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Patrick explores Catholic tradition and leadership and breaks down how the rules for electing a new Pope can change, discusses real human challenges behind forgiveness, and examines the ethics of honesty, even for undercover officers. Patrick answers tough listener questions about the papacy’s roots, Church protocol, and the sacrament of confession. For anyone looking to understand faith and leadership more clearly, Patrick brings real insight and practical guidance. Update on the Conclave – (00:43) Shelbi (email) - How long do you pray for someone's repose of their soul? (07:12) Chad - Can an undercover police officer lie during the course of his duties (12:19) Andy - What is the protocol if the Blood of Christ is spilt during communion? (18:57) Burke - Regarding Lying: Is it permissible to lie about hiding Jews in house from Nazi? It seems like doing it in self-defense would be okay. (24:13) Marie – Can I forgive a family member who used to be super difficult but is finally turning his life around? (28:53) Aaron (X) - Can you explain "Vicar of Christ" to me? (33:31) Ani (X) – Are there politics in the House of God during the Conclave? (40:54) Sarah - How do I talk with my sister about communion and confession. She thinks we can go directly to God? (43:37)
How do we get the next generation onto farms while helping established farmers transition out? In this episode of Head Shepherd, Mark chats with Sarah How, co-founder of Landify and New Zealand finalist for the Zanda McDonald Award. Sarah shares her journey from family farming in Mid-Canterbury to launching a platform that connects farmers, aspiring landowners, and investors. Sarah co-founded Landify after years of working in agronomy and research when she saw firsthand the challenges both young farmers and retiring landowners faced. Transitioning from a stable career to entrepreneurship wasn't without its challenges, but with a passion for problem-solving and a belief in the power of partnerships, Sarah is determined to reshape the future of farm ownership.Mark and Sarah discuss what's next for the platform- Whether you're a farmer looking to transition, an investor curious about opportunities, or someone dreaming of owning a farm, this episode is packed with insights to help you take the next step. https://www.landify.co.nz/Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited. We help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best: info@nextgenagri.com.Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, and Heiniger Australia and New Zealand. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.Check out Heiniger's product range HERECheck out the MSD range HERECheck out Allflex products HERE
We are now accepting new clients! Enquire to see how we can help you today www.fitfemaleproject.comQuestions:1. Paula – Struggling to increase weights for full sets. Is it better to do more reps with the same weight or increase weight and do fewer reps? 2. Caroline – How to tackle sweet cravings? 3. Valeria – How should I take creatine for best results? 4. Orlaith - Thoughts on electrolyte drinks for training? - Any improvements or changes I should make to my training? 5. Ellen - Best exercises for strengthening knees? - How to stay focused and motivated after a long ‘blip' in progress? 6. Sarah – How to plan for alcohol when I have lots of events coming up? 7. Abi - How to stay on track when tired? - Tips for staying on track during my period? 8. Bethan – If I go over on one macro, which is best—protein, fats, or carbs? 9. Lorraine – Should I add another cardio session to help with weight loss? 10. Shireen – My weight fluctuated even though I was careful with food. Could ovulation be the reason? 11. Jackalyne – Is it okay to accept hunger as part of the process? How do I manage it long-term? 12. Francesca – How often should I be increasing weights in my workouts? 13. Aisling – Any tips for staying motivated when I feel a dip? 14. Steph – I hurt my shoulder. Should I rest or modify my workouts? 15. Annabel – What's the best way to ease back into training post-surgery? 16. Julia - What heart rate zone should I aim for in home training? - Do I need to weigh all individual ingredients when cooking? 17. Sam – I'm not aching as much after workouts. Does that mean I'm not working hard enough? 18. Anna – What's the best alternative when I can't find the right attachment for cable machines? 19. Mary – How to manage afternoon/evening sweet cravings? 20. Emily – Should I eat before or after a late gym session? 21. Lauren – Alternative exercises for step-ups if benches are too high? 22. Danielle – Feeling distant from the group due to a busy schedule. Any advice? 23. Emilie – Struggling to focus on nutrition and log food. How can I break it down and make it easier?
If you're looking for tips and ideas on how to leverage speaking opportunities, how to use speaking as your best for of visibility, or how to get booked to speak, you're in the right place. This is the best public speaking podcast for coaches, consultants, and service providers.Today's question comes from Sarah: How can I have the confidence to apply to speak for events? To submit your question for a future Q&A episode go to: https://SpeakPipe.com/BID***Sign up for a free Speaking Monetization Discovery Call at https://SpeakAndStandOut.com/Discovery
Self-love isn't a quick fix; it's a journey made up of small, intentional choices. Elliot unpacks his toughest questions with our guest, Sarah: How did she learn to embrace herself, even in difficult moments? This episode doesn't offer a ‘perfect' solution, but instead, explores the real steps toward self-acceptance that anyone can try. With surprising tools, and reflections from Sam, this is your invitation to start shifting self-talk from criticism to compassion—one step at a time. Finally, we wrap up with Sarah sharing her favorite 3 questions to learn more about yourself and the people around you. Pause the episode after each question and share your answers with us! Stay Connected with Sarah SmythSarah is the incredible visionary behind the brand Raw & Rebellious and host of the Raw Intentions podcast. Shop Raw & Rebellious & Follow them on InstagramListen to Raw Intentions & Follow the show on InstagramFollow Sarah on InstagramStay Connected with Sam & ElliotDive deeper with The Something More Society! The go-to place to level up your connection, community, and collaboration. By joining The Something More Society, you'll gain access to vibrant community chat channels, our monthly Book Club, exclusive mini episodes + ad-free listening, and the opportunity to connect directly with us and fellow listeners.Grab your "IF NOT LOVE THEN WHAT" hat, your new favorite tea & shop our other merch!Follow us on Instagram & TikTok
Two South Island farmers have launched an online platform, Landify, which helps young farmers looking to get into farm ownership find investors and sellers. Co-founder Sarah How tells Bryan that while the sector has talked about the problem of succession for years there has been relatively few tools developed to deal with the problem.Landify is a place where succession conversations can begin and How hopes it will not only help more people get on the property ladder, but also attract more people to the sector in general as it provides a visible career pathway to farm ownership.Federated Farmers is celebrating regulatory changes that exempt those who supply drinking water to fewer than 25 people from costly and time-consuming administration. Its local government spokesperson Sandra Faulkner says the changes are a win for common sense. She says the process of registering, testing and reporting on their water supply would have added significant cost, risk and hassle for absolutely no gain. Skyrocketing power prices are hitting farmers and processors hard. Senior reporter Richard Rennie says it looks like a challenge that will be here for some time as there's no obvious fix on the horizon. Meat and dairy processors, orchardists and irrigators are all grappling with the problem and many are looking for efficiencies and ways to trim costs in other areas.
Two South Island farmers have launched an online platform, Landify, which helps young farmers looking to get into farm ownership find investors and sellers.Co-founder Sarah How tells Bryan that while the sector has talked about the problem of succession for years there has been relatively few tools developed to deal with the problem.Landify is a place where succession conversations can begin and How hopes it will not only help more people get on the property ladder, but also attract more people to the sector in general as it provides a visible career pathway to farm ownership.
In Episode 175, Susie Boutry (@NovelVisits) and I explore our favorite Micro Genres for 2024. Over the past year, we've continued to refine our reading tastes and identify specific themes and types of books that resonate deeply with us. This year, Susie and I have a curated list of 10 all-new Micro Genres, along with standout books from each category. It's another big episode with tons of great book recommendations! This post contains affiliate links through which I make a small commission when you make a purchase (at no cost to you!). CLICK HERE for the full episode Show Notes on the blog. Cold War Espionage (Sarah) [3:19] Sarah Red Widow by Alma Katsu | Amazon | Bookshop.org [4:49] Red London by Alma Katsu | Amazon | Bookshop.org [4:50] Our American Friend by Anna Pitoniak | Amazon | Bookshop.org [5:10] The Charm School by Nelson DeMille | Amazon | Bookshop.org [5:20] Red Notice by Bill Browder | Amazon | Bookshop.org [5:47] The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre | Amazon | Bookshop.org [6:01] Susie The Sisterhood by Liz Mundy | Amazon | Bookshop.org [6:26] Angsty Motherhood (Susie) [7:21] Sarah Perfect Tunes by Emily Gould | Amazon | Bookshop.org [12:00] Susie Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy | Amazon | Bookshop.org [8:38] Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo | Amazon | Bookshop.org [10:04] Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood | Amazon | Bookshop.org [10:37] When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister | Amazon | Bookshop.org [10:53] Little Prisons by Ilona Bannister (currently unavailable in the US) [10:54] Landslide by Susan Conley | Amazon | Bookshop.org [10:57] The Push by Ashley Audrain | Amazon | Bookshop.org [11:00] Memoirs About the Demise of a Marriage (Sarah) [12:18] Sarah How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key | Amazon | Bookshop.org [13:26] You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith | Amazon | Bookshop.org [13:52] A Beautiful, Terrible Thing by Jen Waite | Amazon | Bookshop.org [14:11] Bankruptcy by Janet Lombardi | Amazon | Bookshop.org [14:14] Susie Untamed by Glennon Doyle | Amazon | Bookshop.org [14:49] Pandemic Stories (Susie) [15:26] NOT Based on the COVID-19 Pandemic & More Dystopian [15:49] Sarah Wanderers by Chunk Wendig | Amazon | Bookshop.org [17:43] Susie Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel | Amazon | Bookshop.org [16:06] The Dog Stars by Peter Heller | Amazon | Bookshop.org [16:20] The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller | Amazon | Bookshop.org [16:41] Severance by Ling Ma | Amazon | Bookshop.org [17:07] The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker | Amazon | Bookshop.org [18:20] With the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Background [18:28] Sarah 56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard | Amazon | Bookshop.org [20:37] Reef Road by Deborah Goodrich Royce | Amazon | Bookshop.org [20:40] Susie Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru | Amazon | Bookshop.org [18:37] Day by Michael Cunningham | Amazon | Bookshop.org [19:17] Tom Lake by Ann Patchett | Amazon | Bookshop.org [19:47] Pete and Alice in Maine by Caitlin Shetterly | Amazon | Bookshop.org [19:49] Other Books Mentioned Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult [21:09] Invisible Son by Kim Johnson [21:14] This Is My America by Kim Johnson [21:19] The Measure by Nikki Erlick [22:03] Did She Actually Say That?! (Sarah) [23:03] Sarah Miracle Creek by Angie Kim | Amazon | Bookshop.org [24:18] Happiness Falls by Angie Kim | Amazon | Bookshop.org [24:19] The Push by Ashley Audrain | Amazon | Bookshop.org [24:55] All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg | Amazon | Bookshop.org [25:14] Sociopath by Patric Gagne, PhD | Amazon | Bookshop.org [25:42] Susie The Change by Kirsten Miller | Amazon | Bookshop.org [26:15] On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel | Amazon | Bookshop.org [26:32] Books Revolving Around Generational Trauma (Susie) [27:34] Sarah Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent | Amazon | Bookshop.org [31:24] Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow | Amazon | Bookshop.org [31:28] What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo | Amazon | Bookshop.org [31:52] The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, MD | Amazon | Bookshop.org [31:54] What Happened to You? by Oprah Winfrey and Bruce D. Perry, MD PhD | Amazon | Bookshop.org [31:57] Susie Grown Women by Sarai Johnson | Amazon | Bookshop.org [29:08] Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi | Amazon | Bookshop.org [29:58] The Postcard by Anne Berest | Amazon | Bookshop.org [30:27] Saving Ruby King by Catherine Adel West | Amazon | Bookshop.org [30:50] All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir | Amazon | Bookshop.org [30:53] Swift River by Essie Chambers | Amazon | Bookshop.org [30:56] Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshanathan | Amazon | Bookshop.org [30:59] Co-Ed Friend Groups (Sarah) [32:18] Sarah The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer | Amazon | Bookshop.org [33:17] Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler | Amazon | Bookshop.org [33:29] The Ensemble by Aja Gabel | Amazon | Bookshop.org [33:39] All Together Now by Matthew Norman | Amazon | Bookshop.org [33:47] Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin | Amazon | Bookshop.org [34:01] The Christmas Orphans Club by Becca Freeman | Amazon | Bookshop.org [34:14] Susie The Celebrants by Steven Rowley | Amazon | Bookshop.org [34:36] Who We Are Now by Lauryn Chamberlain | Amazon | Bookshop.org [35:16] Peace, Love, and Rock n' Roll / Books Set in the '60s & '70s (Susie) [36:58] Susie The Women by Kristin Hannah | Amazon | Bookshop.org [38:09] Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid | Amazon | Bookshop.org [38:31] Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau | Amazon | Bookshop.org [38:57] The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead | Amazon | Bookshop.org [spp-timestamp time=”[39:11]″] All You Have to Do Is Call by Kerri Maher | Amazon | Bookshop.org [39:39] Last House by Jessica Shattuck | Amazon | Bookshop.org [39:53] Surprisingly High-Quality Celebrity Memoirs (Sarah) [40:33] Sarah Open by Andre Agassi | Amazon | Bookshop.org [41:05] Spare by Prince Harry | Amazon | Bookshop.org [41:07] Open Book by Jessica Simpson | Amazon | Bookshop.org [42:16] Finding Me by Viola Davis | Amazon | Bookshop.org [43:11] Becoming by Michelle Obama | Amazon | Bookshop.org [43:15] Only Say Good Things by Crystal Hefner | Amazon | Bookshop.org [43:21] Susie Born a Crime by Trevor Noah | Amazon | Bookshop.org [44:19] Other Books Mentioned The Woman in Me by Britney Spears [41:45] The Many Lives of Mama Love by Laura Love Hardin [43:33] Look Backs (Susie) [44:38] Sarah City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert | Amazon | Bookshop.org [48:11] Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney | Amazon | Bookshop.org [48:33] Victim by Andrew Boryga | Amazon | Bookshop.org [49:06] Susie The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue | Amazon | Bookshop.org [45:30] The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker | Amazon | Bookshop.org [46:03] Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson | Amazon | Bookshop.org [47:08] Absolution by Alice McDermott | Amazon | Bookshop.org [47:30] Other Books Mentioned Happiness Falls by Angie Kim [47:47]
TIME STAMPS: 00:54 PETER, from Bulgaria - IG @ gods.ofwar1 - THE ARM WRESTLING BODYBUILDER from BULGARIA!!! 07:22 BLEEDING GUMS - why you might experience this when you go keto at first and what to do if this happens! 11:39 Davina - Ireland - my new client is new to carnivore as of a couple weeks to help with ANXIETY, STOMACH PAIN & POOR SLEEP
Table of contentsNote: links take you to the corresponding section below; links to the original episode can be found there.* Laura Duffy solves housing, ethics, and more [00:01:16]* Arjun Panickssery solves books, hobbies, and blogging, but fails to solve the Sleeping Beauty problem because he's wrong on that one [00:10:47]* Nathan Barnard on how financial regulation can inform AI regulation [00:17:16]* Winston Oswald-Drummond on the tractability of reducing s-risk, ethics, and more [00:27:48]* Nathan Barnard (again!) on why general intelligence is basically fake [00:34:10]* Daniel Filan on why I'm wrong about ethics (+ Oppenheimer and what names mean in like a hardcore phil of language sense) [00:56:54]* Holly Elmore on AI pause, wild animal welfare, and some cool biology things I couldn't fully follow but maybe you can [01:04:00]* Max Alexander and I solve ethics, philosophy of mind, and cancel culture once and for all [01:24:43]* Sarah Woodhouse on discovering AI x-risk, Twitter, and more [01:30:56] * Pigeon Hour x Consistently Candid pod-crossover: I debate moral realism with Max Alexander and Sarah Hastings-Woodhouse [01:41:08]Intro [00:00:00]To wrap up the year of Pigeon Hour, the podcast, I put together some clips from each episode to create a best-of compilation. This was inspired by 80,000 Hours, a podcast that did the same with their episodes, and I thought it was pretty cool and tractable enough.It's important to note that the clips I chose range in length significantly. This does not represent the quality or amount of interesting content in the episode. Sometimes there was a natural place to break the episode into a five-minute chunk, and other times it wouldn't have made sense to take a five-minute chunk out of what really needed to be a 20-minute segment. I promise I'm not just saying that.So without further ado, please enjoy.#1: Laura Duffy solves housing, ethics, and more [00:01:16]In this first segment, Laura, Duffy, and I discuss the significance and interpretation of Aristotle's philosophical works in relation to modern ethics and virtue theory.AARON: Econ is like more interesting. I don't know. I don't even remember of all the things. I don't know, it seems like kind of cool. Philosophy. Probably would have majored in philosophy if signaling wasn't an issue. Actually, maybe I'm not sure if that's true. Okay. I didn't want to do the old stuff though, so I'm actually not sure. But if I could aristotle it's all wrong. Didn't you say you got a lot out of Nicomachi or however you pronounce that?LAURA: Nicomachian ethics guide to how you should live your life. About ethics as applied to your life because you can't be perfect. Utilitarians. There's no way to be that.AARON: But he wasn't even responding to utilitarianism. I'm sure it was a good work given the time, but like, there's like no other discipline in which we care. So people care so much about like, what people thought 2000 years ago because like the presumption, I think the justified presumption is that things have iterated and improved since then. And I think that's true. It's like not just a presumption.LAURA: Humans are still rather the same and what our needs are for living amongst each other in political society are kind of the same. I think America's founding is very influenced by what people thought 2000 years ago.AARON: Yeah, descriptively that's probably true. But I don't know, it seems like all the whole body of philosophers have they've already done the work of, like, compressing the good stuff. Like the entire academy since like, 1400 or whatever has like, compressed the good stuff and like, gotten rid of the bad stuff. Not in like a high fidelity way, but like a better than chance way. And so the stuff that remains if you just take the state of I don't know if you read the Oxford Handbook of whatever it is, like ethics or something, the takeaways you're going to get from that are just better than the takeaways you're going to get from a summary of the state of the knowledge in any prior year. At least. Unless something weird happened. And I don't know. I don't know if that makes sense.LAURA: I think we're talking about two different things, though. Okay. In terms of knowledge about logic or something or, I don't know, argumentation about trying to derive the correct moral theory or something, versus how should we think about our own lives. I don't see any reason as to why the framework of virtue theory is incorrect and just because it's old. There's many virtue theorists now who are like, oh yeah, they were really on to something and we need to adapt it for the times in which we live and the kind of societies we live in now. But it's still like there was a huge kernel of truth in at least the way of thinking that Aristotle put forth in terms of balancing the different virtues that you care about and trying to find. I think this is true. Right? Like take one virtue of his humor. You don't want to be on one extreme where you're just basically a meme your entire life. Everybody thinks you're funny, but that's just not very serious. But you don't want to be a boar and so you want to find somewhere in the middle where it's like you have a good sense of humor, but you can still function and be respected by other people.AARON: Yeah. Once again, I agree. Well, I don't agree with everything. I agree with a lot of what you just said. I think there was like two main points of either confusion or disagreement. And like, the first one is that I definitely think, no, Aristotle shouldn't be discounted or like his ideas or virtue ethics or anything like that shouldn't be discounted because they were canonical texts or something were written a long time ago. I guess it's just like a presumption that I have a pretty strong presumption that conditional on them being good, they would also be written about today. And so you don't actually need to go back to the founding texts and then in fact, you probably shouldn't because the good stuff will be explained better and not in weird it looks like weird terms. The terms are used differently and they're like translations from Aramaic or whatever. Probably not Aramaic, probably something else. And yeah, I'm not sure if you.LAURA: Agree with this because we have certain assumptions about what words like purpose mean now that we're probably a bit richer in the old conception of them like telos or happiness. Right. Udaimnia is much better concept and to read the original text and see how those different concepts work together is actually quite enriching compared to how do people use these words now. And it would take like I don't know, I think there just is a lot of value of looking at how these were originally conceived because popularizers of the works now or people who are seriously doing philosophy using these concepts. You just don't have the background knowledge that's necessary to understand them fully if you don't read the canonical text.AARON: Yeah, I think that would be true. If you are a native speaker. Do you know Greek? If you know Greek, this is like dumb because then you're just right.LAURA: I did take a quarter of it.AARON: Oh God. Oh my God. I don't know if that counts, but that's like more than anybody should ever take. No, I'm just kidding. That's very cool. No, because I was going to say if you're a native speaker of Greek and you have the connotations of the word eudaimonia and you were like living in the temper shuttle, I would say. Yeah, that's true actually. That's a lot of nuanced, connotation and context that definitely gets lost with translation. But once you take the jump of reading English translations of the texts, not you may as well but there's nothing super special. You're not getting any privileged knowledge from saying the word eudaimonia as opposed to just saying some other term as a reference to that concept or something. You're absorbing the connotation in the context via English, I guess, via the mind of literally the translators who have like.LAURA: Yeah, well see, I tried to learn virtue theory by any other route than reading Aristotle.AARON: Oh God.LAURA: I took a course specifically on Plato and Aristotle.AARON: Sorry, I'm not laughing at you. I'm just like the opposite type of philosophy person.LAURA: But keep going. Fair. But she had us read his physics before we read Nicomachi.AARON: Think he was wrong about all that.LAURA: Stuff, but it made you understand what he meant by his teleology theory so much better in a way that I could not get if I was reading some modern thing.AARON: I don't know, I feel like you probably could. No, sorry, that's not true. I don't think you could get what Aristotle the man truly believed as well via a modern text. But is that what you? Depends. If you're trying to be a scholar of Aristotle, maybe that's important. If you're trying to find the best or truest ethics and learn the lessons of how to live, that's like a different type of task. I don't think Aristotle the man should be all that privileged in that.LAURA: If all of the modern people who are talking about virtue theory are basically Aristotle, then I don't see the difference.AARON: Oh, yeah, I guess. Fair enough. And then I would say, like, oh, well, they should probably start. Is that in fact the state of the things in virtue theory? I don't even know.LAURA: I don't know either.#2 Arjun Panickssery solves books, hobbies, and blogging, but fails to solve the Sleeping Beauty problem because he's wrong on that one [00:10:47]All right, next, Arjun Panixery and I explore the effectiveness of reading books in retaining and incorporating knowledge, discussing the value of long form content and the impact of great literary works on understanding and shaping personal worldviews.ARJUN: Oh, you were in the book chat, though. The book rant group chat, right?AARON: Yeah, I think I might have just not read any of it. So do you want to fill me in on what I should have read?ARJUN: Yeah, it's group chat of a bunch of people where we were arguing about a bunch of claims related to books. One of them is that most people don't remember pretty much anything from books that they read, right? They read a book and then, like, a few months later, if you ask them about it, they'll just say one page's worth of information or maybe like, a few paragraphs. The other is that what is it exactly? It's that if you read a lot of books, it could be that you just incorporate the information that's important into your existing models and then just forget the information. So it's actually fine. Isn't this what you wrote in your blog post or whatever? I think that's why I added you to that.AARON: Oh, thank you. I'm sorry I'm such a bad group chat participant. Yeah, honestly, I wrote that a while ago. I don't fully remember exactly what it says, but at least one of the things that it said was and that I still basically stand by, is that it's basically just like it's increasing the salience of a set of ideas more so than just filling your brain with more facts. And I think this is probably true insofar as the facts support a set of common themes or ideas that are kind of like the intellectual core of it. It would be really hard. Okay, so this is not a book, but okay. I've talked about how much I love an 80,000 hours podcast, and I've listened to, I don't think every episode, but at least 100 of the episodes. And no, you're just, like, not going to definitely I've forgotten most of the actual almost all of the actual propositional pieces of information said, but you're just not going to convince me that it's completely not affecting either model of the world or stuff that I know or whatever. I mean, there are facts that I could list. I think maybe I should try.ARJUN: Sure.AARON: Yeah. So what's your take on book other long form?ARJUN: Oh, I don't know. I'm still quite confused or I think the impetus for the group chat's creation was actually Hanania's post where he wrote the case against most books or most was in parentheses or something. I mean, there's a lot of things going on in that post. He just goes off against a bunch of different categories of books that are sort of not closely related. Like, he goes off against great. I mean, this is not the exact take he gives, but it's something like the books that are considered great are considered great literature for some sort of contingent reason, not because they're the best at getting you information that you want.AARON: This is, like, another topic. But I'm, like, anti great books. In fact, I'm anti great usually just means old and famous. So insofar as that's what we mean by I'm like, I think this is a bad thing, or, like, I don't know, aristotle is basically wrong about everything and stuff like that.ARJUN: Right, yeah. Wait, we could return to this. I guess this could also be divided into its component categories. He spends more time, though, I think, attacking a certain kind of nonfiction book that he describes as the kind of book that somebody pitches to a publisher and basically expands a single essay's worth of content into with a bunch of anecdotes and stuff. He's like, most of these books are just not very useful to read, I guess. I agree with that.AARON: Yeah. Is there one that comes to mind as, like, an? Mean, I think of Malcolm Gladwell as, like, the kind of I haven't actually read any of his stuff in a while, but I did, I think, when I started reading nonfiction or with any sort of intent, I read. A bunch of his stuff or whatever and vaguely remember that this is basically what he like for better or.ARJUN: Um yeah, I guess so. But he's almost, like, trying to do it on purpose. This is the experience that you're getting by reading a Malcolm Gladwell book. It's like talib. Right? It's just him just ranting. I'm thinking, I guess, of books that are about something. So, like, if you have a book that's know negotiation or something, it'll be filled with a bunch of anecdotes that are of dubious usefulness. Or if you get a book that's just about some sort of topic, there'll be historical trivia that's irrelevant. Maybe I can think of an example.AARON: Yeah. So the last thing I tried to read, maybe I am but haven't in a couple of weeks or whatever, is like, the Derek Parfit biography. And part of this is motivated because I don't even like biographies in general for some reason, I don't know. But I don't know. He's, like, an important guy. Some of the anecdotes that I heard were shockingly close to home for me, or not close to home, but close to my brain or something. So I was like, okay, maybe I'll see if this guy's like the smarter version of Aaron Bergman. And it's not totally true.ARJUN: Sure, I haven't read the book, but I saw tweet threads about it, as one does, and I saw things that are obviously false. Right. It's the claims that he read, like, a certain number of pages while brushing his teeth. That's, like, anatomically impossible or whatever. Did you get to that part? Or I assumed no, I also saw.AARON: That tweet and this is not something that I do, but I don't know if it's anatomically impossible. Yeah, it takes a little bit of effort to figure out how to do that, I guess. I don't think that's necessarily false or whatever, but this is probably not the most important.ARJUN: Maybe it takes long time to brush his teeth.#3: Nathan Barnard on how financial regulation can inform AI regulation [00:17:16]In this next segment, Nathan Barnard and I dive into the complexities of AI regulation, including potential challenges and outcomes of governing AI in relation to economic growth and existential security. And we compare it to banking regulation as well.AARON: Yeah, I don't know. I just get gloomy for, I think justified reasons when people talk about, oh yeah, here's the nine step process that has to take place and then maybe there's like a 20% chance that we'll be able to regulate AI effectively. I'm being facetious or exaggerating, something like that, but not by a gigantic amount.NATHAN: I think this is pretty radically different to my mainline expectation.AARON: What's your mainline expectation?NATHAN: I suppose I expect like AI to come with an increasing importance past economy and to come up to really like a very large fraction of the economy before really crazy stuff starts happening and this world is going very anonymous. Anonymous, anonymous, anonymous. I know the word is it'd be very unusual if this extremely large sector economy which was impacted like a very large number of people's lives remains like broadly unregulated.AARON: It'll be regulated, but just maybe in a stupid way.NATHAN: Sure, yes, maybe in a stupid way. I suppose critically, do you expect the stupid way to be like too conservative or too like the specific question of AI accenture it's basically too conservative or too lenient or I just won't be able to interact with this.AARON: I guess generally too lenient, but also mostly on a different axis where just like I don't actually know enough. I don't feel like I've read learned about various governance proposals to have a good object level take on this. But my broad prior is that there are just a lot of ways to for anything. There's a lot of ways to regulate something poorly. And the reason insofar as anything isn't regulated poorly it's because of a lot of trial and error.NATHAN: Maybe.AARON: I mean, there's probably exceptions, right? I don't know. Tax Americana is like maybe we didn't just kept winning wars starting with World War II. I guess just like maybe like a counterexample or something like that.NATHAN: Yeah, I think I still mostly disagree with this. Oh, cool. Yeah. I suppose I see a much like broader spectrum between bad regulation and good regulation. I agree it's like very small amount. The space of optimal regulation is very small. But I think we have to hit that space for regulation to be helpful. Especially in this especially if you consider that if you sort of buy the AI extension safety risk then the downsides of it's not this quite fine balancing act between too much whether consumer protection and siphoning competition and cycling innovation too much. It's like trying to end this quite specific, very bad outcome which is maybe much worse than going somewhat slowering economic growth, at least somewhat particularly if we think we're going to get something. This is very explosive rates for economic growth really quite soon. And the cost of slowing down economic growth by weather even by quite a large percentage, very small compared to the cost of sort of an accidental catastrophe. I sort of think of Sony iconic growth as the main cost of main way regulation goes wrong currently.AARON: I think in an actual sense that is correct. There's the question of like okay, Congress in the states like it's better than nothing. I'm glad it's not anarchy in terms of like I'm glad we have a legislature.NATHAN: I'm also glad the United States.AARON: How reasons responsive is Congress? I don't think reasons responsive enough to make it so that the first big law that gets passed insofar as there is one or if there is one is on the pareto frontier trading off between economic growth and existential security. It's going to be way inside of that production frontier or whatever. It's going to suck on every action, maybe not every act but at least like some relevant actions.NATHAN: Yeah that doesn't seem like obviously true to me. I think Dodge Frank was quite a good law.AARON: That came after 2008, right?NATHAN: Yeah correct. Yeah there you go. No, I agree. I'm not especially confident about doing regulation before there's some quite bad before there's a quite bad warning shot and yes, if we're in world where we have no warning shots and we're just like blindsided by everyone getting turned into everyone getting stripped their Athens within 3 seconds, this is not good. Both in law we do have one of those shots and I think Glass Seagull is good law. Not good law is a technical term. I think Glass Steagall was a good piece of legislation. I think DoD Frank was a good piece of legislation. I think the 2008 Seamless Bill was good piece of legislation. I think the Troubled Assets Relief Program is a good piece of piece of legislation.AARON: I recognize these terms and I know some of them and others I do not know the contents of.NATHAN: Yeah so Glass Eagle was the financial regulation passed in 1933 after Great Depression. The Tropical Asset Relief Program was passed in I think 2008, moved 2009 to help recapitalize banks. Dodge Frank was the sort of landmark post financial cris piece of legislation passed in 2011. I think these are all good pieces of legislation now. I think like financial regulation is probably unusually good amongst US legislation. This is like a quite weak take, I guess. It's unusually.AARON: So. I don't actually know the pre depression financial history at all but I feel like the more relevant comparison to the 21st century era is what was the regulatory regime in 1925 or something? I just don't know.NATHAN: Yeah, I know a bit. I haven't read this stuff especially deeply and so I don't want to don't want to be so overcompensant here but sort of the core pieces which were sort of important for the sort of the Great Depression going very badly was yeah, no distinction between commercial banks and investment banks. Yes, such a bank could take much riskier. Much riskier. Things with like custom deposits than they could from 1933 until the Peel Glass Eagle. And combine that with no deposit insurance and if you sort of have the combination of banks being able to do quite risky things with depositors money and no deposit insurance, this is quite dangerously known. And glassy repeal.AARON: I'm an expert in the sense that I have the Wikipedia page up. Well, yeah, there was a bunch of things. Basically. There's the first bank of the United States. There's the second bank of the United States. There's the free banking era. There was the era of national banks. Yada, yada, yada. It looks like 19. Seven was there was some panic. I vaguely remember this from like, AP US history, like seven years ago or.NATHAN: Yes, I suppose in short, I sort of agree that the record of sort of non post Cris legislation is like, not very good, but I think record of post Cris legislation really, at least in the financial sector, really is quite good. I'm sure lots of people disagree with this, but this is my take.#4 Winston Oswald-Drummond on the tractability of reducing s-risk, ethics, and more [00:27:48]Up next, Winston Oswald Drummond and I talk about the effectiveness and impact of donating to various research organizations, such as suffering-focused S-risk organizations. We discuss tractability, expected value, and essentially where we should give our money.AARON: Okay, nice. Yeah. Where to go from here? I feel like largely we're on the same page, I feel like.WINSTON: Yeah. Is your disagreement mostly tractability? Then? Maybe we should get into the disagreement.AARON: Yeah. I don't even know if I've specified, but insofar as I have one, yes, it's trapped ability. This is the reason why I haven't donated very much to anywhere for money reasons. But insofar as I have, I have not donated to Clrcrs because I don't see a theory of change that connects the research currently being done to actually reducing s risks. And I feel like there must be something because there's a lot of extremely smart people at both of these orgs or whatever, and clearly they thought about this and maybe the answer is it's very general and the outcome is just so big in magnitude that anything kind.WINSTON: Of that is part of it, I think. Yeah, part of it is like an expected value thing and also it's just very neglected. So it's like you want some people working on this, I think, at least. Even if it's unlikely to work. Yeah, even that might be underselling it, though. I mean, I do think there's people at CRS and Clr, like talking to people at AI labs and some people in politics and these types of things. And hopefully the research is a way to know what to try to get done at these places. You want to have some concrete recommendations and I think obviously people have to also be willing to listen to you, but I think there is some work being done on that and research is partially just like a community building thing as well. It's a credible signal that you were smart and have thought about this, and so it gives people reason to listen to you and maybe that mostly pays off later on in the future.AARON: Yeah, that all sounds like reasonable. And I guess one thing is that I just don't there's definitely things I mean, first of all, I haven't really stayed up to date on what's going on, so I haven't even done I've done zero research for this podcast episode, for example. Very responsible and insofar as I've know things about these. Orgs. It's just based on what's on their website at some given time. So insofar as there's outreach going on, not like behind the scenes, but just not in a super public way, or I guess you could call that behind the scenes. I just don't have reason to, I guess, know about that. And I guess, yeah, I'm pretty comfortable. I don't even know if this is considered biting a bullet for the crowd that will be listening to this, if that's anybody but with just like yeah, saying a very small change for a very large magnitude, just, like, checks out. You can just do expected value reasoning and that's basically correct, like a correct way of thinking about ethics. But even I don't know how much you know specifically or, like, how much you're allowed want to reveal, but if there was a particular alignment agenda that I guess you in a broad sense, like the suffering focused research community thought was particularly promising and relative to other tractable, I guess, generic alignment recommendations. And you were doing research on that and trying to push that into the alignment mainstream, which is not very mainstream. And then with the hope that that jumps into the AI mainstream. Even if that's kind of a long chain of events. I think I would be a lot more enthusiastic about I don't know that type of agenda, because it feels like there's like a particular story you're telling where it cashes out in the end. You know what I mean?WINSTON: Yeah, I'm not the expert on this stuff, but I do think you just mean I think there's some things about influencing alignment and powerful AI for sure. Maybe not like a full on, like, this is our alignment proposal and it also handles Sris. But some things we could ask AI labs that are already building, like AGI, we could say, can you also implement these sort of, like, safeguards so if you failed alignment, you fail sort of gracefully and don't cause lots of suffering.AARON: Right?WINSTON: Yeah. Or maybe there are other things too, which also seem potentially more tractable. Even if you solve alignment in some sense, like aligning with whatever the human operator tells the AI to do, then you can also get the issue that malevolent actors can take control of the AI and then what they want also causes lots of suffering that type of alignment wouldn't. Yeah, and I guess I tend to be somewhat skeptical of coherent extrapolated volition and things like this, where the idea is sort of like it'll just figure out our values and do the right thing. So, yeah, there's some ways to push on this without having a full alignment plan, but I'm not sure if that counts as what you were saying.AARON: No, I guess it does. Yeah, it sounds like it does. And it could be that I'm just kind of mistaken about the degree to which that type of research and outreach is going on. That sounds like it's at least partially true.#5: Nathan Barnard (again!) on why general intelligence is basically fake [00:34:10]Up next, Nathan Barnard is back for his second episode. And we talked about the nature of general intelligence, its relationship with language and the implications of specialized brain functions on the understanding of human cognitive abilities.NATHAN: Yes. This like symbolic like symbolic, symbolic reasoning stuff. Yeah. So I think if I was, like, making the if I was, like, making the case for general intelligence being real, I wouldn't have symbolic reasoning, but I would have language stuff. I'd have this hierarchical structure thing, which.AARON: I would probably so I think of at least most uses of language and central examples as a type of symbolic reasoning because words mean things. They're like yeah. Pointers to objects or something like that.NATHAN: Yeah, I think it's like, pretty confidence isn't where this isn't a good enough description of general intelligence. So, for instance so if you bit in your brain called, I'm using a checklist, I don't fuck this up vernacular, I'm not making this cool. Lots of connects to use words like pointers as these arbitrary signs happens mostly in this area of the brain called Berkeley's area. But very famously, you can have Berkeley's epaxics who lose the ability to do language comprehension and use the ability to consistently use words as pointers, as signs to point to things, but still have perfect good spatial reasoning abilities. And so, conversely, people with brokers of fascia who fuck up, who have the broker's reason their brain fucks up will not be able to form fluent sentences and have some problems like unsigned syntax, and they'll still be able to have very good spatial reasoning. It could still, for instance, be like, good engineers. Would you like many problems which, like, cost engineering?AARON: Yeah, I totally buy that. I don't think language is the central thing. I think it's like an outgrowth of, like I don't know, there's like a simplified model I could make, which is like it's like an outgrowth of whatever general intelligence really is. But whatever the best spatial or graphical model is, I don't think language is cognition.NATHAN: Yes, this is a really big debate in psycholinguistics as to whether language is like an outgrowth of other abilities like the brain has, whether language whether there's very specialized language modules. Yeah, this is just like a very live debate in psycholinguistics moments. I actually do lean towards the reason I've been talking about this actually just going to explain this hierarchical structure thing? Yeah, I keep talking about it. So one theory for how you can comprehend new sentences, like, the dominant theory in linguistics, how you can comprehend new sentences, um, is you break them up into, like you break them up into, like, chunks, and you form these chunks together in this, like, tree structure. So something like, if you hear, like, a totally novel sentence like the pit bull mastiff flopped around deliciously or something, you can comprehend what the sentence means despite the fact you've never heard it. Theory behind this is you saw yes, this can be broken up into this tree structure, where the different, like, ah, like like bits of the sentence. So, like like the mastiff would be like, one bit, and then you have, like, another bit, which is like, the mastiff I can't remember I said rolled around, so that'd be like, another bit, and then you'd have connectors to our heart.AARON: Okay.NATHAN: So the massive rolling around one theory of one of the sort of distinctive things that humans have disabilities is like, this quite general ability to break things up into these these tree structures. This is controversial within psycholinguistics, but it's broadly an area which I broadly buy it because we do see harms to other areas of intelligence. You get much worse at, like, Ravens Progressive Matrices, for instance, when you have, like, an injury to brokers area, but, like, not worse at, like, tests like tests of space, of, like, spatial reasoning, for instance.AARON: So what is like, is there, like, a main alternative to, like, how humans.NATHAN: Understand language as far as this specificity of how we pass completely novel sentences, as far as where this is just like this is just like the the academic consensus. Okay.AARON: I mean, it sounds totally like right? I don't know.NATHAN: Yeah. But yeah, I suppose going back to saying, how far is language like an outgrowth of general intelligence? An outgrowth like general intelligence versus having much more specialized language modules? Yeah, I lean towards the latter, despite yeah, I still don't want to give too strong of a personal opinion here because I'm not a linguistic this is a podcast.AARON: You're allowed to give takes. No one's going to say this is like the academic we want takes.NATHAN: We want takes. Well, gone to my head is.AARON: I.NATHAN: Think language is not growth of other abilities. I think the main justification for this, I think, is that the loss of other abilities we see when you have damage to broker's area and verca's area.AARON: Okay, cool. So I think we basically agree on that. And also, I guess one thing to highlight is I think outgrowth can mean a couple of different things. I definitely think it's plausible. I haven't read about this. I think I did at some point, but not in a while. But outgrowth could mean temporarily or whatever. I think I'm kind of inclined to think it's not that straightforward. You could have coevolution where language per se encourages both its own development and the development of some general underlying trait or something.NATHAN: Yeah. Which seems likely.AARON: Okay, cool. So why don't humans have general intelligence?NATHAN: Right. Yeah. As I was sort of talking about previously.AARON: Okay.NATHAN: I think I think I'd like to use go back to like a high level like a high level argument is there appears to be very surprised, like, much higher levels of functional specialization in brains than you expect. You can lose much more specific abilities than you expect to be able to lose. You can lose specifically the ability a famous example is like facebindness, actually. You probably lose the ability to specifically recognize things which you're, like, an expert in.AARON: Who does it or who loses this ability.NATHAN: If you've damaged your fuse inform area, you'll lose the ability to recognize faces, but nothing else.AARON: Okay.NATHAN: And there's this general pattern that your brain is much more you can lose much more specific abilities than you expect. So, for instance, if you sort of have damage to your ventral, medial, prefrontal cortex, you can say the reasoning for why you shouldn't compulsively gamble but still compulsively gamble.AARON: For instance okay, I understand this not gambling per se, but like executive function stuff at a visceral level. Okay, keep going.NATHAN: Yeah. Some other nice examples of this. I think memory is quite intuitive. So there's like, a very famous patient called patient HM who had his hippocampus removed and so as a result, lost all declarative memory. So all memory of specific facts and things which happened in his life. He just couldn't remember any of these things, but still perfectly functioning otherwise. I think at a really high level, I think this functional specialization is probably the strongest piece of evidence against the general intelligence hypothesis. I think fundamentally, general intelligence hypothesis implies that, like, if you, like yeah, if you was, like, harm a piece of your brain, if you have some brain injury, you might like generically get worse at tasks you like, generically get worse at, like at like all task groups use general intelligence. But I think suggesting people, including general intelligence, like the ability to write, the ability to speak, maybe not speak, the ability to do math, you do have.AARON: This it's just not as easy to analyze in a Cogsy paper which IQ or whatever. So there is something where if somebody has a particular cubic centimeter of their brain taken out, that's really excellent evidence about what that cubic centimeter does or whatever, but that non spatial modification is just harder to study and analyze. I guess we'll give people drugs, right? Suppose that set aside the psychometric stuff. But suppose that general intelligence is mostly a thing or whatever and you actually can ratchet it up and down. This is probably just true, right? You can probably give somebody different doses of, like, various drugs. I don't know, like laughing gas, like like, yeah, like probably, probably weed. Like I don't know.NATHAN: So I think this just probably isn't true. Your working memory corrects quite strongly with G and having better working memory generic can make you much better at lots of tasks if you have like.AARON: Yeah.NATHAN: Sorry, but this is just like a specific ability. It's like just specifically your working memory, which is improved if you go memory to a drugs. Improved working memory. I think it's like a few things like memory attention, maybe something like decision making, which are all like extremely useful abilities and improve how well other cognitive abilities work. But they're all separate things. If you improved your attention abilities, your working memory, but you sort of had some brain injury, which sort of meant you sort of had lost ability to pass syntax, you would not get better at passing syntax. And you can also use things separately. You can also improve attention and improve working memory separately, which just it's not just this one dial which you can turn up.AARON: There's good reason to expect that we can't turn it up because evolution is already sort of like maximizing, given the relevant constraints. Right. So you would need to be looking just like injuries. Maybe there are studies where they try to increase people's, they try to add a cubic centimeter to someone's brain, but normally it's like the opposite. You start from some high baseline and then see what faculties you lose. Just to clarify, I guess.NATHAN: Yeah, sorry, I think I've lost the you still think there probably is some general intelligence ability to turn up?AARON: Honestly, I think I haven't thought about this nearly as much as you. I kind of don't know what I think at some level. If I could just write down all of the different components and there are like 74 of them and what I think of a general intelligence consists of does that make it I guess in some sense, yeah, that does make it less of an ontologically legit thing or something. I think I think the thing I want to get the motivating thing here is that with humans yet you can like we know humans range in IQ, and there's, like, setting aside a very tiny subset of people with severe brain injuries or development disorders or whatever. Almost everybody has some sort of symbolic reasoning that they can do to some degree. Whereas the smartest maybe I'm wrong about this, but as far as I know, the smartest squirrel is not going to be able to have something semantically represent something else. And that's what I intuitively want to appeal to, you know what I mean?NATHAN: Yeah, I know what you're guessing at. So I think there's like two interesting things here. So I think one is, could a squirrel do this? I'm guessing a squirrel couldn't do this, but a dog can, or like a dog probably can. A chimpanzee definitely can.AARON: Do what?NATHAN: Chimpanzees can definitely learn to associate arbitrary signs, things in the world with arbitrary signs.AARON: Yes, but maybe I'm just adding on epicentercles here, but I feel like correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that maybe I'm just wrong about this, but I would assume that Chicken Tees cannot use that sign in a domain that is qualitatively different from the ones they've been in. Right. So, like, a dog will know that a certain sign means sit or whatever, but maybe that's not a good I.NATHAN: Don'T know think this is basically not true.AARON: Okay.NATHAN: And we sort of know this from teaching.AARON: Teaching.NATHAN: There's like a famously cocoa de guerrilla. Also a bonobo whose name I can't remember were taught sign language. And the thing they were consistently bad at was, like, putting together sentences they could learn quite large vocabularies learning to associate by large, I mean in the hundreds of words, in the low hundreds of words which they could consistently use consistently use correctly.AARON: What do you mean by, like, in what sense? What is bonobo using?NATHAN: A very famous and quite controversial example is like, coco gorilla was like, saw a swan outside and signed water bird. That's like, a controversial example. But other things, I think, which are controversial here is like, the syntax part of putting water and bird together is the controversial part, but it's not the controversial part that she could see a swan and call that a bird.AARON: Yeah, I mean, this is kind of just making me think, okay, maybe the threshold for D is just like at the chimp level or something. We are like or whatever the most like that. Sure. If a species really can generate from a prefix and a suffix or whatever, a concept that they hadn't learned before.NATHAN: Yeah, this is a controversial this is like a controversial example of that the addition to is the controversial part. Yeah, I suppose maybe brings back to why I think this matters is will there be this threshold which AIS cross such that their reasoning after this is qualitatively different to their reasoning previously? And this is like two things. One, like a much faster increase in AI capabilities and two, alignment techniques which worked on systems which didn't have g will no longer work. Systems which do have g. Brings back to why I think this actually matters. But I think if we're sort of accepting it, I think elephants probably also if you think that if we're saying, like, g is like a level of chimpanzees, chimpanzees just, like, don't don't look like quantitatively different to, like, don't look like that qualitatively different to, like, other animals. Now, lots of other animals live in similar complex social groups. Lots of other animals use tools.AARON: Yeah, sure. For one thing, I don't think there's not going to be a discontinuity in the same way that there wasn't a discontinuity at any point between humans evolution from the first prokaryotic cells or whatever are eukaryotic one of those two or both, I guess. My train of thought. Yes, I know it's controversial, but let's just suppose that the sign language thing was legit with the waterbird and that's not like a random one off fluke or something. Then maybe this is just some sort of weird vestigial evolutionary accident that actually isn't very beneficial for chimpanzees and they just stumbled their way into and then it just enabled them to it enables evolution to bootstrap Shimp genomes into human genomes. Because at some the smartest or whatever actually, I don't know. Honestly, I don't have a great grasp of evolutionary biology or evolution at all. But, yeah, it could just be not that helpful for chimps and helpful for an extremely smart chimp that looks kind of different or something like that.NATHAN: Yeah. So I suppose just like the other thing she's going on here, I don't want to keep banging on about this, but you can lose the language. You can lose linguistic ability. And it's just, like, happens this happens in stroke victims, for instance. It's not that rare. Just, like, lose linguistic ability, but still have all the other abilities which we sort of think of as like, general intelligence, which I think would be including the general intelligence, like, hypothesis.AARON: I agree that's, like, evidence against it. I just don't think it's very strong evidence, partially because I think there is a real school of thought that says that language is fundamental. Like, language drives thought. Language is, like, primary to thought or something. And I don't buy that. If you did buy that, I think this would be, like, more damning evidence.#6 Daniel Filan on why I'm wrong about ethics (+ Oppenheimer and what names mean in like a hardcore phil of language sense) [00:56:54][Note: I forgot to record an intro segment here. Sorry!]AARON: Yeah. Yes. I'm also anti scam. Right, thank you. Okay, so I think that thing that we were talking about last time we talked, which is like the thing I think we actually both know stuff about instead of just like, repeating New York Times articles is my nuanced ethics takes and why you think about talk about that and then we can just also branch off from there.DANIEL: Yeah, we can talk about that.AARON: Maybe see where that did. I luckily I have a split screen up, so I can pull up things. Maybe this is kind of like egotistical or something to center my particular view, but you've definitely given me some of the better pushback or whatever that I haven't gotten that much feedback of any kind, I guess, but it's still interesting to hear your take. So basically my ethical position or the thing that I think is true is that which I think is not the default view. I think most people think this is wrong is that total utilitarianism does not imply that for some amount of suffering that could be created there exists some other extremely large arbitrarily, large amount of happiness that could also be created which would morally justify the former. Basically.DANIEL: So you think that even under total utilitarianism there can be big amounts of suffering such that there's no way to morally tip the calculus. However much pleasure you can create, it's just not going to outweigh the fact that you inflicted that much suffering on some people.AARON: Yeah, and I'd highlight the word inflicted if something's already there and you can't do anything about it, that's kind of neither here nor there as it pertains to your actions or something. So it's really about you increasing, you creating suffering that wouldn't have otherwise been created. Yeah. It's also been a couple of months since I've thought about this in extreme detail, although I thought about it quite a bit. Yeah.DANIEL: Maybe I should say my contrary view, I guess, when you say that, I don't know, does total utilitarianism imply something or not? I'm like, well, presumably it depends on what we mean by total utilitarianism. Right. So setting that aside, I think that thesis is probably false. I think that yeah. You can offset great amounts of suffering with great amounts of pleasure, even for arbitrary amounts of suffering.AARON: Okay. I do think that position is like the much more common and even, I'd say default view. Do you agree with that? It's sort of like the implicit position of people who are of self described total utilitarians who haven't thought a ton about this particular question.DANIEL: Yeah, I think it's probably the implicit default. I think it's the implicit default in ethical theory or something. I think that in practice, when you're being a utilitarian, I don't know, normally, if you're trying to be a utilitarian and you see yourself inflicting a large amount of suffering, I don't know. I do think there's some instinct to be like, is there any way we can get around this?AARON: Yeah, for sure. And to be clear, I don't think this would look like a thought experiment. I think what it looks like in practice and also I will throw in caveats as I see necessary, but I think what it looks like in practice is like, spreading either wild animals or humans or even sentient digital life through the universe. That's in a non as risky way, but that's still just maybe like, say, making the earth, making multiple copies of humanity or something like that. That would be an example that's probably not like an example of what an example of creating suffering would be. For example, just creating another duplicate of earth. Okay.DANIEL: Anything that would be like so much suffering that we shouldn't even the pleasures of earth outweighs.AARON: Not necessarily, which is kind of a cop out. But my inclination is that if you include wild animals, the answer is yes, that creating another earth especially. Yeah, but I'm much more committed to some amount. It's like some amount than this particular time and place in human industry is like that or whatever.DANIEL: Okay, can I get a feel of some other concrete cases to see?AARON: Yeah.DANIEL: So one example that's on my mind is, like, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, right? So the standard case for this is, like, yeah, what? A hundred OD thousand people died? Like, quite terrible, quite awful. And a lot of them died, I guess a lot of them were sort of some people were sort of instantly vaporized, but a lot of people died in extremely painful ways. But the countercase is like, well, the alternative to that would have been like, an incredibly grueling land invasion of Japan, where many more people would have died or know regardless of what the actual alternatives were. If you think about the atomic bombings, do you think that's like the kind of infliction of suffering where there's just not an offsetting amount of pleasure that could make that okay?AARON: My intuition is no, that it is offsettable, but I would also emphasize that given the actual historical contingencies, the alternative, the implicit case for the bombing includes reducing suffering elsewhere rather than merely creating happiness. There can definitely be two bad choices that you have to make or something. And my claim doesn't really pertain to that, at least not directly.#7: Holly Elmore on AI pause, wild animal welfare, and some cool biology things I couldn't fully follow but maybe you can [01:04:00]Up next, Holly Elmore and I discuss the complexities and implications of AI development and open sourcing. We talk about protests and ethical considerations around her, um, uh, campaign to pause the development of frontier AI systems until, until we can tell that they're safe.AARON: So what's the plan? Do you have a plan? You don't have to have a plan. I don't have plans very much.HOLLY: Well, right now I'm hopeful about the UK AI summit. Pause AI and I have planned a multi city protest on the 21 October to encourage the UK AI Safety Summit to focus on safety first and to have as a topic arranging a pause or that of negotiation. There's a lot of a little bit upsetting advertising for that thing that's like, we need to keep up capabilities too. And I just think that's really a secondary objective. And that's how I wanted to be focused on safety. So I'm hopeful about the level of global coordination that we're already seeing. It's going so much faster than we thought. Already the UN Secretary General has been talking about this and there have been meetings about this. It's happened so much faster at the beginning of this year. Nobody thought we could talk about nobody was thinking we'd be talking about this as a mainstream topic. And then actually governments have been very receptive anyway. So right now I'm focused on other than just influencing opinion, the targets I'm focused on, or things like encouraging these international like, I have a protest on Friday, my first protest that I'm leading and kind of nervous that's against Meta. It's at the Meta building in San Francisco about their sharing of model weights. They call it open source. It's like not exactly open source, but I'm probably not going to repeat that message because it's pretty complicated to explain. I really love the pause message because it's just so hard to misinterpret and it conveys pretty clearly what we want very quickly. And you don't have a lot of bandwidth and advocacy. You write a lot of materials for a protest, but mostly what people see is the title.AARON: That's interesting because I sort of have the opposite sense. I agree that in terms of how many informational bits you're conveying in a particular phrase, pause AI is simpler, but in some sense it's not nearly as obvious. At least maybe I'm more of a tech brain person or whatever. But why that is good, as opposed to don't give extremely powerful thing to the worst people in the world. That's like a longer everyone.HOLLY: Maybe I'm just weird. I've gotten the feedback from open source ML people is the number one thing is like, it's too late, there's already super powerful models. There's nothing you can do to stop us, which sounds so villainous, I don't know if that's what they mean. Well, actually the number one message is you're stupid, you're not an ML engineer. Which like, okay, number two is like, it's too late, there's nothing you can do. There's all of these other and Meta is not even the most powerful generator of models that it share of open source models. I was like, okay, fine. And I don't know, I don't think that protesting too much is really the best in these situations. I just mostly kind of let that lie. I could give my theory of change on this and why I'm focusing on Meta. Meta is a large company I'm hoping to have influence on. There is a Meta building in San Francisco near where yeah, Meta is the biggest company that is doing this and I think there should be a norm against model weight sharing. I was hoping it would be something that other employees of other labs would be comfortable attending and that is a policy that is not shared across the labs. Obviously the biggest labs don't do it. So OpenAI is called OpenAI but very quickly decided not to do that. Yeah, I kind of wanted to start in a way that made it more clear than pause AI. Does that anybody's welcome something? I thought a one off issue like this that a lot of people could agree and form a coalition around would be good. A lot of people think that this is like a lot of the open source ML people think know this is like a secret. What I'm saying is secretly an argument for tyranny. I just want centralization of power. I just think that there are elites that are better qualified to run everything. It was even suggested I didn't mention China. It even suggested that I was racist because I didn't think that foreign people could make better AIS than Meta.AARON: I'm grimacing here. The intellectual disagreeableness, if that's an appropriate term or something like that. Good on you for standing up to some pretty bad arguments.HOLLY: Yeah, it's not like that worth it. I'm lucky that I truly am curious about what people think about stuff like that. I just find it really interesting. I spent way too much time understanding the alt. Right. For instance, I'm kind of like sure I'm on list somewhere because of the forums I was on just because I was interested and it is something that serves me well with my adversaries. I've enjoyed some conversations with people where I kind of like because my position on all this is that look, I need to be convinced and the public needs to be convinced that this is safe before we go ahead. So I kind of like not having to be the smart person making the arguments. I kind of like being like, can you explain like I'm five. I still don't get it. How does this work?AARON: Yeah, no, I was thinking actually not long ago about open source. Like the phrase has such a positive connotation and in a lot of contexts it really is good. I don't know. I'm glad that random tech I don't know, things from 2004 or whatever, like the reddit source code is like all right, seems cool that it's open source. I don't actually know if that was how that right. But yeah, I feel like maybe even just breaking down what the positive connotation comes from and why it's in people's self. This is really what I was thinking about, is like, why is it in people's self interest to open source things that they made and that might break apart the allure or sort of ethical halo that it has around it? And I was thinking it probably has something to do with, oh, this is like how if you're a tech person who makes some cool product, you could try to put a gate around it by keeping it closed source and maybe trying to get intellectual property or something. But probably you're extremely talented already, or pretty wealthy. Definitely can be hired in the future. And if you're not wealthy yet I don't mean to put things in just materialist terms, but basically it could easily be just like in a yeah, I think I'll probably take that bit out because I didn't mean to put it in strictly like monetary terms, but basically it just seems like pretty plausibly in an arbitrary tech person's self interest, broadly construed to, in fact, open source their thing, which is totally fine and normal.HOLLY: I think that's like 99 it's like a way of showing magnanimity showing, but.AARON: I don't make this sound so like, I think 99.9% of human behavior is like this. I'm not saying it's like, oh, it's some secret, terrible self interested thing, but just making it more mechanistic. Okay, it's like it's like a status thing. It's like an advertising thing. It's like, okay, you're not really in need of direct economic rewards, or sort of makes sense to play the long game in some sense, and this is totally normal and fine, but at the end of the day, there's reasons why it makes sense, why it's in people's self interest to open source.HOLLY: Literally, the culture of open source has been able to bully people into, like, oh, it's immoral to keep it for yourself. You have to release those. So it's just, like, set the norms in a lot of ways, I'm not the bully. Sounds bad, but I mean, it's just like there is a lot of pressure. It looks bad if something is closed source.AARON: Yeah, it's kind of weird that Meta I don't know, does Meta really think it's in their I don't know. Most economic take on this would be like, oh, they somehow think it's in their shareholders interest to open source.HOLLY: There are a lot of speculations on why they're doing this. One is that? Yeah, their models aren't as good as the top labs, but if it's open source, then open source quote, unquote then people will integrate it llama Two into their apps. Or People Will Use It And Become I don't know, it's a little weird because I don't know why using llama Two commits you to using llama Three or something, but it just ways for their models to get in in places where if you just had to pay for their models too, people would go for better ones. That's one thing. Another is, yeah, I guess these are too speculative. I don't want to be seen repeating them since I'm about to do this purchase. But there's speculation that it's in best interests in various ways to do this. I think it's possible also that just like so what happened with the release of Llama One is they were going to allow approved people to download the weights, but then within four days somebody had leaked Llama One on four chan and then they just were like, well, whatever, we'll just release the weights. And then they released Llama Two with the weights from the beginning. And it's not like 100% clear that they intended to do full open source or what they call Open source. And I keep saying it's not open source because this is like a little bit of a tricky point to make. So I'm not emphasizing it too much. So they say that they're open source, but they're not. The algorithms are not open source. There are open source ML models that have everything open sourced and I don't think that that's good. I think that's worse. So I don't want to criticize them for that. But they're saying it's open source because there's all this goodwill associated with open source. But actually what they're doing is releasing the product for free or like trade secrets even you could say like things that should be trade secrets. And yeah, they're telling people how to make it themselves. So it's like a little bit of a they're intentionally using this label that has a lot of positive connotations but probably according to Open Source Initiative, which makes the open Source license, it should be called something else or there should just be like a new category for LLMs being but I don't want things to be more open. It could easily sound like a rebuke that it should be more open to make that point. But I also don't want to call it Open source because I think Open source software should probably does deserve a lot of its positive connotation, but they're not releasing the part, that the software part because that would cut into their business. I think it would be much worse. I think they shouldn't do it. But I also am not clear on this because the Open Source ML critics say that everyone does have access to the same data set as Llama Two. But I don't know. Llama Two had 7 billion tokens and that's more than GPT Four. And I don't understand all of the details here. It's possible that the tokenization process was different or something and that's why there were more. But Meta didn't say what was in the longitude data set and usually there's some description given of what's in the data set that led some people to speculate that maybe they're using private data. They do have access to a lot of private data that shouldn't be. It's not just like the common crawl backup of the Internet. Everybody's basing their training on that and then maybe some works of literature they're not supposed to. There's like a data set there that is in question, but metas is bigger than bigger than I think well, sorry, I don't have a list in front of me. I'm not going to get stuff wrong, but it's bigger than kind of similar models and I thought that they have access to extra stuff that's not public. And it seems like people are asking if maybe that's part of the training set. But yeah, the ML people would have or the open source ML people that I've been talking to would have believed that anybody who's decent can just access all of the training sets that they've all used.AARON: Aside, I tried to download in case I'm guessing, I don't know, it depends how many people listen to this. But in one sense, for a competent ML engineer, I'm sure open source really does mean that. But then there's people like me. I don't know. I knew a little bit of R, I think. I feel like I caught on the very last boat where I could know just barely enough programming to try to learn more, I guess. Coming out of college, I don't know, a couple of months ago, I tried to do the thing where you download Llama too, but I tried it all and now I just have like it didn't work. I have like a bunch of empty folders and I forget got some error message or whatever. Then I tried to train my own tried to train my own model on my MacBook. It just printed. That's like the only thing that a language model would do because that was like the most common token in the training set. So anyway, I'm just like, sorry, this is not important whatsoever.HOLLY: Yeah, I feel like torn about this because I used to be a genomicist and I used to do computational biology and it was not machine learning, but I used a highly parallel GPU cluster. And so I know some stuff about it and part of me wants to mess around with it, but part of me feels like I shouldn't get seduced by this. I am kind of worried that this has happened in the AI safety community. It's always been people who are interested in from the beginning, it was people who are interested in singularity and then realized there was this problem. And so it's always been like people really interested in tech and wanting to be close to it. And I think we've been really influenced by our direction, has been really influenced by wanting to be where the action is with AI development. And I don't know that that was right.AARON: Not personal, but I guess individual level I'm not super worried about people like you and me losing the plot by learning more about ML on their personal.HOLLY: You know what I mean? But it does just feel sort of like I guess, yeah, this is maybe more of like a confession than, like a point. But it does feel a little bit like it's hard for me to enjoy in good conscience, like, the cool stuff.AARON: Okay. Yeah.HOLLY: I just see people be so attached to this as their identity. They really don't want to go in a direction of not pursuing tech because this is kind of their whole thing. And what would they do if we weren't working toward AI? This is a big fear that people express to me with they don't say it in so many words usually, but they say things like, well, I don't want AI to never get built about a pause. Which, by the way, just to clear up, my assumption is that a pause would be unless society ends for some other reason, that a pause would eventually be lifted. It couldn't be forever. But some people are worried that if you stop the momentum now, people are just so luddite in their insides that we would just never pick it up again. Or something like that. And, yeah, there's some identity stuff that's been expressed. Again, not in so many words to me about who will we be if we're just sort of like activists instead of working on.AARON: Maybe one thing that we might actually disagree on. It's kind of important is whether so I think we both agree that Aipause is better than the status quo, at least broadly, whatever. I know that can mean different things, but yeah, maybe I'm not super convinced, actually, that if I could just, like what am I trying to say? Maybe at least right now, if I could just imagine the world where open eye and Anthropic had a couple more years to do stuff and nobody else did, that would be better. I kind of think that they are reasonably responsible actors. And so I don't k
IntroAt the gracious invitation of AI Safety Twitter-fluencer Sarah Hastings-Woodhouse, I appeared on the very first episode of her new podcast “Consistently Candid” to debate moral realism (or something kinda like that, I guess; see below) with fellow philosophy nerd and EA Twitter aficionado Max Alexander, alongside Sarah as moderator and judge of sorts.What I believeIn spite of the name of the episode and the best of my knowledge/understanding a few days ago, it turns out my stance may not be ~genuine~ moral realism. Here's my basic meta-ethical take:* Descriptive statements that concern objective relative goodness or badness (e.g., "it is objectively for Sam to donate $20 than to buy an expensive meal that costs $20 more than a similar, less fancy meal”) can be and sometimes are true; but* Genuinely normative claims like “Sam should (!) donate $20 and should not buy that fancy meal” are never objectively true.Of course the label per se doesn't really matter. But for a bunch of reasons it still seems wise to figure out which label really does work best.Some definitionsStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Moral realists are those who think that, in these respects, things should be taken at face value—moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. Moreover, they hold, at least some moral claims actually are true. That much is the common and more or less defining ground of moral realism (although some accounts of moral realism see it as involving additional commitments, say to the independence of the moral facts from human thought and practice, or to those facts being objective in some specified way).Wikipedia:The robust model of moral realism commits moral realists to three theses:* The semantic thesis: The primary semantic role of moral predicates (such as "right" and "wrong") is to refer to moral properties (such as rightness and wrongness), so that moral statements (such as "honesty is good" and "slavery is unjust") purport to represent moral facts, and express propositions that are true or false (or approximately true, largely false, and so on).* The alethic thesis: Some moral propositions are in fact true.* The metaphysical thesis: Moral propositions are true when actions and other objects of moral assessment have the relevant moral properties (so that the relevant moral facts obtain), where these facts and properties are robust: their metaphysical status, whatever it is, is not relevantly different from that of (certain types of) ordinary non-moral facts and properties.And to settle the matter, here's what some LLM have to say.My prompt:Suppose a person believes the following:1: Descriptive statements that concern objective relative goodness or badness (e.g., "it is objectively for Sam to donate $20 than to buy an expensive meal that costs $20 more than a similar, less fancy meal”) can be and sometimes are true; but 2: Genuinely normative claims like “Sam should donate $20 and should not buy that fancy meal” are never objectively true.Is this person best categorized as a moral realist?ChatGPTGiven these two beliefs, the person's stance doesn't align completely with traditional moral realism, which typically asserts that there are objective truths about both moral facts (like the goodness or badness of actions) and moral duties (what one should or should not do). However, it also doesn't fully align with moral anti-realism, since the person believes in some form of objective truth regarding moral value.One possible categorization for this stance could be a form of "value realism" combined with "normative anti-realism" or "normative subjectivism." This would mean that the person believes in objective truths about what is better or worse (value realism) but thinks that what one ought to do (normative claims) is not a matter of objective truth but perhaps of subjective judgment or societal conventions.This position is quite sophisticated and might be best understood as a hybrid or intermediate position in the landscape of moral philosophy, rather than fitting neatly into the category of moral realism or its standard alternatives.Great, so much for trying to fit things into nice little buckets.Claude, fortunately, is more definitive:No, the view described is not best categorized as moral realism. Here's why:Moral realism is the view that there are objective moral facts or truths. A moral realist believes that some moral claims, including normative claims about what one should or shouldn't do, can be objectively and mind-independently true.The view in the example accepts that there can be objective truths about relative degrees of goodness or badness (claim 1). However, it denies that there are objective normative truths about what one should or shouldn't do (claim 2). By rejecting that genuine normative 'should/shouldn't' claims can be objectively true, the view denies a key commitment of moral realism - namely that moral claims can state objective normative facts. At best it allows for objective evaluative facts about goodness/badness, not prescriptive facts about obligations.So this view would be more accurately categorized as a form of moral anti-realism like non-cognitivism or error theory. It does not qualify as moral realism because of its rejection of the existence of objective normative truths that could make strong normative claims justified or true. The commitment to objective evaluative facts alone does not sufficiently qualify the view as realist in the metaethical sense.In summary, the view accepts objective "good/bad" facts but denies objective "should/shouldn't" facts. This combination puts it at odds with core commitments of moral realism, so it is better seen as an anti-realist view.I'm gonna disagree with Claude here, at least in that the bolded claim above (objective normative facts are a key part of moral realism) just seems…wrong? Like all the definitions could replace the term “moral fact” or “moral claim” with “normative fact” and “normative claim” but they do not!So I really don't have a great answer to which label works best. One of two ~human level chatbots giving me a definitive-sounding “anti-realism” answer is too much evidence for me, whose only formal philosophy training is an undergrad minor, to rule that one out. There are also good arguments, I think, for the “realist label,” as well as for “neither” (i.e., ‘secret third thing'). In fact all of these seem pretty similar in terms of argument convincingness/correctness. So, in sum,
As a school psychologist, my guest Sarah How was confident she was the perfect candidate to become an adoptive parent. That's why she began the process of adoption while her two bio kids were still young. Turns out, though, that adoption and being a school psychologist weren't quite the same. At one point Sarah almost terminated the process because she just didn't think she was the right mom for these kids. And then she learned Nurtured Heart. Listen to this vulnerable and moving account of Sarah How's parenting transformation. To reach Sarah: Email: Sarahk.how@gmail.com Phone (Call or Text): 701-367-6687 Parent Coaching Website: opendoorfargo.com Christian-based individual or parent coaching Website: SpeakTil.com. TedxFargo link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lXNl8NpyuY Sarah How is a dynamic international speaker, author, school psychologist, and relationship coach. Her focus is on empowering others with knowledge and resources to connect and thrive in life. She is the mother of four children ages 18 to 26 and has been married to her husband Mark for the past 29 years. Sarah graduated from Moorhead State University with a Specialist degree in School Psychologist. She is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist with over 26 years of experience working in schools with children and teens from PreK-12th grade. In the field of education, she has served in leadership roles in both ND and MN associations for school psychologists. Sarah has authored several children's books which are also translated into multiple languages and recently co-authored a faith-based workbook for personal and spiritual growth. Sarah became an Advanced Trainer in the Nurtured Heart Approach in 2010 and has coached and trained countless families and educators in this relational approach. She serves internationally on the TIEF board, whose mission is to globally empower youth and adults' well-being. Her advocacy, passion, and experiences have led her to be invited to train in businesses, education, and faith communities, as well as coach individuals and families around the US and internationally.
How does one create their dream job? For Sue Frederick, her profession came to a swift halt as a journalist when she was unexpectedly let go. She decided to listen to the voice of God and form her own unique method of doing numerology readings. Using her gifts of receiving dream visits, downloads from the other side, and her natural psychic abilities, Sue healed from the loss of her husband, Paul, and was able to align herself with her soul's purpose and become an intuitive coach. Sue has authored eight books including Through a Divine Lens, Bridges to Heaven and I see Your Dream Job. Join us as we discuss numerology, dream visits from loved ones, living a spiritually fulfilled life and how the world is ready for all of us to step into our dreams and to fulfill our soul's mission. Topics discussed in this episode: How Sue got into numerology through the shared death experience with her husband, Paul How the numbers saved her life The download of spiritual information around numbers with George Harrison How Sue launched her career as an author and numerologist as a single mom Sue's story of a deceased loved one and a dream visit with Tess How religion is shifting with the tipping point of consciousness Spiritual experiences of one's and love connections of this universe The dream vision of her child, Sarah How religion is teaching that mediumship is evil and bad Sue's story of her aunt being put in an asylum for using her gifts How to send love and healing through soul connections About Sue: Sue Frederick, ordained Unity Minister, lifelong intuitive, Past Life & Between Lives Soul Regression Therapist and Master Numerologist, is the author of Through a Divine Lens; Practices to quiet your ego & align with your soul; Bridges to Heaven: True Stories of Loved Ones on the Other Side; I See Your Soul Mate & I See Your Dream Job (St. Martin's Press). As an intuitive coach, she's helped thousands of people realign with their soul's purpose and connect to departed loved ones for healing conversations. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, CNN.com, Real Simple, Yoga Journal, Natural Health and Complete Woman Magazines. Resources: For books, upcoming events and to schedule a private session with Sue, please visit her website: http://www.SueFrederick.com Become an Inner Eye Member here. For further information and resources on this topic and more, visit our website here. Use coupon code SPIRIT10 for 10% off any item at Dimensions of Heaven and Earth! Shop over here: https://www.dimensionsofheavenandearth.com/ To listen to more episodes, head to Apple Podcasts! Connect with Jamie and Maggie: Facebook Instagram YouTube TikTok Soul Growth Tarot Message Enjoy an audio Tarot Reading with Maggie Clark to help you integrate the levels of the conscious, subconscious, and superconscious for your Soul Growth for only $20. Visit MaggieClark.net
How does one create their dream job? For Sue Frederick, her profession came to a swift halt as a journalist when she was unexpectedly let go. She decided to listen to the voice of God and form her own unique method of doing numerology readings. Using her gifts of receiving dream visits, downloads from the other side, and her natural psychic abilities, Sue healed from the loss of her husband, Paul, and was able to align herself with her soul's purpose and become an intuitive coach. Sue has authored eight books including Through a Divine Lens, Bridges to Heaven and I see Your Dream Job. Join us as we discuss numerology, dream visits from loved ones, living a spiritually fulfilled life and how the world is ready for all of us to step into our dreams and to fulfill our soul's mission. Topics discussed in this episode: How Sue got into numerology through the shared death experience with her husband, Paul How the numbers saved her life The download of spiritual information around numbers with George Harrison How Sue launched her career as an author and numerologist as a single mom Sue's story of a deceased loved one and a dream visit with Tess How religion is shifting with the tipping point of consciousness Spiritual experiences of one's and love connections of this universe The dream vision of her child, Sarah How religion is teaching that mediumship is evil and bad Sue's story of her aunt being put in an asylum for using her gifts How to send love and healing through soul connections About Sue: Sue Frederick, ordained Unity Minister, lifelong intuitive, Past Life & Between Lives Soul Regression Therapist and Master Numerologist, is the author of Through a Divine Lens; Practices to quiet your ego & align with your soul; Bridges to Heaven: True Stories of Loved Ones on the Other Side; I See Your Soul Mate & I See Your Dream Job (St. Martin's Press). As an intuitive coach, she's helped thousands of people realign with their soul's purpose and connect to departed loved ones for healing conversations. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, CNN.com, Real Simple, Yoga Journal, Natural Health and Complete Woman Magazines. Resources: For books, upcoming events and to schedule a private session with Sue, please visit her website: http://www.SueFrederick.com Become an Inner Eye Member here. For further information and resources on this topic and more, visit our website here. Use coupon code SPIRIT10 for 10% off any item at Dimensions of Heaven and Earth! Shop over here: https://www.dimensionsofheavenandearth.com/ To listen to more episodes, head to Apple Podcasts! Connect with Jamie and Maggie: Facebook Instagram YouTube TikTok Soul Growth Tarot Message Enjoy an audio Tarot Reading with Maggie Clark to help you integrate the levels of the conscious, subconscious, and superconscious for your Soul Growth for only $20. Visit MaggieClark.net
Today my guest is Pathologists' Assistant Sarah Blizzard What we discuss with Sarah: How she discovered the pathologists' assistant field How a running injury turned her to yoga Some ways that pathology and yoga are similar Her Youtube series on yoga stretches for PAs Mindfulness and how we can practice it in our daily lives Links for this episode: Health Podcast Network LabVine Learning The ConfLab from LabVine Dress A Med scrubs Sarah Blizzard on Instagram Sarah on YouTube People of Pathology Podcast: Twitter Instagram
Patrick answers listener questions about kneeling at mass, is it okay to go to a non-Catholic service, and how to tell the difference between a venal and mortal sin. Bill - According to my Missal we are supposed to kneel and then say the Lamb of God. Charles - Kneeling and Standing: The bishop told us to stand. It was confusing. Tom - Why don't people bow their heads at the name of Jesus at Church? Alma - Can I go to a non-Catholic service? Sam - My friend thinks that not having kids is biblical, what should I say to him? Noah - How do I tell the difference between venal and mortal sin? Lulu - Can someone go to RCIA while also going through a divorce? C.J. - John versus the synoptic gospels: Why don't they mention the raising of Lazarus or the Bread of life discourse? Sarah - How do I respond to people who ask why we wait to give our kids communion?
A few times a year, I record a Q & A episode, exploring listener questions. This is part one (of two) and here are the questions I ponder (and from whom)… ANDREA: What are your top 5 most influential books? What will you do when your become Dr Harps? MIKE: Why do so many men over 40 still fail to manage, focus on, prioritise their wellness (food / movement / sleep / mindset) despite the overwhelming evidence of the impact on relationships, physical and mental health? CORRINNE: What podcast episode would you direct someone to who is starting their journey with personal growth and metacognition. EM: What do you feel is the best method for prompting a behaviour change in people? What motivates people to change behaviour when education and information provided doesn't result in the desired behaviour change? BEE: How do you remain staying positive when you're going through a really tough time, I know it can't last forever but so hard to see through it when in the middle of it. SARAH: How to stay fit with a chronic illness? CARLY: If you didn't have to work to earn money, how would you spend your time? Enjoy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Do you enjoy fun, fascinating, quirky stories about funny dogs? Do you find yourself binge-watching silly dog videos on social media and wishing you could be treated to a “behind the scenes” look? Would you like to find out more about becoming a social media “canine content” creator yourself? When you listen to today's episode of The Dogevity™️ Show, you will! Dianne visits with Chris Equale, an unlikely social media content creator whose two cute, crazy corgis unexpectedly became TikTok and social media superstars. As you listen, you'll discover· The “lemonade” that resulted when life gave “lemons” to Chris and his fiancée, Sarah· How amazingly simple it is to create social media content yourself· How Chris and Sarah deal with Internet haters· How they keep Hammy and Olivia motivated to perform for the camera· How even “regular dogs” can become superstarsAnd much, much more!If you fancy yourself as a canine content creator, or if you just crave a corgi feel-good serotonin fix, you're going to love this episode! Check it out now!
Scroll down for takeaways about co-hosting well from Sarah and BethAbout the guests: Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers host the popular podcast Pantsuit Politics, which was named one of 2021's best shows by Apple Podcasts and has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Good Morning America 3, The Guardian, Elle Magazine, and Parents Magazine. They are also the authors of Now What? How to Move Forward When We're Divided (About Basically Everything) (2022) and I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversation (2019), which was featured on MSNBC's Morning Joe. Sarah and Beth met in college before going their separate ways for law school. Sarah pursued a career in politics as a congressional staffer and campaign aide and Beth practiced law before serving as a human resources executive. Sarah lives in Paducah, KY, with her spouse, Nicholas, and children Griffin, Amos, and Felix. Beth lives in Union, KY, with her spouse, Chad, and children Jane and Ellen. Sarah's dog, Cookie, and Beth's dog, Lucy, are beloved (and involuntary) contributors to their work.Subscribe to Sound Judgment, the Newsletter, our once- or twice-monthly newsletter about creative choices in audio storytelling. Help us find and celebrate today's best hosts!Who's your Sound Judgment dream guest? Share them with us! Write us: allies@podcastallies.com. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.For more information on Sound Judgment and Podcast Allies, our production and training company, visit us at www.podcastallies.com.Share Sound Judgment!Follow Elaine on LinkedInHow to be a great podcast co-host: Takeaways from Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers1. Respond from a place of humanity. As co-hosts of a news and politics show, Sarah and Beth are driven by what's happening in the world. “A lot of the news media and a lot of the political podcasters are in that same reactive posture. We just try to take a very different approach. We try to react from a place of humanity, instead of a place of expertise; a place of lived experience, instead of a place of … ‘decided-upon' perspective. We really just try to show up as our whole selves.” 2. Don't try to be a brand. Be yourself. “We are here to be Sarah and Beth. And so our honest reactions after the [2016] election, I hope are the kinds of honest reflections that you get anytime you listen to our show.”3. Take your listeners on your journey, no matter where it takes you. Accepting and being transparent about her own evolution was particularly important for Beth. In 2015, when they launched Pantsuit Politics, their premise was that although they came from opposite sides of the political spectrum — Beth was a Republican, Sarah a Democrat — they could hold nuanced, “grace-filled conversations.” That changed after the 2016 election, Beth says — a change that easily could have threatened the show. “Trump was the beginning of the end for me as anything that someone in 2022 would identify as conservative,” Beth says. “And I've tried to be really honest with our audience about that. We didn't get stuck in a brand.” Instead, the podcast evolved as they evolved. “What we're doing is changing all the time,” Sarah says. “That's what's so life-giving about it. That's why we like to do it. That's why I think our audience is so invested. The work at Pantsuit Politics — it's an invitation to just take a journey with us.”4. Their secret to producing Pantsuit Politics for more than seven years “We know that we can continue to do this at the rate that we do because it's always met a need for us. And it continues to meet the need… We really wanted to sit down and have this conversation that we weren't hearing somewhere else.... And when it stops feeling like that, we check in with each other and say, 'Do we need to take a break? Do we need to shift the topics?' If we started down a path, we [may] need to ditch that path because we want to come back to meeting this need that we have. “And so that's our guiding light: If it doesn't feel helpful to us as individuals, it's not going to be good content for the audience. And we need to take a step back.” — Beth5. Differences are essential for a good co-hosting partnership. Lean in. It's not just OK to look at the world through different lenses. It's a fundamental reason to have a co-host in the first place. “Our general thesis from the beginning of the show [has been that] personality is a huge part of politics. And our personalities are different… you hear that a lot in the show. And I think our strength is that we allow both things to be true. We allow both perspectives to live and thrive and trust that the audience will gain something from each of them, because we absolutely gain something from each of them.” — Sarah How are you similar to and different from your co-host? When you're different, like Sarah and Beth, the sum of your parts is greater than the whole. As Beth says, “I can't imagine doing this with someone who was just like me, or really with anyone else. I think it is the contrast that is interesting to listen to.”6. Who are you? What do you value? Who do you want to be to your listeners? Beth can sound professorial — wise and a bit distant. Sarah is more emotional and expressive. As she says, “It's not unusual for me to cry on the show.” These two personalities, both naturally who they are, complement each other like interlocking puzzle pieces.7. Resist the temptation to sacrifice deep thinking for speed. Being first with a scoop may feel crucial. But often the more valuable content is not that which we can publish immediately. Thoughtfully unpacking the news, a cultural phenomenon, or a feeling, is often far more valuable to listeners. “Honestly, just can we slow down for a second? Not compete for the hottest take or the correct take? For the one-liner that's quotable… but instead really figure out what are we talking about? Why is [that headline] so captivating to everybody? What is it touching that we aren't naming, [the real reason] that makes us fascinated by it?” — Beth8. When you know your listeners well, you can meet their needs.“Sometimes, we have a really in-depth look at an issue planned. And we realize our audience is worn out right now. We're just hearing it in emails, they're tired. They need something… people need some delight. How can we serve up some delight right now? Maybe we need it too.” — Beth9. A simple way to understand what your audience wants: real-life avatars “We have an amazing community manager, Maggie Penton, who just reads the room. She's really good at [knowing] this is where people are at right now; this is what we're struggling with. She's also just an excellent listener avatar. She's been listening to our show for a really long time.” — Sarah10. Listen to your audience — and your heart “We're not going to produce a show that we feel everyone's consumed with if we don't want to talk about it ourselves.” — Sarah11. How to avoid perfectionism “I just tell myself, we're gonna make another one. We can get that wrong. There are two a week, you know, we will have another chance if we feel like we missed the mark.” – Sarah12. Set yourself apart from the competition “We're constantly pushing ourselves to say, ‘what could we add?' Because every conversation is so saturated. When we started Pantsuit Politics, there weren't a million…news and politics podcasts, it was a totally different time…. Quiet quitting is a good example. When we discussed having this as a topic, [we asked] what could we possibly say about this that hasn't been said? We are challenging ourselves all the time to ask, what's new? Or what could we say differently? Or how are we thinking about this that we haven't heard somewhere else or read somewhere else?” — Beth13. The value of premium channels goes far beyond revenue Rather than reporting on and analyzing every headline, Sarah and Beth confine themselves to a few well-chosen topics each week. The freedom they feel to be selective comes in part from having “escape valves” — premium feeds that satisfy the needs of different listeners. “In the beginning, we felt like we had to…report on every news story. We don't do that anymore. Because there's lots of new summary podcasts. We produce one every day, so if you're into that, you can get it on our premium channel…. Our premium content that we produce has…freed us up to approach the show differently, because we know there's other places where if that's what the listener is looking for, they can find it.” — Sarah14. Emotional intimacy builds devoted communities. “I didn't understand how deeply people connect with a voice that they listen to. Sarah says, all the time, ‘You can't skim a podcast.' People do connect, because you're in their ears and they are paying attention. And there's something really powerful about spending almost two hours a week with the two of us just in your headphones, as you're buzzing about doing other things — when we are a part of dog walks and laundry and dinner preparation and commutes.” — Beth15. Stop overthinking. What Beth wishes she'd known about hosting when they started: “Understanding the entire premise of your show — that it is about the host. I am not trying to make something. I'm just being and letting people into the experience of me being. Developing that trust in myself is a journey that I'm still on…. If I could go back, I would say to myself, ‘Don't overthink this. Just trust that you can just be you and that's what people are here for.'” CreditsSound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies, LLC. Host: Elaine Appleton GrantProject Manager: Tina BassirSound Designer: Andrew ParrellaIllustrator: Sarah Edgell
Thank you to Sarah and Manny. These two are the absolutely delightful teaching duo behind @pevanandsarah. Follow along to see their behind-the-scenes antics as their national tour unfolds... In this episode we discussed: The journey to creating Pevan and Sarah How music can change your classroom Australian videos for Australian schools Cub Club aka NETFLIX for Teachers Pevan and Sarah National Tour The Sarah and Manny origin story LOVELY LINKS: Discover Pevan and Sarah's NETFLIX for Teachers with Cub Club Get all of the tour details here and bring along your class. https://www.pevanandsarah.com/
Show notes: August is over and we both are kind of glad to see it go, at least for our personal lives. But for our reading lives, August was a pretty good month and we are sharing 10 of our August reads with you today. There are 15 other books we have to share with you on our Overflow episode for patrons, so don't forget to join so you can hear those reviews! We really missed you all after our break from last week and we're so happy to get back to our regularly scheduled episodes. Click here to join us on Patreon to get an exclusive bookish goodie every single Friday. With fun bonus episode series like: Books We Both Love, Monthly Overflow Books, Bookish Conundrums, and The New Books in Our Lives plus a private community for RTL Book Nerds only, you're going to love being a part of our Patreon. Not only that, but you're helping to support our show by saying I LOVE WHAT YOU DO. Find the time stamped show notes below with links to all of the fun things we mentioned. Bookish Goodies: [6:12] Sarah - PangoBooks (Follow Sarah and Mia on PangoBooks) [7:55] Mia - Overdue Podcast Our August Reads: [11:20] Mia - Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner | Amazon // Bookshop [14:10] Sarah - Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Baron | Amazon // Bookshop [15:51] Mia - Confess by Colleen Hoover | Amazon // Bookshop [18:02] Sarah - How to Fall Out of Love Madly by Jana Casale | Amazon // Bookshop [19:51] Mia - The Dream Giver by Bruce H. Wilkinson | Amazon // Bookshop [22:02] Sarah - Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt | Amazon // Bookshop [24:15] Mia - One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid | Amazon // Bookshop [27:53] Sarah - I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy | Amazon // Bookshop [30:24] Mia - Run Rose Run by Dolly Parton and James Patterson | Amazon // Bookshop [32:37] Sarah - Scandalized by Ivy Owens | Amazon // Bookshop Let's Take a Trip: [36:36] Mia - The Summer Guest by Justin Cronin | Amazon // Bookshop [37:24] Sarah - Every Summer After by Carley Fortune | Amazon // Bookshop Follow us on Instagram: @readingthroughlifepod Follow Sarah: @thekindredvoice Follow Mia: @miasutton55 * The books noted above contain affiliate links. This means that we may get a small kickback if you purchase through our links, at no additional cost to you.
The U.S. Marines celebrate Pride month with a tweet Richard - Is it wrong to keep a rosary in your rear view mirror? Denise - What do you think about people going through hard times. How can I deal with it? Megan - What are your thoughts on my situation as a divorced mom with 4 children? I feel like my Ex is still my husband and should help him get to heaven? Patrick comments on taking communion in the hand and having rosaries in the rearview mirror of your car Natalie - How can I address the Pride Flags being raised at schools and people pushing the trans ideology? Sarah - How can I talk with someone who is held up by scandal in the Catholic? Julie - My friend's husband left her but then later on he came back and remarried her. My friend was so patient. Glen - My daughter wants to live with her Boyfriend. She says 'as long as it makes me happy, its fine'. I want to write her a letter. What should I put in it?
You asked, I answered! An intimate, honest and fun Q+A as requested by my Instagram community at @iam.sarahmc In this episode, I crack my heart open and share with a little Sarah fire: - What my daily, non-negotiable rituals or routines are, and why - What my #joyfactor is to access my highest self alignment to feel good! - Things you didn't know about Sarah - How to stay grounded and centred despite close friends + family having opposing views - Allll the health diagnosises I've received - A snippet of 'woo' from my charts - Electromagnetic fields of the heart field and the mind's wiring We explore discernment and boundaries to stay true to yourself, the mindset I cultivate to take back radical self power and the 'strategies' that support pursuing the messages on your heart. Hold your line in this lifetime. Cultivate your inner and outer strength. Big Love x CONNECT WITH SARAH: Follow me on Instagram @iam.sarahmc Explore Working with Sarah Join Sarah's Newsletter + Updates Listen on Spotify / Android
As we continue to deal with the tail end of the pandemic that rocked us all in 2020, we are starting to see artists emerging that found perseverance and something to hold on to. Sarah Matthews is an accomplished artist that specializes in printmaking and binding. She's an Alma Thomas Fellow at the Studio Gallery in Washington, DC, and part of the permanent collections of Yale's Manuscript Library. We can't leave out that she's also a wife and busy mom. In this episode, Sarah shares how her art survived the challenges and struggles Covid created. She has incredible experiences teaching art at a college level and sharing her gifts with people everywhere she can. Areas we explore with Sarah: How she got her art into Yale What is an artist's book? Sarah's art classes for printmaking and binding Sarah's Covid experience and finding new opportunities Behind the scenes of an artist's marketing strategy “If there's something that you really want to do, just go out and do it, [...] we should be able to live our life to the fullest each and every day.” -Sarah Matthews Sarah's journey through art is rich in culture, color, and beauty. You can check out her YouTube channel to get a taste of how to make stamps, blizzard books, upcycled books, collage prints and so much more. Connect with Sarah Matthews: Website Instagram YouTube Also mentioned in this episode: Mary Ruth's Press Portfolio Sarah's IG Visit to Baltimore Museum of Art Miriam's Art Journal Supply List Don't Miss Miriam Schulman's Mindset Playlist to quiet your inner critic and overcome self-doubt. For full show notes, go to schulmanart.com/192 ++++++++++++++++++++
I am joined by my very good friend & soul sister Sarah Elizabeth - @sarahelizabthhb Sarah is a girl with SO much good energy and charisma. She knows how to set boundaries, she knows how to put out standards in her life and she STICKS to them. We discuss: Confidence: - Her journey with confidence - Tips and advice on how to build confidence - Benefits of confidence Worth: - What self worth means -How having self worth and good self care can benefit your life Settling: -What settling means to Sarah - How to avoid settling - How to place boundaries in your life - How settling comes back to how much you value yourself You don't want to miss this one! Listen to the end to find a tool that will CHANGE YOUR LIFE. Sarah is also a podcast host
Your voice is one of the most neglected, yet most important tools you have as a public speaker. Your ability to be heard clearly, to last out the talk energetically, and to connect powerfully with the emotions of your audience are all reliant on your voice. That's why for the first of the insights episodes, I have pulled together highlights from some of the best voice artists and teachers to help you ensure that you are looking after and fully utilising this incredible instrument. First up, joining me on the show is Jay Miller. Jay has spent the last 20 years training speakers, actors and business people how to develop a great voice, as well as overcome anxiety around public speaking. He is now one of Canada's finest voice and speech coaches, appearing across the Canadian media, and his work has had a profound effect, not only on building compelling and engaging voices, but also on the lives of those people that work with him. Helen Langford is a voice actor, who absolutely loves the sound of her own voice … and so do lots of others. She works for many corporate clients, including household names, and every day she tells stories, explains tricky concepts, promotes brilliant ideas and gets to be somebody new! Kristin Linklater has sadly passed away since recording the original interview, which makes what she shares even more precious. She had a long and distinguished career as a teacher and actor in Europe and America, working with some of the most prestigious theatre companies and dramatic institutions in the world. She also wrote one of the seminal books on voice technique based on hearing ‘the person, not the voice Enjoy! What you'll discover: Jay: The distinction between projection and speaking louder. Why you should treat your voice like a plant you love. A tip you can use to sound better tomorrow and develop vocal stamina. Sarah: How you can influence the emotional state of your audience Things that can affect the pitch of your voice as a public speaker Tips for getting more pitch variation Helen: How to avoid the droning voice. Why your voice is never fully dressed without a smile The difference between pitch and tone Simple vocal warm up exercises you can do at the side of the stage. Kristin: The connection between mind, body and voice. Examples of bad voice habits and how they impact the quality of our performance? How trying to control our voice reduces our vocal stamina. Why public speakers must ‘feel' the words and not hide behind a presentational tone. Guest Links: All things Jay: Jay's Website –http://voiceandspeech.com Jay's YouTube Channel - Visit Voice & Speech on YouTube Discounted video course Jay Miller: The Back Exercise Video - https://youtu.be/_97RZ7uRuQs All things Helen: https://www.helenlangfordvoiceovers.co.uk https://www.linkedin.com/in/helensvoice/ All things Kristin: https://www.linklatervoice.com Freeing the Natural Voice by Kristin Linklater Freeing Shakespeare's Voice by Kristin Linklater Full Guest Episode Links: Episode 047 - Raise Your Voice with Jay Miller Episode 053 - Four Tools to Help Avoid Being a Dull Speaker by Sarah Archer Episode 076 - How to tell a Story with Your Voice with Helen Langford Episode 116 - Setting Your Authentic Voice Free for Great Public Speaking with Kristin Linklater Resources: The consonant scale warm up: Ba ba ba bee, ba ba ba baa, ba ba ba, bee, bee, bee, baa, baa, baa, boo, boo, boo Ca ca ca cee, ca ca ca caa, ca ca ca cee, cee, cee caa, caa, caa, coo, coo, coo And so on! Want to get better at finding and sharing your stories then check out our FREE Five Day Snackable Story Challenge Practice your speaking & test your content in a safe space in The Speaking Club ‘Live' Membership Want to create a signature talk that sells, then check out our Nail Your Signature Talk in 60 Days programme. Want to find out about working with me 121 then book a call here. https://www.saraharcher.co.uk Thanks for listening! To share your thoughts: Leave a comment below. Share this show on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. To help the show out: Leave an honest review at https://www.ratethispodcast.com/tsc Your ratings and reviews really help get the word out and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes. *(please note if you use my link I get a small commission, but this does not affect your payment)
Today I'm talking to Jürgen Strauss about his success in building a community with humane podcasting and networking circles. Jürgen is a transformational marketing strategist, helping businesses build visibility, professional authority and connection with their dream clients. He is passionate about helping businesses achieve exceptional results through innovation and modern human-centred marketing. Jurgen believes marketing seems to have somewhat lost its way in business, becoming less about nurturing relationships and more about chasing the elusive dollar and a bigger slice of the pie. His vision and philosophy is simple - make your marketing human again and make it about creating your client's story, leading them on their exceptional journey with you as their guide. And he has created his unique 12 Step Transformational Marketing Blueprint as a simple, step-by-step way to do exactly that. As a podcast host himself, Jurgen has held meaningful conversations with hundreds of outstanding entrepreneurs from all around the world gaining insight into what makes them ‘tick', what ‘lights them up', why they do what they do and what inspiration and value they can add to the rest of the world. On a more personal note, Jurgen is happily married with two outstanding adult children of whom he is very proud. Jurgen is an avid photographer, and enjoys public speaking, and cycling – a passion he shares with both his “children”. In this episode, you'll learn why income follows impact and... The flywheel system behind Jürgen's podcasting success (500 episodes) Tools and tech he uses How Jürgen develops human relationships with his guests The return on investment of his podcast How he created a community out of his podcast guests he calls networking circles to have deeper conversations And so much more Jürgen's Resources Jürgen's Website Jürgen's Free Audio Course: InnovaBuzz Podcasting Flywheel Connect with Jürgen on: Instagram Twitter Facebook YouTube LinkedIn Sarah's Resources Watch this episode on Youtube (FREE) Sarah's One Page Marketing Plan (FREE) Sarah Suggests Newsletter (FREE) The Humane Business Manifesto (FREE) Gentle Confidence Mini-Course Marketing Like We're Human - Sarah's book The Humane Marketing Circle Authentic & Fair Pricing Mini-Course Podcast Show Notes Email Sarah at sarah@sarahsantacroce.com Thanks for listening! After you listen, check out Humane Business Manifesto, an invitation to belong to a movement of people who do business the humane and gentle way and disrupt the current marketing paradigm. You can download it for free at this page. There's no opt-in. Just an instant download. Are you enjoying the podcast? The Humane Marketing show is listener-supported—I'd love for you to become an active supporter of the show and join the Humane Marketing Circle. You will be invited to a private monthly Q&A call with me and fellow Humane Marketers - a safe zone to hang out with like-minded conscious entrepreneurs and help each other build our business and grow our impact. — I'd love for you to join us! Learn more at humane.marketing/circle Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Android to get notified for all my future shows and why not sign up for my weekly(ish) "Sarah Suggests Saturdays", a round-up of best practices, tools I use, books I read, podcasts, and other resources. Raise your hand and join the Humane Business Revolution. Warmly, Sarah Imperfect Transcript of the show Sarah: [00:00:00] Hi, you're again. I'm so glad that we get another chance to talk to each other. I was on your podcast recently and now I have you here. I'm so delighted to have you on the humane marketing podcast. Jürgen: Yeah, it's great to be here. I know. Glad that we're talking again. Sarah. Sarah: Wonderful. Our topic for today is podcasting as well as kind of a smaller topic after networking circles. But let's start with podcasting because that's really kind of become a big area of expertise for you. Your. Celebrating soon as of this recording are probably when it goes live, you have already celebrated 500 episodes of your own podcasts. So, wow. Congratulations. 500 episodes. That's quite the milestone. When did you start and tell us a little bit about this journey of recording 500 [00:01:00] episodes. Jürgen: Yeah, it's interesting. When I wrap up my. Show with a guest. And I let them know when we're going to publish in which episode number. And now each time I say, you know, it's episode 490 something. I think we're recording at the moment and are, I always have to hesitate there and think, wow, you know, we've come a long way. So we start. Back in August of 2014. So we've been going for over seven years. Wow. And it started off a mentor of mine, suggested start a podcast as a marketing and positioning exercise. And I'd always been a fan of audio. Books and even way back when I was still on cassette types and CDs and, and I used to travel a lot and I used to have to commute a lot when I was in my corporate roles. And I would [00:02:00] listen in all the. Travel times or waiting at airports and so on. I would listen to audio books and I found that a really great way to absorb a lot of material, much easier and less tiring for me personally, then reading the physical book. When podcasts started, I'd I'd really just dove into the medium, but I always imagined it as something that was, you know, a professional radio studio. You needed all this expensive setup to do a podcast. And. This mentor of mine, he was actually running his own podcast. And he had actually, because he's, his background was in video production. So he did have a proper studio. But he said, no, no, come and have a look. What I've set up. I'll show you. You actually need as a minimum. And when he showed me that, I thought, oh, I can do all that. And I'm a techno geek from way back. So I was sort of excited to get into that. And I used to do [00:03:00] home recordings of my kids playing music onto tape recorders and so on. So I thought, you know, this is really just a digital version of that. So I've got stuff. And immediately reached out to all the people that in my corporate career, all around the world, I had these really good relationships with, but in my small business, no longer had a professional reason to connect with them. With the podcast I had this ready-made. List of guests immediately and that's how it kicked off. And then it just became this flywheel that was almost impossible to, well, it was impossible to stop when people introduced me to others that I should talk to on the podcast. And over time, it evolved into this medium where I had a. One hour masterclass, sometimes one hour, sometimes 45 minutes. Recently this week we had two episodes where we got quite carried away and went for an hour and a half, but [00:04:00] a master class from an expert in their field that I get the privilege to learn from. And then of course, I get to share that with my audience. So it's kind of a win for everybody, right? So that's been the journey. And as I said before, I knew it. I was. At episode 400 and whatever, 490 something we're recording now. And soon we'll have episode 500 and going forward and I'm still enjoying it. You know, we've been consistent over that time, started off with one episode per week. We went to two episodes per week. We. A little while we did three episodes per week because we had so many recordings backed up that guests were waiting six months to have their episode published. And I thought that was a bit too long to let them wait. So we caught up a little bit and, and balanced bringing people on to the recording session and publishing the [00:05:00] episodes. And, and yeah, here we are at nearly at episode five. Sarah: That's amazing. Yeah. It's just, wow. What a journey. There's so much in what you just shared that I want to dig deeper into. And you started with, you know, kind of the overwhelm of, you know, not knowing how this is going to work out and what kind of tools do you need? I think that's often what we hear for someone who. Podcasting for the first time. So we'll go get into the tools and the tech and all that that we need. What I want to start with is, is what you then shared a little bit, but I want to go deeper into that. Like, what has this podcast done for you? I would say on a business level, And on a personal level, I can tell that you're clearly passionate about it. So it's probably part heart project. But at the same time, you wouldn't be doing it if it was just for your own pleasure. So tell us a little bit more [00:06:00] about what this podcast has done for you. Jürgen: Yeah, well, Probably after about the first 30 or so episodes that this was an amazing networking too, for me to connect me with people all around the world. And as I say, experts in their field, but that were giving me their time, their insights into their area of expertise. As a result, I was able to learn a lot of things that I could bring into my business or. Connect with people that were experts that could help me do something in their business. So often I would, if I needed a particular service that a guest of mine had an, I developed a good relationship with them, I would turn to that guest for that particular service. And also some of my guests have become clients because. We've built that relationship and they've said, Hey, we need [00:07:00] your help in doing something that, that you're good at. So that was kind of a very immediate benefit, but for the longer term now, and I know you want to talk about the networking events and, and things that I've also started doing this. These guests on my podcast have kind of become a community. And I know I can reach out to most of them and get a very quick response to an answer. If I, if I do a question, if I ask questions and I'll get a very quick answer and, you know, insights or feedback on something, and also we've recently won, well, a few of the, a few of the guests we've done some work together in terms of a joint venture type opportunity. So. Lots of different areas where it's, it's benefited second degree. I like to say. So we've started off as podcast host and podcast guests. [00:08:00] That's built a relationship and we've taken that relationship further in the sense of, Hey, there's an opportunity to either work together directly as a client and, and provide. Relationship, or there's an opportunity to work together on a joint project. Or it's just a case of if I need some advice or also guests needing advice, reaching out to me, or I reaching out to them and asking for advice. So there's all of those things of not for me. Over the years. Of course, we've really fine tuned our entire system to produce the podcast from identifying guests, to making them feel comfortable when they come on the show to all the production, after the recording, to the promotion of the show and all of that, people have seen us do that and said, Hey, how do you [00:09:00] do all that? So. Got all these services now and helping other people with their podcasts in various. Sarah: Okay. Wow. What, what strikes me as very different from your approach is that, you know, usually when you hear people talking about podcasting, it's all about growing your podcast and getting more and more listeners and getting more and more reach. Not once. Have you heard, have I heard you say the word? Listen. So, so it's like, almost like you're focusing I won't say more because you can chime in after, but you focusing a lot of attention on the guests, which probably most people don't do so much. At least I, I haven't seen it. Like I have not felt like, oh, I'm now part of a community whenever I've been guesting on a podcast. Not at all. I can think of it. Maybe a few examples where we [00:10:00] stay in touch. But, but it hasn't felt like, oh you know, you really matter? No, you're just like, you know, one of my guests and now move on to the next one. So I find that a really. Very different strategy and the very humane strategies that it's not, you know, just like, like a factory. Okay. Next guest, next guest, next guest. So that's interesting, but do tell us also kind of about you know, your listeners, w what has developed out of the people listening to, to your pod? Jürgen: Yeah. Yeah. Well, the listeners, I mean the listeners first and foremost why we do the podcast. So, and, and we're very clear, right? From the get, go on, who are the ideal, who are our dream audience. And, and when we work with other people to launch podcasts, that's really where we start. We actually start with themselves with the podcast host and, and their business and why they're doing it and what they hope to get out of it. And then [00:11:00] the listeners for me, Then the next level of course, is the guests, because I say that I want to, I want everybody to have an awesome experience. I know if I do the right preparation and come with the right mindset, that I will have an awesome experience, speaking to somebody like you on your area of expertise. My guests to also have an awesome experience. And if we together have an awesome experience, then it becomes an awesome experience for my listener. I, I'm also very protective of my listeners in that I don't take everyone who like we get lots of pitches now for guests in the early days. Of course, I was very active in bringing guests on board. I still actively bring guests on board. However, The balance now is probably 50 50. So 50% of the guests I've been introduced to, and I invite them to the show, the other 50% pitch me and asked to be on the show. [00:12:00] And for those that send me a request to come on the show, I very carefully filter them. Are they a match for my audience? Are they a match for the kind of topic areas? Cover, which is Sarah: probably sorry to interrupt. It's probably the same amount of work to kind of filter them as to invite your own guests. I often find because the pitches, quite frankly, there's exceptions. A lot of the pitches are just kind of like random. And so you have to actually do the work and figure out Jürgen: well yours, your certainly stood out yours was an exceptional one that immediately got my attention and respond for that. Well, no, that's because that's the style I pitched to go on podcasts as well. And that's the style of pitch that I do. It's a personal reach out and I get on video. I show them. What they can expect the. [00:13:00] W I actually have a standard response for people who pitch me and, and it's a templated response, so I'm very anti template, but this is a templated response, but my templates are very special. I think And, and it allows me. So if I get a pitch, I immediately it's like hitting the tennis ball back into the other side of the court, over the net. And so the other person then has to do some more work to convince me that they're a good fit. So the templated responses, thanks for your interest in coming on to our show and we're being much more selective. Because we really want to protect our, our audience and make sure that the guest is a really good fit for the subjects we cover and for the audience. So I say that upfront, I then say, Can you please, the first step is please schedule a short call with me and I give them a calendar link. The second step is send in complete this intake form. So I have an intake form where they're giving me a lot of background [00:14:00] information and some of those questions are why are you a good fit? And have you listen to. An episode. And w w can you give me some feedback on an episode because I've it's kind of that evolved over time. I didn't use to ask that, but I've learned that not everybody listens to the show before they actually come on the show, which I thought was a given. So I kind of put them through that filter. And then I also send them some videos of that I recorded a little while ago about what excites me. Podcast pitch. So I talk about, you know, if somebody sends me a personalized video that gets me excited, I'm immediately attracted to that person. And I immediately will we'll then look at their background and probably reach back out to them to have a conversation. So I turn it around very quickly, like that, to all the pictures I get. And then. The next step of course is then if I have all the information back from the person and [00:15:00] we have that short call, then I can determine very quickly if they're a fit for my audience, if they're a fit for the show and the topics we cover. And also the short call has the benefit of we get to know one another. So when, when we then do get on the show itself, we've already had a conversation. We already know one another, we we've already started a bit of a life. Sarah: Yeah, exactly. That that was a few people do it, but not everybody has that kind of first, you know, 15 minute calls. So that definitely helps you filter. Probably even though I can imagine for me as an introvert, it would be. Hard to say, you know, actually we're not a good fit. So I'm curious how, how do you do that? But yeah, that, Jürgen: that was a bit of a challenge at first. If it's really obvious from. The pitch and if the person like some of the pitchers, and I'm sure you've seen these, if [00:16:00] people, when people pitch to you, they say, hi, I'm Juergen and I've done this. And I do that. And I'm an expert in these things. So it's all about me instead of the value that I might be able to bring to you. Audience or to your podcast. So if I get a pitch like that, I'm already very wary. And if then if the topic itself is, it's not really clear to me, it's a good fit. I usually just send back a polite decline. Oh, Sarah: that's easy. Via email. But what I'm talking about is when you talk to them. Yeah, I Jürgen: have been, and I made a mistake recently on something and I So who this was because the podcast has been published. And I think we actually made a pretty good show out of it, but it turns out it wasn't all that good of fit. I didn't think it was a good fit to start with, but I saw [00:17:00] some things that perhaps we could explore. So the person came on the short call and I actually said right at the beginning, I'm not sure. Your topic is a good fit for my audience in my show. And, but they'd pitched me. And so I said, but you know, maybe we can explore some areas. So then we came up with some areas to explore and are around sales and are around lessons that we could take from this business, which was way different to anything else I've had. But the lessons we could take from that into our area. I didn't, I probably then on the show, I probably didn't, wasn't strict enough to keep the person on track for the lessons. And I. Yeah, they took the opportunity to talk a lot more about their business. Then, then I really wanted because the business that they were doing was not really relevant to my audience as [00:18:00] yeah. That one, that one got that one got through, but I have said to people. Know, and I just say, look, this is not nothing personal. You're just not a fit. You know, I'm very clear on who my audience is. I'm very clear on the type of content that I want to put in front of them. I want to talk about. And that's just me, that's just what I've chosen to do. And I don't think this is going to work if, if it's a good conversation and you know, Connected with so many people that have podcasts. If I think of somebody who might be a good fit, I'll mention some podcasts to them, or I'll certainly point them to pod match and to match Mica the podcast services. And I say to them, Hey, if you're looking to get on other shows, This might be a suggestion. If I can think of one that that's a good fit. And if you'd like an introduction, I'm happy to make that. Or alternatively, go and look at these websites because [00:19:00] that's where podcasts are looking for guests actually hang out and you can pitch. Sarah: Let's talk a little bit about those tools and the tech and the systems, all of that stuff, because with two or sometimes even three episodes per week, I'm sure you by now and. I say, you know, it wasn't always like that, but by now you have like the whole system, probably not completely automatized, but a lot of it is just kind of in the flow. Right. So you really just get to do what you love doing, which is the interviews. So tell us a little bit about, you know, the tools you use and the tech. I think you have a team as well. So tell us a bit Jürgen: about that. Yeah. So I've got a team that edit the show. Do all the promotional material produce all the promotional material that do the invitations upfront from the guests. So I usually [00:20:00] connect with people that might be possible guests. And then if somebody pitches me, it usually comes into my email. So I'll respond to those. But I will also also copy in my, my team and my assistant, who does the scheduling and she will then sort the people she'll do some background research for me and invite the people and do all the scheduling with the scheduling. We've got a calendar system set up that once, once they're booked in, I think it's the same one you use. Once they booked in that will. The appointment in my calendar together with the link to the platform that we record on it, we'll put that into the guests calendar. It's set up to send out reminders a week before, a day before, and then an hour before, just Sarah: want to chime in and say what I'm using is acuity scheduling. And I think that's what you're using. There's also [00:21:00] Calendly Jürgen: that's right. This is quite a few of those around, so yeah. That's that's really important because it, it helps a lot in terms. So we actually, my assistant actually suggests three times, so we don't let them book directly at time because that got very out of hand. We did do that for a little while, but that got very out of hand. 'cause I, I found that often I'd do five recordings in a day and that's just too much. I can do three, but at the end of three, I'm I'm exhausted. It's as an introvert, that takes a lot of energy. The, yeah, so the booking, so for the pre. Get to know your calls that I allow the guests to book. So I've got in acuity, I've got times set up where I'll do those. Usually it's one or two days and specific time window that covers international [00:22:00] time zones as well. So that that's a bit of a challenge as well because of the time differences, but that's set up. So. Just send out that link and the guests can pull at their convenience and that just links to my calendar. So I can only see times when I'm free within those windows that I've set. So that's the calendar part. We, we use squad cast to record. Conversations, the squad cast allows you to record locally at each site, and that produces the highest quality audio. If you do that. And it also records and uploads dynamically so that if we get cut off because of an internet issue, for example, in the recording, The conversation up to that stage is recorded and it's uploaded. So we, that just means we have to edit together the various bits. If we reconnect, then I've got various follow-up [00:23:00] systems. So when I complete a recording, I will send an email. I'll personally send an email. Thank you. And the way I do that, now I have a template which basically. Outlines all the steps that happen from there. And in that template, I add a recorded message. That's personalized. And I added a I had the times when we're going to publish that episode, I will also. Send out some social media posts immediately after the episode saying, Hey, just had a fantastic conversation with Sarah. And we talked about these things. Look out for the episode to publish in December or whenever then after that my team then takes over the. Produce the, what I edit the audio they produce shownotes they produce social media posts from that I upload the completed or the [00:24:00] edited thing, or actually that prompt me to do an intro and outro recording. Then they edit it all together, upload that to the hosting platform and we use captivate if. And then yeah, then I schedule all the social media postings and they actually send an email on my behalf that tells the guests and also the people who introduced me to that guest that their episode is published. I follow up with a personalized video message usually about a week after the recording. Just. Kind of keep the relationship going. And then once the episode's published, I make sure that I'm on particularly LinkedIn and commenting on the posts and commenting on other people, interacting on those posts. So engaging in that conversation. Sarah: Wow. That's really quite the production Jürgen: and there's [00:25:00] probably a few bits and pieces that. Sarah: How, how long would you say how much time do you personally spend on each episode? Jürgen: Yeah, that's a great question. I actually looked at that recently because one of the jaw joint venture initiatives that I mentioned earlier, we were talking about sharing how you can get the time to produce a podcast down to. Two to four hours per episode. I think that's about what I personally spend. So I might I do listen to other podcasts that my guest has been on. And I typically do that while I'm doing something else. So it might be while I'm commuting, it might be while I'm out walking. So I don't necessarily count that time. As, as as work I do for that podcast, then I. Spend a little bit of time [00:26:00] looking at all the material that my team's put together, background research, and thinking about some of the topics that I want to cover. And that typically I'll spend about an hour doing that before the episode. And I've learnt over time that. I don't need in the early days, I would probably spend about four hours and I would script out the episode very carefully. So I'd have his question one. Okay. What, what might Sarah say to question one while she might say this? She might say that well, okay. If she says this, I'll go here. That'll be questioned too. She says this. That'll be questioned too. And I have have this very complex script and of course, most guests didn't say that, or I said something completely different and it threw me right off and then I'd come back in. Well, I've got to try and get this question in. And some of those episodes were really stilted because it was kind of like I was trying to get back on, on this track that I [00:27:00] laid out. And what I've learnt over the years. And I discovered this, even some of my very early episodes that I had a relationship with the person. Cause I knew them from my corporate days and I thought, wow, they have really good episodes because it was just a natural conversation between people that knew one another. And I thought that's what I've got to get to. Even with people that I don't know that well, and. I just take the approach of, okay, let's go five to seven bullet points of things that I touch on. And I was explaining this to a guest this week that we did the recording. I had actually eight bullet points for her and we didn't touch on one of them and we had an hour and a half conversation. So it's really about when I get onto that. As long as I'm, I've read up on the person, I've got some idea about their background. I've got some idea about their expertise. I then trust myself to have a conversation that's interesting and [00:28:00] I'll start off with some things. And depending on, I just have to listen really carefully. And depending on what I say, I will respond to what they say, and we could go off in any direction for me. It's just like, if I meet somebody. And at at some event, whatever it might be, I meet somebody there's no preparation goes into that. It might be a per chance meeting, but if we build a bit of a bond and we find some common interest that could certainly turn into a an hour conversation without any preparation. So that's kind of how I approach it. Now, as I say, I probably do about an hour preparation, not counting. Time. I listened to podcasts. Usually it's done while I'm doing something else. And then after the show, there might be another hour of things I do to wrap up. And then after that, you know, there's five minutes here and there to send a [00:29:00] video. Thank you. Later on. And we have, of course reminder system set up that reminds. Yeah. Now it might be time to touch base with Sarah again, or it's three months since you've connected or touch base with, with this particular guests or the. I just spent five minutes to maybe have a look at their LinkedIn, LinkedIn posts again, to see what what's happening in their world. Hmm. Sarah: I love that. Follow-up as well. I think that that really feels like that's a big focus for you, the, the, the human relationship and, and I, I love that piece. So it's kind of like, yes, we use system. But we use the systems in order to really deepen the human relationships. Are you exactly that's? Jürgen: Yeah, that's my whole philosophy around marketing is exactly that, that the systems are there to take care of the mundane and free up [00:30:00] people's time so that we can build those relationships. Yeah to any of those relationships. The Sarah: other thing I would just also highlight is is that, you know, maybe for some listeners is they're like, oh my God, you know, this is two to four hours of time investment for each episode, plus you have a team. So. And, you know, how, how much time would that mean for, for just a single episode. So that's definitely something to think about. And yes, a podcast is a lot of work and and the other thing that you really show is it needs consistency. You know, how many podcasts do we see that start? Didn't have 20 episodes and then, and then they'd disappear. Could be a thing that you do for like a special event. I have a friend of mine who does a podcast right now because he's launching a book. And so from the get-go it's like, well, I do this about the book and it's part of that book launch. So, so [00:31:00] that's fine. But if you're starting a podcast and then, you know, just kind of. Wayne's out after 15 episodes then that's probably not the goal. Yeah. The other thing I wanted to go ahead. Jürgen: Yeah. Sorry. It kinda comes back to what, what the purpose of the podcast is. And, and the book launch is a great example because I think a podcast is a really great way to enhance a book launch and. Help grow book sales, particularly at the beginning. And one of the beauties of that is that in terms of content, the book author already has the content, right. They've written the book, so you can reuse that content. So all the research that I do is about understanding. The guests that I'm bringing on, understanding their business, what drives them and getting to know them a little bit. So if you're doing a solo podcast, it's about preparing the content [00:32:00] that you're going to present. And if you've written a book, you've got the content you've done that work. So really the podcast itself is, is. The preparation part is already done in writing the book. So it's really more about, okay, how do I repurpose that? And then of course, afterwards, there's quite a bit of work in production and promotion of the podcast. The good news for that is, as you said, there's a lot of podcasts out there that kind of fade out after I think seven to 12 or 13 episodes is the pod fade period where people. Get frustrated because they're not getting immediate results from it. And also they starting to realize, Hey, this is actually quite a bit of work and yeah. And, but the good news is if you're, if podcasting is for you. And you really want to do it and you're consistent and you stay at it. You can build systems around it [00:33:00] to make it a lot easier over time and you will stand out because there's, I think there's about. Melian active podcasts around now at the moment, whereas there's 600 billion or more bloke blogs out there. And yet people put a lot of effort into writing blogs, thinking that a blog is going to. Mike them stand out in the world. Whereas if it's more, it's so Sarah: different to hear you then to just read you all the time. Right. So that relationship really develops in a different way. Two things I want to say. And then I want to talk about those networking circles, but the first thing is I think w here we're a lot about giving ourselves permission as well to do it our way. So just because people listen to you who have, you know, in seven years have developed these systems and I are now really proficient at it. No reason to start out [00:34:00] small and say, well, you know, let me start with one episode every two weeks. I think what's, what's more important is the consistency than the actual quantity. So I want to give our listeners permission to say, Yeah, I just want to start building these relationships and maybe the purpose is not so much to get, you know, thousands of listeners, but to have a reason to people, to get people, to come to you and talk about a topic. So that's Jürgen: absolutely, and permission. The most important thing is who, who is the audience you want to get in front of? Who's the audience that you have a message for that you can make a difference in their world. And if you get in front of that audience and then have that consistency that you mentioned, Sarah. And Mike, the expectation clear up front. So you could start off a podcast and say, this is going to be monthly. We're going to publish [00:35:00] on this particular day of every month. And here's what each episode will contain. So look out for it and tell people how they can follow the podcast or subscribe to it. And then. That's and then you just organically grow your audience. From there. You encourage people to leave reviews. You encourage people to share it with other like-minded people that it could help and consistency and adding value is, is the. Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. And also the letting go maybe of this idea to have the perfect show at the very beginning. So I had to smile when you said how you prepared your questions, because that's another thing that comes with experience to not make it sound like an interview. So, you know, kind of getting just into this flow like you now, I only have a couple of bullet points that I know that. Want to address. And then every now and then my eyes go down because I have [00:36:00] to look, oh, where are we heading that? But other than that, it really is just kind of this, this flow, but it wasn't always like that. I, you know, I have, we've made a, Jürgen: we've made a real conscious decision to avoid the use of the word interview. I say, in fact, all the documentation, I think I've gotten rid of all of it. Although, you know, there were a few places where it kind of stayed. Was there, but I think we've gotten rid of it in all of our documentation, all of the emails that we send out in our sequences to remind people when they come on all of the platforms that we use, where, you know, the reminders go out through acuity and that everything has been changed to our conversation will be recorded. So I talk about it as a conversation and to me, Changing my mindset around this is just a conversation and yes, of course. I'm going to ask questions and yes, of course. I'm going to follow up questions with, oh, that's interesting. Tell me more about that or [00:37:00] that's interesting. Why do you say that? Those kinds of things, but it's not a scripted process. It's, it's a conversation. Sarah: I think. One of the things that I noticed when I listened to podcasts that are probably in the beginning stages is when they say you know, next question, because actually that's not how you talk in a conversation. You don't say I'm going to ask you the next question. So maybe that's something. Kind of also take out of your vocabulary. You don't need to say, you know, let me ask, well, you can say, let me ask you this or something like that, but, but it doesn't have to be announced as the next question. Jürgen: That's right. Well, there's a, there's a real funny one, which I know I've had. Quite a few times where people say, can I ask you a question? And my normal response is, well, you just did. [00:38:00] Sarah: That's true. All right. Well, let's use these last five minutes to talk about the, the networking circles. So that's where you take the relationship even to a further level with your guests. Tell us about that. Jürgen: Yeah, that's right. Well, well, my friend Qur'an ninja one. Runs these networking dinners. And so he gets together a group of like-minded people, a small group in a dinner setting and facilitates conversations that go deeper than the traditional networking event where. You meet somebody and, oh, hello, I'm Juergen. What do you do? And they say, what do you do? And you exchange business cards and then you get home and you throw out all the business cards into the rubbish bin. Cause you, cause none of, none of those people are the businesses that they're in. That's not what you're looking for right then and there. So it's kind of a bit of a waste of time. The, [00:39:00] his. Facilitated meetings were actually much deeper conversations about sort of meaningful things. So I took this when, when we when we were in the early stage of the, of the pandemic and there were lockdowns and everybody was getting on zoom and I thought, how can we make these zoom meetings more interesting? And it coincides. With the time when we had a episode, episode two 50, I think it might've been where I decided what I'm going to just bring people together on zoom and bring former guests together on zoom to celebrate 250 episodes. And I'll kind of run this event. Like those networking dinners that, that Qur'an runs and. So I did that and I used the zoom breakout rooms. So I kind of set the stage top people. We're going to have some deep and meaningful [00:40:00] conversations and it was a safe space. And if you're not comfortable going deep and. Be prepared to be vulnerable, then now's a good time to leave. And everybody got really excited and said, no, no, we're here. We're on board. So I start off with breakout rooms of two people. And I asked a simple question, like, what's got you excited right now. And people have two minutes to say that now, depending on how. Much detailed. I want to go into they'll share something. And then when they come back into the main room, I then asked for volunteers to share what they've learnt about others. And it kind of creates a real dynamic atmosphere and everybody feels part of this big you know, feels this connection. And then we. Send them off to a second breakout of one-to-one. And I usually ask a deeper question there of what's the [00:41:00] limit. Something like what's a limiting belief that you've ever come. And how did you overcome it? Is one that I've used. And so that requires people to get a little bit vulnerable and then. In, we did three more rounds and I put people in groups of three or four at that point and ask some more questions like that and then bring people back into the room. And I have music going when they come back into the room and I'm usually there dancing to the music. So it's kind of a fun party atmosphere. And I thought I did that because. At the trigger point was this celebration of over milestone podcast event. And then everybody had so much fun people and I encourage people then afterwards to say, okay, you've learned something about other people. Connect with one another outside this event and continue the conversations. And out of that people have gone on podcasts. Podcast [00:42:00] hosts have met potential guests. And so they've, those people have come on as a guest in their podcasts that I didn't know, one another beforehand. I know that there was. People that actually went on and did business with one and other out of that very first event. So it kind of starts off with having meaningful conversations between people. Trigger some relationships. And of course not everybody, not every conversation led to an ongoing relationship, but those where people felt, Hey, there's a connection here. They've went on to build that relationship. And I know some of the people that were on that early event are now running those events themselves as well. And I've been a participant in those events too. So it's a lot of fun being a participant as well, but it's kind of an interesting way. To use some of the technology that's available in zoom to help people just break through that, or what do you do and give us your business [00:43:00] card to actually get to know one another at a human. Sarah: Yeah, I love that so much. And, and I was just on a, on a conference recently last week where we had that kind of setup and the idea was to meet each other in small breakout rooms and not use our job titles to say, tell the other person who we are. And it was a really difficult concept for people to understand. And so I just put in the chat. Networking like we're human cause that's really, the idea is like, well, what if you didn't have a job? You know what, if you didn't have a job title, who are you as a human being? And so a lot of that we also do in the humane marketing circle. It's just like, you know, we show up as human beings, but it's true that we have. Kind of been brainwashed to these networking events. And so we always feel like we have to put on a show. And so I love what you're doing also [00:44:00] with this concept of bringing the guests together. I think that is just so, so smart. And, and, and, and I think it helps you. Kind of slow down the process, you know really just changing the focus on the relationships and not just, like I said before this factory of, of guests and one after the other. So. Beautiful. I, yeah. And, and I just received your email about the 500 networking invitation. So I can't wait. Yeah. I'm not Jürgen: sure that's going to be a networking one. I haven't actually worked out exactly what we're going to do there, but the idea for that is that I have a conversation with a group of people on episode 500 and, and I've decided it's probably going to be. Three or four parts. So three or four episode, five hundreds because of the number of people that, that I probably want to [00:45:00] bring on. And I I just, I, I will need to plan how to run this with perhaps eight to 10 people together on a podcast. Yeah. Like a panel. And I, when I say. Do standard questions. I do actually have five questions that I ask every guest at the end of our conversation, or sort of as we wrap up the conversation, there's a, what I call the buzz, which is an innovation round. And there's five questions that I ask every guest. And I'm thinking of maybe taking a couple of those questions and going deeper with each guest in kind of a panel discussion. Sarah: Wonderful. Can't wait. Well, we're getting to that part of the show here too. And, and, and I always ask myself kind of my guests, a personal question, but before that, I would love for you to tell people where they can find you and find out more about your work and your podcast and all of that. Good. Jürgen: Yeah. [00:46:00] Well, if you go to my website, Nova biz.com dot a U R I N N O V a B I Z or Z for the American speaking people. The you'll find the podcast there as well as the other, the other information about our business and on the pages, you'll see a little. When normally is a chat bot, but it's actually me on video with a welcome message. And you can respond to me with your own video or an audio message, or just a normal text message. So the idea of that is it's not a chat bot robot. It's me inviting a conversation. So I'd love you to let me know that you heard me on Sara's podcast. What you liked about it and also any feedback? Yeah. Sarah: Wonderful. Yeah. [00:47:00] Like that invitation. Well, this has been delightful. Thank you so much for taking the time. My last question and this time, it is a question is what are you grateful for today, your again, or, or this week? Jürgen: Well, there's lots of things that I'm grateful for them and I'm healthy. I've. We are coming out of the extended lockdowns here in Australia from COVID. So recently. I was able to visit my 93 year old father and celebrate his birthday, his 93rd birthday. And I hadn't seen him in person for six months. I was also able to visit my daughter in Melbourne. So you know, we we'd had locked downs previously. We couldn't go that far. So I was able to visit her and go out bike riding with her, which we love to do together. So I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for my wonderful wife here. And of course we were together all through the lockdown. So that was good. And yeah, and just all these wonderful [00:48:00] guests that I have on my podcast that, and all these connections and opportunities to come on. Other people's podcasts like this. Sarah: Thank you so much. I love talking to you and we'll do it again, even without a podcast interview. Thank you so much. You're going to take care. Jürgen: Thanks Sarah.
REJOICING IN MOTHERHOOD - Christian moms, Spirit-filled parenting, marriage, homeschool, big family
Episode 40!!! Feels like a milestone! Thanks to YOU for making this podcast a success: listening, subscribing, sharing, reviewing, giving feedback, asking questions. If you're unaware, I have a website kirstenvossler.com where I have podcast show notes with details and resources we talk about on the podcast, and a form where you can submit questions. You can even listen to the podcast right on the website if you want to. That's all under the PODCAST tab. I also have a newsletter that I'll be sending out to everyone on my email list soon—you can sign up for that and choose a freebie on the FREEBIES tab, or kirstenvossler.com/newsletter. And I have an instagram account @rejoicinginmotherhood, where I share the episodes each week, and usually have some kind of daily encouragement in my stories. You can connect with me there in the posts, or send me a dm if you'd like! How to pray for yourself and others Colossians 1:9-12, ESV And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. Today I'm answering a question from Sarah: How do you handle a kid who says that everything at most meals is “yucky” and “gross” and won't try it? Come join our conversation on this over on Instagram, as I would love to hear what works in your family!
In this week's episode, we chat with Sheri Mandour, Freelance Digital Marketing Consultant and Founder of Digital Tulips, about SEO for small businesses with small budgets. Where to find Sheri: https://www.facebook.com/digitaltulips/ (Facebook) https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherihanmandour/ (LinkedIn) https://twitter.com/SheriMandour (Twitter) https://www.instagram.com/digital_tulips/ (Instagram) https://digitaltulips.com/ (Website) Resources from the episode: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/uk/ (QuickBooks) https://www.persado.com/ (Persado) https://monday.com/ (Monday) https://trello.com/ (Trello) https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ (PageSpeed Insights) https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#/ (Google Analytics) https://www.semrush.com/ (Semrush) https://developers.google.com/search/docs/beginner/seo-starter-guide (Google SEO starter kit) https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo (Moz beginner guide to SEO) https://learningseo.io/ (Learningseo.io) --- Episode Sponsor: This season is sponsored by Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog develop crawling and log file analysis software for the SEO industry, and wanted to support the WTSPodcast as listeners to the show. They've just released version 16 of their SEO Spider software, which includes - improved JavaScript crawling to help you identify dependencies, such as JavaScript content and links, automated crawl reports for Data Studio integration, advanced search and filtering, and the app is now available in Spanish, French, German and Italian. You can check out the latest version at Screaming Frog's website (screamingfrog.co.uk). Where to find Screaming Frog: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ (Website) https://www.linkedin.com/company/screaming-frog/ (LinkedIn) https://twitter.com/screamingfrog (Twitter) https://www.youtube.com/c/ScreamingFrogSEO (YouTube) https://www.facebook.com/screamingfrog/ (Facebook) --- Episode Transcript: Sarah: Hello, and welcome to the Women In Tech SEO podcast. I am Sarah McDowell, an SEO content executive, and I will be your host for today. Joining me, I have Sheri Mandour who is a freelance digital marketing consultant and Digital Tulips founder, and she will be talking to me today about how to do SEO for small businesses. Welcome to the podcast, Sheri. Sheri: Thank you very much for having me. Sarah: How are we doing today? Sheri: I'm very well, thank you. How are you? Sarah: I'm always in a very good mood when I get to do a podcast, and get to talk to someone. I'm in my very happy place right now. Sheri: I'm glad. Same here actually, I feel very nostalgic speaking and just relaxed. Hopefully, we will have some fun today. Sarah: Can you give our audience a brief overview of how you got into SEO, and end up having your own business in freelancing? Sheri: Well, my story started actually 17 years ago when I got married and moved to the UK with my husband who was finishing off his studies. Although I had my bachelor's degree with honors and accounting and marketing from Cairo university, as well as experiencing work as an auditor for PricewaterhouseCoopers, and also for the United nations. I found it really challenging to find a job that really fit it around my new life and family. Back then I was approached by a friend who was actually an international human rights lawyer, and she was looking for someone to manage her organization's website and social media accounts. I took on that role basically, and started a long journey of self learning in which really I discovered the magic of SEO, and the digital marketing in general. I was really fascinated by the power of digital marketing, and the impact it had on people. Wanting to learn further, I enrolled in evening classes at the university of west minister and I obtained a diploma in digital marketing from the DMI learning really the strategy behind all the digital marketing tools and the platforms really was a game changer for me,...
In this week's episode, we chat with Kristie Plantinga, Founder of TherapieSEO about how to manage feelings of imposter syndrome. Where to find Kristie: Website: https://www.therapieseo.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/kristie_plant Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therapieseo Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therapieseo/ --- Episode Sponsor: This season is sponsored by Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog develop crawling and log file analysis software for the SEO industry, and wanted to support the WTSPodcast as listeners to the show. They have recently added automated crawl overview reports for Data Studio in version 16 of their SEO Spider software. You can use their Data Studio dashboard, but if you have created your own Data Studio dashboard for their crawl reports that you'd like to share with the community, then get in touch with them via support@screamingfrog.co.uk or @screamingfrog on Twitter to be featured. Where to find Screaming Frog: Website - https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/screaming-frog/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/screamingfrog YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/ScreamingFrogSEO Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/screamingfrog/ --- Episode Transcript: Sarah McDowell: Hello, and welcome to the Women in Tech SEO Podcast. I am Sarah McDowell, an SEO content executive and I will be your host for today. Joining me I have Kristie Plantinga, founder of therapy, SEO and we have them talking about imposter syndrome. Hello, Kristie. Kristie Plantinga: Hi, thank you so much for having me. This is so exciting. Sarah: Thank you so much for agreeing to come on and spending your Monday morning for you, isn't it? Kristie: Yes. Sarah: Monday morning with me. Let's dive straight in and my first question to you, Kristie is, can you tell us how you got into SEO in this world? Then how because, obviously, you're the founder of therapy, SEO, congratulations. Kristie: Thank you. Sarah: How did you end up having your own business? Kristie: Yes. I think everyone in SEO, got started in their unique way. I started more from a writing background, I was pursuing a master's in written communication, which was largely a technical SEO writing Pro-- or sorry, Technical Writing Program and that wasn't for me, I just have more of a creative side. I knew that wasn't going to be a good fit for me. I started learning more about user experience and marketing and I was looking at the job market with a communications degree, which could be tougher to find an entry into the job market but I stumbled upon SEO. I started teaching myself a lot of things as I think many of us do. I always thought it would be so cool if I could work in this but my only qualification is this. I knew how to build websites, and I had this degree. I was lucky enough to get hired by an SEO agency, they took a chance on me, and I've just been in SEO ever since and with my own business. I always wanted to have my own thing. I loved the idea of building a brand and working for myself and having this flexibility and control over my path. I started my own SEO business. I went full-time about a year ago and I started working on everything about a year and a half, almost two years ago. It's like a simple journey but I do think I started earlier with my own business than probably most other consultants do. I'm sure we'll be talking about that more today. Sarah: So when you put forward yourself to come on the podcast, you said about how your business is a niche, isn't it? How did that come about and what do you offer as a niche business? Kristie: Definitely. I work in a niche industry before or a niche agency before. I enjoyed niching because first of all, I'm a pretty practical person, I knew that it would be easier to start a business with a niche. I find that connections and speaking opportunities, and networking, all that stuff comes easier when you're situated in more of a niche...
This week we speak to Aiala Icaza Gonzalez, SEO Director at Reflect Digital, about having a more human approach to site structure. Where to find Aiala: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aialaicaza/ --- Resources https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/empathic-search-results-how-neuroscience-impacts-seo-mikolajczyk/ (Empathic search results – how neuroscience impacts content SEO?) (LinkedIn Post) https://stratabeat.com/neuroscience-of-seo/ (The Neuroscience of SEO) (Blog Post) --- Episode Sponsor This season is sponsored by NOVOS. NOVOS, the London-based eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for their SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running. Trusted by over 150 global eCommerce brands including the likes of Bloom & Wild, Patch and Thread, NOVOS provides technical eCommerce SEO expertise with a creative edge by specialising across platforms like Shopify & Magento. They have been named as one of 2021's best workplaces in the UK and with a diverse, gender-balanced team are a culture-first agency. Check them out on thisisnovos.com or follow on Linkedin @thisisnovos Where to find Novos: Website - https://thisisnovos.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisnovos Twitter - https://twitter.com/thisisnovos Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thisisnovos/ --- Episode Transcript Sarah: Hello and a very warm welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast, I am Sarah McDowell, SEO content executive at Holland and Barrett and I am your host today. We have Aiala Icaza Gonzalez joining us on this episode, who is the SEO Director at Reflect Digital, who will be talking to us today about how we can take a more human approach to our site structure and why that is important. So, hello and a warm welcome, Aiala. Aiala: Hi. Sarah: How are we doing? Aiala: I'm good. I'm good. How are you? Sarah: I'm not bad at all. Not bad at all. Aiala: I'm glad to hear that. Sarah: Have you had a good week so far? Aiala: I mean, it's over now, so I'm happy about it. Sarah: It's Friday tomorrow. So, the weekend is on the cards, isn't it? It's there. Aiala: A 4-day week here so yay. Sarah: I am not jealous at all. Let's kick things off by you giving me and our listeners a brief overview of yourself, sort of the things that you do and how you got into this wonderful world of SEO. Aiala: Sure. So, let's start with how did I get here. I started around nine years ago in Germany. A friend told me; I know someone that knows someone that knows someone. So, I applied. They asked me what SEO was, I had no clue what it was, but I still got the job and that's how it started. I'm a director at Reflect Digital in the UK, although I work from Spain and pretty much, I handle the team, I handle clients, communications and I do talks from time to time whenever I have the time. And yeah, that's the summary. Sarah: I guess it must be quite interesting managing a team remotely. Aiala: Yeah. I mean, I was doing it already through the pandemic, so I found that it wasn't that complicated. Like they still get that human connection through the camera. So yeah. I mean I'm just, I just kept doing it. Sarah: And I'm jealous that you live and get to work in Spain. I mean, I want Holland and Barrett to send me to Spain. Sarah: Well, it's funny, you wouldn't be that jealous. Trust me, not here. Sarah: I've got some quickfire questions. [Quick Fire Questions] Sarah: I mean. Wow, wow. You survived my quickfire round of questions. So now we know you more personally as well as you as an SEO person. Now this is The Women in Tech SEO podcast, so I am going to ask you a couple of questions around this topic, starting with, what would you say empowers you to be the brilliant woman you are today? Aiala: Well, I mean, I'm going to make it short because I could talk for hours here, obviously, starting from my mother and my auntie that has always pushed me to be at my best and
During the past few weeks when we took a break, we tried something new - our first episode in English! In Part 1, we are glad to interview Sarah Elizabeth Nájera Espinosa who worked at the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) for three years. Sarah shares her experiences as a flexitarian athlete and some of the projects with which she was involved at the FAO, including the benefits of microbiome for human and ecosystem health and the impacts of climate change on food security. In Part 2, we summarise the key points of the interview in Chinese. 休息了一段时间,我们做了一点新尝试:一期英文访谈(Part 1),嘉宾是何弦的校友、在联合国粮食及农业组织(FAO)工作了三年的Sarah Elizabeth Nájera Espinosa。Sarah和我们分享了她作为弹性素食者和专业游泳运动员的生活经验,以及她在FAO参与的一些项目,包括微生物组对人类和环境健康的积极作用,气候变化对粮食安全的影响等等。在Part 2,我们用中文对访谈中的关键信息做了总结和补充。 【本期剧透】 00:37 About Sarah 关于Sarah How did Sarah get into the field of food 她是如何进入食品这个领域的? Why did she choose to become a vegetarian at 17? 她为什么在十七岁时选择成为素食主义者? Currently a flexitarian - what does this mean? 目前是弹性素食者-弹性素食是什么意思? Food preparation as a flexitarian athlete 弹性素食运动员的食物准备 Environmentally friendly food for ordinary people 给普通人的环境友好膳食建议 19:29 About the FAO 关于联合国粮食及农业组织 Two projects with which Sarah was involved: pesticide maximum residue limits and microbiome Sarah参与的项目:农药最大残留限量和微生物组 How is the cafeteria at the FAO like? 联合国粮食及农业组织的餐厅是什么样的? 28:33 Challenges in promoting a vegetarian/vegan diet 推广素食/纯素食的挑战” On the controversies around PaperClip 关于视频博主“回形针“的争议 What is “vegetarian/vegan junk food” according to Sarah? Sarah眼中的“素食/纯素垃圾食品” Is vegetarian/vegan food preparation more time consuming?素食/纯素食需要花更多的时间准备吗? 46:51 Microbiome 微生物组 Healthy eating and gut microbiome 健康饮食与肠道微生物组 Other positive services microbiome provides to humans and ecosystems 微生物组对人类和生态系统的其他积极作用 61:07 Impacts of climate change on food 气候变化对粮食的影响 Changes in yields and nutrient contents 产量和养分含量的变化 Impacts on food security: availability, access, utilisation and stability 对粮食安全的影响:粮食的供应、获取、利用和稳定性 “Strong gender and equity dimensions” “很强的性别和平等维度” 【延伸阅读】 联合国粮食及农业组织 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) 联合国粮食及农业组织: 微生物组:缺少的链接?健康、气候和可持续粮食系统的科学与创新 FAO: Microbiome: The missing link? Science and innovation for health, climate and sustainable food systems 政府间气候变化专门委员会:气候变化与土地。政府间气候变化专门委员会关于气候变化,荒漠化,土地退化,可持续土地管理,粮食安全和陆地生态系统中温室气体通量的特别报告 IPCC: Climate Change and Land. An IPCC Special Report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems. Myers等:二氧化碳的上升威胁人类营养 Myers et al.: Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition Ed Young:我蕴含着众多:我们体内的微生物和更广阔的人生观 Ed Young: I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us And A Grander View Of Life Sarah Elizabeth Nájera Espinosa: 我的零废弃生活 My zero waste life Sarah Elizabeth Nájera Espinosa: 从哪里来,到哪里去? Sarah's instagram
Sarah: So John, you're an English teacher now. Is that right?John: Yes. I've been an English teacher for six years now.Sarah: Do you always want to be an English teacher?John: Well actually, recently, I've been thinking about changing my job.Sarah: Oh?John: Yes. I have been studying math and science.Sarah: Oh.John: I'm learning a lot more about math these days. I hope in the future I can be a math teacher.Sarah: That sounds interesting.John: Yes, I think so. I think math is important because if we can understand math, we learn new ways to think about problems.Sarah: What age student do you want to teach math to?John: I think I would enjoy teaching junior high school students.Sarah: So you said you're studying math now.John: That's right.Sarah: How do you do it? Do you study online?John: That's exactly right. I study online from various websites and these websites connect you to free online courses from real universities around the world.Sarah: Oh wow.John: Yeah. So I signed up for a free algebra class from a university in the United States.Sarah: Will you get a degree when you finish?John: Well you can. For every course you finish you can get a certificate that says you passed this course. And if you sign up for a series of courses, you can get a certification in a field like math or science.Sarah: Oh really? And it's all online?John: Yeah. And it's not only math or science, you can choose any field you want. I've been thinking of studying Spanish language there and you can study computer programming or history or law.Sarah: Oh, interesting. Maybe I'll try it.John: You should. They have different types of classes. You can study by yourself by watching videos or you can even have an interactive class with a real teacher and you can meet through video chat.Sarah: Wow. Hey, thank you.John: Yeah, you should try this opportunity.Sarah: I will.
Sarah: So John, you're an English teacher now. Is that right?John: Yes. I've been an English teacher for six years now.Sarah: Do you always want to be an English teacher?John: Well actually, recently, I've been thinking about changing my job.Sarah: Oh?John: Yes. I have been studying math and science.Sarah: Oh.John: I'm learning a lot more about math these days. I hope in the future I can be a math teacher.Sarah: That sounds interesting.John: Yes, I think so. I think math is important because if we can understand math, we learn new ways to think about problems.Sarah: What age student do you want to teach math to?John: I think I would enjoy teaching junior high school students.Sarah: So you said you're studying math now.John: That's right.Sarah: How do you do it? Do you study online?John: That's exactly right. I study online from various websites and these websites connect you to free online courses from real universities around the world.Sarah: Oh wow.John: Yeah. So I signed up for a free algebra class from a university in the United States.Sarah: Will you get a degree when you finish?John: Well you can. For every course you finish you can get a certificate that says you passed this course. And if you sign up for a series of courses, you can get a certification in a field like math or science.Sarah: Oh really? And it's all online?John: Yeah. And it's not only math or science, you can choose any field you want. I've been thinking of studying Spanish language there and you can study computer programming or history or law.Sarah: Oh, interesting. Maybe I'll try it.John: You should. They have different types of classes. You can study by yourself by watching videos or you can even have an interactive class with a real teacher and you can meet through video chat.Sarah: Wow. Hey, thank you.John: Yeah, you should try this opportunity.Sarah: I will.
Sarah: So John, you're an English teacher now. Is that right?John: Yes. I've been an English teacher for six years now.Sarah: Do you always want to be an English teacher?John: Well actually, recently, I've been thinking about changing my job.Sarah: Oh?John: Yes. I have been studying math and science.Sarah: Oh.John: I'm learning a lot more about math these days. I hope in the future I can be a math teacher.Sarah: That sounds interesting.John: Yes, I think so. I think math is important because if we can understand math, we learn new ways to think about problems.Sarah: What age student do you want to teach math to?John: I think I would enjoy teaching junior high school students.Sarah: So you said you're studying math now.John: That's right.Sarah: How do you do it? Do you study online?John: That's exactly right. I study online from various websites and these websites connect you to free online courses from real universities around the world.Sarah: Oh wow.John: Yeah. So I signed up for a free algebra class from a university in the United States.Sarah: Will you get a degree when you finish?John: Well you can. For every course you finish you can get a certificate that says you passed this course. And if you sign up for a series of courses, you can get a certification in a field like math or science.Sarah: Oh really? And it's all online?John: Yeah. And it's not only math or science, you can choose any field you want. I've been thinking of studying Spanish language there and you can study computer programming or history or law.Sarah: Oh, interesting. Maybe I'll try it.John: You should. They have different types of classes. You can study by yourself by watching videos or you can even have an interactive class with a real teacher and you can meet through video chat.Sarah: Wow. Hey, thank you.John: Yeah, you should try this opportunity.Sarah: I will.
Sarah: We've been hearing a lot about Mars in the news.John: Yeah, NASA keeps coming out with announcements every year.Sarah: We just found out that there's water on Mars - liquid water.John: Yes, recently they revealed that there's evidence of liquid water.Sarah: That's crazy.John: Last year they announced that they definitely found ice - solid water - in the soil. In the soil on Mar's surface the found frozen water. Now they found evidence of liquid water flowing.Sarah: Do you think people can go to Mars? Do you think we should send people to Mars?John: I definitely think we can go there. We've already sent a number of spacecraftto Mars, starting with satellites many decades ago. Then there were landers, where satellites landed on the surface and sent data back to Earth. Then we sent the rovers. Little robot cars that drive around on Mars, so we've already successfully sent many missions to Mars. I'm sure we can do it with humans.Sarah: But none of the satellites or landers or rovers, they've never come back. Do you think we could send people and they'd come back safely?John: Well, that is a problem. We could definitely send people to Mars, but bringing them back, having the astronauts come back to Earth, would be a much more difficult problem to solve.Sarah: So you think maybe we would send astronauts to Mars? They would never come back safely?John: Well, if you think about the old explorers, in the olden days ... explorers used to leave their home, and find new regions and not plan to go back. People used to take a risk, and maybe they couldn't return, so I think there are people who are willing to go on a one-way trip to Mars. I'm sure there are people willing to do that, but are the rest of the people willing to send someone on that mission? I think some people will say yes, and some people will say no. I don't know what the percent would be, but I'm willing to allow someone to do that. If someone says I want to go to Mars. I know it's a one-way trip, but I want to go. I think that's OK. We should let them go.Sarah: How about you? Would you volunteer to go?John: Oh, no. Not me. I'm staying here on Earth.Sarah: OK.
Sarah: We've been hearing a lot about Mars in the news.John: Yeah, NASA keeps coming out with announcements every year.Sarah: We just found out that there's water on Mars - liquid water.John: Yes, recently they revealed that there's evidence of liquid water.Sarah: That's crazy.John: Last year they announced that they definitely found ice - solid water - in the soil. In the soil on Mar's surface the found frozen water. Now they found evidence of liquid water flowing.Sarah: Do you think people can go to Mars? Do you think we should send people to Mars?John: I definitely think we can go there. We've already sent a number of spacecraftto Mars, starting with satellites many decades ago. Then there were landers, where satellites landed on the surface and sent data back to Earth. Then we sent the rovers. Little robot cars that drive around on Mars, so we've already successfully sent many missions to Mars. I'm sure we can do it with humans.Sarah: But none of the satellites or landers or rovers, they've never come back. Do you think we could send people and they'd come back safely?John: Well, that is a problem. We could definitely send people to Mars, but bringing them back, having the astronauts come back to Earth, would be a much more difficult problem to solve.Sarah: So you think maybe we would send astronauts to Mars? They would never come back safely?John: Well, if you think about the old explorers, in the olden days ... explorers used to leave their home, and find new regions and not plan to go back. People used to take a risk, and maybe they couldn't return, so I think there are people who are willing to go on a one-way trip to Mars. I'm sure there are people willing to do that, but are the rest of the people willing to send someone on that mission? I think some people will say yes, and some people will say no. I don't know what the percent would be, but I'm willing to allow someone to do that. If someone says I want to go to Mars. I know it's a one-way trip, but I want to go. I think that's OK. We should let them go.Sarah: How about you? Would you volunteer to go?John: Oh, no. Not me. I'm staying here on Earth.Sarah: OK.
Sarah: We've been hearing a lot about Mars in the news.John: Yeah, NASA keeps coming out with announcements every year.Sarah: We just found out that there's water on Mars - liquid water.John: Yes, recently they revealed that there's evidence of liquid water.Sarah: That's crazy.John: Last year they announced that they definitely found ice - solid water - in the soil. In the soil on Mar's surface the found frozen water. Now they found evidence of liquid water flowing.Sarah: Do you think people can go to Mars? Do you think we should send people to Mars?John: I definitely think we can go there. We've already sent a number of spacecraftto Mars, starting with satellites many decades ago. Then there were landers, where satellites landed on the surface and sent data back to Earth. Then we sent the rovers. Little robot cars that drive around on Mars, so we've already successfully sent many missions to Mars. I'm sure we can do it with humans.Sarah: But none of the satellites or landers or rovers, they've never come back. Do you think we could send people and they'd come back safely?John: Well, that is a problem. We could definitely send people to Mars, but bringing them back, having the astronauts come back to Earth, would be a much more difficult problem to solve.Sarah: So you think maybe we would send astronauts to Mars? They would never come back safely?John: Well, if you think about the old explorers, in the olden days ... explorers used to leave their home, and find new regions and not plan to go back. People used to take a risk, and maybe they couldn't return, so I think there are people who are willing to go on a one-way trip to Mars. I'm sure there are people willing to do that, but are the rest of the people willing to send someone on that mission? I think some people will say yes, and some people will say no. I don't know what the percent would be, but I'm willing to allow someone to do that. If someone says I want to go to Mars. I know it's a one-way trip, but I want to go. I think that's OK. We should let them go.Sarah: How about you? Would you volunteer to go?John: Oh, no. Not me. I'm staying here on Earth.Sarah: OK.
Sarah: So John, I heard you've been trying out a new diet. Can you tell me about it?John: Yes. I've been trying the paleo diet.Sarah: What's that?John: Well, this diet is supposed to make you feel better and eat healthier. And the idea is that a lot of the problems we have with health, a lot of modern human health problems, come from the foods we eat. So the idea is that maybe we should eat a diet which is closer to what early humans ate before.Sarah: Early humans ate? Like what did they eat?John: Well, they mostly ate fruits, and berries, and nuts, and meat. They didn't eat grains because grains come from agriculture, from growing plants on purpose.Sarah: Uh-hmm.John: And they didn't eat bread and cake and cookies and crackers.Sarah: It sounds like a hard diet to keep.John: It's a little difficult at first. What you have to realize is that these foods are refined foods. Refined foods are not really natural foods because humans have to do a lot of cooking processes to make these foods.Sarah: Uh-hmm.John: When you want to eat natural, you should eat food just the way it comes like raw vegetables and fresh fruit and meat that isn't processed. So you can't eat hotdogs.Sarah: Okay.John: And sausage.Sarah: Okay.John: But you can have steak…Sarah: It sounds…John: And fish.Sarah: It sounds like an expensive diet.John: Well actually, it turns out that when you eat fresh vegetables and fresh fruits, it can be cheaper. Processed food, refined food, comes in lots of packaging from the store, and sometimes it can be more expensive for convenience. Modern humans eat these processed foods for convenience. You don't have to wash it. You don't have to do the chopping and preparation when you eat refined foods.But when you go on paleo diet, you buy the fruit and you eat it. You buy the vegetables, you have to wash it and chop it and then you eat it. So it's not processed, and it's much healthier for you.Sarah: How do you feel since you started this diet?John: I feel much better actually. When we eat carbohydrates, we can feel tired. Carbohydrates are in processed foods like anything that comes from grains. Like I said, bread, cookies, cake, crackers. They have lots of carbohydrates. And when we eat them, our body has to use lots of energy to digest carbohydrates. It takes away energy which could be used for doing activities. That's why if you eat lots and lots of bread and cake, maybe you feel tired.Sarah: Oh, I see.John: If you just eat fresh vegetables and fruit, you can feel like you have lots of free energy.Sarah: Are there any foods that you miss?John: I think the food I missed the most is pizza. Pizza was my favorite food before. I used to eat pizza three times every week. Now, I rarely eat pizza. Pizza has a crust. The crust is bread, so the crust has lots of carbohydrates. Also, pizza has a lot of processed meats including pepperoni and sausage. Those meats are not very healthy for you. Also, pizza has lots of cheese on it. Cheese is another processed food. So if we cut out pizza from our diet, we can eat healthier and feel like we have more energy.Sarah: Well, that's great. Thanks for telling me about paleo.John: You're welcome.
Sarah: So John, I heard you've been trying out a new diet. Can you tell me about it?John: Yes. I've been trying the paleo diet.Sarah: What's that?John: Well, this diet is supposed to make you feel better and eat healthier. And the idea is that a lot of the problems we have with health, a lot of modern human health problems, come from the foods we eat. So the idea is that maybe we should eat a diet which is closer to what early humans ate before.Sarah: Early humans ate? Like what did they eat?John: Well, they mostly ate fruits, and berries, and nuts, and meat. They didn't eat grains because grains come from agriculture, from growing plants on purpose.Sarah: Uh-hmm.John: And they didn't eat bread and cake and cookies and crackers.Sarah: It sounds like a hard diet to keep.John: It's a little difficult at first. What you have to realize is that these foods are refined foods. Refined foods are not really natural foods because humans have to do a lot of cooking processes to make these foods.Sarah: Uh-hmm.John: When you want to eat natural, you should eat food just the way it comes like raw vegetables and fresh fruit and meat that isn't processed. So you can't eat hotdogs.Sarah: Okay.John: And sausage.Sarah: Okay.John: But you can have steak…Sarah: It sounds…John: And fish.Sarah: It sounds like an expensive diet.John: Well actually, it turns out that when you eat fresh vegetables and fresh fruits, it can be cheaper. Processed food, refined food, comes in lots of packaging from the store, and sometimes it can be more expensive for convenience. Modern humans eat these processed foods for convenience. You don't have to wash it. You don't have to do the chopping and preparation when you eat refined foods.But when you go on paleo diet, you buy the fruit and you eat it. You buy the vegetables, you have to wash it and chop it and then you eat it. So it's not processed, and it's much healthier for you.Sarah: How do you feel since you started this diet?John: I feel much better actually. When we eat carbohydrates, we can feel tired. Carbohydrates are in processed foods like anything that comes from grains. Like I said, bread, cookies, cake, crackers. They have lots of carbohydrates. And when we eat them, our body has to use lots of energy to digest carbohydrates. It takes away energy which could be used for doing activities. That's why if you eat lots and lots of bread and cake, maybe you feel tired.Sarah: Oh, I see.John: If you just eat fresh vegetables and fruit, you can feel like you have lots of free energy.Sarah: Are there any foods that you miss?John: I think the food I missed the most is pizza. Pizza was my favorite food before. I used to eat pizza three times every week. Now, I rarely eat pizza. Pizza has a crust. The crust is bread, so the crust has lots of carbohydrates. Also, pizza has a lot of processed meats including pepperoni and sausage. Those meats are not very healthy for you. Also, pizza has lots of cheese on it. Cheese is another processed food. So if we cut out pizza from our diet, we can eat healthier and feel like we have more energy.Sarah: Well, that's great. Thanks for telling me about paleo.John: You're welcome.
Sarah: So John, I heard you've been trying out a new diet. Can you tell me about it?John: Yes. I've been trying the paleo diet.Sarah: What's that?John: Well, this diet is supposed to make you feel better and eat healthier. And the idea is that a lot of the problems we have with health, a lot of modern human health problems, come from the foods we eat. So the idea is that maybe we should eat a diet which is closer to what early humans ate before.Sarah: Early humans ate? Like what did they eat?John: Well, they mostly ate fruits, and berries, and nuts, and meat. They didn't eat grains because grains come from agriculture, from growing plants on purpose.Sarah: Uh-hmm.John: And they didn't eat bread and cake and cookies and crackers.Sarah: It sounds like a hard diet to keep.John: It's a little difficult at first. What you have to realize is that these foods are refined foods. Refined foods are not really natural foods because humans have to do a lot of cooking processes to make these foods.Sarah: Uh-hmm.John: When you want to eat natural, you should eat food just the way it comes like raw vegetables and fresh fruit and meat that isn't processed. So you can't eat hotdogs.Sarah: Okay.John: And sausage.Sarah: Okay.John: But you can have steak…Sarah: It sounds…John: And fish.Sarah: It sounds like an expensive diet.John: Well actually, it turns out that when you eat fresh vegetables and fresh fruits, it can be cheaper. Processed food, refined food, comes in lots of packaging from the store, and sometimes it can be more expensive for convenience. Modern humans eat these processed foods for convenience. You don't have to wash it. You don't have to do the chopping and preparation when you eat refined foods.But when you go on paleo diet, you buy the fruit and you eat it. You buy the vegetables, you have to wash it and chop it and then you eat it. So it's not processed, and it's much healthier for you.Sarah: How do you feel since you started this diet?John: I feel much better actually. When we eat carbohydrates, we can feel tired. Carbohydrates are in processed foods like anything that comes from grains. Like I said, bread, cookies, cake, crackers. They have lots of carbohydrates. And when we eat them, our body has to use lots of energy to digest carbohydrates. It takes away energy which could be used for doing activities. That's why if you eat lots and lots of bread and cake, maybe you feel tired.Sarah: Oh, I see.John: If you just eat fresh vegetables and fruit, you can feel like you have lots of free energy.Sarah: Are there any foods that you miss?John: I think the food I missed the most is pizza. Pizza was my favorite food before. I used to eat pizza three times every week. Now, I rarely eat pizza. Pizza has a crust. The crust is bread, so the crust has lots of carbohydrates. Also, pizza has a lot of processed meats including pepperoni and sausage. Those meats are not very healthy for you. Also, pizza has lots of cheese on it. Cheese is another processed food. So if we cut out pizza from our diet, we can eat healthier and feel like we have more energy.Sarah: Well, that's great. Thanks for telling me about paleo.John: You're welcome.
What We Covered:00:45 – Introducing today’s guest, Sarah Massey, who shares her background as an entrepreneur and the work she’s currently doing with Joie de Vivre06:03 – Why it is important for queer people to have a sex positive space to express themselves09:20 – The need for members of the LGBTQ community to feel free11:44 – Sarah speaks to the origin story of the Joie de Vivre platform14:55 – Advice Sarah would give to aspiring entrepreneurs19:42 – Michelle thanks Sarah for joining the show Tweetable Quotes:“People want to have that experience still of exploration. Well, the first events that we started with are called ‘Queer Dance Naked’ because there’s so much exploration and so much fun to be had when you’re doing something a little outside the box.” (04:29) (Sarah)“If I want to be able to be free to be myself, I want to have a space that I know was developed for me. Has a club owner or a party thrower really considered all the needs of the LGBTQ community?” (06:30) (Sarah)“There’s an aspect of queerness that can benefit the whole population. Those of us who have overcome oppression and marginalization have a lot to teach others.” (07:26) (Sarah)“Am I gonna be able to be resilient? And that’s something I’ve learned. It’s the intersection of the art and the activism that creates that resiliency.” (10:54) (Sarah)“I don’t like the idea of these mega corporations telling me how I can live my life. I’m an adult. And if I want to take off my clothes and dance to Prince I should be allowed to.” (13:54) (Sarah)“How am I going to grow and sustain my community? That’s what I really want to do as well, sustain our community.” (17:42) (Sarah)“I believe that there’s a ton of money that people want to spend with queer businesses that have a social mission. And it’s up to us, the entrepreneurs and the visionaries, to get out there and make those offerings.” (18:56) (Sarah) Links Mentioned:Massey Media Website – https://masseymedia.wordpress.com/Joie de Vivre Website – https://www.joie.dance/Sarah’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahmassey/Michelle’s Website – https://michellecoyle.com/podcast/
I'm so excited for you to tune into another Q&A episode! Here are the 4 JUICY questions I answer: 1. What can I do to lessen/prevent heavy periods & clotting? 2. How much impact do exterior toxins have on your body/health? 3. How does long term use of an IUD affect your hormones? And 4. Is a post workout drink harmful to my hormones like a preworkout drink is? SUCH awesome questions!! I can’t wait to hear what you think! What can I do to lessen/prevent heavy periods, clots,? Heavy periods are mostly from EXCESS ESTROGEN-body isn’t detoxifying your estrogen it properly (in your liver &/or gut) Your LIVER processes and metabolizes hormones and then moves it onto the gut where they’re eliminated through poop. Go back to EPISODE 10 to learn more about healing your gut TIPS TO HELP: Reduce/remove caffeine, alcohol & dairy because they increase estrogen, & add in cooked Cruciferous veggies (kale, brussels, cauliflower, cabbage, collards) Check out EPISODE 11 for more info on CAFFEINE & HORMONES. 2. SARAH: How much impact do exterior toxins have on your body/health Skin is your largest organ- it absorbs 80% of what you put on it. Most of the chemicals in conventional products are BANNED in Europe but allowed in the United States Whatever we put on our skin goes right into the bloodstream There are more than 80,000 chemicals on the market & many don't have any safety data. Especially those used in the skin care and beauty industry. The Food and Drug Administration (the agency that regulates cosmetics in the United States) does not have the authority to remove harmful ingredients from the products we put on our bodies every single day. Decades of studies show that health issues such as asthma, cancer, and infertility are on the rise and are due in some part to our ongoing exposure to toxic chemicals—whether it's from the products we use in the shower, when we get ready, on our commute, while we eat lunch or when we clean our homes. Toxic chemicals can alter important biological systems (like the endocrine system, which regulates our hormones). Candles, household cleaning products & environmental toxins put a burden on our liver which slows down our ability to metabolize excess hormones. Go to ewg.org/skindeep for more info & to check your products! Check out EPISODE 8 for more info on SKIN CARE & TOXINS EPISODE 2 for more info on pesticides and hormones. MY ABSOLUTE FAVE SKIN CARE PRODUCTS are SKIN ESSENCE ORGANICS. US website: www.skinessenceorganics.com CANADA website: www.skinessence.ca CODE CORINNE saves you 15% off! And FREE EXPRESS SHIPPING when you spend over $50! 3. How does long term use of an IUD affect your hormones? Copper IUD does not change your hormones- it doesn’t prevent ovulation. The copper ions impair sperm motility and the physical presence of something in the uterus changes the uterine lining so that a fertilized egg cannot implant and develop. NEGATIVES: It causes an INFLAMMATORY reaction in your body, it can cause painful periods, heavy periods, it disrupts the vaginal microbiome and doubles the risk of bacterial vaginosis which causes discharge with a fishy odor. Copper toxicity can lead to anxiety & mood problems. The Hormonal IUD- MIRENA & SKYLA IUD: releases progestin and it thickens cervical mucus, inhibits sperm survival, prevents build up of your uterine lining Progestin is not progesterone. Side effects of levonorgestrel include acne, hair loss, hirsutism, depression, anxiety, headaches, breast pain, yeast infections, and weight gain. It causes ovarian cysts in 5 percent of users. It doesn’t aim to suppress ovulation but it CAN and sometimes does suppress ovulation one study found that it does suppress ovulation in 85 percent of cycles during the first year (when the dose of the levonorgestrel drug is higher), and then in 15 percent of cycles after that. fertility returns to normal almost as soon as you remove a hormonal IUD. According to endocrinology professor Jerilynn Prior, “regular menstrual cycles with consistently normal ovulation…will prevent osteoporosis, breast cancer and heart disease.” IUDs are still NOT GETTING TO THE ROOT CAUSE of your period problems/hormone imbalances. Other forms of contraception that DO NOT disrupt your hormones: CONDOMS. Sustain Natural Condoms are my fave brand. For more info on the BIRTH CONTROL PILL check out Episode 9. SOURCES: https://www.larabriden.com/pros-cons-mirena-iud-natural-health/ https://drbrighten.com/iud-side-effects/ 4. AMBER: Is a post workout drink harmful to my hormones like a preworkout drink is? Depends on the product! Read the ingredients! If there’s sugar it’s going to cause a blood sugar spike. If there’s whey protein that’s inflammatory to your system. Always look at the ingredients POST WORKOUT FUEL can be an actual MEAL with protein from legumes, quinoa or a vegan protein powder shake. WAYS WE CAN CONNECT! Come say hi & hang out with me on Instagram! @corinneangelica Join my FREE TEXT COMMUNITY to get weekly HORMONE HEALTH & MINDSET TIPS texted right to your phone! Text the word "CORINNE" to (855) 691-0508. MY TEXT LIST WILL ALSO BE THE FIRST TO KNOW ABOUT WHEN YOU CAN REGISTER FOR MY UPCOMING 12 WEEK GROUP COUSE how to EAT, MOVE & LIVE for your hormones. This course teaches you SIMPLE STRATEGIES you can implement into your BUSY LIFE to help you NATURALLY heal your hormonal symptoms of an irregular period, PCOS, acne, migraines, fatigue, low fertility, constipation & bloating! I’m teaching you what we should’ve learned in school! You can also click here to get more information on the course! Do you know what imbalances you have? Take this free HORMONE IMBALANCE QUIZ to find out! Interested in setting up a complimentary call with me to chat about your health goals, transitioning off birth control & the services I offer? Head to my calendar to book a call! So grateful you’re here! XO Corinne
Sarah: So Adam, today we're talking about do-overs. So what is something that you wish you would have done over? For example, maybe something in your university life?Adam: Yeah. There are a few things. I might change my major. I studied education, and while I enjoy what I'm doing right now, my free time I really like watching movies about science and astronomy. And if I would go back to school and start my studies over, I'd probably study something along those lines, astronomy and metaphysics or something.I think that those topics are really interesting and on the cutting edge of science and just fascinating to explore.Sarah: Interesting. Anything else you wish you would have done?Adam: I might have been more involved in the sports clubs at my school. For example, the American football team. I played in high school but in college, I wanted to play but I didn't have the motivation to push me over the edge to actually go out and really put my heart into it.I went to one training day and kind of tried out, but I didn't really pursue it as much as I would have liked. I think it would have been fun to be a part of that culture and that environment.Sarah: How about something that you did do that maybe now you wish you hadn't?Adam: I pierced my ears in high school because that was the cool thing to do. But now I don't wear earrings. And yeah, looking back on it, kind of just a silly thing to do that I'm trying to follow the trends, that, you know, trends usually pass.So yeah, that would be something that I wouldn't do again.Sarah: Nice. Anything else you would have changed?Adam: I might have made different decisions about my girlfriends at the time. I had a really good girlfriend in the beginning of college, and things didn't work out because of a variety of reasons. But I think if we would have worked on it, we could have. We could have made it, made it happen. So yeah, that's something I think about sometimes about life in college.It's always, you know, college love is kind of a crazy thing. So yeah, we're too much like kids, I guess, I think at that age.Sarah: Okay. Thanks, Adam.
Sarah: So Adam, today we're talking about do-overs. So what is something that you wish you would have done over? For example, maybe something in your university life?Adam: Yeah. There are a few things. I might change my major. I studied education, and while I enjoy what I'm doing right now, my free time I really like watching movies about science and astronomy. And if I would go back to school and start my studies over, I'd probably study something along those lines, astronomy and metaphysics or something.I think that those topics are really interesting and on the cutting edge of science and just fascinating to explore.Sarah: Interesting. Anything else you wish you would have done?Adam: I might have been more involved in the sports clubs at my school. For example, the American football team. I played in high school but in college, I wanted to play but I didn't have the motivation to push me over the edge to actually go out and really put my heart into it.I went to one training day and kind of tried out, but I didn't really pursue it as much as I would have liked. I think it would have been fun to be a part of that culture and that environment.Sarah: How about something that you did do that maybe now you wish you hadn't?Adam: I pierced my ears in high school because that was the cool thing to do. But now I don't wear earrings. And yeah, looking back on it, kind of just a silly thing to do that I'm trying to follow the trends, that, you know, trends usually pass.So yeah, that would be something that I wouldn't do again.Sarah: Nice. Anything else you would have changed?Adam: I might have made different decisions about my girlfriends at the time. I had a really good girlfriend in the beginning of college, and things didn't work out because of a variety of reasons. But I think if we would have worked on it, we could have. We could have made it, made it happen. So yeah, that's something I think about sometimes about life in college.It's always, you know, college love is kind of a crazy thing. So yeah, we're too much like kids, I guess, I think at that age.Sarah: Okay. Thanks, Adam.
Sarah: So Adam, today we're talking about do-overs. So what is something that you wish you would have done over? For example, maybe something in your university life?Adam: Yeah. There are a few things. I might change my major. I studied education, and while I enjoy what I'm doing right now, my free time I really like watching movies about science and astronomy. And if I would go back to school and start my studies over, I'd probably study something along those lines, astronomy and metaphysics or something.I think that those topics are really interesting and on the cutting edge of science and just fascinating to explore.Sarah: Interesting. Anything else you wish you would have done?Adam: I might have been more involved in the sports clubs at my school. For example, the American football team. I played in high school but in college, I wanted to play but I didn't have the motivation to push me over the edge to actually go out and really put my heart into it.I went to one training day and kind of tried out, but I didn't really pursue it as much as I would have liked. I think it would have been fun to be a part of that culture and that environment.Sarah: How about something that you did do that maybe now you wish you hadn't?Adam: I pierced my ears in high school because that was the cool thing to do. But now I don't wear earrings. And yeah, looking back on it, kind of just a silly thing to do that I'm trying to follow the trends, that, you know, trends usually pass.So yeah, that would be something that I wouldn't do again.Sarah: Nice. Anything else you would have changed?Adam: I might have made different decisions about my girlfriends at the time. I had a really good girlfriend in the beginning of college, and things didn't work out because of a variety of reasons. But I think if we would have worked on it, we could have. We could have made it, made it happen. So yeah, that's something I think about sometimes about life in college.It's always, you know, college love is kind of a crazy thing. So yeah, we're too much like kids, I guess, I think at that age.Sarah: Okay. Thanks, Adam.
Resiliency, Agility & Grit Why is it important for women to become more resilient and agile in today's world? What does grit have to do with it? You'll find out in this episode with my guest Pattie Grimm, author, speaker, coach, and trainer. Pattie knows what it is like to go from rock star to rock bottom and learning how to climb back out of a place of total exhaustion and defeat. She has discovered the secrets to embracing change and thriving in the midst of it. Pattie shares many pearls of wisdom such as:How to ride the river rapids of life and love it!The cycle we go through in stressful situations (she calls this SARAH)How to handle your emotionsThe power of your wordsWhy the "girlfriend factor" is vital for women to thriveAs Pattie says, "Courage isn't the absence of fear. It's the acquired ability to live through it." Pattie offers listeners a free video training called Be Bold, Not Bossy - How to Be An Assertive and Confident Woman Leader. Click here to access this training!Email Pattie at pattiegrimm@live.com and mention this podcast episode to receive your autographed copy of Pattie's book, Quiet Women Never Changed History - Be Strong, Stand Up and Stand Out "Let's Go Kick Some Glass?" for only $10.
This is episode 96 of the Pam Sowder Podcast, with your host, Pam Sowder! Pam has over 2 decades of field and corporate experience and was voted one of the most influential women in direct selling. She helps match the daily needs of distributors to everyday life challenges. Join Pam today for another insightful #AskPam episode! In this edition, Pam is answering questions from listeners all about overcoming their current struggles around the coronavirus pandemic. She gives advice on how to push through the hard times and continue inspiring your team as a leader, how to keep your team pumped up and positive, and how to keep growing your business and team given the current circumstances. She also answers: “What is a day in your life like?”, “What kind of sacrifices did you have to make when you were first building your business?”, “What advice would you give your younger self?”, and more! If you have your own #AskPam question, be sure to reach out to her through her website or on Twitter at @ItWorksPam using the hashtags #askpam and #pamsowder! Pam loves all of your questions and can’t wait to get to even more in a future #AskPam episode! Key Takeaways [:32] Pam welcomes listeners to another #AskPam episode and shares how to submit questions. [:51] Pam answers her first question: “How much time did you sacrifice from your family while building your business? And what kind of sacrifices, other than time, were made?” [4:44] A listener asks Pam: “What would you do in a situation where your mental health is at a low and you don’t know what to do to come out of it?” [7:14] Pam answers some questions from listener, Crystal: “What is a day in your life like? When you first started, how did you run your day? And what has been the biggest lesson you’ve learned from when you first started? Additionally, what advice would you give your younger self? [15:50] Pam answers another great listener question: “How can I, as a leader, inspire my team to keep pushing through the slow times, as well as the hard times, to keep crushing their goals?” [18:44] Pam answers a question from listener, Sarah: “How do you keep your team pumped up and positive during this time?” [19:58] Listener, Amanda, asks: “When you find yourself in a funk, what is your go-to personal development strategy?” [21:00] Listener, Jasmine, asks: “What’s the best advice you would give someone who wants to revamp their social media to better support their business?” [22:37] Pam answers her final listener question for the episode: “Given the time we’re in, how can I keep pushing and growing my team?” Mentioned in this Episode It Works Continue on your Adventure Find more episodes on PamSowder.com/Listen Reach out to her at PamSowder.com/Connect Reach out on Social Media! Follow Pam @ItWorksPam on Twitter — Tweet her and use #askpam #pamsowder!
Sarah How dives in to the philosophy of the Nurtured Heart Approach that supports intentional interactions that elevate strengths, rather than perceived areas of weaknesses. The words we speak to our kids become the script they live by. What they hear about themselves, positive or negative, they look for and become as they age. So let’s give them a narrative that ignites and empowers them to be the best versions of themselves. You can find the full clip here: https://youtu.be/9lXNl8NpyuY Tell Me About Your Greatness! (book): https://amzn.to/3dHY5dF We'd love to know what you think and join in on the conversation! Subscribe, leave a review, or follow PG-ish on Instagram (@pgishparenting) or find us at https://www.pgishparenting.com/.
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Sarah Kunst is the Founder and Managing Director @ Cleo Capital with a portfolio including the likes of StyleSeat, Glow Bar and PlateJoy to name a few. Prior to venture, Sarah served as a senior advisor at Bumble where she focused on their corporate VC arm, Bumble Fund, and on the board of the Michigan State University Foundation endowment. If that was not enough, Sarah is also a contributing editor @ Vanity Fair. Due to her success, Sarah has been named a Future Innovator by Vanity Fair and a top woman in VC by Wall St Journal. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Sarah made her way into the world of venture from Bumble and how that led to her founding Cleo Capital? 2.) Does Sarah believe VCs really are still "open for business"? What does Sarah make of all the dry powder sitting on the sidelines? How does Sarah think reserve allocation strategies will change today? Why does Sarah believe another great vintage of funds is to come, as it did in 08'? 3.) What would Sarah most like to change about the world of venture? Does Sarah agree that GP commit expectations prevent diversity in venture? How was the fundraising process for Sarah? How can VCs prove skin in the game without having personal capital? 4.) What is the #1 piece of advice Sarah is giving her founders in these COVID times? How does Sarah advise her founders on approaching the talent market today? How does Sarah advise her founders on burn and capital allocation given COVID? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Sarah’s Fave Book: Attached: Are you Anxious, Avoidant or Secure? How the science of adult attachment can help you find – and keep Sarah’s Most Recent Investment: Planet Forward As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Sarah and on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Melissa and David are here today to answer listener questions. Melissa loves it when people ask questions. We appreciate you trusting us with all of the things we'll be talking about today and on future episodes. The last couple of weeks have been dedicated to something that Melissa just can't wrap her mind around. We've been talking about being still, organizing, and decluttering our homes and our hearts, space, and putting your phone away. If someone would have told me that in the year 1994 when David and I got married that someday David would be checking his phone while we were having conversations, and I would be checking my watch for incoming messages, I would have laughed them out of house and home. Here we are learning how to create space and balance in a way that we didn't have to learn back then. We are navigating a whole new world. Before we dive into the listener questions, we just want to say thank you for trusting us with your questions, even though we don't have all of the answers. We do love each other very much, and we are in this marriage for the long haul. We work really hard on our marriage, so we are going to try and do the best we can with your questions. David also wanted to share that just asking the question or talking about it or hearing someone else talk it can help you feel less alone. Show Notes: [06:34] Someone from Vista, California said she loves the show. Her and her husband will be married 35 years. The only way she could keep balance when the kids were young was to go away on weekends every three to four months. [09:00] Question from Sarah: How to get a guilt free girls night? Her husband only does stuff with her. He doesn't have any friends and doesn't go out. [10:27] Sarah has guilt going out, because her husband just wants to be with her. [11:48] David suggests Sarah's husband be supportive. One of the ways Melissa recharges is by spending time by herself or by spending time with other people. [12:20] When Melissa and David got married, David was jealous of her time. This has changed, because David discovered that Melissa becomes better after having time off with her friends or family. [14:29] It's a good idea to have moments of conversation about how important it is and be nice and treat other people well. Say thank you, and it wouldn't hurt to help him find a hobby. [15:19] Selena is the adoptive mother of a special-needs child. He is now an adult, and Selena is struggling with drawing lines in the sand and kind of pushing him out of the nest. At what point does she say you're ready and it's time to go? [17:04] We are at a double deficit when it comes to answering this question. We don't have a special needs child, and we haven't come to the season where we release our children out into the world. [18:00] Every situation with every child is going to be different. Seeking counseling with people who have expertise and can give true insight on your specific situation would be a good idea. [18:33] It seems to Melissa that you have dealt with this for so many years that you and your husband are a little off-balance on how to be alone and how to make time for one another. [21:45] Ellen asks how to schedule sex in your life when you and your partner have opposite schedules? [22:12] Men can be more flexible, try to find a time that works for Ellen. There's something romantic and life giving when the other partner is intentional. [25:29] It can't be pushed away for too long without having some effect. [27:29] Donna asks how to come to an agreement when it's time to talk about a problem? This gives her anxiety. If we don't communicate to begin with, how could we communicate about a problem? [28:25] Not communicating at all is a red flag. We are firm believers in marriage counseling. When there are problems, husbands don't want to go. Invest in a counselor now, before you are engulfed in flames. Dig your well before you need the water. [29:52] Look into the Enneagram. It's an internal GPS for who you both are. [31:57] Before having the tough questions, tackle easier communication. The Enneagram can really help you learn about yourself and your spouse. Schedule communication. [34:47] Both people need to honor and respect this. Hold up one hand like a stop sign (not talk to the hand) when it's time to stop talking about things that are escalating. [36:06] Jaime believes that there is a low in January. She is having a hard time with her marriage. [37:17] We go through seasons, but then settle back into real life and the day-to-day. The biggest thing is to be intentional with your actions, marriage, or relationships. Write down what you want to see. [38:59] We have a soft spot in our hearts for marriages and relationships. We feel your call Jaime. [39:50] When you pull back the layers, ask if you are going anywhere. We can try anything when we know that we aren’t leaving. Thanks for joining us on Ordinary People Ordinary Things. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave a nice review. Just like your mother taught you. Links and Resources: Podcast Web Page Facebook Page @MsMelissaRadke on Instagram @msmelissaradke on Twitter Sign Up for Insider Access Enneagram
In this episode, we've invited nobody on to defend, and instead asked you lot on our socials what your favourite Christmas movies are. A Big Thank You to; Charlie K = Elf (2003) [09:08], Leah = The Holiday (2006) [17:05], Tim = Jingle All The Way (1996) [26:02], André = Gremlins (1984) [32:24], Sarah = How the Grinch stole Christmas (2000) [39:14], and Michael = Scrooged (1988) [46:25], and everyone else that answered the call for favourite films. As it's only us, how will we fair? We would be hugely grateful if you left us a five star review and/ or share the podcast with your friends! You can keep in touch with us through our socials; @FavFilmisAwful on twitter & @YourFavouriteFilmIsAwful on instagram & facebook. And for short highlight videos find us on youtube at Your Favourite Film is Awful
Transcript Kathy: Welcome to Kathy Santo’s Dog Sense. I'm your host Kathy Santo, and I'm here to teach you everything I've learned in my over three decades of training dogs, their families, competing in dog sports, writing about dogs and being a guest on radio and TV shows. And I'm here with one of my trainers staff in Colorado. And wait, did you guys get snow? Sarah: Oh my God, we got like two feet of snow right now. It's awesome. Kathy: Oh my gosh, I'm glad you said “Aw”, I was thinking “ful”, she said awesome. I'm like, that's why she should be in Colorado and I should be here in Jersey where it was like 52 today. Sarah: I know you guys have some nice weather. I got some of the pictures from the teams today. It looked really nice there. Kathy: Yeah, it's, it's really great. And the dogs are loving it because if it feels like spring and, you know how we have a few dogs who definitely don't like the cold weather, so we're planning some extra indoor activities at daycare for them. Fun, warm activity. What else did we do today? Oh, we did our last day of Thanksgiving photo shoots. Sarah: Yeah, those have been coming out amazing. Kathy: Aren’t they great? Wait ‘til see the holiday winter one. Oh my gosh. I'll send you pictures. Sarah: I can't wait for that. Kathy: It's a big surprise. All right. So anyway, today we are tasked with talking about potty training. Sarah: Not only is potty training but realistic expectations for potty training. So of course, like, we go over what the kind of general process is, but real life training your puppy potty training is a little bit different. Kathy: It is. And I think I really feel like people have unrealistic expectations. My personal feeling is that it takes until the puppy is six months old to be, like, done with it. Now that said, I've had puppies much younger, be perfect. As I a matter of fact, I've never had a puppy take that long. But I'm a trainer, you know, and that's our, it's my jam. Like, I'm watching the, I know what to do. So, but I think a realistic expectation for someone who's not a trainer would be by six months you are done, and there's a lot of things that you could do to make that work easier and there is a lot of things that you could do to make it take much, much longer.. Sarah: Exactly. Kathy: All right, so let's start back at the breeder. All right. So my breeder, one of my breeders, she has a litter of golden puppies and, I think, they are now seven, eight days old and she's, maybe there are two weeks old...Anyway, I think they're two weeks old, and she's introducing the concept of potty-ing in a certain area right now. So they had wee pads down and they're learning to look for that to go. And then from there there'll be moved to, in a couple of weeks, they’ll be moved to a different surface and then learn to go there. And that's one thing she really values is sending a puppy home from the litter box who already has the idea started. Sarah: That is incredible. I didn't realize that they were doing it that young. Kathy: Yeah, it's amazing. And that's where I got Indy from and he, I didn't have to do any housebreaking he gave into my life an 8 week old puppy, he's like, “Hey, I go outside, this is the door?” I'm like, “Oh yeah, sure dude, like, let's go outside.” When I also did was I took the same materials she used to housebreak them and I got a bag of it. So I had an area in my yard and that's where he went. So that’s, you know, your best shot is you're having a breeder who is working on that for you. Now the worst case scenario is you have a dog who's already learned, whether it's a puppy or a shelter dog, rescue dog, learn to go anywhere. Sarah: Yup. Kathy: Pet store dogs. It's terrible because they're in a cage, they have to go and that's where they go. And then we want you to housebreak your dog and use crate training, and the dog is like, “Oh cool. The indoor potty”. So that tends to be a challenge too. So those are the best case and the worst case scenario, but we can get it done no matter what's going on. Let me tell you an interesting story before we get into what you would do for it, a more typical dog. So I had a client come to me and the dog was peeing and pooping in the crate, it was complete reverse housebreaking they take it out, they'd monitor it, it wouldn't go. The minute that dog went into crate, and they did all the things correctly. They tried a plastic crate, they tried a wire crate, they tried a smaller crate, like, they did everything right, and this dog, this dog could be against a wall in a crate and go to the bathroom. So we use the hay trick. Now I learned about the hay trick back in the eighties, I didn't invent it. I can't remember who did. We'll give credit when I remember. Do you remember who it was I told you about the other day? No? Anyway, so basically I got some straw, it was around Halloween so it was great. Broke down a hay bale, put it in the crate up to like hip level of this dog and I put him in there. And because the hay was around him, sort of like hugging him like a nest, he stopped going to the bathroom in the crate. And I made it a bigger space so I get more hay in it and the dog didn't go. So it's hard to get people to get on board with that because, obviously, when you take the puppy out, hay is going to come out the front. But I prepped it. I put down like a big trash bag and a sheet and then I put the crate over that, and then after four or five, six days of perfect, no potty-ing in the crate, then I started taking the hay out by the handfuls. Morning I take some out, at night I take some out, until we were just down to a crate with a few pieces of hay in the bottom and it was done. That was it. Sarah: That's incredible. Kathy: You can also use it for anxiety, for dogs who freak out in the crate. Sarah: Yeah. Kathy: Alright! So now you have a good example and a bad example and what to do in an extreme example. Let's start more with your typical puppy. Sarah: Yep. Kathy: So I believe in crate training and I know you do too. So when I'm not home, when I'm sleeping, when I can have my eye on my puppy, it is in a crate. Sarah: Yep. Kathy: It's appropriately sized. I am monitoring to make sure that I have met all my puppy's needs. Like he is potty before I put him in, and know how long I can keep them in. Sarah: Do you want to touch on the size of the crate really quick? Kathy: Yes. So I would like something that the dog can stand up and turn it around in comfortably, but I don't want them to be able to use one end as the bathroom and the other end as the TV room. Sarah: Got it. Kathy: That'd be just one area. And again, I'm counting on the fact that your dog is uncomfortable being next to his waste. Some puppies come from what we call a dirty litter. And the mom wasn't cleaning them because you know, the mom has to clean them for the first two weeks. She licks them to stimulate them to go to the bathroom. They don't have the reflexes to do it on their own. And so some moms weren't great at that and when the puppies actually went, she wasn't cleaning up after them either and they would just got used to laying in it. So if you have a puppy like that, it's a little more challenging. And then I would try the hay trick. Of course, making sure your dog doesn't want to eat the hay. Sarah: Yeah, exactly. Kathy: So it's a nice small area. And I also feed my dogs in their crates. So if they're going to have a meal in a crate, it's going to be there and traditionally dogs won’t defecate or urinate where they eat. So you kind of have that on your side as well. So yeah, it's a nice tight space. Sarah: And then I think a really important thing too is when you are going into potty training your puppy is just think proactively. So think about how much food he’s getting. Think about what time of day he's getting it, how much water and then you want to take the puppy out before they need to go as well. So that's why the schedule is really important. So what do you do for a puppy potty training schedule? Kathy: So I, you know, my life is the way it is. It's semi erratic. Sarah: A little busy. Kathy: A little busy. Yeah. And so I'm going all the time and I really value a puppy who's not locked into a routine, like, not having to eat at this time a day and not at me to potty at this time of day, but yet I will tell my students to give some sort of loose routine to their dogs or their puppies for housebreaking. So I kind of look at the day that's ahead of me and I say, “Alright, well I'm up at five and I'm going to let the puppy to potty right away. I'm going to carry it, I’m not going to walk it, and carry it to the potty area, which we’ll talk about later, and then I'll bring the puppy in, a little playing, a little training with food, probably another visit outside and then back in the crate. Now my rule of thumb is, one hour for every month of age plus one as the amount of time my puppy can spend in a crate. I don't take that through month six so that's silly, right? Your six month old puppy probably shouldn't be in there for seven hours. Could be, but it shouldn't be, and that's during the day. At night your dog goes into nocturnal mode so they can sleep a little bit longer without having to go out. But I'm guaranteeing you with a puppy that is really young, like eight to 12 weeks, you're probably still getting up at least once a night. I put my puppies to bed at like 11 that's their last walk. I don't want to stay up till 11 but I do, cause I don't want to really be up at two and if I get up at 11 I'm probably stretching that to like four, but I'm also not tanking my puppy very frequently. I will take their dinner meal, take a little bit of it and put it into lunch and breakfast because those are times where I'm awake and then I'm putting less in the belly at night. I do cut off food and water for young puppies at five. That's pretty much my only, schedule that I always hold to that 5, 5:30 mark, because I feel that's enough time for the dog to get it out of their system and give him and me a very nice night's sleep. Sarah: Yeah, exactly. So, stopping the food and water at about five o'clock and then, so, and then you have about the hours in between. And you said by about six months, they should be pretty well potty trained. Kathy: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things, too, I talked to people about is measure your food. Have you ever asked one of your clients how much they feed their dog and they can't give you an accurate answer. They're like, “You know, like this much.” Sarah: Yeah, like a handful. Kathy: They show you their hand! You’re like, “What is that?” They’re like, “Like, a cup.” And then you say the magic question, “What kind of a cup?” They rarely say measuring cup. They're like, “Oh you know, the cup you get, someone gave me.” Sarah: The scoop. Kathy: Oh the scoop. The scoop is deadly. Cause that's like, yeah. So you have to measure your food. You have to know what you're putting into that dog so you know what to expect to come out of the dog. And if you're training, hopefully you're using the food. If you have people in your house giving the dog treats or you have company over and it changes how much is going in, you've got to adjust your schedule for all of those possibilities. Sarah: And another thing for realistic expectations is also to understand that your puppy, like as they're growing and changing, they're going, it's not going to be like a linear path to potty training. They may have some accidents here or there. So what, what would you say is the best way? Like, let's say you just missed it and the puppy peed on the couch or something like that. What would be your steps to kind of helping make sure that that doesn't derail the rest of their potty training? Kathy: Well, the first thing you do is you pick up the puppy and you walk to the bathroom and you look in the mirror and you say, “Why did I let my puppy dog out? I suck because I didn't listen to anything Kathy and Sarah said.” I would pick the puppy up. I would snap a leash on it, take it outside of the potty area, put it down and say, “Hurry up.” I firmly believe that if a puppy is mid pee and you scoop it up, it will stop peeing, probably not pooping, but peeing. I know that if people were on the potty and somebody lifted them up midstream, they would probably stop. I want to try and have the puppy finish outside. And so I can accomplish that, awesome. Then I put the puppy in the crate and I cleaned it up. And some people say, “Oh, don't let the dog see you clean up their accident ‘cause they'll think that they're in charge.” I'm like, “Hello?” Sarah: The most important part of cleaning up an accident is making sure that you actually cleaned it all up and got the smell out. Kathy: It's not about letting the puppy see you. The puppy doesn't think, “Oh, you’re my housekeeper.” Like, that’s just ridiculous. Sarah: Well again, that's adding human emotions to training another species. Like, this is a dog, this is not a child. Kathy: We should do a podcast on weird things that people have told you. Like I heard somebody said, “Oh, you know how you teach your dog that you're in charge, you spit in their food before you give it to them again.” What?! Sarah: Again, that's like a weird human thing. No. Kathy: Yeah, no. There's others we can’t talk about them now. I’m thinking of all of them now. Okay, anyway...So yeah, and you clean it up completely. Now this doesn't mean with water. Please don’t use ammonia, because a component in urine is ammonia. So all your Pine Saul, pine scented ammonia things are just going to draw the dog back. I would use something that gets rid of the odor and breaks it down completely. And we use Fizzion. And I always tell people, “If the dog school uses a product, you better get on it.” Sarah: Yeah, we use it for a reason. Kathy: Yeah! We see all these dogs, we know what works. Fizzion works. There's others that really don't work. We don't want to say a name, but they're not really the miracles that they say they are. Sarah: That they claim to be. Kathy: There you go. Sarah: No, tried and true. We use Fizzion. Kathy: And then some of them are like, “Oh my dog keeps going back to this rug to pee on.” Okay, supervise better and keep him away from the rug, or get rid of the rug. Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. The biggest thing is don't let them go back to there and potty again. Kathy: Right, right. And again, it comes down to supervision. Like, I think the biggest thing to tell people is, “You've got to supervise your puppy.” Supervise it like it's a nine month old baby walking around pulling crap down off the counter on their head with the chords, and sticking their fingers in sockets. Like, you understand that. That you have to supervise that. And yet people after like a day or two of no accents they're like, “Oh, my puppy is trained.” And the hardest puppies to train are the small grade ones, because the big breeds in real time, like, your shepherd takes a crap behind the couch. Like, you know it. You walk around, you’re like, “What is that?” Your Pomeranian does it, you don't find it in real time. You find it like when you go to put up the tree, six months later, you pull the couch out, you're like, “Oh my God, what's that?” And see that's why the dog isn't housebroken because he's pottied in so many places that you don't even know it. And that's rewarding, because relief is really rewarding. And you can't come back and show them the fossilized poop and fuss at them. As a matter of fact, you can never fuss at them for accidents cause it's all your fault. Sarah: Exactly. Kathy: I had a student, and I know I've told you this story, who I went to her house and she had a 10 week old puppy and I walked in and the housekeeper was there and I had to wait for the owner to come. And while I'm there, the housekeeper’s bragging that the 10 week old puppies perfectly housebroken and I totally don't believe it. And then the owner comes. I'm like, “So tell me about the housebreaking.” She's like, “Oh, we don't need to worry about it. He's perfectly housebroken. He just doesn't come when I call him.” I'm like, “Oh, really?” Sarah: 10 weeks old? Kathy: 10 weeks old. It was a little multi-poo. Sarah: Yeah. Kathy: So the housekeeper opens the gate to leave the kitchen. And what the owner said was, “The only thing he doesn't do is he doesn't come when he's called. And if he runs out of this room, he'll never come back.” I'm like, “Okay.” So, of course, the housekeeper opens the gate to leave. And what happens? Dog runs out and they're like, “Oh, my God! He’s loose!” And they're running through this, you know like 32 room house and I'm just by the front door and thinking, “This is going awesomely.” So while I'm there, I turned to the right and I see the dining room, which is right off the kitchen and what I'm struck by is the fact that the dining room has snow white carpet. And I look a little harder and I'm like, ‘Wait a minute.” And I squat down and I see like 500 silver dollar size pee stains. The dog had been peeing in the dining room, and I'm sure he pushed out that gate, got out, and got back in without anybody knowing. And I'm like, “I am going to have to tell this woman and she's...her head is going to blow off her body.” I'm like, Sarah: How’d the housekeeper not find it though? Kathy: Apparently she wasn't doing her job either! It was the formal dining room. So they come back down, they had them, they're like, “Oh my gosh! He didn't do anything.” And I'm like, “You know what? I kind of have bad news about the house. Frankly, he’s peeing in your dining room.” And she was really, like, “He key is not!” And I'm like, “No, he is.” And she's like, “Oh, I don't believe it.” I'm like, “Well..” I had to help her to the ground to crawl into the dining room. Now we're both on our hands and knees and she's so mad. She smacking the ground, “I can't believe it.” Yeah, the housekeeper magically disappeared. And so then we had to talk about better gates and better management and yeah, it was...but then it took twice as long, right? Because the dog said, “Why can't I get to my indoor potty area?” Everything had to change. Supervision had to go through the roof. Sarah: Yeah! Inadvertently you had house-trained your puppy, just on your white rug in the formal dining room. Kathy: Had she had a Great Dane puppy. He would've had one accident and they would have seen it. There's a river coming from the dining room. Because he weighed three pounds, he got away with it. Oh my gosh. It was awful. It was terrible. Sarah: Yeah. Supervision is, and management is a huge piece of the potty training. Kathy: It is. It is. And, and realistic expectations. Like you should know and if you don't, now you do, that a 10 week old puppy is probably not really housebroken. Sarah: Nope. Kathy: Something is amiss. Sarah: Any other, like from working with clients with potty training and like that, that time period before six months, like any other things that have happened that where you fixed it or where it was like as like a kind of specific issue? Kathy: Yeah, I, when I have people who we lovingly call “noncompliance,” and they're non-compliant for a lot of reasons, their life is crazy. I mean they shouldn't go, the dog may didn't want a dog. Maybe they've decided the kids are going to be in charge and it goes badly. So if they're non-compliant or non able to be compliant, we find that we give them these guidelines. If your eyeballs can't be on the puppy, they're crated. If you can 100% supervise, they're gated in a small room with a leash on and if you can supervise pretty much but not 100% they can be X-penned or tethered in a room with you. In addition, if you want really high level security you can tether them. I told a student today at the home. So it was a perfect example at the lesson I was at today. The puppy moved away from us and peed and it was right about the time he should have, and he had just drank water. But if he had been tethered to her body she would have felt him pulling away like a fish on a line trying to get away. Sarah: Yeah. That's a really, that brings up a good one. So what are some of your like tried and true cues that a puppy will give you that they have to potty? Cause a lot of times new owners, they don't know what to look for. They don't know that if the puppy tries to, like, leave you and create distance from you, they probably need to go to the bathroom. So what are some other kind of physical cues that a puppy will give you that they have to go potty? Kathy: They're sniffing and circling is the big one. Definitely becoming disinterested in your play or training or snack or belly rub session. You feel like you're playing and you’re playing and dog's into it and then suddenly they walk away. Like, “What do I smell?” And then they go, right? Sarah: Yep, yep. Kathy: If they're really engaged in something and suddenly disconnect that, that's your cue. And they all have different ways of telling you. Right? So, my Border Collie, both of them actually, would run to me, run to the door, run to me, run to the door. And I'm like, “I guess you have to go.” My golden barks, you've heard, “Oh, gotta go.” My doberman would just stare at me. Like, I'd be on the computer and I feel this. I'd be like, “What is going on?” Sarah: Yeah. They’re tethered to you, you'll learn it that much more quickly because like you'll, you'll be a pattern. You'll notice after maybe one or two times you'll see one of those indicators and take them out and then you'll know their cue. If they weren't tethered to you and they were just loose in the house, you missed it. Kathy: Exactly. And you know, it's interesting when they hit a certain age, they don't give you cues anymore because they're housebroken, and you're taking them out a sufficient amount of time. I can't remember the last time one of my dogs asked me to go out because I think I just take them out. Sarah: Yeah. You get into a routine with your dogs and once they get older, they know when they're going to be able to go. Kathy: Yeah. And you just manage what goes in, what comes out. Sarah: Yeah. Kathy: I think we should talk about the DPA: Designated Potty Area, and this is a huge thing and this is, we did a Facebook live on it, on chicken rock. Sarah: We have the video for chicken rock. Kathy: Chicken rock is...it was very popular. So, basically I want my dogs to be able to go out the back sliding door, obviously if you're an apartment, this is not valid, and run to the back of the property and pee and poop in the area that I want them to so they're not on the grass. And the way I accomplices is I put out an X pen and I leave it unattached, so there's an opening in it. That X pen, I choose to put wood stove pellets because I want the difference in the texture between grass, mulch, and where I want them to go. Although, side-note, I teach my dogs once the potty training is going well, I make the multi-surface pottiers. They go on pavement, they go on grass, they go on stone, they go everywhere because I don't want them to say, “Wait, where's my wood pellets?” What do wood pellets do for you? They're stove pellets. They’re made out of wood. You could use anything you want. If I went somewhere with a potty that was different than my yard, like a friend's house, I could take a baggie of those, maybe even a baggie of used ones and then dump them in a place in her yard. So anyway, in addition to the wood stove pellets, I put a bowl in the back of the crate, so in the pen. So you would have to walk all the way into it and continue going to that to the side of it and that bowl is upside down ,and on that bowl I put a piece of chicken, you can use anything you want that the dog never gets. Hence the name chicken rock and when I was doing it with values to rock. So it looks like this. I know that puppy has to potty. I get up in the morning, I go into the refrigerator, get a piece of chicken, put it on that rock. Yes, I have to make two trips, go back in the house, get the puppy out of the crate, clip on a leash, walk outside all the way to the potty area. I put the puppy down in the potty area. They go to the back, they eat the chicken and they say, “While I'm here, might as well go.” Sarah: Big key to that is you carry that is, in the beginning you carry the puppy out to the rock so that they're not able to go on the way out. That's a big part of it. Kathy: Huge. Huge. Because they’re puppies, their bladder is the size of a moment, so they're going to go at some point on the way to that. Then as they get older and the months go by, and I hopefully can still carry them for a little bit, I put them down farther and farther away, and I'm adding from day one, “Hurry up,” and down they get the chicken and then I say, “Hurry up, hurry up,” and then what happens next depends on the puppy. A lot of owners make the mistake of bringing the dog right back in the house. Now it's important to note that when I'm holding that, when I'm in that X pen, I'm holding the leash. My puppy is not loose, because the first nine months that I have a puppy, they are potty-ing on a leash. People that are lazy, and let the dog out, and then when they have to take the puppy somewhere and they can't let them loose and they're on the lease, the puppy looks at them like, “Can you give me some privacy and space?” Because you taught them to go 50 feet away from you. Now, people who live in the city don't have that issue, but it's a suburban. Once my puppy has gone, I can either take them in the house or I can put on a long leash and then we can play in the yard because I'm so boring in that X pen. I don't give them any fun. And a lot of times people make the mistake of taking the dogs on a walk and then when the dog goes, take them inside. And what the dog knows is that, “If I poop or pee, I'm going back in the house and I love being outside so I'm going to hold it.” But some puppies are outside they’re like, “I gotta go in the house,” and then those are the puppies that you do take in right away. But the puppies are more outward bound, adventurous, energetic, pop on a light line and let them run in the yard for awhile. Give them that as a reward. Sarah: Yup. Kathy: Speaking of the reward, I do reward at night for emptying themselves, Like, they get chicken from being there, but I will start adding the food reward. Not every time, but when they are squatting and pooping, I will give them food in that moment. I don't give it to them when they run out of the pen because they’re, like, “Oh I should run out of the pen to get them food.” And we have great housebreaking sheets. I think we have a couple. We have one with the challenging housebreaking. Sarah: Yeah, we have those. So those are all in the lesson sheet library for you guys. If you need them, just drop a comment when we post this. We can direct you right to them. Kathy: Let's talk about the puppy who suddenly is peeing all the time. I'm thinking about the girl puppies. Sarah: Yeah. Kathy: Normally it's a UTI and they just show up. They don't catch them. They just get them. No. And so then what your vet wants is a urine sample. So let's talk about how to get a urine sample. YAY! You get a short, not high sided, Rubbermaid... I want to say Rubbermaid, it's like saying Jello. You don't say “gelatin,” you say Jello, right? A container, a plastic container. Boiling water goes in, up and out or dry all day. Then I go outside and I hide it. Not going to be flashing it in front of my dog's face and think it's food or get interested in it. So it's behind my back. As soon as the dog squads, I sled that sucker in, get a sample and then take it out. Go in the house, pour it in my sterilized pill bottle or vitamin jar as my sample. Masking tape. Pre-do this right? Put masking tape around the bottle with your last name on it and the dog's first name, then you don’t have to do it when you are full. Now my daughter, who's pre-vet, and has worked at a vet for years, confirms what I always knew when they want a urine sample, they don't want a cup of urine. Okay? When they ask for a stool sample, they don't want a bag, a poop. They just need a little, little bit. So don't go crazy with that. And then you either refrigerate it until you get it to the vet that day or you take it right over to the vet. And I would call ahead and say, “Hey, I'm bringing a urine sample. Can you test it?” Some vets will test it and then give you Clavamox, or whatever they're going to give you for that, or some bets that, you know, “Bring the dog in. I need to see.“ So it just depends on the relationship and the type of vet that you have. But that's how you get a urine sample with very little dramatics. I mean, and people are like, “Should I use gloves?” Yeah. You know what? Knock yourself out, wear gloves. I don't, but you can. Yeah. Sarah: Yeah. Then the indications for that, so usually it is the female dog, like you said. If they're peeing, like, excessively. You know, like, way more than what's normal, then that would be when you could take them to the vet to get that checked out. Kathy: Although sometimes there are other factors. Aww! Hey, Jack and Nev! Sarah: That was Jake. Kathy: There are other factor-that was Jakey? Sarah: Yeah. He was just saying, “Hello.” Kathy: Hey, Jakey! One of Sarah's dogs. So I had a student and it was, like, July and she's like, “My puppy is not a puppy, she's 10 months old. She was housebroken and now she's peeing throughout the house”. And of course the first thing you think is a UTI. Sarah: Right. Kathy: And like, all right, it sounds like UTI. However, let me ask you, are there any new sources of water that she's getting into? Is she drinking out of the toilet? Like is there a water cooler that's liking? She's like, “No, no, there's nothing. There's nothing”. I'm like, “Are you sure?” She's like, “Yeah, no.” She said, “I, you know, we opened our pool last week.” I was like, “ Wonderful! Hello! Big dog water bowl right out in your yard.” And she's like, “Oh, you're right.” The dog is drinking from the pool when she’s swimming!” I'm like, “Yeah, I know I’m right” Sarah: Jesus. Kathy: Yup. And some people have decorative fountains. Like that's what I mean by other sources of water outside the box. Sarah: Yeah. I always ask too, like, you know, “Is the husband or the kids sneaking the dog water when you're not looking?” Something like that. Or, “Are they giving the dog water when you don't know about it? So you don't know that they need to go again?” Looking for those saboteurs. Kathy: I had a student, Oh my gosh, she had this refrigerator brand new and it was gigantic ones and it was leaking and so she called the repair people and they came out and they said it was leaking. And, like, three or four times! And she finally called the company, got the head of the company’s phone number wrote this nasty email, like, RIP customer service. She wanted the company to take it back. She was going ham on them and she was so mad, and this is actually why she wound up calling me. She said one morning she went downstairs, it was off, her schedule was early, and she's in a robe and she hears (whirring noise) Sarah: Oh, God. Kathy: And she’s like, “Now I'm going to see what's wrong with this thing?” Oh no. It was her lab, who learn to jump up and push the button, and drink from the stinking refrigerator. Sarah: Oh, my God Kathy: She said, “Should I call and apologize to the people I ripped?” I’m like, “You just do what you need to do.” Sarah: Send a holiday gift basket. Kathy: God, yeah. And that's what we had to work on and you know, we did unplugged the water. Unrewarded behavior extinguishes itself. Sarah: Yep. Kathy: We plugged it back in, and start on the ice cubes. Sarah: The refrigerator's going batty. Kathy: Yeah, that's great. When again, dogs are invested they discover themselves and people get all twisted that the dog isn't learning Down or Place. I'm like, “If you did it the right way, they'd learn it really fast because they are problem solvers and they are brilliant.” Sarah: Yep. All right. Kathy: Let's see. We covered crate. Oh, I know puppies who pee in their crate! Sometimes, you know this, clients want to leave a blanket or a towel in there and the puppy just bunches it up and pees on it and pushes it back. So I like them, if you have that issue, I like them to have a naked crate. That way. If they pee in it, there's a consequence in a lot of times I had to do that and they also will pee on stuff. Toys, don’t do that. Sarah: Yeah, anything that can absorb the urine, they'll use it. Kathy: I had a student whose dog, see, this is like story time with Kathy and Sarah, but we never, we never say names. So we like the idea that you cover a crate because we feel like it takes the visual interest away from the dog or the puppy, and they settle down better. And I had a student who has, she's struggling with housebreaking. As soon as we took the towels out, the dog was perfect. Until one night, it pulled the blanket through the crate bars that was covering the crate and then peed on them. So like, yup. Sarah: Yeah. We always try to get the caveat like make sure that the sheet or the blanket is thick enough that they can't pull it into the crate. Kathy: And my doberman, when they used to pull it in, it didn't matter. It could be like a mattress and they’d pull that sucker in. The thing was, I put boxes on top of his crate, and then I put the sheet on it and I pulled it out like a tent, and I secured it. Ask Eric, he remembers this. I had books and an end table, and he's like, “Catherine, what is happening?” I'm like, “NO!” Sarah: He can't pull the sheet in! Kathy: Oh man, poor Eric. That should be our hashtag, “poor Eric”. Yup. Sarah: Well it worked didn’t it? He wasn't able to pull the sheet in. Kathy: Damn right it worked. It was great. I felt victorious. I may have even snuck out at two in the morning to see if it worked. I'm not going to lose another blanket. So let's see. Got diet, got the time of the night out, we have the schedule, you have the signals, crate size, potty area outside has to be on leash, when you go somewhere new, you can take, if they’re using that method of having a different surface, you can take it with you, and at some point, you want to teach the dog to be variable. Become a variable surface peer. Sarah: Yeah, it's not linear, right? It's going to be a roller coaster when potty training your puppy. He has an accident, deal with it. Like you said, go in the bathroom, ask yourself what you did wrong and then go back out there and just next day start over Kathy: And realistically say, “At six months it'll be perfect if I do everything right. And so I'm not going to delude myself into thinking of typical puppy with an acorn bladder is able to hold that at all.” Sarah: Yeah, exactly. Kathy: Oh! Can we talk about one thing. When you say, “I told my wife when I was going out to watch the puppy,” “I told my husband to watch the puppy,” “I told my kids to watch the puppy,” nobody's going to watch the puppy like you are going to watch the puppy. So if you can't trust the people that you need, you’re better off crating the dog so you don't set yourself back. Cause that's the worst part. And holidays, cause we're recording this the day before Thanksgiving, holidays are the worst because you get distracted and you get busy and you have company over and somebody's like, “Oh my God, there's poo in the living room!” Sarah: Or someone steps on it on your carpet. Kathy: And they don’t know it and then they track it. Sarah: Or barefoot! In the middle of the night, you get up on Christmas morning and you step in dog poop on your barefoot. That's happened to me way too many times. Kathy: Yes. Yes. So that's why you should have people over for the holidays. No, just kidding. Sarah: Puppy goes in the crate. Kathy: We have really good examples of managing and monitoring your dog on the holidays and that would be in the Thanksgiving podcast as well. Sarah: Yeah. Alright, so we think that we've covered pretty much everything. Any other questions let us know and we'll be happy to answer them. Kathy: Yeah, we'll put our answers to your questions in the comments. Is there a comments? There should be. If not, we’ll just record another one Sarah: Yeah. I'll post the link of this in all the groups and then they can comment underneath any questions they have. Kathy: All right, awesome. Great. Thanks for hanging out with me. Sarah: Absolutely. Kathy: Always fun. All right, I'll talk to you later. Bye, guys! Sarah: Happy potty training everyone. Kathy: As always, if you like what you hear, jump over to whatever subscription service you downloaded from and like, rate, subscribe, tell a friend, and share this episode somewhere to help spread the word so we can continue to create an awesome community of dog lovers and learners. Happy training everyone!
We enjoyed answering questions from our Frugal Friends Community Group on Facebook. Here are some of the questions we answered:Jennifer: What's your 'why' behind being frugalDevin: Why y'all so cute?Melissa: Do you breakup with a hairstylist, photographer, etc., for the sake of frugality? Yolanda: What is something you consciously pay “more” for, and why?Virginia: How do you find the balance that works for you between paying off debt and enjoying life at the same time?Sarah: How do you deal with the “mental” part of being frugal/getting out of debt when things get tough or seem impossible?Kathryn: How to not get too obsessed with finances?Lauren: Do you have your favorite #dfcommunity people who you recommend others to follow and use as inspiration/advice?Jocelyn: Most embarrassing un-frugal things or services you are willing to pay for that you are slightly afraid to admit publicly on a frugal podcast!?Sarah: What are your best tips for avoiding feelings of deprivation while getting out of debt?Amarilys: What was your favorite least expensive place to travel? Or type of travel (i.e. Cruise vs road trip)?THANKS everyone for your amazing questions! You all made us think a little harder about this frugal life we have chosen!See you next week!
Today I’m answering YOUR listener-submitted questions! You’ll often hear that owning your own business can be a very lonely endeavor, even when you have downline, uplines, and sidelines like in network marketing. However, what you need to know is that the problems you have are the same problems so many others are experiencing as well! Which is why I’m excited to release our very first podcast answering YOUR submitted questions! Last week, Sarah, Tiara, Jessica, and Sarah submitted questions to me about issues they are personally facing in their network marketing businesses, and in this episode I go through them one-by-one. 06:29 Question #1 (Sarah) – How do I keep myself ‘unstuck?’ If you have been inconsistent for a really long time in your business, where do you even begin to build consistency, be an example to your team, and get the momentum going? 17:04 Question #2 (Tiara) – I’m a runner. But, how do you change the speed and momentum of your team? How do you adjust your expectations of other people who aren’t like you? 28:12 Question #3 (Jessica) – I want to cast vision and think BIG, but when I think about who I need to be in order to make that happen, it’s threatening my current identity BIG TIME. How do I change my identity and shift into that person that I need to be? 39:42 Question #4 (Sarah) - How are you supposed to see yourself running a million-dollar company when you are so far in debt? How can you truly believe that one day you’ll be able to retire your husband and spend every day together as a family when I barely ever get to see them now as it is? To submit your own question to Bob, please visit www.yourvirtualupline.com/QA. To learn more about my leadership development academy, visit www.legacyleadershipacademy.com. Enrollment is opening in October.
Hubs and I try to be as authentic as we can about our marriage and what the inside/ inner workings look like! In today's episode, we sit down to answer several questions that I received from my member community. We know that some of our answers are atypical but we enjoy sitting down to answer your questions so you can get to know us better. HERE WE GO! India: Did friends have a problem with your husband? Did they try to make you think that something was wrong with your relationship? Did you lose friends due to it, or because you moved away? Did they stop communicating with you? Asjah: Advice for young Christian couples. Sarah: How did who you were before marriage transform after getting married? How are you able to grow together and support each other while running a business? Tiffani: Has being an entrepreneur affected your marriage? How or how not? Shemeeka: How do you guys make each other better? I know putting God first helps all things, so I know He in there :-) Sybol: How you sustain happiness in your marriage? Jessica: Managing expectations in your marriage. Rebekkah: How to make sure communication stays strong in a relationship? Watch the full conversation on Youtube! If you are committed to the mission of being holistically fit, be sure to rate and review this podcast. Hangout with me on the interwebs @JenaEmilyUtley so we can continue the conversation! Newsletter Instagram YouTube Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest If you would like to give/ sow a seed into what I am doing you can give on paypal at info@jenaemilyutley.com or on Cashapp at $JEUtley.
In the last episode of Build, Sarah Doody, who is a UX designer and entrepreneur, and I debunked many myths and misconceptions around UX (user experience) design, as well as the benefits to having a UX designer on your product team. In today’s episode, we’re going to switch gears and talk about what UX designers can do to stand out, and then share how companies can go about sourcing, vetting, and hiring a UX designer. Finally, we'll talk about how they can work with software engineers and product managers. I always learn a ton from Sarah, and I found this episode to be really insightful because aside from being a UX design herself, Sarah has reviewed the portfolios of 700+ UX designers! So whether you are a UX designer yourself, or looking to work with one, I’d consider this a must watch Build episode. Here’s what you’ll learn from Sarah: How to find and reach out to UX designers 3 Things UX Designers can do to stand out What UX designers can do if a past project hasn’t yet launched or there was no clear result How software engineers and product managers can work effectively with a UX designer How UX designers can avoid being overwhelmed by projects that aren’t related to the product Here are links to the resources Sarah mentioned in the show and some additional resources to check out: Design Value Index https://www.dmi.org/page/DesignValue/The-Value-of-Design-.htm Slack / Facebook Groups Related To UX Designer Hangout: https://www.designerhangout.co/ With Candles (for junior designers): withcandles.slack.com User Defenders: https://community.userdefenders.com/ UX Careers Tribe: http://www.facebook.com/groups/uxportfoliotribe (this is my group) Design X: https://designx.community/slack/ Mixed Methods: https://www.mixed-methods.org/community1/ UX Career Resources From Sarah UX Portfolio Formula (use code BUILDSHOW for 50% off): http://bit.ly/2t05Ztu Free UX Portfolio Blueprint: http://bit.ly/2t04yvp UX Careers & Job Interview Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2_D298hAH0&list=PL73Nci5CBE-7OFGFhYawlJh9bYZd-a-b1 -- Build is produced by Femgineer (http://femgineer.com/). -- Femgineer's Confident Communicator Course 2019 is coming up! To learn more visit: https://femgineer.com/confident-communicator-course/
Dr Sarah Ballantyne is a medical biophysicist, mum and bestselling author of Paleo Principles and The Paleo Approach, just to name a few. To find out more about Dr Sarah Ballantyne go to ThePaleoMom.com.Listen in as I ask Dr Sarah:* How she learned about the Paleo approach* The best way to transition to Paleo* What is auto-immune disease, and the Paleo Auto-Immune Protocol* Her ingredients for a happy recipe for life!You'll also discover:* How she turned her life around from having obesity and Type 2 Diabetes* Understanding food beyond calories - understanding nutrition* A small time commitment to cook whole foods will make you feel better* How to plan ahead to make sure your kids enjoy food at birthday parties!* How the Paleo template out-performs many other ways of eating to reverse poor health* The promising clinical trials of the Paleo Auto-Immune Protocol which are currently underway* Just because ill health and fatigue are common, doesn't mean it's normal. We're entitled to health and longevity!A couple of things Sarah said resonated with me:“Mommy, I like food now because I never have tummy aches anymore!”“My life as a whole is under control, it feels like I'm an active participant in it.”I'd love to know your thoughts and experiences - join the conversation on my Facebook page. For more episodes of HEAL, find us on iTunes at https://apple.co/2NpsIba, Spotify at https://spoti.fi/2NpSiN0, Acast at https://play./s/pete-evans, click the link on https://peteevans.com, or just look up "HEAL" in your favourite podcast app. I'd love to spread the knowledge in these podcasts far and wide. If you liked this episode, I'd love it if you could share it with your friends, and perhaps even leave a review on iTunes. This podcast is proudly presented by The Institute For Integrative Nutrition, or IIN for short.I've completed this amazing health training course through IIN, and I would thoroughly recommend it for anyone wanting to start a career in the health coaching and wellness space.This course is conducted over a year long period and it's constructed in a way that if you're a full time worker or a busy parent or wherever you are in your life will still be able to complete all the required curriculum and modules. Please see the link included in this post on my Facebook or Instagram page or on iTunes, to access the free sample class and first module of the program, to get a great taste of the format and structure as well as utilise my special discount that I can offer you if you decide to sign up.Make sure you tell the admission team that you're part of the Pete Evans tuition savings to claim your very substantial discount visit https://www.integrativenutrition.comTheme music by Mandharu - https://goo.gl/DAztoQ. Audio production by Andy Maher - https://andymaher.com. See /privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Dr Sarah Ballantyne is a medical biophysicist, mum and bestselling author of Paleo Principles and The Paleo Approach, just to name a few. To find out more about Dr Sarah Ballantyne go to ThePaleoMom.com.Listen in as I ask Dr Sarah:* How she learned about the Paleo approach* The best way to transition to Paleo* What is auto-immune disease, and the Paleo Auto-Immune Protocol* Her ingredients for a happy recipe for life!You’ll also discover:* How she turned her life around from having obesity and Type 2 Diabetes* Understanding food beyond calories - understanding nutrition* A small time commitment to cook whole foods will make you feel better* How to plan ahead to make sure your kids enjoy food at birthday parties!* How the Paleo template out-performs many other ways of eating to reverse poor health* The promising clinical trials of the Paleo Auto-Immune Protocol which are currently underway* Just because ill health and fatigue are common, doesn’t mean it’s normal. We’re entitled to health and longevity!A couple of things Sarah said resonated with me:“Mommy, I like food now because I never have tummy aches anymore!”“My life as a whole is under control, it feels like I’m an active participant in it.”I’d love to know your thoughts and experiences - join the conversation on my Facebook page. For more episodes of HEAL, find us on iTunes at https://apple.co/2NpsIba, Spotify at https://spoti.fi/2NpSiN0, Acast at https://play.acast.com/s/pete-evans, click the link on https://peteevans.com, or just look up "HEAL" in your favourite podcast app. I'd love to spread the knowledge in these podcasts far and wide. If you liked this episode, I'd love it if you could share it with your friends, and perhaps even leave a review on iTunes. This podcast is proudly presented by The Institute For Integrative Nutrition, or IIN for short.I've completed this amazing health training course through IIN, and I would thoroughly recommend it for anyone wanting to start a career in the health coaching and wellness space.This course is conducted over a year long period and it's constructed in a way that if you're a full time worker or a busy parent or wherever you are in your life will still be able to complete all the required curriculum and modules. Please see the link included in this post on my Facebook or Instagram page or on iTunes, to access the free sample class and first module of the program, to get a great taste of the format and structure as well as utilise my special discount that I can offer you if you decide to sign up.Make sure you tell the admission team that you're part of the Pete Evans tuition savings to claim your very substantial discount visit https://www.integrativenutrition.comTheme music by Mandharu - https://goo.gl/DAztoQ. Audio production by Andy Maher - https://andymaher.com. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, Sarah Mei, founder of RailsBridge, Director of Ruby Central, and Chief Consultant of DevMynd Software, talks about the way we write software: What's right? What's wrong? How can we do better? The conversation examines changing code and reassessing needs. i.e.: "Does it bring me joy? Should I get rid of this thing? Do I understand this code?" She also talks about what these needs mean for others on a team. Sarah Mei: @sarahmei Links: Sarah Mei: How We Make Software: A New Theory of Teams @ Brighton Ruby 2016 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo Transcript: CHARLES: Welcome to the Frontside Podcast. I am Charles Lowell and with me is Robert DeLuca. We have a very special guest this week. One that I'm really excited about because the things she says and the ideas that she has - open eyes and minds all over the place, in all different types of areas that are so pertinent to the way we do our jobs. So, we'll get to it. Our guest today is Sarah Mei. SARAH: Hi. Thanks for having me. CHARLES: Like I said, we are super excited to have you here. Before we get started talking about some of the things that you've been thinking about recently, why don't you just give like a very brief introduction of how you got started with development, where you've been, and how has that brought you to where you're going right now? SARAH: You know, I actually was not one of these people that got started with it real early. I came to programming in college. I was an Engineering major. I wanted to build bridges. I wanted to be a Structural Engineer. I want to build things. I had a weird schedule the first couple of quarters of college, so I ended up taking an elective earlier than most people take it. It was a programming class in Fortran that was required for the structural engineering program. I took my class and I was like, "This is really cool." CHARLES: Wait, Fortran is what set the hook? SARAH: Yeah, and the professor of the class was like, "Well, if you think Fortran is cool. I've got some other stuff that you might like." I mean, the language and whatever doesn't really matter. What I liked about it was the fact that I could build something. I can get that same feeling of building something that you get if you build a bridge but you can do more than like one or two in your career, like you do if you're a structural engineer. I like the constant feeling of building. That's what I liked about it. So I ended up switching my major and graduating with the CS degree and coming out and doing a bunch of different things, mostly like starting in a large company and sort of doing smaller and smaller companies over time. CHARLES: Yeah, there's a lot of people in the industry who are career switchers, where they started out in something else and moved into Computer Science but I actually feel that a lot of people, like myself included, I have the degree in CS too, but that was not what I set out to do at all. It totally derailed, like the course of my life in a good way. But in that way, it's like a career switch within a career switch. ROBERT: I'm a little odd in that aspect. I came out of high school like ready to go in software. It worries me a little bit for the later half of my life. I'm like, "Oh, am I going to do software for the entire time?" CHARLES: Probably not. SARAH: That might be a good thing. You'll never know. ROBERT: Yeah. CHARLES: Yeah, seriously, what lies ahead? ROBERT: Who knows? SARAH: I feel like in a lot of places that are like, for example, in public policy and in other places where we need more people that understand tech so if we can send you out into other parts of the world knowing a whole lot about programming, that can only be good. CHARLES: Yeah. ROBERT: Yeah, this is actually kind of funny. I was telling CHARLES about this the other days, like I'm starting to view programming more as a tool to do the things that I really want to do and less as like the thing that I'm going to be doing forever. I wanted to augment and make things that I have a passion about easier. SARAH: Yeah, absolutely. CHARLES: Yeah, it's like software is eating the world so what you're doing now is just learning how to chew. ROBERT: That's a great way to put it. SARAH: You should tweet that. [Laughter] CHARLES: All right. Please continue. I'll ignore the typing sounds. SARAH: [Laughs] Switching careers is a really interesting thing because you end up with a bunch of experience that you wouldn't have had otherwise. I'm really excited actually about the next five years as we have all these folks that switched into programming from something else who are all becoming mid to senior level because they're bringing just such amazing experience from other parts of the world. CHARLES: Yeah, I know, right? It's like, "Where've you guys been my whole career?" SARAH: Right. CHARLES: It's like you understand these things, just almost like it's second nature of these things that are opaque and completely inaccessible to me. So anyhow... SARAH: That's how I got here. CHARLES: So then, after you kind of switched in college, you went out and did you just start working in programming immediately thereafter? SARAH: Yeah, I worked in a bunch of different product companies. I built products for a while. My first job actually out of college was at Microsoft up in Redmond and then I have worked at smaller and smaller and smaller companies. Then I spent about 10 years doing product stuff and then about 10 years ago, I switched into doing consulting mostly because I realized that I have a fairly short attention span for projects. And that working on a product, there wasn't anything wrong with me exactly but what would happen is when I was working with a product, I would get six months to a year into it and I'm starting to get antsy. I started to get bored and decided that I should just embrace that. And I switch to something where I am going to be on a new project every three to six months. I've been a lot happier since then. ROBERT: That's interesting. I wonder if that comes with seniority in software development and knowing your way around because consulting for me is I've gotten the experience of, "Oh, wow, I'm just finally getting a hang of this person's product or this client's product or app or whatever we're building," and it's, "All right. It's time to rotate off." It's like you just get in there and understanding everything. SARAH: There is that aspect of it for sure but even when I was much less experienced, even with my first couple of jobs, I noticed this tendency in myself to just get bored after six months on the same code base. For a long time, I thought it was because I'm not cut out for software or maybe I'm not very good at it or something. Eventually, I just realized now actually, it's just that I just need to switch projects. I'm just one of those people. That's how my brain works. I get a lot out of switching projects because the one that I switch on to, I see an entirely different way of doing things like code bases are so different. Even if you look at a hundred different Rails apps or a hundred different Ember apps, they're all so different. So switching on to somebody else's app, I learned a ton just out of that switching process. CHARLES: It sounds like the actual kind of studying the meta-level of the software is what really engages you and kind of understanding how the software came to be the way it is and not some other way. One of the factors that gave rise to that and kind of 'that's the problem' that really sunk its teeth in you, as opposed to individual business problem. Is that fair to say? SARAH: It has certainly been interesting to see different business problems and to understand different parts of industries and so on. That's definitely part of it for me but what really gets me interested is the different ways that people organize their code and by how they make the decisions that they make. ROBERT: Yeah, you get to see different problems that they've maybe put themselves into because of the way they structured something, which you wouldn't see if you wrote yourself but somebody else did and get to see, "Oh, I understand this pattern now." That's kind of been my experience out of it. I don't want to speak for you, but yeah, that's kind of how I've seen other client projects like, "Oh, this is really cool. I didn't think of a way to do this," and you get to experience many different things in many different ways. SARAH: You get to see a lot of the tradeoffs. Like a lot of times in a single code base, what would happen is I'd make a decision or we'd make a design decision of some kind. Then I'd see how it turned out. But there's no way for me to see how it would have turned out if I did it the other way. The nice thing about switching projects for me is just being able to see all of those tradeoffs, like the tradeoffs that you make tend to be pretty similar. You can see very similar situations where people do different things and how does it turn out for them. ROBERT: Right, and like one of my favorite things is where you go into a project that is totally against something, like for me it was object-oriented CSS and then you go in and you actually see it in practice, and you're like, "Oh, wow. This is turning a whole new light on it. I like this in this case." SARAH: Microservices are like that for me, where it's generally I am anti the microservice bandwagon. But then I went on one project where I was like, "Wow, they actually figured it out. This works really well. I can see why people like it," because I've seen so many work that was horribly executed. When you go on to the one where it's good and you're like, "Oh, this is why people do that. Okay." ROBERT: Yeah, it's like that light-bulb click, "Oh, yep. There's another side of this." CHARLES: Once you actually see it done right, it helps you avoid every other situation where it was done wrong and you can say, "Oh, this this was the one differentiator that made it all go right." I mean, sometimes it doesn't always boil down to that. But there's these one, two, three things that we could have done. But they were just completely and totally hidden from you because you didn't have that context. I would love to talk to you about microservices because I've certainly never seen it done right. I've heard it talked about and I've seen this beautiful world, picture-painted that looks so fantastic on the whiteboard. But I see -- SARAH: Oh, it's so beautiful, isn't it? It's like an object-oriented design diagram. I'm like, "Look at all the boxes and lines. They all line up." CHARLES: "They're beautiful." SARAH: "I can do this in Visio," and they're all like, the line, they are on the same shape. It was great. CHARLES: "And when I move this one over there, it just tells me that these two are exactly the same distance apart from that other one." Ah, so satisfying. SARAH: Yeah, and then you try and do it, is the problem. ROBERT: Then you build it and you cross your errors and everything. CHARLES: Which actually I think that brings us, recently -- we're talking on Twitter. I think that's actually very recently about kind of the difference between when we talk about software and the meta conversations we have around it. When we do talk about these abstract and perfect worlds of boxes and lines versus the actual code bases, which is the things that you've kind of been observing many, many, many since you've started consulting, and kind of the vibe between those and you know what that means. I think a lot of people aren't even aware like I certainly, before kind of reading that, wasn't really aware that that is a very, very distinct difference, like these are two very different modes for software. One that exists and one that is kind of perfect world. ROBERT: Kind of academia versus the real world, I guess. SARAH: In some ways, yeah. I remember when I was in college, we had a software design class as part of our degree program. We studied how you define objects and you write a little bit of [inaudible], like we did all this stuff. When I got out and I got into the real world and I had a job, I found it very difficult to actually apply that stuff successfully, to be able to draw a diagram and then turn it into code and have it work out the way that the diagram said it was supposed to work out. I initially thought that was because I was just not experienced enough to figure it out. But eventually, what I realized is that it doesn't work because it doesn't work. It really doesn't work to design things ahead of time and then just do them. I think there might be a certain type of person that can do that. I am not that type of person and most people aren't. I think that it takes a very unusual type of brain to be able to just draw a diagram that has already taken into account all of the things you're going to encounter once you start making it. CHARLES: Yeah, I would even go so far as to say there's probably a brain that solved that problem many, many times, that just could skip a bunch of steps. SARAH: Right, and they're not aware they're skipping them necessarily. Unless you have an entire team full of that type of brain, it's probably not a good idea in general, for the software that you're building as a group. I feel like I've been trying to talk about that concept between the difference of how we talked about software in books, in blogs, and in conference talks and then how we build the software we actually build. I feel like I've been trying to articulate that for 20 years, like since I have my [inaudible] and I was like, "This doesn't work. Why can't I make a diagram and then make it into code?" Like two days ago, I feel like I finally found a way to articulate it that captures everything that I've been trying to communicate and it was a really strange feeling. I'm like, "Wow, I finally kind of got it." One of the reasons that I came up with that, I think, is because I haven't really been thinking about it for a couple of months. I've been off and not really thinking about software stuff for a while. Oddly enough, I've been thinking about organizing my house for the last three months. All of my free time outside of my job has been thinking about like, "I've been learning how to cook, so how can I organize my kitchen so that the things I actually use every day, I don't have to dig through a drawer every single time to find them?" There's actually some interesting problems there like, "How do I make sure that all of the stuff that I need is at hand that I use all the time? All stuff that I need occasionally is still around and accessible, and then things that I don't use, I should probably just get rid of." I have this problem that I think probably a lot of people have which is that I have trouble getting rid of stuff once I have it. I live in a small apartment in San Francisco and that's not a good thing to be able to unable to get rid of things because in an apartment this size, I can let it go for a week or two maybe, but like I got to be very vigilant about it because otherwise, it just overwhelms the space. CHARLES: Yeah, there's a bunch of research that the people estimate vastly different the cost of acquisition versus the cost of loss, and they've [inaudible] way too much, like irrationally unbalanced like not wanting to lose something that they already have. SARAH: Even if I bought it for a need that I don't have any more or the need has changed or shifted. I don't buy things I don't need. There are some people that have that problem, that they buy a bunch of stuff that they don't have any particular plans for it. I don't have that problem, thankfully. I've had people in my family that have that problem which I think is why I have avoided that. But the problem I have is that once something is here, I find it very difficult to get rid of it. I look at it and I'm like, "I can think of all these reasons why I shouldn't get rid of it." Oh, that was expensive so the sunk cost fallacy of like, "Oh, I paid a lot of money for that even if it's not useful and I don't like it, I shouldn't get rid of it." Or, there'll be like a dress in my closet that I haven't worn for two years and I'm like, "Ah, maybe I should get rid of it," and I take it out and I'm like, "Oh, my God. But it looks really good on me. I like it. I should wear this. I should really wear this." So I'm going to keep it even though I haven't worn in for two years for some reason, but I should keep it anyway because it looks good. I have all these stories. I tell myself about why I can't get rid of things. A couple of weeks ago, I read a part of a book, to be totally honest with you, called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. It's written by this woman from Japan who's a professional organizer. Her name is Marie Kondo and her method is called KonMari. Basically, what it does is when you're trying to figure out whether you should get rid of something, you don't ask yourself, "Should I keep it?" What you ask yourself is, "Does this thing bring me joy? And if it brings me joy, then I keep it. If it doesn't, then I'm going to get rid of it." So that made it really easy, going back to the dress example. I'm like, "Does this dress give me joy?" And I thought about it, I was like, "No, the reason I don't wear it is because I went out to dinner and I had a bad experience at dinner so every time I look at that dress, it reminds me of that experience." And so it looks good and everything but I'm not going to wear it because it doesn't make me happy. So that was just like, "Okay, fine. I'm just going to give it away." And changing that question that I ask away from 'should I keep it' towards 'how does that make me feel' was a huge change for me because it's like, that's really easy to answer, where 'should I keep it' is a much harder question. There's these bunch of sort of ifs and maybes or what-ifs and what happens. I feel like that applying this KonMari question to stuff has changed the way that I calculate what stays and what goes in a very positive way. CHARLES: Yeah, boy, I need to get this book for several family members who will go [inaudible]. SARAH: Well, you know, I've got two kids and so there's a constant flow of stuff coming into the house. Because of the amount of space I have, there has to be a constant stuff going out. So this is something I just need to be very vigilant about and this has made it so that it takes up a lot less of my time and a lot less of my brain space, which is really awesome. It feels like it's moving my house in the right direction. I've been thinking about that sort of in various ways, on and off, for a couple of months and I haven't been thinking about software. I have this fear that like, maybe that means I'm never going to think about software again. I go through these phases where I've got like, "Oh, I'm going to come up with a bunch of new ideas," where I'm coming up with new ideas for some whatever reason. Maybe I'm making new conference talks, I'm doing stuff, and I'm thinking about software a lot. Then I go through these phases where I don't do that, like I sort of retrench and maybe... I don't know. I think about other stuff for a while. So it's been home organization for several months now. I was like this, "I'm never going to think about software again," because it's just that -- [Laughter] CHARLES: Career change. ROBERT: Oh, man. This sounds so much like my life since I moved down to Austin. SARAH: You know, I live in San Francisco and I'm not 25, I'm 40. A lot of it is like maybe I'm just too old for software now. I should just give up and live out the rest of my career doing quiet, maintenance work -- [Laughter] SARAH: Somewhere. I don't know. Then suddenly, this thing happened on Monday, where I was just like, "Oh, code, an organization." And boom! There it was. I realized, I was like, "I basically just had to give my brain some time off," like my conscious brain needs some time off from software and it wasn't that it had disappeared because what I came up with on Monday was really just how home organization applies to code because I realized that the feelings that I get when I'm trying to figure out what I should do with code are very similar to the feelings that I get what I'm trying to figure out whether I should get rid of a thing. I look at this piece of code and I'm like, "Should I change this? Should I get rid of this? Should I refactor it?" You know, why I can't get rid of that? We just spent two weeks refactoring it so I can't change it again. [Laughter] SARAH: We just put in a story for refactoring this and we spent three days and I can't go back to the [inaudible] people and tell them, "I need to change it more." Or, "I really like this code because I wrote it with someone that I really liked." CHARLES: So I don't want to get rid of it. SARAH: I don't want to get rid of it because then I would lose the memory of working with, you know. CHARLES: I actually can say that I have experienced that. SARAH: Yeah, there's a lot of reasons why you don't want to change code. What I was thinking about, like maybe I was asking the wrong question, in the same way that 'should I keep this' is the wrong question when you're talking about stuff. Maybe 'should I change this' is the wrong question when you're talking about code. Maybe it's sort of leading you in the same way with stuff that leads you down this conversation of reasons that don't really have anything to do with the essential quality of why the code is there or why the thing is there. We need something that helps us reassess our needs. So if our needs have changed, maybe you don't need that thing anymore because your needs have changed. Same way with code. If your needs have changed, maybe you don't need that code anymore, at least not in the form that it's at now. I think that question for code that, "Does it bring me joy," because joy is not something that I think is concrete enough when we're talking about code. I think the question for code is do I understand this? Do I understand what it's doing? Not just understand it like a very surface level of like, "Can I figure out what this syntax means?" But understand it more like the grok level of like, I understand this at a very deep level. I understand why it's here. I understand what problem it's solving. I understand why this abstraction is necessary. I understand how it got here. CHARLES: Yeah, how it fits into the bigger picture. SARAH: How it fits into the bigger picture, exactly, like the application. CHARLES: How it fits in with like our conventions that are just purely stylistic. SARAH: How does it fit in with the other stuff that we've been doing? How does it fit in with the product needs and the features we're trying to build and the business goals and all of that stuff, all of these different levels of understanding of why this code is here and what it does? CHARLES: Do other team members' understanding factor into that? Like, "Do I understand the way that other people understand it," so to speak? SARAH: I think that it can. But I think the important thing is whether you personally understand it. CHARLES: Okay, like it's a very personal decision. SARAH: I think it is. Hopefully, what you do is you want different people looking at the same code. You don't want just one person on a piece of code that no one else ever sees, whether it's pairing or code review or whether it's something else. It need to be really clear to someone is coming in and looking at that code what it does, what it means, and why it's there? CHARLES: Right. I guess the reason I asked the question is because a lot of times when I look at a piece of code, I try and really step outside of myself and say, "What will someone else think who has never been on this project before?" Or, "Who is on this project and they see this code, will they understand it?" SARAH: Absolutely. It's definitely a part of it when you're on a team. CHARLES: Yeah, so I'm just trying to figure out how that question factors into this framework. SARAH: I think that it depends a lot on how you distribute tasks. For example, if you work in a shop where you're pair programming most of the time, so there's always two people looking at a piece of code, 'do I understand this' is a reasonable question just for the two of you to consider, both from the fact that you can pool your knowledge but also from the fact that 'are there pieces of this that you understand that I don't understand' and vice versa. On the other hand, if you work in a shop where it's more like, "Here's the piece of code that you work on like you own this section of code." Then I think it's more important for you to be able to step outside and be like, "Okay, do I understand this? Would other people on my team understand this?" That can be a very difficult thing to assess and that's where I think it's very helpful to do things like code reviews, call people in and be like, "Hey, can I run some stuff by you. I'm trying to figure out if this is good or not," because what you want is you want a code base that is comfortable and understandable for you and for your team. Just like the thing that makes the KonMari Method powerful for stuff is that it doesn't tell you what you're going to end up with. It doesn't tell you what level of clutter versus cleanliness is good for you. It doesn't tell you. You either end up like something in one of these simple living magazines or end up something like Quarters, the TV show. There's a bunch of places in the middle, they're all fine. Everyone's going to fall somewhere differently along that line. So I've managed now that I've thought about this a lot to set up my kitchen in a way that is very comfortable for me, like I know where things are, I can find them really easily, things that I use are at hand. But other people come in, they're just like, "I have no idea where everything is," like it's very personal. The organizational system you end up with [inaudible] that you have is a very personal thing and that's why, if you look at something like staged houses, so you're selling your house, you hire someone to put in rugs and furniture and stuff and make it look like somebody lives there so that people can walk in and sort of imagine themselves in this space, they don't put any of that clutter into the stage. They don't put any books on the coffee table except the big picture books. They don't leave the remote controls on the couch. There's no plunger by the toilet. There's no like -- CHARLES: There's no Legos on the floor. ROBERT: Everything that looks good. SARAH: Everything that makes it more personal, they leave out because it looks like somebody else's mess. You go into something like that and you're like, "This is not my mess. This is somebody else's mess. It can't possibly be my house and I'm not going to buy it. ROBERT: Oh, do we do this for software in conference talks and posts? SARAH: Absolutely, we do. That's sounds very similar when you get someone new onto a project, especially if they're more senior and they'll walk in and be like this, I can't live like this. [Laughter] SARAH: This is somebody else's mess and clearly we need to make some changes. But that's the reason why they leave it out of the staged houses is because you want people to be able to imagine their own level of clutter and disorganization that superimposed on the skeleton. But real life is not that. Real life is somewhere between that and hoarders. There's a very interesting parallel there with code, which is like when we look at code, if we look at the object-oriented design textbooks, you look at conference talks, you look at blog post, sample code, it's all very staged house. It's very uncomplicated. It has no clutter in it and that's because you're supposed to be able to look at that. CHARLES: I mean, that clutter can distract the sales process so to speak. SARAH: Exactly, like they have an idea they're trying to get across and the clutter would distract people from the idea. But the problem there is the same with the staged house which it's very difficult to tell what it will be like once you move in. It's very difficult to take some of these ideas that you see demonstrated in these staged environments and take them and apply them to your code base which is probably closer to a hoarded house than to a staged house especially if it's a code base that existed for a while over time, that has been worked on by lots of different people. This is the problem that I've noticed with a lot like there's some really amazing books about software design that have come out in the last couple of years. Of course, Sandi Metz's book is at the top of my list. But the thing that people have trouble with, like they love the book. They love the book. I love the book. But then they find it very difficult to apply those principles when they sit down in front of a code base that has already been worked on for six or seven years, in some cases by maybe 50 different people, who knows, over time. How do you take those principles and start applying them in a way that moves you in the right direction? That's where people are just like, "I can't do this. I can't do this and I'm not going to do this." And it's very similar to a problem where you've got a very dirty house and you don't know where to start in order to move it towards something from the Simple Living magazines or are more like a staged house, you don't know how to start to get it in that direction and so you just kind of give up. The powerful thing about KonMari is that it doesn't give you like, "Here's what you're going to end up with it," but it gives you a way to get started on something that gives you a very easy question to answer. It moves you in the right direction. It moves your house in the right direction without being overly prescriptive about what you'll end up with. CHARLES: Yeah, what that direction even is. SARAH: What you'll end up with is personal for you, anyway. I think the question about 'do I understand this code' is similarly helpful and that it moves you and your code base in the right direction without necessarily giving you a lot of prescription about how you do it or where it goes or even where it's going to end up. It just gives you a question to ask that it tells you whether or not this code needs to change and a question is, "Do I understand it?" If I don't, it should probably change, and if I do, okay, we can just kind of leave it for now. CHARLES: So now, if you're working on a team where you have two different people, maybe different skill levels, maybe just a different temperament or different set of preferences, what do you do when the answer to that question is two different things for two different people? SARAH: Well, sort of like when you move in with someone. This is the hard part about living with somebody else, is that you have to mutually agree upon a method of keeping your house that is agreeable to both of you. Sometimes, when they say that working through a startup is like being married to someone, there's some elements of that because you basically have to figure out like, "Okay, we're going to live in this code together. If we're going to live in this code together, we better both be happy with it. How can we both be happy with it?" It involves usually, some compromise, like I really hate doing the dishes but I don't mind cooking and vice versa. You have to figure out. It really bothers me when there's socks on the floor but I don't care if you leave dirty dishes in the sink or whatever it is. You just have to have these conversations about, "What is going to make the code livable for you?" You basically want to end up with a code base that's understandable where all parts of it are understandable to everyone on the team. Now that's like an ideal. You're not going to get there. But that's kind of what you're going for. If you have two people in the code and you have disagreements about what is the right way to go, sometimes it can help to just be like, "Hey, I don't really understand this," versus, "I don't think this is the right decision and here's why I don't understand this." Sometimes, reframing the question in that way can prompt them to communicate reasons that they have for doing this that they maybe weren't able to articulate before, for example. Just like when you move in with someone, you need to have sort of this commitment to finding a level of housekeeping that you're both happy with. When you're working on the team, you do have to have sort of a mutual commitment to having a code base that everyone can live in. CHARLES: Right. I like that because having like, "I just don't understand this and here's the reason why," that being a completely totally valid answer because sometimes in a code base, where someone's brand new or maybe they're at a more junior level, they don't quite have the tools to understand it or there's a lot of steps that haven't yet taken. It's like understanding is not going to be accessible to them immediately. SARAH: And maybe that means that's the wrong decision for that code base, is that right? CHARLES: Right. SARAH: Because if something is abstracting to the point that a lot of people on the team don't get it, then it's probably not the right abstraction for that code base. That abstraction might be totally appropriate in a code base in which you've got folks that are more experienced who understand why it's there, who have the scars from previous times when they didn't do it, et cetera, et cetera, and they understand why it's there. There is sort of like intellectual understanding of like, "Yes, object-oriented design is a good thing," and then there's, I would call it almost emotional understanding of like, "Oh, yeah, there's this time that we didn't do that and that worked out badly for us." I think that folks that don't have the sort of experiential understanding, sometimes they just need to have that. They need to get that. Sometimes, what that means is you want to let them see what happens to a certain extent. Let them see what happens when you don't do that. CHARLES: Right. This reminds me actually, I've got three kids and the way our house is now versus the way it was seven years ago is wildly different -- the way that we live. You know, with our first child, I'm ashamed to admit it, like our strategy was just to kind of put safety locks all over everything: every cabinet, on the oven, not on the refrigerator, but just kind of 'childproof' the house so that we wouldn't have to change the way that we lived but it made the house really uncomfortable for our children. And kind of having observed that over the course of having the second and the third, there's not anything that we childproof really. We put the dangerous chemicals way up high, where only we can get them. It's a little bit more inconvenient if we need to access the bleach but that level of discomfort is something that we live with. We've always got cups that are set out on a cabinet that sits below the counter so we've got water cups set out so that the children can get water and stuff anytime that we want, and we try, for things that they're going to need, make sure that it's accessible if you happen to be four feet shorter. That's just a condition of who you are. So it means that the actual configuration of our house, even though it's the same house, is just radically different and it is more optimized or it's optimized as a compromise for the fact that there are people living in this house now that haven't learned how to operate everything but they just need to learn that the oven is hot and you don't go there rather than slapping a lock on it. SARAH: Your house is probably more comfortable for you as a group, right? CHARLES: Yes. SARAH: And what that means is that as the 'senior' in the house, it's slightly less comfortable for you in some ways but it's worth it. It's worth being less comfortable for you in order to increase comfort across the board for everyone in the household. CHARLES: Right, because it means that if the child needs water, I don't have to stop what I'm doing to get a cup out of the cabinet and fill it for them. SARAH: And they feel [inaudible] over the stuff in their house. They feel like they live there, like the house is for them. CHARLES: Yes. ROBERT: That builds comfort and confidence. SARAH: Yeah, I think that's a very good analogy. Anytime you have a group of people living together, everyone makes compromises in order for the house to be set up in the way that's optimized for the group. CHARLES: Yeah. "So man, how are we going to apply this to software? What's the next step? What are the concrete steps?" I guess it's just asking those questions, like asking, "Did I understand it?" SARAH: It is asking those questions and it's also, if you are one of the more experienced folks on the team, it's your job to elicit the answers to that from other people that are less experienced. They're not going to tell you. A lot of times, sometimes, they may or may not feel comfortable saying that they don't understand something. So it's your job to really try and figure out like, "Do they get this at a level that is acceptable? Do they understand why this abstraction is here at an intellectual level or at an experiential level, at an emotional level? Do they get it?" Which is not something you can really just ask. In many cases, it's your job to -- CHARLES: To just observe it. SARAH: To observe and to see how it works. If people are having a hard time understanding where things are in the code base, it could be because everything is so cluttered that you can't see anything or it could be that everything is so hidden that you can't see anything. It's sort of the staged house equivalent where everything is too abstracted, or is it the hoarded house equivalent where everything is just obscure and under piles of junk. Either way, no matter which direction you need to move towards the middle, the question is always, "Do I understand this?" ROBERT: I like this a lot. I keep on coming to the analogy of if you put a chef in a different kitchen where everything is just totally rearranged and they don't know where their knives are, where their measuring cups are and stuff, I think that plays perfectly in a software of like you put somebody into a code base that they don't know, "All right, I'll figure it out." It's not their home. It's not what they're comfortable with or used to. Yeah, I think this is making my brain work on how I can apply this. SARAH: Or if they're moving in like when you hire somebody and they 'move into your house', you need to be ready for things to change. And this is one of the reasons why I've been saying for many years in ways that I think maybe didn't quite connect as well as they could have, that really the team is the code and vice versa. Every time you add someone to the team or someone leaves the team, teams are not mutable. You get a completely new team. So, it's not like you can just sort of carry on like you did before. Every time you get someone new onto the team, everything gets reimagined, every breakdown of responsibility, every decision. You look at it in a new way when you have someone new come on to the team. If they're going to stay, like in your chef example, if this person is moving in and this is going to be their kitchen and they're sharing it with other people, then what you're going to end up with is probably something in between what it is when they get there and what they had before. They're going to bring in some ideas, you're going to keep some of your ideas and you're going to end up with something in the middle. The same thing has to happen with your code when you bring someone new onto the team. CHARLES: I really like the way that this just focuses the discussion and I know that you've talked about this a lot before, whether it's a kitchen or a house, this idea of the code not being so much the shrink-wrapped product. It's a structure, yes. It is definitely that but it's a structure that you, as people, inhabit. It protects you from certain things and it provides you certain things that you need to live. When people ask us why is a continuous delivery pipeline so important in automating all these things for deploying your software it's because the idea is this is going to be a living thing that your team will actually be living in. And every member of that team will be living in from the time they start with the company or start with the project until the time that they exit and the time that they leave. It's the actual living process that you want to make comfortable and pleasant. SARAH: And what comfortable and pleasant means will be different depending on who's on that team? It's not something that you can have like a -- CHARLES: It's not. SARAH: Right. This is why all of these things are like, "Here's how you design things." It always seemed to fall flat. I think it would be better titled like, "Here's how I did one thing once." [Laughter] SARAH: Or, "Here's what works for me." I feel like every conference talk that is about design could be, "Here's what works for me. I did this one thing once." CHARLES: You might want to try it. SARAH: You could try it. It might work for you, it might not, right? CHARLES: Right. SARAH: A lot of times where conference talks fall flat and blog post and everything else was why they're more like, "This is how you do it. This is the right way to do it." You're like, "Well, it certainly works for you." [Laughter] ROBERT: The one time I gave a conference talk, the night before I went through every slide and scrutinized it as much as I thought somebody out in the public would do it. And I think that might be where we go through in a 'stage our code'. It's like we're trying to make it perfect for somebody that might come through and scrutinize it or criticize. Because I know when I was going up to put those slides up, I wanted to make sure it was the best foot I could possibly put forward. CHARLES: Right, we don't want to be wrong but I think that's where it actually, thinking of it as 'this is what worked for me' and this is an example from my house that worked. This is a way that I organize my code and my space. That'll not take a lot of pressure off of not having like, "I am right and I'm an authority at saying that this is the right way." That's a lot of pressure. SARAH: I don't even like that. I try and frame a lot of the things that I talk about as like, "Here's the thing that works for me really well. Maybe it'll work for you too. Let me know." CHARLES: Yeah. ROBERT: Yeah, that's how I give it. CHARLES: Up until really about two years ago, I felt like that was the expectation that was put on people is to say the right thing. SARAH: That's true. And I think that there's a lot of teams where that is an unspoken requirement and that's something that we should examine. Because even within a team like 'here's a thing that works for me or here's a thing that worked on my last project' isn't very different from saying something like, "Well, industry best practice --" [Laughter] SARAH: And I think that like you get to a certain level of experience and people expect you to say things like that. In my experience, the best way to do it is 'blah'. I mean, it's not actually a super useful statement because your past experience may or may not be directly applicable to the thing you're looking at right now, no matter how experienced you are. I think that it's much more friendly to have a range of experience levels to say things like, "Well, this worked for me on this project. Let's talk about whether it could work here." CHARLES: Right, yeah. ROBERT: I really like that. CHARLES: I do. It's so hard because your human nature is to try and boil things down into a simple binary. SARAH: People would love to have a list of rules, I'll tell you that. This is a problem. This is one of the reasons why I think it's important for us to come up with these questions that you can ask that will move you in the right direction without giving you rules, that will move you in the direction of finding the rules that work for you. Because rules themselves, people really, really, really want them. But they're always misused. They're always misunderstood and what you really need are the questions that led you to those rules in the first place. That's what people really want, although maybe that's not what they are asked. ROBERT: Ah, the Steve Jobs approach. SARAH: [Inaudible] to start wearing black turtlenecks. I hate turtlenecks. ROBERT: And New Balance shoes and the jeans. [Laughter] SARAH: But yeah. I think it's one of those things where people are very hungry for guidance. But we've been giving them the wrong kind of guidance. We've been trying to give them rules. When what we really need to do is give them questions to help them develop their own judgment. ROBERT: Right. Like when I was coming up, I thought, in everything, there was a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. I've been slowly, sadly figuring out that it's not all black and white and it's not all just logic. I've always treated programming as like, "Well, they wrote this and it's just logic so I should be able to understand this." It's been a long road to come to this conclusion that kind of like what you're talking about and this has been enlightening for me. Like you are going to solve your problems your own way, your own person, and you'll think about things differently. I really like the analogy of 'this is your house and this is how you work and live in your house'. SARAH: Right, and no one would tell you in order to be a proper human being, you have to set up your house this way. ROBERT: Exactly. SARAH: We feel comfortable telling people, in order to be a professional developer, you need to set up your code this way. I think that those are very similar statements and we should really examine a lot of these 'should' statements that are all over the place when you're talking about software. Think about whether or not they're actually serving us in our mission of doing more things with tech. Like overall, my mission here is for people to be more effective with code so that we can do more interesting things with it. I live in the TV show, Silicon Valley, essentially so I'm surrounded by these companies that are solving these little tiny problems and I'm tired of it. I want us to solve bigger ones. In order to do that, we need to get better at coding. We need to get better at managing code over time and that's what I'm trying to do. CHARLES: Because it's not going to scale, otherwise. We're out of time. We're going to have to have you on the podcast again because I don't think we've got to... what? About 15% of the things that we want to talk about? SARAH: Oh, we are overtime, aren't we? CHARLES: Yeah. But thank you so much, Sarah, for coming on and talking with everybody. You drop real quick your Twitter handle so that if people want to have follow on discussion, they can reach out to you that way, or your other preferred means of contact. SARAH: Yeah, Twitter is probably the best. My Twitter is @sarahmei, and that's mostly where I am. CHARLES: All right. Well, fantastic. As always, feel free to reach out to us too. I'm @cowboyd on Twitter. And what are you, Rob? ROBERT: @robdel12. CHARLES: All right. It's a wrap. Thank you so much, Sarah, and we'll see you in Ether and hopefully we'll have you on the podcast again sometime.
We are excited to have Jamie Gregory and Sarah How as hosts. Our guests, Tanya Fraizer and Matt Steinborn will round out this important conversation for our July 15, 2016 podcast. No More Bullies! will be our topic for July. Full bios can be found at http://childrenssuccessfoundation.com/nha-podcast We know this will be a conversation you won't want to miss and the beginning of more to come at work, school and in your homes. For additional details regarding podcasts now and in the future, register for a monthly update here. All podcasts are recorded and archived for on-demand listening. Please feel free to browse the archives below.
Midlife Love Bytes! | Relationship | Insight | Psychology | Healthy Love | Transition
Are those deal breakers in you marriage, relationship, connection, or date selection? Beth takes a deep look at Bert Adams' 1986 research-based triangle of the Five Phases of Mate Selection in the US and how the common, normal sense, acceptance, and structure of coupling can be a comfort AND a guide no matter what your situation. Includes a definition of red versus pink flags. Pay attention to both, but in different ways! Answering the burning question from Sarah: How do I know if this man is the wrong one for me? Find complete show notes at www.midlifelovebytes.com.
Join Howard Glasser and Catherine Stafford as they have a conversation with Julie Gelo and Sarah How. Julie is the legal mother to 16 children ranging in age from 8 to 47. She and her husband, Lynn, live in Washington state with the youngets six children. They were licensed foster parents for 22 years. Eleven of the children have been diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or related conditions. She is a certified Advanced Trainer of the Nurtured Heart Approach, Executive Director of the Washington State Affiliate to the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and co-founder of the FASt Friend FASD Community Support Network. She is also a Continuing Education Coordinator with the alliance for Child Welfare Excellence. She also works closedly with Special Olympics in her area. She presents workshops and trainings throughout the US, Canada and Europe. Sarah How is a practicing Certified School Psychologist and Advanced Trainer in the Nurtured Heart Approach. She is currently serving as president of the North Dakota Association of School Pyschologists. Her passion and experiences have led to being invited to train businesses and educators. She can be found coaching families, individuals to be more intentional in relationships every day. She has a Tedx talk and is the author of two children's books that inspire greatness. She is the mother of four children, two of whom had previously been in therapeutic foster care. She knows first hand what it means to be the approach, "like your life depends on it."
In today’s episode, we talk to NYT-bestselling author Sarah Ballantyne about her new book, “The Paleo Approach Cookbook.” The cookbook teaches readers to incorporate seemingly exotic ingredients like cricket flour, fish heads and cow liver into their diets to reduce inflammation, calm their immune system and help their bodies heal themselves. Sarah, who has a Ph.D. in medical biophysics, ate fish eyes as a child. (Sarah: “How do you KNOW this about me?” Rob: “You wrote it in your book. You have written a book.”). She learned from an early age that there were nutritious foods that nobody knew about. “I was exposed to foods that people usually ignore,” she explained. “Clearly this has translated to my adult life.” Sarah and Rob also talk about: -How the exoskeleton of shellfish and insects contains a fiber unique in the animal kingdom. -Why grass-fed meat has different nutrients in it, like Omega 3’s, that aren’t inflammatory. (Meat is only inflammatory when you eat it processed or cured and don’t eat enough vegetables.) -Why Breakfast is a construct! You can eat whatever you want for breakfast. Chicken soup instead of waffles; whatever you want! Your body will thank you later. “The Paleo Approach Cookbook,” which is available starting TODAY on Amazon.com, also contains “normal” dishes like garlic rosemary roast beef, burgers with portabello mushrooms buns and mediterranean mahi mahi. If your head is buzzing after this interview, please tweet questions to #askopensky or go to OpenSkyFitness.com and click the tab labeled “send a voicemail.”
Amanda and Mike are back with an all-new episode of Quiver: The Green Arrow Podcast to recap the CW Arrow episode, “Birds of Prey!” Could the Huntresses return spell doom for Oliver and Sarah? How far will Team Arrow go to stop Helena? Can Roy get a handle on his powers without destroying everything in […]
We got tribal shuffles, new beginnings, exciting challenges, and blindsides. This episode had it all. Just when the castaways start to think they have it figured out, Survivor scrambles the tribes and forces everyone to rethink their alliances and standings in the game. No one would have been surprised to see the Brain tribe continue to get decimated, but now they will likely all make the merge and some might even make it to day 39. The Beauty tribe suffered the biggest split and three of them promptly turned on each other. The majority of the Brawn tribe lost a challenge that appeared to be tailor made for them to excel at then followed in Beauty's footsteps by splitting up their alliance too. We are really enjoying this season! Who emerged from the tribe shuffle in the best and worst positions? What do you think will become of Sarah? How did LJ decide not to play his HII? Is Lindsey really in danger of quitting? Do you think New Solana will be able to recover? Who do you think will be next to go? Here are the tribes after episode 4. New Aparri:Alexis, Jeremiah, Kass, Morgan, Sarah, Spencer and Tasha New Solana:Jefra, Lindsey, LJ, Tony, Trish and Woo We've got several ways you can reach us. You can call and leave a voicemail at 206-350-1547. You can record an audio comment and attach it or just type up a quick text message and send it to us via email at joannandstacyshow@gmail.com. Listener Feedback is due by Saturday noon PST. Please keep it to 3 minutes or less. 00:00 Date 00:04 Tribute to Russ Landau by Aaron from Granville 00:34 Introductions 35:21 NToS 37:23 JSFL 43:19 Tribute to Russ Landau by Aaron from Granville Links for Today's Show Paul's Visual Roster for Survivor Cagayan Survivor Fans Podcast Fans group on Facebook JSFL SFP on Twitter Contact Info: Voicemail: 206-350-1547 Email: joannandstacyshow@gmail.com Survivor Fans Podcast P.O. Box 2811 Orangevale, CA 95662 Enjoy, Jo Ann and Stacy