was lucky enough to study with Ron Leibman1 (30m 42s):Who he, more,7 (30m 44s):Ron originated the role of Roy Cohn in angels in America. He was Rachel Green's dad on friends. He and studying with him was really a gift. I mean, and he, you know, I mean, he had done what you want to do as an actor in his career. He had Tony, can I curse? I really, You know, he had a fucking Tony. So there was no, I think sometimes with acting teachers, there is an ego part of it where they, I don't know, they want to mold you or they're frustrated and they haven't done what they want, but he had done everything that he wanted to do.7 (31m 27s):And so really he was just in it because he cared about young actors and he was tough, but he wanted you to be the best artists you could possibly be. And so that was such a gift that there were lots of professors that I really had a wonderful experience with there. Casey Biggs was my classical technique. Like Shakespeare professor. He's wonderful. He was, he's a star Trek actor. If you don't know, the Saifai world gets a lots of Shakespearian actors because they have to3 (31m 58s):Make7 (31m 58s):Sense. You know, they have to take this ridiculous material and make1 (32m 3s):And make it accessible.7 (32m 6s):Right.1 (32m 7s):So for people that don't know, obviously the new schools in New York, did you audition? How was that?7 (32m 14s):Yes, I auditioned. So it, yes, it's in New York city. It used to be where the actors studio was. And then there was this gray Bradley Cooper went to my grad school at the time that the actor's studio was still attached. And then there was this big schism actor studio went to pace. And then the new school had its own drama program run by Patty lipomas brother bobble poem. So he was the Dean1 (32m 44s):Of the school at your school?7 (32m 46s):At my school. Yeah. Bobby Lou. And so, yeah. So the audition process was I actually, they asked you to prepare a scene. So you had to find a scene partner and do a scene rather than just a monologue, which was cool. So I had a friend of mine come with him. This is funny. And a friend of mine come and do a scene with me. I did a scene from a play that I hate, but that I felt like would make me appear marketable. I did a scene.1 (33m 17s):Yeah.7 (33m 17s):I did a scene from fat pig, which,1 (33m 19s):Oh, no,7 (33m 21s):But Hey, I got into school with it. So1 (33m 23s):Yeah. You know what I always say about that play? Like I actually know Neil LaBute and that guy's a Dick. So, I mean, I've met him. I wouldn't say know him. He directed did he direct, he directed Wicker man, that my boss Nick cage, was it the second time UN he's got problems. He's a, he's like a Mormon, he's got problems with his own body size. I think as a, as a plus sized dude, he's real weird. He's real weird. But anyway, I always say about fat pig. It's like, I am always rooting obviously for the actress that takes on that role.1 (34m 6s):Especially as a plus sized lady, I'm like, yeah, you go. And, and we think, God, I hope we're writing better plays in that, but you know what? It's not the actresses deal that is doing it so good for you. So you did a scene from that pig with your friends,7 (34m 22s):And then he got asked to audition for the school himself and he got into,1 (34m 30s):I'm glad you both did because you didn't.7 (34m 33s):I know it would have been nuts. So, so we do the scene and then we find out what happens then is something called callback weekend. And I actually, I have to say, I think that the new school at that time, because the training has completely changed at the school now, since I've graduated. But their audition process was the best that I ever experienced because, and by the way, I auditioned for graduate schools, like on three different occasions. And when I auditioned for the new school, it was like the last gasp. It was the only school I applied to that season. Like I was like, I'm done with this. I'm going to open it.1 (35m 11s):No one, no one accepted you the first times. Right. Mad at them.7 (35m 17s):It was really awful. But are you1 (35m 19s):Fucking kidding me? Okay. All right. So they, you were like, fuck it. This is the last hurrah. I don't get it here. Okay.7 (35m 25s):Yeah. So the only school that I applied to that season, so you do your scene and then they have something called callback weekend where it's a whole weekend. You go and it's a surprise. You don't know what's going to happen. You go. And they have, because part of the core of the training and the new school is having playwrights directors and actors create new work together, creating your own work is a big part or was at that time a big part of the training program. And so you had to put together, we were put in groups and we put together a short play in 24 hours. And that was our, our callback.3 (36m 6s):I mean, that sounds really stressful, but also really7 (36m 8s):Fun. It was so fun.1 (36m 10s):Did you write the play,7 (36m 12s):The playwrights? Did they1 (36m 14s):Right? Yeah.7 (36m 15s):Yeah. At some point too, I did have to do two monologues and I cannot remember when that happened. I think, I think, you know what it was. Okay. It was callback weekend. I had to go and do my two monologues and do like a movement workshop. And then you found out, okay, you've made it now. You're the last round and you're doing a 24 hour play. Yeah. And so, yeah, it was really fun to be honest with you. It was good.3 (36m 42s):Yeah. I bet it was. So what about for undergrad? Were you also doing theater and under?7 (36m 48s):I did, but I didn't get a BFA. I got a BA at UMass at the university of Massachusetts Amherst. They actually have a beautiful theater program there. I had a great experience with them.3 (37m 1s):Yeah. And what was the impetus to go to grad school?7 (37m 6s):I had always, I mean, since I was a small child, like four years old, I've wanted to be an actress. I always, and I'm not, I'm not, I'm a theater nerd. Like I always wanted conservatory training. My family historically was not supportive of this. I really wanted to get a BFA and they didn't want me to do it. And so I ended up going to, you know, regular school, regular school and just getting a BA but studying theater. And so I had always wanted to have the experience of conservatory training.7 (37m 45s):After, after I got my BA at UMass, then I did a, like a training program with the Moscow art theater kind of connected. Cause I had applied for art. Didn't get in. But then the Moscow art theater reached out to me and they were like, Hey, we do this summer program. And we also do a winter program in Moscow. So I did both of those things.1 (38m 9s):Awesome. Yeah. They tell you my art story.7 (38m 12s):Oh yes, please.1 (38m 13s):Dude. I was a fucking idiot. So I, I was at taking a leave of absence from the theater school at DePaul. And I was at, I was at Shakespeare and company on the east coast. I was working there, but anyway, I thought, oh, this is a great time to audition for Harvard.7 (38m 28s):What?1 (38m 30s):I don't know what I was thinking. Like DePaul was fine. Like Harvard, like air chief was actually going to be better. But anyway, I mean, it's all the same once you get there. But so I thought, let me just audition. Sure. I had, usually I have two monologues. I had one monologue. Sure. I was also young and you didn't3 (38m 49s):Read the,1 (38m 52s):I did not understand the assignment. So I show up at a party and I'm do my monologue. And it went really well, even though it was probably a totally ridiculous monologue. It was above my head and the person the woman goes, that's great. And then I just stopped. Right. Cause I didn't have another monologue. And I said, and they said, do you have anything else you could show me? And I literally said no, but I could tell you some jokes.3 (39m 21s):See, I know it's a great idea. I think that was a great, I mean maybe he didn't know her that well, but I like,1 (39m 28s):And it was the truth and I, and they, she looked at, it was, it was, I did not get in there and I think they were all like what? She was like, what I, it was, she wasn't that I was on drugs. I wasn't, but she probably thought this child is on drugs. Like that's the only answer. So anyway, I don't know. But also they closed so no longer around. So you, okay. So you, so you did, you went to Russia?7 (39m 51s):I did. I went to Moscow and I studied like one of my teachers that I stayed with her father was Stanislavski student. I mean, it was crazy1 (40m 2s):My, oh,3 (40m 3s):Tell us everything about that program. It sounds interesting.7 (40m 6s):And I mean, considering what's going on, it's so sad in the world, but I always will hold my experience with the Stanislavski summer school and with it's my hot mess, Moscow art theater, very, very close because you know, I think as actors, NSX and students, we are delicate creatures and our confidence in ourselves and in our instrument and in our own talent is very, very delicate at all times. You know what I mean? And it really studying with them really made me fall in love with the theater and ma built me up and made me feel like, oh, this is what I'm meant to do with my life. And it just was because again, these, you know, the Russians, they, they don't give a shit.7 (40m 53s):They're all about the art. And they care about you as a, an artist. And1 (40m 59s):Did they not? Can I just say, were they not? Were they inclusive about body sizes? Oh, see, this is my problem. It's like what kid? Anybody fucking, not even in Moscow.7 (41m 11s):I mean, listen over there. It's definitely. But what I will say is my experience in classes and stuff, they just expected me to do it, you know, like,1 (41m 21s):Right.7 (41m 21s):My, my Grotowski admire hold biomechanics teachers. They were like, okay, now you will do backbend. You know? And I would just wouldn't do it. And it was like, okay, Catherine, now you will. You know what I mean? And so, and I, you know, I, we had this one teacher who re actually recently passed away. He was the most wonderful man. His name was Misha and Misha taught Michael checkoff technique, which I had never studied before I studied with them. And he was a lunatic, but like in the best, most beautiful way he would do this, this game with us called I love myself where, where he would have us run around the room, like crazy seagull.7 (42m 10s):And then while we're running around the room, like crazy seagulls, he is humming the theme to the godfather. So he goes,1 (42m 18s):It's fantastic. It's like what I did in my day program in therapy.7 (42m 24s):So he's going up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, and then he'd clap his hands and go number one. And you had to hug yourself and he goes, I love myself. And then he'd clap again. And then you have to run around again and he'd go bump up, Clap number two. And you'd hug someone and he'd go, I love my friends and Cutest. And like, he, I don't know, it was, it was a lovely experience. And I got to do Google. I was in a Google little, oh, Hey, I was in the inspector general. And I just felt seen by these teachers3 (43m 5s):Randomly, I don't know what the connection is, but they're in my town, which only has 30,000 people in it. There's a Michael checkoff like festival. Oh, I don't know if he lived here or I I'll have to look into it more Connecticut.7 (43m 24s):Is that because my grad school, Michael checkoff technique, professor Ragnar fry dog does a maybe1 (43m 34s):Greta. Steve. I bet it's gotta be connected. Ragnar and fry. Duncan7 (43m 38s):Connect,1 (43m 39s):Cover all connected.7 (43m 40s):Yeah. It might be. It might be there. It's somewhere up. I don't know. It might be,1 (43m 46s):Are you in New York city?7 (43m 47s):I am. I am in the city. Okay.3 (43m 51s):Okay. So you didn't feel prepared once you graduated. So what did you do?7 (43m 56s):Well, one thing that the new school, like I said, that they did, that was great. Was they taught us that we have to make our own work, which I think is true. I mean, I think, you know, and you know, I just been through this experience where I had to plumb all of this personal trauma to, you know, being in front of your friends to be an actor. I don't know. And there was a crisis in my family and I ended up using it and applied for an artist residency with Mabu mines. I don't know if you guys Mabee mind says1 (44m 33s):I don't, what7 (44m 34s):Is that? So Mabu mines is a theater company. That's been in New York city since like the sixties, seventies. And they're very experimental run by who has since passed away Ruth Mela check and Joanne Akalaitis and Lee brewer. Who's also, so they they're really into cookie, like experimental crazy theater. And so I got an artist residency with them right out of graduate school. And for a year developed my own place,3 (45m 5s):Something where you had to write a proposal about what you would be working on there. And, and you're, so you wrote something that was informed by a terrible thing that happened to you.7 (45m 15s):Okay. And so, yeah, I wrote a few3 (45m 17s):Minds saying anything about,7 (45m 21s):Because I wrote a play. So yeah. So I come from a very chaotic family. There's just all kinds of craziness. Always my father, who is much older, he was a doctor for nearly like 50 years, maybe 50 years. And he had this huge practice in this like shitty Podunk, back ass words, town and Florida. And he's very eccentric. He doesn't make friends, he's not politically savvy and was employing really ne'er do Wells to run his office.7 (46m 4s):And one of his nurses was writing counterfeit prescriptions1 (46m 10s):For opioids,7 (46m 11s):Opioids. So the, the, what is it? The DEA shut down his office and conducted an investigation for over a year while I'm in graduate school. This is going on. And then D couldn't get him on running a pill mill because he wasn't, but got him on insurance fraud, which I will tell you, actually, something that I do have done in the past no longer, but for a survival job, I've worked as a medical secretary. Every doctor concerns, insurance fraud and the1 (46m 50s):System, the system is set up for that. What are you7 (46m 52s):Talking about? So at the time, my 77, my in fact, my, was it my third year. Yeah. My third year of graduate school, my 77 year old father went to jail. Thank God he wasn't in there for very long, but we fought, he might be, he was held on half a billion dollars bail. Like it was insane how they went after him. And, you know, it's funny because I've been rethinking the project that I did because I was so fresh out of it. I essentially, I took because as he started me letters from jail, and then I realized he had been writing me letters since I, for like 20 years, he's a letter writer.7 (47m 37s):He himself is kind of insane. Like, he's, I love him, but he's, you know, and so anyway, I took all of that source material and I created a play out of it.3 (47m 51s):Wow. And, and I mean, presented for the public, right. Like people came to see it. How was it received?7 (47m 58s):I think it went really well. I mean, it was my first, you know, I, again, being unprepared, you know, coming out of graduate school, I didn't know a lot about promoting your own work, you know, I didn't know to write a press release and I didn't know to, but I did it with Mabu mines. And then I workshopped it in a few other places. I did it at Dixon place, which is another like incubator you're in the city. And then I did it in residency at the brick theater in Williamsburg. And that was, yeah, that was the last showing that I did1 (48m 30s):A solo show.7 (48m 31s):No, I had a hue. I unwisely had a huge cast. It was like nine all of us. Yeah. But it was like about because I'm from the south originally and it was about my family. And like the stories you tell yourself about your family versus reality versus very, yeah. It was, it was a great experience doing that. So3 (48m 55s):How have you continued to create your own work? I know you have a show, your own show, big girls. Is it called big girl?7 (49m 1s):It's called big girl. Yes, I, yeah. I really do enjoy writing and writing for myself. I think that, yeah, my experience has been more fruitful in writing for myself. Then, you know, the little parts you can get or, you know, yeah.1 (49m 20s):I want to let your, I just want to give you permission to let yourself off the hook for the publicizing of your thing. No, no. I need to tell you that I, when I did a solo show and it went to New York, I fucking paid a publicist $10,000 and they didn't do anything. So, so, so I'm just saying he, they didn't write a press release either and you were out $10,000. So was actually saying you saved $10,000. So you did good. Oh, wait. So Gina asked about like, yeah. So you have big girl is a, it's a, it's a show that is still is an ongoing, is it happening right? The second?7 (49m 56s):No, we, so we did. So the way big girl came around is that I started taking improv classes of all things. I hate improv, but I'm glad that I studied it. And I met my producers there in improv class. And I had written a play about body image and they came to see reading of it. And then we decided to do, let's do something together. We decided to write this web series. And so we, we worked on it from like 2018 through 2019.7 (50m 37s):And it's five short episodes. It's stories based on my life, but heightened about dating and just living as a plus sized woman in New York city, every episode is a different genre. So there's a clown episode, a black and white clown episode. That's episode three, which is my favorite of clowning is my favorite theatrical practice. I think I'm working on a clown show right now, actually, but clowning is my favorite. So what do you3 (51m 7s):Love about it? What do you love about coding?7 (51m 10s):I think that clowning is a way of celebrating your vulnerability and your ridiculousness. You know, I think that whatever makes you feel vulnerable is actually your superpower as a performer. It's the thing that people can see that connects us all to our, you know, terror of the abyss, right? And clowning is such a loving and gentle. Isn't the right word. It's, it's a very freeing way to just celebrate whatever is silly or weird about yourself. And if you can laugh at yourself, it gives the audience permission to laugh at themselves, you know, and it's also just really fun.7 (51m 60s):I, I have this beautiful clown professor, my clown, professor, Jean Taylor, she teaches at the Barrow group and that new school and over the pandemic, she reached out to some of us and was like, would you all like to do some zoom clown sessions? And let me tell you that saved my mental health, my like twice a month clown meeting it.3 (52m 25s):It was a picture of a clown school in zoom.7 (52m 28s):It is, I mean, we would just get into nos and we would do eccentric dance. And, you know, she would just have, she has something called go to my spot, which is like, as your clown, you find your spot. It's the whole thing. And, you know, we just made it work and it was, and we would create little, like a tubes as clowns that we would do for her. And it was, it's just, I just love it so much. It's just a, I don't know. It's like balm for the soul. It makes you feel joy.3 (52m 59s):And this is what happens when people feel left out of whatever's happening mainstream wise, as they go find a, like a little off shoot, you know, where, where any aspect of being different is is okay. Celebrated whatever. I mean, in a way it's like, okay, well, I guess that works out too, even though we'd like to be able to be included in mainstream stuff. Right.1 (53m 21s):Well, I feel like that's how all these theater companies that we adore love were made and then, you know, then it becomes something else that gets commercialized. And, but like, if you think about it, like a lot of, a lot of stuff in life, right. Comes from that. And like, I'm now writing feminist body horror. I know, I didn't even know that existed. It only happened because I just was like, okay, well maybe, maybe this. Okay. Fuck it. And then people are like, no, it's actually a genre. And I'm like, what? So like clowning was like, we can do this thing together and tell these stories. And people were like, oh yeah, that's good. And so then that it becomes a thing, you know, for years and years and years, so, okay.1 (54m 4s):So you, you, are you doing a clown show? Are you developing a solo clown show?7 (54m 10s):I have a co clown and a director and we are putting together a clown burlesque show.1 (54m 19s):I love that.3 (54m 21s):That sounds amazing.7 (54m 23s):It's going to be, I'm really excited. Yeah. It's going to be, we're just at the beginnings, like applying to festivals and things like that. And we're just about to start real rehearsals and1 (54m 35s):Oh, is it a scripted, like how does that work in terms of like, what, how what's your process like for us? So I don't know why I keep pushing you to do solo work. I keep asking if everything you do, I feel like I really need you to do a solo show. Apparently7 (54m 46s):I should do a solo show. I haven't before this1 (54m 50s):Do what you want. I just said, so it's a solo show. So you're doing your clown burlesque show. How do you write, is it scripted? Tell me about that.7 (54m 60s):That is a very good question. We are figuring that out because clown involves a lot of, I don't want to call it improvisation, but impulse it's like, you have to let your in order for it, to be honest, right? The clown clowns are my teacher put it this way. They're like cretins. They're very, they're there. Everything is very simple and they're idiots, but experts at the same time and you have to leave room for the unexpected. So our tactic right now is we're going to have a, a loose, an outline, like beats that we want to hit, let's say, but then to leave room for our clowns to play and do what they want.3 (55m 47s):I'm kind of curious about this thing you said about improv, because I also have the feeling that I hate improv, but only to say that I hate doing it, but actually if I was good at it, I wouldn't hate it. So what do you hate about it?7 (56m 2s):I am also not good at it. I get too, too in my I'm just not good at it. I get too in my head. I'm like, why are there so many rules? Why can't I ask questions? Why can't I just come up here and have fun? Why does there have to be a, what does the Harold, why do I have to go back to see the,3 (56m 22s):I mean, think that like, this is all just because a bunch of guys made up improv, right? Like what would it have been like if it was a bunch of women who, who developed the art,1 (56m 35s):It would be clowning and it would be, it would be something more beautiful. I mean, I just think the culture of improv is such garbage and I happen to love improv. I love, love, love it, but I love it because I'm scared because I do feel like you can do no wrong and improv, especially at like an improv audition for commercials and shit are my jam because there's no things to memorize and, and, and to be serious actors and not fuck anything up, but that does crossover into yeah. It, if you're in a culture and improv like school, the culture is there a lot of rules and there are a lot of stuff.1 (57m 16s):And also to be fair, you know, to be, or to be honest, there's a lot of drinking. There's a lot of drugging. It's just not my scene. And it's also really like a 22 year old white dudes see3 (57m 25s):Very fresh, very fat frat life,1 (57m 28s):But okay. So go ahead.7 (57m 30s):Wait, where was1 (57m 31s):I? Oh, no, it's me. I was just saying, go ahead. Either one of you. Cause3 (57m 36s):Well, I, I, I can't actually bring us back to what we were talking about before, but I can ask you, does new school do a showcase at the end? Can you tell us about it?7 (57m 48s):Sure. So it was, we did our showcase at playwrights horizons. We worked on our scenes for a semester and there were a lot of us in my class. So I got into graduate school, like at a time when people like right after the oh eight recession. So tons of people were applying to graduate school and they let 35 actors into our class. And so that was a big, obviously a big issue all through my graduate experience was what do we do with all of these kids?7 (58m 36s):There were, I think at least a good 10 people in my class who had no business. Like they just shouldn't have. And there were people who graduated from the most expensive. The, my school debt is so ridiculous. It's imaginary. There were people who graduated from my program who never stepped foot on a main stage.1 (58m 56s):We, why is it so fricking expensive? What's happening?7 (58m 60s):I it's the new school. I don't know. But yeah, it's the most expensive,1 (59m 5s):Never we're up. We've heard this before, by the way, at other schools Where the people never, there were people that graduated, maybe not an MFA, but like, there are people that graduated that were never in a show and I'm like, okay,7 (59m 19s):I would have, yeah. I,1 (59m 22s):Why weren't they at a show? They never got cast or7 (59m 24s):They didn't get cast.1 (59m 26s):I give him like a pity part. Like you're going to be Cinderella's step sister. And the,7 (59m 31s):I mean, they would be like in the chorus of something1 (59m 34s):That would have been me. That would have been me. I know it would've been3 (59m 38s):Me too. Me too, but was it for agents? And the showcase was for agents.7 (59m 42s):Yeah. Agents and managers. And I did two scenes from bridesmaids because bridesmaid said recently come out. So I did the airplane scene with, and then I did her, her monologue at the end about being in the CIA. I just love. And it probably wasn't wise of me to choose scenes from what, but I was like, fuck it. This is what I wanna do. I worship Melissa McCarthy. I think that she's I, if I ever met her, I would absolutely lose my mind. I just think she be,3 (1h 0m 13s):I think that was the perfect thing to do because right. Because the, the, the thing that bothered, I are always talking about that we never got is that we were supposed to think of ourselves as, you know, to be crass, like a product and what, you know, so what is our brand and what, you know, and we never did that, but that is what is required. So why is it not good to have done the Melissa McCarthy?7 (1h 0m 36s):I guess maybe I think you're right. I maybe I felt like I should have shown more range.1 (1h 0m 42s):They're not looking for range. Let me tell you something. They're looking to look at you seriously and now be in LA. I can really tell you looking at, oh, oh, she knows. She, she, she knows that we think she's going to be like the Melissa McCarthy character. Great. So let us just all get on the, the Melissa McCarthy bus with her, and then we can sell her that way. And maybe we'll all make a lot of money and be rich. Now look, I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm just saying it was smart in terms of a business move. And please tell me you got an agent. Did you get an agent and a manager?7 (1h 1m 15s):Ah, I, I got one agent who freelanced with me for a minute and he sent me on two auditions in three years.1 (1h 1m 31s):Okay. All right.7 (1h 1m 32s):So1 (1h 1m 33s):Not good, not good.7 (1h 1m 35s):And that agent, I mean, I,1 (1h 1m 38s):What,7 (1h 1m 39s):He, it just,8 (1h 1m 41s):Eh,7 (1h 1m 44s):I'm worried because why?1 (1h 1m 46s):Okay. Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. This is not about him. This is about your reaction. You don't have to, obviously don't say the name, but this is about your experience of what it was like to be that age and work with is someone in the industry. So tell it now.7 (1h 2m 2s):Okay. So from that point, yes, from that point of view, you know, number one, it, you know, I, I had one really solid audition. I didn't book it, but it was my first big audition in a big room. And I went in and I was prepared and I killed it. And I remember, oh, at PA, oh, oh wait, okay. It's back. Oh, you're1 (1h 2m 24s):Fine.7 (1h 2m 25s):Okay. Like froze for a1 (1h 2m 26s):Second. That's okay.7 (1h 2m 29s):I went in and it was Judy Henderson's office. She's a casting director. I killed it. And I had them all laughing. And I remember I walked out and I heard the director say, oh, that was really good.1 (1h 2m 43s):Yes.7 (1h 2m 44s):So that was such a win right out of an acting program. You know, I didn't get a call back. I didn't book it, but it was such a great, you know, experience. But then after that, and I emailed my agent to say, Hey, this was so great. This is what the people said, send, thank you, notes, all of that. But he like had this Facebook group for the members of the agency and he would have these mixers, Which, and I went to one and it made me so uncomfortable because it was like him. And then a bunch of like women, you know what I mean?1 (1h 3m 23s):Yeah. It's gross. That's gross. I don't know who you are, agents. So it's not a personal thing, but also that's gross.7 (1h 3m 29s):Yeah.1 (1h 3m 30s):It's weird. That's weird.7 (1h 3m 32s):And like also something that made me super uncomfortable would be that there would on the Facebook group, he would put up these statuses, like, you know, a word to the wise, never write an email to an agent like this deducted that dah, dah, and don't show up to an audition doing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just in my head, I'm like, why don't you go get me an audition instead of spending your time? And like, there is no roadmap for young actors. None of us know what the fuck we're doing.3 (1h 4m 4s):Well, let's do mystify something right now for people who haven't gone through this yet. Why do some agents not get auditions for their clients?1 (1h 4m 16s):Oh, I know. I feel like, I feel like for what my knowledge is of working in casting and then also working as a writer and an actor, is that agents. Okay. So like, this is my understanding. All agents get the same breakdowns, right? And a lot of times for better, for worse they're thinking is I need to, I can't possibly do everything on this breakdown. So who are the people I know that are gonna, for whatever reason are top of mind that are gonna, that have a better, good chance of booking these things. And then they sort of gravitate towards that. And then a lot of people who aren't, don't look a certain way for whatever, get pushed to the side.1 (1h 5m 2s):And then I think we're also not as actors at our schools and in the world taught how to have a relationship with an agent that is on equal footing so that you stay top. This is what I teach my kids at the theater school, which is like how to build a relationship or get out of one. When you feel like it's not on equal footing where you can't, you don't feel like you can call or email the agent and say, Hey, I'm feeling like I'm not going out. Is there something that we can do together? Because we're so scared of the agent. We never make those, but I am. I think that is what happens.1 (1h 5m 43s):And then the fear begets fear. And then you just never hear from them again. Then they drop you or whatever. So it's a matter. So that's what happens. And, and agents, a lot of times, like the rest of us are traumatized and hurt and scared. And, and it's easy to take that shit out on younger people.3 (1h 6m 3s):So it's not what I was thinking. You were going to say, which is that if the agent is unknown, they literally cannot get their client. Okay. It's not that,1 (1h 6m 15s):I mean, I feel like they, I feel like S H certain agents have better relationships than others with casting, but everyone gets the same breakdowns. It's, it's a, it's a common document. So anyone, if we, if you, and I said, now we're an agent. We would get those breakdowns and we could start submitting people. And if you send a kick ass letter that says, Hey, Catherine is perfect for this. Look at our shots. Please see her, they'll see her because they want, Cassie wants to meet new, new, fresh faces that are kick ass. Like that's their jam. So, yeah, it's a matter of top of mind. And3 (1h 6m 49s):Well, since we're on the topic, I don't know. You mentioned this thing about getting a good relationship with your agent CA well, so Kevin, do you have an agent now?7 (1h 6m 57s):I am. Now I am looking for representation right3 (1h 7m 0s):Now. All right. You're looking for representation. A lot of people who listen to this podcast are recent graduates from theater school. I have my only experience with an agent is I'm helped my son with his stuff. And so I'm, I have a relationship with his agent. I'm very scared of this person. And when he doesn't like something we did just on my stomach. So like, what, I mean, you know, what, what do you do and how do you have a good relationship with an agent? Because it seems like they're all the hassle.1 (1h 7m 31s):No, no, they, they, it does seem like that. They're not all assholes, but I feel like a lot of them are, are scary. So inherent and Gina, Gina talks about this and Catherine, I want to know your thoughts. So, so we talk about the idea that like inherent in this industry is a pear is a patriarchal and like a, a status, right. Triangle, whatever hierarchy. So that creates a dynamic where the people that have, are seemingly having the more power are, are, are a little bit mean. It can be a little bit mean. So Catherine, how do you think, I guess my question for you would be like, what is your, maybe your experience with how to work with that and what are you looking to do differently this time when you have an agent, I guess, for the youngsters7 (1h 8m 15s):Listening? So my experience with them being mean, Or I just think that there is a, in my experience, there has been a feeling of being dismissed perhaps of, you know, yeah, yeah. You know, I do a lot of in the past, I've done a lot of there's this company here in the city called one-on-one, which there's another one that's called, like actor's connection where you can go and it, it kinda sucks. It's pay to play and you pay like a little fee to do a class with a casting director or an agent, or, you know, an opportunity for like a 10, 15 minute meeting with an agent.7 (1h 9m 2s):And I have met some success with that, you know, in the past, I don't necessarily, I feel a little morally repugnant about pay to play. You know, this is such a, I mean, the other thing along with the hierarchy of this industry is that it's predatory, you know, it's very predatory on the hopes and dreams of, you know, young actors. And so I have had tons of experience going into auditions for things. And, you know, it's like, oh, you have to pay to do this, or you have to it. And it's like, okay, well, fuck you, bye. I'm not going to pay you to work. But, and then what was the second part of your question about, oh, what am I looking to do differently?7 (1h 9m 45s):I mean, I think the thing is right, I'm a character actress. I'm a misfit, certainly in the industry. And I need to find someone who really gets me, gets my work. You know, I want to find representation that isn't necessarily trying to, and this is perhaps an unrealistic dream, but I, I would like to find representation that that gets my voice as an artist, and doesn't necessarily want to pigeonhole me. You know, for example, I will never, I'm very into body justice and fat liberation.7 (1h 10m 30s):I'm not gonna even say body positivity anymore because it's been co-opted by a skinny white women, but I will never make a weight loss, commercial that's not happening. And that might be a problem for a commercial agent who meets me, you know what I mean? And so I, so yeah, I, I would like to find a team who, who gets me and really, you know, wants to, wants to see me succeed in that, in the, in that way,3 (1h 10m 59s):This relates pause to our conversation earlier, just about contracting versus expanding. And I think that my mindset for certain, and maybe other people too, is like, you know, it's like kind of like how I used to be with boyfriends. If, just, if, if anybody likes me that I have to go with them because there's not going to be anybody else that likes me. Right. When in reality, It seems like the, the way to think about it is, oh, they need me because I know what I'm doing. And I have this look and I've seen people who look like me in this kind of thing. And there'll be lucky to find me because I can solve a problem for them.3 (1h 11m 40s):That's not how I've ever thought about it. I've thought about it. Like, I hope they pick me, but they probably won't. So if anybody shows me any attention, even if I have to pay for it, then the bus. Yeah.1 (1h 11m 50s):I mean, I think that's so right on. And I will say that. And I, I, I was that way for, and I still am obviously that way, but I found a team. I love my team, but it took me a very long time. And it took me to 40, I dunno, 44 to do that or 43. And it took me going in literally and saying, this is me, here's my body of work. I look like this. I want, I came in, I went in with a list of things in a piece of paper and what I brought to the table and what I expected from a relationship.1 (1h 12m 35s):And I had to be prepared that they were going to say, no, thank you. Like, this is crazy. Fuck you. But they didn't say that instead. They said, we, we support you. We've looked at your stuff. We believe in you. And we want to work with you. And that was all right. And then I found my person at that place. And when she left, I followed her. So it really is about relationships, but it's like, it takes a long check. My therapist, this, it takes a long time to do the work. Like it is not an overnight

Why Is Russia Password Spraying Hurting You? What Are They Trying to Do? And What Is It? This is one of the top topics I've had people ask about lately: How can you protect yourself and your business against Russian hackers? So I've got a presentation. We're going to run through it. We're going to talk about what you can do about it. [Automated transcript follows] This has been a long time coming. I have been doing a lot over the years of webinars of online meetings, trying to help people understand what's going on, what can be done. [00:00:28] And I got a great email this week from one of the listeners. Who's been a man on my email list now for years, I'm not even sure how many years. And he was saying, Hey, thanks for giving all of this information for free for small businesses. And afford it. And I got to thinking because there've been a lot of requests lately, for instance, backups how should I be doing them? [00:00:52] What should I be doing? And a number of other topics that really all go together into the, how do I protect myself, my business. From ransomware from these Russian hackers. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to go through a few of these. This is going to be a series. [00:01:10] We're going to continue this here and weeks ahead, and I appreciate all your feedback. And if you miss part of it, make sure you email me just M. Craig peterson.com. Let me know, and I'll be glad to send some of it to you. Now I'm recording this on video as well. So it's great when you're driving around and listening in picking up some tidbits. [00:01:34] And if you do want to see the recorded version again, dropping them in an email to me@craigpeterson.com or search for me on YouTube or on one of the other sites that are out there like grumble and you'll. This as I release it. Cause this is going to take a few weeks to really get into the whole thing. [00:01:55] So let's get started. I'm going to pull this up here. Full screen. For those watching at home and what this is called today, we're talking about protecting your business and your self from Russian hackers because they have been out there. They have been causing just all kinds of problems, but there's a few things that you can do. [00:02:18] And I have them up on the screen here. Let me pull them up, but I want to get into the background first. Russian ransomware group. They're a bunch of bad guys and it's called Conti. Now. Conti has been around for a long time. These are the guys that have been ransoming us. They're the guys who ran to mean the businesses they've been rants. [00:02:40] Government, you might've heard them. They've got into hospitals. They have been all over the place and they've raised a whole lot of. For the Russians. I'm also going to tell you about a couple of things you can do here. Cause there's a real neat trick when it comes to keeping Russians out of your computers, but Conti decided, Hey, listen, we are all for Russia and president and Putin. [00:03:03] So they came out with an official warning, oh, I want to read this to it says if anybody. We'll decide to organize a cyber attack or any war activities against Russia. We are going to use our all possible resources to strike back at the critical infrastructures of an enemy. Yeah, no, not the best English, but much better than my Russian. [00:03:25] I got to say that I know two words or so in Russian, but they said that they were announcing full support for president. That's a pretty bad thing. If you asked me, they also have ties to Russian intelligence intelligence, but what are we talking about really? Think of the KGB. [00:03:43] The FSB is what they're called nowadays, but directly tie. China and North Korea, Iran, or also now tied in with Russia to varying degrees, but all of them are a little bit concerned about getting into it a little too much, but we're going to talk about their tactics. That's what's important today. What are they doing? [00:04:05] Why are they doing it? What can you do about. So the first thing is password sprain. This is big deal. I've got a nice big slide up here. I like that color blue. I don't know about you, but I think it's pretty, but password sprain is something we all need to understand a little bit better. It's a brute force attack that has been really hurting. [00:04:30] Many of us. Let me see if I can get this to work. For some reason it has decided it just doesn't want. Let me see here. What is up? Oh, is something isn't it's just, I'm getting a white screen, but it's a brute force attack targets users who have common passwords. Now this is a problem. When we're talking about passwords. [00:04:55] If you have a password that has been breached in any of these breaches that have gone on over the last, however long, right? 30 years plus now that password is known to the bad guy. So what they'll do is they'll take that common password and they'll start to try it. So password sprain is where they will go to a bank site or they'll go to Google. [00:05:21] The, oftentimes they're trying to get at your email accounts. So if you have Google email or Yahoo or Hotmail, they'll try it. Use passwords that they have found against accounts that they have found on those various sites that ends up being quite a big problem for everybody out there. Okay. I got that screen back here. [00:05:42] So I'll put that up for those people who are well. But they will send multiple times attacks using variations of these passwords. And it's known as a low and slow method of password hacking because if they were to go bam, and send all of these passwords and login attempts. They get caught. [00:06:06] The automated systems would say, Hey, wait a minute. This is not good. We're going to cut you off. In fact, that's what I do for my client. We have remote access using SSH, which is a an encryption session so that we can have a terminal session. And if you try and log in three times, We automatically zap you, right? [00:06:28] We shut you down. So they take a very slow approach to this password sprain technique. And they're also going after volume, which makes a whole lot of sense. And there are right now, billions of passwords usernames, email addresses that have been stolen that are sitting out in the dark. So you've got to make sure that you are not reusing passwords. [00:06:54] How many times have we talked about that? You've got one common password that you're using over and again, while that's a problem, but they're not going to keep hacking your account. They're going to switch from one account to another because they don't want to get locked out. [00:07:09] Just like I lock out somebody who's trying to get in. So if someone's coming from that same. IP address that same internet site. And they're trying to log into that same account multiple times. Bam. They are gone. So with path's word sprain, they're trying to get around the problem of you noticing they're trying to get into a bunch of different accounts and they try and leverage it. [00:07:34] So they'll oftentimes use multiple computers that they've stolen access to. We've talked about that before too. It gets to be a real big. Now they're also targeting these single sign-on and cloud-based applications, because once they're on. Using one of these federated authenticated authentication protocols, they can mask the malicious traffic. [00:08:00] We've heard some of these hacks lately where they're using a token that they managed to pick up from somebody's email, I account, or they got onto Microsoft and they got into the email account on Microsoft. That happened recently. In a supply chain attack, solar winds. You heard about that 20, 21, right? [00:08:21] So they're going after these email applications, including Microsoft or Microsoft has done they're going after routers and internet of things, devices for a very good reason, those IOT devices, which are things like your smart lights, they can be. Controlling the cameras outside, they go on and on there's thousands, millions of them. [00:08:44] Now I actually all the way through your microwave, they tend to not be very well protected. So that's a real big target for them. So step. They want to acquire a list of usernames. Step two, they're going to spray the passwords. Where do they get those passwords in those usernames? Or they get them from breaches. [00:09:06] So again, if you have an account that's breached at some online shopping site, a big one, a small one, it doesn't really mean. That particular breach is now well known and they can, will and do gain access to your account which is step three, gain access to it. It gets to be a serious problem. [00:09:26] Okay. How do you know if you are under attack? Number one? There is a spike in failed. Log-ins this is where having a system and there's technical terms is tough for this. I'm trying to avoid a lot of those terms, but this is where the system is watching logins, noticing that there's a problem and going ahead and stopping it, not just noticing that, but stop. Very important to do. There are a high number of locked accounts, which means what it means that again, someone's been trying to log in. You should make sure that your account, if there are invalid, lock-ins automatic. Locks it out after some number of attempts and five attempts is usually considered to be okay. [00:10:14] I know on my phone, for instance, I have a higher number of the neck, cause sometimes the grandkids get at it. But when it comes to your business account, when it comes to your bank account, you probably don't want to have a whole bunch of. Of a attempts, and then in known or valid or invalid, I should say user attempts again. [00:10:36] Why are they trying to log in with a username that just doesn't exist? Yeah, it can be a problem. Hey, when we come back. We're going to talk about some steps. Like you can take here to really remediate, maybe even stop a password spraying attack. I've already given you a few ideas here, but what are some act of things that you can do, particularly for a small business to really protect yourself? [00:11:04] Hey, stick around. We'll be right back. Craig peterson.com. [00:11:10] Russia has, hacking our computers, Russia's continuing to hack our computers and this is a real problem. So we are going to talk right now about how to stop some of these things. We already talked about password sprain. How do you start? [00:11:26] There are a lot of things we have to pay attention to, and that's what I'm going to be doing in the weeks ahead. [00:11:33] We're going to be going through some of the things you need to do to keep yourself safe. Keep your business safe in this really dangerous online. There are so many things going on. So many people that are losing their retirement businesses, losing their operating accounts. We've seen it before with clients of ours while you know their clients now. [00:11:59] And it was just a devastating thing to them. So I don't want that to happen to you now, if you are interested. All of this is recorded and I am doing this as video as well. We've got slides and you can find out more about it. Just email me M e@craigpeterson.com. It's really that simple. And I didn't let me know. [00:12:24] And I'll be glad to send it off to you. Okay. This is available to anybody I'm trying to help. And we've had a lot of emails recently about some of these things. So th this is covering everything from the password spraying we're talking about right now through backups and other things that you need to do. [00:12:43] Let's get going on our sprain problem. So w what are the steps that we need to take an order to really remediate against one of these password spraying attacks? And frankly, it is. Oh, a lot to do. It has a lot to do with our users and what we do, if you're a business, if you are an individual, we need to be using longer passwords. [00:13:12] Now we're not talking about all of these random characters that we used to have. I remember having to have my password be at least four characters, long APAC, when didn't even have to have a username, it was just all based on the password. And things changed over the years, the latest standards that are out there right now come from this too, which is the national Institute for science and technology. [00:13:37] They are the guys that put together, all of the guidelines said federal government and businesses need to follow. And they're telling us that a longer passwords means elaborate pass phrase. So you should use 15 character passwords. I had an article just a couple of weeks ago saying that an eight character password can be cracked almost instantly, certainly within an hour, any eight character password. [00:14:08] So if you're still using that, you've got to make a change. And obviously nine characters is a lot more possibilities, takes a lot longer to crack. I don't have those numbers right in front of me, but 15 is the ideal. So use pass phrases instead of single words. So phrases like I don't know secretary of one, the Kentucky. [00:14:34] There you go. There's a phrase. So what you would do is put, maybe dashes between each one of the words. Maybe you would go ahead and use a comma, put some numbers in there, put some special characters in upper lowercase, right? So it's basically on uncrackable at that point. And that's what you want. [00:14:53] Next one. When we're talking about rules for your passwords, the best passwords are the passwords that you can remember without writing them down and words that don't make sense to anyone else's. I remember taking a memory course a few years back and they had random words and you had to remember them. [00:15:18] And the whole idea was okay, visualize this happening. And as I recall, man, it's been a lot of years I won't say decades, but it hasn't been. Since I did this, I still remember a part of it, it was first word was airplane. Next was all envelope. The next one was paper clip. Next one was pencil. [00:15:38] So I visualized an airplane flying into an all envelope and that all envelope then goes into a paper clip and a pencil writes on the outside. Like it's addressing it to someone. That is a good little password, actually airplane or envelope, paperclip, a pencil with a mixed case and maybe a number two or special symbol thrown in. [00:16:05] Those are the types of rules that we're talking about. The types of rules that really. Next up here. Oops. Wrong keyboard. Stay away from frequently used passwords. We've talked about this many times. If you're using one of the better password managers, like for instance, one password, you will automatically have any passwords that you are there in Shirin or that it creates you'll have them checked via a website out there. [00:16:37] It's called. Yeah. Okay. It's called. Have I been poned I, and I hated to say this because how do you spell it? It's all one big, long word. Have I been poned to.com and poned is P w N E d.com. It will tell you if a password that you're trying to use is a known password. If it has been found out in the wild, okay. [00:17:02] Use unique passwords for every site you visit, I can't stress this enough. We were talking about password sprain. If you use the same password and email address on multiple sites, you're in. Because all they have to do is try your email address and your password for whichever site it is that they might want to try out. [00:17:27] Remember, many of them are trying to get into your email and they have done that successfully. With Microsoft email, if you have their Microsoft 365 service and you might want to read the fine print there very carefully, because Microsoft does not guarantee much of anything. You make sure you back it up yourself. [00:17:50] Make sure you do all of these things because Microsoft just plain, isn't doing them for you. Next one here. Next up is our password manager. And I mentioned this before installing and using a password manager is phenomenal. It automates the generation of passwords. If you have. Integrated with your web browser. [00:18:15] It now allows your web browser to work with your password manager. So when you go to a site, you can have it pull up your passwords. How could it be much easier than that? It's really rather simple. That way it's keeping track of your logins. And again, One password.com is the one I recommend and people get confused. [00:18:36] When I say that, when I'm saying one password, I don't mean only have one password used for everything. One password is a name of a company. Okay. So it Talking about only having a single password, but use a password manager. And I've got all of these up on the screen right now. If you're interested in getting copies of these, you can go ahead and just email me M e@craigpeterson.com. [00:19:04] And I'll make sure I send you a copy of the slide deck of this presentation as well. Cause this is just so important, frankly, but having these points is going to be huge for you. Now strange activity. That's another very big deal. And we're going to talk about this when we get back, what is it? [00:19:25] What does it mean? But I'm going to hold off the rest of this, I think for another week. But right now, what let's hit this, we're talking about odd log-in attacks. A lot of login attempts, the excessive login attempts trends in unusual activities take any, you need to basically take measures to block it and determine if this activity is legitimate. [00:19:50] Is someone just for forgetting their password and spraying themselves or what's going on? Okay. There you go. Simple. Hey, everybody, you can find out a lot more and you'll be getting links to this automatically to these videos, et cetera. If you're on my email list, Craig peterson.com and you can email me M e@craigpeterson.com. [00:20:15] We'd be glad to send you this or any other information I might have. All right. Take care. We'll be right back. [00:20:23] Putin has been working for a while. In fact, it looks like as early as September in 2021, Putin started going after major us corporation. So we're going to talk about that. And what does it mean. [00:20:39] Putin has been going crazy for a while. I'm going to put this up on the screen for those of you who are watching either on rumble or YouTube, but Putin planned this whole invasion apparently quite a while ago. [00:20:56] And I got an article from the Washington post up on MSN talking about what Putin did at least a little bit about what he did. And you can see right here if you're following. That Russian agents came to the home of Google's top executive and Moscow. And what they did is gave an ultimatum. They told that Google, a senior executive that they needed. [00:21:24] Pull down an app that was in use in Russia. And this app was polling. It was for people to do polls and say, Hey what do you think about Putin's garden performance, et cetera. We do them in the U S all of the time you hear about the polls right left and center. Poland, which is a small country next to another small country called Ukraine next to a large country called Russia. [00:21:50] But we're talking about Paul's favoribility polls. What do you think they should be doing? What do you think that the government should be doing and maybe what they should not be. So Putin didn't like this. He didn't like this at all. And so what he did is he sent a couple of guys ex KGB, FSB, the secret police over in Russia by to visit this Google executive. [00:22:16] If you're the Google executive, what are you going to do? If you Google. Yeah, you're going to say, oh my gosh, I'm out of here. So I'm not sure if she, if this executive was an American or Russian, this article doesn't seem to be clear about it, but what happened is they said, okay let's go hide. [00:22:41] So they rented a hotel room for the. They put her in it and they rented the room under an assumed name. So it wasn't the real name of the executive. It wasn't tied into Google and they thought, okay, now we're pretty safe. Cause you got a hotel security, I guess there are a couple of Google people hanging out with her and they felt pretty safe. [00:23:04] What happens next? There is a knock on the door. These same agents, again, that are believed to be Russian secret. Police showed up at her room and told her that the cock was still ticking because they had given her 24 hours for Google to take down the app because Putin, dental. People weren't particularly pleased with Putin. [00:23:31] So at that point, of course it was forget about it. And within hours, Google had pulled down the app. Now you might complain, right? A lot of people might complain about it. It's one thing for a company like Google or apple to capitulate, to a government to do maybe some censorship, like the great firewall of China. [00:23:54] You might've heard of that where the Chinese citizens can't get certain information. Russia has something pretty similar and us companies have gone ahead and helped build it, provided the technology for it and put it in place. They sold it to them. I don't like that in case you didn't guess, right? [00:24:12] I'm all for free speech. I think it's very important for any form of a democracy. No question about it, but these companies apparently don't have a problem with that. However, now this is something, a little different. If you have employees who are being threatened and I mean threatened to serve 15 years in a Russian prison, what are you going? [00:24:39] Are you going to say no, I'm going to leave that app up. And then now all of a sudden your executives, or even a coder, somebody a programmer, like the guy that sweeps the floors, whatever are you going to let them be arrested so that you can have this app up on your Google play store or your app store over the apple side? [00:24:59] Probably not because frankly, this is something that is not worth it. So what are you. I think the only answer is what we've seen company after company do, and that is get out of Russia completely. And there was an interesting story. I read this recently about McDonald's you might remember back in the Soviet days, McDonald's worked out this deal with the Soviet union to open a McDonald's right there in downtown Moscow. [00:25:32] I guess it was pretty prominent. I don't know if it was, I think I might've been even on red square and there were people like. To have an American hamburger and it's been pretty popular the whole time. McDonald's closed that store and pulled out of the country. Starbucks has pulled out, are they going to reopen? [00:25:50] Cause I don't think either one of them said, forget about it. We're not coming back, but I know both of them have closed on operations. Automobile manufacturers from the U S have closed on operations. What is their choice? You can't just go ahead and say, okay yeah. Okay. Yeah. You're just going to arrest people or, we'll keep quiet for now and come back later. [00:26:12] What are you supposed to do? That's part of the problem with these oligarchies, with these people who are basically all powerful. Now we actually see some of that here in the us, which is just as shame, just a shame because we see these companies going ahead and cutting out free speech saying, oh, you can't say that there was a time where if you said masks work, that you would have been censored. And then there was a time where if you said masks don't work. You cloth mass don't work, you would have been censored. There was a time when you said masks aren't necessary. You would have been censored right now, but the science is settled. [00:26:56] It was just crazy. Science has never settled and oh, we could go on with this for hours and hours, but potent is not a good guy. And this article, I'm going to bring it up on the screen here again. But this article talks about. And a single year. And again, this is MSN. Potent had his political nemesis, Aloxi Novolin novel ne yeah, I got it right. [00:27:23] He had him in prison after a poisoning attempt, felled to kill him. Do you remember that whole poison attempt? Where they gave him this really nasty radioactive bride product, as I recall, and potent went ahead and basically shut down. They pushed all of these independent news organizations to the brink of extinction. [00:27:46] Look at what happened with Russia today. The entire staff walked off on the. Saying, we're not going to report on any of these lies that are coming out of Moscow. It's happened again and again, Putin orchestrated a Kremlin controlled takeover of Russia's Facebook equivalent, and he's also issued liquidation orders against human rights organizations. [00:28:12] And so all this is going on. What are you going to do if you're. If you're a Google, right? I can see the criticism of those countries or companies should say when they're cooperating with the regimes, putting in place, things like facial recognition to, to spy on people, to have a social credit system, these great firewalls in these countries. [00:28:34] But when you have something like this happen, I forget about it. There's nothing you can do. And the crackdown is accelerated Facebook and Twitter were knocked offline by the government for millions of Russians news outlets had survived the state harassment for years, shut down in the face of a new law impose. [00:28:55] 15 year prison sentences for spreading fake news. It's incredible what has happened. And we've got to be careful here in the U S too, because we see this censorship, there's a lot of complaints about what was happening under Donald Trump president and old Biden, both Obama and Biden. [00:29:15] Both of those have done some of these same things to a lesser extent. Stick around. We'll be right back. [00:29:23] This whole war with the crane, Ukraine and Russia has brought a few things to light here over the months, and really the more than year that it's been leading up to the beginning of that war even, but we've got clear view in the news again. Yeah. [00:29:39] am also besides broadcasting this on the radio, we're doing it in video two. So you can always follow along at rumble or at YouTube, but there's a great article here. [00:29:52] I have up on my screen for you to see. And this is from writer. Para carried over on MSN. And it is an exclusive story talking about Ukraine, using something called clear views. AI facial recognition. This to me is absolutely fascinating because what is happening. Is the technology that Clearview develop and has it been selling to police forces in the United States is being used on the battlefield and. [00:30:27] How here's what the technology did. And does Clearview illegally went on websites, major websites all over the world and did what we call scraping. Now, scraping is where they go to the site and they grab the pictures. So they scraped Facebook. They scraped you tube. They scraped. Dan and many more. [00:30:54] And then they put it all into a big database that told them where they found it, who that person was. And then they also took that biometric information from that image of the face and came up with some unique codes, a hash basically is what they did. And. Now what Clearview is doing is if you are a police organization, you can get a little app that runs right there on your. [00:31:22] And you have an encounter with someone you're a policeman, right? Let's say, and you just hold the camera up and it gets a picture of that person. It now finds the background information on them. And then you can use that tied into the police databases to check and see if there's any record of this person. [00:31:42] If they've been doing anything illegal. It's really quite cool. What they're able to do and scary at the same time, we use the same basic technology over in Afghanistan. So literary troops as they're out, and they're having encounters with civilians, people in the streets, fighters, et cetera. They could hold the device up. [00:32:04] It would identify them. It went further than just the face that actually did retinal scans and things, all kinds of cool stuff, but basically recognize the face. And they were able to tell if this was a friend of foe or. So a friend might be someone who worked as a translator who has been known to be helping the us troops in Afghanistan, et cetera. [00:32:29] So we built this huge database of hundreds, of thousands of people's biometrics person, very personal information in it. And if they were getting paid even how much they're getting paid, all of that was in the database, in the backend. And then we abruptly. And we left that equipment behind. I hope the database was destroyed. [00:32:52] I haven't found anything. Absolutely conclusive on it. That the withdrawal from Afghanistan was frankly unforgivable. It just I can't believe they did what they did at any rate. This is Clearview. This is this company. So now that same technology has moved to Ukraine. What's interesting. About this whole Ukrainian thing to me was okay, great. [00:33:18] Now they can identify people. Can they really identify a pretty much everybody? Who are they going to identify? As it turns out clear Clearview also illegally stole photos of people over in Russia and in Ukraine. So the clear view founder said that they had more than 2 billion images from. How's that right from this social media service called V contact a or somebody like that out of a database of 10 billion photos total. [00:33:52] So one out of five of the pictures they scraped was Russian, which surprised me. So the Ukrainians have been using it to identify dead Russian. And it's, they're saying it's much easier than matching fingerprints even works. If there's facial damage, it's scary to think about right. Wars, terrible. [00:34:14] Who wants to go to war? I can't believe all of the people that want to jump in there. I really feel for these people in Ukraine, what can we do? I'll start approximately. Research for the department of energy, found the decomposition, reduce the technology's effectiveness while a paper from 2021 showed some promising results. [00:34:36] Now, this again is an example of technology being used in a way it's never been used before. And having that ability to identify dead or living combat combatants on a field like this is just amazing. So this is the most comprehensive data set. There's critics, of course, they're saying that the facial recognition could misidentify people at checkpoints, obviously, right? [00:35:04] Could miss identify people in a battle mismatch could lead to civilian deaths, just like unfair arrests have risen from police use. And that's from Albert Kahn, executive director of surveillance, technology oversight, product, project, and new. So as usual, these things can backfire and I think they probably will given a little bit of time and that's a sad thing. [00:35:31] Now I also want to talk about this. This is cool. Another article here, I'm pulling up on the screen right now. And this is about some hackers. Now we know that the Kremlin's been lying. We know that if a politician's lips are moving their line, isn't that the old standby, but Russians apparently don't know this. [00:35:56] And the average Russian on the street is thinking that, okay, we're rescuing Ukraine. Isn't that just a wonderful thing. There's a couple of ways that the hackers have been getting around it. It's called a squad 3 0 3. They have this tool that's hosted at the domain. 1920 dot. There's an Indian domain and it loads a pre-written statement in Russian into your native SMS app. [00:36:29] In other words, the app that you use for texting and the idea is they that they've taken, oh, let's see here. Tens of thousands of trying to remember the exact number of stolen phone numbers from Russia. So all of those hacks that we've talked about for all of these years, those hacks have many of them phone numbers in them. [00:36:54] And they've been taking those phone numbers from some of those hacks and using them to send out about 6.5. Million text messages. So what happens is you, your phone, your actual phone ends up sending a text in Russia saying something to the effect of dear Russians. Your media is being censored. The Kremlin is lying. [00:37:18] Find out the truth about Ukraine on the free internet, and then the telegram app time to overthrow dictator. Yeah, that's not going to cause any problems, is it right? I'll put that up on the screen again for people who might read Russian. Cause it's got it in Cyrillic. Okay. And then you have the option to get an, another set of text and figure it out. [00:37:40] So the phone number, you can see there, you can copy it and paste it into your app and off the message goes. It's very cool. And in the daily dog, They're quoting a member of this squad 3 0 3 saying that this is a non-violent communications project. It's bypassing Russia's crackdown on the news. [00:38:02] They're sensitive. They're censorship of the news. And by the way, the domain 1920 dot. Refers to Poland's surprise victory against Russian forces just after world war one and the Bolshevik Menshevik revolution. You might remember all that stuff, that you studied all those years ago. So it's interesting. [00:38:23] We'll see what happens. But this hacking group also claimed that they were attacked probably again by Russian hackers, the FSB ex. Using a distributed denial of service attack shortly after launch. And they put CloudFlare in front of their domain. Now we use CloudFlare for one of our, something, not one, but some of our customers. [00:38:50] What CloudFlare is a website that's designed to basically buffer your website when it's been served. So if all of a sudden you get a ton of legitimate request, your site's going to stay up. It's going to be able to respond to people. The other big advantage to CloudFlare is what's happening here with 1920, Diane CloudFlare goes ahead and will block some of these denial of service attack. [00:39:19] So I think that's pretty darn cool. Many texts apparently are met with silence. Some say they've been able to converse with Russian citizens. One user who remained anonymous said they had made. The text messages they'd made using the tool really worked it says, I want the people of Russia to know the truth. [00:39:38] The government is doing to the people of Ukraine. This is a quote from the daily dot going to pull this up too. This is a a tweet here on Twitter and. Yeah. It's from the anonymous, that hacker group, you've probably heard of them before. Cause they've done a lot of nasty stuff over the years, but he says it's been doing just absolutely amazing things for him. [00:40:02] Let's see here. Can we hear this? Here we go. Ah, I got to unmute it. Let's see. Where is my mute? There it is. So this guy's name is Rodney. He is. D Jang, oh my dog. Get to Django my dog. And he's got a really great little testimonial there about that. It works and his tweet has had 4,300 views and it's good. [00:40:30] Again, another way around censorship now, Twitter, of course could decide they're going to sensor and that could be a problem too, but that's also why we now have alternatives to Twitter. And some of these other sites that are out there that are doing a whole bunch of blocking really, they don't like you. [00:40:51] And by the way, the reference to Telegraph was fascinating because they are using. In order to get around censorship. Again, many people are using it to to send information about what is really, truly happening in Ukraine. So a lot of stuff from the beginning of the war here, visit me online. Craig peterson.com. [00:41:14] Get my newsletter and get the free up-to-date trainings. [00:41:20] They pass the infrastructure bill, which means now it's time to figure out what is in the infrastructure bill. And we're going to talk about the technology that they decided to fund the technology. That's going to win the game because it has billions of dollars of federal money behind it. [00:41:36] This is disappointing bully it's normal, right? [00:41:40] It's absolutely normal because the federal government has always been one that picks winners and losers. If you're old enough, you remember, of course, VHS. Tapes right too. Do you remember beta tapes? Beta max tapes. Beta max was really quite the standard for professional production for the longest time, a better technology, frankly, a lot better than VHS. [00:42:06] Same. Thing's true with beta, but beta lost. And of course we ended up with VHS tapes. That's an example of technologies that were backed by investors. And we've seen a lot of that. Look at what's happened with the Serono trial, again, technology backed by investors. And it turned out to not work and in quite a dramatic way, frankly. [00:42:33] We've seen that again and again, and keep hitting my mic here and the problem that we really have, isn't so much that investors get things wrong because they. I was talking with a friend of mine. Who's has been an angel investor and part of VC partnerships for a long time. And he was saying, we're lucky if we get maybe one out of 20 times, we get. [00:42:57] Now, these are professionals and my friend, he's a technology guy. He and I contracted together at the same time over at digital equipment corporation. And he came to me for a lot of advice about business. Now, I look back and think my gosh, the way he did it. You can have all kinds of decisions in life. [00:43:18] Some are going to bring you closer to family. Some are going to bring you more peace and joy and happiness, and some are going to give you very gray hair that you're going to lose very quickly. And he chose the kind of the gray hair. But he was really clear about that. Cause I had said to him, what is a one-time out of 10 VCs make money. [00:43:39] And that's when he corrected me. He said, no, it's really one out of 20, if they're lucky, because that doesn't even happen all of the time. Now think about him. He was working on the scuzzy subsystem, which is. Complicated topic, but basically the ability for a computer to be able to talk to its hard desks. [00:43:58] Okay. Let's just keep it simple. And I was working in the kernel, which is the core of the operating system and was rewriting kernel modules and routines. To work with a few different types of features and functions. I was in very deep very complicated. He was in rather deep, rather complicated. [00:44:19] There's always a battle by the way, between compiler people and kernel people as to who has the more complicated job, but he wasn't either. So he just a Colonel guy guess. So he went on. He started a company. He got VC angel funding and VC funding. He made a card for your computer that you could plug in that would provide not just scuzzy support, but he moved the file system out of the operating system onto the card. [00:44:50] I that's something I had actually done a decade earlier with the network moving it out. But anyways, that's a different story entirely. So many things I've done all my life that I wish I'd been able to monetize. But anyways, w he doesn't, he's not a slacker. Let me put it that way. When it comes to technology and neither are his partners, and yet one time out of 20 and along comes the infrastructure. [00:45:14] They call it the infrastructure, but it really bothers me to call bills things that they're not the infrastructure bill that had. What was it? About five, 6% actually going to infrastructure. It's like the Democrats under president, the last president Obama they, he had this shovel-ready jobs, which of course wasn't true. [00:45:35] And most of the money didn't go to building infrastructure. It just got worse. It's just crazy and we're not paying attention. So I'm going to help you right now. Enough ranting and raving. The infrastructure bill contains money for some things. We'll talk about a few of them here in a minute and also has new regulations. [00:45:56] And one of those regulations that I've been talking about on the radio this week is this requirement to put kill switches in all new cars. That is really a big deal. Now a kill switch of course, is something that will stop the engine and it'll stop the car. That's the whole idea. And there's various types that have been bantered bandied about including pulling the car over to the side of the road. [00:46:25] If the driver stops responding as a driver might have a heart attack, or maybe they fell asleep, maybe something happened in that car should probably pull over and get out of traffic, turn on the flashers which then makes it a target. Apparently for some of these Teslas, we've seen articles about that in the new. [00:46:44] Yeah, don't park on the side of the road. They, I was in emergency medical for a long time. And one of the things I can pass along to that may save your life is if you have to pull over, do not stay in the car, do not stand in front of the. And particularly in the evening or at night because the flashing lights and the car at the side of the road is a beacon for drunk drivers to come and hit you as well as some of these autonomous vehicles, apparently just get out of the car. [00:47:16] Behind the car off the road. Okay. Go off the road behind the car, not next to the car off the road, not in front of the car, off the road, behind the car. So if it does get hit, you are less likely to suffer severe damage yourself, but this kills switch. That's part of this bill that was passed in sign, of course, a hidden part requires all manufacturers to include the ability. [00:47:44] For police departments and potentially others. And this is where some of the problem comes in to be able to stop the. Now you might remember back in 98, there's a Saifai series called the X-Files. It was very cool series. And there's an episode called kill switch about an artificial intelligence gone wild. [00:48:07] And that, that is of course a while ago back when most people were still using dial up modem. But this was a tale of technology, run a muck, and it was warning about handing too much of your life over to technology. Oh, that's one thing. But in this case, isn't it safer, right? Because somebody is whipping through neighborhoods at 80 miles an hour in their car, trying to avoid police. [00:48:37] Shouldn't have, please be able to stop that car and pull it. The problem is multifold frankly, and having this kill switch one is what constitutes law abiding. There's a great article in motorists.com and it shows a picture of this down in New Zealand. Our car was pulled over. And the police found the trunk was full of contraband. [00:49:02] Now we've seen this before, right? And movies, Miami vice and others, where they pull over the car. It's got all this contraband in the trunk. It's cocaine and various other things. No. This isn't Auckland New Zealand and the trunk was full of Kentucky fried chicken meat. They were running Kentucky fried chicken, just like the Kennedys, running illegal booze back in the day. Yeah. That's how they made their millions. They were running Kentucky fried chicken. Now this bill that was signed into law by president Biden states that this kills switch, which uses referred to as a safety device, must passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired. [00:49:54] In other words, big brother will be constantly monitoring how you drive. If you do something that the system has been programmed to recognize as driver impairment or unsafe driving your car could just shut off, which could be incredibly dangerous. I want to point out this week too. There's another article I read about Teslas and how Tesla had introduced last fall, a feature. [00:50:23] So you could set how the car was going to drive. Do you want to drive? Real cool, laid back fashion. Do you want the car to drive an average way or do you want it to be aggressive? Just weave in and out of traffic a bit and tailgate and do all of those sorts of things and you could set it and there is a public backlash and Tesla got rid of it. [00:50:42] It is back now. How do you tell if a driver's being unsafe? When a car in its autonomous mode will do the same things that a human drivers shouldn't be doing? Or what if you're hauling contraband, Kentucky fried chicken? How is the driving going to be measured as impaired? Now I know in many states you have these breathalyzers that are court ordered, installed in cars. [00:51:13] Okay, so that makes sense. Somebody has been drunk driving many times. You don't want them drunk driving ever again, please. And thank you. But how about having that system in every car? Because it fails. It doesn't work sometimes. And how about the back door? Because that's essentially what we're talking about. [00:51:34] These cars are going to have a back door that allows someone named government authorities to access it whenever they want. Would they need a warrant to do it? Probably not. Even as hackers could access the back door and shut down your vehicle, think about lad having a kill switch that would kill all of the cars and trucks in the United States. [00:52:02] Right? There are so many potential problems here and they haven't been thought about. Oh, obviously it's government, but we're going to talk or we'd get back about the investment that are part of this multi-trillion dollar bill that you and your kids and grandkids are paying for. [00:52:23] We know they snuck a backdoor kill, switch into all cars manufactured after 2026 into this infrastructure belt. What else is in there? That's going to affect technology. That's what we're going to talk about right now. [00:52:38] We know about this now. After it passed, finally, people had a chance to read it because this provision on the kill switch was not debated in the house. [00:52:50] It was not debated in this. Just like they've been doing was so many other things for so long now they just bundle them all together in a bill. They gave it a cute little cuddly title, and then they go ahead and put whatever it is they want into it. These are these omnibus bills that they should have gotten rid of decades ago. [00:53:16] It is absolutely crazy to me. I just. Get it. Why are we putting up with this? So now the next step here is the investments that are being made. Now I'm going to type in right now, how successful are angel investments? Okay. So here we go. Bunch of ads for angel investing says you can have an average return of 1.1 X cap. [00:53:48] All right. And it goes on and on. This is a company called core associates. The success rate of angel investors. This is from Investopedia, the effective internal rate out return for a successful portfolio for angel investors is approximately 22%. Now, remember that over. So that's pretty amazing. Those numbers are much higher than what my friends said that they can expect absolutely much, much. [00:54:19] But I can tell you one thing for sure. Government quote, investments, end quote, rarely ever actually pay out because you've got political motivations in there. It's one thing to be a smart technology guy investing in technology. But how about those people in Congress? That aren't smart technology guys. [00:54:44] How about the doctors in Congress? Look at what Senator Paul ran. Paul has been saying he is a doctor and what he's been saying about the whole COVID thing and the way the government has handled it. We are really going down the wrong road to here because government. Taking the money from us at the point of a gun. [00:55:06] Try not paying your taxes and see what happens rarely ends up. Okay. So the us Congress passed November six. Biden's trillion. Plus infrastructure bill that includes 65 billion of investments in the power grid to accommodate rising, renewable energy capacity and demonstration clean tech project. So what's that one about? [00:55:32] That particular one is because our grid cannot handle solar and also the windmill power. The rates, we would need to have it, our grid set up so that you have a few centralized power stations, and then that power is distributed to the area. It's not set up for having tens of thousands of power stations. [00:55:56] So there you go, president Biden, put money into try and figure out well, Hey, how do we accomplish? How do we accommodate them? Noma, Germany has done. Is they've gone ahead and they're using a massive lake as a heat sink to get rid of the extra electricity that's being generated. When it comes to a regular power plant, you can turn it up. [00:56:21] You can turn it down the same. Thing's true for every type of power plant, whether it's powered by water or nuclear or cold, you can turn it up. But when it comes to wind and solar you can't turn it down. If it's a nice sunny day, you're not going to be able to turn that power down. It's still coming out. [00:56:40] You got to do something with it. You can cut it. Open the circuit. But the power companies that run the grid don't have that kind of fine grain control over the electricity that you're generating in your house or in your business. There's so many problems that start to open up here. So they're spending $65 billion. [00:57:02] That is a lot of money to figure this out. Okay. Personally, I'd rather see the private sector do it because they're going to have a better chance of coming up with something that's really going to work next part here. Okay. And by the way, Colin it or trillion dollar plus is being favorable because they played all kinds of gimmicks with this money. [00:57:25] Just, I just found out. In fact, I think it was a couple of weeks ago, June. Do you remember. President Biden moved all of the college loans from private sources into the white house. Do you remember that? So the white house is controlling all college loans at the time I thought, okay, it's just them paying back the unions, the teachers unions, right? [00:57:49] Because it also included provisions that you cannot have be bankrupt and get rid of your college. Th that's just mind boggling to me, but as it turns out what he was doing. Okay. All of that's true. But what he was actually doing is saying, oh, there's over a trillion dollars in college loans. So we're going to move them into the white house and call those assets to offset all of the money we're spending. [00:58:19] You see what we're talking about here? It's just not. Electric vehicles, clean energy, public transit are all part of this trillion dollar plus legislation. It's got $550 billion, a half, a trillion dollars to fund advancements in public transit, clean energy electric vehicles, roads, and bridges. Okay. It's always electric. [00:58:48] Really? The right winner here is electric. The beta max that should have won out over VHS. How about hydrogen? How about some other way? How about natural gas or LP gas? What we'll never know because some of that is not going to get funding. However, there is going to be some funding. For nuclear development? [00:59:12] No, I've talked a lot about this on the radio before, but the bottom line is nuclear is the only green energy that we can really get. And I can hear some people saying, oh, you're not sure not to know. Look at the current generations of nuclear power. Now, unfortunately, the regulations around nuclear power were written what, 70, 60 years ago, right? [00:59:38] When nuclear power was nasty stuff, it came out of the projects that we had in world war II to build nuclear bomb. Now these six generation nuclear power plants are as clean as can be. They only need to be refueled every 10 to 20 years, and they're small enough to fit into a small building smaller than your average home. [01:00:02] And you can put one of these in the neighborhood in a small town, and that will power the whole. Thing. Okay. So we're already getting 27%, according to president Biden of our power from these decades, old nuclear and hydro power facilities, they've got 21 and a half billion dollars in this for clean energy demonstrations and research hubs focused on next generation technologies, helping to get us to that net zero by 2050 that they're looking at. [01:00:35] To get to, so this will be interesting because there they've got 8 billion earmarked for hydrogen and carbon capture. Guess what's going to get more, yeah. Carbon capture, direct air capture, and we don't know what's going to happen with this. We're turning cow, carbon into stone, basically with some of these plans and experiments are underway. [01:00:56] So what happened. When we need that carbon again. But 8 billion is earmarked for hydrogen and carbon capture direct capture, 10 billion, two and a half billion earmarked for advanced nuclear. So I'm happy with that. Not that they're spending the money, not at all, but that they're actually putting it into something that might make a difference. [01:01:22] And hydrogen funding in this, by the way, it looks like it's a big win for oil and the whole oil industry stick around. [01:01:31] You've heard of this shortage of Silicon, of semiconductors CPU's et cetera. I don't know if you tried to buy a computer lately, order a computer, et cetera, but there is another part of the computer that's really hard to get. And that's what we're going to talk about. [01:01:56] CPU is the central processing unit in your computer. [01:02:01] And that nowadays might actually not just be on a chip by itself, back in the day. I'm thinking about the, some of the first microchips microcomputers I worked with such as the 65 0 2, that original. Apple chip that they use great little chip, by the way, he was just so clever how they got around some of the problems eight-bit problems or the day that computer with its CPU was a standalone CPU. [01:02:30] That in other words, the CPU only did CPU thinks, it went out and grabbed stuff from memory and then did the computing and then. Push the results back to memory. Just simplifying it there today. You look at a CPU like what apple is putting into their iPhones and the iPads, and particularly their desktops with , the M family, really whole family of chips. [01:02:56] It is no longer just a CPU on that chip. That chip has all of them. It has, of course, all of the memory controllers on it, the processors, it has low power processors. It has high power processors and it has GPU's that's what I want to talk about right now are the GPU's cause in the apple case, you. One of these M series computers and your stuck with what you buy, which is why you should always be buying the biggest, best just computer you can so that it will last you longer. [01:03:32] And I'm not talking about the fact of that study that said your average laptop, nowadays windows, laptop is going to last about seven months. I'm talking about the it's going to last, not because it breaks down or doesn't break down, but it's going to last because it has enough memory to handle future operating systems, et cetera. [01:03:53] Now we've got a problem today with TPMS. These are trusted platform modules and apple has actually been using something very similar to that for a long time. TPMS are in the window's case, very simplistic and don't actually provide very much security. They're basically going to help prevent someone putting some malicious code into the boot blocks on your computer. [01:04:23] So it's going to do some good, but it's not going to do a lot of good and windows. Now, Microsoft is requiring pretty much TPMS for windows either. Across the board. Now there's some ways around it sometimes depending on what you're doing, how you're doing it, but as a whole, yeah. You gotta have that TPM in order for things to work for you and even installed windows 11. [01:04:50] That's a good step, frankly that they made apple is many steps ahead of Microsoft in this case, mainly because they can make their own hardware. Microsoft can't. So when you buy a Microsoft computer inside, it's going to have what we're still calling a CPU, but it's much more than that. [01:05:11] Nowadays their CPU might be from Intel. It might be from AMD. Those are the two most likely Microsoft with their surface tablets does support similar chips to what apple is making. So you don't have to use an Intel type of chip in order to run windows anymore, depending on the hardware you're using. [01:05:32] But as part of these chips, you have to move graphics around. So the modern chips, like the Intel chips and AMD chips have some GPU capabilities built into. But in most cases, you're going to add a GPU card to your machine. So what is this GPU? What are we talking about here? A GPU is a really interesting piece of hardware because it is designed specifically to move. [01:06:05] Bits of information around very efficiently versus a CPU, which is designed to do mathematics on words of data. So in other words, 64 bits at a time. So if you're moving stuff around the memory buses on the CPU, et cetera, are optimized for maybe 128 bits of data all at once. So why would you want something that only handles. [01:06:33] A bit at a time. Of course it can do more than that, but we're keeping things simple. You want that because it's efficient at it. And if you think about the graphics processing unit, as the thing that handles the graphics, and you look at a screen, that screen is composed of most likely millions of dots, even on our little smartphone device. [01:06:55] Millions of dots. And so you've got to flip those dots around. Sometimes you need to move them as something most, or the most efficient way. For instance, to show a video is not to update that whole screen, because if you look at a screen with video, most of that screen, isn't moving nothing. Tap. What you want to update is just the parts that are moving and that's where compression comes into place. [01:07:21] And also where decompression comes into play. So all of this stuff that is part of moving things around on your screen, even if you're dragging a window around on your display, that is most optimally handled by the graphics processing unit, the. So Apple's putting their memory on chip. It's putting the GPU's, CPU's the high power, low power. [01:07:45] CPU's everything it can. And then all the memory management and stuff on one chip. And that gives some huge advantages because when you're talking about the speeds that we're using today the less space that electrons have to travel the faster it will be. I know you think about that for a minute, right? [01:08:03] You turn on a light switch and lights are on instantly. In reality, it takes a little bit because the electrons have to, first of all, get to the light and then they have to somehow excite something in the light in order to make the light. But electrons, distance traveled matters in. So why are we having such a huge shortage of GPU's while it has to do with their ability to mine, crypto current? [01:08:34] Now the best way to mine. Cryptocurrency is using specially made and designed hardware that is designed for that one particular cryptocurrency. So it makes sense to you. That's the best way to do. But in most cases you don't have that specially designed hardware. And in many cases, that hardware is only really viable for a few months, but people are still buying GPU specifically to mine, cryptocurrencies, by the way. [01:09:09] It's usually cheaper to buy cryptocurrencies and to mine them because the average electric bill in the United States makes it so that it is impossible to mine. These cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin effectively enough. So the electricity is cheaper than the pit coins worth. So think about that. If a Bitcoin is worth $50,000, Frank. [01:09:34] The electricity to mine. Another Bitcoin is more than likely going to cost you more than 50 grand and take a long time. So people are still buying GPU's these high-end GPU's, they're using them to build machines that have a bunch of these cards in them. And that is causing shortages for you and me who might want to make videos efficiently or who might want to do just. [01:10:01] Computing and buy a high-end computer. So it's good for you for the next five to 10 years. Oh, and Radian, who makes some of these high-end GPU's just came out with one that is specifically designed to be bad at mining cryptocurrency. So who knows? Maybe there is a little bit of hope here. You can visit me online. [01:10:23] I'd appreciate it. If you would, Craig peterson.com, you'll find all kinds of great information there. And if you sign up, I'm going to send you absolutely free. My three most popular, special reports, including. The one-on passwords, Craig peterson.com. Visit me online and stick around because we'll be right back. [01:10:49] There are a lot of programs claiming that they are secure. That's what we're going to talk about right now for secure communications. What about telegram? What about signal? What about WhatsApp and WhatsApp? You remember started 20, 21 with a real blackout. [01:11:05] Signal is probably the best software that you can use the best app. They've got a desktop version as well in order to keep your communications safe. And that's what you want to do. You don't want. People listening in. You don't want people spying on you. You just want to have a conversation. [01:11:27] And there's many things that you'd say in a private conversation that you would not say, if you were sitting here on the radio or standing on the top of a building with a thousand people below you, private conversations are meant to be. What signal is doing to play with fire is they are talking about trying to pull in cryptocurrency payments into part of signals, platinum. [01:11:55] It all started with something called mobile calling and signals CEO. And his name is mark C Marlin spike. We've talked to him about him a few times, but he was an advisor to the mobile coin, current cryptocurrency. And it's been built on this stellar blockchains designed to use a view, be used to make anonymous payments that are basically the same mistakes. [01:12:20] So it's designed to hide everything from ha from every one. That's the whole idea behind mobile coin. So the problem is if you start to integrate advertising systems into supposedly secure communication channels, what's going to have. If you start to take things like a cryptocurrency and put it into a secure communications channel, then what's going to happen. [01:12:48] You can bet that what's going to happen is governments are going to step in saying, Hey, wait a minute. Now you can have money flowing. I remember buying a car. And this was back in I think the early eighties and I went to the bank and I got a loan from the bank in order to buy the car. And they gave me eight, $1,000 bills. [01:13:11] Cause I was going down to the auction car auction and I was going to buy a car and I set myself an $8,000. So the idea was like buy the car and I come back, I pay them back the difference, and then they write the rest stop as alone, man. Weren't those the days, right? When a banker knew you, the banker made decisions on things like an $8,000 loan, I don't know. [01:13:37] What would that be worth in today's money? 10,020 probably goes to the $15,000 just based on my word. And I walked out of there with thousand dollar bills and. I also had $500 bills. And back then, you used them to pay bills and of course they're worth more today than they were then. Let me put it the other way is actually worth less, right? [01:14:03] Because of the, in crazy amounts of inflation that we've had. But the bottom line is you could have. Get thousand dollar bills and put eight of them in your pocket. So it doesn't look like you're walking around with a huge water cash that someone's going to steal from you. And then the government decided that, oh my gosh, that's terrible. [01:14:25] Oh no. Wow. Drug dealers might be using those thousand dollar bills. Oh, yeah, this is true. They might be using them and we all want to start off, stop the sale of illegal illicit drugs. That makes sense. But the war on drugs, we're not going to get into that has been an abject failure and it has resulted in things like the fiscal or w you're not even charged criminally or civilly, and they seize the money. [01:14:55] You. So they got rid of thousand dollar bills because of course they were only used by drug dealers and people like me, they got rid of $500 bills because of course it was still the drug dealers. And to me who were using them now, the biggest denomination that you can get is a hundred dollar bill. [01:15:14] Although the treasury is talking about making minting a 1000, excuse me. $1 trillion coin that they would use in order to make payments, right? Yeah. So that, that balances their budget. Cause yeah, they just printed a trillion dollar coin. Anyhow. The problem is that the government wants its fingers in every transaction, whether or not there are drug dealers involved and that is causing us nothing but headaches and heartaches, frankly, it's a real. [01:15:49] Problem. So when you get Marlin spike, tallying people, that signal is going to include a cryptocurrency called mobile calling that is designed to be absolutely private. That's when they government starts freaking. China already has a cryptocurrency. In fact, they've been trying to peddle their cryptocurrency for use by governments around the worl

Overview Ann Charles is the first USA Today Bestseller I've had on the podcast. And she didn't even know she was a bestseller when it happened. We discuss her publishing journey, which isn't what she intended to do. Originally she wanted to be Indiana Jones, and tells us the ironic reason she didn't do that. If you remember kindle worlds, it helped get her started. She has multiple series, one of which she writes with her husband, and we discuss the latest. Website https://anncharles.com/book_cat/jackrabbit-junction/ Book Favorites Louis Lamour - Flint https://www.amazon.com/One-Navajo-Family-Blessings-Book-ebook/dp/B01M0NH3VV/ref=sr_1_1 YouTube Transcript [00:00:44] Stephen: Welcome to another great episode of discovered wordsmiths. And this is an exciting episode because today I have the very first USA today, bestseller that is on been on my podcast. Now, normally I wouldn't even come close to having someone [00:01:00] like that on here because. That's not what I focus on. I focus on new authors, still working hard for their career. But Anne is a little different. I know a lot of you probably have any unheard of her and she got the USA bestseller kind of by surprise didn't even expect it. But that doesn't mean that she didn't deserve it. So it's an exciting one for me, because she's still unknown. Somebody that everybody talks about and fits very well on the podcast and has a whole lot of things that can help to help other authors and things to talk about for other authors plus has some really great books. So that's always the best part of it is finding some really great books that people can go out and read. So I'm not going to sit around too much longer here. I know Anne's been waiting to get this podcast episode up anyway, so here. All right. So today discovered will wordsmiths. I've got an Charles and I'm really excited to [00:02:00] talk to you. How are you doing today? I am. [00:02:02] Ann: I'm doing great so far, tomorrow's the big Turkey day for us here. So I'm making a lot of, not eating much today so I can eat so much pie tomorrow. I just got. [00:02:12] Stephen: Yeah, we've got way more pies planned and I think should be humanly feasible, but [00:02:17] Ann: I don't know. There's never too much pie for those of us who love [00:02:21] Stephen: desert. I'm the, obviously I do the Turkey, that's my things. And I've got a really good system and I'm just so proud of. I actually remembered all the steps so far. It took it out, put it in the brine. I, usually I miss something, so all good. I was [00:02:36] Ann: just going to ask if you have it bright if you're brining it yet. So here on, [00:02:40] Stephen: yeah, I, I am my wife wants to do like a oil roaster one year. We haven't done that yet, we'll see. And we're chatting a bit, but tell everybody a little bit about who you are, where you live, what you like to do. [00:02:53] Ann: Besides writing and Charles and I live in Prescott, Arizona, we're up in the mountains for those of you. Aren't [00:03:00] familiar with Arizona. We're not down in the desert, like the Phoenix folks and outside of writing. Of course I like to read, but I also love to watch movies. We were talking about your star wars and Raiders of the lost Ark and all that good stuff. So I love all kinds of movies, but action, adventure. Saifai anything fun? Humor, my favorites. And I actually, I really like to watch movies instead of read books because. It recharges me in a way that's different. I do love to read books. Don't get me wrong, but there's something about, I think I'm a visual learner. So watching movies really helps me think about how to create dialogue and set up a scene and things like that. When I go to sit down and write a story [00:03:45] Stephen: it's a quicker process that you can rather than spread out over, an hour and a half. All right. Yeah. I see that [00:03:53] Ann: too. Yeah.

Overview JP is a great guy and has one of the most fantastic names you could hope for, well, I guess unless you're an author and wanting people to find you. But he uses that as an advantage and it fits his style. In this week's episode, JP talks about his writing journey - where he started, where he's at, and where he's headed. Most of this involves other writers and community - something we discuss in more detail in part B. JP not only is writing serial fiction in Kindle Vella, but has started a podcast about that - The Serial Fiction Show. Website http://www.jprindfleischix.com/ Books https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B09H65GWR2 Favorites https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009NFHF0Q/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B009NFHF0Q&linkCode=as2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=86082084a7df36ed3c7e7c1091e9f94a https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005IZOH1K/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B005IZOH1K&linkCode=as2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=c6d2720dbac1abdf08faa1ff28583985 Toad Hall Bookstore - https://toadhallonline.com/ https://cultureshockshop.com/visit-us/ YouTube https://youtu.be/GraG54nTF4E Transcript [00:01:48] Stephen: all right. Welcome to episode 90. One of discovered wordsmiths, and one of those voices you just heard talking about the serial fiction show is JP, who is our guest on today's podcast. [00:02:00] I met JP through J thorns, uh, author success mastermind group. And I've known JP going on two years now. I believe we've had some good times. He's a great guy, funny, and I really wanted to get him on the show because he's unique. He uses taro to help do his writing. He's. Uh, has written some dark fantasy. He's written a lot with other people. So he's got some unique insights into writing and thoughts and how to do things. And besides he's got one of the best names I think I've ever heard. So sit back and enjoy this episode with JP. Alright, JP. Yeah. Party time. Hi. Thanks for being on the podcast. How you doing today? Uh, not too bad, you know, considering it's beginning of November. So. Yeah, I like this season. [00:02:56] JP: I generally do too up until about January [00:03:00] or February, then it's too cold. [00:03:01] Stephen: Oh. I used to not care. And then I got old and it makes a big difference [00:03:08] JP: ever since the minus. Outside. Yeah. Broke me. I'm just like not done with you winter. [00:03:14] Stephen: Oh yeah. Just wait to you get up another five, 10 years. And suddenly everything changes JV. We're just chatting. We've talked for about a year and a half now on Jay's mastermind, but everybody else listening probably doesn't know anything about you. Tell us a little bit about yourself besides. Besides [00:03:31] JP: writing this side. Yeah. I'm JP. I have a bachelor's degree in biochemistry and I took the science route in life and I worked in quality ever since I graduated college all the way up into working for a radio nuclear isotope, injectable plant, which is really fun to say. But yeah, I love science. I love video games because of course I do. And a big movie buff. So that's, I guess. In a nutshell. [00:03:59] Stephen: Okay. [00:04:00] Well, let's see a current movie and video [00:04:02] JP: game. Okay. We're halfway through doing, because my partner can't seem to finish a movie. One [00:04:09] Stephen: third of the whole thing too. [00:04:11] JP: It's really fun to watch. Cause I remember reading it and then also watching the nineties mini series on Saifai. And so it's fun seeing all the correlations between everything. [00:04:22] Stephen: What's your current video game. [00:04:25] JP: What kind of video? And, uh, I just started playing this weird game called the last stop. I really like weird indie games and I also, the telltale S choose your own adventure games. So this one really hit all the buttons.

Title: Blade Runner Series Wrap Up and Filling in the BlanksDescription: Today we are joined by our frequent guest, Erik Fogg of the Reconsidered Podcast to wrap up this series on the Blade Runner series of films. We look at how the messages and the themes of Blade Runner carry through each of the films. We also take a deeper look into the Blade Runner universe through a series of shorts that were released prior to the opening of Blade Runner 2049.Learn More About our Guest:Erik Fogg of the Reconsider Podcastwww.reconsidermedia.orgBlade Runner Shorts:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrZk9sSgRyQ (Black Out 2022 Anime Short)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgsS3nhRRzQ&t=1s (2036: Nexus Dawn Short)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ9Os8cP_gg (2048: Nowhere to Run Short)You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen and subscribe at all these great places:www.beyondthebigscreen.comClick to Subscribe:https://www.spreaker.com/show/4926576/episodes/feedemail: steve@atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comhttps://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacyParthenon Podcast Network Home:parthenonpodcast.comOn Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypagehttps://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfThePapacyPodcasthttps://twitter.com/atozhistoryMusic Provided by:"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Image Credits:https://letterboxd.com/film/blade-runner-2049/Begin Transcript:, [00:00:00] this is beyond the big screen podcast with your host, Steve Guerra. Thanks again for joining us today. Today, we are going to wrap up our series on blade runner and blade runner 2049. And the past three episodes we've discussed these two movies and the really powerful themes they uncovered and discuss.Today, we're going to discuss how the two movies fit together and explore a few more issues that came up and just try and tie these two movies together. I'm very happy to be joined the gun by Eric of the reconsider podcast. And as we well know, since you've listened to the three previous episodes, we know that reconsider as a political and current events podcast, Eric, and as partners and or help you contextualize current politics and [00:01:00] history and broader forces and political theory reconsider helps you rise above the one-liners the 140 character politics and the tribal narrative and their motto is we don't do the thinking for you.Thank you so much for coming on for a fourth time, Eric. Yeah, my pleasure. I mean, obviously I love your show. And one of the things I really love about talking about movies, like this is it lets us look at. Um, and by like this, I mean, I mean really good movies that do a great job, exploring society, exploring humanity.They let us, as people really look into. Humanity and looking to society today through, in another place where it's sort of safe, right. Where we can say, or we can say, Hey, what, what does this tell us about humans as a whole about society, about government, about how we get along with each other as a whole, um, where we're not as emotionally tied up in it.Right? Cause this, this isn't our [00:02:00] world. It's, it's just a story, but we can learn a lot from it. And so it gives us this opportunity to ask some questions about ourselves that aren't as threatening. Whereas, you know, as, as I'm sure you're aware from the. Political climate. If someone from your not from your political tribe asks these kinds of questions in a way that's not comfortable for you, you can get very defensive.And so movies can be a great place to be able to have some of those tough questions. And when they're, well-built, they're they're questions that are open to everyone. I think blade runner does a great job of that, and I'm always happy to keep talking about it and other, you know, other great movies like that with you, just a great movie as a sandbox to see how a lot of different ideas can be played out.Yeah, exactly. And the, I think the true brilliance of blade runner as a Saifai and something that is, I think the. The what's it, the gold standard of scifi is it doesn't just get us asking, oh, what happens when like this technology [00:03:00] comes around? That's interesting, right? That is an interesting question.But when we, when we see humans whose nature is, you know, somewhat constant acting in a world where the technological and sort of societal and resource forces are incredibly differently and we ask, why are they acting this way? This is different from the way that we act today, what is it about our nature that.Roughly is reflected in that behavior that is true today that we should really pay attention to that's when you've hit the gold standard and blade runner. Does that, uh, yeah, absolutely. Before we dig in, I heard through the grapevine, one of the greatest podcasting stories that actually has to do with your podcast, that your partner Zander was standing in line to get a book signed and actually overheard something.We have to share this story. Okay. Yeah, this, this is a great story. Zander Zander shared it with me and sort of, as soon as he was done, [00:04:00] um, he couldn't help, but get me on the phone. And of course he's in the west coast and it was an ed thing. So for me on the east coast, it was really late. I was like, oh my God, what does he want?And he tells me that she's standing in line to get a book signed by Mike Duncan. So Mike Duncan, as the history of Rome podcaster and the revolutions podcaster, and obviously a huge work, huge fans, and he's a big inspiration to us. And we, of course both got his book, the storm before the storm, uh, which is about the decline and fall of the Roman Republic.Actually the, the, the fence immediately before the decline and fall of the Roman Republic. Also something I really like, because just like with fiction history is a great place for us to start asking some of these questions about ourselves. And so. And of course everyone in line, it's a big line, Mike, Duncan's a big deal if you've not heard of him.And of course all everyone else in line, it's like a big history and podcast nerd as well. And so they're talking about, of course, you know, the United States and [00:05:00] the late Roman Republic, because what else is on your mind when you're just hanging around thinking about the decline and fall of the Roman and the Roman Republic.And one guy says they start talking about voting, right? They start saying like, oh, what are alternative ways for us to vote or ways to create a more stable, uh, functional representative Congress? I'm like, I guess, you know, I was listening to this podcast recently and they actually talked about this. They had a whole bunch of different ways to, to vote, uh, You know, they explained it theoretically and then explained it with a bunch of other countries.And I really liked to their Ireland example. And Xander's that years per cup. He's like we talked about Ireland recently and this guy goes on to explain pretty well apparently how, um, Ireland's election system worked and it's one that I'm a fan of. And, uh, and people go like, oh, that's really interesting.I'm gonna listen to it. What's this podcast called. And he goes, oh, it's called reconsider. And I really like it because, uh, what's their motto. It's, it's something like, uh, we don't, we don't think for you or we let you think for yourself [00:06:00] and Zander puts on his radio voice and he goes, we don't do the thinking for you.And this guy's like, oh yeah, you listened to it too. So the effect was like slightly lost. He goes, well, I do, but I also make it I'm I'm Zander one of the co-hosts and like everyone's heads explode a little bit. Um, and so all of a sudden, Sandra has this, this crowd around him because, you know, Of course, it was just this magical moment where someone is gushing, about how much they love a podcast and there's the co-host right there.Uh, so they had a great time together and of course he just gave out a bunch of business cards and hopefully got a bunch of new fans. And then he got to see Mike Dunkin, which was actually the highlight of the night because Mike is so cool. Um, and you know, that's, uh, that was, uh, that was a real treat for me to hear because of course, you know, as, as, you know, as a fellow podcast or we put so much work into this and it doesn't pay a freaking dime.And so, you know, what do you really get out of it? And sometimes we like hearing ourselves talk, um, but just to get some independent. [00:07:00] Uh, some independent validation from someone who doesn't know that you're there, that you're doing a good job, that, you know, you've helped people learn some stuff and they really care about what you're talking about.That just, it, it, you know, it brightens your day. That's just the best story, the best podcasting story ever. Now let's dig into these movies, uh, and wrap them up. We have blade runner from 1982 blade runner 2049, which came out in 2017, then release shortly before the blade runner 20 49, 3 shorts were released that were meant to bridge the 1982 blade runner movie, which has sat in 2019 to bridge to the blade runner 2049.And we'll work on a kind of base the episode around those shorts and then expand on them a little. Maybe we can just talk really briefly about what were some of the plot points that crossed over [00:08:00] between blade runner and blade runner 2049, some of those themes that carried over across the two films?Yeah, definitely the way I like to think of the, or the way I like to name the three shorts in order to keep them right in my head is with their dates, not date of release, obviously, but the dates that they're involved. So this blade, you know, the first one is blade runner also known as blade runner 2019, which was when it was set.And then the three shorts are set in 2022. 20 36, 20,

Title: Blade Runner 2049 – Reimagined and as Relevant as EverDescription: Today we are joined by our frequent guest, Erik Fogg of the Reconsidered Podcast to talk about the sequel and reimagination of Blade Runner – Blade Runner 2049 (2017.) Director Denis Villenueve examines some of the questions of the first Blade Runner movies and expands upon them. This movie stars Ryan Gosling, Bautista, Harrison Ford and an incredible performance by Robin Wright. Learn More About our Guest:Erik Fogg of the Reconsider Podcastwww.reconsidermedia.orgYou can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen and subscribe at all these great places:www.beyondthebigscreen.comClick to Subscribe:https://www.spreaker.com/show/4926576/episodes/feedemail: steve@atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comhttps://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacyParthenon Podcast Network Home:parthenonpodcast.comOn Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypagehttps://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfThePapacyPodcasthttps://twitter.com/atozhistoryMusic Provided by:"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Image Credits:By The poster art can or could be obtained from the distributors, Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51893608Begin Transcript:, [00:00:00] this is beyond the big screen podcast with your host, Steve Guerra. Welcome back to beyond the big screen today, we are very happy to be joined by Eric of the reconsider podcast. And today we're going to take a deep dive into the movie blade runner 2049. And if you listened to last week's episode, we talked about blade runner from 1982.So these are two great episodes to listen to back to back. Uh, so I highly suggest you go back and listen to. Episode, but it's not required, obviously, uh, not so much because you need that as background knowledge for this movie or episode it's just because it was a great show. So thank you so much, Eric, for being on today.Yeah, my pleasure. I love your show and I love this movie and I love talking about great. Thank [00:01:00] you. So reconsider as a podcast about politics and news, but it's really much more than just the news of the day sort of thing that you can get on TV or radio Zander and Erik, which I'm sad to say. Zander, wasn't able to join us today.But they help you contextualize current politics and history and the broader forces and in political theory. Reconsider helps you rise above the one-liners the 140 character politics and the tribal narratives, their motto is we don't do the thinking for you and they really don't. And that's why I think it's such an amazing podcast.Do you have anything you could add to that, Eric? No, thanks, man. I, I think one of the things that I really like about reconsiders that Zander and I don't always agree on everything and we do a great job. I think showcasing how to discuss stuff in a way. Um, you know, in a way, which we're really learning.And one of these days I want to do a behind the scenes episode where we actually, [00:02:00] uh, you know, cause we build these, we build these episodes out with a lot of disagreement and then we do a bunch of research and, and learn some stuff as we go. So I kind of want to do one of these blind to, to show a little more of how we do that.But that's my, my favorite part is, is whenever we disagree and it's a good time. Yeah. It's a really cool, I'd love to listen to an episode like that. Now, um, this movie blade runner 2049 is currently in the theaters. If you're listening to this show in the 2017, 2018 time period, it stars Ryan Gosling as K Harrison Ford reprising his role as Decherd there's Robin Wright, Penn, and a bunch of other great actors.It was released in October of 2017. We will definitely have a few spoilers in this episode. So I think this is, yeah, but I think this is a good way to help you understand the movie and maybe get a little different perspective when you're watching it. Your second, fourth or fifth time. And [00:03:00] this film takes place about 30 years in the future.After the original blade runner movie. And it's, uh, all of these blade runner from 1982 and then this newest blade runner are all based on the 1968, Phillip K Dick novel, do Androids dream of electric sheep, which was a great novel to two great movies based on a great novel. Yeah. And I think that the, one of the things I like about the second movie is it brought in a lot of the elements of Dick's novel that were missing in the original, um, a lot of, in particular, a lot of details about society and the environment that we'll get into.So it, it brings back some stuff that I thought, well, you know, that, that just really flesh out the mastery of the novel in movie. Now Eric, you're quite an officiant auto of blade runner, especially that first movie. Can you just explain a bit where your interest in blade runner came from and then maybe briefly set up how that 1982 movie leads into [00:04:00] the blade runner 2049?Yes, definitely. So blade runner is the original blade runner is my. Pretty much hands down and what I love about it. And I was really excited to be able to talk about it with you on your show, a number of episodes back. And so guys, if you haven't listened to that, I encourage you to listen to it. Cause we really get into the thick of it.Blade runner is a scifi movie that manages to do an incredibly good job being true to the thematic and philosophical questioning that makes science fiction such a powerful and important, uh, literary genre in the world. Um, Saifai that gets translated into movies, you know, in order to be available for a wider audience, sets aside a lot of those questions in order to have more action, more sex, more whatever.Uh, but these guys really spend a lot of time and, and really respect. The audience and force them to think. So the [00:05:00] first time I watched blade runner, I came out thinking what the heck happened. And so I read some more and I thought about it and I watched it again and again and again, and every time I got something more out of it and I always, it always leaves you with really good questions.Whenever you watch it, that are hard to answer. Um, so like our show, it doesn't do the thinking for you. And I really liked that. And so of course I had to see 20, 49 as soon as it came out. Uh, I went out, uh, you know, the, the night that it opened. And what's interesting about 2049, is it set so far in the future?That a lot has happened. A lot has changed in the world. Between these two movies. And there are three shorts that were released, uh, between the movies, as part of the promo that do a little bit of explaining of some of the events that occurred pre movie, like how the big power outage happened and how all the, like, all that data in the world basically was lost.Um, [00:06:00] how the replicant program got shut down and then restarted after Tyrrell died, stuff like that. And so if you're not familiar with those 2049. Is going to be a bit of a shock, which is okay. It works just fine, but I encourage you to watch those shorts as well. Yeah. I didn't see those shorts. Um, now I'm definitely gonna go back and watch them that very first scene, the opening scene of LA, we see a very different LA than we did and the original blade runner.Maybe we can get, get our setting a little bit. And then before we move on, Definitely. I was really happy with how they did this because of course, I'm, I'm walking into this SQL knowing that blade runner is my favorite movie terrified. Right? There's lots of hype, uh, blade runner had a cult following and I'm part of it.And I have a lot of anxiety that, you know, okay. They're trying to do a big box office smash. And is it, is it going to blow its connection to its predecessor? Um, is it going to, you know, have the same kind of respect for the [00:07:00] genre that blade runner did? And at that opening moment, we see that we see K flying through.Um, I knew it was going to be great. So in the, in the original blade runner, of course, it's nearly all black, uh, it's dark it's destructive. It's an industrial wasteland. And, you know, you have these flares rising up in the background, as you have Decker, um, flying through and in, in. 2049, they show that they're going to be taking a bit of a different spin on this because the world has changed.So instead of black, we have a ton of gray, uh, and you have just gobs and gobs of endless this endless grid of high density housing that really sets the mood. There are these endless people, really nothing in the city, rather than a series of concrete blocks. Um, it's almost like a. [00:08:00] It's almost like an ant farm kind of thing, except that people don't look very busy.They look pretty idle. So there's jammed in there. They're just cleaning on to survive. There's no luxuries of any sorts. And the other notable thing is that it's, since it's gray instead of black and you don't see those flares, it tells you already that, okay, we've changed something. We're no longer out putting a bunch of hydrocarbons.We're no longer. And industrial wasteland where now more environmentally stable, um, and the, the population hasn't plummeted the way that it had in the original blade runner, um, where there were a lot of empty buildings, but instead we've, we've got this population surging back, but no prosperity, no lively.The, the city's not alive, even though there are a lot of people live in. Some of the themes have carried over though. And then the very next scene that they show somebody who's a bug farmer and just a complete wasteland. And we find out that that's actually [00:09:00] one of the replicants that K is sending. To kill let's maybe just quickly talk about what were your impressions of Kay, because he's a very different character than Deche

Title: Blade Runner (1982) – Reinventing Science FictionDescription: Today we are joined by our frequent guest, Erik Fogg of the Reconsidered Podcast to talk about a trailblazing piece of science fiction, 1982's Blade Runner starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer and More. This film reimagined and reinterpreted Philip K. Dick's classic novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Although the movie is 40 years old, it is more relevant today than it was in the early 1980s.Learn More About our Guest:Erik Fogg of the Reconsider Podcastwww.reconsidermedia.orgYou can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen and subscribe at all these great places:www.beyondthebigscreen.comClick to Subscribe:https://www.spreaker.com/show/4926576/episodes/feedemail: steve@atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comhttps://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacyParthenon Podcast Network Home:parthenonpodcast.comOn Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypagehttps://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfThePapacyPodcasthttps://twitter.com/atozhistoryMusic Provided by:"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Image Credits:By IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59925545Begin Transcript:, [00:00:00] this is beyond the big screen podcast with your host, Steve Guerra. Welcome today. We are going to talk about the 1982 movie blade runner based on the Phillip K Dick novel, do Androids dream of electric sheep. The book and the film are set in a near future. Post-apocalyptic dystopia. One of my favorite genres as is common with the dystopian science fiction, John.Blade runner addresses a number of political and political science issues, political theory, and even philosophy are important for our frameworks while blade runner is not overtly political, it does tie deeply into questions of humanist and theological philosophy and to morality as well. Ultimately, all of this is critical for us deciding on what [00:01:00] political action, which is just our own moral, personal, moral action on collective scale to take.It's why it's fascinated Eric for so long, and I'm very happy to be joined by Eric and Zander hosts of reconsider podcasts. Thank you guys so much for coming on today. We are happy to be here. Thanks for having us. Reconsider is actually a political podcast. Eric and Zane. Help you contextualize current politics and history and broader forces and political theory reconsider helps you rise above the one-liners the 140 character politics and tribal narratives.Their motto is we don't do the thinking for you. And they really don't. That's why it's such an amazing podcast and one of my personal favorites. Thanks. But before we dig in too deeply, the. Here's some production details. We watched the final cut, which is the director's edition. Eric, you had commented on that.Why do you think [00:02:00] that that's a better cut of the film than it? It went through several evolutions. Yeah, it actually went through four there's the theatrical cut. The international cut. The director's cut. And the final cut. The final cut being the one that really Scott. Like the best. And I have strong opinions on this and I think most other diehard blade runner fans do, there's a consensus generally that the final cuts the right one, not only because really Scott liked it best.Uh, I don't know if Philip K Dick liked it best, but the reason we like it best is that the theatrical cut, um, has a number of, uh, sins. The biggest of which is the ending. The second biggest of which is the fact that. Um, Harrison Ford does a monologue. It does it like a backwards memory monologue. Like a lot of new are like, ah, she walked in and was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen lights up to hair kind of thing.And unfortunately what that does is it not only sounds [00:03:00] stupid in the context of what is otherwise a beautiful. Uh, but it also takes away the opportunity for you to do the thinking yourself. So, uh, you know, sort of as is the, our, our podcast motto, I hate when things do the thinking for me. Um, and so the, the, both the director's cut and the final cut take that those two key elements out the final cut adds another element, which is a unicorn dream.That's really important to how you interpret one of the big questions of the movie. Uh, so if, if you guys haven't seen it yet on the show, Or that eliciting, I highly recommend just go straight for the direct or the final cut and skip everything else. Pretend it doesn't exist. It had our runtime of about 120 minutes.And it was released in 1982. It had a $30 million budget, which was today almost $80 million. So it's a really, it was a huge budget, but it only brought in about $26 million. That's [00:04:00] first summer. It was, that was the summer that ITI launched and there was a couple other big movies. So it really, wasn't a huge commercial success for somebody who's into this movie.Do you know the reason why it didn't seem to catch on at the time? I don't know the reason, there's always a lot of speculation with this stuff, right? Some of it's a self fulfilling prophecy, um, and a bit of a, uh, like networking or positive, negative feedback loop effect. Anytime you release a commercial product, however, Um, blade runner really challenged, a lot of norms.A lot of people thought it was going to be an action movie. It was originally in the theatrical cut, um, advertised and, you know, the trailers came out as if it was an action movie and ended up being a very slow paced, very plotting, very grindy, methodical movie. Um, and so it was very different from. The producers or the, the, um, studio originally seemed to [00:05:00] promise to hook people.And I think they just watched it and, uh, you know, action movie fans watch it went, oh, this is garbage. I don't like it. It's not an action movie. And so they didn't tell their friends to go watch it. Um, and so I ended up being relegated to a, you know, sort of hardcore Saifai or dystopia or Neo noir fan cult, film.Uh, it's made a lot of money since that first. Since that first summer, of course. But I think that's why it never really took off if I had to guess. Yeah. I think it challenged the genres at the time. It didn't really fit into hardcore science, science fiction. It wasn't really action, especially that this is the time where star wars came out and Tron Terminator.Yeah, exactly. And so. It's ultimately not comparable to those, even though at first, the studio tried to compare it to those. I think a lot of people are disappointed, but I think for the same reasons that it challenges that so much is why it's such a great film and something that can really [00:06:00] teach you something in the way that star wars really has very little to do.It was fighting words for a lot of people. Yeah. What was your perspective of seeing this movie as sort of an outsider that you hadn't seen the movie before? So it wasn't as much of a call classic to you. Okay. Yeah. I've seen this movie like one and a half times the first time. Like a vacation weekend. I was with a bunch of folks and we turned it on and we were already, you know, three beers in, so, and we didn't even finish the movie.So I really, I kinda have to pick it back up again and watch it. And Eric, thank God for your movie notes because I went on Amazon and purchased the first thing I found. Kind of flip through the notes and realize it wasn't the final cut. So I went back and returned it and watched the final cut. Good, good stuff.As an outsider or at least someone who doesn't know nearly as much about it as Eric, I was struck by how similar certain elements are to a lot more modern Saifai that deal with [00:07:00] consciousness and artificial intelligence. Now that. 35 years after the movie, we have a much better understanding of how certain cognitive mechanisms work in the brain.And we have people out there trying to really push the envelope for how artificial intelligence works. So I've seen some modern scifi. Television and movies. And I'll bring this up at some point on this episode, that blade runner really seems to have a lot of common elements with, but again, it was 35 years.The movie was based off of a Phillip K Dick book. As Eric. You had said, you've read the bug Zander. Have you read the book? Unfortunately not. It was an interesting book. I believe this was the first Philip K Phillip K Dick novel. That was translated into a movie. Is that right? That's my understanding, certainly.And I think he wasn't exactly ecstatic about the way it came out. Now. It was a very, uh, a very contentious [00:08:00] development process, not as contentious as 2001, a space Odyssey, which is perhaps if I come back the next one, I'll want to talk about. Uh, yeah, Dick was, Dick was even more unhappy with the theatrical cut than Ridley Scott in part, because I think once you have developed a story and Scott came in and he really changed the story significantly, um, it is a different story.It is based on do Androids dream of electric sheep. It is not a really direct, um, uh, Translation of it. It's a it's, you know, changed a lot. And so I think for that reason, Dick kind of went, what the heck? And then he saw the theatrical cut and sort of legend has it, that he walked out in the middle of it.He was just as. A lot of his movies have actually been made into, or a lot of his books rather have been made into films lately, but he died in 1983, I believe. So he didn't really have much to say about how those other ones were [00:09:00] translated. Now, the cast was almost, I would say it was pretty much the perfect eighties past that had Harrison Ford as Rick Decherd look at young and sexy.Yeah, the per yeah, the absolute Harrison Ford at his peak Rutger Hauer who played Roy batty, which he's a very different character than he was

Are You Ready For Your Car to Spy On You? It's Already the Law They pass the infrastructure bill, which means now it's time to figure out what is in the infrastructure bill. And we're going to talk about the technology that they decided to fund the technology that will win the game because it has billions of dollars of federal money behind it. [Following is an automated transcript] [00:00:16] This is disappointing, but it's normal, right? [00:00:20] It's absolutely normal because the federal government has always been one that picks winners and losers. If you're old enough, you remember, of course, VHS. Tapes right too. Do you remember beta tapes? Beta max tapes. Beta max was quite the standard for professional production for the longest time, a better technology, frankly, a lot better than VHS. [00:00:46] Same. The thing's true with beta, but beta lost. And, of course, we ended up with VHS tapes. That's an example of technologies that were backed by investors. And we've seen a lot of that. Look at what's happened with the Serono trial, again, technology backed by investors. And it turned out to not work and in quite a dramatic way, frankly. [00:01:13] We've seen that repeatedly and keep hitting my mic here, and the problem that we really have, isn't so much that investors get things wrong because they. I was talking with a friend of mine. Who's has been an angel investor and part of VC partnerships for a long time. And he was saying, we're lucky if we get maybe one out of 20 times, we get. [00:01:37] Now, these are professionals, and my friend, he's a technology guy. He and I contracted together at the same time over a digital equipment corporation. And he came to me for a lot of advice about business. Now, I look back and think, my gosh, the way he did it. You can have all kinds of decisions in life. [00:01:58] Some are going to bring you closer to family. Some are going to bring you more peace and joy and happiness, and some are going to give you very gray hair that you're going to lose very quickly. And he chose the kind of gray hair. But he was really clear about that. Cause I had said to him, what is a one-time out of 10 VCs make money? [00:02:19] And that's when he corrected me. He said, no, it's really one out of 20 if they're lucky because that doesn't even happen all of the time. Now think about him. He was working on the scuzzy subsystem, which is. It's a complicated topic, but basically, a computer can talk to its hard disks. [00:02:38] Okay. Let's just keep it simple. And I was working in the kernel, which is the core of the operating system, and was rewriting kernel modules and routines. To work with a few different types of features and functions. I was very deep, very complicated. He was rather deep, rather complicated. [00:02:59] There's always a battle, by the way, between compiler people and kernel people as to who has the more complicated job, but he wasn't either. So he's just a kernel guy, I guess. So he went on. He started a company, he got VC angel funding and VC funding. He made a card for your computer that you could plug in that would provide not just scuzzy support, but he moved the file system out of the operating system or onto the card. [00:03:30] that's something I had actually done a decade earlier with the network moving it out. But anyway, that's a different story entirely. So many things I've done all my life that I wish I'd been able to monetize. But anyways, w he doesn't, he's not a slacker. Let me put it that way. When it comes to technology, neither are his partners, and yet one time out of 20 and along comes the infrastructure. [00:03:55] They call it the infrastructure bill. It really bothers me to call bills that are not the infrastructure bill that had. What was it? About five, 6% are actually going to infrastructure. So it's like the Democrats under the president, the last president Obama they, he had this shovel-ready jobs, which of course wasn't true. [00:04:15] And most of the money didn't go to building infrastructure. It just got worse. It's just crazy, and we're not paying attention. So I'm going to help you right now. Enough ranting and raving. The infrastructure bill contains money for some things. We'll talk about a few of them here in a minute and have new regulations. [00:04:37] And one of those regulations that I've been talking about on the radio this week is this requirement to put kill switches in all new cars. That is really a big deal. Now a kill switch, of course, is something that will stop the engine, and it'll stop the car. That's the whole idea. And various types have been bantered bandied about, including pulling the car over to the side of the road. [00:05:06] If the driver stops responding as a driver might have a heart attack or fell asleep, perhaps something happened in that car should probably pull over and get out of traffic, turn on the flashers which then makes it a target. Apparently, for some of these Teslas, we've seen articles about that in the news. [00:05:24] Yeah, don't park on the side of the road. I was in emergency medicine for a long time. And one of the things I can pass along that may save your life is if you have to pull over, do not stay in the car, do not stand in front of the. And particularly in the evening or at night because the flashing lights and the vehicle at the side of the road is a beacon for drunk drivers to come and hit you as well as some of these autonomous vehicles, apparently just get out of the car. [00:05:56] Behind the car off the road. Okay. Go off the road behind the vehicle, not next to the car off the road, not in front of the car, off the road, behind the car. So if it does get hit, you are less likely to suffer severe damage yourself, but this kills switch. That's part of this bill that was passed in sign. Of course, a remote feature requires all manufacturers to include the ability. [00:06:24] For police departments and potentially others. And this is where some of the problems come in to be able to stop them. Now you might remember back in 98, there's a Saifai series called the X-Files. It was a very cool series. And there's an episode called kill switch about the artificial intelligence gone wild. [00:06:47] And that, that is, of course, a while ago back when most people were still using a dial-up modem. But this was a tale of technology, run amuck, and it was warning about handing too much of your life over to technology. Oh, that's one thing. But in this case, isn't it safer, right? Because somebody is whipping through neighborhoods at 80 miles an hour in their car, trying to avoid police. [00:07:16] Shouldn't have, please be able to stop that car and pull it. So the problem is multifold, frankly, and having this kill switch one constitutes law-abiding. There's a great article on motorists.com, and it shows a picture of this down in New Zealand. Our car was pulled over. And the police found the trunk was full of contraband. [00:07:42] Now we've seen this before, right? And movies, Miami Vice, and others, where they pull over the car. It's got all this contraband in the trunk. It's cocaine and various other things. No. This isn't Auckland, New Zealand and the trunk was full of Kentucky fried chicken meat. They were running Kentucky fried chicken, just like the Kennedys, running illegal booze back in the day. Yeah. That's how they made their millions. They were running Kentucky fried chicken. Now this bill signed into law by president Biden states that this kills switch, which uses referred to as a safety device, must passively monitor the performance of a motor vehicle driver to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired. [00:08:34] In other words, big brother will constantly be monitoring how you drive. So if you do something that the system has been programmed to recognize as driver impairment or unsafe driving, your car could just shut off, which could be incredibly dangerous. I want to point out this week too. Another article I read about Teslas and how Tesla had introduced it last fall, a feature. [00:09:02] So you could set how the car was going to drive. Do you want to move? Real cool, laid-back fashion. Do you want the car to drive an average way, or do you want it to be aggressive? Just weave in and out of traffic a bit and tailgate and do all of those sorts of things, and you could set it, and there is a public backlash, and Tesla got rid of it. [00:09:22] It is back now. How do you tell if a driver's being unsafe? When will a car in its autonomous mode do the same things human drivers shouldn't be doing? Or what if you're hauling contraband, Kentucky fried chicken? How is the driving going to be measured as impaired? Now I know in many states you have these breathalyzers that are court-ordered, installed in cars. [00:09:52] Okay, so that makes sense. Somebody has been drunk driving many times. You don't want them drunk driving ever again, please. And thank you. But how about having that system in every car? Because it fails. It doesn't work sometimes. And how about the back door? Because that's essentially what we're talking about. [00:10:14] These cars will have a back door that allows someone named government authorities to access them whenever they want. Would they need a warrant to do it? Probably not. Even as hackers could access the back door and shut down your vehicle, think about lad having a kill switch that would kill all cars and trucks in the United States. [00:10:41] Right? There are so many potential problems here and they haven't been thought about. Oh, obviously, it's government, but we're going to talk, or we'd get back about the investment that is part of this multi-trillion dollar bill that you and your kids and grandkids are paying for. [00:11:02] We know they snuck a backdoor kill, switch into all cars manufactured after 2026 into this infrastructure belt. What else is in there? That's going to affect technology. That's what we're going to talk about right now. [00:11:17] We know about this now. After it passed, finally, people had a chance to read it because this provision on the kill switch was not debated in the house. [00:11:29] It was not debated in this. Just like they've been doing was so many other things for so long now, they just bundle them all together in a bill. They gave it a cute little cuddly title, and then they go ahead and put whatever it is they want into it. These are these omnibus bills that they should have gotten rid of decades ago. [00:11:54] It is absolutely crazy to me. I just. Get it. Why are we putting up with this? So now the next step here is the investments that are being made. Now I'm going to type in right now, how successful are angel investments? Okay. So here we go. Bunch of ads for angel investing says you can have an average return of 1.1 X cap. [00:12:27] All right. And it goes on and on. This is a company called core associates. The success rate of angel investors. This is from Investopedia, the effective internal rate out return for a successful portfolio for angel investors is approximately 22%. Now, remember that over. So that's pretty amazing. Those numbers are much higher than what my friends said that they can expect absolutely much, much. [00:12:58] But I can tell you one thing for sure. Government quote, investments, end quote, rarely ever actually payout because you've got political motivations in there. It's one thing to be a smart technology guy investing in technology. But how about those people in Congress? That aren't smart technology guys. [00:13:22] How about the doctors in Congress? Look at what Senator Paul ran. Paul has been saying he is a doctor and what he's been saying about the whole COVID thing and the way the government has handled it. We are really going down the wrong road to here because government. Taking the money from us at the point of a gun. [00:13:44] Try not paying your taxes and see what happens rarely ends up. Okay. So the us Congress passed November six. Biden's trillion. Plus infrastructure bill that includes 65 billion of investments in the power grid to accommodate rising, renewable energy capacity and demonstration clean tech project. So what's that one about? [00:14:10] That particular one is because our grid cannot handle solar and also the windmill power. The rates, we would need to have it, our grid set up so that you have a few centralized power stations, and then that power is distributed to the area. It's not set up for having tens of thousands of power stations. [00:14:35] So there you go, president Biden, put money in to try and figure out well, Hey, how do we accomplish? How do we accommodate them? Noma, Germany has done. Is they've gone ahead and they're using a massive lake as a heat sink to get rid of the extra electricity that's being generated. When it comes to a regular power plant, you can turn it up. [00:14:59] You can turn it down the same. Thing's true for every type of power plant, whether it's powered by water or nuclear or coal, you can turn it up. But when it comes to wind and solar, you can't turn it down. If it's a nice sunny day, you're not going to be able to turn that power down. It's still coming out. [00:15:18] You got to do something with it. You can cut it. Open the circuit. But the power companies that run the grid don't have that kind of fine-grain control over the electricity that you're generating in your house or in your business. There's so many problems that start to open up here. So they're spending $65 billion. [00:15:40] That is a lot of money to figure this out. Okay. Personally, I'd rather see the private sector do it because they're going to have a better chance of coming up with something that's really going to work next part here. Okay. And by the way, Colin it or trillion-dollar-plus is being favorable because they played all kinds of gimmicks with this money. [00:16:03] Just, I just found out. In fact, I think it was a couple of weeks ago, June. Do you remember. President Biden moved all of the college loans from private sources into the white house. Do you remember that? So the white house is controlling all college loans at the time I thought, okay, it's just them paying back the unions, the teacher's unions, right? [00:16:27] Because it also included provisions that you cannot have be bankrupt and get rid of your college. Th that's just mind boggling to me, but as it turns out what he was doing. Okay. All of that's true. But what he was actually doing is saying, oh, there's over a trillion dollars in college loans. So we're going to move them into the white house and call those assets to offset all of the money we're spending. [00:16:58] You see what we're talking about here? It's just not. Electric vehicles, clean energy, public transit are all part of this trillion-dollar-plus legislation. It's got $550 billion, a half, a trillion dollars to fund advancements in public transit, clean energy electric vehicles, roads, and bridges. Okay. It's always electric. [00:17:26] Really? The right winner here is electric. The beta max that should have won out over VHS. How about hydrogen? How about some other way? How about natural gas or LP gas? What we'll never know because some of that is not going to get funding. However, there is going to be some funding. For nuclear development? [00:17:50] No, I've talked a lot about this on the radio before, but the bottom line is as nuclear is the only green energy that we can really get. Now you can hear some people saying, oh, okay. You're not sure not to know. Look at the current generations of nuclear power. Now, unfortunately, the regulations around nuclear power were written what, 70, 60 years ago, right? [00:18:17] When nuclear power was nasty stuff, it came out of the projects that we had in world war II to build nuclear bomb. Now these six generation nuclear power plants are as clean as can be. They only need to be refueled every 10 to 20 years, and they're small enough to fit into a small building smaller than your average home. [00:18:40] And you can put one of these in the neighborhood in a small town, and that will power the. Thing. Okay. So we're already getting 27%, according to president Biden of our power from these decades, old nuclear and hydropower facilities, they've got 21 and a half-billion dollars in this for clean energy demonstrations and research hubs focused on next-generation technologies, helping to get us to that net-zero by 2050 that they're looking at. [00:19:13] To get to, so this will be interesting because there they've got 8 billion earmarked for hydrogen and carbon capture. Guess what's going to get more, yeah. Carbon capture, direct air capture, and we don't know what's going to happen with this. We're turning cow, carbon into stone, basically with some of these plans and experiments are underway. [00:19:34] So what happened. When we need that carbon again. But 8 billion is earmarked for hydrogen and carbon capture direct capture, 10 billion, two and a half billion earmarked for advanced nuclear. So I'm happy with that. Not that they're spending the money, not at all, but that they're actually putting it into something that might make a difference. [00:20:00] And hydrogen funding in this, by the way, it looks like it's a big win for oil and the whole oil industry stick around. [00:20:09] This year, we have a live show at the consumer electronic show. That's a cool thing. I was not able to go this year, but we're going to talk right now about some new technologies that were unveiled just this year. From some of the major manufacturers. [00:20:27] Samsung had some really cool announcements out at the consumer electronic show. [00:20:34] There were a lot when you consider how many people attend that show every year, it was way down this year, by the way, usually there's like 120,000. The people who attend, give or take this year, it was like a fifth of that number, hardly anybody, but there were still thousands of businesses that were there, exhibiting products and software and things. [00:20:58] Hopefully next year I'll be able to head back out there again. I just don't like all this lockdown craziness that they have, and man, they had quite a bit of it out there. This year, just a large part of the reason. I didn't know. But Samsung had some cool stuff. We'll talk about that right now. [00:21:16] You might've seen the galaxy fold, you know what that's about where you have a phone. That folds in half and it has a couple of displays on it. There's one display that might all always be visible. There have been some cool phones in the past that had LCD, just regular, old, black and white displays on the outside. [00:21:38] And you open it up inside and there's color. Now galaxy has come out with the tri-fold flex and flex. Concepts, you can't buy these right now, but they're really quite cool because this tri-fold is something that looks like a little big bit of a big iPhone. So you, if you're familiar with iPhone, It's probably about 25, 30% bigger than your iPhone when it's all folded up. [00:22:09] But I'm just talking about the face. It's obviously a lot thicker than your iPhone, and then you can fold it out and you have, what is. Tablet. Now, this is quite cool. This tablet look, and I'm looking at it right now. And it is neat. If you need to carry something around, of course, courses, Android. [00:22:30] And I always advise you guys against not getting Android because of the inevitable security problems that they have. But it is quite cool. What they've done a whole way, which of course, another company you definitely should not buy from. If you're stuck on Android, then go ahead and buy the latest Samsung do not buy Walkway LTE or. [00:22:55] Algae, any of these other guys that are out there. Okay. No safe place to, to put it on the table. At least with the tri-fold at the bottom is going to be good, but we'll see, they had another one that is a scaled up galaxy Z fold. And what you do with this thing is you pull the screen. Out now, this is something that we looked at years ago, where we had these foldable screens that would actually roll right up into the device and you could pull it out as well. [00:23:29] We haven't really seen that go anywhere. You might remember back to the future where they had displays that were so cheap on the cereal boxes that they were disposed of. And it would play a little video, cute little video that went along with this cereal that you are buying, but we'll see what happens there. [00:23:47] This version of the flex ass has been another trade shows. It's got this tri-fold design. There have not been a whole lot of real successes with the galaxy folds in the past. I don't know if you'll be able to see it. They've also got the flex G and this is what they call a multifold product that folds inwards twice in kind of a G shape. [00:24:13] I'm looking at it right now. So it just folds up entirely. You can't see any display when it's all folded up, but it gives you a bigger display ultimately, and that's a thing. They also came up with the flex note and this is a laptop that has no keyboard on it. So it expands to. And then you would have it folded a little bit so that you could use the bottom half of the display as a touch key pad, which is cool. [00:24:45] We'll see what happens with that. But there were a few things like that Samsung had out there. I like, frankly, the ability to have a device with me that can double as a laptop, and there have been some attempts at it in the past, including one, the projects are keyboard. On to any surface and then measures where your fingers are and hears and feels the taps of your finger on the surface to figure out what it is, you're typing and things but they've all been gimmicky. [00:25:17] Now I want to talk about something that just came out that I guess you could say it's a little bit gimmicky, but it's real world stuff. And that is GM has something they're calling their ultra cruise driver's assistance. And this is going to come out in 2023, they think, and they're using a Snapdragon platform using Cellcom. [00:25:42] Five nanometer chipsets. Now that's pretty cool because the five nanometers stuff is something you don't see very much apple is using it. Now some of these others are other manufacturers are too, but what's going to happen is this new ultra cruise is really it's out there right now, which is really quite good, but they are. [00:26:08] Coleen and ultra crews, because it's better than the supercruise that you're seeing on the road. So alter cruise, you can't buy it yet again, that's for next year, but supercruise is limited to restricted access divided. Lane highways alter crude is gotten to operate on more than 2 million miles of roads in the US and K. [00:26:33] So in Alterra crews, equipped car from GM is going to sense its environment. It's got a bunch of different sensors, including LIDAR, which is a laser radar thing, optical cameras, as well as regular rates. And it's going to have the sensor fuse 360 degree view of the world around it. It's going to recognize and react to permanent traffic control devices like stop signs, traffic lights, even handle left turns. [00:27:00] Although apparently it's going to need a little bit of driver input and like super cruises, altar cruises, a driver assistance system. So it's under a level two, which is. Pretty advanced frankly, and the human driver is still responsible for the situational awareness. In other words, stay awake. This has a driver monitoring system, making sure you are awake and you're going to have to supervise it. [00:27:27] So that's the problem I have with it. I would rather have a system that monitors. As I'm driving, they have a system that's supposed to be running on its own. And I have to monitor again. I think that's a huge mistake, the same mistake that has been made many times in the past, but it's. People are not good at monitoring computers. [00:27:51] Computers are good at monitoring people. So I, my ideal is to have a system or I'm driving. I'm holding onto the steering wheel. I got maybe my foot on the gas. Maybe not, maybe it's on cruise control, but if I decide to do something that the onboard computer thinks is wrong. So I'm varying into another lane and there's a car there. [00:28:13] I just assumed to have the car kind of jerk the steering wheel a little bit, and I have a little alarm go off. Hey, there's a car next to you. Comma you idiot. And I'm back in the. I think that makes the most sense, but if I am fighting against it, so if I pull really hard, I turn even harder to the right. [00:28:35] The system says, okay, you must know what you're doing. I'm going to let you go. And it now lets you drive into that other lane. And there may be a lot of reasons for that. I'd rather have hit a car on the side then rearrange. Julian do a dump truck that stopping on the road in front of me. So there's those types of human evaluations that you're going to make, that the computers really cannot make. [00:28:59] That's the way I wish it would go. In other words, I'd rather be driving something made by our friends at Boeing than drive something that is. Maybe a little bit of a problem from Airbus. And if you are already a Volvo owner, I want to point out that you are already in the car. That's what I just described. [00:29:22] And that's part of the reason I haven't driven Volvo. I haven't been buying them and that is involved. The computer can override what you want to do. Your steering wheel is not hooked up directly to the wheels, your brake pedal, your gas pedal. None of them are hooked up like they used to be. I've got a 1980 Mercedes. And there's direct linkage to all of those things. So if I'm turning my steering wheel, it is in fact directly hooked up to that front end of the car. And I am really turning the wheels. Push down on the accelerator. There's a mechanical linkage that goes right to that engine and moves a controller on the fuel injection system. [00:30:08] Same thing with the brakes. However, in ma many modern cars, not all of those things are direct linkages for many vehicles. In fact, your gas pedal does not really. Directly to the car. All it does is provide a potential geometer, one of those little volume dial type things that is sending a signal to the computer, and then the computer's actually controlling it all. [00:30:36] So a Volvo is designed to not let you pull more than one G laterally. In other words, it only lets you turn the. So hard so far, and the idea there is just stop you from rolling over. But I, again, I can see situations where you might not want that computer to override you. And certainly not in the fashion that Volvo does it. [00:31:00] So that's why I'm not a Volvo fan, right? Although they consider themselves safety experts. I guess they are in some ways, but now they're a Chinese company. So I don't know. I'm getting even more confused. He visited me online. Craig, peter.com. This week. If you subscribe, you'll get my password special. [00:31:20] We've got some news on the 5g front with Verizon deciding to change its pricing strategy. So we're going to talk about that. And we're also going to talk about the promise of 5g. We keep hearing about it. What is it and what does it mean for us? [00:31:37] Verizon's making a major change here in its five G upgrade. I'll tell you about that in just a few minutes. [00:31:44] First of all, let's talk about 5g and what the promise of 5g is, frankly, 5g. Absolutely a huge change. It really is a complete transformation of so many industries. Our society is going to change because of 5g. Now, initially there's going to be some bumps in the road. Like we'll talk about here with Verizon, but 5g is the data plan that is being rolled out or the data technology that is being rolled out. [00:32:19] All major salaried or phone companies, and it's going to allow them to compete against cable companies. These satellite services that are by the way, in such trouble right now, they're looking to combine themselves together. The whole dish networks thing it's really that world is going to change and 5g is going to make it even harder for them because 5g is 10 times faster. [00:32:48] Than 4g LTE. Remember how fast 4g was now? That doesn't mean that 5g is guaranteed to be 10 times faster than 4g. LTE is right now at your home or office or commute. But what it does mean is that it has that potential. Now it's going to matter. Who your carrier is going to matter who you are, how far you are from those cell towers, because 5g requires far more cell towers than 4g ever did or anything prior to it because of the frequencies and the bandwidth that, yeah, that 10 times faster comes with a price, but 5g also supports 10,000 times more network. [00:33:33] Then 4g does and can handle a hundred times more devices than 4g networks. And it is also one 50th, the latency of Phi or for. One 50th, which means the latency, the amount of time that it takes for the packet to get to the other side and potentially back is one 50th of what it was in 4g. So what that means is 5g is going to make your video calls seem like they're local. [00:34:06] There's so much bandwidth that they can send high resolution. Text or data. So video, for instance, now let's talk about one of the really, I think big applications it's already been tried a little bit here, but it has to do with telemedicine. All of us probably have had some sort of a run in with telemedicine because of the. [00:34:29] Down the doctor doesn't want to see you now, but he will see you potentially over a video call. Now that's a big deal. How about the next step up and the next let's get to surgery. What happens if you are living in a town that doesn't have a surgeon that specializes in this one particular bone inside your middle of. [00:34:53] How many places have that right. In the Boston area. Of course, we are lucky to have some of the best hospitals and doctors in the world without a doubt. But how much detail do you want? You don't want a doctor. Who's never performed that surgery before you want a doctor. This performed at a thousand times. [00:35:12] So when we're talking about 5g, what that means is that doctor could be at a remote hospital, could be using one of these control surfaces that allows them to hold on to tools that are hooked up to computers that are almost like the scalpel or the other tools they might be using to perform their surgery. [00:35:34] Yeah. In maybe even a doctor's office for outpatient thing or you're in a hospital and a surgical center. There's of course a surgical staff right there. And there is a computer system set up with all of these remote controls and those remote controls are controlling, specific tools that the doctor wants. [00:35:56] And. So the local people are there. Doesn't keep an eye on your breathing and make sure you're properly medicated and put under and that your blood pressure's correct, et cetera. And now that surgeon that works on that one bone in the middle ear can remotely control all of the surgical. Almost like they're local and that's possible because of 5g. [00:36:21] Now I know many places have fiber. I have fiber at my office. We have three gigabits of a high speed fiber coming in as three gig up and three gig down. And that's just great. And it's wonderful, but not every place has that kind of bandwidth available where we go. To the internet backbone from the office, we have an, our own ASN and stuff they'll get into too much detail, but basically we're part of the internet backbone. [00:36:49] So I think that's a really an interesting thing when you get right down to it, because now that doctor could be in a rural area, that doctor could be in New York City and you are out in middle of nowhere, Lancaster, New Hampshire, for instance. You're in that little hospital there, or that outpatient clinic in, in Lancaster or wherever it is you are, and that doctor can now control all of that surgical equipment. [00:37:19] So it's going to change a lot of things. Having that kind of latency allows that doctor to have incredible control over those regions. Scalpels and other surgical tools. And it also lets that doctor see everything that's going on in super high definition video. Assuming, of course, you've got the cameras and you've got the right displays, et cetera. [00:37:41] Now, this is going to change, not just the medical industry, but it's going to change many industries. As I mentioned earlier, think about things like your clothing, your cars, almost anything nowadays can be embedded with some sort of a computer apple has been working on kind of the apple glasses thing. [00:38:02] Remember what Google came up with Google glass and it's going to be built right. To your glasses. You're going to be able to ask questions of Siri and it'll be able to answer them, show you things, put overlays on your glasses. So you're trying to get to a place you've never been to before your glasses are going to show you where you're going. [00:38:23] Same thing inside your car. It's going to be projecting upon these windscreen in front of. So you're going to be able to see all of the directions and things right there. It's going to be telling you your speed or other things that you care about right then and there. And it's all going to be doing it over this amazing 5g network. [00:38:43] Now it's going to take a while for it all to roll out. We're seeing the starts of it, in reality, we're probably talking about a decade to completely roll out 5g networks and to start really seeing its value, and much of the value comes from something I complain about all the time. The. Of things. [00:39:03] Now, the internet of things, of course, is all of these devices we were just talking about. But instead of hooking your jacket up to the wifi, where at home and you, of course, you're gonna wear the jacket out and get a cup of coffee, and then you're going to go do some shopping and visit some friends that jacket's going to be able to keep you up to date and provide feedback wherever you are because of. [00:39:30] Hi, high bandwidth available to it. Remember it can handle a hundred times more devices on 5g than it can on 4g. And that's what they're looking for. The automated driving, where the cars can all talk to each other. But instead of that mesh network that we were trying to build previously where the cars talk to each other, and that means everybody's got to be on the right frequencies and talking the right way. [00:39:55] Just do the 5g. And let them all just talk over the internet with. There's so much stuff that's going to be able to happen here. Artificial intelligence tied into the glasses. Like we mentioned augmented reality again, so much. So they're thinking that by 2025, we may see 1.8 billion 5g connections deployed worldwide. [00:40:21] Now that seems like a very big number until you get into how many people. On the earth. And you can see that it's not even going to be one device for every person, but it is going to be a huge thing in the developed world. And the bandwidth and latency are important and 5g solves most of that problem for most applications. [00:40:44] But right now we are. I see the roll-outs and right now T-Mobile has the best 5g network nationwide. And it has very high data rates, but not as high as Verizon's are because Verizon's using different frequencies and it can get more bandwidth out of those frequencies than T-Mobile can, but T-Mobile has better coverage. [00:41:08] So this is a trade off, right? If you're already with the company. And you're happy enough with them. There really isn't much reason to move to a T-Mobile or whatever it might be, because they're all going to have pretty good performance. And as I said, it's going to be about a decade before we're really realizing what's going on. [00:41:27] But Verizon on January 19, launched its 5g on the C band spectrum. And there's been a lot of stuff back and forth about that. And some of it comes from the airline industry because it's using some of the frequencies that are close by and they're afraid it's going to. Problems with the airplane navigation systems and data feedback systems, but this is going to provide even faster 5g speeds for Verizon customers. [00:41:57] So even though right now T-Mobile has a leg up. That doesn't mean that they're going to have a leg up forever. That's true. But. You're beyond unlimited Verizon smart phone plans and the other plans that include data. They're all changing right now. So check with Verizon, if you have Verizon as your character, because here's what our carrier I should say, because things are changing. [00:42:23] Hey, visit me online. Craig peterson.com. [00:42:29] Patents were intended to help innovation, not just stifle it. And you look at people like Edison. He had more patents than anyone else in his age, but now we've got a different world with Google and Apple and Samsung. [00:42:44] This week, we have an article about Google losing the Sonos patent. [00:42:51] Now, this is fascinating to me because one has happened here is we have two companies. We have Sonos who I've had on my radio show before, who has these great speakers that you can put in your home? And the idea is they all connect to your wifi and the speakers can talk to each other or talk to the internet. [00:43:12] You can play the music you want. You can extend your television speakers, et cetera, and you can control them all. And play them all with the same songs, this up the volume down the volume, all kinds of cool stuff. Google came out with their own speakers and there was a problem with that because Sono says that it pitched Google. [00:43:38] For support of Google play music to go to these Sono speakers. Now I've got to tell you full disclosure here. I was in a similar position here to Sonos many years ago, and I had developed software that allowed a computer system to run old code, basically. So what this was is it was for COBOL and I could emulate. [00:44:07] The code that went into this old Sperry Cade computer assisted data entry system, which was really quite a little accomplishment. And I sold it to RCA Astro space who used it to make the space shuttles, the space shuttle program, Telstra how long ago that was right. And it was pretty cool. It was a great accomplishment. [00:44:28] But I had gone to Sperry and I paid my own way down to their headquarters in Pennsylvania. And I did a presentation for them, showed them, okay, this is what I'm doing. You guys I'd love it. You're talking about selling it. You've already sold it to a couple of different companies and I would love for you guys to sell it some more. [00:44:50] And Sperry went behind my back and. I had a project going to replace their Cade system. Now I was using Sperry branded anyways, Unix systems in order to do this. So they would still be able to sell hardware. The fee for this new hardware, as well as my software, that monthly fee was lower than just the maintenance fee on this old K data entry system. [00:45:22] Now that's a huge deal. And I think what happened to Sperry said we gotta be able to sell them more stuff has got to be more expensive. They never talked to me about it again. And then about two years ago or two years after that, then. I had a trade show, announced they're brand new system for data entry and they wasn't the best. [00:45:46] And they had taken some of my ideas and tried to implement them. Now they did a terrible job implementing them, but they stole my idea. And it's very difficult to Sue another company much to my chagrin because I've been cheated, ripped off. I don't know what, how you want to call it, but many times for stuff like this. [00:46:09] And so it just has really beaten me down over the years. So what's happening here is Sono is this company that makes these great speakers and sound systems went to Google and said, Hey. I would love for your streaming music system to tie directly into Sonos. And that was the Google play music is what it was called. [00:46:33] So there they go. And Google gets okay, great meeting. Let's go have 'em now. I kept this and Google gotta be hide. The scenes. Look at Sono, says operations back in 2013, and I'm sure their founders were thinking what I was, oh, this is great. They're either going to license it or they're going to buy us. [00:46:52] And this is going to be fantastic for us. Sono says Google use that access to quote, blatantly and knowingly. Copies synopsis features for the Google Home speaker, which launched in 2016. And then, so nos sued Google in early 20, 20 Eddie Lazarus, and this an article in ARS Technica that chief article had Sonos told the New York Times. [00:47:18] We appreciate that the ITC has definitely validated the five Sonos patents at issue in this case and ruled any equivocable. Yeah. And equivocally and does not be in there. The Google infringes, all five patents that isn't across the board, when that is surpassingly rare in patent cases, I have to agree. I think that sort of thing is just terrible. [00:47:44] Just terrible. So what does Google. We're going to talk about a Samsung apple case as well. And they did a much different thing, but what does Google do here? Google has decided that due to a recent legal run, this is a quote from Google due to a recent legal ruling. We're making some changes to how to set up your devices and how the speaker group functionality will work moving forward. [00:48:11] By the way, I corrected the grammar as. Terrible grammar. If you're using the speaker group feature to control the volume in the Google Home app, by voice with the Google assistant or directly on your nest hub display, you'll notice a few changes. So basically what Google did is they removed functionality from their speakers, and then they push that out to everybody out there. [00:48:37] Now Sonos has been criticized for pushing updates. Devices, it's owner says we're not going to support this anymore. So they send out an update that makes the speaker completely useless, which is just crazy. But this volume changes the biggest annoyance on the list of features that Google has dropped. [00:48:57] So rather than saying, oh, okay, you know what I'm really? Yeah. We messed up because we did get all of this inside information and then we use some of your technology without licensing. It let's reach a mutual agreement here and we'll pay you whatever, some sort of royalties for the past and in the future. [00:49:19] No. They decide to keep fighting. Isn't that just incredible. And Google's says, yeah, we're not paying anything. We're just going to remove it from all of our speakers. So we don't have to pay you any royalties going forward. And there's a great customer reaction that was on a subreddit. Actually, there's a whole bunch of them, angry customers, demanding refunds, threatening lawsuits, and one who said you got sued by Sonos and we pay the price either, get some better lawyers and win the suit or pay Sonus or royalty or start issuing refunds to the customers. Fascinating. Despite Sarno's having one Sarno still says it. Hasn't got the outcome at once. Sonos wants Google to pay royalties for its patent, not pull the rug out from under the customers by stripping features from already purchased products. [00:50:11] So a Google is going to keep getting pressure from Sonos as we go forward here, hopefully they'll pay pat patent licenses for stuff in the past. Now patents are something that are a double-edged sword. And I want to talk when we get back about the whole pattern thing between Apple and Samsung, we're not going to talk about every one of the patent issues, but we're going to focus in on why. [00:50:39] Oh on one patent. And I also want to talk about what I see to be the problems with the patent system. There were major changes made during the Obama administration, and they made some things much, much worse, and a couple of things, a little bit better. Okay. Isn't that always the case when government gets involved, right? [00:51:00] Yeah. At least you hope sometimes some things get a little bit better. So we'll talk about that. If you've ever thought about taking something and patenting it, you're going to want to listen. Or if you have friends or family that are great little inventors, because there's a lot of things here that most people just aren't aware. [00:51:19] Hey, take a couple of minutes. If you would go online to Craig Peters, son.com, I've got all kinds of great information there. And if you sign up for my email list this week, you'll get my special report on passwords, which password manager to use and what to do. Craig peterson.com. [00:51:40] So what is so wrong with the patent system? It has been such a huge problem for small companies against big companies, but what's the underlying problem. [00:51:52] We were just talking about Google and Sonos and how Google lost this case in this international. Court and has not lost a case here in the us yet where it needs to pay royalties. So what happens in this case with the ITC is if Google removes certain functionality from the devices, in this case, the smart speakers, they can import them to the United States. [00:52:22] I suspect Sonos is going after Google for patent infringement and royalties. But Google is just being a, I don't know what you wanna call it, but they're, they got their head somewhere and I, it just isn't. I explained how I went through something like this more than once in fact. And it wasn't just Sperry. [00:52:45] Microsoft has been doing this sort of thing for a long time. I'm sure Apple has basically been doing that as well. In fact, Apple sued Samsung using a patent. The claim that that slide to unlock feature that Apple has been using on I-phones is Apple's invention. If you can believe that. Tells you about part of this problem, that slide to unlock really? [00:53:13] That is an obvious next step. And that's what we had with patents in the past. If something was an obvious next step in technology, you could not patent it. You asked me that makes a whole lot of sense, because if it's an obvious next step, how is patenting it and getting the exclusive right to use and sell that technology, how is that going to help the advancement of technology and. [00:53:46] Because that is what patents are there for. That's why they were included in the constitution. And the idea was you work hard and long for years and you come up with a cotton gin, for instance, there's going to save incredible amounts of labor and you patent it and you're rewarded for that. So you can now exclusively sell it and licensed. [00:54:10] And you are also, of course, required to put all of the information about how to make your patent into the public domain via the patent office. So it's a cool thing. It makes a lot of sense, and I'm glad to see that it same place, but we've had a lot of problems lately. I'd looked at some numbers here before we started talking today. [00:54:37] There's been over 350,000 US patents that were granted in 2019. 350,000 granted new member, not every patent application is granted. And that number 350,000 patents in 2019 is four times higher than the per capita rate in 19. That is huge. And the reason for this is research managers at these larger companies like Microsoft, look at a patent as being cheap and easy to get. [00:55:13] And so why not file for them? So in the early 2000 bill gates decided that Microsoft needed more patents so that it could wield them against competitors. And within a few years, Microsoft increased their annual patent application rate by 50%. Now patents are easy to get because the standards now that are in place, thank you, President Obama and the Congress are lower than they have ever been. [00:55:43] And also because the burden is now on the US patent and trademark office to prove that an invention is. Patentable. So you're relying on bureaucrats, many of whom sit on their butts all day long, right? And their number one job is not to get fired. No, I'm making incredible broad generalizations here, but that's really true. [00:56:09] Everybody wants to be Fowchee getting paid a half a million dollars almost per year to sit around and make bad decisions. Why not? So patent examination is slow because of this. It takes three years or more after you file a patent application in order to get your patent approved. Now think about that in the technology world, taking three years from the time you come up with an idea to the time you finally get a patent. [00:56:46] So they've increased staffing at the US patent and trademark office, but the patent backload. It is continuing to grow, and the examiners are spending, on average, only 20 hours reviewing each application. But think about that for a minute, 350,000 patents granted in 20 19, 20 hours reviewing each application. [00:57:11] Now I said only 20 hours spent because in reality, It should be more, the patent examiners are supposed to be reading and understanding the invention. This described in the patent application, they're supposed to determine whether that invention meets the claim of the application. And then they're supposed to search existing technology to see if the invention already exists and then write a response to the applicant. [00:57:42] time was again, a next step, an obvious next step wasn't patentable, but now you gotta just fight over this stuff and it's first to file. So if you come up with a really great idea that you want to patent and you play with it a little bit and you refine it, and then you file it only to find out that someone else already has a patent on your technology. [00:58:08] 'cause they got there first and there have been cases where someone has developed something and they intend on patenting it, the word gets out about what they're doing. And then the third party files a patent on it before the actual person who invented it. This is just crazy. This type of examination is just bound to cause problems cause errors, many patents are just too broad or they cover obvious inventions. [00:58:40] Like what? I just mentioned the slide to unlock thing on the Apple home screen. Lock screen being. It's something that Apple wasn't forcing against Samsung, Samsung just gave up after years of fighting it. So what are you supposed to do? If you're a little guy, right? You don't have the money that Samsung has or that apple has. [00:59:05] One of the things that mark Cuban has done that I like. And he and I disagree on. Oh, a lot of things. But mark human endowed, a chair at the electronic frontier foundation, which is an organization I also support dedicated to the elimination of stupid. Patents and quote-unquote. So the idea is let's get rid of some of these stupid patents. [00:59:28] Let's maybe update our patent system. And frankly, I think the patent system should be gone. Now that's a pretty bold statement, right? That's my opinion, obviously, but for technologies, like what you might put into a smartphone for technologies, am I going to software, et cetera? The life of that product is only going to be maybe a year or two or three years before the competition takes over. [00:59:57] And now you are moving on to something else, and you've gone through what a three year difficult, expensive, very costly, sometimes impossible process of trying to get a patent on. So let's look at a smartphone technology. Let's say you want to start a new smartphone company, a patent attorneys going to have to review hundreds of patents, including many patents that were not even granted until long after the product could be launched. [01:00:29] Does that make sense, too? It's going to take years to go through this patent process. And the failure to license. All of these different relevant patents creates a risk of litigation. So you'd be crazy to try and come up with something. Look at Motorola, Motorola exists basically as a patent portfolio, Microsoft has their patent portfolio. [01:00:57] Apple has a Google, has it. Some of these companies have cross-licensed their patents because there's so many, and they have no idea how they're going to affect each other. So they just give blanket. So they say, okay here's what we'll do. We'll trade our portfolio with your portfolio. So you can use any of our patents and we can use any of your. [01:01:18] The real problem, isn't it. And smartphone litigation, because of all of these complexities is just way too common. Apple who is truly a pioneer in smartphones. I don't think anybody would argue that. Although obviously they weren't the first, but there are definite pioneer they've been involved in. Dozens and dozens hundreds, probably of lawsuits around the globe as both a defendant and a plaintiff. [01:01:46] And as a plaintiff, apple sometimes has been using its patents to beat other competitors over the head to stop them from coming up with new, innovative. This is a huge deal here. Frankly, Apple was able to convince the court that their version of the slide to unlock feature was patentable. And after seven years, as I mentioned here, Samsung agreed to pay license fees, to apple, to just settle the case, get it over with and economic research that is being done. [01:02:21] And I'm looking at right now. What site is this? This is direct costs from some of these yeah. Boston University, school of law law and economics research paper, number 12 dash 34. And it's talking about these non-practicing entities known as patent trolls, that these litigation costs and license fees are stifling innovation in a very big way. [01:02:48] Frankly, I think the, we got to get rid of the patent system entirely. It's gone. When an investor gets a patent, they're supposed to reveal the secret sauce behind the invention in the patent, in this public document that I mentioned so that other people can learn about the invention and use it to improve technology. [01:03:08] That's the theory, but the practice has been something out it's been. To beat competitors over the head and shoulders to stop them from being able to compete is a very bad thing. So there you go. My opinion. Hey, if you want to get this week special report on passwords and password managers, sign up right now. [01:03:31] Craig peterson.com/subscribe.

Overview Justin joins us again for the first time (sorry, it's a thing) to talk about his books. Justin has written many fantasy and sci-fi, some of them have been with Michael Anderle. We discuss how books are different than video games and what he is working on now, which includes his ghostwriting. Since he writes fantasy, he tells us how it's different than Game of Thrones. Website http://www.justinsloanauthor.com/ His Book https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09L1GVDQ7/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B09L1GVDQ7&linkCode=as2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=718909cbf54b540ea1c2cc2f8f563a76 Favorites https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0545139708/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0545139708&linkCode=as2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=d6ef0c8b153de68177e4762d9d4af216 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062073494/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0062073494&linkCode=as2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=627353fbc3aa0228c7f9647dc63d78eb YouTube https://youtu.be/6pFkMLlVgZA Transcript [00:03:21] Stephen: Let's get started. So this is backwards for me. Usually I talk about books and then we discuss other things, but I got so excited talking to you. I talked about all the other stuff and totally forgot about your books. So this is actually part a when I put them out. So it'll be backwards for everybody listening, but that's fine. It keeps life interesting. So Justin, where are we found that a little bit about you and all that it's coming up in the actually next part of the interview, but I wanted to talk about your books because you have some interesting titles. So tell us about the fiction that you write. [00:03:58] Justin: Sure. So I write a lot of different [00:04:00] kinds of fiction and so a lot of it is Saifai a lot of is fantasy. I got my start back in the day when I had been waiting for the next game of Thrones book to come out. So I wrote my own fantasy. And then it all went crazy from there. I did some middle grade stuff that I finished before that one was really done and inspired by Harry Potter and whatnot. And then went on to write more supernatural stuff I wrote with Michael Anderly for a little bit. We did probably let me just think real quick, maybe like 16 books together and yeah, that was a lot of fun nowadays. I'm writing a lot more of like kind of space, fantasy, like star wars type stuff. [00:04:35] Stephen: So couple of questions, first of all, do you find. Problems with going from fantasy sci-fi with readers or people like, Hey, this isn't like the last couple of weeks. Cause I hear that a lot. [00:04:49] Justin: Yeah. Uh, so what's interesting about Angelie's readership is that his is very much a mixture already. So. And a lot of those, we just carried over [00:05:00] to me, which is great. And so they don't really care. I would say that when you're trying to reach the broader market or when I'm moving away from that focus, then it's like lately I haven't read a book now with Michael and two years, at least. So I'd say that I probably have lost like the idea that originally there was a lot of his readers who would check out my stuff. And now it's just the ones who are truly loyal and really interested in Michael publishes so much. I like a book a week or a book a day, or who knows a lot. It's not like his fans have time to go check out other authors anyway, unless it's inside that university reaching out to new audiences, I'd say, yes, it's a lot harder to try to straddle two horses at the same time. But a lot of my newer books have been just Saifai or especially the next three that I have ready to go are pure Saifai. So maybe that'll make it a lot easier, but when you're trying to publish only Saifai or sorry, when you're trying to publish a mix or you're trying to go yeah. Only Spotify and then fantasy and backup. Uh,

Subscribe to Benzinga Options NewsletterEpisode Summary:Coinbase $COIN drops on disappointing earnings reportAdding new stocks to our watchlist Buy or sell: LiveNation LYVGuests:Saagar Govil CEO of Cemtrex (Ticker: CETX) Greg Crawford CEO of Quipt $QIPT Jesse Kaylor, Elite TradingNic Chahine, author of the Benzinga Options NewsletterHosts:Spencer IsraelTwitter: https://twitter.com/sjisraelAaaron BryTwitter: https://twitter.com/aaronbry5Subscribe to all Benzinga Podcasts hereClick here for BENZINGA TRADING SCHOOL Get 20% off Benzinga PRO here Become a BENZINGA AFFILIATE and earn 30% on new subscriptionsDisclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.Unedited TranscriptCan you hear us? Why are we running away to AB that is a great question. I don't understand. I, so one of our, our colleagues, Adam Partridge brought in a big bag of Halloween candy that was left over from his house. I was enamored by the bag and just go in through it. Um, but yeah, uh, Brohan had to physically dragged me away from the candy, but now I am here.So without further ado, let's go ahead and get this show. Rolling. Bren says you could get hurt. You could hear me before. Great.CEO, Jason. Razak here with us. The man, the myth, the legend Skeeter shifts on the power hour with us live today. Interesting different innovative company. You are alive.we need a new intro. AB can we get a new intro? Yep. W w we'll get working on that. Spencer's we've got a jam packed show today. Uh, do you want to give us a rundown of our agenda for the day? Oh yes, I can do that because I wrote stuff down. Uh, we've got our first gas coming up in seven minutes at 12, 15 Eastern time.Cigar global, the CEO of Centrix. Did I get that right? Yep. Okay. I just want to help you get out of the right seminars. Tickers seeds DX will be on at 1215, uh, Lena Alena, chin, head of IRR at newborn town at 1230. Uh, the CEO of quipped, Greg Crawford at 1245, Jesse Kaler from elite trading at one. And then Nick Shaheen from the author of the big thing, the options newsletter will be on the show at one 30.We got a lot to talk about today. Let's start with, you know, I don't know. Where do you want to start? AB well, places I want to start, um, let's start with a nice little crypto update. Spencer's so as many of you may know. Bitcoin hit a brand new, all time high today. This was spurred by the CPI data that came out this morning.So CPI came in hotter than expected showing, um, inflation and investors went and rushed to buy Bitcoin as an inflation hedge. So we had Bitcoin, uh, almost reach up to 69,000 up about 3.2, 6%. A theorem is up 2.14% nearing 5,000. So I'm looking for that as a big psychological level. Spencer, when a theory, um, hits 5,000, um, Shiba, Inu, and doge coin to dog related cryptocurrencies are down today in this sea of green.So maybe that's showing that investors are leaving Sheba and dos to go buy Ethereum and Bitcoin. I don't know. Um, but overall good day for crypto so far, we will continue to watch crypto and see how it's performing today. Um, but since there's other stuff in the news, I want to talk about before we move on, though, I just want to mention, you can get some free Bitcoin ha.Look at the screen, it says it right there. Go to Voyager, go to the app on your mobile device of your choice, whether to Android or iPhone or some other third OSTP, I'm not aware of down on the Voyager app in the app store, fund your account with a hundred bucks, make your first trade, and they'll give you $50 in BTC.You should do it before Bitcoin goes to a million. I'm just saying that because then you'll be getting more bang for your buck, but that's just me. Okay. I know you have things on your mind today, Aaron. Yes, I do have things on my mind before we get to that though. I want to introduce a new little game noodle segment.We have a new segment. Yeah. If you're like me and you grew up watching Pokemon as a kid, you know that the show used to do a thing called guests, that Pokemon, where they would give you the outline of a Pokemon. And you had to guess which one it was his name. Fine. You're right. It was named that Pokemon.So we're going to do that with charts, name, that chart. This is the first one we're going to do. I'm going to go ahead and pull it up on screen. Uh, as you can see, this is a recent, uh, not, I, I have, again, I, this is an easy one. Yeah. We're going to start. We're going to, uh, well, it could be one of, one of several actually.Um, and I don't know the answer can, so can, I guess AB you can guess this is a, this is an easy one. We're just going to start off easy and get more difficult as we do more iterations of this game. Oh, wait. I was not looking at the, the, the x-axis this, so this was from my high was October of last year. Oh yeah.Chris, who's that Pokemon? That's the correct one. No, no, I'll wait. No, no. Wait, how, how far back does this chart out? Exactly. It goes further back then. Uh, wait, are we looking at that? That's October 20th of this year, correct? Uh, Cobra flash. Okay. I don't know why I thought that. Um, okay. Yes, the answer is on the shadow.I would guess Brenda. Got it. Is what I'm thinking. Um, my guess is the same as his DW AAC, are we right? Yes. You are D whack right up $49 in the past month. Um, of course this was a spec, so it was trading around $10 for a very long time. And then once the merger was announced, the stock ran all the way up to about $170 before coming back down, currently trading right at $60.Um, so congrats to Brenda who was the first correct? Guests are in the chat with D whack. Um, you know, we, we are going to do this more often, so we'll introduce, we have to give away prizes to bring saw was in the chat. We got to give away some schwag. I think Brent is right. Email us shows that bends and good.com.I will get you hooked up with some free swag. Um, you know, maybe you pick out a hat or a t-shirt, but we will do this more. I will, uh, say the charts will get more difficult. So we started you off easy, but Brenda, don't, don't get used to getting such easy charts. Uh, yeah, that was a surprisingly easy one.And maybe next time I'll do it and there'll be some totally obscure stop. Yeah, that barely trades. Okay. Wait, we got two minutes before first guests are running behind here. I know you have a rant like in your city. That, uh, even you've been talking to me about this stock today. Do you want to go get that out there now?Or do you want, wait, yeah. Wait, we've only got a couple minutes, so let me just share my Benzing a pro I'll get it pulled up. Um, you're right, Spencer. This has been on my mind. So I've been watching live nation's stock, um, all week. And so live nation, of course, uh, the company that put on the, the Travis Scott concert that tragically ended, uh, with eight deaths.And I've just been surprised that we haven't seen this stock, um, trade. I know necessarily the markets don't really care about that, but there've been about 30 lawsuits opened up against live nation and the company has a history of. Uh, safety problems in past concerts. Not only that, but Travis, Scott has a history of having safety problems in past concerts.So for live nation, as a company to know we've had safety issues and Travis Scott who's at safety issues to not, um, do a better job of making sure, you know, all the, all the concert attendees were safe, taken care of. I mean, to me, that's just a big oversight, so we'll see. And in due time, what the outcome is of these lawsuits filed against live nation.Uh, but to me, I'm surprised we didn't see this stock trading down 10%. I mean, I know the company reported earnings, uh, that, that were pretty good for the company. You know, what's interesting is the wa uh, the street doesn't a lot of times it doesn't really care about a little care about the lawsuits. If they end up being, uh, if they ended up implicating, I only care about like certain kinds of lawsuits, right?Like they care about. Like when the DOJ sues you, they care about that. They care about like antitrust lawsuits. They don't, I I'm not saying it's right or wrong. It's just seems like it's the way it is. Um, you know, I can think of like every automaker has had major lawsuits, uh, Toyota with the airbags. I don't really think the street cared about that.I, I think the street doesn't really care about product recalls. They don't really care about like wall suit risk, you know what, here's another one. Why don't you pull up the chart of match, match.com MTC gauge because they have a lawsuit going on, uh, right now, just when to trial or, or, or they're in jury selection, the proceedings have started, um, this is related to the founder.Resewing assuming IAC because he's saying that, um, he, uh, misled them as far as the value of the company when he was buying them. But, um, Yeah, you don't, you don't see stocks react really to tool a lot of times to lawsuits. I'm not really sure why that is. I don't know. Well, yeah, there's some crazy theories being thrown out there about the concert, Spencer.And I'm going to ask you, take it or leave it. The first one, um, being thrown out there is Travis. Scott is like a satanic devil worshiper. What are we talking about right now? That's look it up. That's the theory being thrown out there. I'm asking you to take it or leave it. Uh, I don't need, well, I don't even know who he is, so I like, I leave it.I don't know here. The article from Newsweek, Travis, Scott, satanic festival blood sacrifice, conspiracy theory. Okay. So you're leaving that. You're not buying it. Yeah. I don't even know what that means. So no, uh, it would sell that headline, whatever that means. Okay. There we go. I don't know. I don't even know.All I know is the concert ended in tragedy. It's not the first time. And nor would it be the last time that it happens. I fear cause these kinds of things, uh, um, they happen occasionally for whatever reason. So, um, Hey, I think we're running late for our first guest. That was quite a segue, but we're going to, uh, do that say w w we're going to commit to the segway here.Uh, cause we have, uh, the CEO of a chem tracks backstage right now. It's ticker a C E T X cigar. Goalball let's get him on the show AB well, let's do it. Shugar how are you doing today? I'm good. How are you? Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you as well. Uh, you guys can tell what is on our mind right now by the kinds of companies that we're bringing on with bill, uh, cigar, you are in the VR AR space.We are thinking about that. We are interested in that. Um, so it is not enough for me to merely drop that nugget. Please tell us exactly what it is that you do. Sure. So soundtracks is a diversified technology company. We have several different operating brands, uh, from the IOT sprays to security technology, but also AR and VR, which is a big focus for us going forward.So, uh, we operate a number of different brands. We've been building in VR for the last, uh, three or four years already. So we're quite familiar with this space and we're very excited for sort of the next phase of the computing, uh, paradigm as we get into the metaverse, obviously with the recent news with Facebook.You know, transitioning to the metaverse, um, there's a lot of discussion around this and we think the time is perfect for, uh, for VR now to take off what exactly are you building? Because the metaverse can mean any number of things. It can be anything to do with the metaverse. Right. So, so w so what are, yeah, so, um, so we look at the, metaverse says.A number of different opportunities. It's going to evolve, uh, dramatically over the next 20, 30 years as, as, as it takes shape. Uh, but right now we're very much in the nascent stage of this. And so, you know, our group, our focus is to really, uh, drive growth for our business, uh, in areas where we see early adoption and areas where we see opportunities for, uh, growing our business.So right now, um, we've acquired, um, a training studio that is called virtual driver interactive, where we build simulation technology for, um, right now, just for drivers. But we plan to evolve that as VR is used for training applications, um, we also launched our first gaming studio. So we're building our first, uh, VR gaming experience, um, as part of the metaverse, uh, that'll be launched early next year.Um, and the, the name of that studio is called Bravo strong and reliance. Our first Saifai first person shooter, uh, in, in, in Q1. Uh, so that's really something that we're looking forward to as our first kind of foray of our own, uh, technology and platform in, in the, in the space. We also do make investments in, in VR as well.And so, you know, we kind of have an, all of the above approach of building our own technology, as well as finding and seeding companies that we see big potential in. It seems like everyone is, is, is thinking of training of professional training as like the primary aside from gaming. Uh, the primary use case of the metaverse, you're not, you're like the third, fourth, fourth person to come on our show and mentioned training specifically.So, yeah. And so, uh, I think that's an early, it's sort of, uh, some of the easier, uh, low adoption kind of, uh, uh, opportunities right in front of us. So, um, you know, for instance, I mean, you know, taking large equipment to trade shows, training your customers on, um, complex equipment, it can be challenged. Did you things like that, uh, inexpensive, right.So VR solves that problem. Uh, so, uh, you know, whether it's training sales teams or training your customers, um, that's clearly an opportunity where, um, you know, there's a number of opportunities and, you know, we've even seen this with, uh, you know, sort of in-person virtual training. You can train police forces, chain, you know, fire, firemen, you know, OSHA training.I mean, so there's a number of opportunities across the board when it comes to, to training, uh, you know, with VR, is there another use case outside of the training and obviously the gaming that's really exciting to you? Yeah. So we're heavily looking at, um, a couple of things. Uh, one is entertainment. So, um, I mean you've seen some of the things that Fortnite has done, uh, with, with, uh, their own experience with Ariana Grande day and, uh, uh, and some of the other artists that they've put.So we see a big opportunity as, as that evolves. And we're looking at forming some partnerships or joint ventures to. Uh, some kind of experience in terms of entertainment. Um, and then, uh, additionally, I mean, I think everybody's trying to figure out how to monetize. So you have lots of opt developers that are, um, you know, putting out products in there, but they don't have any easy way to monetize those applications.So we see that as a big opportunity in terms of, uh, you know, ad monetization strategies, you know, whether it's advertising or similar sort of paradigm. So, um, I think there's a number of things that are taking place. And I think as we, uh, we're planning to launch a number of initiatives in, in the first half of next year, as we make more headway in the metaverse space.So the other things that we're doing is we invest in, in VR companies. So we made an investment in a company called masterpiece VR. Um, and so there's going to be more development tools. So masterpiece VR is, is a content creator tool that will. People to rapidly create three-dimensional assets. And as you know, the metaverse comprises of all 3d digital assets.And so, um, you know, we view this as getting on the ground floor of a really great, uh, unique creation tool. Um, that will be, uh, you know, one of the primary tools as developers start to build more and more products in VR. So, um, you know, there, there are a number of different avenues that we're looking to capitalize on in terms of, uh, the next year or two within VR.Um, That concerns me here. Cause like, as I said at the top, we are very interested in the metaverse right now. It is the hot topic of the, of the last month. We, we can think, uh, Facebook slash Mehta for that, but we do this a lot, right. Where we get this idea, we focus on it, we get excited and we realize, oh wait, we're still awhile away from adoption.And then we move on. Um, and when I say we, I mean the public investors, the media, right? Whether it's cannabis, whether it's Evie stocks. Um, and, and that concerns me here now with the, with the metaverse um, I think I saw a comment. I think it was a CEO of 10 cent. I could be wrong that said like, everyone like slow down.Like it's gonna, it's going to be, this is a long-term thing, but it's going to take a while. Or maybe we're maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves. Right now, do you do, do you agree with that sentiment? Okay. I do think this is early days, you know, I mean, when you think about Amazon, you know, it started in 1994.Right. But, you know, I mean, you know, you think about 20 years later, it was really when the true premise of what Amazon or the Bezos vision was really kind of materialized. I think this is sort of a similar kind of paradigm where we're in, uh, in the early stages of a, uh, computing revolution that could largely, you know, it could be larger than the mobile computing revolution and, um, has the potential for, you know, massive value creation.I think it is still very much early days and that we are, um, you know, there are a lot of opportunities, right. Uh, for, for picking, however, You know, it's going to take some time for the technology to evolve for the bandwidth constraints to evolve. And we're going to start to see that over the next two to three years.And I think from that point onwards, it's just going to get better and better with each, each year as the technology improves and makes it easier for the average person to spend more and more time in VR. Right. And so when you look at like computer usage in the early nineties or late eighties versus where it is today, it's a similar paradigm that you're going to see with how many people, how much time the average user spends in VR today versus 10 years from now and 15 years from now and so forth.So, um, but that doesn't mean that, um, there aren't, you know, the Amazons of tomorrow that are right for investing in or, or, or focusing on, right. People don't realize that Amazon. Like a decade to figure, figure it out, at least in terms of inter actually know in terms of the business, in terms of the stock.Right. Uh, so, um, I, I, and I, I guess, you know, you mentioned a couple of those initiatives that, that, that you're focusing on, uh, in the, in the first, I guess, quarter or so of next year. Can you, can you, can you pick one and tell them. Yeah. Sure. So, um, so we see obviously gaming is, is one of the biggest opportunities, um, to really enter the, enter the VR experience.And so, um, we want to build a brand for our sales, build a name for ourselves, and we felt that that was the easiest way to start to get in the door. And I think naturally, uh, you know, we believe that much bigger than gaming is our, is our, um, is our thinking. But, uh, you know, we want to kind of start with that inch into it and then start to evolve kind of what we're doing.Uh, I think in general, the entertainment experience is going to be crucial for, um, what can be done in VR. So we've see that as a launching pad for educational experiences in VR, um, for creating entertainment experiences in VR, you know, reading your favorite book, instead of reading it, you could experience it in VR.Um, you know, so things like that I think are where we want to see this go. And by building our first game, we started. Um, build that infrastructure in house and start to set the tone of what we're trying to do, um, and, and start to, uh, kind of unleash the potential of, of what's possible in VR. So I think this is sort of, um, you know, we are trying to ride the wave of VR and as you know, to your point, this is going to take some time to evolve.And so we kind of want to ride that natural organic wave into the, into the, uh, into the future. Uh, Kenneth, uh, Pivar prior, I'm not sure in our chat says that you need some paintings on your wall, but no, he doesn't. You just need some VR stuff on the wall, some AR stuff on the wall. I think that's the paintings are so 19th century.We don't need that. We, we need some VR on the wall. I'm sure I'm not, I don't know how that works. I'm sure you can probably figure it out. Um, and then, uh, the last thing is Ryan Norris asked if, uh, uh, if you can share what you'll be presenting, uh, at the, uh, AR uh, reality event coming. Um, I think, uh, that information should be available on our social media accounts, if you ping them, uh, you know, that information should be there or on our website.Um, you know, but we'll make sure we put it out on Twitter or something where, you know, when there'll be presenting. Uh, and then I guess my last question for you is like how far away is a company like yours from profitability? Not that that ma makes a difference necessarily now, but is that, is that on your radar?Yeah, I think, listen, uh, I, you know, focusing on profitability is crucial for us. I think, you know, we all also trying to balance that with driving top line growth, you know, so, uh, especially when it comes to these cutting edge industries where, you know, requires a good amount of software development and, and, uh, and, and investment in sales and marketing activities.Um, you know, our first focus right now is to continue to drive partnerships, drive top line growth. Um, I do think that profitability is on the horizon. Um, you know, but really right now, our focus is to get some of our key initiatives within all of our segments, um, uh, going to sort of the next phase of our, of our product roadmap and, and hopefully, you know, all of that will continue to drive top line growth and ultimately, um, a higher return on our equity and, and profitability.Awesome. cigarettes, CTX, and he's joining us here on Benzinga live and we appreciate that. Have a good day, have a good rest your day, sir. Thanks. You too. All right. Uh, AB are we running behind schedule? I don't think we are. I think we're somehow. No, we are on schedule. It looks like we're still waiting for our next, we never run on time.This is good. We're waiting for our next guests, Lana chin from a newborn town to join us. I'm sure she'll be joining any. Um, let's go ahead and get cigars banner off the screen. There we go. Spencer, anything in particular you're watching today? Uh, yeah. Yes, frankly. There is a lot of stuff going on in the pre-market session today between, uh, earnings between, uh, the inflation number, like you mentioned.Uh, I was watching Coinbase. I was watching Coinbase because I wasn't surprised by their, uh, by, by what they said in their earnings report that, you know, and maybe we can bring the chart up there and, uh, just, uh, they saw a massive slowdown, right. Uh, in, in activity. And that led to a dry mess, uh, in top line revenue.Um, you've got two catalysts, you've got a bear catalyst, which was the negative or the not so great earnings report. And then you have your bowl catalyst, which is the fact that crypto is at all time highs, but like you said, that was going to be, my point is it's sort of a. You've got on the one hand is a declining, declining retail activity, which they themselves said.We, on the other hand, in theory, there should be some kind of a correlation with Bitcoin. So here's your, you know, when I go down to the five minute chart, you can see here, the, you know, I guess tale of two tapes, you've got the, uh, big leg down after the earnings. But if you, if you just start right there and the stock's doing pretty well since then, um, like you said, I'm not surprised about the bad earnings report because of course this is going to the previous quarter, so it's not taking into account, uh, necessarily all the trading that's happened over the past month, two months since Bitcoin has had its epic turnaround.Um, and the previous quarter wasn't necessarily a great one for crypto. They talked about how, uh, trading was down, like you mentioned. So I dunno. I mean, I, if you went in there and bought the dip right here, you're looking pretty good. I, I think we'll have to see kind of how if Bitcoin and. Blast through there they're all time highs and continue to rip higher.I know a lot of people are calling for Bitcoin to hit a hundred thousand. By the end of the year. If that happens, you can bet your bottom dollar Coinbase will be trading significantly higher. But I think right now I'm just sticking on the sideline. Um, you know, waiting to see kind of what happens. Brent, Brent Slava must listen to the call and sort of Chris catchy because they're saying, oh, it's all about the NFTs, but I didn't know this until the call.So I'm sorry guys. I guess the hyped out the NFT, uh, bandwagon on their call. Uh, so I guess that's a cannabis that I didn't, that I have not considered yet, but, uh, Hey, I have a corn based account. That's where I have my, my, my crypto through. I feel sometimes like I didn't do enough research before.Deciding to open an account one day and, uh, on Coinbase, but that's the brakes? Um, well I think the NFT, it goes hand in hand. I think if we see the NFT hype continue the way what it's doing right now, then we'll see a theory, um, continue to arise. I mean, I think if we, if we see, uh, you know, some wind taken out of the NFT sales per se, then, uh, we'll, we'll see that in the price of Ethereum and other crypto.So I think it's all hand in hand. The NFT though, is I think being taken more and more seriously among the, from the institutional side. So really, no, this is not, this is a Rico story. That's not a bad thing. That's not a, I'm not saying institutions are going out by. Um, a bunch of NFTs. I'm saying more from the sense that like Coinbase is saying, okay.Yeah, we need to get into this space. Um, so more and more big players we'll see, get into all right. I'm also watching Riverton and Ford ravine. There's nothing to see right now. You've got the news feed up on the screen, right there from Benzinger probate that you can see. So, you know, not a real surprise here to see, uh, the stock, uh, going to open above its IPO price of $78 per share.Uh, if you think back to like a week and a half ago, the original, the estimated range was what like 55 to 60. They priced the last night 78. And you can see here all the headlines we have in the pro, as we wait for Vivian to open here, we have, Sherry's indicated as high as 125. Dollars today. Um, so they're still working through the order book, trying to figure out who gets what and at what price, um, and when they get through that, we will have, and we will open and then I'll be watching Ford on top of that.Um, I don't know where Luke Jacoby is or what he's doing right now, but I really, really hope that he sold some of his Ford costs today. He made a fan task trade, and I pulled the Ford chart. I just, I worry here, and this is a daily, so this is good. Let's keep this up. This is a daily chart of Ford. I don't know what the future holds, but if you're all big in, in Ford after this massive run, I would strongly, if it were me, I would definitely take some of my money if want all my money off the table here in Ford, if it was.I don't know about Uribe. Yeah. I mean, anytime that you have the type of returns that Luke has had on this trade, always a smart idea to trim some of those positions. Um, but it can be fun to let them ride too. We will see real fast. What is Ford's market cap? $80 billion. Okay. What is ravines market cap going to be?Well, the valuation was at 65 billion. What was that at? 78. Was that 78? I think that was, um, that was at 70 bucks a share. And we're now potentially $30 above that. Right? We're talking what, like 40%. I don't know that math is hard. I don't know. But, um, so is weaving going to have a higher evaluation than.What's uh, what's the thought process behind Ford owning 10% of heaviness? Is it just the fact that Vivian's going to be a direct competitor? So if they start taking some affords market share that at least forward has some stake in the game. Yeah. Ford and GM. We're both trying to invest in, in Vivian for, uh, for, I think Ford, uh, thought they had it and then thought they lost it to, uh, to GM and the GM thought they had it, but then Ford got it back.Um, uh, pickup trucks are the number one selling vehicle. It's Ford's number one selling vehicle pivoted to a few years ago. Right, exactly. So that's why I'm curious. It's because like I've revealed truck is directly competing with the Ford lightning electric truck. Yeah. But it's more. Yes, but it's more of a case of like, they all have to compete with Tesla in a way.Right. So not really, I don't think the cyber truck's going to be a thing for another. All right. Here's a good one. Take it or leave it. Buyers sell cyber trucks will be on the road. This time next year? No. No. So what about this time? Two years from now? Sure. You think so two years from now? I don't think so.Okay. Definitely not next year. Um, look I Ford and GM, they, they do, this is what they do. They make investments across the space, right? Why the GM go down then the Nico, the rabbit hole, right? It's the same idea. They have to make an investments in this space. So this is part of that. Um, all right. So young money is saying he's selling a one year out cyber truck, but buying two years.Yes. Brent, this is new. This is our new segment. Take it or leave it. Yeah, we came up with that like two minutes before Showtime. Yeah. Let me, well, let me try to think of some more, some good take it or leave it. Well, while you do that, I'm, I'm still just watching the news feed here on reveal and, uh, I would expect it would open within the next day.I obviously can't say for sure, take it or leave it Rivy and shares will be trading with why are we doing, I don't understand why we're doing this, the take of the, even on everything, take her to leave and take, Hey, take it or leave it on, take it or leave it, chat, chat, let us know what you think. But I go back to my point, Luke, I don't know where you are, but if you are, please sell your Ford a little bit.Thank you. Um, because he made a great trade and I worry about days like today being a topping event for, for, uh, uh, Suffolk Ford. So, um, there's that? Okay. Uh, it is 1237. I do not see our next guest here, which means we're going to just keep on rolling. And, uh, we will have, we will have a, uh, another guest coming up at 1245.Uh, the CEO of a equipped, uh, medical Greg Croft will be on the show, uh, in a few minutes from now. Uh, let's go back to our dock where we planned the show to. And I wanted to talk about, let's see, we hit on Coinbase. We hit on Trivian. Um, I want to talk about Disney actually, because Disney reports earnings tonight.They're in my never sell portfolio, but we have two events coming up. We have earnings tonight and we have their, uh, their Disney plus streaming extravaganza, whatever you want to call it event on Friday where they're going to like, say, Hey, look, look, you know, all the really cool stuff we have coming up on Disney plus.So two potential catalysts for Disney, the chart doesn't look great. Can you pull it out please? The chart does not look great right now. Um, I think it was trading around its 200 day moving average, uh, this morning, maybe, maybe the fifth today. Let's go out to the daily chart. I don't know Spencer it's been trading sideways.It's done nothing for the majority of the. Almost the entire year ranks and nothing for the last, what the high was in March. Right. Um, we go back out high was right here March. Yeah. So we've done nothing here for, for nine months. Sometimes stocks just like to take a little break from, yeah, I know. So I want to know how you feel about this.I want you to, you can, I don't intend to, I'm not selling this thing, but, but what can we think about this in the context of like Netflix and what they said? Cause they cause they're, you know, they pumped the brakes on their earnings report. Uh, Roku, Pomona, the brakes on theirs as well. Um, and I, I don't know.I I'm, I'm worried, like I can wake up on Monday and Disney's. I don't know what, if we did like a straddle on Disney where we said, we think it's going to move at least a 3% neither direction that yes, actually you want to set that up? Because I would definitely, I've never put it on a spread before, so Oscar it up, but I would take that bet who is, um, you know, let's wait, let's wait for Nick to come on.Okay. Nick Shaheen is our options guy, but what let's have Nick walk us through, uh, but he's not going to want it to it. Like I, it's not going to be as much of a Yolo trade once Nick is on your right. Nikki, Nick is not going to yellow his money on him. It's going to be very like defined loss and that's, that's fine.That's boring. Yeah. All right. Oh, uh, from affirms reporting earnings today, uh, I mean, uh, firm's just been an absolute monster ever since the, uh, the Amazon deal. It's coming off a little bit. Well, wait, the earnings are tonight and it's already down 12%. Sounded good side. He'd be running sorority. Yeah.Someone in the chat said, um, affirming there's 10,000 of these a day. I can't keep up. Yeah. And I'm sorry, the earnings were not out after close today. So does someone just know something we don't know? And that's why the stock is trading down. You have to look at it within the context of like, what is trading up and what is trading down today?Oh, so many of these hot stocks are just getting like punished right now. Like how has the pop up start ups T how's that hanging today? Not great. Spencer. It's down about 18 and a half percent. Yeah. I mean, it's up from the open, but the boat that's down this upstart do loans. Okay. That was it. That was a trick question.You're trying to get me. It was trying to get me. I know I've started. Does they do wounds? There are FinTech lenders smash. The like, if you got that right. Um, any, any other stocks that were watching some crazy movement on today? We I've been watching roadblocks all day. So roadblocks from mortgage monster quarter.Great earnings was up about 20, no 30% yesterday. And is now trading lower, uh, by about 8%. So this might just be a little sell off after that massive rip up or, uh, I don't know. I mean, a lot of times when a company reports great earnings and it goes up like 10%, my thought process is all this can't keep going up.And what does it do? It keeps going up. How many times have I said that to myself this year too many, but, so I actually bought some roadblocks yesterday while it was up about 30% and now it's down 10%, so who knows? Nice. Very nice. Uh, okay. We'll have our next guest on Greg Crawford in a couple of minutes.Let's catch up on the chat. Um, happy saying reveal and shares will be indicating at 105 that's unconfirmed, but, well, that's just, that's just the block. That's just a block of shares. We have to get to the whole thing first. So, um, yeah, but you know what let's do, let's do an informal survey slash poll on the chat and whoever gets closest, we'll get some swag.Okay. Drop your, and drop your price in the chat where we'll reveal and open know that the IPO price was 78. The most recent indication was 1 0 5. The highest indication was 1 25. Um, drop your number in the chat. What price does ravine open for trading at when, if it even opens today? That of course it opened that wasn't to.Ah, we got some numbers, 1 2197 96, 1 25, 1 to 32 voodoo. Wow. That's Polish 81 proton 81. I think you're on the low end of that one. Proton. Uh, we got, when we got 90 in there, we got 94, 1 29 50. I love the, the, the specificity of that down to the penny. 1 25 51 to three, one to 5 93, Shelly 64 K. Get out of here, Shelly, 64, come on.Be serious. Okay. So I seem to have a consensus of a, someone on the 1 0 5 to one 20 range. We're waiting for this. And when it, when it comes out, we will be, uh, we will be there for it when it happens. Of course, in Cal asking this. Uh, the million dollar question is where does it close? If I knew that answer, I'd be a very rich man.I guarantee you, man. I almost, I want to bet right now. You want to bet on, but I don't know. I want to bet it closes. It closes down from the open. So, uh, you're coming from the open. Huh? That's a good, that's a good point. Cause you can't trade it. You can't trade options. Yeah, it will close up from the IPO and down from the open is my, that's not a very hot take though.That's I think that's that's that's that's a common thing we see. There are sites you can bet on certain events on. I don't know. That's a good question, Spencer. Okay. Uh, while we digest that let's bring on our next guests. Um, this is an interesting one, uh, this, this company, uh, in many respects and you can see it in, in the chart of their stock, uh, is seen as a COVID play.Uh, and now that we are. Uh, hopefully maybe trying to come out of that, uh, companies like our next, uh, our next one, our, our, our, you know, figuring out where they stand in the future here in a real post code the world. So Greg Crawford is the CEO of Quip to medical. That's getting them up on the screen if we can.Mr. Crawford, how are we doing today? Doing great. How about yourself? Thanks was my, was my introduction, a fair assessment. I have to tell you as far as being a COVID play, I think you're off on that COVID is held this company down and that for over a year and a half from executing on our organic growth, although we've grown about 10% over the past couple of years, each year, we're on pace this year for 11% or so.Uh, but, uh, well, I had, I had assumed though, cause you, you make ventilators. Yeah. Yeah. But all of our services are, uh, home-based services, um, here, uh, patients inside their homes. And we have not been able to expand our Salesforce and, and our current Salesforce has not been able to quite go as deep as they'd like to in some of the different referral sources because of the visitation restrictions and things like that.So we think we're going to do much better once we get outside of COVID. So of all the different products. And I mentioned the home ventilation, but you guys also, you, you, you make a sleep apnea, um, uh, treatments, uh, and, uh, and of all your different products and services, what, what is, what is the highest growth area right now?Yeah, so the highest growth area for us really, it's just across our entire respiratory category. So this year we're up about the 40% and that just over 40%, about 10% of that is organic. Uh, so we continue to see strong demand for all of our products as just the overall. For home-based care and services.Uh, it has been going on for quite some time. And I think COVID is really just kind of brought it more to the limelight rationalization is that these patients can be taken care of in the home setting rather than a hospital setting. So, yeah, go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say, so Greg, you you've spoke before about the company's acquisition strategy.Um, and I'm just curious if you, if you can outline that again for our audience here today. Yeah, sure. So we have a three tiered acquisition strategy. Um, right now we would consider ourselves kind of a regional player. We're currently in 15 states, uh, uh, this year to date we've added five new states. Uh, so we continue to look for opportunities in that to expand into new states, uh, obtain new insurance contracts within those states.Uh, and that's kind of the first tier in that of our acquisition strategy is, is really looking for so. Uh, $5 million type companies, but they, uh, they've got an infrastructure and they hold a lot of insurance contracts that allows us to kind of go in and capitalize on that particular market that they're in.And then also add continuum markets. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Keep going. Yeah, no. The second tier of our strategy is to look for heavily weighted respiratory companies. Uh, typically those companies we're seeing in the five to $20 million top line revenue range, uh, and then the third tier, and that is to look for much larger, more material size acquisition from a revenue standpoint and an EBITDA EBITDA standpoint.And right now with our a robust pipeline, we've got all three of those, uh, to date and that we've, uh, since about, uh, July, we've closed six acquisitions for a total of about $16 million in top line revenue growth. Wow. And how are you funding this? Um, mostly all cash with our. Current cash on hand. So, uh, occasionally we will, we will issue some shares if we want to align some management in that with our culture to keep them on.So Greg, I understand there was a, a recent acquisition. Do you want to go ahead and speak a little bit about that? Yeah, sure. So we just expanded in the state of Illinois in that, uh, via the way of an acquisition, uh, was a really, uh, Illinois, a very important state for us. It's one of the top, uh, states there with, uh, patients with, uh, high acuity of lung disease and COPD.And that's what we're really looking to heavily expand in that state, but it also kind of aligned a Metro market for us in, in that, between us St. Louis and Chicago, uh, where we currently have operations. Uh, so, uh, we were able to add about 3,700 patients and about, uh, two and a half million dollars in top line revenue and also connect to geographical areas along with some important insurance contracts to operate in that.Greg, you mentioned COVID being a headwind in that it, it did sort of hinder your Salesforce a little bit, but I'm curious aside from that, what have you observed in the last year and a half in terms of, um, patient behavior? Uh, for context, my, uh, fiance doesn't anymore, but she used to work in a senior living community and, uh, she just recently left, but having worked in, you know, there for, for a, for seven or eight years, uh, and the changes that she saw in the last year and a half, uh, we're we're startling just in terms of.Just their census was got so low. And part of that was due of course, to, to, uh, to people passing away, but also people not moving in. Right. So, and, and choosing to stay at home more. Uh, and I'm, I'm just curious what, what you've observed in terms of patient behavior in the last year. Yes, absolutely. In that, I mean, that kind of, uh, dovetails off of our story here in that, whereas we're taking care of the patients and the home-based setting in that, and they require our equipment and our services to go along with those particular products.So, so that's where we've really been, uh, stepping in and making a difference in the marketplace. There we've seen trends in our referrals, in that we've primarily been hospital-based in long-term care based kind of referrals in that, which is what we, that's where the majority of our business comes from.But we've seen a lot of that, uh, go direct to the physician. And that's a, rather than that, physician may be sending them to the hospital or long-term care. We feel that, uh, they're, they're ordering these products directly from their offices. Uh, and we think that we're also getting these patients earlier in the onset of their disease state, uh, which bodes very well for us because then we're able to keep them on service.Yeah, this, this to me seems like a demographics play more than anything else, right? It's it's, it's, it's a family thing. It's just a bet on getting older and needing, needing more medical attention. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. There's 10,000 people turning 65 or older every day. And that's, that's really, that's our core market.Uh, the market itself has grown about five or 6% a year. So we've kind of been, uh, doubling that the past few years. So you mentioned expanding to different states. You mentioned Illinois, uh, is the eventual plan here to be in every state because right now you're in, I believe what, like a dozen we're in 15.Yes, absolutely. We're looking to build out a national presence in that as we continue to expand in that, uh, both, uh, organically and inorganically through acquisition. So Greg, um, as the industry of kind of home health care grows, are there areas that you think investors should be looking out for ways to kind of invest in the home care industry as a whole?Like, is it in telehealth? Is it in companies like yours that provide, uh, equipment for people to have at-home care? Yeah. I mean, it could be all of the above. I think anything that's home-based care, whether it be home health or it'd be durable medical equipment or a, some type of tele-health or something, uh, you know, would definitely be a good investments if that's what you're looking to do with your money.And what do you think the timeline is on that? Do you think? Uh, like the whole look of healthcare looks different than it does today in, in 10, 20 years down the road? Yeah, I think, uh, the push for home health care, and that is only going to continue in that. Uh, and I think, uh, COVID has really kind of brought that to the limelight that, uh, now physicians.Insurance companies can see that these patients can be taken care of and in the home setting, rather than going to a long-term care type setting or a hospital or something for some of their, uh, elements that they need treated, especially with our remote monitoring patient, uh, features that we have on our ventilation and our sleep products and things like that.Greg, you mentioned in your investor deck, the, the strong regulatory or the favorable regulatory environment right now, uh, what, what exactly makes the regulatory environment so favorable for equipped? Yeah, so for us, so there's been a program that was implemented in 2010 called the DMV competitive bidding program.Uh, that's where the industry really had undertaken some drastic cuts from 10, 2010 to 2016. You've seen a lot of consolidation in the industry at that time. Um, but really since 2010, uh, or since 2016, I'm sorry, the industry has not seen any, uh, significant reimbursement. And the program, uh, the DME competitive bid program was set to take effect January 1st, 2021.And it was actually, uh, Medicare had removed, uh, 13 product categories, which is essentially everything that Quip provided to Medicare beneficiaries. Um, for this round, that was to begin January one. And the reason they removed it is quote their, their quote. They did not achieve the expected savings. Uh, so.When the rates actually came out in early January of this year and that they were actually about 30 to 40% higher in some major metropolitan areas, uh, for services that we provide. So, you know, we can definitely see why they remove those because they sure didn't want to pay us additional. So we think with where the rates sit right now, uh, you know, we're just got a clear outlook in that for what our fee for service looks like in that, uh, for the foreseeable future.Also we've recently here in 21, we've also received, uh, some increases, um, on oxygen rates that had begun, uh, April 1st, 2021 also, uh, for home oxygen, there has been some changes in that to the coverage determination, and also for the types of patients that they cover in that. Now patients with acute diagnosis is beginning in 2022 will become.Uh, for home oxygen services and also they've removed some of the burdensome paperwork that's required. Uh, in curious as the medical device side of your business, I'm wondering if you have seen or felt any sort of supply chain scrubbiness yes, absolutely. That's the official term, by the way, if we had to pick something wacky there in that, uh, you know, going on a headwind in the industry, it would definitely be supply chain.Uh, you know, so we've definitely had that. We've had it throughout the entire pandemic. We continue, uh, just access to a certain products and services at a given time. Uh, but we've done a great job of managing through that. Being able to forecast what our needs are and that's really, that's still kind of driving the organic growth is our ability to actually get products.So I think we're doing better than, uh, probably a lot of other providers out there, especially a lot of the quote, mom and pop providers out there. There's over 6,000. So with our buying abilities, uh, in our forecasting abilities and that we've been able to kind of preplan a little bit better. Yeah. I find it so fascinating because it seems like the access to this at-home medical care, it's almost like we're going back in time to when it was commonplace for doctors to make home visits, of course, with new technology.But, um, I just think this industry as a whole, as far as being able to get medical care at your home, uh, is fascinating. We'll continue to grow. Yes, no doubt about it. I think we're seeing everything home bare, uh, home-based care or anything kind of go home base from delivery service of food and, and Dayton all the way back to get your milk delivered.I guess you could say. You can get groceries delivered now. That's true. I hadn't thought I hadn't thought about it like that, but, uh, that's a good point. Greg Crawford is the CEO of Quip medical us here on Benzinger live. Greg, appreciate the time. Have a good one. Thank you. We appreciate it. Have a great day.All right. Uh, let's get that banner off the screen and we're going to have our next guest on in a couple of minutes. Jessica Kaylor will be joining us. So, uh, we'll be talking some trays and some charts with Jesse at one O clock. Uh, in the meantime, Riviera has not yet opened. I actually, haven't seen a new indication in a few minutes.Talk about Uber puts in the chat. Yeah, a lawsuit. Um, I guess from the DOJ regarding the America, the ADA, the American with disabilities act. Um, again, we talked about this off the top of the show, right? I just don't for whatever reason, I just don't think. The street really cares about this kind of a headline?Well, I think what's interesting. And what I always like to do is if I'm looking at a company like Uber, I want to see its relative strength or weakness compared to peers. So obviously with Uber it's biggest, uh, peer would be Lyft. Uh, but you have others as well. Like door dash is up a bunch today, I think on strong earnings.But, um, the, the fact to me, when, if you just look at it, I mean, Lyft is down too, but Lyft is down about one, about 1.3%. Well, Uber is down. Let's see about, about 3%. So to me, that's showing saying that look, investors are, uh, you know, there's more sell pressure on Uber than Lyft today. And I don't know. I mean, I, I can get behind some Uber puts, I already don't like Uber.As a, as a, as a stock. Really? Yeah. I mean, the company just has profitability issues. They have a legal problems as easy Mike is pointing out. And like you said, let's zoom out on a weekly. No, let's go to a monthly on Uber, Spencer. You were talking about this the other day that you, you just think the, um, I guess business model of, you know, the, the food delivery, the Uber, I think it's wrong.I think that, I think it's terrible for small businesses. Yeah. And I mean, I don't know. I think, I dunno. I, I, I'm looking at Uber puts, I'm not saying this is this stock's going to trade lower in, in the next week. I don't know. I don't know. Make a call. Um, give us a hot take, make a stand standing for something.I am buying I'm tailing. Easy mic, easy mic. That's good enough for me. Okay. All right. And the fact that I already don't like the business model. Uber, uh, for whatever it's worth, um, is, is, is trading above. Speaking of IPO is trading above its IPO price, um, and above its opening price of $38. So it took a long time to get there, took over.It took over a year to get there year and a half, but, uh, finally falling in the black, if you bought Uber on day one, um, okay. Are going to keep our eyes on reveal fun, just to see in this pulpit chart here, just to see when it opens. I don't think it, it has, uh, our IVN. It has not, but when it does open, we will know, and we will talk about it.But in the meantime, let's talk about, uh, some other charts with Jessica Kaylor from elite trading. Jones's every Wednesday on this show, we'll bring him on now, Jesse. What's up, man? How are we doing? Oh, it's doing great. How you guys doing? Uh, we're hanging in there, man. Hanging in there. It's Wednesday. It's daylight savings.It gets dark at like two o'clock now. And, uh, it is what it is. So, uh, what stocks do you watch them today? There's a lot going on out there. Um, I was watching the bank stocks, uh, looking at some hotel resorts, you know, rrr. Um, I've been looking at the Neo node. The one that I brought up actually with you guys, uh, sometime early last year when they were around six, we, we had that target of nine currently.I'm almost breaking that $10 mark. So I was going to go show you, share that one off today. Um, but let me share real quick. Did we, do we just get, do we open upour, it was $6 and 75 cents. $106. I have to refresh my, my chart now $106 and 75 cents for revealing bada Bing, bada, boom. I'm not going to go back into the chat and see who came close. I'm sure one of you came close here. It's 1 0 8. It's rolling. Let's see, I'll go. Since Spencer refuses to. Thank you. Thank you.I appreciate that. Yeah. Uh, we had someone guests one 10. What, what was it open at 1 0 8 grant Gibson with a 1 0 9 oh oh Dunkin. Bracey no. Oh, wait a minute. We didn't say what we're doing. Price is right. Rules are not. What is price is right rules. You can't go over and go closest without going over. Dunkin Gothic hosts without going over.But technically grant came closest. Ooh, wait, why did grant come open that? What 1 0 8 74. Sorry, James sands. He has, he always says hi every day. We had a couple of guesses for 1 0 9 AP grant Gibson. Um, yeah. So good guesses in the chat, everyone.200 and then back down to, no, I, you, you can talk me into one 50 as in the next, like 10 minutes and then, and the end of the day at like 90, but, uh, I think 200, 200 tad high. I remember, uh, when Coinbase opened, it opened at what, like two or 180 or something and went all the way up to like four 50 and came back down.Oh, ribbons already. Let's see. Well, there's your first road. Nice little red candle. There always wait, it was one of a six happy saying 1 0 6 75. Wait, did I misread? I may have misread it. Oh, it is 1 0 6. Oh my God, Spencer. I screwed up. I messed up. I screwed up. I thought it was 1 0 8. This was one of those off by only $2 back.I, I take back what I said about who was closest. So we're looking for 1 0 6. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. My mistake. I'm sorry. 1 0 6 75 IPO price. It's 78. Congrats to all those people, because they're now making money on their long-term investment. Right. Um, anyway, so we got sidetracked with Vivian. Can we go back to what was on your list?Yeah. And just talk in, um, touch us. I just shared your charts. W w this is Teledyne. Yeah. TDY. They're the biggest competitor to Nia node. And neon was the one that I was talking about earlier, which is touchless. They do like touch of technology for like elevators, um, things of that nature for the future.So. Um, I will have a future. Yeah. Where, you know, a lot of people go in a lot of button touching. You don't want to get in and touch the elevator button. So if you could go up and just like, put just barely even put your hand over the button, then it'll actually put it up, pull it up for you in there. They got a big contract for that.And then they also have it to where they can attach to windows 10 capable computers. And it makes their screen touch screens, uh, touchless. But, well, this reminds me of a game that we used to play when I was a kid, uh, my cousins and I, whenever we w the family would all go to a hotel or whatever the game was run until the elevator hit everyone at the same time and see where you see where it takes here.And you wonder, how do you want to know how that game ended? This is the true story. You all know how that game ended and did it with us stuck in between the floors a little bit. Yes. I swear. I have a cousin who to this day will not get into an elevator with. That was like 20, it was 25 years ago that this happened a little bit less than that 20 years ago.Uh, and he will not get into an elevator with me cause we got stuck and true story anyway. So nobody get on the elevator with a joking. Hey and real quick, other side note, uh, that was actually not my first time being stuck inside an elevator. I've gotten stuck twice. Um, the first time was actually I, uh, the doors closed on me.Um, when I was like six years old, it was a traumatic experience. The bottom line is, do not get into an elevator with me. Okay. If the bottom line here. Um, anyway, let's go back on the charts. Yeah. So we were on, um, with you guys back where this line is here and near at. Um, . Of 2020 and we were watching the same play and we were talking about it as touchless technology.I think I just felt like it was, this is an old company they've been around since 1976. So it's not like a new company and they've, I think this is just finally the, the environment that they needed to. Maybe break away. And when you start looking up, okay, who's are their competitors and you look at TD why a $400 stock, you start thinking, okay, maybe there's, there's a space here that hasn't been touched by a lot of people.And these there they've been in it for a long time. So it's just kind of a long-term idea. Play for me. Maybe they get into this whole metaverse if there's a lot of need for touchless technology in the future. As in video gaming, uh, health wise restaurants going to touchless, um, ordering, servicing stuff, like order style.Um, I think that this is, I think they have a lot of room to grow, so just one that I'll be watching, but today in particular did take a little, um, position in GLD. Um, that was. What are you a boomer? Nah, just, I, I heard triple D talking about it and I was like, you know what? I'm already, I'm already thinking banks, everyone in the chats going and talking gold.And I think that, you know, it, wasn't working for a hedge play for a lot of people, but I just wanted to get maybe 80 cents to a dollar, just a little bit, just to have some green today out of the red morning, I woke up to and I made, you know, made that, made that dollar I needed out of them. And I'm not a huge move in a stock.That's $173, but at the same time, it, if it's green, it's green, right? Well, for people like me, that's looking at roadblocks and trying to figure out a way to play roadblocks when it was up 30% yesterday. Now down 10% today, or 8% today. Uh, w what are some options on how we can, you know, play this? Um, if you're synthetically longer, you can sell, puts that are deeply, um, out of the money, maybe, and at a, at a position that, you know, maybe a strike that you would feel comfortable buying them.And then you collect that premium every week or month until it gets down to that price. And until you're willing to pay for it, and you use that money that you make off the premiums to pay for more of the shares. Okay. What, so, so what if I sold puts at like $80 and then I bought a put at, I dunno, 95 or something.So if I thought it was going to continue to go down for a little bit, but not all the way to my lower strike price, then you're going to make that money off that 95 all the way as it goes down. And then you're going to also be able to collect that premium as long as it remains above that $80. You just want it to just end up between 80 and, um, what'd you say?95? Yeah, something like that. I mean, do you think something like that? Is it. Uh, yes. If you, if you're, if that's the opinion that you're taking on it, you know, if you think that it's going to fall, um, below that range, now you will lose that 95. If it stays above that, you know, you're going to lose out on that, whatever you pay for the premium on the 95, that's a potential loss there, but, um, it's going to make the, the play possibly a little cheaper for you.Um, it's a good way to do a spread, you know, on, on a stock that you're comfortable with, that you want to buy. Anyway, I would, I would strongly recommend for anyone that's trying, in my opinion, to buy a stock that they want to get in what they don't think that it's at the price they want to buy it. They just sell the puts at the price that they want to pay for it.And then if you get at you get, now, it can be dangerous, especially with Snapchat. Why didn't I do that? Well, so, so, but if I wanted to just sell. And I wasn't doing a spread. You need to have like a certain amount of money in your portfolio to be able to do so, correct? Correct. Yes. But buying us or doing a spread versus just selling the put alone makes it a little bit more affordable.Yes. It alleviates some of that, um, equity that you have to have. So it's, it's all about positions. You know, how, you know, when you're talking a hundred dollars stock, you'd expect someone to have that decent amount of, you know, buying power available. If they're looking to buy a hundred shares of a hundred dollars stock, you know, that's a, that's a big, that's a big one, you know, I think, um, that we're talking, but it's good for people when you're talking, just trying to make premium, even just to, just to do it, like uses, like you just suggested you could do that same way by the 95, sell the eighties and collect that premium regardless of what you want to do position wise in the.Got it. Uh, rich Williams saying good afternoon, everyone from Florida. Good afternoon, rich. How are you doing? Let us know in the chat, what stocks you were watching. We'll go ahead and take a look at them with Jesse. Uh, Jesse, any other trades that you're looking at that are setting up for you? Um, I did want us to just see where it's at one 16.Oh, nice. I'm also watching China stocks here. Cause I guess easy Mike noted it and I don't even know who care, but every grand officially defaulted. Do we care about that? I'm watching China. That sounds bearish for China stocks, right? Nah, that sounds bullish. Cause we brought the dip. So, um, but there has to be a dip to be bought.The dip already happened now we're buying it. Oh, okay. Beautiful. Oh, I'm watching something that I wasn't even mine on my radar until yesterday. That's highs on motors, a ticker, H Y, Z N having a breakout today. I've got some open calls on the stock. We had them on them. We had them on the show. Highs on uh you're you're going to helium.No, no, no. You sure. Yes. I'm sure they, we had them on one of, I don't remember which show take it or leave it. We've

The best way to learn the craft of writing is to study the best of the best! Join us for our first critical reading episode where we take a look at the Hugo Award winning novel the Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin. We take a look at what this story does right... and what had us scratching our heads. Warning: there are spoilers if you haven't read the book! Do you agree on our assessment of the book's strength and weaknesses? Leave messages in the comments or join the discussion thread in the Am Writing Fantasy Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/! And don't forget to signup for the Fantasy Map Masterclass to be held October 28. Register at https://ultimatefantasywritersguide.com/fantasy-map-masterclass/. Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday. SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.   Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (1s): You're listening to The Am writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello. I'm Jesper. Autumn (31s): And I'm Autumn Jesper (33s): This is episode 147 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And we've finally arrived at our new initiative. So once a month, we are reading a high profile fantasy book, and then we record an podcast episode about it. So this is our Critical Reading of the Fifth Season by NK Jemisin. Yes, I am looking forward to getting into the nitty gritty because I admit some of the aspects of this one or what kind of gave me the idea for the Critical Reading group when we were first talking about it. I also don't know if our listeners will be surprised at our, I think we both have a very similar takeaway from this book, but the Le there's some aspects of this one that are like, oh, that is so different. Jesper (1m 22s): It's amazing. I see why I want to Hugo for this is such a cool book and there's other aspects that well we'll get there all the way. Yes. You're already teasing it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we got make people want to listen to like the heart of this line, which they should be excited. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's going to be an interesting conversation. And of course the, the idea is also here to see if we can try to draw out some things to learn in terms of either D these are good ideas or this kind of stuff you should probably avoid, you know, that kind of thing is what we're trying to draw out of the Critical Reading. Jesper (2m 3s): Exactly. And we'll, we'll get to it, but it's all matter of opinion, obviously. So yes, you can disagree with us. That's okay. It's just our opinions, but yeah, we'll, we'll get to, it sounds good. Well, if we're going to get to it, how are things going for you over in Denmark? Yeah. Well, I don't think I have wage that much to share this week. I'm just attempting to finish up the first draft of book two in our new series. So a couple of chapters to go and maybe I will be done by Friday. I hope don't tell me that. That that's my, well, you should be happy about that or very happy, but I was hoping to finish the edits on book one, which always seemed to be getting pushed back ever so slightly. Jesper (2m 50s): I'm so close. Maybe, maybe the end of next week, but you're going to beat me on the book too. I will catch up eventually. Autumn (3m 1s): Yeah. Yeah. So I, I don't think I have that much other to share this week. It's just been, you know, what do you call it? Like a head in the sand? No, not head in the sand. That's not good, but in the trailer, how do you say Jesper (3m 15s): Clouds? How did the clouds? Autumn (3m 19s): That was not what I was looking for, but nevertheless, I know, I know you were at some FANTASY con or something or Jesper (3m 25s): Yes, I went to a Vermont fantasy and sci-fi con up in Burlington and that was a lot of fun. I was there, there, it was definitely, I think, more, more than 50% Saifai but at the same time, it was so much fun. You would have, I thought of you several times because they had a R2D2 that was like truly moving. You could have mistaken it for the from the movies and the guy who could control it was so good. Like he didn't have to look down at the remote and the remote was so small. You didn't even really notice who was responsible. And this little thing would come up to your booth would be talking to you. And you're like, this is awesome. Jesper (4m 7s): And there was like Ghostbusters, there was a gorgeous Ghostbusters car and some plasma things. But one of the coolest things is definitely the star wars. And there was a lead the 501st Legion for the stormtroopers. So representatives there. And so there's these guys walking around and for full storm trooper armor. And the coolest thing is that they had to go upstairs to the conference room and I happened to be up there and I look out and I see one in the hallway and I'm pointing out to my husband. He ran out there and got a picture just as the elevator doors were closing. It looks so star wars. I'm like, that is the best picture ever. Jesper (4m 47s): So that one framed, it's just always, we're going to take a picture of a storm trooper. It should be in an elevator. It's just so cool. Autumn (4m 57s): I've always loved those uniforms. To be honest, I think I always also in the movies, you know, when it seems like they just look so cool. And, and sometimes I feel like it's a shame that they had just like Canon father in the movies, just don't troopers because they look so cool. Jesper (5m 11s): They look so cool. It's a very cool armor. And I was actually, I mean, I've been part of the SCA, the society for creative anachronism. I used to do that back in my twenties. And so I really enjoy that, but I didn't know there was a 501st Legion of storm troopers. I'm like, dude, you can go and dress up and be a storm trooper. That is cool. Autumn (5m 38s): Yeah. Well, I would rather be the Sith Lord, to be honest, Jesper (5m 42s): Probably I would want to go in as a Jedi master, but I do come from a FANTASY background. I think any Fantasy author should automatically get to be a Jedi or Sith master just it's in our resume. Autumn (5m 56s): See you, you pick the good guys and I automatically pick the bad guys. I don't know what the tails, Jesper (6m 3s): Well, we have to bounce each other's out. It's the force there's balance. Autumn (6m 8s): Oh, okay. Okay. Fair enough. Narrator (6m 12s): A week on the internet with The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. Autumn (6m 18s): One last reminder here on the 28th of October, we are having our very first ever virtual Masterclass. Jesper (6m 28s): I can't wait. It's a Maps. I love fantasy maps. Autumn (6m 33s): Fantasy Maps. Yes. And if you can't make it in person, there will be a recording made available for you as well. So I don't know, I'm looking so much forward to just geeking out for an hour about fantasy maps. This is going to be so awesome. Jesper (6m 48s): It'll be almost better to on, so yeah, it'll be fantastic. Autumn (6m 54s): Yeah. We'll have a lot of fun and I will share some thoughts on map-making that you might not have considered before. So whether you want to learn something or if you just want to, well, kick out with us, we hope that you will join the Masterclass. It is a very inexpensive and it is conducted online. So you don't need to leave your house or anything like that to attend. Jesper (7m 18s): And the fact it's actually a really good deal. It's not only is it expensive, but it's a two for one, you get a second invitation to a second Masterclass as you have to be scheduled. So it's a two for one deal. It's a really good deal. Yeah. Autumn (7m 34s): Yeah. So there's a link in the show notes and you can find the registration page from there and yeah, we really hope to see you otherwise it'll just be you and me Autumm and I think talking, we can talk to ourselves about map-making, but it might be slightly boring. Jesper (7m 52s): Never boring. Autumn (7m 54s): That's true. That's true. Narrator (7m 59s): And onto today's topic. Autumn (8m 3s): Okay. So while we're doing, while we're doing Critical Reading here today, we, I think we better start out by saying that the purpose here is to learn from the books that we read, not to bast them or claim that anything is wrong with these books. Well, with this book in this case, and we should also say that the fifth season is a very popular book. It was awarded by the Hugo award for best novel in 2016. And this means that there's a lot of people loving this novel. So everything we say is personal opinions, and we fully understand that some people will disagree with that. Autumn (8m 42s): And that's okay. Jesper (8m 44s): Yes, exactly. And actually, I didn't realize this, but it's also has won the Sputnik award. It was nominated for Nebula award and it's a world FANTASY award best novel. This, this is a highly acclaimed story. So I think it'll be really interesting to look at it, but it's definitely that's. We want to learn why this is so popular and it's okay to, you know, find things that you don't like about it, but that's why it's a learning experience to find maybe the core features that you love and then, you know, learn from those and maybe learn what you want to stay away from. If you, especially, if people are leaving reviews or comments that you agree with and you can say, well, then I, there are readers who don't want that as well. Jesper (9m 29s): That's great. Autumn (9m 30s): And we gave plenty of warning as well, leading up to this episode that we were going to do this Critical Reading. So we are not going to be careful about spoiling anything here. So if you haven't read the book and you want to, I suggested you turn off the podcast now and then come back to listen to the rest. Once you have done the reading part. So yeah, I might say, oh, I think I will definitely say some sports. Jesper (9m 57s): Yes, I will. Definitely too. And I had written down the exact same thing on my notes for today that spoilers will fall low this. So if you are still reading and haven't finished or plan on reading it, we're going to ruin the book for you. So stop now and go read the, finish the book and then come back and listen and see if you agree. Autumn (10m 17s): Yeah, I think that's a good idea. So I try to divide sort of my notes into some headlines. So I have a headline called plodding, one called magic and one cold world-building and then I have a bunch of stuff underneath each headed air. So I don't know if we just want to start out with a plotting on and then go from there or do you have a different preferences? Jesper (10m 41s): That sounds fine though. I wanted to start with maybe a quick explanation of what the fifth season is. I don't want to do a whole blurb and Sabine Opsis, you know, we're hoping you read the book, so, you know, what's about, but just to set the stage, the fifth season is, you know, we have our summer spring, winter fall. Well, the fifth season kind of lends its name to a world ending event, like a cataclysm, a major earthquake, something that is going to destroy civilization. So it doesn't come every year, but when it comes, it's known as the fifth season. So it's actually a very ominous title once you realize that Autumn (11m 15s): It is definitely so, yes. Okay. So we'll assume people have read it or otherwise go and check the book description on Amazon and UK. You can see what it's about. So should I just get started on the plotting stuff and then we can see where it takes us. Jesper (11m 35s): Maybe we should start almost with the way we would write books and we should start with the world building. Autumn (11m 41s): Okay, fair enough. We can do that. Okay. So I can start out with my first point here. It's, it's a bit of a long one, but let me try to get through it. So first of all, this is from a wealth building perspective. It's incredibly complex with all, like, there was all this seismic activity that is impacting on society and we have slaves, we have outcasts. And to some extent, this book is also about people dealing with being controlled and abused and having a total totalitarian regime. Autumn (12m 21s): And while I, well, I do enjoy the exploration of these sort of horrible things that people are willing to do to each other, as soon as they don't see the other person as a human being anymore, but I'm still wanting it to be more personal. You know, I have to sort of mention, I don't know if it's directly world-building building, but it's in here in my notes. But in this context, I have to mention that the second person present tense that the NKG Emerson uses it's, it's probably the reason why the book won the Hugo war, to be honest, because it's different and it is very well done. Autumn (13m 4s): I mean, don't get me wrong. She pulled it off very, very skillfully. However, none of that changes how it really puts me off. I just cannot get into the story and the characters. I don't know how you feel about that. Autumn. Jesper (13m 20s): I agree. I had a very hard time relating to the characters, especially the main character, which we can get to later. But again, we're not giving anything away, but I wasn't sure if we were not supposed to realize that the older woman, the middle age, you know, the, the motherish woman and the child were the same person. But I mean, as soon as we switched between the two, I knew instantly that the little girl was the same as the older woman who had just lost her son who was the same as the mother. I don't know if it's because we write in a fantasy and it's like, well, duh, or, you know, the idea of the goddess, who's the, the may, the mother of the crone. I mean, it's, it was just so obvious. Jesper (14m 1s): And so I knew the whole time that this is going to be the same person and I still never related to her. But to go on your comment of the second person, I agree. That's what makes this story literary Fantasy is that it switches between a third poison person, point of view, to a second person present tense. And it's amazing that it's done. And it, I didn't notice it as fast as some people who have left comments on what they thought of the story as they read along for today's podcast. So I, it literally, I think I was about a quarter of the way through the book. And I was like, oh, this is a total, this isn't, this is using you. And this is using present tense. Jesper (14m 41s): And this is not what was in this previous chapter. But I will say as a literary story, I think it was done very purposefully because the chapters where the second person is used are the ones where the character has just lost her son. And she goes into shock and doesn't recover for days. And she doesn't really recover for the entire course of the novel because that point of view is always in second person. She is disassociated from herself and her emotions and it works so well. The use of you makes it feel like you're separate from this character, especially compared to the chapters where it's third person. Jesper (15m 25s): And so I think in that way, it works great, but I never bonded with her because this is the adult version. This is the present version of who she is. And all the other ones are memories, which their past tense makes sense, brilliant Writing, but for character, you know, wanting to hear more about this character, I told you I can share it later, but I have a quote who basically her, I grabbed the review and her title to the review are my feelings for this book are complicated leading towards negative. And I'm like, oh, that's I could have written this one. And she too mentions that she couldn't bond with the main character. Autumn (16m 8s): No. And I agree with what you said, because I, I also think that the chose to point of view on purpose to exactly do what you sat there like to, to give you the sense that the character is this issue, this issue associated, I can't even say that now on to tie it, but, but that's definitely the purpose of it. And it works for sure, but at the same time, you know, if you're looking at it from a emotion, emotion perspective, like you want to get in the body of the character, you want to see and feel with them as they go through the story and getting Merced inside the setting and in their lives and all that good stuff. Autumn (16m 49s): Like that's what I enjoy when reading to just disappear into this sort of fantasy world and go with the characters. And that's what you get with the deep point of view. We talked about that in a previous episode as well, but that is what kept, keeps me fully engaged. And it just doesn't happen here because as a reader, I'm also distanced from it because of the second person. And I feel like that's a real shame. And I think Stephen from patron, he also said something that I really felt like was true because he said like, quote, the point of views were a stumbling block for me at first. Autumn (17m 30s): But I read on thanks to you guys with a critical eye so that I could see what made this book tick. And then it hit me the pros, the writing style. It was so lyrical and almost poetic in places. And I think that that hits it home for me because I fully agree. That's also how I see it. It is not, it is more lyrical and poetic than it is storytelling in many places. And for those who love that, then that's great. But I, I, I just can't get into the character and the story you, I just feel almost like I don't care. Yeah. Jesper (18m 6s): And that it is a shame. It is a shame for a book that is, I think, has such potential because the world is really interesting and it sort of relates to what you just said about the lyrical writing. To me, the, I saw it more like poetry, but minimalize, the world is a very harsh world. The book has some really harsh themes things that I don't usually like to think about when I'm reading Fantasy, it's, it's dark, dark Fantasy to me. And the magic is also hard. It's hard. It is basically earth magic. And so you have this hard world it's described very harshly. The language to me is very bare at times, fractured very punctuated. Jesper (18m 49s): It reminds me very much of geology and earth and different types of rock and layers. So it's like this whole thing is designed to be this hard surface as Rocky surface that can, at times it pokes you in it's painful. And that is just as a writer, as someone studying Writing, I'm like, oh my gosh, I want to read this in, you know, a college class. And I would have to break it down and discuss it. But as a reader, I'm like, I didn't bond. I didn't feel it. I didn't buy book two because I didn't have that, you know, warm gooeyness of, oh my God, I love this book. It was more like, I can appreciate this on a literary sense in a scene. Jesper (19m 30s): And I see, well, it was done kudos to you and yeah, good. Don't need to write like that. Thanks. Autumn (19m 39s): No, I agree. And I think I read somewhere that NKG, Amazon didn't intend for the setting to represent our world. And it's like future destruction. I could be wrong about that, but I think I read that somewhere, but one of the characters do call it earth. So there is that, but I sort of quite like the reflections on real life here, you know, whatever, whether the author intended it to be so not, I don't know, but, but I think it is pretty cool to think about, you know, from a climate perspective in a real world and so on. And yeah, I mean, it, it gives sort of the real world angle on thing. Autumn (20m 20s): And I guess that's the kind of thing that also gets awards, right? Because there's more to it than just a story. Jesper (20m 26s): Yes. Especially the end. You know, the last thing that alabaster the one character mentioned is have you ever heard of a moon and this planet that they're on, it's a supercontinent now. So it's like Pangea, but it's called the stillness. And so it's this fast continent and it doesn't have a moon. And suddenly, you know, the last phrase like mentions a moon. So is this future earth that has been torn apart with earthquakes and all this fracturing going on. It's very interesting. And I, over on world building too, I do the previous cultures that are there. They call them the dead sieves. So you see all these ruins of previous cultures and some of them sounded so technologically advanced and there's parts of the book where there's a lot of description and then there's like a dead sieve in the distance. Jesper (21m 15s): And I'm like, I want to know more about the ruined cities. I would have been like hard hat on. I am going to go check it out, but they're basically the culture is, oh, we don't go there. They failed. Screw them. Like, no, I love history. I want to know why they failed. Can't you learn from previous lessons and become something better and not just wipe the canvas clean and start over and fail again. So there was that element too, where maybe it is describing our current world where we're not learning from past mistakes and past things and we're repeating ourselves and this just kind of does it with civilizations. Autumn (21m 53s): Yeah. That makes sense. To me, at least, I don't know if that is the intention, but, but it, it makes sense that it's a commentary on the real world. I feel like, but I don't know. It asks a bit more depth to it, which I actually quite like. Jesper (22m 10s): Yes. And I was definitely teased by the floating obelisks pyramids. I forget how they're described. They have a couple of different ones, but these floating blocks of stone. And I couldn't believe that the, again, that there was very little curiosity about what they were, except for alabaster, trying to figure it out. And a young girl on the cell, in the girls viewpoint. And I get days, I can't remember her name, but her, when she's a child and she's at fulcrum learning to become, I can't even pronounce it. Origin, NIST origin is what they call their magic system. Autumn (22m 50s): I shouldn't going to Jesper (22m 50s): Try. And I had to look up how to say it because it is a world real world. And so I looked up and so there's this girl, and she's curious, but it's like two people in the entire book are curious about these giant floating things in the sky that are made out of stone. And again, I find it, I find the lack of curiosity, which is something that is true for the whole book and especially the main character. She's never curious. And that's sort of against who I am as a person. I thrive off of going to know what things, you know, why things are this way. And so I really think that did not help me relate to the book because there's not a single character who was like, well, why does this happen? Jesper (23m 33s): What happened here? They don't care. Autumn (23m 38s): Yeah. And, and the other aspect of what you're saying, I feel like is, is I don't feel like there's enough at stake for the protagonist. I mean, yes, she is searching for her daughter, but the rest of what happens, like you're talking about the obelisk and all this kind of thing, all of that is sort of dealt with because, well, it's my job. So I'm dealing with it, but it's not, I mean, I just can't help by questioning here. If we, if we're trying to learn from it, what would have happened if the author had found a way to link all of this stuff around the obelisk and all that other stuff closer to the life of the character so that it make a personal difference for the character, whether she dealt with it or not, instead of just I'm taking care of my job, I just feel like that would be a lot more interesting. Autumn (24m 26s): Yeah. Jesper (24m 26s): Yes. I feel like the entire plot, what you have, you said you have a whole section on the plot. I feel like the whole plot revolved around the search, the present search for her daughter, and then the, how she got to where she is now, which is the two past point of views where there was some really cool stuff. Like, you know, the one time, the first time she bonds with an obelisk and a volcano erupts. And I'm still not sure if that was her, the obelisk or alabaster somehow making this volcano up here. And I thought, oh, this is going to start connecting with her. And immediately the next part, she doesn't even really ever think about them again. Jesper (25m 7s): And then when she moves on with the present tense where she has been a wife and a mother in this new new town, and it begins with her losing her son, she's never even wondered about, again, anything that obelisk the things that I thought like, oh, you've connected with an obelisk and it's an alien intelligence and it was talking to you. Okay. Not mentioned for the next 50 chapters. I was like, oh, I want to know more about that. Autumn (25m 34s): Yeah. Yeah. I, I do have some issues then. And I thought as well, if I just say infidel student, know what I'm thinking about, autumn, Jesper (25m 46s): I think they hit you worse, especially cause you're listening. And I think maybe I just kind of skimmed them and didn't realize it was skimming them. But you said that there were more and I realized, Autumn (25m 59s): Well, at least it feels like that to me. I mean maybe, maybe it's just me, but I was listening to the audio book version Al and I, and can I just say, if you haven't, you know, listeners, if you want to check this book out, then Narrator for the audio book is freaking amazing. She does such a good job at narrating this book. So that's definitely worth it. I can highly recommend the, that this narrator she's so good at it, but, but that's, I digress what I want men was just that I noticed in several places, how well, maybe you don't notice it so much when reading and I'm speculating here, but, but because of the very lyrical language, she's so good at writing that maybe you don't really notice that much, but there are quite a lot of info dumps in my view where you just get like a whole section about something that happened like in the older days or blah, blah, blah, something it's like. Autumn (26m 57s): Hmm. Yeah. Okay. But, but if, if it was, if I read it in a book and maybe if, if it was maybe well less written, I could put it like that, then I would just feel like, well, put all of this conversation between characters or something so that I can, I get the, as part of the action of what's happening or characters talking about it and shared that way, because it feels like sometimes there's just a whole sections about old history stuff. And it's like, okay, I guess I don't, I don't know. Yeah. Jesper (27m 32s): One of the reviews mentioned that if they had to read another description of meeting someone on the road and what they were wearing and what their hair color was that she would go and how you knew which part of the continent they were from based on these things, that it just seemed too repetitive. And you know, I, again, I didn't really quite notice that, except I know sometimes I, I would, again, probably just skim ahead a little bit, be like, okay, that's nice. You know, I, I don't need to know all the details. So again, I don't mean to be pointing out the flaws, but I think we're just, we're pointing out the difference between what's literary Fantasy and what is normal, like dark fantasy, what we expect in the two genres. And this is literally sold as literary slash epic slash science fiction. Jesper (28m 15s): So it's, it's a weird mishmash where I think it fits better actually with literary Fantasy than it does with dark fantasy. Autumn (28m 26s): Yeah, I do too, because I mean, as I hinted at just a moment, a Gomez, the writing is exceptionally well done. I mean, she writes really, really beautiful. I have nothing to say against that. It's it's amazing. Jesper (28m 39s): And the world is like you said, it's, Autumn (28m 44s): But yeah, that's what I mean, if that's what you're there for, then it's great. Right. But if you're there for more, like what I guess I could call commercial fiction, you meaning you're there to enjoy a story and so on, then this is not it. Jesper (29m 0s): And I think part of that part is also the not bonding and the plot feeling sort of flat that, you know, all these potential side plot plots could have happened, but they don't because one, the reader, the character is not curious, but it's also the character. What kind of character arc would you call this? I'm thinking it's either a fail or a flat arc. And because she never learned, she never grows. She's not curious at all. She doesn't change. Plot is kind of static. Autumn (29m 34s): Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to come back to that a bit when I talk about the ending, but I'll save that for a moment, but I did have another comment from, from Steven on Patrion as a last comment, I have at least on my list when it comes to world building, because I think he might have a good point here, but I'm curious what you think Autumm. So he's asked quote, the one aspect of the world building that I didn't care for is that she made up many curse words like rust and rusting. And yet she still used several modern curse words. This is probably nitty nit-picky, but if you make up your own own course words, that fit the culture of your story. Autumn (30m 16s): Why use modern carbon curse words too? So I think he has a point. Does New York, Adam, Jesper (30m 22s): I think he does. I don't know if I would have no, I don't. Can't say I super noticed it. I, I noticed like when she was using rusting and stuff. Yeah. I really, I just, I liked the ones that she made up. Cause again, it fits the world. It fits the culture of, you know, very like metal is not considered safe because it, rusts rust is a bad thing. It's leads to dead sieves, but I don't think I noticed too many modern words and what they were. And so, yeah, I think as a, you know, I would think I would appreciate them more if she, if she had stuck left them in the world that she was, especially if this was not supposed to be a future earth where people are still saying F this. Jesper (31m 4s): So Autumn (31m 6s): Yeah, I get the point that Steven is making to be honest, but at the same time, I must admit sometimes you can just put in the effort. I mean, I know there is a lot of debates. I've seen it in many times being debated whether or not there should be an F-word in a fantasy novel personally, I don't have any problem with it, but yeah, I don't know. I still get the argument. Jesper (31m 30s): I I've used it because it fit, it was actually set in modern day earth. But yeah, I've been, as long as it's not aimed targeted at kids, I don't have a problem with using some of our language because you they're already speaking English. So why wouldn't they have some of the same swear words? I mean, at that point, why are you not making up all the names? Why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you making a Calvary word? Just let's keep it simple. Autumn (31m 58s): Yeah, yeah, indeed. Yeah. So that was sort of my notes on the world building parts. And if I just go into, let's say, well, we talked about a lot of the plotting stuff already, but what I did want to mention as well, something very positive because I really like how we are following three women. It's the same person, of course, but essentially there's three women here in different ages, but I really liked that because I just don't think that there is enough fiction out there with female protagonists, to be honest. Autumn (32m 40s): And I really liked that. Yes, Jesper (32m 42s): I actually, it would be, it was funny being female. I didn't even think about it, but you're right. It was nice to have that and have that point of view. And also she was a very capable and determined woman. In many ways she could take care of business. She knew what she was doing. She had when she was younger, she was pushed around a little bit. But she overcame that, I guess, about the only growing she does do. Autumn (33m 6s): Yeah, I agree. The thing is though, as you said before, it's just too easy to guess that it's the same person. I, I also guessed it almost immediately. So, but, but at least, I mean, if we disregard the fact that maybe some people didn't get it, I don't know. But if we disregard that for a second, the fact that there is a plot twist or surprise in the story, which if you didn't guess it is, it is a surprise at the end. I think that is a very good idea to take away from that as a learning experience, you know, to try to have something that will surprise and excited readers once they get to that final pots of destroying, they're like, whoa, you know, that kind of thing is great. Autumn (33m 50s): Yes. Jesper (33m 51s): Agreed. I mean, I will be, I would be surprised if people didn't, I guess I, it's hard to know how you're reading it. If you truly, she does make the settings, she doesn't tie them together at all, really until that kind of twist at the end where you realize it's all the same character, but she also didn't really go out of her way to make it seem too different. Like why they might, you know, hints that it was the same time. So I think it was a pretty easy guessed that they're the same ones. So it wasn't a huge twist, but it could have been, it is always good to have a twist like that. Autumn (34m 25s): But honestly, I think if you did not have the second person, if all of them have been third person limited, I don't think I would have guessed it. Oh, it's because the second person stands out so much that I knew that it has to be linked to the other people in there. And maybe it's something to do with we're different on different in different times or something. I don't know. It was just so different that I knew that it had to link together somehow. And then I could just add the two and two together and then I guessed it right away almost right. But if you had three third person limited point of view, then I might not have guessed it to be honest. Jesper (35m 8s): That's interesting. I still, I think I, cause I had noticed a second person at least consciously at that point. I just, again, I think it's kind of Celtic kind of the made mother and crone, as soon as it switched to a little girl, I'm like, oh, this is her as a child. I just, because she was mad, you know, she had the same power. It just seemed right to me. There was enough of the character in there as a, even a little girl that I'm like, yeah, this is the same one. So, but I think everyone would pick it up in their own path. But because the book like you were saying is it makes you think you start trying to think and solve it pretty quickly. Autumn (35m 44s): I have to ask, how could you not notice? I mean, did the second person is like, it jumps right at you. I mean, it's like, oh, what is going on here? I mean, instantly, I mean, how can you not notice that? Jesper (35m 56s): I don't know. I don't, I was reading it at night and if I was just tired or it was a very good. And like I said, I first noticed that the magic being an earth magic, which I had to laugh because of how many times you've picked on me for my debut novels, elemental magic. I'm like, here's a Hugo award winner. It's only earth element of so, but the harshness of the word and the language and just how everything just felt like geology. And I am a huge geology. Gleek I mean, if you like earth and granted and schist and you know, these big geological terms, oh my gosh, read this book and geek out and no one will know you're totally geeking out over just the geology. Jesper (36m 39s): So I think I was so caught up going, oh, this is so cool. Her language is harsh. The world is harsh. I love how it all ties together. I can't imagine the number of revisions to make it sound this way. And everything ties together that I just never even noticed that it was second person. Autumn (36m 57s): Jesus Christ. You must have been tired. It's like, as soon as I got to, to that in the audio book, it was like, I had to pause it, like what, what is going on here? It was just so incredibly different than weird all of a sudden. And I, and that, that, and that from that point on, I just couldn't get into it. So it did. But I agree with, with regards to the magic system, just to match it, I, I, I would hate to do all that research. She must have been, she must have done in order to pull this off and all this seismic stuff and figuring out how it all moves and all my God. So it must have been a lot of research behind that magic system, but it is very well done and I have to applaud her for it. Jesper (37m 43s): Absolutely. Unless she happened to be, or have the family of geologists. And so she was kind of eking out on it as well. So I could see that, but yeah, you would definitely have to have an interest in deep earth sciences to come up with this magic system and make it, so she talks about flop fault lines and you know, some things can only happen here and only happened there. And probably you're not into geology and not into really cool magic. There's probably going to be times you're like, oh my gosh, please stop describing rocks to me. But I loved it. Autumn (38m 18s): No, I, I too. I did too. I think it, because also I feel like it's a different magic system to what I, at least maybe there's already some magic system based on seismic activity and so on, but I I've just not seen it before. Maybe it exists, but I'm not aware, but at least it was a different enough that I thought it was, it was very cool. Jesper (38m 38s): Yeah, definitely very cool. And I would say, cause I do want to point out and it's, I think one of the things that though where I fell out of the book and what lost me is that is with the main character, the present tense, the second person a son is I think what lost me is again, her arc her arc. I assume it's a flat arc to slightly fail, but she never learns from her mistakes, which again, that would be a grow arc. But I just, there was one point what should have been the climax where I'm sure you remember it, she's on the pirate ship. Do you know, she's had this safe Haven, she's in a really good place, but she's bored. Jesper (39m 22s): And so she goes on a pirate ship and she is literally the one she uses her magic and pokes the spear up to the boat. And she realizes when she does it, that I shouldn't have made it visible because now they know there's this robe earth magic orogeny. And so we're going to basically have to kill everyone. She's the one who realizes it. And literally the next chapter, she goes and stops an entire volcano. No, one's going to notice a volcano suddenly just going away. I wanted to bang my head. And then she goes to alabaster the, probably the most intelligent character in the whole book. The one who's really a forward-thinking he's curious. Jesper (40m 2s): And he, she tells him, you know, he knows that she did this and he gets mildly like upset when she says, oh, I saw somewhere on the shore. And he's like, oh, we should, you know, we'll have to be careful. She quelled an entire volcano. He should have been jumping up and shaking her saying, you just gave away where we are. That was 20 miles from here. And so this leads to the death of her first son. The book starts with the death of her second son. I'm like that. That is when I think I decided I wasn't reading book two was when I read through that climax and I'm like, this is supposed to be the clincher for the book. And I don't care. I'm mad at the character. Autumn (40m 46s): Yeah. I cannot disagree with that. I have some points about that ending as well, but I just want to finish off one thing that Stephen said about the magic as well. First. So Stephen from patron said, quote, the magic system was very unique. Erogeny definitely adheres to Sanderson's loss of magic, where in origin he has limits orogeny has a cost. And the reader is given a clear understanding of how Erogeny is in this world so that he or she has a willing suspension of disbelief. In other words, it's believable, magic fits well into the story and it isn't used always to solve the problem or conflict in the story. Autumn (41m 32s): In fact, for all intents and magic is both the problem and the solution in the fifth season. I think that's sums it up very nicely. Jesper (41m 41s): I think that does as well. And even to add to that, that the magic system has the, the 10 rings the tiers. So you even have, you know, what level people are at and what they can kind of do at those levels. It's well done. I liked that. Yeah. You started off as a novice and what you have to do to advanced and how your, your attachment to the magic grows. Autumn (42m 4s): Yeah. Okay. So let me get to the ending here. You touched upon some of it already. So I want to say a few other things in, in addition to what you already mentioned, because I feel like the ending just leaves way too many things completely open-ended, you know, I don't necessarily have anything against cliffhangers. I know a lot of people do, but it doesn't bother me personally that much, but please, you know, when you write a story, at least give the reader a certain degree of closure, you know, just something to at least give a sense of what is going on here. Autumn (42m 46s): If you can take the stone eaters as an example, you know, by the end of this book, I have no idea what the Stoney ETA's want or how it all sort of links together. I have no idea. We also don't know what happened to Eastern's husband and child. I understand that this is the first book in the series, but it just left me slightly frustrated. And if I'm honest, like, you know, very honest, I have to say that I, I did not read like this book at all. Jesper (43m 23s): I agree with the ending, especially it felt, it felt more like the first third of a novel than the first book in a series. It didn't have that book ending. And I thought it was, we never, in the entire story, we hear that the son has a daughter. I don't even, I'm sure we hear her name, but we never see her now even in a memory. And so it's hard to feel that mother's like she gets distracted. She goes up all over the map. You're reading about two other points of view of her that I never felt a huge bond. She's kind of just like the walking dead and, and just, this is her mission. It's her last living child. Jesper (44m 3s): She will find her daughter, but there's no bubbling passion with that at all. And so I just kinda thought it was really weird that we had this huge pivotal character. That is the reason the woman is, you know, walking forever and what happens to her. And we don't ever see her even in a memory. And that's just seems very strange to me. Autumn (44m 29s): Yeah. So maybe it would be fair to say that on the plus side you have amazing world-building lyrical writing and you also have well sort of commentary maybe, or at least there is even if it wasn't intended by the author herself, but there is something you could use as least as commentary to our real world and the, you know, real situation with climate changes and so on. So, so that's sort of on the plus side and I guess those things and well, not on the plus side, but the second per the use of second person in order to emphasize how the couch of fields dos are sort of the things I, I think is what gives you the awards because it is different and it is commentary on more than just being a story. Autumn (45m 27s): And so that's why you is, she has one do your watch. I feel like, yes, but on the negative side to me, you have a very, the plotting doesn't, it doesn't add up, you know, it doesn't connect. Well, there was several times, like you've mentioned things that happen where it's like, it doesn't really like make logical sense. Why the character doesn't question this or look into this. Or there are several places like that. I'm also very much missing the personal stakes that we talked about as well. And if you're reading it for a good immersive fantasy story, then yeah, that's goes on the minus side as well, because it does just does not succeed on this at all. Autumn (46m 12s): Yes, Jesper (46m 12s): I agree is the, the tropes, the things that we would expect from commercial fiction or that make it immersive and maybe build up the passions just aren't there, but for the literary aspects for how well it is put together and how well it all fits together in a literary sense, the writing the magic, the world-building, the use of second person versus third person it's amazingly well put together and it deserves the award. But if you're working on it from more of a commercial and epic or dark fantasy, it is just not as adhesive. It doesn't have what people are looking for, which is often characters. And your just characters are what make you turn the page. Jesper (46m 55s): And that wasn't what drove this story. And so I think that's a really important takeaway is it's the character. I won't even say it's a building, but I did read some of the reviewers said that the characteristics were just shallow. They didn't have that depth. It always stayed kind of on the surface. And the few times you thought you saw more, sometimes it just the contradicted each other. It wasn't very solid. Yeah, Autumn (47m 19s): Yeah, yeah, no, I, I can agree with those reviewers because that's exactly the, that's exactly the point here. Right? I think everything here depends on how look at it, right? Because I, as a reader, what I appreciate when reading is the good story, the good characters, that's the sort of stuff that I enjoy. But of course, I also have to respect that many other people, they enjoy the other aspects that I had on the plus side just a second ago, Ryan, I'm not going to mention them once again here, but, but those things that I mentioned before on the plus side, some other people, they love that stuff. Autumn (47m 57s): So yeah, I think a lot of it, well, it is like that for any book ever written. Some people love it. Some people hate it. That's the way it is, but I can only speak for myself. And I just, this is not the type of book I enjoy reading at all. And I will definitely, it's a bit of a shame because honestly, when, once I started reading it, I had, because of all the awards, I actually had quite high expectations that this was going to be awesome. And then I felt pretty disappointed to be honest. Jesper (48m 28s): Yeah. And I would also say that I was surprised that this one did not come with any trigger warnings in the blurb, maybe because it's an award winner. But I mean, I have, my books are so much more mild, but I mean, this is literally sexual molestation, Istation, exploitation, the death of children. There are some really horrible dark themes in this one that I was shocked as true. And there was no trigger warning. And I was like, wow, I am shocked. I have a slightly rough sex scene. And I had someone, a reader put a trigger warning on my book and I was like, don't touch this one. This one's going to really hurt. Autumn (49m 7s): Right. Yeah. Okay. We'll I have some final remarks, but I don't do what do we have more now on your note list? Autumn? Jesper (49m 16s): I think that covers pretty much everything. I think I said there was, if you go into there, there's a review by NBS Lee. It comes up as the, the highest ranked critical review. Cause 295 people have found it helpful. And I think it sums up really well. The, the aspects that are so interesting about this book, I mean, she gave it a, she or he gave it a two out of five stars. Just, it's such an interesting complex, highly written book, but it's also not what you expect if you're reading commercialized fantasy or science fiction. Autumn (49m 53s): No, totally agree. Okay. So what I wanted to do to finish off here is I want to take the chance to thank Steven for his input on Patrion. It is just so much more fun when we have people reading along with us here. And of course, if you, dear listener also want to provide input for future Critical Reading episodes and us sort of taking your comments into the actual podcast episode like we did for Steven here, then just make sure to join on Patrion. And there is a link in the show notes for that next Monday. I will have an interview with the extremely popular and successful YouTuber, Jenna Morrissey. Autumn (50m 35s): And we'll talk about using YouTube as an author. Narrator (50m 39s): If you like, what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast, going, stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

Dr. Brian Arthur and I talk about how technology can be modeled as a modular and evolving system, combinatorial evolution more broadly and dig into some fascinating technological case studies that informed his book The Nature of Technology. Brian is a researcher and author who is perhaps best known for his work on complexity economics, but I wanted to talk to him because of the fascinating work he's done building out theories of technology. As we discuss, there's been a lot of theorizing around science — with the works of Popper, Kuhn and others. But there's been less rigorous work on how technology works despite its effects on our lives. Brian currently works at PARC (formerly Xerox PARC, the birthplace of personal computing) and has also worked at the Santa Fe institute and was a professor Stanford university before that. Links W. Brian Arthur's Wikipedia Page The Nature of Technology on Amazon W. Brian Arthur's homepage at the Santa Fe Institute Transcript Brian Arthur [00:00:00]  In this conversation, Dr. Brian Arthur. And I talk about how technology can be modeled as modular and evolving system. Commentorial evolution more broadly, and we dig into some fascinating technological hae studies that informed your book, his book, the nature of tech. Brian is a researcher and author who is perhaps best known for his work on complexity economics. Uh, but I wanted to talk to him [00:01:00] because of the fascinating work he's done, building out theories of technology. Uh, as we discussed in the podcast, there's been a lot of theorizing around science, you know, with the works of popper and Kuhn and other. But there's has been much less rigorous work on how technology works despite its effect on our lives. As some background, Brian currently works at park formerly Xerox park, the birthplace of the personal computer, and has also worked at the Santa Fe Institute and was a professor at Stanford university before that. Uh, so without further ado, here's my conversation with Brian Arthur.  Mo far less interested in technology. So if anybody asks me about technology immediately search. Sure. But so the background to this is that mostly I'm known for a new framework and economic theory, which is called complexity economics. I'm not the [00:02:00] only developer of that, but certainly one of the fathers, well, grandfather, one of the fathers, definitely. I was thinking one of the co-conspirators I think every new scientific theory like starts off as a little bit of a conspiracy. Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah. This is no exception anyways. So that's what I've been doing. I'm I've think I've produced enough papers and books on that. And I would, so I've been in South Africa lately for many months since last year got back about a month ago and I'm now I was, as these things work in life, I think there's arcs, you know, you're getting interested in something, you work it out or whatever it would be. Businesses, you [00:03:00] start children, there's a kind of arc and, and thing. And you work all that out. And very often that reaches some completion. So most of the things I've been doing, we've reached a completion. I thought maybe it's because I getting ancient, but I don't think so. I think it was that I just kept working at these things. And for some reason, technologies coming back up to think about it in 2009, when this book came out, I stopped thinking about technology people, norm they think, oh yeah, you wrote this book. You must be incredibly interested. Yeah. But it doesn't mean I want to spend the rest of your life. Just thinking about the site, start writing this story, like writing Harry Potter, you know, it doesn't mean to do that forever. Wait, like writing the book is like the whole [00:04:00] point of writing the book. So you can stop thinking about it. Right? Like you get it out of your head into the book. Yeah, you're done. So, okay. So this is very much Silicon valley and I left academia in 1996. I left Stanford I think was I'm not really an academic I'm, I'm a researcher sad that those two things have diverged a little bit. So Stanford treated me extraordinarily well. I've no objections, but anyway, I think I'd been to the Santa Fe Institute and it was hard to come back to standard academia after that.  So why, should people care about sort of, not just the output of the technology creation process, but theory behind technology. Why, why does that matter? Well[00:05:00]  I think that what a fine in in general, whether it's in Europe or China or America, People use tremendous amount of technology. If you ask the average person, what technology is, they tell you it's their smartphone, or it's catch a tree in their cars or something, but they're, most people are contend to make heavy use of technology of, I count everything from frying pans or cars but we make directly or indirectly, enormously heavy use of technology. And we don't think about where it comes from. And so there's a few kind of tendencies and biases, you know we watch we have incredibly good retinal displays these days on our computers. [00:06:00] We can do marvelous things with our smartphone. We switch on GPS and our cars, and very shortly that we won't have to drive at all presumably in a few years. And so all of this technology is doing marvelous things, but for some strange reason, We take it for granted in the sense, we're not that curious as to how it works. People trend in engineering is I am, or I can actually tell you that throughout my entire life, I've been interested in how things work, how technology works, even if it's just something like radios. I remember when I was 10, I like many other kids. I, I constructed a radio and a few instructions. I was very curious how all that worked and but people in general are not curious. So I [00:07:00] invite them quite often to do the following thought experiments. Sometimes them giving talks. All right. Technology. Well, it's an important, yeah, sort of does it matter? Probably while I would matter. And a lot of people manage to be mildly hostile to technology, but there are some of the heaviest users they're blogging on there on Facebook and railing about technology and then getting into their tech late and cars and things like that. So the thought experiment I like to pose to people is imagine you wake up one morning. And for some really weird or malign reason, all your technology is to super weird. So you wake up in your PJ's and you stagger off to the bathroom, but the toilet, [00:08:00] you trying to wash your hands or brush your teeth. That is no sink in the bathroom. There's no running water. You scratch your head and just sort of shrugged in you go off to make coffee, but there's no coffee maker, et cetera. You, in this aspiration, you leave your house and go to clinch your car to go to work. But there's no car. In fact, there's no gas stations. In fact, there's no cars on the roads. In fact, there's no roads and there's no buildings downtown and you're just standing there and naked fields. And wondering, where does this all go? And really what's happened in this weird Saifai set up is that let's say all technologies that were cooked up after say 1300. So what would that be? The last 700 years or so? I've disappeared. And and you've [00:09:00] just left there and. People then said to me, well, I mean, wouldn't there have been technologies then. Sure. So you know how to, if you're a really good architect, you might know how to build cathedrals. You might know how to do some stone bridges. You might know how to produce linen so that you're not walking around with any proper warm clothes and so on. But our whole, my point is that if you took away everything invented. So in the last few hundred years, our modern world or disappear, and you could say, well, we have science, Peter, but without technology, you wouldn't have any instruments to measure anything. There'd be no telescopes. Well, we still have our conceptual ideas. Well, we would still vote Republican or not as the case may be. Yeah, you'd have, and I'd still have my family. Yeah. But how long are your kids gonna [00:10:00] live? Because no modern medicine. Yeah, et cetera. So my point is that not only does technology influence us, it creates our entire world. And yet we take this thing that creates our entire world. Totally. For granted, I'd say by and large, there are plenty of people who are fascinated like you or me, but we tend to take it for granted. And so there isn't much curiosity about technology. And when I started to look into this seriously, I find that there's no ology of technology. There's theories about where science comes from and there's theories about music musicology and theories, endless theories about architecture and, and even theology. But there isn't a very [00:11:00] well-developed set of ideas or theories on what technology is when, where it comes from. Now, if you know, this area is a, was that true? On Thur, you know, I could mention 20 books on it and Stanford library, but when I went to look for them, I couldn't find very much compared with other fields, archi, ology, or petrol energy, you name it technology or knowledge. It was, I went to talk to a wonderful engineer in Stanford. I'm sure he's no longer alive. Cause this was about 15 years ago. He was 95 or so if I couldn't remember his name it's an Italian name, just a second. I brought this to prompts. Just a sec. I'm being sent to you. I remember his name and [00:12:00] make it the first name for him. Yeah. Walter VIN sent him. So I went to see one it's rarely top-notch aerospace engineers of the 20th century had lunch with them. And I said, have engineers themselves worked out a theory of the foundations of their subject. And he looked, he sort of looked slightly embarrassed. He says, no. I said, why not? And he paused. He was very honest. He just paused. And he says, engineers like problems they can solve. It's. So compared with other fields, there isn't as much thinking about what technology is or how it evolves over time, where it comes from how invention works. We've a theory of how new species come into existence since 1859 and Darwin. [00:13:00] We don't have much for theory at all. At least. This was 10, 15 years ago about how new technologies come into being. I started to think about this. And I reflected a lot because I was writing this book and people said, what are you writing about? I said, technology that is always followed by Y you know, I mean, I could say I was maybe writing the history of baseball. Nobody would've said why, but Y you know, what could be interesting about that? And I reflected further that and I argue in my book, the nature of technology, I reflected that technology's not just the backdrop or the whole foundation of our lives. We depend on it 200 years ago, the average length of life, might've been 55 in this country, or 45. [00:14:00] Now it's 80 something. And maybe that's an, a bad year, like the last year. So, and that's technology, medical technology. We've really good diagnostics, great instruments very good methods, surgical procedures. Those are all technology. And by and large, they assure you fairly well that if you're born this year in normal circumstances, Reasonably the normal circumstance through born, let's say this decade, that's with reasonable, lucky to live, to see your grandchildren and you might live to see them get married. So life is a lot longer. So I began to wonder who did research technology and strangely enough maybe not that strangely, it turns out to be if not engineers, a lot sociologists and economists. [00:15:00] And then I began to observe something further in that one was that a lot of people. So wondering about how things change and evolve had really interesting thoughts about how science, what science is and how that evolves. And so that like Thomas Kuhn's, there are many people speculated in that direction, whether they're correct or not. And that's very insightful, but with technology itself I discovered that the people writing about it were historians associates, which is an economist and nearly, always, they talked about it in general. We have the age off the steam engines or when railroads came along, they allowed the expansion of the entire United States Konami that connected his coast and west coast and [00:16:00] so on. So they're treating the technology has sort of like an exogenous effect sent there and they were treating that also. I discovered there's some brilliant books by economic historians and sociologists add constant is one. He wrote about the turbo chapter, super good studies about Silicon valley, how the internet started and so on. So I don't want to make too sweeping the statement here, but by and large, I came to realize that nobody looked inside technologies. So this is if you were set in the 1750s and by ology certain biologists, they would have been called social scientists, natural philosophers. That's right. Thank you. They would have been called natural philosophers and they would have been interested in if they were interested [00:17:00] in different species, say giraffes and Zebras and armadillos or something. It was as if they were trying to understand these from just looking outside. And it wasn't until a few decades later, the 1790s, the time of George cookie that people started to do. And that to me is, and they find striking similarities. So something might be a Bengal tiger and something might be some form of cheetah. And you could see very similar structures and postulate as Darwin's grandfather did that. There might be some relation as to how they evolved some evolutionary tree. By time, Darwin was writing. He wasn't that interested in evolution. He was interested in how new species are formed. So I began to realize that in [00:18:00] technology, people just by and large looking at the technology from the outside, and it didn't tell you much. I was at a seminar. I remember in Stanford where it was on technology every week. And somebody decided that they would talk about modems. Those are the items that just connect your PC. The wireless internet. And they're now unheard of actually they're built into your machine. I'm sure. And we talked for an hour and a half about modems or with an expert who from Silicon valley who'd been behind and venting. These never was the question asked, how does it work? Really? Yeah. Did, did everybody assume that everybody else knew how it worked? No. Oh, they just didn't care. No, no. Yeah, not quiet. It was [00:19:00] more, you didn't open the box. You assume there was a modem who is adopting modems. How fast were modems, what was the efficiency of modems? How would they change the economy? What was in the box itself by and large was never asked about now there are exceptions. There are some economists who really do get inside, but I remember one of my friends late Nate Rosenberg, superb economist of technological history here at Stanford. Rude poop called inside the black box, but he didn't even in that book, he didn't really open up too many technologies. So then I began to realize that people really didn't understand much about biology or zoology or evolution for that matter until this began to open up or can [00:20:00] isms and see similarities between species of toads and start to wonder how these different species had come about by getting inside. So to S set up my book, I decided that the key thing I was going to do, I didn't mention it much in the book, but was to get inside technologies. So if I wanted to talk about jet engines, I, wasn't just going to talk about thrust and about manufacturers and about people who brought it into being, I was going to talk about, you know heat pumps, exactly Sur anti surge systems for compressors different types of combustion systems and materials whole trains of compressors. Oh, assemblies of compressors the details of turbines that drove the compressors. [00:21:00] And I found that in technology, after technology, once you opened it up, you discovered many of the same components. Yeah. So let me hold that thought for a moment. I thought it was amazing that when you look at technologies from the outside, you know, see canoes and giraffes, they don't look at all similar legs. Yeah. But they all have the same thing, basic construction there. And then their case, their memos, and they have skeleton their vertebrates or et cetera, whatever they are or something. And so in technologies, I decided quite early on with the book that I would understand maybe 25 or so technology is pretty well. And of those [00:22:00] I'd understand at least a dozen very well, indeed, meaning spending maybe years trying to. Understand certain technologies are understanding. And and then what I was going to do is to see how they had come into being and what could be said about them, but from particular sources. So I remember calling up the chief engineer on the Boeing 7 47 and asking them questions personally, the cool thing about technology, unlike evolution is that we can actually go and talk to the people who made it right. If they're still alive. Yes. And so, so, so I decided that it would be important to get inside technologies. When I did that, I began to realize that I was seeing the same components [00:23:00] again and again. So in some industrial system, safe for pumping air into coal mines or something, fresh air, you'd see compressors taking in their piping, it done. And and yeah. Again, and again, you see piston engines or steam engines, or sometimes turbines powering something on the outside. They may look very different on the inside. You are seeing the same things again, again, and I reflected that in biology and say, and yeah, in biology save mammals we have roughly the same numbers of genes, very roughly it's kind of, we have a Lego kit of genes, maybe 23,000 case of humans slightly differently for other creatures. [00:24:00] And these genes were put together to express proteins and express different bone structures, skeletal structures, organs in different ways, but they were all put together or originated from roughly the same set of pieces put together differently or expressed differently, actuated differently. They would result in different animals. And I started to see the same thing with technology. So again, you take some. You take maybe in the 1880s some kind of a threshing machine or harvester that worked on steam summer inside. There there'd be a boiler. There'd be crying, Serbia steam engine. If you looked into railway locomotive, you'd see much the [00:25:00] same thing, polars and cranks, and the steam engine there be a place to keep fuel and to feed it with a coal or whatever it was operating on. So once I started to look inside technologies, I realized it was very different set of things that there's ceased to become a mystery. And so the whole theme of what I was looking at was see if I can get this into one sentence. Technologies are means to human purposes normally created from existing components at hand. So if I want to put up some structures and Kuala lumper, which is a high level high rise building, I've got all the pieces I needed. Pre-stressed concrete, whatever posts are needed to create. [00:26:00] Fundations the kinds of bolts and fasteners the do fastened together, concrete, high rise, cranes, and equipment et cetera. Assemblies made of steel to reinforce the whole thing and to make sure the structure stands properly. It's not so much of these are all standardized, but the type of technology, every technology I thought is made with pieces and parts, and they tend to come from the same toolbox used in different ways. They may be in Kuala, lumper used in Seattle's slightly different ways, but the whole idea was the same. So it's technology then cease to be a mystery. It was matter of combining or putting together things from a Lego sets in M where [00:27:00] I grew up in the UK. We'd call them mechano sets. What are they called here? Erector sets or, well, I mean, Legos are, or, but like, I mean, there's, there's metal ones, the metal ones. I think the metal ones are erector sets. There's also like the wood ones that are tinker toys. Anyway, I like Legos, like, like I'm kinda like, okay. Okay. So, and that goes and yeah. And then you could get different sorts of Lego sets. You know, a few were working in high pressure, high temperature, it'd be different types of things of you're working in construction. There'd be a different set of Lego blocks for that. I don't want to say this is all trivial. It's not a matter of just throwing together these things. There's a very, very high art behind it, but it is not these things being born in somebody's attic. And in fact [00:28:00] of you were sitting here and what used to be Xerox park and Xerox graphy was invented by not by Mr. Xerox. Anyway, somewhere in here, but xerography was invented by someone who knew a lot about processes. A lot about paper, a lot about chemical processes, a lot about developing things. And shining light on paper and then using that maybe chemically at first and in modern Sarah Buffy. Electrostatically. Yeah. And so what could born was rarely reflecting light known component of marks on paper, thinking of a copier machine focused with a lot of lenses, [00:29:00] well-known onto something that was fairly new, which was called a Xerox drum. And that was electrostatically charged. And so you arranged that the light effected the electrostatic charges on the Xerox drum and those electrostatic as the drum revolved, it picked up particles of printing, ink like dust and where being differentially charged, and then imprinted that on paper and then fused it. All of those pieces were known. It's and it's not a matter of someone. I think mine's name is Carlson by the way. It's not a matter of what's somebody working in an attic that guy actually, who was more like that, but usually it's a small team of [00:30:00] people who are, who see a principal to do something to say, okay, you know, we want to copy something. Alright. But it could, you know cathode Ray tube and maybe it could project it on to that. And then there might be electrons sensitive or heat sensitive paper, and it could make her copies that way. But certainly in here Xerox itself for zero park, the idea was to say, let's use an electrostatic method combined with Potter and a lot of optics to ride on a Xerox drum and then fuse that under high heat into something that, where the particles stuck to paper. So all of those things were known and given. So I guess there's sorry. There's, there's so many different directions that I, that I want to go. One. [00:31:00] So sort of just like on the idea of modularity for technology. Yeah. It feels like there's both I guess it feels like there's almost like two kinds of modularity. One is the modularity where you, you take a slice in time and you sort of break the technology down into the different components. Yeah. And then there's almost like modularity through time that, that progresses over time where you have to combine sort of different ideas, but it doesn't necessarily, but like those ideas are not necessarily like contained in the technology or there's like precursor technology, like for example there's you have the, the moving assembly line. Right. Which was a technology that was you originally for like butchering meat. Yup. Right. And so you had, you had car manufacturing [00:32:00] and then you had like a moving assembly line. Yep. And then Henry Ford came along and sort of like fused those together. And that feels like a different kind of modularity from the modularity of. Of like looking at the components of technology, M I D do you think that they're actually the same thing? How do you, how do you think about those sort of two types of modularity? I'm not quite sure what the difference is. So, so the, the Henry T I guess like the, the, the, the, the Ford factory did not, doesn't contain a slaughter house. Right. It contains like some components from the slider house. And some components, I guess. Let's see, I think, like, [00:33:00] this is like, I, I was like, sort of like thinking through this, it feels like, like when, when you think of like the sort of like intellectual lineages of technology the, like a technology does not always contain the thing that inspires it, I guess is and so, so there's this kind of like evolution over time of like, almost like the intellectual lineage of a technology that is not necessarily the same as like the. Correct evolutions of the final components of that technology like for yeah. Does that, does that make sense? Like th th th or am I just like, am I seeing a difference where there, there is no difference which could be completely possible? Well, I'm not sure. I think maybe the latter, let me see if I can explain the way I see it, please stop me again. If it [00:34:00] doesn't fit with what you're talking about. I could fascinated by the whole subject of invention, you know, where to radically new technologies come from, not just tweaks on a technology. So we might have we might have a Pratt and Whitney jet engine in 1996, and then 10 years later have a different version of that. That's a good summer different components. That's fine. That's innovation, but it's not ready. Invention invention is something that's quite radical. You go from having air piston engines, which spit like standard car engines, driving propellers systems, 1930s, and you that gets replaced by a jet engine system working on a different principle. So the question really is so I've [00:35:00] begun to realize that what makes an invention is that it works in a different principle. So when Cox came along, the really primitive ones in the 12 hundreds, or a bit later than that are usually made up, they're made with their water clocks and are relying on this idea that a drip of water is fairly regular. If you set it up that way and about the time of Galileo. And in fact, Galileo himself realized that the pendulum had a particular regular beat. And if you could harness that regularity, that might turn into something that can measure time I clock. So, and that's a different principle that the principle is to use the idea that something on the end of a string or on the end of a piece of wire, give you a regular. [00:36:00] Frequency or regular beat. So the country realize that inventions themselves something was carrying out unnecessary purpose using a different principle before the second world war in Britain, they in the mid 1930s, people got worried about aircraft coming from the continent. They thought it could well be terminated and and bombers coming over to bomb England and the standard methods then to detect bombers over the horizon was to get people with incredibly good hearing, quite often blind people and attach to their ear as the enormous air trumpet affair that went from their ear to some big concrete collecting amplifier, some air trumpet that was maybe 50 or a hundred [00:37:00] feet across to listen to what was going on in the sky. And a few years later in the mid thirties, actually the began to look for something better and then. Made a discovery that fact that being well-known in physics by then, that if you bounced a very high frequency beam electromagnetic beam of say piece of metal, the metal would distort the beam. It would kind of echo and you'd get to stores and see if it was just to adore three miles away, made a word, wouldn't have that effect, but it was metal. It would. So that that's different principle. You're not listening. You're actually sending out a beam of something and then trying to detect the echo. And that is a different principle. And from that you get radar, how do you create such a beam? How'd [00:38:00] you switch it off very fast. Search can listen for an echo or electronically how do you direct the beam, et cetera, et cetera. How do you construct the whole thing? How can you get a very high energy beam because needed to be very high energy. These are all problems that had to be solved. So in my, what I began to see, she was the same pattern giving invention guidance began usually an outstanding problem. How do we detect enemy bombers that might come from the east, from the continent, if we need to how do we produce a lot of cars more efficiently and then finding some principle to do that, meaning the idea of using some phenomenon in the case of ear trumpets, it was acoustic phenomena, but these could be greatly amplified for somebody's ear. If you directed them into a big [00:39:00] concrete here, right? Different ways to put out high frequency radio beams and listen for an echo of that. Once you have the principle, then it turns out there's sort of sub problems go with that in the case of radar, how do you switch the beam off so that you can, things are traveling at the speed of light. I just switched it off fast enough that the echo isn't drowned out by the original signal. So then you're into another layer of solving another problem and an invention. Usually not. Well, I could talk about some other ways to look at it, but my wife looking at an invention is that nearly always is a strong social need. What do we do about COVID? The time that [00:40:00] says February, March 20, 20 oh, cur we can do a vaccine. Oh, okay. The vaccine might work on a different principle, maybe messenger RNA rather than the standard sort of vaccines. And so you find a different principle, but that brings even getting that to work brings its own sub problems. And then if with a bit of luck and hard work, usually over several years or months, you solved the sub problems. You managed to put all that in material terms, not just conceptual ones, but make it into some physical thing that works and you have an invention. And so to double click on that, couldn't you argue that those, that the solution to those sub problems are also in themselves inventions. And so it's just like inventions all the way down. [00:41:00] No great point there. I haven't thought of that. Possibly the, if they need to use a new principal themselves, the sub solutions. Yeah. Then you'd have to invent how that might work. But very often they're standing by let me give you an example. I hope this isn't I don't want to be too sort of technical here, please go, go, go, go rotate. Here we go then. So it's 1972 here in Xerox park where I'm sitting and the engineer, Gary Starkweather is his name, brilliant engineer and trained in lasers and trend and optics PhD and master's degrees, really smart guy. And he's trying to [00:42:00] figure out how to how to print. If you have an image in a computer, say a photograph, how do you print that now at that time? In fact, I can remember that time there. There are things called line printers and they're like huge typewriter systems. There is one central computer you put in your job, the outputs it was figured out on the computer and then central line printer, which is like a big industrial typewriter. And then it clanked away on paper and somebody tore off the paper and handed it to through a window. Gary, Starkweather wondered how could you print texts? But more than that images where you weren't using a typewriter, it's very hard to his typewriters and very slow if you wanted to images. So he [00:43:00] cooked up a principle, he went through several principles, but the one that he finished up using was the idea that you could take the information from the computer screens, a photograph you could use computer processors to send that to a laser. The lasers beam would be incredibly, highly focused. And he realized that if he could use a laser beam to the jargon is to paint the image onto the Xerox drum. Then so that it electrically charged the Xerox drum, right then particles would stick to the Xerox, strung the charge places, and the rest would be zero graphy, like a copier machine. He was working in Xerox park. [00:44:00] This was not a huge leap of the imagination, but there were two men's sub-problems in as well. We want to mention, if you look at it there's an enormous two huge problems if you wanted. So you were trying to get these black dots to write on a zero extremity to paint them on a zero Ekstrom. I hope this is an obscure. No, this is great. And I'll, I'll, I'll include some like pictures and this is great. All right. So you suppose I'm writing or painting a photograph from the computer through a processor, send to a laser. The laser has to be able to switch on and off fast. If it's going to write this on a Xerox Trump, and if you work out commercially how fast it would have to operate. Starkweather came to the conclusion. He'd have to be able to switch his [00:45:00] Lezzer on and off black or white 50 million times a second. Okay. So 50 megahertz, but nobody had thought of modulating or doing that sort of switching at that speed. So he had to solve that. That's a major problem. He solved it by circuitry. He got some sort of pizza electric device that's kind of don't ask, but he got a electronic device that could switch on and off. And then he could send signals to modulator for that to modulator, to switch on and off the laser and make a black or white as needed. And so that was number one. Now that kind of, that in your terms acquired an invention, he had to think of a new principle to solve that problem. So how do you, how do you write images on a computer? Sorry, on [00:46:00] how do you write it? How do you write computer images? Print that onto paper. That's required a new principal switching on a laser and. 50 million times the second required a new principal or acquire a new principal. So those are two inventions. There's a third one and another sub problem. The device, by the way, he got to do this was as big as one of these rooms in 1972. If I have my if I have the numbers, right a decent laser would cost you about $50,000 and you could have bought a house for that in 1978 here. And it would be the size, not of a house, but of a pretty big lab, but not something inside a tiny machine, but an enormous apparatus. And so how do you take [00:47:00] a laser on the end of some huge apparatus that you're switching on and off the 15 million times a second and scan it back and forth. And because there's huge inertia, it's an enormous thing. And believe it or not, he, he solved that. Not with smoke, but with mirrors. So he actually, instead of moving the laser beam, He arranged for a series of mirrors under evolving a piece of apparatus, like actuate the mirrors. Yeah. All he had to do was 0.1 beam at the mirror, switch it on and off very quickly for the image. And then the mirror would direct it kind of like a lighthouse beam right across the page. And then the next [00:48:00] face of the mirror exactly little mirror would come along and do the next line. So how do you do that? Well, that was easier. But then he discovered that the different facets on this mirror you'd have to, they'd have to line up to some extraordinarily high precision that you could not manufacture them to. So that's another sub problem. So to solve that he used ope optics if there was so here's one facet of mirror here is the beam. So directs the beam right across the page, switching it off and on as need be. Then the next facet of the mirror comes round switches. The same beam that you want to line up extraordinary. Precisely. Couldn't do it manufactured. [00:49:00] In manufacturing technology. But you could do it with optics. It just said, okay, if there's a slight discrepancy, we will correct that. He did agree and optics. He really knew what he was doing with optics in the lab. So using different lenses, different condensing lenses, whatever lenses do he solved that problem. So it's took two or three years, and it's interesting to look at the lab notebooks that he made. But for me let me see if I can summarize this. There is no such thing as Gary Starkweather scratching his head saying, wouldn't it be lovely to wouldn't it be lovely to be able to print images off the computer and not have to use a big typewriter. And and so he sits in his attic, a star of some self for three months comes up with the solution, not at all. What he did was he envisaged a [00:50:00] different principle. We're writing the image, using a highly focused laser beam onto the Xerox drum. The rest then is just using a copier machine fair. But to do that, you have to switch on and off the laser beam problem. So that's at a lower level to invent a wedge to that. And he also had to invent a principle for scanning this beam across the Xerox strung, maybe whatever it would be 50 times a second, or maybe a hundred times the second without moving the entire apparatus. And the principally came up for that was mirrors. Yeah. And so, and then I could go down to another level, you have to align your mirrors. And so, so what I discovered and see if I can put this in a nutshell [00:51:00] invention, isn't a sort of doing something supremely creative in your mind. It finishes up that way. It might be very creative, but all inventions are basically as problem-solving. Yeah. So to do something more mundane imagine I live here in Palo Alto let's say I work in the financial district in San Francisco and let's say my car's in the shop getting repaired. How am I going to get to work? And or how am I going to get my work done tomorrow? I have no car. The level of principle is to say, okay, I can see an overall concept to do it with. So I might say, all right, if I can get to Caltrain, if I can get to the station I'll go in on the train, but hang on. How do I get to the station? So that's a sub problem. [00:52:00] Maybe I can get my daughter or my wife or her husband, whatever it is to, to drive me. Then the other end, I can get an Uber or I could get a a colleague to pick me up, but then I'd have to get up an hour earlier, or maybe I'll just sit at home and work from home, which is more of the solution we would do these days. But how will that work? Because I et cetera. So invention is not much different from that. In fact, that's the heart of invention. If we worked out that problem of getting worked when your car is gone nobody would stand up and say, this was brilliant yet you've gone through exactly the same process as the guy who invented the polymerase chain reaction. Again, I can't recall his name. Getting older. I can't [00:53:00] eat there, but anyway so what's really important in invention. I think this goes to your mission. If I understand it, rightly is the people who have produced inventions are people who are enormously familiar with what I would call functionalities. Yeah. How do you align beams using optical systems? How do you switch on and off lasers fast? And so the people who are fluent at invention are always people who know huge amounts about those functionalities. I'm trained as an electrical engineer. You're, what's it I'm trained as a mechanical engineer robotics. Oh yeah. Brilliant. So what's really important [00:54:00] in engineering, at least what they teach you apart from all that mathematics is to know certain functionalities. So you could use capacitors and inductors to create, and also electronic oscillations or regular waves. You can. Straighten out varying voltage by using induction in the system, you can store energy and use that in capacitors. You, you can actually change a beam using magnets. And so there's hundreds of such things. You can amplify things you can use using feedback as well to stabilize things. So there are many functionalities and learning engineering is a bit like becoming fluent in this set of functionalities, not learning anything that's semi [00:55:00] creative. What might that be? Yes. Paint learning to do plumbing. Yep. Learning to work as a plumber. Good. A true engineer. So it is a matter of becoming fluent. You want to connect pipes and plumbing. You want to loosen pipes. You want to unclog things you want to reduce. The piping systems or pumping system, you want to add a pump you want, so there's many different things you you're dealing with. Flows of liquids, usually and piping systems and pumping systems and filtration systems. So after maybe three to four years or whatever, it would be a for rail apprentice ship in this, not only can you do it, but you can do it unthinkingly, you know, the exact gauges, you know, the pieces, you know, the parts, you know where to get the parts, you know how to set them up and you look at [00:56:00] some problem and say, oh, okay. The real problem here is that whatever, the piping diameter here is wrong, I'm going to replace it with something a bit larger. So Lincoln's whatever. And here's how I do that. So, you know, being good at invention is not different people. Like Starkweather, Starkweather new, I think is still alive. Knows all about mirrors, but optical systems above all, he knew an awful lot about lasers. He knew a lot about electronics. He was fluent in all those. So if we don't, if we're not fluent ourselves, we stand back and say, wow, how did he do that? But it's a bit like saying, you know, you write a poem and French, let's say I don't speak French. French and support them and it worked, how did he [00:57:00] do that? But if I spoke French, I might, so, okay. Yeah, but I can see, so this actually touches on sort of like an extension of your framework that I wanted to actually run by you, which is what I would describe what you were just describing as talking about almost like the, the affordances and constraints of different pieces of technology and people who invent things being just very like intimately familiar with the, the affordances and constraints of different technologies, different systems. And so the, the question I have that I think is like an open question is whether there is a way of sort of describing or encoding these affordances and constraints [00:58:00] in a way that makes creating these inventions easier. So like in the sense that very often what you see is like someone who knows a lot about. One like the, the affordances in one area, right. When discipline and they sort of like come over to some other discipline and they're like, wait a minute, like, there's this analogy here. And and so they're like, oh, you have this, this constraint over here. Like, there's, there's like a sub problem. Right. And it's like, I know from the, the affordances of the things that I'm, I'm really familiar with, how to actually solve the sub problem. And so like, through that framework, like this framework of like modularity and constraints and affordances, like, is it possible to actually make the process easier or like less serendipitous? Yeah. In, in a couple of ways. One is that I [00:59:00] think quite often you see a pattern where some principle is borrowed from a neighboring discipline. So Henry you were saying that Henry Ford took the idea of a conveyor belt from the meat industry. Right. And and by analogy use the same principle with manufacturing cars. But to get that to work in the car industry, the limitations are different cars are a lot heavier, so you could have a whole side of beef and it's probably 300 pounds or whatever. It would be for a side of beef, but for the car, it could be at 10 and a half. So you have to think of different ways. Yeah. And in the meat industry to do conveyor belts, there's two different ways. You can have a belt standard, rubber thing or whatever it would be just moving along at a certain speed, or you [01:00:00] can have the carcass suspended from an over hanging belts working with a chain system and the carcass is cut in half or whatever and suspended. And you could be working on it pretty much vertically above you both. It was that second system that tended to get used cars as, so things don't translate principles translate from one area to another, and that's a very important mechanism. And so if you wanted to enhance innovation I think the thing would be to set up some institution or some way of looking at things, whereas. They're well-known principles for doing this in area in industry X, how would I do something equivalent in a different industry? So for [01:01:00] example blockchain is basically let's say it's a way of validating transactions that are made privately between two parties without using an intermediary, like a bank. And you could say, well, here's how this works with a Bitcoin trading or something. And somebody could come along and say, well, okay, I want to validate art sales using maybe some similar principle. And I don't want to have to go to some central authority and record there. So maybe I can use blockchain to do fine art sales, in fact, that's happening. So basically you see an enormous amount of analogous principle transfer of principles from [01:02:00] one field to another. And it's we tend to talk about inventions being adopted. At least we do an economic. So you could say the, the arts trading system adopts block chain, but it's not quite that it's something more subtle. You can get a new principal or new, fairly general technology comes out, say like blockchain and then different different industries or different sets of activities in conjure that they don't adopt it then countries. Oh, blockchain. Okay. No, I'm saying the medical insurance business let's say so I can record transactions this way and I don't have to involve a room or, and I particular, I don't have to go through banking systems and I can do it this way and then [01:03:00] inform insurance companies. And so they're encountering and wondering how they can use this new principle, but when they do, they're not just taking it off the shelf. Yeah. They're actually incorporating that into what they do. So here's an example. A GPS comes along quite a while ago. I'm sure. 1970s in principle using atomic clocks. Satellites or whatever. Basically it's a way of recording exactly time and using multiple satellites to know exactly where they are at the same time and allowing for tiny effects of even relativity. You figure out you can triangulate and figure out where something is precisely. Yeah, no, that just exists. But by the [01:04:00] time, so different industries say like Oceanwide Frazier shipping and you conjure it exists. Okay. And by the time they encounter it, they're not just saying I'm going to have a little GPS system in front of, in the Bennett code it's actually built in. And it becomes part of a whole navigational system. Yeah. So what happens in things like that is that some invention or some new possibility becomes a component in what's already done just as in banking around the 1970s, being able to. Process customer names, client names, and monetary months you could process that fast with electronic computers and there most days they were [01:05:00] called and data processing units that we don't think of it that way now, but you could process that. And then that changed the banking industry significantly. So by 1973, there was a, the market and futures in Chicago where you were dealing with say pork belly futures and things like that because computation coming home. Interesting. So the pattern there's always an industry exists using conventional ideas, a new set of technologies becomes available. But the industry doesn't quite adopted it, encounters it and combines it with many of its own operations. So banking has been recording people in ledgers and with machinery, it has been facilitating transactions, [01:06:00] maybe on paper unconscious computation. Now can do that. Yeah. Automatically using computation. So some hybrid thing is born out of banking and computation that goes into the Lego set and actually sort of related to that, something I was wondering is, do you think of social technology as technology, do you think that follows the same patterns? What do you mean social technology? I, I think like a very obvious one would be like for example, like mortgages, right? Like mortgages are like mortgages had to be invented. And they allow people to do things that they couldn't do before. But it's not technology in the sense of, of built. Yeah, exactly. It's not like, there's no, like you can create a mortgage with like you and me and a piece of [01:07:00] paper. Right. But it's, it's something that exists between us or like democracy. Right. And so, so I feel like there's, there's like one end, like, like sort of like things like new legal structures or new financial instruments that feel very much like technology and on the other end, there's like. Great. Just like new, like sort of like vague, like new social norms and like, yeah. Great question. And it's something I did have to think about. So things like labor unions nation states nature. Yes, exactly. These thing democracy itself, and in fact, communism, all kinds of things get created. Don't look like technologies. They don't have they don't have the same feel as physical technologies. They're not humming away in some room or other. They're not under the hood of your [01:08:00] car. And things like insurance for widows and pension systems. There's many of those social technologies even things like Facebook platforms for exchanging information. Sometimes very occasionally things like that are created by people sitting down scratching heads. That must have happened to some degree in the 1930s when Roosevelt said there should be a social security system. But that wasn't invented from scratch either. So what tends to come about in this case, just to get at the nitty gritty here, what tends to happen is that some arrangement happens. Somebody maybe could have been a feudal Lord says, okay, you're my trusted gamekeeper. You can have a [01:09:00] rather nice a single house on my estate. You haven't got the money to purchase and build it. I will lend you the money and you can repay me as time goes by. And in fact, the idea that so many of those things have French names, more, more cash. You know, it's actually, I think the act of something dying as far as my, my school friends would go, I don't know. But a lot of those things came about in the middle ages. There are other things like What happens when somebody dies the yeah. Probate again, these are all things that would go back for centuries and centuries. I believe the way they come about is not by deliberate invention. They come about by it being natural in [01:10:00] to something. And then that natural thing is used again. And again, it gets a name and then somebody comes along and says, let's institutionalize this. So I remember reading somewhere about the middle ages. They it was some Guild of some traders and they didn't feel they were being treated fairly. I think this was in London. And so they decided to withhold their services. I don't know what they're supplying. It could have been, you know, courage, transport, and along the streets or something. And some of these people were called violets. We were, would not be valet again, very French, but so they withheld their services. Now that wouldn't be the first time. [01:11:00] It goes back to Egypt and engineered people withholding their services, but that becomes, gets into circulation as a meme or as some repeated thing. Yeah. And then somebody says, okay, we're going to form an organization. And our Gilda's going to take this on board as being a usable strategy and we'll even give it a name that came to be called going on, strike or striking. And so social invention kind of should take place just by it being the sensible thing to do. The grand Lord allows you. It gives you the money to build your own house. And then you compare that person back over many years [01:12:00] and and put that, put that loan to to its death and mortgage it. So the I think in this case, what happens in these social inventions is that sensible things to do gets a name, gets instituted, and then something's built around it. Well, one could also say that many inventions are also the sensible thing to do where like it's someone realizes like, oh, I can like use this material instead of that material. Or like some small tweak that then enables like a new set of capabilities. Well, I'm not, yeah. In that case, I wouldn't call it really an invention that the, the vast majority of innovations, like 99 point something, something, something 9% or tweaks and, you know, [01:13:00] w we'll replace this material. Well, why doesn't that count as an invention? If, if, if it's like a material, like it's a different, like, I guess why doesn't that also count as, as a new principal, it's like bringing a new principal to the thing. The word to find a principal is it's the principles, the idea of using some phenomenon. And so you could say there's a sliding scale if you insist. Up until about 1926 or 1930 aircraft were made of wooden lengths covered with canvas dope. The dope, giving you waterproofing and so on. And and then the different way of doing that came along when they discovered that with better engines, you could have heavier aircraft, so you could make the skeleton out of [01:14:00] metal, right? And then the cladding might be metal as well. And so you had modern metallic aircraft. There's no new principal there, but there is a new material and you could argue, well, the new materials, different principle, then you're just talking about linguistics. So, so, so you would not consider the, like the transition from cloth aircraft to metal aircraft to be an invention. No. Huh? Not got another, I mean, sure might be a big deal, but I don't see it as a major invention going from air piston Angeles to jet engines. That's a different principle entirely. And I, so I, I've a fairly high bar for different principles. But you're not using a different phenomenon. That's my that's, that's my criteria. And if you have a very primitive clock [01:15:00] in this 16, 20 or 16, Forties that uses a string and a bulb on the end of the string. And then you replace the string where the wire or piece of metal rigid. You're not really using a new phenomenon, but you are using different materials and much of the story of technology isn't inventions, it's these small, but very telling improvements and material. In fact jet engines, weren't very useful until you got combustion systems where you were putting in aircraft fuel. Yeah. Atomizing that and setting the whole thing and fire the early systems down. When you could better material, you could make it work. So there's a difference between a primitive technology and [01:16:00] then one that's built out of better components. So I would say something like this, the if you take what the car looks like in 1919 0 5, is it a very, is it a different thing than using horses? Yeah, because it's auto motive. There is an engine. It's built in. So it's from my money. It's using a different principle. What have you changed? What if you like took the horse and you put it inside the carriage? Like what have you built the carriage around the horse? Would that be an automotive? Well then like, like what if I had a horse on a treadmill and that treadmill was driving the wheels of the vehicle with the horse on it, then I think it would be it would be less of an invention. I don't know. I mean, you're basically say I find it very useful to say that if [01:17:00] that radar uses a different principle from people listening, you could say, well, I mean, people listening are listening for vibrations. So is radar, you know, but just at a electro magnetic vibrations, what's different for my money. It's not so much around the word principle. All technologies are built around phenomena that they're harvesting or harnessing to make use of. And if you use a different set of phenomena, In a different way, I would call it an invention. So if you go from a water wheel, which is using water and gravity to turn something, and you say I'm using the steam engine, I would regard that as you're still, you [01:18:00] could argue, well, aren't you use a phenomenon phenomenon of the first thing you're using the weight of water and gravity, and the fact that you can turn something. And then the second thing you are using the different principle of heating something and having it expand. And so I don't see, I would say those are different principles. And if you're saying, well, there's a different principle, I'd go back to, well, what phenomena are you using? So, yeah, I mean, if you wanted to be part of a philosophy department, you could probably question every damned thing because yeah. I'm actually not trying to, to challenge it from a semantic standpoint. I think it's just actually from like really understanding, like what's going on. I think there's actually like a, sort of a debate of like, whether [01:19:00] it's. Like, whether it's like a fractal thing or whether there are like, like multiple different processes going on as well. Maybe I'm just too simple, but let's start to look at invention. The state of the art was pathetic. It wasn't very good because all papers, well, all the versions of invention, I was reading, all of us had a step, then something massively creative happens and that wasn't very satisfactory. And then there was another set of ideas that were Darwinian. If you have something new, like the railway locomotive that must have come out of variations somehow happening spontaneously, and might've been sufficiently different to qualify as radically new inventions. It doesn't do it for me either because you know, 1930 you could have varied [01:20:00] radio circuits until you're blue in the face. You'd never get radar. Yeah. So what the technology is fundamentally is the use of some set of phenomena to carry out some purpose. The, there are multiple phenomena. So but I would say in this maybe slightly too loose speaking, that's the principal phenomenon you're using or the, the key phenomenon constitutes the concept or principle behind that technology. So if you have a sailing ship, you could argue, well, you know, it, displaces water it's built to be not have water intake. It's got a cargo space, but actually for sailing ships, the key principle is to use the motive, power of wind in clever ways to be able to propel a [01:21:00] ship. If you're using steam and take the sails down you're using, in my opinion, a different principle, a different phenomenon. You're not using the mode of power of wind. You're actually using the energy that's in the, some coal fuel or oil and clever ways and to move the ship. So I would see those as two different principles you could say, well, we also changed whatever the staring system or as does that make it an invention. It makes maybe that part of it, an invention, but overall The story I'm giving is that inventions come along when you see a different principle or a set of phenomena that you want to use for some given purpose and you managed to solve the problems to put that into reality. Yeah. I completely agree [01:22:00] with that. I think the, the thing that I'm interested in is like like to, to use is the fact that sort of, again, we go back to like that modular view then, you're you sort of have like many layers down you, the, the like tinkering or, or the, the innovations are so based on changing the phenomena that are being harnessed, but like much, like much farther down the hierarchy of, of the modularity. Like, like in, in S like sailing ships you like introduce like Latin sales, right? Like, and it's like, you change the, into, like, you've invented a new sale system. You haven't invented a new kind of ship. Right. So you've changed the phenomenon, but yeah, I think the distinction you're making is totally on target. When you introduced Latina sales, you have invented a new. Cell system. Right. [01:23:00] But you haven't invented a new principle of a sailing ship. It's still a sailing ship. So I think you're getting into details that are worth getting into at the time I'm writing this. I I was trying to distinguish, I'm not trying to be defensive here. I hope, but I was just, I'm not trying to be offensive in any way. Wait for me to, I haven't thought about this for 10 years or more the I think what was important in yeah, let's just in case this whole thing that said innovation happens. Nobody's quite sure what innovation is. But we have a vague idea. It's new stuff that works better. Yes. In the book I wrote I make a distinction between radically new ways to do something. So it's radically new to propel the ship by a [01:24:00] steam engine. Even if you're using paddles versus by wind flow. Okay. However, not everything's right. Radically new. And if you look at any technology, be it computers or cars the insides, the actual car Bratcher system in the 1960s would have been like a perfume spray or a spraying gasoline and atomizing it, and then setting that in light. Now we might have as some sort of turbo injections system, that's, that's working, maybe not with a very different principle, but working much more efficiently. So you might have an invention or a technology that the insights are changing enormously. But the, the, I, the overall idea of that [01:25:00] technology hasn't changed much. So the radar would be perfect examples. So be the computer, the computers kept changing its inner circuitry, the materials it's using, and those inner circuits have gotten an awful lot faster. And so on. Now that you could take a circuit out and you could say, well, sometime around 1960, the circuit cease to be. Certainly it seems to be trialed, vacuum tubes and became transistors monitored on boards. But then sometime in that deck, could it became integrated circuits, was the integrated circuit and invention yeah. At the circuit level, at the computer level better component. Yeah. So hope that, that absolutely has I guess as, as actually a sort of a closing question is there, is there like work that you [01:26:00] hope people will sort of like do, based on what you've written like, is, is there, is there sort of like a line of work that you want people to be, to be doing, to like take the sort of the framework that you've laid out and run with it? Cause I, I, I guess I feel like there's like, there's so much more to do. Yeah. And so it's like, do you have a, do you have a sense of like what that program would look like? Like what questions, what questions are still unanswered in your mind? I think are really interesting. I think that's a wonderful question off the red cord. I'm really glad you're here because. It's it's like visiting where you grew up. I am. I'm the ghost of, of books. Oh, I don't know. I mean, it's funny. I was injured. This is just, yeah. I was interviewed a month or two ago on [01:27:00] this subject. I can send you a link if you want, please. Yeah. I listened to tons of podcasts, so, yeah. Anyway, but I went back and read the book. You're like, wow, I'm really smart. Well, it had that effect. And then I thought, well, God, you know, it could have been a lot better written. It had all sorts of different things. And, and the year this was produced and free press and New York actually Simon Schuster, they put it up for a Pulitzer prize. That really surprised me because I didn't set out to write something. Well-written I just thought of keep clarifying the thing. And it went to come back to your question. Yeah. My reflection is this the book I wrote the purpose of my book was to actually look inside technologies. So [01:28:00] when you open them up, meaning have you look at the inside components, how those work and how ultimately the parts of a technology are always using some, none, you know, we can ignite gasoline and a, in a cylinder, in a car, and that will expand rapidly and produce force. So there's all kinds of phenomena. These were things I wanted to stay at. And yeah, the book there's that book has had a funny effect. It has a very large number of followers, meaning people have read that and I think of a field for technology and they're grateful that somebody came along and gave them a way to look at technology. Yeah. But having, let me just say it carefully that I've done other things in research [01:29:00] that have had far more widespread notice than this. And I think it's something tech the study of technology, as I was saying earlier on is a bit of a backwater in academic studies. Yeah. It's eclipsed. Is that the word dazzled by science it's? So I think that it's very hard to we, if something wonderful happens, we put men on the moon, we put people on the moon. We, we come up with artificial intelligence. Some are vaguely. That's supposed to be done by scientists. It's not, it's done by engineers who are very often highly conversant, both with science and mathematics, but as a matter of prestige, then a [01:30:00] lot of what should have been theories of technologies, where they come from, it's sort of gone into theories of science and I would simply point out no technology, no science when you can't do much science without telescopes crystallography x-rays systems microscopes. So yeah, it's all. Yeah. So you need all of these technologies to give you modern science. Without those instruments, we'd still have technology. We'd still have science, but be at the level of the Greeks, which would

In this Conversation, Jason Crawford and I talk about starting a nonprofit organization, changing conceptions of progress, why 26 years after WWII may have been what happened in 1971, and more. Jason is the proprietor of Roots of Progress a blog and educational hub that has recently become a full-fledged nonprofit devoted to the philosophy of progress. Jason's a returning guest to the podcast — we first spoke in 2019 relatively soon after he went full time on the project . I thought it would be interesting to do an update now that roots of progress is entering a new stage of its evolution.   Links Roots of Progress Nonprofit announcement Transcript So what was the impetus to switch from sort of being an independent researcher to like actually starting a nonprofit I'm really interested in. Yeah. The basic thing was understanding or getting a sense of the level of support that was actually out there for what I was doing. In brief people wanted to give me money and and one, the best way to receive and manage funds is to have a national nonprofit organization. And I realized there was actually enough support to support more than just myself, which had been doing, you know, as an independent researcher for a year or two. But there was actually enough to have some help around me to basically just make me more effective and, and further the mission. So I've already been able to hire research [00:02:00] assistants. Very soon I'm going to be putting out a a wanted ad for a chief of staff or you know, sort of an everything assistant to help with all sorts of operations and project management and things. And so having these folks around me is going to just help me do a lot more and it's going to let me sort of delegate everything that I can possibly delegate and focus on the things that only I can do, which is mostly research and writing. Nice and sort of, it seems like it would be possible to take money and hire people and do all that without forming a nonprofit. So what what's sort of like in your mind that the thing that makes it worth it. Well, for one thing, it's a lot easier to receive money when you have a, an organization that is designated as a 5 0 1 C three tax status in the United States, that is a status that makes deductions that makes donations tax deductible. Whereas other donations to other types of nonprofits are not I had had issues in the past. One organization would want to [00:03:00] give me a grant as an independent researcher, but they didn't want to give it to an individual. They wanted it to go through a 5 0 1 C3. So then I had to get a new. Organization to sort of like receive the donation for me and then turn around and re grant it to me. And that was just, you know, complicated overhead. Some organizations didn't want to do that all the time. So it was, it was just much simpler to keep doing this if I had my own organization. And do you have sort of a broad vision for the organization? Absolutely. Yes. And it, I mean, it is essentially the same as the vision for my work, which I recently articulated in an essay on richer progress.org. We need a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century and establishing such a philosophy is, is my personal mission. And is the mission. Of the organization to just very briefly frame this in the I, the 19th century had a very sort of strong and positive, you know, pro progress vision of, of what progress was and what it could do for humanity and in the [00:04:00] 20th century. That optimism faded into skepticism and fear and distrust. And I think there are ways in which the 19th century philosophy of progress was perhaps naively optimistic. I don't think we should go back to that at all, but I think we need a, we need to rescue the idea of progress itself. Which the 20th century sort of fell out of love with, and we need to find ways to acknowledge and address the very real problems and risks of progress while not losing our fundamental optimism and confidence and will to, to move forward. We need to, we need to regain to recapture that idea of progress and that fundamental belief in our own agency so that we can go forward in the 21st century with progress. You know, while doing so in a way that is fundamentally safe and benefits all of humanity. And since you, since you mentioned philosophy, I'm really like, just, just ask you a very weird question. That's related to something that I've been thinking about. And [00:05:00] so like, in addition to the fact that I completely agree the philosophy. Progress needs to be updated, recreated. It feels like the same thing needs to be done with like the idea of classical liberalism that like it was created. Like, I think like, sort of both of these, these philosophies a are related and B were created in a world that is just has different assumptions than we have today. Have you like, thought about how the, those two, like those two sort of like philosophical updates. Yeah. So first off, just on that question of, of reinventing classical liberalism, I think you're right. Let me take this as an opportunity to plug a couple of publications that I think are exploring this concept. Yeah. So so the first I'll mention is palladium. I mentioned this because of the founding essay of palladium, which was written by Jonah Bennet as I think a good statement of the problem of, of why classical liberalism is [00:06:00] or, or I think he called it the liberal order, which has maybe a slightly different thing. But you know, the, the, the basic idea of You know, representative democracy is you know, or constitutional republics with, with sort of representative democracy you know, and, and basic ideas of of freedom of speech and other sort of human rights and individual rights. You know, all of that as being sort of basic world order you know, Jonah was saying that that is in question now and. There's essentially now. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to frame this my own way. I don't know if this is exactly how gender would put it, but there's basically, there's, there's basically now a. A fight between the abolitionists and the reformists, right. Those who think that the, the, the, that liberal order is sort of like fundamentally corrupt. It needs to be burned to the ground and replaced versus those who think it's fundamentally sound, but may have problems and therefore needs reform. And so you know, I think Jonah is on the reform side and I'm on the reform side. I think, you know, the institutions of you know, Western institutions and the institutions of the enlightenment let's say are like [00:07:00] fundamentally sound and need reform. Yeah, rather than, rather than just being raised to the ground. This was also a theme towards the end of enlightenment now by Steven Pinker that you know, a lot of, a lot of why he wrote that book was to sort of counter the fundamental narrative decline ism. If you believe that the world is going to hell, then it makes sense to question the fundamental institutions that have brought us here. And it kind of makes sense to have a burn it all to the ground. Mentality. Right. And so those things go together. Whereas if you believe that you know, actually we've made a lot of progress over the last couple of hundred years. Then you say, Hey, these institutions are actually serving us very well. And again, if there are problems with them, let's sort of address those problems in a reformist type of approach, not an abolitionist type approach. So Jonah Bennett was one of the co-founders of palladium and that's an interesting magazine or I recommend checking out. Another publication that's addressing some of these concepts is I would say persuasion by Yasha Munk. So Yasha is was a part of the Atlantic as I recall. [00:08:00] And basically wanted to. Make a home for people who were maybe left leaning or you know, would call themselves liberals, but did not like the new sort of woke ideology that is arising on the left and wanted to carve out a space for for free speech and for I don't know, just a different a non-local liberalism, let's say. And so persuasion is a sub stack in a community. That's an interesting one. And then the third one that I'll mention is called symposium. And that is done by a friend of mine. Roger Sinskey who it himself has maybe a little bit more would consider himself kind of a more right-leaning or maybe. Just call himself more of an individualist or an independent or a, you know, something else. But I think he maybe appeals more to people who are a little more right-leaning, but he also wanted you know, something that I think a lot of people are, are both maybe both on the right and the left are wanting to break away both from woke ism and from Trumpism and find something that's neither of those things. And so we're seeing this interesting. Where people on the right and left are actually maybe [00:09:00] coming together to try to find a third alternative to where those two sides are going. So symposium is another publication where you know, people are sort of coming together to discuss, what is this idea of liberalism? What does it mean? I think Tristan ski said that he wanted some posting to be the kind of place where Steven Pinker and George will, could come together to discuss what liberalism means. And then, then he like literally had that as a, as a podcast episode. Like those two people. So anyway, recommend, recommend checking it out. And, and Rob is a very good writer. So palladium, persuasion and symposium. Those are the three that I recommend checking out to to explore this kind of idea of. Nice. Yeah. And I think it looks, I mean, I mean, I guess in my head it actually like hooks, like it's sort of like extremely coupled to, to progress. Cause I think a lot of the places where we, there's almost like this tension between ideas of classical liberalism, like property rights and things that we would like see as progress. Right. Cause it's like, okay, you want to build your [00:10:00] Your Hyperloop. Right. But then you need to build that Hyperloop through a lot of people's property. And there's like this fundamental tension there. And then. I look, I don't have a good answer for that, but like just sort of thinking about that, vis-a-vis, it's true. At the same time, I think it's a very good and healthy and important tension. I agree because if you, if you have the, if you, so, you know, I, I tend to think that the enlightenment was sort of. But there were at least two big ideas in the enlightenment, maybe more than two, but you know, one of them was sort of like reason science and the technological progress that hopefully that would lead to. But the other was sort of individualism and and, and, and, and Liberty you know concepts and I think what we saw in the 20th century when you have one of those without the other, it leads to to it to disaster. So in particular I mean the, the, the communists of you know, the Soviet union were were [00:11:00] enamored of some concept of progress that they had. It was a concept of progress. That was ultimately, they, they got the sort of the science and the industry part, but they didn't get the individualism and the Liberty part. And when you do that, what you end up with is a concept of progress. That's actually detached from what it ought to be founded on, which is, I mean, ultimately progress by. To me in progress for individual human lives and their happiness and thriving and flourishing. And when you, when you detach those things, you end up with a, an abstract concept of progress, somehow progress for society that ends up not being progress for any individual. And that, as I think we saw in the Soviet union and other places is a nightmare and it leads to totalitarianism and it leads to, I mean, in the case specifically the case of the Soviet union mass. And not to mention oppression. So one of the big lessons of you know, so going back to what I said, sort of towards the beginning that the 19th century philosophy of progress had, I think a bit of a naive optimism. And part of that, [00:12:00] part of the naivete of that optimism was the hope that that all forms of progress would go together and work sort of going along hand in hand, the technological progress and moral and social progress would, would go together. In fact, towards the end of. The, the 19th century some people were hopeful that the expansion of industry and the growth of trade between nations would lead to a new era of world peace, the end. And the 20th century obviously prove this wrong, right? There's a devastating, dramatic proof though. And I really think it was my hypothesis right now is that it was the world war. That really shattered the optimism of the 19th century that, you know, they really proved that technological progress does not automatically lead to moral progress. And with the dropping of the atomic bomb was just like a horrible exclamation point on this entire lesson, right? The nuclear bomb was obviously a product of modern science, modern technology and modern industry. And it was the most horrific destructive [00:13:00] weapon ever. So so I think with that, people saw that that these things don't automatically go together. And I think the big lesson from from that era and and from history is that technological and moral progress and social progress or an independent thing that we have. You know, in their own right. And technological progress does not create value for humanity unless it is embedded in the, you know, in the context of good moral and social systems. So and I think that's the. You know, that's the lesson of, for instance, you know, the cotton gin and and American slavery. It is the lesson of the of the, the Soviet agricultural experiments that ended on in famine. It's the lesson of the, the Chinese great leap forward and so forth. In all of those cases, what was missing was was Liberty and freedom and human in individual rights. So those are things that we must absolutely protect, even as we move technological and industrial progress forward. Technological progress ultimately is it is [00:14:00] progress for people. And if it's not progress for people and progress for individuals and not just collectives then it is not progress at all the one. I agree with all of that. Except the thing I would poke is I feel like the 1950s might be a counterpoint to the world wars destroying 20th century optimism, or, or is it, do you think that is just sort of like, there's almost like a ha like a delayed effect that I think the 1950s were a holdover. I think that, so I think that these things take a generation to really see. And so this is my fundamental answer at the, at the moment to what happened in 1971, you know, people ask this question or 1970 or 73 or whatever date around. Yeah. I think what actually happened, the right question to ask is what happened in 1945, that took 25 years to sink in. And I think, and I think it's, so my answer is the world wars, and I think it is around this time that [00:15:00] you really start to see. So even in the 1950s, if you read intellectuals and academics who are writing about this stuff, you start to read things like. Well, you know, we can't just unabashedly promote quote-unquote progress anymore, or people are starting to question this idea of progress or, you know, so forth. And I'm not, I haven't yet done enough of the intellectual history to be certain that that's really where it begins. But that's the impression I've gotten anecdotally. And so this is the, the hypothesis that's forming in my mind is that that's about when there was a real turning point now to be clear, there were always skeptics of. From the very beginning of the enlightenment, there was a, an anti enlightenment sort of reactionary, romantic backlash from the beginnings of the industrial revolution, there were people who didn't like what was happening. John chakra. So you know, Mary Shelley, Karl Marx, like, you know, you name it. But I think what was going on was that essentially. The progress you know, the, the progress movement or whatever, they, the people who are actually going forward and making scientific and technological progress, they [00:16:00] were doing that. Like they were winning and they were winning because they were because people could see the inventions coming especially through the end. I mean, you know, imagine somebody born. You know, around 1870 or so. Right. And just think of the things that they would have seen happen in their lifetime. You know, the telephone the the, you know, the expansion of airplane, the automobile and the airplane, right? The electric light bulb and the, and the, the electric motor the first plastics massive. Yeah, indoor plumbing, water, sanitation vaccines, if they live long enough antibiotics. And so there was just oh, the Haber-Bosch process, right. And artificial or synthetic fertilizer. So this just like an enormous amount. Of these amazing inventions that they would have seen happen. And so I basically just think that the, the, the reactionary voices against against technology and against progress, we're just drowned out by all of the cheering for the new inventions. And then my hypothesis is that what happened after world war II is it wasn't so much that, you [00:17:00] know the people who believed in progress suddenly stopped believing in it. But I think what happens in these cases, The people who, who believed in progress their belief was shaken and they lost some of their confidence and they became less vocal and their arguments started feeling a little weaker and having less weight and conversely, the sort of reactionary the, the anti-progress folks were suddenly emboldened. And people were listening to them. And so they could come to the fore and say, see, we told you, so we've been telling you this for generations. We always knew it, that this was going to be what happened. And so there was just a shift in sort of who had the confidence, who was outspoken and whose arguments people were listening to. And I think when you, when you have then a whole generation of people who grew up in this new. Milia, then you get essentially the counterculture of the 1960s and you know, and you get silent spring and you get you know, protests against industry and technology and capitalism and civilization. And, [00:18:00] you know, do you think there, mate, there's just like literally off the cuff, but there might also be some kind of like hedonic treadmill effect where. You know, it's like you see some, like rate of progress and, you know, it's like you, you start to sort of like, that starts to be normalized. And then. It's true. It's true. And it's funny because so well before the world war, so even in the late 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds, you can find people saying things like essentially like kids these days don't realize how good they have it. You know, people don't even know the history of progress. It's like, I mean, I found. I found it. Let's see. I remember there was so I wrote about this, actually, I hadn't had an essay about this called something like 19th century progress studies, because there was this guy who was even before the transcontinental railroad was built in the U S in the sixties. There was this guy who like in the 1850s or so [00:19:00] was campaigning for it. And he wrote this whole big, long pamphlet that, you know, promoting the idea of a transcontinental railroad and he was trying to raise private money for it. And. One of the things in this long, you know, true to the 19th century, it was like this long wordy document. And one of the parts of this whole thing is he starts going into the, like the whole history of transportation back to like the 17th or 16th century and like the post roads that were established in Britain and you know, how those improve transportation, but even how, even in that era, that like people were speaking out against the post roads as, and we're posing them. No sidebar. Have you seen that comic with like, like the cave men? The caveman? Yes. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. The show notes, but caveman science fiction. Yeah, that one's pretty good. So I'm, I'm blanking on this guy's name now. But he, so he wrote this whole thing and he basically said that. The [00:20:00] story of progress has not even been told and people don't know how far we've come. And if, you know, somebody should really like collect all of this history and tell it in an engaging way so that people knew, you know, how far people knew, how far we've come. And this is in like the 1850s. So this is before the, the, the railroad was built, right? The transcontinental one, this is before the, the light bulb and before the internal combustion engine and before vaccines and, you know, everything. It was pretty, that was pretty remarkable. I also remember there was like an 1895 or 96 anniversary issue of scientific American, where they went over like 50 years of progress. And there was this bit in the beginning that was just like, yeah. You know, people just take progress for granted these days. And there was another thing, a similar thing in the early 19 hundreds, I read where somebody went out to find one of the inventors who'd improved. The the mechanical Reaper I think it was somebody who'd invented an automatic binder for the sheaves of grain and and was saying something like, yeah, people don't even remember, you know, the, the inventors who, you know, who made the modern world. And so [00:21:00] we've got to go find this inventor and like interview him and to record this for posterity. So you're seeing this kind of kids these days type attitude all throughout. So I think that that kind of thing is just natural, is like, I think is sort of always happening. Right. There's this constant complaint. I mean, it's just like, you know, at any pretty much any time in history, you can find people complaining about the decline of morality and you know, the, how the youth are so different and The wet, the ankles, they exposed ankles. Right? Exactly. So I think you have to have some somewhat separate out that sort of thing, which is constant and is always with us with kind of like, but what was, you know, what we're. What was the intellectual class? You know as Deirdre McCloskey likes to call it the clerisy, what were they saying about progress and what was the general zeitgeist? Right. And I think that even though there are some constants, like people always forget the past. Whatever they have for granted. And even though you know, every new invention is always opposed [00:22:00] and fought and feared. There is an overall site Geist that you can see changing from the late 19th century to the mid 20th century. And I think where you can really see. There's a, there's a couple of places you can really see it. So one is in the general attitude of people towards nature. And what is mankind's relationship to nature in the 19th century? People talked unabashedly and unironically about the conquest of nature. They talked about nature almost as an enemy that we had to fight. Yeah. And it sort of made sense you know, nature truly is red in tooth and claw. It does not, it's not a loving, loving mother that has us in her nurturing embrace. You know, the reality is that nature is frankly indifferent to us and you know, we have to make our way in the world in spite of now. Let's say, let's say both because of, and in spite of nature, right? Nature obviously gives us everything that we need for life. It also presents it. It also gives none of that in a [00:23:00] convenience form. Everything that nature gives us is in a highly inconvenient form that, you know, we have to do layers and layers of industrial processing to make into the convenient forms that we consume. David Deutsch also makes a similar point in the beginning of infinity, where he says that, you know, the idea of earth as like a biosphere or a life support, you know, or the ecosystem as a, as a life support system is absurd because a life support system is like deliberately designed for, you know, maximum sort of safety and convenience. Whereas nature is nothing of that. So there was some, you know, so there was some justification to this view, but the way that people just on a, on ironically talked about conquering nature, mastering nature, taming nature improving nature, right? The idea that the manmade, the synthetic, the artificial was just to be expected to be better than nature. Like that is a little mindblowing. Today I was just there was a quote, I was just looking up from I think the plastic is a great example [00:24:00] because plastic was invented and, and, and you know, or arose in this era where people were more favorable to it, but then quickly transitioned into the era where It, it became just one of the hated and demonized inventions. Right. And so in the early days, like in the 1930s I think it was 1936 Texas state had a, some sort of state fair and they had a whole exhibition about plastics and somebody was quote, one woman who was, who, who saw the exhibition, you know, was quoted as saying like, oh, it's just wonderful how everything is synthetic these days, you know, as this is like, nobody would say. Yeah, right. Or there was a documentary about plastic called the fourth kingdom and it was something like, you know, in addition to the, the three kingdoms of what is it like animal vegetable and mineral, you know, man has now added a fourth kingdom whose boundaries are unlimited. Right. And again, just that's just like nobody would ever put it that way. And sometimes, okay. So to come back to the theme of like naive optimism, sometimes this actually led [00:25:00] to problems. So for instance, in this, this still cracks me up in the late 19th century. There were people who believed that we could improve on. Nature is distribution of plant and animal species. The nature was deficient in which species you know, we're aware and that we could improve on this by importing species, into non-natural habitats. And this was not only for like, you can imagine some of this for industrial, like agricultural purposes. Right. But literally some of it was just for aesthetic purposes. Like someone wanted to imitate. Yeah. If I'm recalling this correctly, someone wanted to import into America like all of the species of birds that were mentioned in Shakespeare sun. And this is purely just an aesthetic concern. Like, Hey, what if we had all these great, you know, songbirds in from, from Britain and we have them in America. So it turns out that in importing species, Willy nilly like can create some real problems. And we got by importing a bunch of foreign plants, we got a bunch of invasive pest species. And so this was a real [00:26:00] problem. And ultimately we had to clamp down. Another example of this that is near to my heart currently, because I just became a dad a couple months ago. Thanks. But it turns out that a few decades ago, people thought that for me, that infant formula was like superior to breast milk. And there was this whole generation of kids, apparently that was, that was just like raised on formula. And, you know, today, There's this, I mean, it turns out, oops. We found out like, oh, mother's breast milk has antibodies in it that protect against infection. You know, and it has maybe some, I don't know, growth hormones, and it's like this, we don't even know. It's a really complicated biological formula. That's been honed through, you know, millions or hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Right. However long mammals have been around. Right. And. So yeah, so again, some of that old sort of philosophy of progress was a little naive. You know, but now I think that someday we'll be able to make synthetic, you know whatever infant sustenance that will, [00:27:00] you know, that could be better than than what moms have to put out and given the amount of trouble that some women have with breastfeeding. I think that will be a boon to them. And we'll just be part of the further, a story of technology, liberating women. But we're not there yet, right? So we have to be realistic about sort of like where, where technology is. So this, this sort of relationship to nature is I think part of where you see the the, the, the contrast between then and now a related part is people's people's concept of growth and how they regarded growth. So here's another. One of these shocking stories that shows you going like the past is a foreign country in the, in 1890 in the United States. The, the United States census, which has done every 10 years was done for the first time with machines. With that we didn't yet have computers but it was done for the first time with tabulating machines made by the Hollerith tabulating company. And if it, if it ha you know, the, the, the census had grown large and complicated enough that it had, if it hadn't been known these machines, they probably wouldn't have been able to get it done on time. It was becoming a huge clerical challenge. So, okay. Now, [00:28:00] everybody, now this is an era where. The population estimates are not, are just there. Aren't like up to the minute, you know, population estimates just available. You can't just Google what's the population of the U S and get like a current, you know, today's estimate. Right? So people really didn't have a number that was more like the number they had for the population in the U S was like 10 years old. And they were all sort of curious, like wondering, Hey, what's the new population 10 years later. And they were gunning for a figure of at least 75. There was this one, the way one one history of computing put, it was there were many people who felt that the dignity of the Republic could not be sustained on a number of less than 75 million. And so then, then, so then the census comes in. And the real T count is something in the 60 millions, right? It's not even 70 million. And like, people are not just disappointing. People are incensed, they're angry. And they like, they like blame the Hollerith tabulating company for bundling. They're like, it must've been the machines, right. The machines screwed this. [00:29:00] Yeah, that's right. Demand a recount. Right. And, and so they, they they're like, man, this, this Hollerith guy totally bungled the census. Obviously the number is bigger. It's gotta be bigger than that. Right. And it's funny because, so this is 1890, right? So fast forward to 1968 and you have Paul and, and Erlick writing the population bomb, right. Where they're just like overpopulation is the absolute worst problem facing the entire world. And they're even essentially embraced. You know, coercive population control measures, including you know, and and not, but not limited to like forced sterilization essentially in order to in order to control population because they see it as like the worst risk facing the planet. I recommend by the way Charles Mann's book, the wizard and the prophet. For this and, and many other related issues. One of the things that book opened my eyes to was how much the the 1960s environmentalist movement was super focused on on overpopulation as like its biggest risk. And then, you know, today it's shifted to, they've shifted away [00:30:00] from that in part, because population is actually slowing. Ironically, the population growth rates started to slow right around the late 1960s, when that hysteria was happening. You know, but now now the population is actually projected to level off and maybe decline within the century. And so now of course the environmentalist concern has shifted to resource consumption instead because per capita resource consumption is growing. But, yeah. So just like that flip in, how do we regard growth? Right. Is growth a good thing? Something to be proud of as a nation that our population is growing so fast, right? Or is it something to be worried about? And we breathe a sigh of relief when population is actually level. Yeah, I'm getting like a very strong, like thesis, antithesis synthesis vibe of like we've had, we had the thesis, like the sort of like naive but like naive progress is the thesis, the sort of backlash against that is the, the antithesis. [00:31:00] And then like, now we need to come up with like, what is, what is the new city? Yeah, I mean, I'm not a hit Gelien, but I agree. There's something, there's something. Yeah, sir. Like a police back to two routes of progress, the organization something that I've been just sort of like wondering like Fox is like I feel like sort of a lot of the people. In, in like the, the progress movement in the slack, or like, I would say people like us, right? Like people, people from tech and I've, I've sort of talked to people who are either in academia or in government. And they're like really interested. And I was like, wondering if you have like, faults about like, sort of like now that is sort of onto like the next phase of, of this. I have like, sort of like ways to Rodan broad, like almost like broadened the scope brought in the sort of like people, [00:32:00] I don't know what the right word is like under, under the umbrella, under the tent. And sort of like, yeah, or like just sort of how you, how do you think about that? Cause it seems like really useful to have sort of as many sort of worlds involved as possible. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let me talk about that. Maybe both longterm term and short term. So. Fundamentally, I see this as a very, long-term like a generational effort. So in terms of, you know, results from my work do like direct results from my work. I'm sort of looking on the scale of decades on games. And I think that yeah, I would refer you to a, an essay called culture wars are long wars by tenor Greer of his blog scholar stage which really sort of lays out why this is that the ideas at this fundamental level are sort of they, they take effect on a generational level, just like the, just like the philosophy of progress took about a generation to flip [00:33:00] from, I think, 1945 to 1970, it's going to take another generation to re. Established something deep and new as as the nude psychosis. So how does that happen? Well, I think it starts with a lot of deep and hard and difficult thinking. And and writing and like the most absolutely the, the fundamental thing we need is books. We need a lot of books to be written. And so I'm writing one now tentatively titled the story of industrial civilization that I intend to be sort of. To, to lay the foundation for the new philosophy of progress, but there are dozens more books that need to be written. I don't have time in my life to even write them all. So I'm hoping that other people would join me in this. And one of the things I'd like to do with the new organization is to help make that possible. So if anybody wants to write a progress book and needs help in our support doing it, please get in touch like a list of titles that you'd love to see. Yeah, sure. So I think we actually need three categories of of books or more broadly of contents. [00:34:00] So one is more histories of progress. Like the kind that I do where just a retelling of the story of progress, making it more accessible and more clear, because I just think that the story has never adequately been told. So I'm writing about. The, in, in the book that I'm writing virtually every chapter could be expanded into a book of its own. I've got a chapter on materials and manufacturing. I have a chapter on agriculture. I have a chapter on energy. I have one on you know, health and, and medicine. Right. And so just like all of these things does deserve a book of their own. I also think we could use more sort of analysis of maybe some of the failed promises of progress, what went wrong with nuclear power, for instance what what happened. The space travel and space exploration. Right? Why did that take off so dramatically and then sort of collapse and, and have a period of stagnation or similarly for for air travel and like, why is it that we're only now getting back supersonic air travel, for instance. Perhaps even nanotechnology is [00:35:00] in this category, if you believe. Jason was, Hall's take on it. In his book, where is my flying car? You know, he talks about he talks about nanotechnology as sort of like something that we ought to be much farther along on. So I think, you know, some of those kinds of analyses of what went wrong I think a second category. Of books that we really need is taking the the, just the biggest problems in the world and addressing them head on from kind of the, the pro progress standpoint. Right. So what would it mean to address some of the biggest problems in the world? Like climate change global poverty the environment War existential risk from, you know, everything from you know, bio engineered, pandemics to artificial intelligence, like all of these different things. What would it mean to address these problems? If you fundamentally believe in human agency, if you believe in science and technology and you believe that kind of like we can overcome it, it will be difficult. You know, it will, it's, it's not easy. We shouldn't be naive about it, but like we can find solutions. What [00:36:00] are the solutions that move us, the move humanity forward? You know, how do we, how do we address climate change without destroying our standard of living or killing economic growth? Right. So those are, that's like a whole category of books that need to be written. And then the third category I would say is visions of the future. So what is the, what is the kind of future that we could create? What are the exciting things on the horizon that we should be motivated by and should be working for? Again Hall's book where's my flying car is like a great entry in this. But we could use do you use a lot more including you know, I mean, I would love to see one and it made some of the stuff probably already exists. I haven't totally surveyed the field, but we absolutely need a book on longevity. What does it mean for us all to, to, to, to conquer aging and disease? You know, maybe something on how we cure cancer or how we cure all diseases, which is the the, the mission for instance, of the Chan-Zuckerberg foundation or Institute. We should you know, we should totally have this for nanotechnology. I mean, I guess some of this already exists maybe in Drexler's work, but I just think, you know, more positive visions [00:37:00] of the future to inspire people, to inspire the world at large, but especially to inspire the young scientists and engineers and founders who are going to actually go you know, create those things. The plug is a project hieroglyph which was like, if you've seen that. I've heard of that. I haven't read it yet. Why don't you just say what's about, oh, it was a, it's a collection of short science fiction of short, optimistic science fiction stories. That was a collaboration between, I believe Arizona state university and Neal Stephenson. And like the, the opening story that I love is by Neil Stevenson. And it just talks about like, well, what if we built just like a, a mile high tower that we use that like we've launched rockets out. Like, why not? Right? Like, like you could just, it's like, you don't need a space elevator. You seem like a really, really tall tower. And it's like, there's nothing, we wouldn't actually need to invent new technologies per se. Like we wouldn't need to like discover new scientific principles to do this. It would just take a lot of [00:38:00] engineering and a lot of resources. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a similar concept in Hall's book called the space pier, which you can look up. That's also on, on his website. It does require like discovering new things. Right? Cause the space depends on like being able to build things out of them assignments. The, the space tower just like involves a lot of steel like a lot of steel. So, so you've touched a little bit actually on, this is a good segue into, I've been talking about. But then like, beyond that, you know, the same, the basic ideas need to get out in every medium and format. Right. So, you know, I also do a lot on Twitter. We need, we need people who are good at like every social media channel. You know, I'm, I'm much better at Twitter than I am at Instagram or tech talks. So, you know, we need people kind of on those channels as well. We need, you know, we need video, we need podcasts. We need just sort of like every, every format platform me. These ideas need to get out there. And then ultimately you know, they need to get out there through all the institutions of society. Right. We need more journalists who sort of understand the history on the promise of [00:39:00] technology and use that as context for their work. We need more educators, both at the K-12 level and at university who are going to incorporate this into the. And I've already gotten started on that by creating a high school level course in the history of technology, which is currently being taught through a private high school, the academy of thought and industry we need you know, it needs to get out there in documentaries, right? Like there should be I'm really I'm really tempted as a side project. A a docu-drama about the life of Norman Borlaug, which is just an amazing life and a story that, that everybody should know is just, it's just like an underappreciated hero. I think a lot of these sort of stories of great scientists that had mentors could really be turned into really excellent, compelling stories, whether it's documentaries or I sort of fictionalized you know, dramas. The Wright brothers, it would be, you know, another great one. I, I decided after reading David McCullough's history of them and their invention and, and so forth. Right. So there could just be a lot of these. And then I think ultimately it gets into the culture through through fiction as well in all of its [00:40:00] forms. Right. So optimistic Saifai in, you know, novels and TV shows and movies and everything. Yeah. It's just also, I think I'm not. Science fiction, but just like fiction about what it's like to like what it's actually like to, to, to push things forward. Because I think I, like, I don't know. It's like most people don't actually know. Like researchers do along these lines Anton house had a good post blockbuster two, where he was talking about movies that dramatize invention and was looking for recommendations and was sort of reviewing movies by the criteria. Which ones actually show what it's like to go through the process. Right. And the sad thing about a lot of popular, even the popular treatments of this stuff, like Anton reviewed I guess there was a recent movie about Mary Curie. And there's a similar thing about you know Edison and like the current wars starting Benedict Cumberbatch. [00:41:00] And the problem with a lot of these things is they just sort of focus on like human drama, like people getting mad at each other and yelling and like fighting each other and so forth. Right. And they don't focus on like the iterative discovery process and the joy of, of inventing and discovering. So the, one of the totally you know, unexpected, the sleeper hit of Anton's review was this movie, I think it's actually in Hindi called pad man, which is a drama. the real story of. A guy who invented a cheap menstrual pad for women and that could be made you know, using a sort of like very low capital and then, and be made affordable to women in India. And I mean, he was really trespassing on social you know, cultural norms and boundaries to do this and was sort of like ostracized by his own community. But really pursued this process and the, the movie I saw the movie it's, I, I recommend it as well. It really does a good job of dramatize. The process is process of iteration and [00:42:00] invention and discovery and the trial and error and the joy of finding something, you know, that that actually works. So we need, yeah, we need more stuff like that that actually shows you know, shows the process and and the dedication you know, it's funny, one of the. One of my favorite writers in Silicon valley is Eric Reese who coined this term, the lean startup and read a book at the same name. And he's got this. He has this take that you know, whenever you see these stories of like business success, there's kind of like the opening scene, which is like the spark of inspiration, the great idea, you know, and then there's like, there's like the closing scene, which is. Basking in the rewards of success and in between is, is what he calls the montage, right? Because it's typically just a montage of kind of like people working on stuff, you know, and maybe, you know, maybe there's some like setbacks and there's some iteration and stuff, but it's just kind of glossed over. There's this like two minute montage of people iterating and some music is sort of playing over it. Right. And, and Eric's point is like, the montage is where all the [00:43:00] work happens. Right. It's unglamorous, it's a grind. It's like, you know, it's not necessarily fun and, you know, in and of itself, but it is where the actual work is done. And so you know, his point in that, in that context, it was like, we need to open up the, the, you know, the covers of this a little bit. We need to like teach people a little bit more about what it's like in the montage. And I think that's what we need, you know, just sort of like more broadly for science and. Okay. Here's, here's a pitch for a movie. I believe that the, the Pixar movie inside out right where they like go inside the, the little girl's head that, but for the montage. Right? So like the hall with the montage is that a lot of it is like sitting and thinking and like, not necessarily, it's like not necessarily communicated well with other people or just be talking, but like, you could have an entire internal drama. Oh, The of the, the process as a way to like, show what's [00:44:00] going on. Yeah. Good work. I don't know. I'm so sorry. All of that is so all of that is sort of the long-term view. Right? I think how things happen. A bunch of people including me, but not only me need to do a lot of hard thinking and research and writing and and speaking, and then these ideas need to get out to the world through every, in every format, medium platform and channel and, and institution and you know, sort of that's how ideas get into the zeitgeist. And so then I, you know, I said there's also, so the short term, so what's, so in the short term I'm going to work on doing this as much as possible. Like I said, I'm writing a book. I'm hoping that when I hire some more help, I'll be able to get my ideas out in more formats and mediums and channels. I would like to support other people who want to do these things. So again, if. Any vision that you are inspired to pursue along the lines of anything I've been talking about for the last 10 minutes. And, and there's some way that you need help doing it, whether it's money or connections or advice or coaching or [00:45:00] whatever, please get in touch with me at the roots of progress. And you can find my email on, on my website. And and I would love to support these products. And then another thing I'm going to be doing with the new organization and these resources is just continuing to build and strengthen the network, the progress community finding people who are sympathetic to these ideas and meeting them, getting to know them and. Introducing them to each other and getting them and getting them to know that they all getting everybody to sort of look around at everybody else and say, ah, you exist. You're there. You're interested in this great list form of connection. And I hope through that that there will be you know, a people will just understand, Hey, This is more than just me or more than just a small number of people. This is a growing thing. And also that people can start making connections to have, you know, fruitful collaborations, whether it's supporting each other, working together coaching and mentoring each other, investing in each other and so forth. So I plan to hold a a series of events in the beginning probably be private events. For a, you know, people in various niches or sub-communities of [00:46:00] the progress community to sort of get together and talk and meet each other and start to make some plans for how we develop these ideas and get them out there. Isn't that seems like an excellent, an optimistic place to close. I, I really sort of appreciate you, like laying out the, the grand plan. And just all the work you're doing. It's it's I mean, as you know, it's like, it's super exciting. Thanks. Same to you and yeah, it was great to be here and chat again. Thanks for having me back.

Sure, you can target ads by keywords, age, and gender... but have you ever thought about what all that means? Not every generation is the same or will respond to the same tactics! In this week's episode, we take a look at the different trends of Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. Where do they hang out online? What are their spending habits? What key phrases will get them to buy your book... or cause them to run away in disgust? You might be surprised at which generation is the most ready to buy your book, what it takes to actually hook Gen X... or why KU might be the best fit if you write YA! Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.   SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.   Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (1s): You're listening to the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello, I am Jesper Autumn (32s): and I'm Autumn. Jesper (35s): This is episode 143 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And this is a bit of a different topic that I actually haven't seen covered anywhere else. And Autumn, you wrote this a really interesting block series for our patron supporters. So perhaps I can just hand it over to you to share what we're talking about here today. Autumn (60s): So you want me to do all the work again? I see how it is. Well, Jesper (1m 6s): I prefer it that way. Autumn (1m 8s): Well, you've been busy, so that's fair enough. But yeah, I don't even, honestly, I don't even know where this idea came from, but there was at some point I was like, what would it be interesting to look at marketing book marketing by generation? Like, is it different to market, to boomers? Should you be marketing your books to boomers? Cause you know, when you do your Facebook ads, it almost, almost all the trainings, like say two 60 and under, well, why are boomers not buying books on Facebook? Are they not on Facebook? So I'm always curious. And you know, I like to question the status quo and see, well, why does it work this way? So I wrote a series of four Patreon posts looking at marketing to boomers, marketing to gen X, go gen X marketing to millennials and gen Z. Autumn (1m 57s): So I was actually really interesting and it did influence all of my thoughts on marketing. So it'll be really fun to dig into that today, Jesper (2m 6s): For sure. It should be a quite interesting and yeah, maybe we'll learn some stuff that we need to think about here. Autumn (2m 16s): No, I, I, I have to admit that it made me even rethink some of the stuff I'm doing my entrepreneurial sphere in my own life. And I think there is one generation that is like the ideal of who you should be marketing to. And I'm like, oh, I want to try this. So we'll have to get there. Jesper (2m 38s): Wow. Nice. Yes. Autumn (2m 41s): So anyway, how are things for you over in Denmark? Jesper (2m 47s): Well, as you said, pretty busy, I would say. And we also really still struggling with the potty who selling the house that we put in an offer for still Autumn (2m 60s): No definite there. Jesper (3m 4s): Well, we are pretty far from each other when it comes to the price at the moment, we probably have a gap like 45, 50,000 us dollars between us at the moment, which is quite a lot. And if I'm honest, I'm not really sure that we are going to be able to agree. Yeah, we did increase our offer with around 17,000 us dollars, but because the house needs a new roof, which will be very expensive to fix. Like I, like I mentioned in a podcast episode, a couple of weeks back, we have more or less offered now as much as we're willing to offer. Jesper (3m 51s): And if we offer more, we basically risk losing too much money if we won one day, want to sell the house again. So I think with the increased offer, we made, honestly, we're probably, if we want to sell the house again, we're probably going to lose around 50,000 us dollars the day we sell the house. And I don't like that, of course, but it's sort of within F acceptable acceptable range. I mean, we can live with that, but it cannot be any more than that. Right. And, and still, if I didn't look at that, then the selling party still needed to drop their price around 45,000 us dollars to meet us, which I don't think that'll happen to be honest, Autumn (4m 37s): Too bad. Cause I know you guys liked that one, so that's really unfortunate. Maybe they'll change their mind. You know, you're going, we're going into winter. And most people, most houses don't sell in winter. I know in the United States. So I can't imagine that they're selling like hotcakes in Denmark. So maybe they'll rethink that. Jesper (4m 57s): Yeah, usually, usually there's no problem selling houses in the winter here in Denmark that does, it goes year round. But I did talk to the real estate agent today and you know that the selling parties real estate agent, because she called me to sort of ask how things were going and what we were thinking. And I was sort of explaining to her like, you know, you're asking way too much money. And the fact that you had to put in a new roof, you need to account for that in the price, which you're not doing. And then I also told her, you know, find if he doesn't want to drop the price, but at the end of the day, the next buying party, if it's not going to be us, but the next party will have the same problem as we have now. Jesper (5m 40s): So you're not going to sell the house. If you keep insisting on chatting this much for it, because other people will also figure out that, okay, we need to put in a new roof, that's very expensive. We want a price reduction because of it. So you're going to end up in the same place next time. And he's been, they've had it for sale for about six months now. Right. So it's also about time that you start questioning. Maybe your price is too high after six months and you still haven't sold it. Yes. Autumn (6m 8s): Especially in the current. Jesper (6m 13s): Yeah. W w we'll see how it goes. But honestly, I, I don't know. Yeah. So we will, we've submitted the, a slight increase in our offer. And then also said in the email that this is our last offer. So we're not gonna increase the price any more than this. So either you take it off or that's Autumn (6m 31s): It, well, I'll keep my fingers crossed. We'll see what they say. Jesper (6m 35s): Yeah. I think it'll be a no, but, but maybe who knows, maybe they changed their mind in, in four or five months when they still haven't sold it. And maybe they'll come back and say, okay, are you still interested? Who knows? You know, Autumn (6m 46s): Maybe you'll find the perfect house coming up. I know you guys are so busy, so it's hard to look for houses at the same time, but you never know. You might find something else you like even more. Jesper (6m 58s): Yeah. Yeah. Who knows, but you're also trying to work out what to do and what not. So I know you are busy as well. Autumn. Autumn (7m 4s): Yeah. Yeah. Just a, I think it's so funny because we were just joking. I mean, it looks like I'm in the middle. It's like midnight here that we're somehow on the same continent, but it's only three in the afternoon and it is just like gray and raining. We got the fall rains coming into Vermont. But yeah, our housing where we're kind of wanting to leave here around November, you know, my husband spent all summer working in Maine. He's got some good job offers up that way. So we're kind of up in the air trying to look around too. But the housing market, the rental apartment market and the U S is just insane. So we're like, well, you can want to change something, but sometimes it's not as easy as you expected. So I don't know why we're going to end up doing where we'll end up being. Autumn (7m 47s): But I know the next, I know the upcoming podcast will be slightly out of order, but I am going to go see my parents and that'll be fun. So I know one of our episodes we'll be recording soon. I'll have a whole different backdrop and maybe some overhead lighting. I won't look like I'm coming from like, Jesper (8m 6s): Just for a change Autumn (8m 7s): For a change just to, you know, make things exciting and keep my life exciting. It'll be good. Jesper (8m 13s): Oh yeah. Sounds like a good idea. Okay. Let's move on here Narrator (8m 19s): A week on the internet with the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Jesper (8m 25s): So the most important thing first here, Autumn. Okay. Are you ready? Oh, I'm going to spring something on you. Autumn (8m 34s): I'm taking a deep breath. Okay. I'm ready. Jesper (8m 39s): So one of the YouTube comments on episode 141, that was the one where we went head to head trying to come up with the worst superpowers ever. But one of the comments was from Zayed and he actually declared a winner. Did you notice that? Autumn (8m 54s): I think I did... Jesper (8m 56s): See that one because it made me rather happy. You want to guess who he thought was the winner or him, Autumn (9m 5s): If it's the same post well, no, that's right. I saw a Facebook comment, not a YouTube one. Shoot. So you better not tell me he thought you were the winner. Jesper (9m 15s): Of course. Otherwise. Why would I bring it up? Otherwise I would just have ignored it Autumn (9m 22s): Really? I swear on Facebook he said I won Jesper (9m 27s): No, no, no. He actually said, he actually said, quote, I'm a practicing Christian. And I got to say, I'm confused about Bible Man. I think yes. But wins on that one alone. Autumn (9m 41s): I don't think so. You had, it was a pretty pathetic list. I have to say that you had, I don't know if it's the worst though. Jesper (9m 49s): Well, that was the point of it. It was supposed to be pathetic. Autumn (9m 54s): It was pathetic, but I wouldn't say it was worse, but the dog had weld, whatever that one was, dog welder. I just put the heck arm fall off point. Just know, I can't believe someone even came up with those as like characters ever much less actually wrote a comic where they're included. I mean really, really stretching, cutting the risk guys. There were some really good writers out there. They'll help you a lot. Jesper (10m 31s): Yeah. Yeah. So I thought that was an important YouTube comment into, and that's worth mentioning of course, here on the podcast as well, I Autumn (10m 41s): Think was Jesper (10m 42s): For, no, thank you. Say it for, for being so smart about your choices on who should win. I think that it was a good choice. I would just say that. Autumn (10m 55s): I think you guys have a deal going. I don't believe that one. Jesper (11m 1s): Okay. But something else I wanted to mention was a post I did for our Patrion supporters, because I actually wrote about whether or not Kindle unlimited is good for fantasy authors. So if people want to check out the details of that post, I can, of course join over on Patrion. There's a link in the show notes, but I thought it interesting how in the post that all the top 100 fantasy books in the top 100 chart in, on Amazon, all of them are available through Kindle unlimited. That Autumn (11m 40s): Is pretty impressive. Jesper (11m 43s): What do you think about that? Every single one on the top 100 chart is in Kindle unlimited Autumn (11m 48s): Pretty impressive. I think that is a high stat showing whether or not it's for fantasy. I would have to admit. Jesper (11m 57s): Yeah. Yeah. The post I wrote was based on an article written by a written word media and it's based on some research as well, which I always like when I, she stuff that is based on research rather than on opinions. So, so I think that was a very interesting, and in fact, we have recently enrolled some of our books in Kindle unlimited as well. And I have to say, I'm not very happy about the exclusivity demand for Kindle unlimited or from Amazon there, but we do want to see how it affects sales. So yeah. Autumn (12m 34s): Yeah. I, you know, I'm always up for testing, but it is interesting that, you know, you brought up your path, Patreon posts on Kindle unlimited and then today's podcast is based off of four posts and Patreon. So in if I want to, yeah. If you want to hear more about read those posts, which are in depth and have a lot of market research and links to other sources. Yeah. That's on Patreon. If you want to join. And really, if you were inspired by this episode today, and once you check it out and really get into the links and the stats, that's waiting for you on there for just a dollar a month. Jesper (13m 9s): Indeed. Yeah. And also of course, if, if the, if you, dear listeners should be interested in knowing sort of, if we got any results from placing our books in Kindle unlimited, then do let us know. And I dunno, maybe we can dedicate like a future podcast episode to that topic or something. But yeah, if that interests you, then let us know. Sounds good. Narrator (13m 33s): And onto today's topic. Jesper (13m 37s): So we have some different generations to cover here today. We have boomers, gen X, millennials, and gen C. So I don't know, do we just want to start with the boomers and then sort of work down the list of these generations? Or how do you want to do it on them? Autumn (13m 55s): I, that makes sense. Or I guess maybe at times we can compare and contrast, but I think as boomers are a great place to start because they were, it was not the, what I expected was the result of what came up with boomers. It was kind of fun to get a different perspective on who the boomer generation is, especially with marketing and fantasy book marketing. Jesper (14m 21s): Yeah. So boomers are born between 1946 and 1964. So those are the people we are talking about. So this also means that they are an older generation. Autumn (14m 32s): They are they're my, my parents' generation though. Some people have, you know, there are still a few people alive who are known as the silent generation, which is older than boomers, but I left them off our little marketing analysis. We were letting them be, let them be, but they're still readers, but the boomers, they're the, I said, if you're going onto Facebook and you were choosing your targeting audience on your Shane saying 60 and under, you're totally leaving out the boomers. The boomers are the ones who are actually 60 and older. So they're an older generation and you might be surprised. Cause I think the perception is that they're not online. Maybe they do a lot of research, but there's some interesting stats about where they hang out, how often they buy and what it takes them to actually buy something, which I didn't expect. Jesper (15m 24s): Yeah. And also worth pointing out. Like you said, in the article that the boomers hold almost 50% of the total wealth in the us. So yeah. They have money. These people, Autumn (15m 38s): Yes. There's 72 million boomers still alive. This was a massive generation there and they're called boomers. It's from the baby boom that happened post world war II. So there was a huge amount of children born, still a large base of the population, 72 million. The only one that is larger than this as gen of millennials are also really large generation. So lots of people, they hold around 50% of the U S well, that's a lot of money. And I guess the question is, well, you know, do they read fantasy? Do they buy books online? Those are really the big questions of if they're worth marketing to. Autumn (16m 20s): And what I started to think about it, I mean, this is the generation that the first, when their Lord of the rings was published, these were the kids reading them, this teenagers, they were reading token. I would love that. Can you imagine being alive and Tolkien was writing and producing his books. That would be so cool. But they were alive with Isaac Asimov, if you like. Saifai so a lot of the clot, what we consider now, classic, they were the original fans. They were my parents who, you know, took me to see star wars and were fine with it and thought it was so cool. So they saw the moon landing. They are not anti fantasy. So I I've definitely heard that of some people saying, well, they don't read fantasy kidding. Autumn (17m 3s): They may talk in popular. They love fantasy. They just didn't like Dungeons and dragons. Well, that's another story. Jesper (17m 12s): Yeah, that's true. But the one thing that I'm thinking about, at least I, well, I don't have like a statistical research of it, but at least if I compare to my own parents, for example, I'm reading on the Kindle, for example, that took some convincing. You know, I, I don't know. I mean, of course my parents might not be like the stereotypical, you know, version of, of the boom was meaning that, that this is how all the boomers are not, I'm not saying that at all, but I could speculate, at least that might prefer to have the book in their hands, like paperbacks or hot packs and stuff like that, that I could speculate that. Autumn (17m 56s): I think it would be not disingenuous to say that, that if you want to market to boomers, it would probably be a good idea to make sure you have a paperback version, but they have taken, unlike the perception they have taken to computers and the internet age actually extremely well. A lot of them are like, oh, Facebook is the number one place. If you want to go market to boomers, just go to Facebook. That's where they are. But it was the stats on them. I mean, it was 70% of like boomers are online or on a computer. And of those 70%, like 90% of them are on Facebook. So they're online and what my favorite thing about them. Autumn (18m 36s): So they have their huge population base. So if you want to say, even 10% of them like fantasy and you know, or maybe 10% of will read on a Kindle, that's still a huge number of people. They have a ton of wealth they're retired. So they, they might work part-time but they don't need to work because they already have money and they're in retirement. So they have time to read which show that's fantastic. And they are, tend to be impulsive buyers and they're very brand centric. So if you say something to them that they like, they will immediately go and buy because they've got the money. They're not worried. They just learn what they don't have is time. So they want to make sure, you know, they have, they enjoy their lives. Autumn (19m 20s): They're not going to sit there and him and hall, if they think they're going to like a book, they'll go and buy the book. And then if they like you, they love brands. So they will stay with you and be a loyal follower. I mean, they sound like the perfect person to try to sell your book to, you might want to tailor your ads though, specifically to them, they're going to want different wording. And remember they were alive when token was writing. So you don't want to say, hi, as good as a token. Well, you know, you better, gosh, darn be as good as token. Cause they know who that is. And they were reading it before you were born. So make your ads honest, but make it something where they're like, oh my goodness, I want to go and try this out. Autumn (20m 4s): And they click and they may very well just going by like that. Jesper (20m 9s): Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. It might be sometimes a bit harder to get them to read the books, but yeah, the various debt, but I was a bit surprised in your post-test worlds that your post pointed out that a lot of them is actually using YouTube as well. That w I mean, not, not creating videos, but watching YouTube. I mean, that actually surprised me a bit because that's not normally what I would think about this generation that they would be watching YouTube. Yeah. Autumn (20m 38s): And we'll see that across all of them. That YouTube is a really big player often next to Facebook, or a little bit better than Facebook. So YouTube, if you can find a way that taps into that market that is engaging. And I think that's the tough thing with selling books is finding a way of selling your books on YouTube. I don't think anyone has hit the perfect formula for that yet, but at the very least you can, if you can try out some videos, you could try them on Facebook and YouTube and see if you can kind of get people hooked in, try your book trailers, just make sure they're really, really good and really engaging and not boring. Jesper (21m 17s): Yeah. I would not spend time on that to be honest. But yeah. Well we had our little spell with YouTube already. Autumn. So yeah, we gave up on that quite a long time ago. Autumn (21m 30s): I don't, as I said, I don't think anyone, there's some people who do very well on YouTube and it takes a ton of work, more work than I think most people appreciate. And I still don't think when it comes to selling actual books, like being there as an author, not trying to sell a service, I don't think anyone has cracked that nut. So Hey, you could be the first one. Good luck. Jesper (21m 51s): Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. Should we move on to gen X? Yeah. These people are born between 1965 and 1979. So this, Autumn (22m 9s): Yes, this is us. This is ours. And it's even includes my husband. If you count as you, the years you gave also includes something called they call them Zen, not millennials zinnias, which is starts with an X because they are the, a group that's, they're not really millennials. They're not really gen X. They're kind of squished in between. They call them a micro-generation, but they tend to go both ways. It can be a little bit more millennial. They can be a little more or gen X. And that's my husband. He's a little younger than me. There are some differences, but not much. But what is neat about these two generations or this generation micro-generation is we are the first ones who have an analog childhood. Autumn (22m 51s): We had a childhood of books and playing outside and hearing about computers in the basement of giant colleges, you know, but never seeing one until we hit our teenage years. So our adulthood has been taken over by the internet and the digital age, but our childhood, we remember playing war and kick the can and running through hayfields. At least I do. It was much more, much more a hands-on and physical. And as I say, analog, and we're the last generation who has that memory of the time before computers, which is kind of Sky Net App or something. Jesper (23m 28s): Yeah. Nobody, it's actually quite funny because as well, sometimes I've been, I've been talking to my sons about, you know, when we got the very first computer at home, when I was a kid or like teenage young teenager, we've got the very first computer. And I was trying to explain to them how it actually felt, you know, to get the first compete because they don't understand because computers has always been part of their life and they don't get the fact that once you sit down and for the first time ever, you use this kind of machine that has never existed before. And then I was showing them on YouTube. I found some old clips of what the games looked like back then. Jesper (24m 9s): And they were looking at me like, are you crazy? I was like, but you don't understand. That was amazing back then. Yeah. Just some pixels moving on a screen was amazing. Autumn (24m 21s): If you've been that the first time I did a, a game, that was, it was mushing. So multi-user shared hallucination. I did the college. And the fact that, you know, you could be on at 1:00 AM and you're talking to someone in New Zealand and all you had literally was texts on a screen. We didn't even have pixels for the, some of the sites I was on. And I was just like, oh my gosh, you're in Australia, New Zealand, you're in Asia. This is amazing. I can't, I still have an email that I found recently from my dad, one of the first ones on my account that somehow got saved. And it was like, I can't believe it was when I was studying abroad in Manchester, UK. And I was like, I can't believe you, you know, you asked me for this and I just sent it to you and you have it instantly. Autumn (25m 2s): I mean, mail was two weeks long and I could chat with my dad, like, and get information, something I needed from him like that. Well, as long as it took the attachment to upload and download, which is like still an eternity compared to today, but back then 10 minutes for an attachment, you're like, cut, thank you so much. You just saved my life. It was amazing. And I still have one of those original emails and it's just cool. It's cool to think back saying this was huge, huge, huge, huge. Jesper (25m 31s): Yeah, it is. Yeah. And it's so difficult to explain to people who are not gen Xs, what that felt like, but, but it, I think it's Autumn (25m 40s): Pretty cool. It is. I am sure there is. Jesper (25m 42s): And you also pointed out in your post how sorry I interrupted you Autumn (25m 48s): And I'm sure there's listeners who are like, yeah, this is so cool. This thing. No. Jesper (25m 53s): Yeah, yeah. And also you pointed out in your post to how during the teenage years of G annexes, we were influenced by dragon lands and dragons RPG and stuff. And I instantly thought, yes, that's right. Autumn (26m 10s): Yes. That is, that came out usually most of our formative years. So if we're a fantasy fan, it might've started before dragon lands. For me, it started before dragon lands with Anne McCaffrey. But when it came out, it became this huge phenomenon, especially getting to play the role-playing game. Of course, on the side of that, our parents, we were going through the satanic panic, which I mentioned later in some of the other generations. But yeah, it was such a big donor that we, you know, we often hid the fact that we're into Dungeons and dragons from our parents. Lest we be have our games taken away or not be allowed to see your friends anymore, but it was sort of one of the first, I mean, token was big, but I think dragon lands really defines a lot of our generation and our love of fantasy and the type of fantasy. Autumn (26m 57s): Maybe we still enjoy because it's changed a lot, but there's still a core of those stories that have the ELs, the dwarves that are still so much a derivative of token very closely. Jesper (27m 10s): Yeah. And, and the whole thing about a, you know, like an adventure group, like in, in dragon lands, like there, they are a group that goes out together and all that stuff. Right. That's very trophy nowadays as well. And I also liked, which I also felt like hit home in your article was that we like to do research before we buy. So we are checking on the internet for reviews and, and you know, other competitors, other products and stuff like that, which I definitely recognize because I do that myself, whenever I need to buy something, I'm going to check reviews. I'm going to do some, a bit of internet research to see, you know, is there some, a better alternatives or is this really the best product and stuff like that? Jesper (27m 52s): So, so I definitely recognize myself in, in that as well. Autumn (27m 57s): Yes. I think that is a very funny trait. We weren't born into the internet age, but we helped shape it. And we certainly helped shape it as a marketing platform. So a lot of us that are entrepreneurs, we know our way in and out of the marketplace and in and out of running businesses online and we do our research, we will check out comparisons. We will look at competitors, we will check the reviews, we'll read the reviews. So we're not a spontaneous buyer. We are the one that when they say it takes at least seven to 11 times of seeing an ad before someone will go and look at your book, that's us. Yeah. We will not go buy your book just because you sell it on. Instagram will be like, yeah, that's nice. You don't hook us on the first bite. Autumn (28m 38s): Not even close, we're going to check you out. We'll think about it. And compared to boomers. So was it a lot of more research and we are a smaller generation. We're not 72 million. We're like 68, I think. So there's less of us. And I can't remember what percentage of the wealth we have, but obviously boomers have almost half. And we have about half of what's left somewhere around 25%. So we're doing pretty Jesper (29m 1s): Good. We're doing pretty Autumn (29m 2s): Good. We were getting into our, you know, forties now and we're, we're okay. We're doing well. You know, our most famous, I think gen X-er is Elon Musks. So we, you know, some of us have done really well. None of the rest of us are working on that. We're definitely a generation of doing our research. We have some money, but we're pretty much, we've worked really hard to earn our money at this point. And we don't let it go as quickly. So you can get us with a coupon. We will launch, we will jump into an email marketing to get a coupon. That's fine. We know how email marketing works because we probably set it up ourselves. That's just how we, we know how it all works. Autumn (29m 44s): So we'll sign up for something. We'll get on a list. And I thought it was funny. One of the biggest things about our generation is we'll stick with you. We like brands. We like people until they say something we don't like. And then it was like, you're gone. You have one chance to lose us. And you say something we find offensive, or we don't agree with like, you're gone unsubscribe. So we're the, also the unsubscribed generation, Jesper (30m 7s): Right? Yeah. So I think in overall from a book selling perspective, this is where you're, you know, building up your reviews are really important. That's at least that's going to help to convince a gen X person to actually buy your book. Autumn (30m 22s): Yes. Jesper (30m 24s): Move on to millennials. Autumn (30m 25s): Okay. Well, I want to wrap up one quick thing. So gen X is, are on Facebook, so you can still market to them. We're also on Instagram. And I agree if you're going to try to hook a gen X-er, you're probably gonna have to spend a lot more money than you would with a boomer and reviews. Being able to say other people have liked this, be very open with your reviews. That's how you're going to get them more interested than saying we're great. I write just like token and they're not going to buy that Jesper (30m 53s): Molina. Millennial. Stan is born from 1981 to 1996. So these are the people who actually grew up fully in the internet age. And probably most of them probably don't even know what life before computers. Autumn (31m 11s): No, if they have any interesting to me. Yeah. I can't imagine. So they have any recollection of life before computers. They will have memories of life before smartphones. So they might remember flip phones and cell phones. So that's kind of, you know, I can at least relate to that a little bit, but they grew up knowing computers, building computers, and they they're pretty snazzy and know their way around the marketing. What's surprised me is I thought, for sure, all the millennials, they get such a bad rap as being like the more self-centered generation. But at the same time, the oldest ones are in their forties. You know, they're taking their kids to college, they've grown up, but they are really still really good online. Autumn (31m 56s): And I thought they'd all be off of Facebook, but there's still a majority of them on Facebook. And after that Instagram, I mean, those are the two big ones of where you can find still millennials somehow. I don't know how Facebook keeps everyone, but they do. Jesper (32m 12s): Yeah, they do. Yeah. But also things like Twitter and Twitter and tick-tock and that kind of place, they also hanging out. Autumn (32m 19s): Yeah. They're sick talk is especially coming up, but there are, yeah, there are a little more broad spectrum. So it's harder to find out exactly like in what was interesting. It doesn't that study this statistic. I was quoting didn't show if they were on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, which most likely they are, but there could be some orders. Like, are you here or here or here? I mean, this is one of the ones. If you're marketing to them, you're going to have to market to our broad base. Cause I'm not quite sure where they are and how often they're seeing you. Jesper (32m 53s): Yeah. And again, the majority is watching YouTube here. Amazing. Again, I'm not so sure about this. I mean, it's interesting of course, to know that the majority is watching YouTube, but I don't think that they are watching YouTube from a book perspective. So they're just using it as it as entertainment. So there's also means that I I'm not, I don't think that you want you to conclude out of this, that you should try to sell books on YouTube to these people. That's not the point here. No. Autumn (33m 21s): Oh, I think you'll good luck with that. If you can find a way, but yeah. I think they're pretty much on YouTube. Like you said, for entertainment, maybe tutorials. I mean, my that's my favorite use of YouTube. I must be so boring, but I'm on it to watch tutorials on how to, to stuff. Yeah. I wouldn't do it yourself or that's how it works. Jesper (33m 41s): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and also for the millennials, you know, they have a very, very large population-based there even lots of than the boomers, but as you pointed out in your article as well, they, on the other hand, they don't have that much cash compared to our gen Xs. We have like five, five times the wealth of the millennials and they are many more than we are. So I think money wise, they usually operate with a fairly limited budget. Yes. Autumn (34m 16s): I agree. There tend to be educated. And I think gen Z are even going to be more educated than millennials, but millennials tend to be educated. Their careers really haven't taken off, even though, I mean, they can be as old as 40, but they're still struggling. We'll get to the statistic when we talk to gen Z, but gen Z and millennials combined, combined, which has a huge amount of population. That's 68 million plus like 72 million somewhere in there. They only have 6% of the U S wealth 6%. So if you're a marketing to anyone who is 40 and younger, we're talking about someone who has only 6% of the U S wealth. They're going to be inheriting quite a lot from baby boomer parents. Autumn (34m 57s): I think it was like 68 trillion. But again, the wealthiest are going to inherit. The most, most people are going to just inherit, maybe a nice modest sum. And then you take out the inheritance tax, which is like 50%. They're not going to be made wealthy overnight. And that was 68 trillion by 2030. So they still have some ears and that's a good a statistic. So that's going to be up and down. It's going to be some sooner. Some later may remind me later. So they're not a very wealthy generation. If you're marketing to them, this is the one you want to be trying free giveaways. They will sign up for free giveaways and free coupons. And again, these are people who have grown up with the internet. Autumn (35m 37s): They have probably started their own businesses in high school. They know how it works. They know what happens when they sign up. Most often they've done it probably a million times and they, but they will do it. They will sign up to check out something and to give a sample, they'll go for the free sample. It might be the best way to hook them. However, they might not be able to afford to go buy all your books right away. They might have the budget for them. They might be the ones on Kindle unlimited. That's going to be the best deal for them because they don't have a ton of money. You want to keep these aspects in mind that, you know, they're the ones who are looking for things. But the nice thing is, is since I grew up in the internet age and because they have a limited amount of money, they're also really good at research. Autumn (36m 19s): They're really into reading reviews. And they're huge at social media, leaving reviews and telling people if they loved or hated you. So these are the influencer generation. They're the ones who, if they like you, they're going to show the unboxing. They're going to give you reviews. They're going to give you a huge shout out. However, they are definitely not brand second shirt. They are quality centric. So they might stick to you for a while. But if they find something better, they're going to move to something better. So you might not be able to hold on to these as tightly, as you might a boomer who was going to basically keep you in cherished for the last breath. Jesper (37m 3s): Yeah. And of course the good news is that the eBooks, at least, I mean, these people are very used to the, you know, technology and so on. So eBooks is not a problem. And then the other part of it is of course as well that they might not have a lot of wealth, but eBooks are like a couple of bucks. So for most of them, they, I think they should be able to afford a couple of bucks for an ebook. Otherwise they have a lot of problems, but not to say that some don't of course, but, but I think there's quite a big, I mean, because they aren't, there are so many of these that a lot of them will have the money to buy a three, four, $5 ebook. So yeah, it's good to know of course, to be mindful that they are operating on a limited budget. Jesper (37m 48s): And like you just said, autumn, this, just to me, that doesn't mean so much about them not being able to afford the books. I think it more speaks to the fact that you have to write really good books too, to keep these people reading. Otherwise they they'll just not buy any more from you. Then they'll go jump on onto another author or something instead, and try to read some other books. But because they might, you might be able to hook them to buy one book, but they're not going to continue reading the series unless they really find it really good. Yeah. So for me, I think that's the important part. Yeah. Autumn (38m 21s): Yeah. I agree. And I'm though, I do, I have met a, quite a few that have mentioned that, you know, they have a book budget, you know, they can only, they, everything is budgeted in their life because they only have so much money and you know, the good ones don't go over, but that's why things like Kindle unlimited are such good deals and they're going for the deals. So if there's a way, if they love reading and they want to be able to read as many books as possible in a month, they're going to read Kindle unlimited. And that's why I think you see Kindle unlimited being such a huge, you know, inducement, why so many people are a part of it because it's a good deal. If you're a serial reader and you only have like 4% of the entire U S wealth. Yeah, I do it. Not a problem. Jesper (38m 60s): Yeah. Okay. So Jen C born between 1997 and two, 2012. So that basically makes them between six years old and 24 at this point in time, they are so there's a lot of them, nearly 68 million people in the U S here. Autumn (39m 21s): So this is another big generation, almost the same as a gen X. So this is like our, our shadow copy gen Z and admittedly they're young. So there's not a ton of market research on them yet, but it's up and coming. They're starting to make their waves known in the world. But again, combined gen Z combined with gen with millennials, only 6% of the U S well, so tiny amount. So they're even less. They have even less than millennials because they're just getting into the workforce. If they finish their education, they almost, all of them have at least one parent that graduated from college and a lot of them are going on to do master's program. They're going to be one of the highest educated generations. Autumn (40m 2s): And so because of that, a lot of them are not in the workforce or working full time. So they have even less money going around. They have also never known a world without smartphones, and that's just terrible by amazing, amazing. They are, you know, they're going to, the next generation is going to come with USB plugs installed. I swear. They just know their way around. Exactly. So they're there. The biggest thing I think in the reason I included them, even though they're not much marketing research is that if you are targeting Y a young adult readers, you're targeting gen Z. So go and look and see what they're doing. Autumn (40m 43s): Of course, I thought it was so funny when I looked at why stats 50% of why readers are adults they're older than 24. So that's, you know, gen X of even boomers, millennials, they're all reading. Why are they just doing a secretly? But technically gen Z is your target audience. If you're Yia. So you should know where they are, what they're doing, how they buy books. This is really important for you to take a look at it and see where they're hanging out, which again is pretty much all over from Tik TOK to F to Facebook, to YouTube, to Snapchat. Tick-tock rising pretty quickly. Jesper (41m 26s): Yeah. I think for these people, you know, think of somebody who's grown up with computers, they grown up with smartphones, they grown up with apps. So it's really important if you want to engage with these people online, which is like the main place where you should be engaging with them, all the, like, you know, nice images, nice user interfaces, eh, corresponding with them through commons and in chats and you know, the whole community building thing. That's the key here. So yeah, to me, like for, for somebody, a, a gen X person, I already feel like, oh, this sounds stressful. Jesper (42m 9s): All the, all the million interactions in commenting on all these different social media platforms. I don't know. It's not my thing to be honest. But I think for these people, for the GNCs, it's important for them, this, this is how they, to a last degree, that's how they view relationships. A lot of their relationships are online. So it's, it's yeah. For, for, for somebody from a gen X, this is just like a different planet kind of thing. Autumn (42m 41s): I mean, they consider their life online almost equal to their physical life. It is about equally important, 50 50, which yeah. As a gen X or having remembered like life offline that I still prefer, you know, to be offline quite a lot. We're the, we're the generation that's like, I'm digging a social media break. I mean, I think gen Z is like, that's half of my life. I would never go offline, but they want the fine touch. They want the, they want community. If you want to get gen Z ears into loving your WIA books, you have to build community. You have to have interaction and beautiful photos and you have to have video. They like video. So they want to see all of these things and you've got to be chatting with them and you've got to be dynamic. Autumn (43m 21s): And you've got to also be really aware. And this is what I've been reading some way books. And the change is so non they're, non token, not at all. If you want to go read like the shadow and bone, the Grisha series of Krisha verse, it's so different from what I was reading as a teenager, there's very few elves, very few dwarves, very few overs. It's almost all humans and different races and their interactions. And, you know, they'll have issues of transgender and homosexuality. It's all there and it's very open. And those are the concerns rather than, you know, a quest group it's totally different. And it's kind of, to me, it was really a refreshing to read. Autumn (44m 3s): It was very exciting to read very different, but it is a completely different audience. And it's interesting. You got to go in and hang out with them and see what they're doing and be on Tik TOK and be very engaged and fun and have that community, and also have the coupons and the free books and Canon limited, because that is definitely how you're going to be able to hook them. At least have one series in Kindle unlimited. If you're doing WIA, because they're in school, they don't got much money. Don't make them pay for everything. They're probably getting it as a Christmas present from their parents. Jesper (44m 38s): It sounds like way too much work on them. I'm already tired. Autumn (44m 42s): And you have kids, your kids are technically gen Z or Jesper (44m 48s): Yeah, but I, yeah, that part is fine. But I marketing to these people sounds like way too much. Autumn (44m 55s): Yeah. I probably is. But just have your train, your kids to do it. You'll, there'll be naturals. That's why you have kids, maybe your marketing managers. True. Jesper (45m 6s): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was talking to my oldest son because he's about to, he wants to start his own YouTube channel. He wants to do like a, well, like a true GNC, I guess. Right. So he wants to build a YouTube channel and he wants to, you know, do like those gaming videos and stuff like that. And then I was trying, I w I was trying to be like the good dad who has been, you know, I've been doing the YouTube thing for us as well and all that stuff. So I was, I started talking about something because we were talking about the intro and outro music thing that you put on videos and stuff like that. And I was sort of saying to him, well, just be mindful that you know, that some of that is copyrighted. Jesper (45m 49s): You can't just take some music for wherever. And he was like, yeah, yeah. I know all of that as you do. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I also know where to find it. Okay. So he knows all of it. I bet you, like, in, in four months, you'll will know more about YouTube than I ever knew. Autumn (46m 6s): We're going to be hiring him as our social media manager. Just watch the, Jesper (46m 11s): Yes. They just, yeah. They notice stuff. They do know this stuff. Okay. But what can we sort of conclude out of all this order, Autumn (46m 19s): That if you're a gen X-er and marketing to G and you're not doing Y a and marketing to gen Z and millennial sounds too much market to boomers, try it. I would S I would love to know if anyone is specifically choosing like a Facebook audience saying, you know, 50 and older, and, you know, just finding the right words, because again, they will actually spend money. They will go buy your books. Possibly. Like I said, you should have paper books available, but they will read online. As lot of them have adapted to like the Kindle paper, whites and stuff that feel more like a book that look more like a book. I want to know if anyone's doing that because after reading this, I'm like, they have money. They're impulsive, they're brand centric. Autumn (46m 60s): They sound like they have, they're retired. They have time to read. They sound like the gift of book marketing right there. Go for boomers. I want to know if anyone else is because it's totally rethought. I'm like, I now see why, if you're marketing to gen X, you're going to be marketing forever to try to get them to get, you know, give you a try. They'll give you a try, but they're, you know, they're booked, they're tired. They've got kids, they do their research. They're going to be so hard sell to, and the rust, you know, they don't have much money. These are not a huge 6% of the wealth they're going to be. It's going to take some time to get gen Z and millennials to want to spend money on you, unless you've got a really good deal. Autumn (47m 43s): But boomers, you know, 50% of the U S wealth, lots of free time, impulsive shoppers. Oh, I love you. I have to admit in some of my best emails, I put that in the post, some of the best emails I've ever gotten and the lengthiest emails, because boomers will correspond with you and they will stick with you. My biggest fans have all been boomers, but it took until I wrote that article to valet, oh, this is why they care. And they want to get to know you and they will stay with you and they will love you. And maybe they're not going to give you as big as a shout-out as a millennial or a gen Z, because they're going to spread you all over the internet. Autumn (48m 23s): They're going to love you in a really compassionate way. So I want to know if anyone's marketing to boomers. Cause I think it's totally a way to go. Jesper (48m 32s): Yeah. So let us know. And hopefully you got a bit of a inspiration for, you know, well, at least on the Facebook ads, you can target different age brackets. So at least now, you know, for your Facebook ads, at least some things to consider and think about on Amazon ads, obviously there's no way to select certain age groups and so on. So there you, yeah, it doesn't help much, but yeah, but at least with the Facebook ads, I think this is very useful. Autumn (49m 5s): Yes. And in the posts on patron, I actually went into maybe some suggested images because each generation has different traits of the type of images that call to them. So again, come, go check out the post on Patriana. If you're a member or join for a dollar a month, then go check it out and see what the suggestions are. Jesper (49m 24s): Okay, good. So next Monday, autumn has a very special interview lined up for you. It's about how to write fight scenes. And for us fantasy authors that is highly relevant. Narrator (49m 36s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the and writing fantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy for as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

Una de las temáticas que más nos gustan en Solo en Balda debía de tener su programa especial en este vuestro amado podcast, así que sí, hoy en Solo en Balda hablamos de SAIFAI o lo que es lo mismo, juegos de ciencia ficción!!! Adéntrate en el espacio exterior con nosotros y junto a Kaneda que hoy nos visita desde Neo-Tokyo. Además, comentamos comentarios, noticias golosonas, hablamos de lo que hemos jugado y hacemos alguna que otra recomendación. Juegos comentados: Tainted Grail Conflict of Heroes Hoplomachus: Victorum Broken Compass Space Empires 4x Imperial Assault Core Space Stargrave Galaxy Defenders Firefly Adventures Gears of War Terminator Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress Sine Tempore Deep Madness X-Wing Escape The Dark Sector Renegade Space Hulk: Death Angel Cielos de Metal Conquest of Planet Earth Legendary Alien Terraforming Mars Gaia Project Race for the Galaxy Defiance Ironsworn: Starforged Nemesis Lifeform Fallout Talon Stars of Akarios XIA Too Many Bones Pathfinder Spirit Island Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion Arkham Horror LCG Bloodborne

Join Autumn and special guest Bryan Cohen to discuss AMS ads, book blurbs, and, oh yeah, the worst advertising mistake authors can make. Bryan is an expert on book blurbs and his free AMS ad challenges have helped thousands of authors learn the ropes of using Amazon ads. Does that mean AMS ads are hitting saturation? What might be the next big move for self-published authors to connect with readers? We discuss that and more! Check out Bryan's podcast the Sell More Books Show at https://sellmorebooksshow.com/. And learn more about Bryan on his website: http://bryancohen.com/. Join Bryan's January 2021 AMS challenge at https://bryancohen.lpages.co/january-amazon-ad-challenge-2021-ov4/ Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.   SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.   Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (1s): You're listening to the am writing fantasy podcast in today's publishing landscape. You can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt, and Jesper Schmidt. Autumn (30s): Welcome to the am. Writing Tennessee podcast. This is episode one Oh five I'm autumn. And today Yesper has the recording session off and I have with the very special guest instead author and entrepreneurial Brian Cohen. Whoa. Welcome to the writing fantasy podcast. Brian, Bryan (50s): Thank you, autumn. I appreciate you having me. We had some nice technical difficulties figuring this out, but I'm so glad we were able to make it work Autumn (1m 0s): Well. It's always nice working with someone who is probably, I mean, you do live webinars and all these other things. So I have a feeling you can roll with the technical difficulties very well. I wasn't worried. Hey, that's the nice thing is, is with modern technology. There's always a workaround. There's at least like three or four, so we figured it out and you're here and I'm so excited for you to join us today. So I know you through these amazing AFS ad challenges you run, but I had of course heard of your name way before the AMS ad challenges, because you were known as like a guru of book blurbs, but I know that's not even close to everything you've done. Autumn (1m 43s): So if you could introduce yourself, that would be fantastic. Bryan (1m 48s): Sure. Of course. Well, of late, the big thing that I I've been doing is I run these free courses that we, we talk about them as challenges, these free challenges about Amazon advertising. One of the, the, the strangest weirdest little advertising platform is Kindle author them. And it's our goal to try to just make it simpler, but it also try to make them not spend all of your money. And those are the five day Amazon ad profit challenges and, and I've been running them and I have a really good team behind them and it's a lot of fun, but originally I would say some people might know me from my podcast, the some more books show, some people might know me from the author copywriting agency. Bryan (2m 47s): I run best page forward. We write book descriptions and ad copy, and I'm an author myself having written multiple young adult scifi fantasy. Depends on it. Depends on where you're placing superheroes. Amazon has a category on both sides. Autumn (3m 6s): Oh, that's so is it like more techie? So it ends up in this Saifai side or if it's more magic it's on the fantasy side or is that, Oh, Hey, that's excellent. Bryan (3m 20s): But yeah, so I am not currently writing fantasy, but I have been in the state of M writing fantasy in, in the past. So hopefully I still qualify. Autumn (3m 32s): Oh, absolutely. And I mean, just for your expertise alone, I think it's fantastic. I, I said, I've done at least two or three of your AMS ad challenges and I learn something new every single time. They amazing. And so it's great to have you on here, but yeah, you, you get some of the fantasy mindset and the world-building and the powers and making rules so that people, you know, aren't going crazy and can do anything in their God. And that just makes it so less tense and fun. Yes, this is true. Well, I mean, there's so many things we could talk about. It was hard to choose even a focus other than I know, you know, I know you threw AMS at challenges, but you help authors so much with the marketing. Autumn (4m 19s): And I mean, market from the book, blurbs to the AMS ads, are you aware when authors market books with all your experience and all the people you've helped, what do you think is the number one thing authors do wrong when they're trying to get their book out there in the world? Bryan (4m 37s): Well, I think it has to start with, with the foundation of the book. The, I don't know who invented it, but I'll, I'll borrow it and not take credit for it. But writing the book with the marketing in mind is so key. When I, the first, I think I remember it being like conceptualized for me when a few years ago, when Adam Croft a very successful mystery and thriller author, he talks started talking about writing the hook, the, the, the first line of the book description, the thing that could be used on ads, the copy, as some people call it to write that before the book. Bryan (5m 28s): And I just thought, well, how smart is that? If you don't even have a good hook, if you don't even have something that would get people excited about it, chances are you're going to have a hard time getting people excited about your book. So I loved the idea of writing that, that big one-liner, even before the book. And I've heard of some people writing the book description for a book before they write the book. And I think that that is a thing that a lot of people get wrong is they write the book and then they do all the marketing stuff after. Bryan (6m 14s): But really you might want to start by doing some of the marketing work first to make sure you're writing a book that you're going to put so much effort into that, that there will actually be people who are interested in, Autumn (6m 30s): Right. Oh, I should say whew. Cause I, I definitely one of those people who I do write little descriptions before I start writing, and then I refer back to it. Cause that's, it's one thing to come up with an idea and develop it with a description or a hook, but then you have to make sure you actually pay attention to it. Not you're like halfway through the novel and go, Oh, that's not even close to what I'm doing. It kind of it's, it should guide you not be this exercise that you put aside and don't even think about until you're done. And then you realize you're completely off the rails. Bryan (7m 1s): Oh yeah, no, absolutely. I was working with a friend of mine who was trying to write the market and trend. It was a paranormal cozy mystery and she sent over the book description and I read it and I thought, you know, I don't think this is paranormal cozy. At least not the way the book descriptions written. And I check in with her, you definitely want to write in this genre. Right? She says, yes. And I said, all right, well, let me connect you with someone who writes a lot of paranormal cozy and she can give you opinions on what would need to change. Bryan (7m 43s): And certain like setting pieces and character motivations and tropes as they are often referred to changing those in that early stage of the game has now made her a huge, like on the edge of five figure author per month access. And it start. And obviously I'm not taking credit for that. She, she has written out 13 books in that series, but when you take a minute, take a breath, share it with some experts, share it with some people in that early, early stage, it could be worth a lot of money, but it could also just be worth like helping you to write the book you were meant to write. Bryan (8m 39s): Anyway, Autumn (8m 40s): That's true. Or even just drawing out some of the, the tidbits. I like the tropes, like you mentioned, like, well, did you consider this? This is popular right now, or that's been overdone. So stay away from it. It could save you months of writing to write something. You could've gone a different way. And it might've been a little bit better. I have to been I've recently did read Chris Fox's book right to market. And we had him on the podcast, but of course we didn't. We talked about Kickstarter and not his right to market books, but it's wonderful. Pretty cool. But I do really appreciate the idea. I think a lot of authors, you know, they hear that right to market and they think, Oh, you know, you're, you're taking away the, the, the fun of it, the innovation of it. Autumn (9m 27s): But it's not really that it's sort of looking at it from a business perspective, saying I'm going to spend this many months of my life and probably give up some things like family time. So I can do this. And I want to invest that wisely with something that I really would like to do well, at least as well as the best chance it has. Bryan (9m 46s): Yeah. I have an analogy that might help those. So I used to do improv comedy. Anyone who's ever been to an improv comedy show, you know, that they often take suggestions from the audience and like a word or I've, I've been to a show where they use a title of a musical, or they use a news story that they have to read out loud and then they, they will take that inspiration and they will use that to inspire them for a scene. You might think you get some weird suggestion. Of course, people are always trying to use potty words, whatever, but at least drinking on a Friday, Saturday night. Autumn (10m 33s): So just setting the idea there. Yeah, Bryan (10m 36s): Exactly. But you've got this word that you think, Oh, this might constrain me, but I have seen words and concepts and titles and news stories inspire incredible things. Even though you might think that word or that concept would constrain you, it it's really what you do with it. What you do within that framework. That is where the creative process happens. I mean, Shakespeare's plays are nearly all adaptations and they have stood the test of time, even though they weren't his original idea. Bryan (11m 21s): He took these concepts, these other plays, these stories, these pieces of history. And within that framework created something we're still talking about 400 plus years later. Autumn (11m 37s): That's a great analogy. And it really does bring it home. I agree with you. I had never considered it in terms of Shakespeare. And I only have this complete work sitting on my bookshelf and I've read most of them. So that's Oh yes, I, yeah. That's a whole different conversation, but that is fantastic. Bryan (11m 58s): That and the Shakespeare podcast. Autumn (12m 0s): Oh, excellent. I will see you there. As soon as we find it. Bryan (12m 5s): Great. Autumn (12m 6s): Send me the link. So that's wonderful. And that kind of develops too. So obviously, I mean, I already know you, you like to, you're so good at writing blurbs. You even teach in the AMS ads, challenges, you teach a little bit of blurb writing and how to hone them and refine them. And I have to admit, so it's a nice to hear that you, you, you think that they should be part of like the original story development, it leads so much into your marketing and that's where you grow it. And you've seen probably thousands of blurbs. I mean, what do you think authors get wrong the most when they're developing it? Because I love you have a very solid strategy of saying, you know, sentence one, sentence two. I have it like copy and pasted in my Scrivener file when I'm developing my blurb. Autumn (12m 50s): I just already have it copied there so I can look at it and develop mine. Yeah. I really am thrilled to have you here today. Bryan (12m 58s): Oh well, I'm, I am honored, but I think the thing people th that they struggle with is, is I think partly it's not getting themselves in the right mindset in the right framework. And you might hear some buzzing. I, I am in a hotel rooms, a fear just came on, but it is what it is when you are trying to fit in a blurb in the 30 or so minutes that you've allocated for yourself and not realizing that this is a piece of marketing. Bryan (13m 42s): This is a piece of poetry's someone whoever created, just do it. The slogan for Nike probably hammered on it for eight hours. I mean, you aren't necessarily going to be able to complete something that is going to make every reader who stumbles upon it excited unless you give it the time that is needed and the space and for it to be your creative time, not your well, I do my writing in the morning and I do my marketing after three o'clock when I'm half falling asleep, you need your creative time to work on this piece of the marketing, because that piece of the marketing is something that requires creativity. Autumn (14m 35s): Yes. So you'd definitely recommend probably coming back a couple of times, not, you know, you're 30 minutes and you're done and never look at it again. Bryan (14m 45s): Yes, definitely. Don't do that. You don't know if you have any typos, you should check. Oh. And share your blurb with your editor when you are writing the book, because then they will catch the mistakes that you don't catch yourself. Autumn (15m 4s): Yes. That's a very good point. And I definitely have seen some what looked like very well sounding blurbs online, but then yeah, you read them and you notice, you know, sometimes it's little things come as a periods, but sometimes it is a word wrong. You're like, Oh, I can always, always do a good deed and let your author know so that they can figure it out. Yeah. Bryan (15m 25s): You see something about a blurb, say something about a blurb. Autumn (15m 28s): Yes. That's a very good idea. Well, I mean, we've mentioned the AMS challenges you've run. So just, just in case there's an author out there who is not aware of AMS ads and what they are. Could you give a quick description of what they are and how did you come up with doing these challenges? Bryan (15m 49s): Oh, that's a great question. So Amazon ads, AMS ads, whatever you want to call them. These are the ads that you see on Amazon. When you're searching for a book, when you type something into the search bar, you'll often notice there's some ads at the top. There's some ads kind of interspersed in the search results. And then there's also some ads that show up on every page, every book page, there's a carousel. You'll see a little sponsored icon when you know the hat. Those are, those are the ads. And those ads are placed by publishers or other authors who are run through the Amazon advertising platform. Bryan (16m 36s): And they will bid what they want to spend per click. They say, I want to bid 40 cents per click. And then someone, if, if a reader clicks on the ad and then goes to check out your book page, you get charged for that click. So you would get charged 40 cents or a little bit less for someone to click onto that ad. And the goal of course is to bid low enough so that you're not paying so much per click because you could bid $5 per cent. I know people who've accidentally bid $5 and get $5 clicks. Bryan (17m 20s): Chances are, if your book is selling for $2 and 99 cents, that is not going to be a effective use of your money. No. Yeah. And so if that's part of the game is bidding low enough. The other part of the game is, and it goes back to the blurb. It goes to the cover. It goes to how well something has been written to market. You want to get a sale for as few number of clicks as possible. Because even if you're, if you're getting clicks for 10 cents, if it takes 40 clicks for someone to buy your book, well, then you're going to be paying $4 every time you sell a book. Bryan (18m 5s): And if your book's two 99, and then you're, you're not going to be making that money. So you play the game of getting as low as you can and still getting traction and making sure that your book converts with as few clicks as possible. I like to say about six to eight clicks. I used to say 10, but now I say six to eight clicks because some books are shorter. Some books are standalones and, and ten one sale for every 10 clicks. Sometimes isn't profitable. So about six to eight, especially if the books in Kindle unlimited six to eight clicks per sale is a good ratio for profitability and then trying to keep that bid low. Bryan (18m 59s): So that was the, just the answer to the first question, answer to the second question is I I've, I've been pretty fortunate to connect with a few people who have really had success running challenges. One of the first challenges I ever joined as a participant was a challenge called the simple green smoothies. Oh, I know. And I was very fortunate to be in a mastermind group, which is a group of entrepreneurs or group of people trying to use their smarts together. Bryan (19m 45s): So it's the master mind. And this, this group had one of the co-founders of the simple green smoothie challenge in it. And one of the things that her name is Jada Sellner. And one of the things I learned from her was that challenge for spending $0 on marketing brought in over a million people. Wow. Oh, that's amazing. Or challenges. Sound cool. Yeah. So seeing that challenge and seeing other challenges, I knew I really wanted to do one and it was just a matter of trying to figure out, well, what about Amazon ads? Bryan (20m 32s): Could we do a challenge about, and really, I think that the thing a lot of people struggle with is the creation of these ads. And so if we could provide as much support as possible, the right documentation, the right to help people get over every technical hurdle, mental hurdle, just like a glitch hurdle, Autumn (20m 60s): Time hurdle, just making the time for it. Yes. Bryan (21m 4s): And getting over all of those in a short period of time. I think that I thought that people would, would really take to it. And we've been very fortunate that word of mouth is good. We, we do spend a lot of money on marketing, our own thing. And, and now we're on our sixth one and it's been over 20,000 people have taken the challenges. Autumn (21m 30s): That's fantastic. And they are, they're a great motivational. I mean, if you, if you're tempted to do AMS ads and you just don't know where to start, or you're just, you know, you can go find all this research in different places and just not take the time to synthesize it. And you just put it in front of you and you give a deadline and you have people supporting you and commenting on your stuff and, you know, helping you out. It's like, it's a whirlwind, but you get through it. And you do finally, if it's, if there's some hurdle for you to start, you kind of get beyond it. The next thing you know, you're doing AMS ads and it's amazing and it's been a month. And then the, you know, the next challenge comes up and you have to join that one too, because you always have something new to learn. And it's like nano Ramo. Autumn (22m 10s): You know, you're, you're joining with a bunch of authors. And I see a lot of faces that I I've known. You know, I've been an author since 2012. So there's a lot of other writers I know, and you connect and you lose touch over time and then you reconnect and I've seen them in the challenge. So it's also been a great, like, Hey, how have you been doing, I haven't seen you for two years. So that's very, it's fun. It's a fun group that you do run and they're informative and helpful. Bryan (22m 37s): We, we really enjoy it. And, and I love fostering those connections. We need community more than ever right now. And so if I can play and my company and the people I work with can play a small role in providing some of that community. We are absolutely all for it. Autumn (22m 57s): No, I definitely think you do. And yes, 2020, especially we need our community a little bit more sympathetic and a few more extra arms to support us all this year. So with the AMS ads, do you think, I mean, you've noticed that, you know, your, your, the number of clicks, you've dropped it from 10 to six to eight. So do you think as well that there any keywords or genres that AMS ads might be getting saturated in? Is this something you're concerned about in the future? That, cause I noticed like Facebook ads, I had a golden age and now they're a lot harder to get traction on. Do you think the same thing will happen with the AMS ads? Bryan (23m 39s): I think it's very possible. I was at the 20, 1920 to 50 K conference and I was talking about ads and I mentioned that Amazon ads are under priced right now because a lot of people can and do make profit off it. And I didn't realize at first I was hearing a noise from the crowd and they were sh people were shushing me. They were like, there's Amazon ad reps in the, in the room. And I'm like, Oh, okay, sorry. Don't raise our prices. Come on to this point, they are still under priced and people can still make money off of them. Bryan (24m 20s): I think the very, very popular genres, your, your paranormal, your contemporary romance, those are going to be more saturated. There's no question. But one of the things that currently is true here in December, 2020, because things are always changing. But currently right now, because Amazon doesn't just focus on the price of your bid, but also on how relevant your book is, how similar your book is to the things you're targeting. Bryan (25m 4s): It's not just a care. I used to think that it was a ranking system and it was the first place as a $2 bid and second place as a dollar 80 in third place has a dollar 60. I used to think that I think it was Janet Margo, who can, who, who had worked with Amazon advertising and developing the platform. She was the one who I think was the first to inform me that actually you could have a 40 cent bid, 30 cent bid and be the first in the carousel. Oh, I didn't realize this. How is this possible? And it's because relevancy is such a huge factor. Bryan (25m 46s): If your book is so perfectly a coming of age fantasy, it's got the right cover. It's got the right title. People are clicking on it. People are buying it. The conversion rate is very good. And at the conversion rate, particularly from the ads is good. It's going to be higher up in the rankings than a book that isn't as well marketed. Autumn (26m 13s): It has a higher bid price. So that's interesting. Bryan (26m 17s): Right? So that's why you always want to target books that are very close to your own and you don't want to try more is not necessarily going to be better unless you can come up with more and more, very perfect targets. Autumn (26m 35s): Okay. Well, that's, that explains a lot of the strategies. Even you teach a refining the key words and finding the right books to target, because that's really the key to not spending a ton of money, but also getting your books seen. Bryan (26m 51s): Yes, exactly. Exactly. Autumn (26m 54s): Like I said, every time I talk to you, I learned more. So this is really, that's a good tip. Now I'm 30 thinking. Well, you do definitely. Oh, that's interesting. So you think, so, that's good to know that, you know, AMS has, are not saturated because they are working now and it's always important to find a way we've gone past the, you don't need to market. If you want your book seen, you basically need to market in some way, these years, 20, 20, 20, 21. It's, that's just the reality we're in we're now, you know, the book, big book publishers are, they're still out there, but there's enough indie authors that we're running this as a business that we've got to consider advertising anymore. Bryan (27m 36s): Yeah. It, it, I, I, you are an author since 2012. I started in 2010 and it used to be easier. Autumn (27m 44s): Yes. Oh my goodness. Yes. I refer to those early years as the wild West where, I mean, you could just dash up a book dash up a cover dash up, you know, something you wrote as a blurb and people would find it and buy it. And even if you did a five K Kendall, K you unlimited countdown, I mean, people would download it by the thousands because there was less than a million books, but it's a little Bryan (28m 12s): And thought that those books were paid. So your sales rank would be like, number one, afterwards, those, those were interesting times for funny glitches to be discovered that made some people very well. Autumn (28m 25s): Yes, it was good for them. I did not get on one of those glitches, but that's okay. I'm still doing it. I still love it. And I love helping other authors as well. I mean, it's just, it's half the community. I think this is one of the nicest communities you can find online or other authors. So it's just a really wonderful place to be. I agree. I agree so well, do you think though Amazon is always going to be the King either for finding books or the ads? I mean, do you think there's going to be eventually, maybe down the road another way for readers to discover authors? I know a lot of, as Amazon grows and they don't even give away how many books they now host on their platform and on their servers, it's, you know, people are saying eight and 9 million books easily. Autumn (29m 15s): What's going on. Do you think it's going to get too crowded? Is, is there going to be something else other than Amazon that readers will be able to find other authors or is it just going to be, you know, like really crowded beach we're in doing Scott, they're a little square and that's about it. Bryan (29m 31s): We've been, we've been waiting and hoping for someone to just come out of the gate and be the next Amazon. And there's definitely lots of smaller pockets of, of some people who are having some success on Kobo or Apple or Barnes and noble, but I'm most intrigued by people selling direct and what, I've, what I, I, I remember Michael Scott aro, who was, I believe his books were taken down from Amazon. Bryan (30m 20s): Amazon had said that there were some rules violated. I have no idea everything I consider allegedly until I see see some documentation on it, but from what I hear, and he was doing very, very well, top hundred, one of the top hundred authors on Amazon at the time and making a lot of money. A lot of it was from Kindle unlimited. A lot of it was from, from Amazon type sources of income. But from what I hear, he has used more of the crowdfunding and direct sales models based on a very, very large email list to just say, well, if Amazon won't have me, then I'm going to do it myself and Chris on your podcast talking about his very successful Kickstarter. Bryan (31m 21s): Now I know his was with his RPG connected to his world's IP, but it's still connected. I have a student who crowd funds his, his comic books. I mean, there is just so much opportunity to branch, into connecting more directly with the consumer. And there's so many benefits. I think Alex peer Alex Jonty, who has had some amazing posts on the 20 bucks to 50 K group, he's had months of 50 to $100,000 a month selling direct from his, I believe he, he uses a Shopify store and I could be wrong about that, but I know he does it direct. Bryan (32m 13s): And he, and, and, and Michael and, and Chris and folks who do have that more direct relationship via email, they have the ability to pivot when something doesn't work as well on Amazon. And I think there may come a reckoning in 2021, 2022, if something funky happens with Kindle unlimited or audible, or what have you, the folks who have primarily relied on Amazon, who do not at the same time, grow their email list and their fan base, they could be in trouble. Bryan (33m 3s): I think that it's a really good idea to not put all your eggs in one basket and to always be growing your base of people and connecting with them. Autumn (33m 14s): Oh, I love, I absolutely love that message personally, because I'm wide. And I actually do sell off my website. I mean, it's small. I have a small list and I have a compared to these people you're referring to these other authors, but it is good and readers. I think I've gotten very savvy. Some, I mean, a lot of readers are also authors a little bit, so they know what's going on. But yeah, I do have some readers who will always go to my website and buy my books directly from me, or they'll at least asking what's the difference. And I just, I think that's fantastic. They understand a lot more about the marketplace than I think a lot of people realize. And that's good because it is, it is important that they're seeing a value in our writing and they want to support authors and have them write more books because that's the only way that they'll get more books is by supporting, you know, their favorites. Autumn (34m 6s): So that's, that's really interesting. So I did want to know. So we got into the author and writing conversation. So with everything you're working right now on the next challenge, which I'll have to ask you in a couple of minutes when that's going to happen. But first, so you're an author too. How much time do you get to write with all of these other things you're juggling, you have your own business and you have these challenges and so much going on. Bryan (34m 38s): Well, it's funny, I'm I, I sit in the hotel today, right? My it's funny. It's like, I've done this a few times now and now my, my three-year-old daughter says, let's go to your hotel and like Autumn (34m 56s): The hotel Bryan (34m 57s): Room that we can walk to, but yeah, it's adorable. So I sitting here working on the slides for the upcoming challenge, and I look at my I'm typing into a Neo two and I look, all right, well, how much have I written today? How much have I written? Then it's like 6,800 words after 6:00 AM onwards. And I write plenty, but I have not had much chance to write books of late. And it's been a couple years. And I, and I do miss it. Bryan (35m 39s): I think that I I'm hoping to fit them in, in 2021. I'm, I'm hoping to squeeze some in, but I also know that if I don't, I it's okay. Because as I often am telling a lot of the people, a lot of the authors I work with find the thing that is, is providing the most value. Find the thing that is providing the most profit, whatever your goal is, find the thing that is most achieving that. And then focus a lot more on that. Like if you have, you know, three readers from this series, you never finished from like five years ago and you have three readers who keep asking, don't do the old, well, people keep asking about it. Bryan (36m 34s): No, not people, not my readers, three readers, keep asking about it. And if only 20 people bought that series in total five years ago, then no, that is not the thing you should be working on unless it provides something else for you because you need to be working on the most important thing. The one thing as the Gary Keller book says, you need to find the one thing and you need to focus on that because it is so easy to be pulled in a million different contradictory directions. Bryan (37m 16s): And right now, writing a book might be a fun middle of the year project for me. But for now it's like, this is the thing that helps the most people. My, my goal in authored is to be at the point where if 10,000 authors emailed me on the same day, needing help of all different varieties that my team and I could actually handle that to me, could support basically the entire community at scale all at the same time. Bryan (37m 58s): And that is a goal that's going to take a long time to get. But the challenge right now is the thing that best fulfills that goal. And so everything creative, every I used airline points, but this hotel was not, was not cheap. Anything I can do to help that goal, that one thing, goal, that top priority goal I'm going to do. And I think everyone listening should do the same thing. That was just Autumn (38m 36s): Brilliant. And I just, so you know, you are already doing a fantastic job because I know any question that gets asked, any question I've asked in the challenge group, you or someone from your team has gotten back to. And usually several people have gotten back to and given tips and help, and actually spent the time where I know I've been in other places and challenges and other groups where, you know, you just kind of sometimes hear crickets when you ask that hard question. And yes, you even helped me once on a Permafree you trying to figure out what, what bid price to put in by the way it worked. So thank you for that. Yes, it's very good. Autumn (39m 16s): So when is this challenge you're working on, when is it going to be ready? When are you going to do your next one? You're sitting number six, Bryan (39m 24s): Number six, it's coming up January 11th. So Monday, January 11th and, you know, kicking off 2021. And as per usual, it'll be five days of videos. They're, they're not all contiguous. So they kind of do bleed in to the following week and there is a video of zeros, so it really ends up being six. And so just block out that whole, January 11th to about the 20th and, and that'll be a good time to, to work on it. And I can absolutely autumn give you the link to it. You can check it out. Bryan (40m 5s): And I'll probably put a link@sellingforauthors.com powers last January. Now that I'm thinking about it. And then, yeah, I I'm, the more the merrier, we always try to have like several dozen people at any given time just available to answer anything and everything so that we can help people at scale. Yeah. Autumn (40m 30s): I, one of my favorite things about your challenge is that it is not, it's five. You call it five days, but then, you know, with the zero, it's a six, but you give a break. There's always, I used to think it's usually between three and four, but you let people catch up on their homework and I've had to use that for sure. And it makes it a little less stressful. You don't, you don't feel so before behind you, you're like, okay, I've got the weekend. I can do this now. So that's always been wonderful. Bryan (40m 58s): Yeah. I, I know I would want the same. So I'm glad that you, Autumn (41m 1s): I found it helpful. It is. You're very, very kind to the authors. You help in many ways. Well, yes. So that's perfect. Cause this is going out on December 29th. So just 12 days from when this is live, it'll be time and you'll be done with it and you will not be in a hotel room. I'm pretty sure that's correct. Okay. Yes. So where else can listeners find you other than we'll put the links in show notes as well? Of course. Bryan (41m 37s): Sure. Well, I, if you like podcasts, you can also listen to the sell more books, show podcasts. We just did episode 340 something. I think. So. Thank you. That's that's been going for, I guess, six and change years. So we're happy to always keep doing that. And if you haven't listened to in like a year got a new co-host H Claire Taylor, who was just fantastic and definitely that, that, that is aside from the challenges. That's another great place to hang out with me. Autumn (42m 19s): Excellent. Well, thank you again for the time. Is there anything you would like to any last words of advice you want to give to authors out there for whether they're thinking of blurbs or marketing or AMS? Just some last bit of hope as we end 2020 as this will be like one of the last days of the year when this is released, Bryan (42m 44s): It's very, very, very likely that 2021 is going to be better than 2020. So please, if you have not taken into account that 2020 was very hard. If you've not taken that into account with your writing productivity, and you said I had a bad year writing, or if your sales have been down and you say I had a bad year of sales, just give yourself a little bit of, you know, leeway, give yourself a little bit of wiggle room because it was a hard year, very, very challenging for a lot of people. Bryan (43m 26s): And you should not hold yourself to the same high standards of the past when a generationally bad year comes around. So please be kind to yourself. And in 2021, continue to be kind as you do everything you can to snap yourself out of any funk and go do the work you need to do to be as successful as you hope to become. Autumn (44m 1s): That is a wonderful advice for the end of, I love that. A generationally trying your, it was, it was a doozy. It's one we'll talk about for a long time to come. So many means. Yes. Thank you again so much for joining us, Brian. We appreciate it. And I look forward to seeing you in just under two weeks in the AMS edge challenge. Bryan (44m 25s): Thank you, Adam. I'll see you there. Autumn (44m 27s): Bye. Join us next week when Yesper will be back and we'll be sharing some 3 (44m 32s): Great book ideas that we don't think we'll ever get around to writing, but Hey, maybe they will inspire you. Narrator (44m 41s): If you like what you just heard. There's a few things you can do to support the am writing fantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Ottoman Yesper on patrion.com/and writing fantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the M writing fantasy podcast going, stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

Now that KDP Rocket changed it's name to Publisher Rocket, we brought its founder and creator, Dave Chesson, on to Am Writing Fantasy. We discuss the recent change to Publisher Rocket, but more importantly, how authors can get the most out of Publisher Rocket. The conversation covers everything from how to rank on Amazon, insights on the Amazon A9 algorithm, KDP keyword selection and onto Amazon ads. There's a lot to take away. Enjoy. https://publisherrocket.com/  https://kindlepreneur.com/  New episodes EVERY single Monday. To subscribe on YouTube, go here: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC  PATREON! Many bonus perks for those who become a patrons. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy  LET'S CONNECT! Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/  Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/  Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper  Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Jesper (0s): So the awesome tool for authors called KDP rocket recently changed its name to publisherrocket and I could think of nothing better than to bring its founder and creator Dave Chesson on peer two amwritingfantasy to talk about why he changed it to publisherrocket and what is it that we people can learn from it. And maybe we can get some Ninja tips out of him. We'll see if you're a fantasy author, then you've come to the right place. Jesper (32s): My name is Jesper and together with autumn I've popped this modern 20 books and it is our aim to help you in your writing and marketing endeavors. So Dave maybe you would like to just say a few words about yourself and thank you for coming onto amwritingfantasy. Dave (50s): Well, it's really awesome to be here. Um, as, as you said, I'm Dave and a. I run a website called kindlepreneur.com a that teaches authors how to sell their books and get their books discovered on Amazon as well as the creator of publisherrocket. I started off as an author, but I actually have a bit of dyslexia. And so I've never thought of myself as a great writer. And that's why it was very important for me that if I was going to spend all that time, you know, uh, I'm a father, I'm a husband, and I was, I used to be military. If I was going to spend all that time writing on wanting to make sure that I had the right market. Dave (1m 23s): And so it's from all that research and understand that helped me to get my books out there and to make enough money for my books to be able to quit my job and be here full time with my children. So Jesper (1m 33s): yeah. Excellent. And uh, we use a tend to be rocket, uh, ourselves as well. Autumn and myself and the, actually I talked about it in a, in a previous video, so if any of you watching wants to sort of get a inside KDP rocket look, I did some screen-sharing stuff and whatnot. I'll put a link right here on the screen for you so you can just click that one and then it'll take you through that video. Would you want to see what the KDP rocket looks like inside? Because we're not going to do three SEO in here today. And for those of you listening on the podcast, you need to cycle through to episode 11 and that's when I talked about canopy rocket but maybe to start us off Dave maybe we can sort of why, why did you want to change the KDP rocket into publisherrocket? Dave (2m 15s): Well, the first thing was, is that Katie P rocket uh, we used to have version 1.0 and it's solely focused on Kindle and that's why we chose the name KTP because the Kindle aspect, this is back in the day when create space existed and then there's KTP for ebook. So now that a publisherrocket is a version 2.0 it covers both books and eBooks. So we needed to make sure that nobody got confused about thinking it was just a Kindle tool anymore. But another crazy thing too though is that we've been in talks with Barnes and noble, Kobo and iTunes about including their markets data in rocket in the future. Dave (2m 53s): It's kinda hard to have a conversation with those guys when your name is very Amazon centric. He has to say it stalls the the discussions. But now that we're publisherrocket though am most of the representative we've been working for a very pleased about that and had been really forthcoming in looking into how we can access the data that we do to be able to provide authors with the information that we give. So that was a really major factor about, you know, taking and changing the name. And at the same time, like I talked about, we did the name change, right as we transitioned to version 2.0 and version 2.0 is not only faster. Dave (3m 30s): And I would, I would say sleeker, definitely a better look, but also the internal programmings allowing myself and my programmers to add even more. We have a whole bunch of new features and capabilities coming out. We'll be adding every international market here very soon. And this isn't just pulling information from those markets. We've actually been collecting years worth of data on all of the, from the German, that UK, the Japanese, you name it, to be able to give the right analysis that fits those markets perfectly. Dave (4m 2s): So now that we have a more robust program, we can do things like that. We also have added every one of the 16,000 Amazon categories inside the program itself. So for the first time authors can go in there and be able to see every possible category, especially from their genre or their string. And then they can even see how many books that day they need to sell in order to be number one. And that that is updated daily. And as a matter of fact, we're actually adding new systems to make it update even more so. Dave (4m 32s): So you can get real time data and find out which categories are best. And in the future we're going to be adding even more to that to include the average am abs, LR of the number one books. And here's the cool part. We're going to be adding something that lets you know how many shoppers actually go to that category to purchase books. So now authors can finally select categories that help them to be a bestselling author even more so and on top of that categories that will help you to sell more books. Jesper (5m 2s): It's a, it's an amazing tool. I mean, I, I can't imagine the amount of data scraping you must be doing. I mean, actually last time when I recorded the previous video I was talking about every time, can it be rocket started pulling data. I did the screen sharing system recording sessions just like, Ooh, powered down or the most I could see it. You know what a but I'm glad that the a that you mentioned that the publisherrocket is, is, is let's say faster because also sometimes it didn't happen often, but a few times it didn't happen on me. Jesper (5m 34s): That KDP rocket crest and I had to restart it. It was not a big deal. You know, we just do the research again, but, but of course, I guess publisherrocket tests that fixed mountain, is that right? Dave (5m 44s): Seven times faster and it's able to hold more information. The thing about it was when I created KDP rocket 1.0 back about three years ago, I had no idea how popular it was going to be, nor did I understand how many extra things I wanted to add to it. So our original foundation of the program was, was meant for just keyword research and competition analysis, you know, helping you to choose the right keywords that get discovered and help you to see what your competitors are doing. And that's it. But over those three years we added the category feature. Dave (6m 16s): Then we added Amazon book ads feature and you know, we have even more that we want to do a. And it was evident that our original programming wasn't able to support that. And so as we added more, it started to slow down just a bit. Or like you said, there was the crashes. So we completely overhauled the entire system with the plans in the future of adding even more. And we put that in the infrastructure. So, and we timed it seven times faster, which believe me, it's, if you're doing a lot of research or you're pulling, you want to pull hundreds if not thousands of keywords for your ads, every second counts. Jesper (6m 51s): Yeah. You have some new cabinet. And it is, I mean, it is amazing how, how much computer power that needs to be to actually pull all that data out, uh, from, from what is, you know, from, from the use of perspective on my end, it just looks like a very sort of, that's a simple piece of software, but there's a lot to it underneath the hood if one were to look at it. Right? Dave (7m 14s): Yeah. When I first designed the a the software, I did what I call the Mazy test. And, and Muzzy is actually the name I give my grandmother and she's super awesome. Um, she knows about that much about book marketing. But the key was, is that I, I wanted to see if she could figure out how to use it, you know, kind of on our own. And, um, that was kind of a test that we did to figure out, okay, how good is this? How is it going to work? But then on top of that, we continue to revise it and change things and move things around so that no matter what age you are, whether or not you're young or you're in retirement age, it's very intuitive and we'll help you to get through it. Dave (7m 51s): And one thing that I want to add too is, is that, you know, we talk about all these additions and new features and even the upgrade to version 2.0 a I'm a strong believer of software companies never charging people again, you know, you make your software better. Don't, don't make me pay more money for it. Uh, so every one of those things we've talked about has been a free upgrade for every user on that. That's our policy. That's the way we're going to keep it. Jesper (8m 13s): Yeah, that's excellent. But I w I was thinking maybe for, for those who doesn't jump on to that, the other video that I recorded them, but who just sort of want a very quick overview. Maybe you could just start off, talk us through that for different features that are inside the publisherrocket and I think it's four, if I remember correctly, four different areas that you, what you can do and maybe maybe your thoughts on what is, which one of these are, if any, are most useful in your view for, for authors if any of them better than the others or, or, or what, I'm just curious to have your thoughts on that. Dave (8m 49s): Well, let me answer the first question and then we'll get to that last one. What I'd like to tell people is, is that that publisher rockets entire design is to help authors get their books discovered. Okay. To get found on Amazon and hopefully in the future the other markets as well. Uh, so that they can get their books in front of the right shoppers slash. Readers. Now, every one of those features was designed with this in purpose. Okay. But with different ways of doing it. The first feature is keyword feature and that is helping you to choose your seven Kindle keywords, okay? Dave (9m 20s): Those are the words that people type into Amazon and then Amazon chooses to show books of for it. There are three very important questions when choosing your keywords that authors should definitely consider. The first is they want words that shoppers actually type into Amazon. The second is they want to make sure that that shoppers actually buy those books when they see them. Okay. A great example is you're in fantasy, right? What are the chances that I type in the word fantasy and Amazon shows me the perfect book, right? Dave (9m 51s): Like the type, I mean, you know all the different types of genre out there. Right? On top of that though, what if I type in something like Velossa Raptor, Epic war? Okay. Maybe there's a book out there, I don't know, but you know, you can quickly see that no, there are no sales coming in for those books. Therefore, this is not actually the end game. This is not where shoppers end up and then purchase. So knowing how much those books are making that show up is a very important thing. And the third and final part is understanding the competition. Dave (10m 23s): It's great to choose those words, but if your book doesn't show up on the first page of Amazon, your book will not benefit from that keyword. So we've designed it for authors to quickly answer those three things inside the keyword feature. They can see all the words that people are typing into Amazon that pertained to what they're thinking about. They know the average amount of money that books are making that show up for that keyword and they know how hard it would be to rank for it. And we give it a great score from one to a hundred. And our programming, uh, takes into account when it creates that competition score. Dave (10m 57s): It takes into account the popularity, the author, the popularity of the book, the sales, how new is it, uh, the re review grades, uh, and more importantly recent review grades cause that has a major effect. I would say reviews that came in two years ago, I have little to no effect where as a review that came in yesterday as more of an effect. Um, we also take into account, um, some other factors as well, and we compile it into a number that makes you easy for you to say, Oh wow, that keyword would be a lot harder to rank for then that one. Dave (11m 31s): So right there you have everything you need to select your seven Kindle keywords. But I'd also say too, that that feature's really important for new authors just about to start their book. Say for example, your thinking of writing a book on, we'll say, um, some type of magician fantasy I'm going to stick inside of your genre. Here is I give an answer, right? Okay. Now knowing what it is that people are typing into Amazon and whether or not there's a hungry market for it can be really important to helping you sort of not only choose the niche genre that you go into, but more importantly, it can help you in figuring out what should be the focal point of your book cover or your book description and help you to know that your book idea before you even start, whether it has a market on Amazon that's willing to pay or if it doesn't. Dave (12m 25s): Okay. So you can collect all this information and validate your book idea before you start, as well as have important information on how you design and layout your book going forward. Because remember, keywords are the words that your market is using when they are shopping and looking for the next book. So if somebody, if there's a lot of people say typing in necromancer, uh, you know, Epic fantasy right, okay. You know, you were thinking about having a wizard that, you know, maybe, maybe it does raise the dead or are deals in the dark arts a bit, you know, um, and you know that that has a hungry market. Dave (13m 3s): You may want to focus or ensure that your cover represents that more so that it truly needs the desire of those of those readers. You may find out that, well, there are other characters, you know, in, in my, in my group that are trekking through the woods, you know, but maybe that one should be front and center. Um, you may do research and start to find more and more about what people are typing. And so that information can really help you get your foot, you know, get you started on the right foot. The second feature is our competition analyzer. Dave (13m 34s): And the purpose of this one is to understand what your potential competitors are doing, how well they're doing and what they're doing, right? So you start by typing in say a keyword phrase or whatever it is you might want to target for your keyword. And rocket will list out the books that Amazon would list out and it gives you important information about, you know, the book cover, the title, the, the age, how much money it's made. It made that day about how much money it's making on average in the month. Um, and so you can start to kind of see what's working. Dave (14m 4s): You can even flip between book and ebook and see how, how well their ebook is doing compared to their book and understand which ones actually making more money for them. And so that can kind of help you with some of your marketing decisions moving forward, your price selection, um, you know, whether or not you want to target this an advertisement later on and so forth. The third feature is our category feature. And like we talked about earlier, you know, Amazon has 16,000 plus categories and we have the data to help you find the right category. Okay. Dave (14m 33s): It's interesting, there's actually a lot of authors, especially for fantasy might think that a that the main category of science fiction and fantasy would be the only category that holds fantasy related categories. That's actually not true. There are four different main categories that have a whole subsection on just fantasy and especially in literature and fiction, um, young adult. And there's a couple of more that are just really weird and out of place. And our software actually helps people to find those very quickly. And I assure you, if you look at the science fiction and fantasy and then you find your fantasy selected category there, it's probably going to be a lot harder to rank for that than say a the fiction or literature and fiction version of that same exact category because nobody thinks to look there. Dave (15m 18s): So the software helps you to find those opportunities so that you have a much better chance of actually being a bestseller. Why does bestseller help? Well, there's a couple of things that come from this. Number one is that you get the orange tag that says bestseller. And that's cool. I mean from a humorous perspective, but what's really good from a marketing perspective is that when Amazon shows your book and others, it shows the orange tag or yeah, it's the orange tag that says bestseller. So your book sticks out, which means my eyes are going to direct to yours, even if somebody else's is above you. Dave (15m 50s): And on top of that to that tag is a bit of social proof. It tells me that other people like this book because they're buying it and I feel more comfortable purchasing it. Now that I know that others have bought it as well. What's funny is is that you might not be selling as much as the others, but you selected the right category. And so you have that advantage. Another thing that's coming from category sales to is that Amazon sends out emails to people who've bought inside that category. And if you're the new bestseller, you're actually gonna get promoted more often from their email campaigns. Dave (16m 23s): And so that's a major help. And a third thing that's really coming from, from categories as well is that we're seeing an increase in shoppers' purchasing from categories themselves. And you can see this cause Amazon is now adding filters inside of the categories on amazon.com. So say for example, you go to your favorite category, you can now look on the left and it'll give you phrases that people have used to describe different types of fantasy. You'll see a top authors listed. So you can click those series names, um, genres to choose from. Dave (16m 57s): And if there are fantasy specific awards, they even have little click boxes there for you to select. So you can see the award winners. So Amazon's really focusing on improving shopper experience through categories themselves. And that all starts with authors selecting the right one. And finally we have the Amazon ads. We call it the AMS keyword feature. Because say for example, you've got a great book and you just can't seem to either break into your, uh, your area. There were too many powerful, awesome, you know, books make more money and you just can't get up to the top. Dave (17m 29s): Or maybe you know that you're creating something absolutely new, like some crazy new genre a or what have you. Then Amazon ads is probably a phenomenal way for you to take it to the next level. And I would also say to those who have written a book and it failed, maybe try given a little breathing it, you know, new life into it through ads and you may see it finally get that opportunity with Amazon ads, you can now say, Hey, look Amazon, I want to put this book at the top of the search result. Somebody types that in, I want to show up for that. Dave (17m 60s): Or you could also say, Hey, Amazon, anytime somebody sees this book, I want to be next to them. Okay, I want to be right there so that you know, they've got to see my book first. This gives you ability to 100% now. You're getting eyes on your book and that can be incredible. But the problem that author's run into is you can't just select 10 or 15 terms, sit back and say, sweet. You know, and even raise up the cost per click to make it. Yeah, no obvious that you're going to make those. The you're going to get seen. Actually, it's taking hundreds if not thousands of keywords that you want to focus on for your ads before you can really start to see some progress. Dave (18m 36s): And so we created a system that helps you to auto-generate those pertinent keywords and help you to make your ads more effective and efficient. So from those four features, we're helping you to get discovered naturally. We're helping you to understand what your competitors are doing as well as what you'd be facing. We're helping you just like those categories who you're seeing and found and connected to other books. And finally we're helping you with your ads, if that's what you choose, all of that to help get you discovered. Jesper (19m 3s): It's amazing. I really liked that. The piece of software, it's very well developed. Um, and I think especially now in, in the, if we're, if we're looking at Amazon for a second year in the Amazon marketplace, if you are to let's say, get any sort of traction with your Amazon ass, we are getting to a stage now where short the top keywords, they are so expensive that when you're selling an ebook for $5, it's, it's, it's forget about bidding on it. Jesper (19m 33s): It's way too expensive. And then the only other option then is to have tons of apps running on a little bit, but then you're going to pick up the fuse that nobody else saw bidding on or maybe a few people are bidding on. So and there I have found now publisher Rob, I was just about to say KDP rocket, but probably so rocket to am to be incredibly helpful because I think on, I, especially one of my books I have, I think I have my 20,000 plus keywords ads running on those a but, and then just out of KDP rocket, I mean it's so easy to just go in, generate lists, pump them into Amazon and other list into Amazon. Jesper (20m 9s): I mean, it doesn't matter if some of the keywords are replicates of of one, you already have it there because who cares? I mean, you were going to win one of them and as long as you are bidding the same, it doesn't really matter. So you can just, you know, beef up your Amazon ads by pulling data out of K.D.P. Oh, sorry. Now I did it again. Publisherrocket I mean, uh, so I, I think it's, it's an amazing tool that saves, she was so incredibly much time. Dave (20m 34s): Yeah. You know, a lot of people are afraid about, like you were talking about 20,000 keywords are, so what happens if I'm showing up for keywords ed, you know, nobody's ever going to buy. That's okay. Because the thing is you don't pay Amazon until somebody clicks on your ad and nobody will click on your ad unless after seeing your book cover in your title and your ad blurb, if you choose to have one that still interests them, then they click. So, you know, I found some interesting keywords that I still can't figure out exactly why that directed, but it somehow caught the attention of a larger number of people. Dave (21m 9s): Those people clicked and those people bought. And again, I think the reason why I made those sales was because nobody was thinking to target that. And yet it was a good fit in some way. And again, I only pay if people's, after seeing my ad like it and choose to learn more. Jesper (21m 26s): Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's exactly my mentality with it as well. I mean, it doesn't matter what your load in there, because as you just said, you know, you only pay for the click. So who cares if you're 500 keywords for that you got from publisherrocket that nobody cares about, that doesn't really relate to fantasy, but for whatever reason, that's what you've got in your list. It doesn't matter. You know, you gotta kinda pay for them anyway. So yeah, it's just a base, you know, you can just go crazy and lots of lots of keywords and look them into Amazon with lope it and some of it will get clicked. Dave (22m 0s): Yep, absolutely. And you know, and that's, that's an interesting thing. I just kind of break away for a bit on this is what I love most about Amazon ads is I can use the numbers to finally figure out where the problem is with my book. You see, when am here's an example. I, have you ever heard of the book a battlefield earth? It's a science fiction book. There's actually a really bad movie made about it, but it doesn't ring any bells red, but okay. Well anyways, uh, this book was written and uh, awhile ago the publishing company reached out to me and said, Hey, we'd like your help about figuring out how to improve our Amazon ads. Dave (22m 39s): I said, okay. You know, I actually read the book as a child and it was probably the second ever science fiction book I read and I credit it for kind of turning me into a scifi fan. Uh, the first being Ender's game. Love that one. So I said, cool honor to, to kind of work on a book that I read as a kid. Sure. So we looked at it and we looked at their Amazon ads and it was crazy because I saw him now they had a large number impression, so great. They were, they were choosing the right keywords, you know, Amazon was choosing to show their book and they had a lot of great clicks and awesome. Dave (23m 12s): The cover fit, it was perfect. Got it. And they've just done a new cover when they were doing this new launch. However though the percentage of people choosing to buy that clicked on it was pretty low. It was like 0.5% maybe it was 0.4% but it was like somewhere that low that we're actually going from clicks to buy. And while they were making money and they were helping to get their book out there more in, the problem was was that there was a significant number of people who were coming to their sales page and choosing not to buy. So they were like, well, maybe we need better keywords. Dave (23m 43s): I was like, no, no, no. I know what your problem is. Your book description is horrible. So I told him that the problem was was that the book description was more like a book report. They were giving way too many details. They were listing out, you know, characters that didn't need to be in there. They were giving, you know, the specifics of the entire story and it dragged on. Now I said, so really we shouldn't be focusing on our keywords because obviously those are driving in the right people because they're clicking and they're interested, but they're not paying. So I said, look, I'm going to rewrite your book description, I'm going to use what I know about Amazon and everything and we're going to go ahead and construct something that makes shoppers now. Dave (24m 21s): This is truly an a post-apocalyptic Saifai book that you know of, you know, Epic proportion and why they need to read this book. So I wrote one, they said, yeah, that sounds really cool, but we really think that our original one fits most with fans. I said, all right, hold on, let me, let me show you something. So I went to a website called petfood.com and it's where you can pay to like submit two different versions, whether it's like two different versions of a cover or two different versions of a book description. And they go out and they find people to survey and to choose which one they liked best. Dave (24m 54s): But more importantly, those people have to give a reason for why they chose one of the other one. What's really cool is is that we had about 75% of the people choose mine over the other. One. More importantly, when reading the comments, most of the people that chose the other one said, I've read this book before and this one gives more detail. So obviously it wasn't the best one to choose a new person to purchase it. It was only the one that they felt most comfortable with because they knew the story and that was the thing about the publisher was they were so close to the story that they thought they needed more information. Dave (25m 26s): So when I showed that to the publishing company, they mirror like, Whoa, okay, cool. So they changed out the book description and immediately they tripled their conversion rate of their ads. And even more so from tweaking it beyond then to get even more sales. Now that not only helps with their Amazon ads but also helps with every other effort they're making in marketing, whether it's Facebook ads, email campaigns or whatever, because now when people land on that book, more people are converting to purchase because the book description is that good. Dave (25m 57s): So I love Amazon ads, not just from the ability to proactively and absolutely get my book in front of people, but also I can learn through the numbers where my bra, my book is having a problem and then I can fix it and give it the best success rate. Jesper (26m 14s): Yeah, absolutely. I mean a I also wrote a whole guide, step by step guide book on how to read, write fantasy book descriptions because it doesn't matter. Your book description is part of the equation that makes people buy. So it's not only about finding good keywords and finding out what to be and so forth and of course have a good cover. But the book description is absolutely a part of the equation. Dave (26m 38s): Yeah. I never realized how important a book description was until finally Amazon provided those AMS numbers mean I kind of used to think, eh, you know, it's, I mean the coverage is really important, but really that book description is what makes somebody who's interested turn into a buyer. So 100% and yeah, use that kind of resource and material, make sure that your book description is stellar arrests, all of your marketing efforts could be dying prematurely because you couldn't land that sale. Jesper (27m 6s): So I wanted to cycle back to the seven keywords again, um, that you mentioned before, and I'm sort of spraying this question on you a bit. So if you don't know, that's fully fair. Uh, but I was just wondering, when you're looking at the data from, you know, under the hood, if you have any reflections or insights on how much those seven keywords actually matter. Because when I use publisherrocket, of course, I also figured out which with seven keywords performance better than the others and, and, and all that. And I could see the data from publisherrocket that there is a difference. Jesper (27m 38s): So of course I researched out the seven best ones and I used those. But in terms of moving actual book sales, at least on my end, I did not really see that those setting the keywords mattered much. So I'm just wondering, based on your data perspective, if you know, if it's because there was seven keywords, actually it doesn't matter as much as we think they do. Or is it because maybe it's too saturated with those keywords and that's why you're not seeing the needle move? Or I don't know if you have any insights on this. Dave (28m 10s): Well, there are three important parts to keywords to help push book sales. And the first one is identifying your target keywords, right? So knowing which keywords really will work to help move the needle. And that's exactly what publisherrocket does, is it finally gives you the ability to see what those keywords are. The second important part is making sure you get indexed for that keyword. Okay? And indexing is where Amazon acknowledges that your book should show up for that keyword. K, uh, ways to influence indexing are, you know, you've chosen that phrase is when you're seven Kindle keywords. Dave (28m 43s): Another thing is, you know, the words are either in your title or subtitle and yes, Amazon does index the book description. I know a lot of people say that it doesn't cause they'll take like a full sentence from a book description or some made up word, put it into Amazon. It doesn't show anything but Amazon's own a nine a algorithm. That's actually the name of their search engine. If you go to a nine.com which has its own website a they flat out say we index book descriptions and descriptions of products. So the way that they do it though is they know what words should be appropriate to that genre and therefore those are very important to them. Dave (29m 17s): Um, to go a step further on that, if you scroll down on the Amazon book sales page and you'll get down to where the reviews are and notice that there's a word cloud density above the reviews now. And these are like words that Amazon has figured out that people are using when reviewing the book. Guess what? A majority of those are genre or category specific words that it has identified. I believe it does the same thing like that with book descriptions. Um, that's why you don't see a lot of buzz. He is, you know, because it's, but you'll see like war made, you know, you'll see a necromancer, you'll see those words popping up. Dave (29m 54s): So I'm going to throw in book description, um, for that purpose. So again, those things all help to show Amazon that. Okay. Yeah. And same thing with reviews. What people put in reviews. I definitely think his index, but I don't see a nine. Talk about that. The work high density makes me think so. So those things help to say to Amazon you should show up and yeah, to a certain extent that will help you to show up, um, higher in the rankings. Okay. But it depends on the competition. Maybe just choosing those words is enough to get you on the first page. Dave (30m 25s): So long as the competition is low, that you know that competition score we talked about, right? You get an 80 competition and I'm sorry, but you choose the best seven Kindle keywords, you're not going to show up on that first page. Um, but you choose like a 20 and yeah, you can get there just by choosing one of them. So that brings us to the third one, which is ranking for that keyword. Now statistically speaking, if you ranked number one for a keyword, okay on Amazon, you can expect 27% of the people that typed in that phrase. We'll click on your book. You ranked number two though, and it quickly quickly drops to 13, then 11 then nine, eight, seven, six, six, six, six and then it bumps up to seven at the bottom because apparently people scroll down and then they see that last book the most. Dave (31m 6s): Um, but that's a huge difference. You ranked five or you rank seven for that book, that title, excuse me, that keyword. And that's 6% compared to 27%. And if you rake on the second or third or fourth page for that keyword, it's, it's, it's like 2%, 1% less than 1% of the people will actually find you from that keyword. So making sure that you're in the top of that keyword is very important. Now, one of the best ways to increase your rankings for that keyword is by the sheer act of a shopper typing in your keyword, finding your book, selecting it, and purchasing it or downloading it, okay. Dave (31m 46s): Because that is a pure signal to Amazon that somebody went, when they typed in this phrase, this product was the one that connected with them. And this is the product that actually made us money as well, right? So they'll want the best selling for that keyword to be at the top so that they make, um, you know, they make the sale. And I've actually got a quote from Jeff Bezos about this, the CEO of Amazon and he said, we don't make money when we sell things. We make money when we help customers make purchase decisions. Dave (32m 20s): So they want to show the one that makes that, that sale. So how do we as authors influences were, remember when I talked about, uh, you know, validating your book idea and choosing covers that fit that term better. That's huge. Um, I was working with a romance author and she was writing a romance. We did our keyword research. Long story short, her perfect keyword phrase was am second or Victorian second chance romance family or with baby or these other words at the end that helped people to know more about the book. Dave (32m 54s): Let's just those words, we understand what the story is. K Victorian error. So we're looking at the Victorian period of time. Second chance romance is a type of romance where somebody finds love again and then the whole family or with baby is that at the last moment people were adding in there some kind of phrase or term to help them know that no, this isn't hotter steamy or no, this isn't, I want this to be about family. She needs to have a kid and she's looking for love again. So she's looking for somebody who would be cool enough to, you know, to date her while she has somebody else's child. Dave (33m 30s): And even more so if you put that on in the context of the Victorian error, right. I mean that sh that wife, no matter how it happened, she must be a charlatan or an end, a social pariah because she's without husband. So he's, you can see, we just know from those words exactly what it is the market is looking for. And the interesting part was that the, the cover originally was of like a castle that was kind of Victorian period. So cool. She nailed the, the time setting. However though there was nothing about it that helped to personify the other parts. So instead that cover was designed where it showed the, you know, like a ball basically happening and the mom holding the child with kind of the group of people looking down on her like, Oh, you know, she without a husband and the Charlotte and, but there's one guy standing in the back kind of looking very interested. Dave (34m 16s): Notice that that cover symbolizes everything the shopper's typing in. So what do you think's going to actually get the click? Write the book that shows exactly what they're looking for. But another tactic for people who are like, look, I already got a cover and I'm cool with it. Another tactic that I recommend to people is that if you know that somebody is going to be buying your book, okay? Uh, so you have some people out there that yes, they are fans, they love what you do. I would recommend to tell some of them to go to Amazon, type in your keyword, phrase your target, and then find it that way. Dave (34m 51s): Might want to give him a warning. They may have to go through a couple of pages, but it means the world to you. If you did that, what that will do is that we'll send the signal to Amazon that this book should definitely be ranking. You'd be surprised how little amount of sales, what happened, you'll shoot up to the top. Now I'm not, this is not a hack and I'm not ruining Amazon and I'm not going to help a bad books when, okay? Because what ultimately happens is this tactic will give you that ability to be at the top and to be found. However, though, if your book continuously is passed up from books under it in case so shoppers are normal, shoppers are typing it in and not choosing your book, but choosing this book or this book or this book, you will start to come back down in the rankings and you'll finally sit at where you belong. Dave (35m 35s): So us doing researches, authors is not about hacking Amazon it's not about bad books. Winning Amazon smarter than that and its algorithm is great. What we've talked about here is helping authors know their market better, make better decisions as they develop their book, make better decisions on how they want to position it, and know that all of those efforts are actually going to existing markets where they will find the right readers. Jesper (35m 58s): I couldn't have said it better myself then, but a that's the thing. Am you know the thing about all this machine learning, because I fully agree. I'm an Amazon the the algorithm behind or I guess there's actually many probably, but the algorithms then a behind the drives Amazon are very intelligent. The only thing that seems very old school to be still it, you know, in 2019 that we even have to write in those 70 words manually. It seems crazy to me. I mean Amazon should be able to learn by a machine learning, which are the works that associates to this book and you know, I don't know, maybe that'll stop at some point. Dave (36m 37s): Well, and to an extent that really is what we were talking about in the indexing, right? It's taking the input you, the author gave, it's taking the input of the categories you choose. It's taking in the input of the title and the words you use in the book description and it's taking in the input of what your customers are writing and then it is figuring out where it should put you. Now what's really cool about keywords is that you may say you may choose seven particular phrases, right? You're going to show up for more than that. Okay. You don't just show up for those seven, you're actually going to be indexed on a whole bunch more like hundreds. Dave (37m 12s): Okay. But the key is is that if you show that your book is making more sales, okay, it's succeeding Amazon then starts to spread you out even more. Okay? That's why like if you type in Harry Potter, you know, or any type of wizard kid, wizard, wizard school, whatever, you're going to find Harry Potter in that list. Harry Potter didn't have 50,000 keywords they can enter and they just had seven. But Amazon is going to test and show books more and more often because the whole point of the 89 algorithm, again that's there they have lots of algorithms. Dave (37m 45s): Um, but the 89 is the search bar that shows up and it's the only one that's got its own name. The a nine algorithm is going to test and push and show products because the ultimate goal of the a nine algorithm is to make Amazon more many. And like we heard from Bezos, it's not about the sale, it's about providing the right product and that's when they get the sale. So Jesper (38m 8s): we've, we've sort of talked them out a lot around the publisherrocket and how Amazon works and all that. So I think there was a lot of good stuff here for, for people to take home and consider the Dave. But is there anything you want to share who are at the end around a? Maybe what your future plans are with publisherrocket or anything like that? Dave (38m 29s): Yeah, like I said earlier, we're going to be adding the international markets so that people in Germany can focus on the German or Indian or Japanese. And we've been collecting information for years now for that. We're also going to be adding more information about each individual category so that people can choose less volatile ones are more popular ones, you know, for purchasing power. Um, and help people see seasonal changes as well in categories. And again, you know, as an author myself, I'm always testing and Amazon's always changing so we're always staying on top of that as well. Jesper (39m 3s): And if people would like to sort of get more insight into publisherrocket a where can they, where can they find publisherrocket and maybe you can share how much does it cost? Dave (39m 15s): Sure. So publisher rocket you can find it@publisherrocket.com and it's a onetime payment of $97. So, and you get that for life a that includes all updates, upgrades, you name it. As we add more as we change, uh, you'll benefit from those as well. And I would also say too, if anybody out there wants to learn more about Amazon ads, I've got a full free course on Amazon ads. You can find that@amscourses.com and it's one of those that I give every detail for you to do Amazon ads without software or without paying for any other aspect. Dave (39m 48s): It'll take you all the way through the process. Jesper (39m 51s): That's excellent. And if you email me the link to those things, then I will put it into the description field below. If you're watching on YouTube, so just go below this video, or if you're listening on the podcast, you just go to the show notes and then you'll find the links there from, from Dave that he mentioned. So thank you so much for coming on amwritingfantasy Dave and at least from my end, I can say that the, I think the dose $97 I will spend, it's definitely worth it. So, uh, but I'll leave that up to you guys. Thank you so much for joining Dave. Dave (40m 22s): Absolutely. And it's really good being here.

Don't you hate it when story ideas fizzle leaving you lost in a half finished manuscript? No more! Learn to develop an idea to double check it will lead you somewhere while creating a framework to help guide you through the novel - all in under half an hour. Heck, the video isn't even that long! Be sure to check out the FREE Ultimate Fantasy Writer's Starter Kit - a short video course that will help you even more with idea development, plus tips to avoid rookie mistakes, and tools to succeed! Sign up at https://ultimatefantasywritersguide.com/starter-kit/ New episodes EVERY single Monday. To subscribe on YouTube, go here: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC  PATREON! Many bonus perks for those who become a patrons. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy  LET'S CONNECT! Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/  Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/  Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper  Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Autumn (12s): Have you ever had this amazing idea for a story, but once you scrambled to your keyboard and started typing, nothing seems to work. You get lost and the one's fantastic ideas sort of fizzles. Yeah. We're going to talk about how to solve that today and take that nugget of idea, keep its energy and Don up with a finished novel instead of another unfinished manuscript ready. If you're a fantasy author, then you come to the right place. My name is Autumn Birt and together with Jesper Schmidt, I host this channel between us. We've published over 20 books and our aim is to help you with your writing and marketing endeavors, right? Autumn (46s): So if you've written a lot of stories, you usually have a pretty good instinct. If an idea we'll make a novel or what to do when you get to that middle third where it's after the excitement of the introduction and all that fun and you have this huge stretch to go to reach the penultimate real excitement of the climax and everything's just a bit boring and tough to write. But if you are new to novel writing, it can be so hard to gain that experience and let's face it, the only reason I get through some books with my interest lags because yes, it can still like and I writing book 14 1516 and 17 as I mentioned in my intro video a few weeks ago is by having a strategy. Autumn (1m 27s): That one I know works to is simple so I don't spend weeks plotting out something I don't want to write or is it going to work and three is replicable. In other words, I want to know that'll work for any book I'm writing because I could switch from Epic fantasy to military thriller to dystopian and I have some plans for some like galactic Saifai. The good news is that's such a technique does exist. It works. It's simple and I can use it on any genre. Even if you're a pantser, it is worth trying because it does not require full out plotting. Autumn (2m 2s): Instead, think of it as a mental exercise that you put on paper and we'll help you chart the course for your story and know before you start writing that this idea will actually make a decent story why you're giving it an idea of where you are in the story and what you should be writing right now, which will only help you get to the finish line without getting lost or falling off a cliff. On the way, I'm a hybrid writer in that when I get idea, I want to start writing now, but I've also written enough novels to resist that initial urge. Autumn (2m 34s): It is a good idea, it won't die. And if I spend some time thinking about it, I only get more excited as the pieces start to fall into place. So I do spend a bit of time working out the story structure and world-building before jumping too far. Well, okay, a few scenes might getting written while world-building, but that just helps me figure out what else I need to build. And if the rules of magic world building characters, they're all working together, right? So what is this amazing tool that I keep telling you exist and haven't bothered explaining it is the seven steps of story structure. Autumn (3m 9s): So Barry perceptive people way, way back, figured out that underlying all good stories is the same exact basic framework. So folks use the three act or five act structure, but I don't like those three acts still leaves this nebulous middle that tends to swallow novels whole while leaving them languishing on your hard drive, mocking you. Five acts put the climax in the middle and well that isn't where the climax falls in a well-written novel because after the big Epic battle, everyone is ready for a wind down when the curtains to drop, not another 40,000 words. Autumn (3m 47s): So the seven steps of story structure gets rid of the mushy middle and it sets you want to clear path to get this novel written. And there's, once you're familiar with it, you can get a rough outline. About half an hour though if you're a plotter, you might want to spend a bit more time or like me, end up outlining the entire series. Um, and then knowing how everything fits together over the course of a day, but it's only one day. So let's get started. Number one, this is the introduction and like it says, you want to introduce the character and the world. Autumn (4m 18s): Though you should start with action. What you don't want to do is start with a lots of detail. The reader won't care about any of that until they care about the character. So focus on that. So some problems should be going on that the character needs to solve, but nothing that is pivotal, at least obviously to the course of the entire novel. No, don't save the world sort of thing. I'm more like I'm running late to the celebration and just drop the cake. Uh, that kind of thing. Write down what daily life problem we'll be going on in your notes. Autumn (4m 51s): It's already list opening. See, now we're on to number two, the inciting incident here, that easily relatable problem goes disastrously wrong or wonderfully write, whatever. But the end result is completely unexpected. Being late to the celebration actually saves the character from the descending horde of invading the village. So he cares about the cake run for your life. This event turns a character's world upside down, right down to what happens to catapult the character from a normal day into a new reality. Autumn (5m 25s): That's on to number three. It's three action phase here. The characters emotionally reacting to what just happened and you know emotions, they tend to lead us astray. So if I will happens by luck or with help because your character is in no way prepared to handle this new reality. Write down three events or more, but start with three of a deer capture escapes, stupid mistakes the character will make and who will help them survive. Number four is the idea or dark night of the soul. Autumn (5m 57s): This is the moment that disastrous event does happen and the character has to come to some major soul searching just to realize they are the ones to play or they need to do better. Old McGrumpy (6m 9s): They should just give up. Autumn (6m 11s): Okay, thanks. Old man. Grumpy. He is our resident AI co-host because we haven't managed yet to believe his coat. Yeah. I don't think your advice would help an author actually complete a novel, rather the opposite. Old McGrumpy (6m 26s): There are enough books. We don't need more. Autumn (6m 30s): Pick up a little bit grumpy as the voice of doubt in your head. The one you should always ignore. Speaking of itch, let's just keep going. If events aren't dired this phase, it's more of an epiphany moment when the character realizes their personal problems are tied to the world at large, right down what pivotal event will be and what the character will realize. It should be linked to the big plot of the novel, like the benevolent arch. Duke is really good dark sorcerer or trying to take over the kingdom and control to the rating hordes that destroyed the village. Autumn (7m 4s): Number five is the planning phase. Now the character has a better idea of the big picture and what does it stake? The villain will notice and start actively trying to stop them. So write down what the main character will do to gain the skills, objects, or allies to take down the villain and a few things available we'll do to try to stop him. At least two of each. Number six is the climax. You know what this is is the big confrontation between the villain and the hero. Autumn (7m 35s): The entire book has been building up to this point. So write down whenever you can about this really important event, like where it'll take place, who is fighting, and if you know someone's going to die, Old McGrumpy (7m 49s): the Dylan should always win. Autumn (7m 51s): Well, at least that. Oh, how all of your books will end MC grumpy. Old McGrumpy (7m 55s): Yes. All of the worthless humans would die. Autumn (7m 60s): So you are more into an apocalyptic genre. I bet he loved her mediator in the matrix. Old McGrumpy (8m 6s): No, there are still humans. I'd write something different. Writing and novelists and powered. You don't need steps to do it. Autumn (8m 14s): You're only saying that because you've never actually written a novel. Right. Why does it seem like people and AI eyes who have never attempted anything are the most vocal about how easy it really is? To do it for more in depth tips on idea of development, check out the ultimate fantasy writer starter kit. It's free. It's a video course that will not only help you get started with your novel idea using the seven steps. That's all. Some key tips on why you should think of. The first part of your book is a mini short story. Autumn (8m 45s): Plus it also shows you how to avoid other novice pitfalls, provides the tools to help you succeed. Back to the story structure and we're onto the final step and number seven is the wrap up. Just like a workout, there should be a brief cooling off period after the climax, before you end the novel, unless you like cliffhangers, which in that case, just skip this part. This is the time to tie up loose ends. If a character fell in love, they do, they get married now or does something tear them apart? Autumn (9m 17s): Do you want to develop a subplot into a new problem leading to the next book? Write down whatever you think needs to wrap up the big story of the book and anything you want to develop to lead it to the next one. See, that wasn't too hard. It was that you will be able to chart your course while writing refer back to these notes that you've just written and when you feel lost, you can see where you are in the seven steps and then you'll know what needs to be going on to keep the story moving. Plus you'll have an idea of how far you are from the end, and that could be a motivation to stay safe out there and see you next Monday.