Podcasts about so becky

Amazon is selling auto insurance in India! So? Becky and Laird talk about why it's time to stop the hand wringing and start actually doing something. Plus, we have an announcement. Amazon's entry into auto insurance holds valuable lessons for agencies (Insurance Business America) (https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/technology/amazons-entry-into-auto-insurance-holds-valuable-lessons-for-agencies-231940.aspx?q=amazon%20india) AMA Virtual Happy Hour Panel on October 8 (https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/2599855026891089677) The funniest video we saw this week (https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1306438597550243841?s=20) Life Changing BBQ Tongs (https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B000GBLPLG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

For All Abilities – The Podcast Episode Thirty Two - Becky Kekula - DisabilityIN/Advocating for Others and Yourself Part One    In this episode, I interview Becky Kekula of DisabilityIN. On the podcast, Becky talks about her early years as a Little Person and her education and career were affected. We discuss her early career in the film/tv industry and the importance of advocacy.  To connect with Becky, please follow her  on LinkedIn (Becky Kekula) and visit her website at http://www.beckymotivates.com.     Go to our website www.forallabilities.com for information on our software that enables employers to support their employees with ADHD, Dyslexia, Learning Differences and Autism. Thanks for listening!  Betsy     Thanks for listening to For All Abilities today!    Share the podcast with your friends, they’ll thank you for it!   Get our newsletter and stay up to date! The newsletter link is on our website www.forallabilities.com   Follow me   Twitter: @betsyfurler   Instagram: @forallabilities   Facebook: @forallabilites   LinkedIn: @BetsyFurler   Website: www.forallabilities.com   Full Transcription from Otter.ai   Betsy Furler  0:05   Welcome to for all abilities, the podcast. This is your host, Betsy Furler. The aim of this podcast is to highlight the amazing things people with ADHD, dyslexia, learning differences and autism are doing to improve our world. Have a listen to for all abilities, the podcast, and please subscribe on whatever podcast app you're listening to us on. Hi, everybody, welcome back to for all abilities, the podcast. This is your host, Betsy Furler. And I'm so excited that you're here along with my special guest, Becky kulula, which I hope I said that correctly. Becky is was introduced to me by a friend and the the diversity and inclusion space. And I'm so excited to have you here. So Becky, why don't you make the Yeah, Tommy if I mispronounced your name and then introduce yourself to my audience.   Becky Kekula  1:04   My last name is Kekula. I was recently married within the past year. And my former last name is Curran. And one of the reasons I bring that up is because I started my speaking career under Becky Curran and just recently added the kukula. So no worries on that piece. And I just wanted to say that I'm excited to be here, I identify as a person with dwarfism, person with a physical difference, okay to call me a little person, a Gore. also identify as being someone who's proud to be part of the disability community. And in my current role, I work as the director of the disability Quality Index at disability in a nonprofit that helps business advanced disability inclusion. We're all on a mission to reduce the unemployment rate. of people with disabilities in this country and in the world in order to make people more people feel empowered and independent, and happy to have a place in this world when it comes to employment.   Betsy Furler  2:14   Awesome. And normally I interview people with neuro diversity, which you don't fit into that category. But when I met you and talk to you, I thought you would be really interesting to have on the podcast because the of the career path that you've kind of been on. And but let's start with what were you like as a little girl growing up going to school? Normally people talk about their diagnosis, but I guess you can talk about that, too. You. You may not have memory of that, but I'm sure you know, you've heard the story.   Becky Kekula  2:45   Yes, definitely. So 80% of people with dwarfism are born to appetite parents and that includes myself. When I was born in 1984. My parents had no clue what it meant to have a child dwarfism. And the only reason they were actually able to find out that I had dwarfism was because there was someone in the delivery room a medical professional, who had seen another person with dwarfism, more specifically 100 plastic dwarfism, which is the type of dwarfism that I have being born in that hospital. It's very common for a lot of people with dwarfism, since they're over 400 types of dwarfism to not even have a diagnosis when they leave the hospital after they're born. So they were fortunate to have that scenario where they could at least identify what my condition was. But they also found out that it was very possible I wouldn't make it through my first night that I was having breathing difficulties related to sleep apnea, which is common among people with dwarfism. And there were some issues that maybe they thought I had that didn't even seem related to dwarfism, but here I am. 36 years. Later still alive. And that was just the beginning of their journey really not knowing what that meant. And I know you mentioned how you do work to advocate and speak on behalf of the neuro diverse community. And although I don't identify as such, people often get people with dwarfism mistaken with certain communities because of our height. They assume as adults, we still should be talked to as children. And it's really just lack of the unknown lack of previous exposure, and figuring out where to meet us. So a few days after I was born, my parents were released from the hospital, but they knew that they had a long journey ahead of them, and it was recommended to them to go meet with the geneticists, and they made an appointment and they got to the office where the geneticists worked, and they met with the receptionist and asked for directions on how to get to the gym. This office, and the receptionist immediately told them to follow the signs that say birth defects, and then go into the elevator that says birth defect floor, and then follow the hallway to see another sign that says birth defects. And then the genetic counselor will be waiting for them there. And that was something that really didn't settle well with my parents. So they decided that maybe it was time to write a letter to the hospital and let them know that there are a lot of new families who have found out that their child has some sort of difference. And it is not really fair for them to be told that their child has birth defects when they're learning to figure out how to find beauty within the difference that their child may have. Unfortunately, that hospital did change the signs to say genetics, and it matched exactly what the genetic counselor did work in genetics. And that was kind of just a testament of how I was was raised and how if they saw something that seemed off, they were going to question it and challenge societal views, and making sure that they could find a way to help me grow and thrive in this life that wasn't necessarily made for someone of my stepdaughter.   Betsy Furler  6:20   Yeah. Hi, I relate to that story so well, because my son, my 22 year old son, who we've just recently found out has a neuro autoimmune disorder, but he's 22 years of not knowing. But how his life started was, when I was six weeks pregnant. I knew I was pregnant because I'd already taken a million pregnancy test. I went to my ob and he said, I don't know why you women think you're pregnant when you're not hot. And I learned to start fighting for his life at that point. And I think parents who start on that road of advocacy really early for their And how that, that idea of I don't want my child just to survive. I want them to thrive and be the best that they can be. I, you know, I just keep hearing this, this refrain over and over and over again as I interview people. So I'm so glad you had those parents.   Becky Kekula  7:18   Exactly. And really that's what I've tried to dedicate my life to do is advocate on behalf of those potential new parents, the next generation of new parents as they find out any type of difference their newborn child may have. I would love to get to a day where people are equipped with the tools and resilience and confidence to raise their child no matter the difference. I recently spoke at a conference and someone was sharing this book about children being born with Down syndrome and it was a book Had letters from all of these people with living with down syndrome as adults, writing congratulations instead of I'm sorry, because people try to say I'm sorry. Like, we've got nothing better to say to you, and we don't know how to help you. Good luck, versus congratulations. This is what your child can accomplish and still has the potential for.   Unknown Speaker  8:26   Oh, yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. But the perspective is, it makes all the difference, doesn't it?   Becky Kekula  8:32   Yeah. So my parents really just didn't have a ton of resources. Even my dad's brother worked in the medical field, and all he could offer was a brochure that he found once on dwarfism. And it took about six months for my parents to find a specialist in Baltimore, Maryland. I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, and they had to find a doctor eight hours away, who was hosting people with dwarfism who weren't current patience for a sleep study. It was a research project they were doing. And in order to get an appointment with him, we have to sign up for the sleep study. And we got to his office. And my parents immediately, just like showed how panicked and nervous they were, but also kind of about to feel relieved because they found the answers to what they were praying for just someone who was an expert in this area. And he had a doctor had a waiting room full of people. And he ended up calling my parents and even though these people had been waiting for hours for their appointments, he just saw their ghostly looks on their faces and said, basically, just lay it out there. What are your concerns? Let me help answer the questions you may have. And that kind of led to me being able to be patient of his and we were okay with waiting eight hours for those annual appointments. Even If we arrived for the original time, because we knew that he helped us in a very important moment when I was six months old.   Betsy Furler  10:09   So what was it like when you were in preschool? And then elementary school? What were those years? Like? I think   Becky Kekula  10:16   one of the greatest things my parents tried to do is help me fit in seamlessly with our community. And one of the ways they did that was they worked closely with the family friend, who I think we may have met just while we were going to preschool and preschools pretty early on. So I was still around the height of most kids in my preschool. So a lot of questions didn't start till people started growing taller than me in my age range. And there was a person in my preschool class who my parents worked with her parents to have her be in my class all the way up until seventh grade when we were separated by alphabetical order because I was C and she was w four last names. But still, that was a good chunk of my early childhood, where I had at least one friend in my class who could protect me from any potential beliefs in the community. And really, I don't remember many times being made fun of and it could have been, I do have narrow ear canals. So I have a little bit of hearing loss in my right ear. So it's possible that maybe I didn't hear certain things, but other things, I really think that she was able to stick up for me without me even knowing and it just kind of felt seamless, being a part of community. And then my mom was actually a special education teacher in middle school. So when I got to middle school in fifth grade, she was already a part of that community within that school and well respected. She was never one of my teachers, but at least I was kind of in that environment that people knew and respected her and I think that really helped me feel like that middle school. Those middle school years were just a seamless and then junior high in high school. I did have some medical procedures growing up. And the biggest procedure that affected my older high school years, was losing my ability to walk and I had to miss 29 days of school in 10th grade. And oh, wow, the community was super supportive during that time. Unfortunately, I did fall back in classes, I was in all honors classes, one of my biggest fears was falling behind. And I decided to still stay with my grade. But I had to work extra hard to try to keep up and make up for those 29 days of school, and everyone was super supportive. I think one of the reasons I needed to stay dedicated to staying with my class was that doctor we had gone to at six months and beyond. He mentioned to my parents try your best to keep her in the same school. system with the same people. And I think it even applies to try to stay with your grade because you know those people the most from early on. And that's one of the decisions I could have taken a year off not feel as rushed to finish my junior and senior year. But it was equally as important for me to stay with those people who knew me and grew up with me. Yeah, I   Betsy Furler  13:24   think that's really, really important. I know I say to parents that all the time really, no matter what, you know, your child has that could be a potential struggle. My son's issues are mainly medical. And he was also with the same kids from kindergarten or from first grade through eighth grade and it made a huge difference. And one of the girls he was with all those years, they ended up going to college together and they lived in the same dorm and it was so wonderful. You know, that she kind of like was kind of looked out for him. For me, so I think it's really important to stay with your peers and when you can.   Becky Kekula  14:07   Absolutely. And a lot of what I've done now, as we get to that point in talking about kind of the speaking that I do advocating on behalf of the community, I go into schools where sometimes there isn't that choice A family has to move to a different community, and try to try to help make that transition a little easier for those kids who are also sometimes it's five elementary schools coming together for middle school and if you don't already know someone at the middle school like me being fortunate to have my mom there. It's going to be a scary place because we'll only know a fifth of the people.   Betsy Furler  14:50   Right, right. That's very limited. So what did you do after high school or and also in high school, were you in any clubs or anything like that?   Becky Kekula  15:00   My mom was I was very good at getting us active in Student Council because she was in charge of it in the middle school and then I just continued on with it in the older years, and then I did speech and debate but it was the speech side it was forensics, where you compete based on how well you can present materials. So I focused on children's books, those competitions and how you can read children's books and really learn some of the presentation skills that way. I took some public speaking classes and photography while in high school, and then I was involved with the high school swim team and sailing team. Sailing was like a, it was a club that was newer there were not as many participants but my my dad actually made the decision to help me get that started so I could have a high school sport to participate in after my bachelor's surgery I had been on the swim team, but it was harder for me to participate as actively as I wanted to after that.   Betsy Furler  16:09   Yeah, that's, that's wonderful. So what did you do after high school? I ended   Becky Kekula  16:14   up applying to nine colleges. And I ended up choosing Providence College. Because when I was in the cafeteria, while going on a tour, there was a little person who's already attending school there. And I was able to see someone like me in that environment, even though it's not a very diverse school. It's predominantly Irish Catholic,   Unknown Speaker  16:38   is at a small school.   Becky Kekula  16:39   It had about 4000 people, so about 1000 each grade. Uh huh. But I knew that since most environments, there are only 30,000 little people living in the United States, and 180,000 or so in the world. Most environments have not met a little person. So it really does matter. If someone has touched that community in one way or another, so as soon as she was there, it helped set up the tone that whether or not she was having a great time. And it seemed like she was having a great time. I knew that people would be a little bit more respectful because they had seen her before seeing me.   Betsy Furler  17:20   Right, you kind of had a, the door was opened a bit a little bit.   Becky Kekula  17:24   Right. And, and that didn't make it extremely easy. That was just kind of the reason why I chose to go there. And it almost felt like applying to jobs, deciding whether or not you're going to disclose your difference. This was back in 2002. So when they were doing the roommate selections, I didn't feel like I needed to disclose that I was a little person and I don't, I don't really think Facebook was fully available by then or any of the social media. So it was pretty much Just what you have on your roommate profile, and I had two roommates that I was matched up with, and one I got along really well with on the phone. And once we arrived at school, she was not too happy about me not disclosing because she just didn't know what to expect. And it was a very challenging six months we still we talked about it to this day. We we've been in touch and we just talked about how it was a learning experience. But in the moment of it, it was very hard not knowing how to fix apologizing or like being forgiven for just being who you are.   Unknown Speaker  18:42   Right. roommate situations are so touchy anyway.   Becky Kekula  18:46   Right and that and I had a few days before we moved into school I was involved with this program called urban action. And it was like Habitat for Humanity where we went and cleaned up a farm, but it was a way to go to college a few days early. And meet the amount of people that you are going to be taking classes with. So it was about 150 of the people who were going to be in my class that I could get to know ahead of time. So I was already, like prepared them going above and beyond getting involved before even moving into college. So this will give me a head start. But I think it just kind of comes with the journey, the roadblocks that come with it. And I was fortunate during that program to meet someone who is my best friend to this day. And after that freshman year, she and I were roommates from sophomore to senior year and it really made a huge difference. Just having someone who, I didn't have to apologize for being myself too. And someone who gives me a lot of constructive feedback. That's something I asked for a lot. And I'm sure that you kind of witness that a little bit within the community that you advocate on behalf of wherever People just want to say they're doing a great job, and don't really know how they can improve. And I really appreciate when people tell me if I'm doing something wrong, so I can learn how to do it better in the future. And she's one of those people always been in my life willing to give that feedback, honestly and authentically. And I think that's so important.   Betsy Furler  20:22   Yes, we all need friends like that. I know, I appreciate that too. Because I don't want just everybody going, Oh, you're doing great, Betsy. Because then it's like, but I know, like, There's something I need to be doing better. There's gotta be. And so after, what did you major in and what did you do after you graduated?   Becky Kekula  20:40   I was a marketing major. And I just thought it was super interesting. It wasn't. Providence now has a business school with a more detailed program. So it was still kind of part of the liberal arts, just in general, the liberal arts, they want you to take all those general courses, so I didn't really focus as much on marketing specifically until the junior and senior years, we had to take four semesters of Western civilization, freshman and sophomore year. And that was challenging because I am one of those people where I look at something and I think everything's important. So I highlight everything. So it was hard to study and figure out what was important and what I should remember. But I think the life skills that you learn in college and just learning how to live on your own and be independent, add just as much value. So the whole experience regardless of how challenging it could have been at times, I ended up starting to do some different internship experiences throughout the summers. We had a family friend in our neighborhood who owned a fire insurance company, and I worked in the accounting department my first summer after freshman year. Found out fast that I didn't like that progression. The next year I ended up working in marketing iRobot they make the robotic vacuums and then they also have a war division where they make robots that can go on the war lines closer than people would want to go to the action to tech for bombs. So that was fascinating just learning about that whole robotic business. And while I was there, we also received some television scripts, where we could try to determine if there were appropriate moments, like in the TV show friends and Sex in the City, where they could have the robotic vacuum featured, but also talked about, rather than it just being product placement or you have it in the scene. Is there like an effective way to get brand recognition in a TV show? And that was kind of my first exposure to Oh, wait a minute, this industry has a lot of influence.   So I kept trying to figure out okay, even though marketing major, super passionate about marketing, I'm going to try to figure out how to get closer to what it is this industry does with a lot of influence. And I ended up right before my senior year in college I applied. I actually just thought maybe advertising in general because that's media advertising. just fascinated by the profession. I found an article in a Boston newspaper and it was the top 120 ad agencies in Boston. I just sent my resume to all them. I knew it was going to be an unpaid internship, but I was willing to get experience anywhere. And the one that got back to me, the only one was allied advertising and they are the intermediary between the movies, the movie companies and the general public. So they try to find target audiences for advanced screenings before a movie is released. To the wider public. And then if they find that audience and someone goes, as a representative from the agency, they can take notes on what people reacted to, and any tweaks they may want to make before the wider release, like maybe jokes that didn't work too well, or where there was maybe too much silence when people should have been laughing. Just those things. So I would go and I would write notes in the dark on how people reacted to these different movies. And I did that for summer. And when I went back to school in Providence, my senior year, they didn't have anyone to cover the screenings in Providence, and I was able to continue doing that for the fall. And while I was doing that, I also applied to the local NBC News affiliate, and I was at promotions and publicity in turn. And while I was working there, I found out about the movie underdog being filmed in Rhode Island. In that next summer, which was going to be right after my graduation, and Peter Dinklage was going to be in the film. And they found out since I was in the area, maybe I want it to be his stand in. Meaning that if they're setting up the film set, he can stay in his trailer. Well, they set up the lighting and me being close to his height. I could stand there until it's time for him to actually go and act. And a lot of times they have standards because children on movies and television sets need to go to a certain amount of schooling. So they are able to go do that schooling while someone standing in for them in a lot of times it ends up being little people since we are at the height of children. So it has been a profitable career for a lot of people. But unfortunately, it was seemed like a great opportunity. They were ready to use me, but it conflicted with my last two weeks of college and I had to turn The opportunity because I needed to graduate and we know how important it is even to me staying on track with my class.   Unknown Speaker  26:09   Right, but what a shame, but I guess, the way it's supposed to be,   Becky Kekula  26:13   right, so what I ended up doing so that was going to be like a $4,000 summer opportunity. I had to turn that down. But I did since I had already made the contact with the casting director. I asked if I could still help out with the casting process throughout the summer so I could learn really what goes on behind the scenes as a casting director. So she was she was happy to have me help her find people for crowd scenes. Sometimes I would have to call over 300 people a day just to show up to the movie set and some people were canceling life threatening doctor's appointments because they just wanted to be on TV and film, which is a lot different than like in New York and LA where it happens. More often, I think because it was taking place in Providence and not many things are filmed in Providence. People were like this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I don't want to miss it.   Betsy Furler  27:10   Thanks so much for tuning into this first episode with Becky. Next week, we'll air the rest of the interview and you'll find out what amazing twists and turns her career took after the disappointment of not getting to work on that film. So Becky is so wonderful Her name is Becky Kola, and you can find her on LinkedIn. I will put all of her contact information in the show notes so you can get in touch with your feed like but please join us next week as we finish the interview with her. Also, please like subscribe, rate review, follow all of those things for all abilities podcast. You can do that on Apple podcasts stitcher pod bean anywhere Where you are listening to this podcast. And to find out more about my consulting services and my software that I use to help employers support their employees with disabilities, you can go to www dot for all abilities.com. Thanks for tuning in today. And I'll see you next week for the rest of my interview with Becky. Thanks so much for listening to the for all abilities podcast. This is Betsy Furler, your host and I really appreciate your time listening to the podcast. And please subscribe on any podcast app that you're listening to a song. If you'd like to know more about what we do and our software that helps employer support their employees with ADHD dyslexia, learning differences in autism, please go to www dot for all abilities calm. You can also follow us on Instagram. And you can follow me on LinkedIn at Betsy Furler f isn't Frank you are elhuyar have a Great day and we will see you

In questa puntata:SHIVA FEAT. CAPO PLAZA - CHANCESHIVA & THA SUPREME - CALMOTHA SUPREME - BLUN7 A SWISHLANDSHIVA FEAT. MARRACASH - MILANO OVESTSHIVA - DOMANIACHILLE LAURO - ME NE FREGOSHIVA - SCARABEOELODIE - ANDROMEDAKSI feat. Trippie Redd-Wake Up CallDua Lipa -PhysicalJoel Corry-LonelyDoja Cat-Say SoBecky Hill-Better Off Without YouTiësto & 7 Skies-My Frequency feat. RebMoeChocolate Puma & Firebeatz-Soul FiftyAbove & Beyond -Blue Monday

11 cookbooks that inspired us in 2019 according to The Washington Post.Photo credit- Stacy Zarin Goldberg Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors. Becky Krystal: I'm Becky Krystal. I'm the lead writer for Voraciously at Washington Post. Voraciously is a part of the Washington Post food section where we are aimed at beginner and intermediate cooks. We try to take the mystery out of cooking, teach a lot of basic recipes, interesting recipes, and really try to walk people through all kinds of ingredients and things we think are really helpful to know in the kitchen. Suzy Chase: For more Cookery by the Book, you can follow me on Instagram. If you enjoy this podcast, please be sure to share it with a friend. I'm always looking for new people to enjoy Cookery by the Book. Now, on with the show. So Becky, you're the lead writer for Voraciously at Washington Post Food. How long have you been with the newspaper? Becky Krystal: I've actually been here for 12 years, not the whole time with food. I started out actually writing about TV, which was really fun, and I've kind of been food and food adjacent for the past 10 years, but Voraciously has been my full time gig for about the past two years. I'm actually a home-taught, self-taught cook. I didn't go to culinary school. It's been the school of culinary hard knocks, if you want to call it that, but I've learned a lot and I think everyone else can teach themselves how to cook too.Suzy Chase: I just read an article in Fortune Magazine yesterday that was all about discovering the allure of cookbooks. Why do you love cookbooks? Becky Krystal: I love being inspired by cookbooks, obviously. Of course, making new dishes out of new cookbooks is a very obvious thing to do, but I also just like to read cookbooks, kind of like I do novels, looking at the photos and learning about new ingredients. I think a lot of, actually, my reading is kind of recreational, as opposed to, I'm going to make something out of every book, because I don't necessarily have that kind of time. I love looking at the photos, seeing what other people are doing in terms of art direction in photos because we do a lot of that here at Voraciously, and just learning about ingredients and dishes that I have not cooked before.Suzy Chase: The article in the Washington Post is 11 Cookbooks That Inspired Us In 2019. Each of these 11 cookbooks are handpicked by a staff member. You can read the whole piece over on washingtonpost.com. Could you take us through the process of putting this article together? What was the criteria you had to work with, if any? Becky Krystal: Yeah, it's a very scientific process. Actually it's pretty casual. We had a couple ... We have a weekly staff meeting, and so over the course of a couple then we sort of threw out ideas about what each of us are interested in. Obviously we want to make sure that we don't have a ton of overlap. Not everyone's cooking the same cuisine or not everyone's doing baking books. But really we just talked about books that inspired us, books that we cooked out of, books that we just saved on our desk. That's a major criteria, because we get so many that come and go, and if you have even just held onto a book, of probably hundreds we get a year, that's already a good sign. Yeah, we just all kind of picked one and it ended up working out well. We got a really good diversity of types of food and authors. Suzy Chase: What are some cookbook trends you saw this year? Becky Krystal: It's almost like there are too many trends to be any trends, because there are so many different types of books, and the common themes, there's been a lot of the specialty diets, keto, paleo, gluten-free, vegan, low sugar, stuff like that. Obviously Instant Pot multi-cookers are still a huge powerhouse. I'm just looking at our closet right now and there's Mexican Instant Pot, Mediterranean Instant Pot. Basically any type of Instant Pot is going to be out there. We saw a lot of deeper dives on global cuisines. We featured Island Kitchen, which was about cuisine from some of the Pacific islands, Mexico with Oaxaca, Sichuan food, a lot of immigrant-based cuisines, which are very timely with what's going on in our country. And then a lot of, there are people who are experimenting with more personal and casual approach to recipes and cookbooks, so people are kind of pushing the boundaries.Suzy Chase: Let's go for a few of these cookbooks on the list. First, All About Dinner by Molly Stevens. One thing that makes this cookbook stand out for me is that you get Molly's teacherly voice on the page. It's easy to follow the directions and succeed with every recipe you make of hers. Becky Krystal: Yeah. Molly, I've interviewed Molly a few times for stories and looked over some of her cookbooks, and like you said, she's a great teacher, and not intimidating. She's not going to give you imposter syndrome. She really wants to teach you, and that's what we liked a lot about this cookbook. She has lots of these sidebars where she pulls things out on the side of the page, or she throws in a few pages on perfecting pilaf for example, or boiling rice, or the difference between red and green curry paste. She doesn't want to just throw things at you, she wants you to understand either the ingredients or the methodology. The food in there is really approachable. It's not necessarily overly complicated. It skews a little bit towards comfort, but interesting. There's a pork loin with a miso glaze on there. And my colleague Emily Heil who chose this book, the book got her really into sumac, which is one of my favorite flavors. So you can learn a lot but also make very approachable dinners that you'll probably just keep making over and over again.Suzy Chase: Now to Vietnamese Food Any Day by Andrea Nguyen. I like that Andrea focuses on ingredients that are easily accessible. You don't need to go to the Asian market. Becky Krystal: Yeah, a lot like Molly, Andrea is someone else I've talked to and she also is a really great teacher and, like you said, the accessibility of the ingredients in this book is awesome. Her family came from Vietnam, and when they ended up in California, they obviously didn't have access to the types of ingredients they had where they came from. And so it was this combination of couple hours trip for one big shop, and then we're going to deal with whatever our local grocery store has. Obviously stores have come a long way since Andrea was young, so you walk into Trader Joe's, Safeway, Harris Teeter or whatever your local grocery store, and you're actually going to find probably a lot of Asian ingredients that she would not have been able to find at stores. But even then, she makes some fun and interesting substitutes. She uses French's fried onions, which we all know from that green bean casserole at Thanksgiving instead of fried shallots, which is a popular Asian ingredient, and it's a brilliant swap. She wants to streamline her recipes but not dumb them down, so that obviously get the spirit of Vietnamese food without having to go to a specialty store. Suzy Chase: Milk and Cardamom by Hetal, Hetal? How do you pronounce her name? Becky Krystal: Hetal Vasavada. I haven't actually heard her say it, but.Suzy Chase: Okay, we're going to stick with that one. Now, this was your personal pick. I had never heard of this cookbook before. Why did you pick this one? Becky Krystal: I love to bake. It's really my forte and my passion, and it's just if I have free time, that's really what I want to do. I also absolutely adore Indian food and Indian cuisines, so Indian desserts naturally are of interest to me. Indian desserts are not, you can't just go to the supermarket, so I think they're kind of underappreciated in America still, and people aren't familiar with them, so immediately I was intrigued by that. What I also like about this book is that she gives you both quote-unquote, "Traditional Indian desserts." But she often combines them in interesting ways with American ingredients, or American foods, so it's this cool mashup. She does this peanut ladoo, which an Indian dessert, but she sort of rifts on buckeyes, which are a, Ohio, Midwest staple. So she combines those, she puts pomegranate curd in the brownies. She uses more common Indian spices jaggery in her monkey bread. I just wanted to make everything out of the book, and to me that's always the sign of a book that got my attention. My favorite recipe, and the one that I ended up featuring in the story was a gulab jamun Bundt cake. Gulab jamun is, they're basically fried dough balls, so they're a little bit like donuts, they're smaller than golf balls and they're soaked in this rose and cardamom, this saffron, very aromatic syrup, and formed them into a very classic American Bundt cake. Phenomenal flavor, it's beautiful. It's way more interesting than your typical Bundt cake and people here really went bonkers for it. Suzy Chase: Now, moving onto one of my faves this year, Ruffage by Abra Berens. I call this the vegetable bible. This is the book you need if you have a membership to a CSA or just if you're strolling through your grocery store. Becky Krystal: One of the reasons Matt Brooks, who's the Voraciously editor who picked this book, was he has been a long time CSA member, and of course with CSA it's a little bit like, "We're letting you get what you get and you have to figure out what to do with it." So what's nice, she includes buying information and fridge information, and she really lets the vegetables shine rather than burying them under other ingredients. Suzy Chase: Whole Food Cooking Every Day by Amy Chaplin was another cookbook that I wasn't familiar with this year. What's her take on vegetarian cuisine? Becky Krystal: Joe Yonan, who's a food editor just absolutely raved about this book, and she obviously wants you to focus on eating seasonally. She is really great about offering base recipes that you can riff on, depending on the event, or your taste, or whatever you happen to have on hand. Again, it's gluten-free, it's low refined sugar, but she is not preachy about it. She kind of makes everything feel off the cuff and it's relaxed and she's not making you feel guilty. She just wants you to learn how to cook like this, and make dishes that appeal to you, and that are as close to the original state of the ingredients as possible, so it's kind of refreshing in that way. Suzy Chase: This next cookbook moved me. It's one of my personal favorites this year. I was so happy to see it on the list. It's Midnight Chicken by Ella Risbridger, from the watercolor illustrations in the book, to Ella's stories surrounding despair and mental health, to the homey recipes, it sounds odd just saying it like that, but there's something oddly brilliant about this cookbook. I just loved it. Becky Krystal: Yeah, it's a really good combination of cookbook and memoir. Like I mentioned earlier, it's sort of this less traditional approach to cookbooks and recipes. You mentioned the watercolor paintings, there are no photos, which is really different from a lot of cookbooks you seen now. It really lets you focus on the words and she's very lyrical in her recipe writing. There's a lot of kind of short, almost poetic sentences, and then there's these longer stretches where she's talking about kneading bread and you see the sunshine, and it's beautiful, and it's casual, without being cutesy. It's going to let people feel free to cook and relax and admit that there's a lot of connection between feelings and cooking too. Suzy Chase: What cookbooks are you excited about coming out in 2020?Becky Krystal: Well, I would not be a good employee if I didn't mention Cool Beans by Joe Yonan, the food editor, but I'm actually genuinely excited. I cook a ton of beans, especially now that I have an Instant Pot. I cook beans every week, I love that. I'm really looking forward to Rose's Ice Cream Bliss by Rose Levy Berandbaum, whose books are, I mean they're airtight, so many great recipes and I actually talked to Rose for a story I did on ice cream earlier this year, so I know that she's got some amazing flavors that are going to be in there. Also really excited about Erin McDowell's High book, that's coming out next year. You can see there's a common theme here, I like baking a lot. Erin's an awesome teacher, so smart. One other one I'm really looking forward to is Healthy Indian. If you're a Great British Baking Show fan, you probably remember Chetna who was on the first season it aired in the US. I love her, I think she's so fun, and really nice to see her doing things well beyond baking. And like I said earlier, Indian is one of my favorite cuisines, and I really like eating a lot of vegetarian food, so I think this is one to look out for. Suzy Chase: What can we look forward to with Voraciously in the new year? Becky Krystal: That's a good question. I think maybe we're going to try to do maybe a couple more slightly more involved recipes, not too much. We're in year three and we want to keep giving people the fundamentals of cooking and basic recipes. But I just got an email from a reader who said, "I am on the hunt for the perfect baguette recipe. That could be fun." Give people something that's a little more projecty, but it's still kind of this approachable dish. And yeah, I think I'm going to try to do more of my own recipe development. And it's going to be an unexpected mix I hope. Suzy Chase: Now to my segment called My Favorite Cookbook. What is your all-time favorite cookbook and why? Becky Krystal: You're going to make me choose. That's really hard as someone who collects cookbooks. If I had to, had to, had to pick, I would probably say The Gourmet Cookbook. Actually one of the first cookbooks I owned. It's just a nice all around book, and I think especially for people who haven't cooked a lot, it will encourage you to go a little bit outside of your comfort zone. Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media? Becky Krystal: I am at voraciously.com. On Facebook I'm @BeckyKrystal, all one word. And on Instagram I'm @becky.krystal.Suzy Chase: Wonderful. Well thanks Becky for coming on Cookery by the Book Podcast. Becky Krystal: All right, thanks Suzy. Outro: Subscribe over on CookerybytheBook.com, and thanks for listening to the number one cookbook podcast Cookery by the Book.

So Becky has been suspended for 60 days and Charlotte has now been inserted to the main event at WrestleMania in her place. Oh, and the Revival finally won tag team gold in a fantastic match. But how was the rest of Raw? Come and listen to Warren's thoughts!We record live every Monday night at YouTube.com/MrWarrenHayesTwitter: twitter.com/MrWarrenHayesInstagram: instagram.com/MrWarrenHayes------------------------------Apero Hour Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Over the next two episodes, the Windows Insider podcast explores all things mixed reality. In part 1, we chat with the Hololens team about design elements in Windows Mixed Reality and how developers can get started creating immersive experiences. We also hear how virtual reality enhances social life and creates community with people from all over the world. Find out more about Windows Mixed Reality here: https://aka.ms/MoreInfo_WindowsMixedReality   Episode transcript ALEX KIPMAN (from video):  Now we're standing together at the threshold of the next revolution of computing.  Now, the thing that excites me about this revolution is that computers will empower us to renegotiate our very contract with reality, giving us the capability to transcend time, space, and devices In this revolution we will immerse ourselves in virtual worlds of our choosing, and we'll be able to accomplish impossible things.  And we'll be able to do all of this while creating lasting memories with the people that we love Our very sense of reality is set to be transformed as we enter this new era of computing, the era of mixed reality JASON HOWARD:  That's Alex Kipman, Technical Fellow here at Microsoft, delivering the keynote at a recent event where he unveiled the company's vision for mixed reality And as you can tell from that clip, his vision is a bold one.  Microsoft's plan for mixed reality is nothing short of transforming the way people interact with the physical and digital worlds But let's back up for a second.  What is mixed reality, and what will it enable us to do? Welcome to the Windows Insider Podcast where we explore all things Windows, the Insider community, and beyond I'm your host, Jason Howard. You're listening to Episode 10, the first of a two-part series where we'll explore mixed reality Microsoft has been a pioneer in mixed reality, also known as MR, starting with the groundbreaking launch of HoloLens in 2015.  The HoloLens is the world's first untethered holographic computer that enables people to have experiences that blend both the physical and digital worlds To learn about recent developments in MR I've invited a couple experts from the HoloLens team to the podcast today BECKY HARUYAMA:  My name is Becky Haruyama, and I am a Principal Designer for the Windows Mixed Reality Engineering Team. And what I've been focusing on most recently is the customer experience in the physical Microsoft stores where people who are going out and looking at what is this Windows Mixed Reality, we have design and experience for them to kind of better understand why they should invest in this KATHERINE HARRIS:  Yeah, and I'm Kat Harris.  I am also on the Windows design team, but I am a developer and I work mainly with our open source toolkits that we provide to developers to help them really dive into working with our headsets, and making very high quality, cool, new experiences and new tools for their companies or bringing their ideas to life JASON HOWARD:  So Becky, let me ask you, what is your definition of mixed reality? BECKY HARUYAMA:  So we are familiar with the physical world.  We live in it every day.  It's made out of atoms.  It's things that you can touch.  And then there is this digital world that is made out of pixels.  And mixed reality is the blending of those two realities together And so while that is still really abstract, if you start thinking about augmented reality and virtual reality, those are actually under the spectrum, the umbrella term of mixed reality So augmented reality is when you have digital artifacts in your physical world, so you can see your environment, you can move around inside of it, and there are digital artifacts that are around.  And there's different kind of fidelities of that And then of course on the virtual reality side your environment is completely digital. And there's not really like a hard edge line, it's more of a blending of people, places, and things.  And so you could have a fully digital person in a fully physical location or physical place.  And so it's really like Alex Kipman talks about this dial, the mixer, that kind of mixes people, places, and things between augmented reality and virtual reality.  So there is no boundary between the two, it's really a mixture of those three characteristics under the umbrella of mixed reality JASON HOWARD:  So Kat, your work is focused on enabling developers to create mixed reality experiences.  What are some inspiring things you've seen people do with this new technology KATHERINE HARRIS:  A lot of different things.  What's great about mixed reality is that it's kind of an open platform for a bunch of different industries to kind of jump into.  You have the medical industry, you have education, you have training people.  And it's this new exploratory like medium of giving content to people and kind of training their brains or delivering that content in a different way that they've never really experienced before And so we're enabling developers now to create new experiences that we would have never realized ourselves.  Just being in the tech industry we're kind of in our own little bubble.  But getting to share this technology with a bunch of different people allows them to create some really cool things I met a woman last week actually who was working in robotics, and she was using the HoloLens to control multiple robots and like control where it was going.  And I was asking her, like, oh, that's so amazing. She's like, yeah, what would be really cool eventually is to be able to have a counterpart application in immersive reality, and have the headsets where people could experience like what the robot was experiencing perhaps.  And that way you have one person controlling it with the HoloLens, and another person experiencing what the robot is experiencing JASON HOWARD:  Wow KATHERINE HARRIS:  Yeah, exactly.  I was like, oh my gosh, that's so cool, I want -- I want that application now BECKY HARUYAMA:  Tell him about what that event was KATHERINE HARRIS:  Oh yeah.  So last week, we had an event with women in VR.  We invited a bunch of women creators who had HoloLens out in the field in LA, New York, Paris, and had them all come in for a two-day workshop to kind of introduce them to the new headsets, as well as showcase their awesome HoloLens applications So there was about nine or ten different applications that people were showing off.  One of them was a museum application called HoloStoria where museums could use it, and you can have 3D assets, place them around your museum, scale them up, add 2D information to also display to the user. And you didn't need to know anything about programming to use it.  So you could give it to curators and stuff, and they could just easily go around and create their museum add-ons or extensions to their physical locations And a couple other fun ones, there was one where you defend kittens from aliens attacking.  So that's more on the gaming side One person was using AI to train a dragon.  Think of a Tamagotchi, but with a dragon that could interact with your physical world.  So it knew where walls were, it knew where the ground was, it could fly and burrow and avoid stuff, and you could interact with it, give it commands We also had like art installations where you could see a stage and interact with your friends and see this art installation come to life Muralize is a very popular application where you take your Instagram feed or any Instagram photo and put it on a wall, pin it there, and then you can actually have paints and stuff and paint the wall with the headset on, so you can see your art.  So it's helping artists create in a new way that I would have never been able to come up with BECKY HARUYAMA:  And this whole thing was kind of identifying people out in the wild who are creating amazing things on HoloLens, and then the effort was helping them kind of port these experiences over to Windows Mixed Reality immersive headsets, just to kind of enable them to have broader reach JASON HOWARD:  So it sounds like developers obviously they have their hands on this, they are doing great things already.  What are some of the key things that, Kat, you and your team are doing to enable developers to have a good experience in this space KATHERINE HARRIS:  Yeah, there's a bunch of things that we're trying to do to meet developers where they are So we have a repository on GitHub called the Holo Toolkit.  And it's a toolkit of assets and scripts that developers can use with the engine Unity.  It's a game engine to use simulations or create 3D environments. And using those scripts and the toolkit they can easily get started with the basic foundations of how do you do spatial mapping, how would one do like hand gesture for tapping or gaze.  And so the scripts are already given to them JASON HOWARD:  Let's talk about some of the design elements in Windows Mixed Reality.  Becky, can you tell us about the considerations you and your team had during development BECKY HARUYAMA:  We really wanted to make sure that we had content that would be interesting to people who are gamers, people who are not gamers, men and women, different ages.  And so we had that as a goal And then we were also looking at the Cliff House, which is our kind of, quote/unquote, "home" in mixed reality.  It's the environment that you cruise around when you're inside the headset.  And we looked at the design of the quote/unquote "architecture," and there are different spaces in the Cliff House And so we looked at what we call these different psychological fields or what are the things that you do in these different types of rooms or these different kind of locations.  So we have a back patio.  It's really beautiful.  It's very relaxing.  You're looking out over Mt. Rainier.  You can go outside and there's birds chirping.  So the psychological field for that is relax and dream And then we have a studio which is more your typical kind of office studio space.  And that's more for creativity and productivity And then we have the deck which overlooks the water.  There are these floating islands.  We like to have a little bit of fantasy in with our reality.  And that one's more aspirational.  It's more like what's next for me.  I'm about to decide what I'm going to do with my life.  And so that room is learn and discover And then we have the theatre, which is this really amazing, huge space that is where you have your games and your movies and it's more about like escaping and playing So we kind of had that as our organizing principles for the way we wanted the demo to unfold.  We looked at what content we needed in each of those locations to kind of ensure that we would have an experience that would really resonate with a wide group of people JASON HOWARD:  Can you tell us a little bit about the history of the Cliff House and why is that the first place you land in the Windows Mixed Reality world? BECKY HARUYAMA:  So one of the things that I think is really interesting when we talk about mixed reality is realizing that on our desktop our 2D screen when you go to the Start Menu, like that's kind of your center of gravity, like that's how you go back to it, it's how you move around, and that is kind of kind of the paradigm that we use So when you think about transitioning into a spatial analogy, and it's actually the thing that we're most familiar with in the world.  Like we were born and we move around in the world, and it is a spatial interface, it is a spatial environment So when you think about what is a home, it's something that everyone can relate to, hopefully, that it is this place that is kind of central to who you are and to what you do. And architects and space planners really leverage these constructs that we're familiar with around what situation am I going to do in this room  and in this room and in this room, and then you design kind of a place around it So having it be a home really seemed to make the most sense, because we wanted it to be familiar, and we infused some like fantasy into it, like I mentioned before with the floating islands.  So it really is like this aspirational, amazing place that we wanted people to instantly understand how to move around within it But it's not your normal home.  Like there are no doors, there are no windows.  You can hop up onto the roof, which is my favorite place to go KATHERINE HARRIS:  Same BECKY HARUYAMA:  Yeah, it's so fun.  It's got the best view And so it just seemed to make the most sense We weren't going to do like a forest.  Ah, I'm lost in the forest, you know, or like you're on a beach.  Well, okay, that's fine, but we wanted it to have a certain level of utility.  We wanted it to be a place that was comfortable, and we wanted it to be neutral enough in the sense so that you could personalize it in the way which you organize all the things that matter the most to you, the apps that you like the most And it was actually inspired by a really beautiful modern house that was built in the 1950s, I believe, it was the Farnsworth House.  If you look it up online, it's this really beautiful, kind of super simple, streamlined house, had a lot of glass, really simple lines.  And the architect built it for his client to kind of support her hobbies, which were playing violin, reading poetry, and looking at nature.  And so it was this really amazing kind of inside-out space that when everyone looks at this picture, it's like, oh, I really want to live there, that's like the most amazing house.  And so that was a lot of the inspiration for the Cliff House And we picked the external environment to be inspired by our beautiful Northwest, and that's why we have Mt. Rainer there also JASON HOWARD:  Nice.  I actually didn't know that about the history.  That's kind of cool that it's based off of an actual house that exists BECKY HARUYAMA:  Yeah, well, a lot of architecture is this really interesting -- you know, you look for inspiration, and then you kind of apply it to the goals that you're trying to facilitate I mean, I think the most important thing is we wanted people to be able to identify with it, and to then make it their own.  And so that was one of our main goals JASON HOWARD:  So to the point of personalization and making Cliff House your own, right, do either of you have your own Cliff House that you've designed and customized and - KATHERINE HARRIS:  Oh yeah, yeah.  Becky, you go first BECKY HARUYAMA:  Yeah, okay.  So I have spent a ton of time in the headset kind of creating my own environment.  And my favorite thing was when I put up the photos app, and put my own personal photos in, so it turned into like a slideshow.  And so I'm hanging out in there, and I'm doing my self-hosting and kind of figuring out how we were going to create the demo for the retail stores.  But then there's my family right there with me. And then we had kind of an internal contest of who could like make the craziest Cliff House.  And some of the other designers made these amazing -- like they take the holograms and they would like make -- I don't know, there was like a hundred flamingos or monkeys, I don't remember what it was, or they'd like take the shopping bag and make it huge, or, you know, it's really fun, because there's a lot of scalability.  You can play with the scale of things in a way that you can't do in the quote/unquote "real world."  And so like playing with the holograms, and then putting your apps in the way that you want to, and like what's on the roof and -- okay, Kat, you go KATHERINE HARRIS:  My favorite thing is to make the Netflix app as big as possible, so I have like an 80-foot screen BECKY HARUYAMA:  Is that on the roof KATHERINE HARRIS:  No.  So there's like the media room, right?  Well, there's a button on the side of the media room where it's just like a wooden room, but then when you hit that button, it turns into outer space.  Or like not outer space, like the stars JASON HOWARD:  Okay KATHERINE HARRIS:  And it's beautiful.  And I just like watching my new Netflix shows, and then seeing this beautiful skyline.  And then it's like Netflix but then it's all my other media as well.  I have a bunch of 360 video apps on the side, and then I have a bunch of games on the roof of the house, so I'll just pop up to the roof, and it's like 360, just all my favorite games. And then, of course, I use my holograms to like make it my own.  So I have like a little dog hologram, a little cat hologram, just lots of pets and animals.  Since I don't own any, I can have hologram ones JASON HOWARD:  And no mess to clean up KATHERINE HARRIS:  And no mess to clean up.  I don't have to like feed them and stuff or forget to feed them, because that's why I don't have a pet, because I would -- they would die.  I've killed a cactus.  Never mind.  That's another story JASON HOWARD:  If you're ready to see the Cliff House for yourself, just go to a Microsoft Store for a free demo.  You'll also be able to check out the different immersive headsets that are available now.  I've tried it, and it's a ton of fun.  Not to mention the fact that I scored Spartan the first time I played the new Halo mixed reality edition. Another exciting development in MR is the opportunity for socializing.  This immersive technology can give you the chance to meet people from all over the world, attend live events in far off lands, and play interactive games Here to tell us more about the social side of MR is Katie Kelly from AltSpaceVR, one of the leading social platforms for virtual reality So AltSpaceVR provides an environment for people to meet up in virtual reality.  Why is it important to have social spaces in VR KATIE KELLY:  I think the better question is, why is it important to have social spaces in general.  And I think in virtual reality having a place where you can hang out with other people is just a natural evolution of where we are with communication technology So you have Skype and you have videoconferencing and you have a phone, and we've gotten really tethered to these devices where you are only communicating through speech or looking directly at somebody on a Skype call.  But you miss out on those things that we do when we're watching TV together, those natural interactions that you have when you're doing something together So what we think is that VR is the natural evolution of communication, is that you are going to have shared experiences with each other instead of being tethered by just your voice or through eye contact on a videoconference JASON HOWARD:  So can you describe a little more what it's like being there in virtual reality just hanging out KATIE KELLY:  Sure.  When you go into AltSpaceVR, you don't know what you're exactly going to get, but our biggest goal is to get you to laugh, hopefully in the first five minutes So you can come into AltSpaceVR and you will first probably pop into our campfire.  It's our communal space where there are people hanging out, and we have marshmallows and we have a forest landscape and a roaring fire, and that's where people go to hang out And so when you go in and there's going to be somebody there, they'll probably say hi, and you'll say hi back, and then you'll realize that you are talking from inside your headset, probably in your living room, hopefully with clothes on, to a random person that might be in Norway or might be in Sweden or might be in California or somewhere in the states, and then you just start talking And if you don't just start that conversation, we have lots of things for you to do to start to encourage those interactions.  Our main goal is to get you to meet somebody new, and to have a good time, and hopefully make a friend And so we have games that you can play, we have dungeons and dragons, and we have chess, and we have Cards Against Humanity is our most popular, of course JASON HOWARD:  That's a fun game KATIE KELLY:  It's called Holograms Against Humanity in AltSpaceVR And you can go explore different environments.  We have a full Mayan maze that will take you 20 minutes to get through, and you'll make some interesting friends along the way We have a disc golf course, and mostly we have events.  We're really known for our events.  You can come in at any point and see a community calendar of all the events that will be happening throughout the day or the week.  And it spans the gamut from meetups to comedy shows to news broadcasts to live streams, our rocket launches.  We do a live stream of SpaceX rocket launches.  Those are some of our most popular live streams Because we've found that people want to experience these pulse moments together with other people.  So what's a better way of doing that than putting on your headset, you're alone in your room in maybe rural Nebraska, and all of a sudden you're in a room watching something really cool with a bunch of people that could potentially be new friends JASON HOWARD:  So as an individual, the experience, I put on my headset, and, you know, I get logged in, so to speak, right?  What do I see of other people?  Am I seeing actual images of them?  Can they upload photos of themselves?  Is it just like a representation, is it some sort of avatar KATIE KELLY:  So right now you're an avatar.  And we have a range of different avatars that you can customize, mostly with different colors for different robot avatars, and then we have a male and a female avatar with a couple different clothing styles, different races, different hair colors.  And so that's where we are right now with our avatar system.  And so when you go into a room, you see a bunch of other avatars But what's interesting, if you haven't tried VR, is it's really hard to explain how present you actually feel with other people.  My father has a Gear VR that I got him years ago when I first started at AltSpace so that we could experience what it was like hanging out with somebody you knew in VR.  And he's always a white avatar with red stripes, with his hands behind his back.  But after probably, I don't know, 15 minutes, I completely just associated that avatar as my father.  At one point, he switched avatars, and I was like, no, dad, you've got to back, now you're just in a different body.  You were you when you were that avatar And we found that across the board that people really start to identify with the avatar that they are, and when I got into AltSpace and I see my friends there now, now that I have friends in VR, which is really strange to say, I recognize people based on their avatar.  I'm like, Lea, hey, how's it going, and Peroxide, how's it going, so nice to see you in your red avatar JASON HOWARD:  So it sounds like people from around the world are participating and joining in and getting together.  Can you tell us a little bit about the people that are participating?  Do you have any information about like the diversity of users kind of around the world KATIE KELLY:  So our events are a testing ground for us to try a lot of things to see what people are going to like in VR.  So we do a lot of things.  I have done the first yoga class in virtual reality.  I have held the first meditation meetup with our amazing previous community manager, Lisa Kotecki.  And we've just tried to supply a lot of different things to see what people like to do And so one idea was to do meetups, and they've become really successful.  So I did an LGBT meetup, and we had a good couple hundred people show up, and we talked about what it was like being gay around the world One guy was from South Africa talking about being gay down there.  A couple in Australia was talking about fighting for gay rights.  A man in Turkey was talking about having to prove that he was gay, because he couldn't join the military because he was gay, but they didn't believe him And then you had a girl in rural Nebraska that was 16, and she couldn't actually say the word gay because her family could hear her, because she was still in her family's house.  So she messaged, she wrote a little text message to one of my coworkers that was in the space I was in.  You have to use your imagination a little bit, but you feel like you're in an actual space with other people And he messaged me and said, "Hey, there's this girl here that wants to talk and tell us her experience, but she can't say the word gay.  What do we do? And so I asked her, I said, what's something you just love to talk about?  And she said chocolate.  I said, okay, every time you want to say the word gay, say the word chocolate She told us about the first time she ever ate chocolate, who she liked to share her chocolate with, all the different kinds of chocolate that she liked.  And then three weeks later, she came out to her family, because she felt like she had her community in VR that she saw once a week, and she didn't feel as different as she had felt before And those stories are happening over and over again, but those kind of moments where you wouldn't be able to find your community out in your neighborhood, you can now put on a headset and potentially find it from anybody around the world JASON HOWARD:  That seems like it takes away some of that isolation, and so that you can connect with other people that are going through whatever particular experience they may be seeing or feeling or thoughts or topics or anything really KATIE KELLY:  Exactly. Another example, we partnered with NBC last year to do a virtual democracy plaza.  So we did a recreation of Rockefeller Plaza in VR that you could wander around, go to the ice rink.  And then they brought in some of their amazing talent, Al Roker, Chuck Todd, Steve Kornacki, to do live newscasts in VR But what they also did was they brought in live streams the presidential debates into VR.  So we did all four of them. And this sounds like it could go wrong in so many ways, right?  Like you're inviting a very polarized nation and world to come hang out in virtual reality and watch this live together. But what we found was that people in general when they felt like they were really there with other people, they talked, they communicated.   They weren't leaving mean messages on YouTube, they were actually having a conversation with somebody.  So even while they disagreed, they were talking The first day after the elections, results came in, I held a casual gathering in VR asking people to talk about their thoughts.  And we had Republicans, we had Democrats, we had people from outside the U.S. talking.  And after about an hour, my heart felt so much better, because the main thing that people kept saying is, hey, we're in this together And I took off my headset after that moment and felt like I had gotten out of my echo chamber that I see on so many other social media accounts, and felt like, okay, I had connected with the people that I didn't necessarily know or have a face to, and I felt like we got each other.  And that's what I've found in AltSpaceVR all the time JASON HOWARD:  So that's interesting that you put it that way, because when you don't have some of that personal connection, you end up with a lot of what you see in social media, be it Twitter or Facebook or wherever, where when you don't know the person and it's just a flat 2D image and it's a wall of text that you're scrolling through, it's easy to sit behind your keyboard and type something that you may not necessarily say or not say it the same way if you were face-to-face with somebody or if you were in a group of people And it sounds like having this extra layer of feeling like you're there, even though you may not physically be there, it kind of takes that down and kind of resets people back to a moment of, hey, I'm actually talking to other people instead of just adding to a wall of text KATIE KELLY:  Definitely.  And I think what's important, too, is to acknowledge the work that the AltSpaceVR community has also done to make it a really welcoming place.  I don't think it's just you're in VR now, you feel like a better person. I think we've worked, one, really hard to make sure that we are really welcoming to a diverse group of people.  So we have live in VR customer support all the time.  We have our community support representatives that are always there in the campfire, a living, breathing person in VR.  I can't say that enough, because we're probably the first people to have that always there.  And they are our first person that you talk to, first person to kind of intro you to the product if you have any questions going on.  But also if you have any troubles, if any problems are arising, you can go and talk to a real person and say, hey, I'm having this issue And then on top of that we've put in some really amazing tools so that you feel like you have control over your environment.  So if I am talking to you and your mic is really loud or maybe you're saying something I don't want to hear, I can mute you.  And then that mutes you for the rest of the experience until I unmute you.  I can also block you if I don't want to see you anymore.  That will remove you from my experience, and will remove me from your experience.  And then also when you block somebody, too, you can report like why did I block this person. And then you have the live 24-hour support.  But then you also have a space bubble.  And this one's really important I think just in VR because it's really easy for an avatar to get so close to you that you feel they're actually invading your personal space.  It feels really uncomfortable.  And so automatically when you come into AltSpaceVR, you have a space bubble around you that if somebody gets too close they disappear and their handle disappears.  And then if you want to get closer, like if you have a couple friends, people love like cheek kisses in AltSpaceVR and fist bumps and hugs. There's this one woman, Clair, that lives in London.  She's in AltSpaceVR a lot.  And every time I see her like she wants to give me a hug.  And I get so excited, I'm like, Clair, and we hug, and it feels like I'm getting a real hug by this woman from around the world So you should have that control, too, to be able to have those more intimate moments when you want, but if you don't, you have some tools at your disposal so you can take care of yourself JASON HOWARD:  So earlier, you mentioned the concept of an echo chamber.  And a lot of times that gets associated with like political thoughts and things like that.  But if you expand upon it a little bit, you get to the whole like your social bubble of like the things you surround yourself with, right, the spaces you choose to participate in So how are you like creating inclusive experiences for all kinds of people?  It sounds like you're already taking steps down that path KATIE KELLY:  I think our events is where we start.  So you can think of an event almost as the easiest way to create VR content, especially if you're not a developer.  And also we should talk later, too, about all the developer tools we have. But specifically with events if you are just a random person, again maybe living in rural Nebraska, not to pick on rural Nebraska, but you can go into VR, set up an event, and you automatically have a way to talk to a lot of different people. And our community has been creating most of the events that we've had, especially the last couple months.  And those have included things like book clubs and poetry meetups and writing workshops for NaNoWriMo last month.  And we've had yoga classes and meditation and talent shows, talk shows.  Talk shows have become really popular where you kind of have the original feeling of YouTube.  You have these people that recognize the power of the platform, and they were basically unknown before, but now they're creating a presence in VR This amazing woman, Vivian, if you ever come into VR, you'll see her show.  And she comes on, and she just puts together this amazing show where she'll have games and trivia and invite people from the audience to come and participate But we're creating a new medium, and it's really fascinating.  And what that goes back to when it comes to diversity is that our events aren't games, they aren't attracting just a gamer audience that usually skews male.  We're attracting a wide range of people because we aren't a game, we're an experience So if you come into AltSpaceVR and you want to go to an event, you might go to a meditation event or there's actually a slumber party I think on Monday night.  And women and men are welcome, but it's run by a bunch of women that wanted to have an event where they could connect with other women and watch movies and TV and just hang out So that's what makes me really excited about the diversity possibility of VR is that AltSpaceVR is showing that there's a lot of people out there that want to experience VR.  They just don't necessarily know where to go, and AltSpaceVR seems to be a great place for them to start JASON HOWARD:  Yeah.  So having this type of space, and I know we touched on a moment about ago about muting and blocking people, things like that, right?  And as we mentioned before, on traditional social platforms there's the whole concept of trolling and annoying people and people that are out to in essence create an unwelcoming environment or they try to take over conversations, things like that, right?  Have you seen this as a problem in AltSpaceVR as of now?  Do you expect it to be a problem into the future KATIE KELLY:  It's a problem in VR in general.  It's a problem in real life in general So one thing that my team spends a lot of time thinking about is how do we try to address those problems as soon as possible, and give users the chance to address it themselves, which is why our mute and our block and our bubble are so important, and why are in-VR 24/7 support is really important So what we found, one, when you come into social VR I do think you're more likely to feel like you are around real people.  So I think it makes it a little bit harder to cause as much grief as maybe some other social platforms, because you want to fit in.  You feel like there's a little bit of a culture that you're joining, and you want to be a part of it But if you don't and you want to cause havoc, you'll figure out ways to.  So we want to make sure that when that happens, we can remove that person as soon as possible or at least have the users have the tools they need to remove them from their own experience JASON HOWARD:  So there's obviously some guidelines in place as for if there's a person who's continually disruptive or creating an unwelcoming environment, things of that nature, that there are consequences to those actions KATIE KELLY:  Yeah, we have a list of community standards that are very important to us that include everything from respecting other people and being inclusive, but also being mindful that we are inviting people from around the world to be in this space together, so we need to work together to make sure that everybody feels welcome and kind of know the rules JASON HOWARD:  So in the opening, right, you mentioned that AltSpaceVR had been acquired by Microsoft.  What was that like?  Like how did that happen KATIE KELLY:  It has been a roller coaster I think for our team the last couple of months, but it's also been really exciting, especially where we ended up. We thought we were closing down in June, and we closed up shop and left AltSpaceVR running.  We're able to keep everything there.  We actually had a goodbye party planned that our users - JASON HOWARD:  Wait, wait, wait, wait, like closing  as in closing the doors, ending the service potentially?  Like, ow, okay KATIE KELLY:  Yeah, we got to a point where that was unfortunately the reality kind of where we were at.  And we had a goodbye party planned, and a bunch of our users showed up.  And it was really heart-wrenching.  But people on my team just kept fighting for the service, and telling people like why this mattered. And then we connected with the Microsoft team, and they saw why it mattered, and they really grew passionate about what we created, and lo and behold, we were acquired by Microsoft JASON HOWARD:  Wow.  That's a good thing, right?  I mean, with the good work that you're doing, and obviously the plans that you have for the future, it's nice that the doors didn't get closed. But anytime there's an acquisition, things seem to change a bit.  How do you see this particular acquisition changing the direction of the company KATIE KELLY:  The thing that I've loved the most that I've heard from the team that we now work with at Microsoft over and over again is that they want AltSpaceVR to stay AltSpaceVR, and that they in a lot of ways are coming to us and our team to kind of find out about like what we did right, and what we've learned for now So in a lot of ways we feel really respected as a team, and really excited about the potential to use the resources, the massive amount of resources that Microsoft has to improve the experience in AltSpaceVR, grow our community, make more exciting events and experiences, and yeah, just grow this thing that we like passionately spent like the last couple years working on JASON HOWARD:  So you mentioned earlier developer tools as part of this platform.  Do you want to highlight on that a little bit KATIE KELLY:  AltSpaceVR's SDK community is a bunch of really creative, really scrappy people that with three.js and A-frame can build their own experiences and environments in AltSpaceVR You can go to AltVR.com and check out our developer community and join our Slack, and you'll basically be introduced to a lot of people that are just doing some of the coolest stuff in VR that I've ever seen So in AltSpaceVR now you can go and you can check out a desert environment that somebody made with a tiki bar.  This amazing woman Faye made a karaoke room with posters that she designed all over the walls, and rainbow wallpaper and rainbow floors So basically, you can kind of let your creativity go wild, and using our SDK make your own VR experiences JASON HOWARD:  So are there any community imposed limitations on what they can create?  Like is there any content that's, for lack of a better word, almost forbidden or not welcome KATIE KELLY:  We think about ourselves really similar to I think how we think about the Internet.  So a space in AltSpaceVR is really similar to a web page.  And we think that people should be able to make whatever web content they want and bring it into AltSpaceVR That doesn't mean we're going to allow our general community to go and see it.  So you always have to go through at least one step to have your content on our listed events page.  But you will have a URL that you can share with your friends.  So if you make a room that you're really excited about, and just want to share it with your community, by all means. And you also have the chance to have private events and private spaces, and you can make it friends only So there's a lot of different ways that you can kind of customize like who you want to share your content with, but we are going to be following our community standards and our guidelines for anything that the general community is going to see JASON HOWARD:  So as part of those standards are there age limitations, anything that need to be thought of before somebody potentially tries to join the community KATIE KELLY:  AltSpaceVR is 13 and over.  And then we have content that we will put warnings on the banner of the tile image on the event page that will tell you whether it's appropriate for 17-plus or more for adults We are a community for adults, and we have some amazing like 13 to 17 year olds in general, but in general when you come to AltSpaceVR you're going to feel like you're around other adults, and it's something that we tried to make the community really awesome for that JASON HOWARD:  So we've talked a lot about the social aspect and people interacting, but more to the broad picture like what do you think the future of social VR experience is? KATIE KELLY:  The future of social VR I think is really up to the imagination of what people can make there.  I do think that VR in general is going to be social, no matter what, in some capacity. And so I think that the future is just becoming a place where anybody can go meet, interact, share content, do cool events, go do other VR experiences, but eventually you're going to want to do it with your friends and the people that you know.  So we think that the future of VR is social, to say it so bluntly JASON HOWARD:  Well, I've got my mom on Facebook, so maybe I can send her a headset and get her to come join one of these types of spaces at some point KATIE KELLY:  You should.  It's really fun JASON HOWARD:  So just as a quick reminder, how can the listeners join the AltSpaceVR community KATIE KELLY:  You can join AltSpaceVR by going to AltVR.com or go to any store on your Oculus headset, on your Samsung Gear, on your Daydream, or through Google Play, and you can look up AltSpaceVR and download us for whatever platform you have.  And if you have a mixed reality headset, you can go to the Steam VR Bridge and find AltSpaceVR and download that.  And we really hope to see you in VR sometime JASON HOWARD:  The acquisition of AltSpaceVR is just one of the ways Microsoft is working on a catalog of immersive experiences.  From games to travel to videos, there are so many ways MR can enhance our work and social lives We're going to continue exploring the subject of mixed reality in January's episode.  Join us next month to find out how the traditional media industry is incorporating virtual reality, and we'll find out more about the technical process for turning people and animals into holograms.  You won't want to miss it Make sure you never miss an episode of the Windows Insider podcast by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts.  And if you liked this episode, be sure to review and rate the podcast so others can discover it as well Thanks, Insiders.  Join us next time on the Windows Insider Podcast NARRATOR:  Our program today was produced by Microsoft Production Studios.  The Insider team includes Tyler An (ph), Michelle Paisan (ph), and Amelia Grime (ph) Our website is Insider.Windows.com Support for the Windows Insider Podcast comes from Microsoft, empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more Moral support and inspiration comes from Ninja Cat, reminding us to have fun and pursue our passions Thanks, as always, to our programs cofounders, Donna Sarkar (ph), and Jeremiah Marble (ph) Join us next month with more stories from Windows Insiders END

No one wants a Griswold family vacation. So Becky gets some helpeful advice from Pam Oakes, radio host, author, and ASE-certified car shop owner to make sure your car is good working order before you head out on that family adventure this summer.

No one wants a Griswold family vacation. So Becky gets some helpeful advice from Pam Oakes, radio host, author, and ASE-certified car shop owner to make sure your car is good working order before you head out on that family adventure this summer.

Have you ever wondered if there was a way for your child to have another alternative from the main stream schools and still have a social environment and a plethora of learning opportunities without having to home educate? Tune into this interview with Mimsy Sadofsky who has her B.A. in English Literature and was one of the group that founded Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts in 1968. She has been deeply involved in the establishment of several dozen other schools throughout the world based on a similar educational philosophy. She has served in a wide variety of capacities at the school -- teaching algebra, bookkeeping, management, writing, English literature, French, cooking; helping produce plays; occupying administrative positions in admissions, as registrar, and bookkeeping; and overseeing the school's public relations program. She has spoken extensively in public forums about education, has written several articles, and is co-author of the books Legacy of Trust, Kingdom of Childhood, Starting a Sudbury School, and The Pursuit of Happiness, published by Sudbury Valley School Press. -- Becky Wheelock who has a Masters degree in Applied Mathamatics and has been teaching Math at local colleges and universities for nine years. She has taught in charter schools and has also worked with students with disabilities for a couple of years. She has three kids 7, 9, and 16 years old. She is a founder with the Sudbury School Start-Up in San Diego which is planning to open in 2011. So Becky has been dowsed in the school system for many years and has known that there has to be another way. Kathleen Pleasants, a home educating mother, Mimsy who had her children attend the Sudbury School and Becky will cover many topics on education alternatives, pros & cons. You should be able to find plenty of answers here.Sudbury Valley School Framingham Massachusetts - www.sudval.com - - - San Diego - Facebook - 'Leeway Sudbury School in San Diego'