Podcasts about so disney

Are you a Disney fan, but weary of the prices and endless lines at the theme parks? Or perhaps you have a large family and taking a trip to Orlando, Florida or Anaheim, California isn't in the budget. In this week's episode, host Nat Cardona is joined by NerdWallet's Sally French who has 5 U.S. destinations for Disney fans that aren't Disneyland or Disney World. Read more on NerdWallet here! About this program Nat Cardona is host of PennyWise as well as Lee Enterprise's true-crime podcast Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicals. Lee Enterprises produces many national, regional and sports podcasts. Episode transcript Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically: Welcome to Pennywise, a Lee Enterprises podcast. I'm your host, Nat Cardona. Calling all Disney fans! Orlando, Florida and Anaheim, California. Been there, done that, right? Are you looking for a new adventure to express your love for Disney? We have NerdWallet travel rewards expert Sally French with us today, ready to share five alternative Disney inspired destinations. All right, Sally, we've got a fun topic today, as you know. I know pretty much anyone in the living world knows Disney fans are big fans. They're just all hyped up for all things Disney. The two destinations we have in the US are the one in Anaheim, Disneyland and then Disney World in Orlando and all the things that come with it. But you've recently written an article about five US destinations that Disney fans may not know of that are maybe some hot places for them to go. So let's just jump right into it. I looked at this list and was pretty surprised by every single one. First one being New York City.  Yes. You know, this is a major tourist destination for anyone, Disney fan or not. But there are some good reasons for Disney fans to skip the Disneyland and Disney World vacation in 2024 and maybe head to New York City instead. So, for starters, Disney's official stuff is the two musicals that it's got running Aladdin and Lion King. Lion King is an absolute classic, really stunning art. And then Aladdin is just so much fun. The genie is hilarious. It's just great energy. So if you want to see a Broadway musical, those are two good ones to see. And not far from Broadway is the Times Square Disney Store. Unlike your usual mall Disney store, this one's two stories. It's got the usual Disney merch, but it's also got cool, unique, unique New York merchandise. And then finally, my best free to visit option and doesn't require, you know, that $100 plus Broadway ticket or buying stuff at the Disney store. This one's free You can head to the New York Public Library. What's really cool is they have the actual original plush versions of Stuffed Winnie the Pooh and all his friends. So little stuff, Tigger, Piglet, all those guys. So I think that's a pretty cool historical thing to see that Disney fans in the plaza. Who do guess it's super awesome. Very, very cool. The next saw an even less of what I expected. Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. What's Disney related We're. We're heading south to Hilton head get a little more warmth from New York and this is home to a really interesting Disney owned resort. It's called Disney's Hilton Head Island Resort. And it's part of the Disney Vacation Club. And this is a sort of timeshare like program. And to be honest, Nerdwallet does not recommend that most people join this unless you're the most ardent Disney fan who spends a lot of money as it is. In fact, the baseline cost to join it now is more than $30,000. And then there are annual resort fees or sorry, sorry annual annual dues for DDC. But what's interesting is you don't necessarily need to be a DVC member to stay at this resort. You can pay cash rates when available. And another thing that people do is they rent DVC points from existing members who just aren't vacationing that year. 00:03:27:18 - 00:03:52:13Speaker 2And so I will pay you to use your points instead. And it's interesting, unlike the resorts that are, you know, super high energy, you have a ton going on. Hilton Head is more leisurely. This is good for the Disney fan who want some Disney touches, but also just wants to go fishing or hiking or swimming. And so this is a really great way to take a Disney vacation that's far more relaxing than your theme park vacation. Actually, that's fascinating. I wish I could talk to somebody that's a part of that because I had no idea. That's nuts. Yeah, yeah. And you know, it can definitely be worth it if you truly go to Disney every year and, you know, sometimes you can get DLC, look at, you know, a resort like the Animal Kingdom budget, Disney World, which is so beautiful and has actual animals out front. You can get rooms there for the equivalent of like 100 or $200 in your DVC points versus, you know, the cash rates. There are can be easily over 400. So it can be a good deal. The problem is you have to commit to a Disney vacation every single year, which you might not necessarily want to do, or maybe just something like, you know, hopefully not another COVID pandemic happens and you can't travel that year and you're kind of out of luck. Yeah, we don't want that at all. But the next place we have, we're heading down to Missouri. Yes. This is Marceline, Missouri. I and this is Walt Disney's considered his hometown. Walt Disney was actually born near Chicago, but he spent most of his boyhood in Marceline. So so we consider this Walt Disney's hometown. And it's actually said to have shaped his vision for Main Street U.S.A., which is the iconic entrance to the park. And when you go to Marceline, you really feel that same thing. It's a small town, feel really cute, small town. And then if you're a Disney fan, you have to go to the Walt Disney Hometown Museum. They have tons of memorabilia. They've got Walt's desk there from when he was a grade school kid. And you know, it is because he carved his name in the desk just like we all did when we were in first grade. Walt Disney did the same thing. And you can see that desk there on some other cool stuff. You can see his boyhood home. A really great place to check out if you're a Disney fan. And Sally, I see that you've maybe gone there before from this date.I checked it out. I saw I saw his desk with my own eyes. And it's a fun spot. It's sort of a little hard to get to it. I would recommend flying into Kansas City Airport and then you definitely will need a rental car to get there. But if you're a Disney fan, it's absolutely worth it. Yeah, Missouri is one of those cool little spots, various parts across the state. I'm from Chicago, and so Illinois is obviously the next state over and there's a lot of hidden gems there. And I just really didn't know that Walt Disney's Hometown Museum was one of them. So not to mention it totally is. So we're heading towards your neck of the woods, San Francisco. That's correct. So there's the hometown museum in Marceline, Missouri, and then there's the Walt Disney Family Museum. And this is located in San Francisco. Walt Disney, whose family lives in the San Francisco Bay area. So this museum was actually founded by his daughter, who has since passed away. But now it's sort of overseen by his grandchildren. And this is a really cool place, especially if you love history of any type, whether it's Disney history or just, you know, World War Two era history, Depression era history is really compelling. 00:07:06:19 - 00:07:37:10Speaker 2And they have cool stuff in there. They have a multi plane camera, which is just one of three in the world that was used to film animated movies like Pinocchio and Bambi. And there's an amazing Disneyland model, and it's really fun to look at. You could spend hours and hours there. And besides the the Walt Disney Family Museum, there's other really interesting Disney touches on the other side of the Bay Bridge over in Emeryville, which is the city adjacent to Oakland, is Pixar's headquarters. You can't walk through. But they do have, you know, some stuff that you can see out front. And of course, when in Oakland, you need to stop for ice cream at Fenton's Creamery, which you can see that exact version animated in the Pixar film app. I didn't know that. And the other one little aside that you had mentioned, Disney at Berkeley, the library, that's very similar to the one in Monsters University I can contest. That's true. And I'm a good old friends. I went to Berkeley and we walked through it and I was like, my God, I'm 20 years old. Look at this. This is just like the movie. It looks familiar, doesn't it? It's that's really last on on the list here. Looks like Oahu, Hawaii. Tell me more. Now. This is another vacation club outpost, so much like we talked about with the Hilton head, where you have to be a DVC member to stay. Alani is the DVC resort. But again, you can rent points or you can book remaining rooms on cash. This is an interesting resort. It's removed from Waikiki Beach. Where is all the tourists hullabaloo? This is an area called Colina, which is a little quieter, a little bit off the beaten path from Waikiki. And you can meet Disney characters here. The lines are so much shorter than meeting them in the parks. So if you want to meet Moana, you want to meet Mickey and Minnie, come do it here. And they've got giant pools and water slides, and then they've also got the Disney treats. So Disney fans loved it. You can buy that there. You can buy a spare moose Ruby in the shape of a mickey Mouse. And then, of course, if you do love toilets, you might as well head to Oahu anyway, because they've got the Dole plantation there, which is definitely a must visit for any door fans. Yeah, I've heard. It's very beautiful too, from the pictures that I've seen it Absolutely beautiful. Is it fair to say, since we're wrapping up this list here of these other Disney destinations, that you're a Disney fan yourself? Ooh, I think you got me. How did you guess? I don't know. I've been to all of these places because I'm such a personal fan. In fact, I was just at Aulani last week doing some very important research. I had to buy a Mickey shaped spam musubi just to make sure that I knew what I was talking about when I came to talk to you. Okay. And can you just tell me exactly what that is? I mean, I know you're saying the word spam, but I don't know what the next part is. Yes. Is there spam? Musubi is is a great Hawaiian classic treat. And you can buy these everywhere. You can buy them in the little mini markets like little ABC stores. And it's basically just a piece of spam and some rice and it's wrapped in seaweed and it's really tasty and those sprinkles and seasonings on it. And you can also customize these things. So if you want to get fancy, you could add some egg. You could add a little shrimp, you could add, you know, avocado. You can get fancy with a spam movie. But, you know, the fanciest for Disney fans is eating the rice in the spam in the shape of a Mickey Mouse head. Yeah. So once in a lifetime event can't be said. All right, Sally, anything else you need to add? Want to add about these Disney destinations? You know, there's so many good destinations around the U.S. and I think, you know, so many of us Disney fans go to Disneyland and go to Disney World. And we think we've seen it to the max. We've seen every corner. But there are so many other places to go travel to and experience Disney without being at a theme park. And save yourself some of those lines, too. Thank you so much, Sally. I appreciate it.  Thank you.

Julian Emanuel, Evercore ISI Chief Equity & Quantitative Strategist, expects consolidation in the streaming industry in the coming years. Greg Valliere, AGF Investments Chief US Policy Strategist, discusses the third Republican primary debate. Cameron Dawson, Newedge Wealth Chief Investment Officer, says it's too early to know if the uplift in unemployment will barrel higher into next year. Geetha Ranganathan, Bloomberg Intelligence US Media Analyst, breaks down Disney's better-than-expected 4Q earnings. Ellen Wald, Atlantic Council Senior Fellow, discusses the global oil market as crude prices remain low.Get the Bloomberg Surveillance newsletter, delivered every weekday. Sign up now: https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/surveillance    Full transcript:  I'm Tom Keene, along with Jonathan Farrow and Lisa Abramowitz. Join us each day for insight from the best and economics, geopolitics, finance and investment. Subscribe to Bloomberg Surveillance on demand on app, Spotify and anywhere you get your podcasts, and always on Bloomberg dot Com, the Bloomberg Terminal, and the Bloomberg Business App. Jitting a manuel jointed to surround a table Chief Equity just over at evercor SI jitting Good mornings here, Good morning. Have you been participating in this wonderful, beautiful thing that is an eight day winning streak. Yeah, we have, you know, several weeks ago we just felt that when you backed off of that five percent yield, And I know we've been talking about it, but it is the fact that in this world now for the last year and a half, where stocks and bonds have been positive correlated, if bond yields go down, stocks go up, and backing off of five percent was huge for the psychology. And now we've got this unexpected oil price plunge, which is even bigger for Cheryl, I'm with you. Those two points yesterday stood out for me. Break a four to fifty on a ten year break of eighty on Brent crude. At what point do these correlations start to break the other way? What brings up hot that change? Well, we are watching that very closely. And guess what, the high frequency data is really important because that chart you were talking about a few moments ago, with the unemployment rate rising from three to four to three nine in the past, when that starts to happen, it tends to snowball. But where we're going to get the initial read on that is that eight thirty jobless claims number starts edging over two hundred and fifty thousand, we get a little bit cautious. Three hundred thousand is where we know the economy is going to turn down. I'm supposed to fold in now A question on Ed Hyman's Hicksy and Islm theory and his disinflation theory into your stock babble, forget about it. I love the single sentence you have which pushes against all that malarkey by saying price is paramount. Right now, when you talk to Ed Hyman, how does a respond to you telling them your economics doesn't matter, price is paramount. I'll tell you how five weeks ago Ed Heyman started putting out in almost daily the act that gasoline lean prices started falling as the conflict was erupting. You already had the turn in gasoline prices completely, you know, devoid of real sort of prosperity with Hymen's disinflationary tendency or outright deflation in China. Look, if you look at the last fifteen years, you've had episodic times of that from again. Obviously the financial crisis is one of those times. But ultimately what it comes back to again for equity investors, for bond investors. First of all, the whole idea of getting a real return on money in this world now is actually a positive for financial assets. It's a positive for capital allocation, and long term, it's a positive for growth. And that's you know, that's part of the equity investing mindset. Do you need a long term view right now or do you just trade the short term. It's really difficult to have a long term view because of what we're talking about the inflection in the economy potentially happening. But if you take the super long term view, is that even if you get the recession that Ed's thinking we're going to get, that it's going to be mild in twenty twenty four. What you're left with is a labor market that has rebalanced. What you're left with is again a real cost of money, better capital allocation, and frankly, we've talked about this before, you have new technological developments like generative AI that is going to improve the productivity of corporate America over the long term. One of the main frustrations of this year was that pretty much everything everyone said at the beginning of the year has proven to be wrong, including that this would be the year that tech stocks would fade more meaningfully and you start to see a broadening out in the rally. Energy stocks would start to be the true leaders. You just actually moved away from an overweight and energy and are talking more about generative AI. It seems like the theme just keeps on being that the leaders will keep leading. Everything else will just have to figure out where they fit in. Well, look, again, the recession will probably, you know, to the extent that it does arrive in the next twelve months or so, rationalize some of this, but ultimately what it's going to do, and look, part of the consternation on equity investors' minds is the fact that the Russell two thousand is making new lows. Ultimately, you're going to get to a point where there will be an attractive price for the other four hundred and ninety three stocks away from the Magnificent seven, and you will get to an earnings reset. We think that's part of next year's narrative. This is the difficult question I think people have got to confront at the moment. Do I want to buy the recovery to the recession I've not had yet, given the damage we've seen in the small camps. You can pick up various places to back up the consumer discretionary story. Allines, for instance, which have come way off the peak back of the summer. Do I want to start picking up the pieces going into what could be a slow down next year. We think you need to be balanced. It's one of those things where again, given the lack of visibility into next year, what we always say, we've had a very nice run in recent weeks, and if you go back over the last year, it's been a very nice run off the October lows. You need to be comfortable with the fact that if the market comes in ten or fifteen percent, which it does in any typical year, as it did several weeks ago, that you're a buyer of the dips and whatever that asset allocation is to you. That's the kind of discipline you need to employ. Goldman speak to this as well. We've gone through their note this morning a few times. It's worth doing it again. The hard part's over. More disinflation is in store over the next year. On growth, they see limited risk of a recession, and they say this on central bank policy. Then this is a really really interesting point. An increased willingness of central banks to deliver insurance cuts it grows slows. Earlier this week, Ben later on this program of E Toro, was saying the FED put was back. Lisa and I looked at each other and almost spat out our water. The FED put is back insures cuts of growth slows. Is the old fetch story returning? No? Why are they wrong? No? Look, because there is an assumption that there is a reflex reaction to a minus GDP quarter. Thankfully we didn't see it in twenty twenty two when we had that, because if you had interrupted the rate hiking program, you wouldn't have gotten to where you are. And you can argue both sides of this case, but frankly, for US, there is a commitment, given the fact that core PCE is still solidly with a three handle, that you just can't go down that road unless it really looks like there's a severe economic downturn. And we still think there's enough savings left over so that won't be the case. Judy and awesome as a was Emmanuel have et a court joining us now to brief off the GOP debate. Last night, Gregory Vliate, US policy strategist at AGF Investments. Gregory stood on the floor of the GOP convention of two thousand and four, and it was a different Republican Party. George Bush Junior wanted a more hopeful America. What's going to be that slogan this summer for the Republicans? Well, I think they'll emphasize the economy. They'll state that Biden has not done a good job. Frankly I would disagree, but I think that they'll make it more about the economy than anything else. The really intriguing issues are abortion number one, number two. How much more involved are we going to get in Ukraine and Israel? What about the idea that they're losing elections, not doing as well in certain elections. It going to be the mix of that we just saw it can be from a year ago, November, etc. How do they start winning again? Well, I don't think you talk like Ramaswami. I think he talked himself off the boat last night. I don't see much of a future for him. Probably not much of a future for Tim Scott. So it's dwindling. You've really only got three challengers. DeSantis, who was okay last night but made a strategic error he didn't mention the governor of Iowa had endorsed him. I can't believe he didn't talk about that. And then you've got Nicky Haley. He'll stick around for a while, maybe Chris Christy, but we'll begin at twenty twenty four. I think with just two challengers to Trump, that would be DeSantis and Haley. Do you think either of them have a chance of taking Trump off the ticket? Who would either of them? Oh? No, not at all. I mean Trump would have to do something really egregious, and he's pretty much filled the role on that for the last couple of years. So no, I don't see anything, you know, barring a health issue, that will keep Trump from being the nominee. Meanwhile, President Biden is going to meet with the UAW leader today and the there's a real question of what he can do to shore up the image of bignomics, of what's happened in the economy, which some people are saying on paper doesn't look so bad, yet in practice, has a lot of people feeling like they want something different. Well, it's a good question, Liza. I'm told that within the White House, Trump Biden is angry, he feels he's done a pretty good job in the economy and gets no credit. So he's going to hit the road and try to make his case. The problem is an awful lot of Americans fear that we're not out of the woods, and there's still more inflation threats, food, gasoline still to come. Greg Valier one oh one. Folks, this is a great course to take in politics. You get it off the back of a matchbook. You can take Valier one oh one. Greg, Your value one oh one is fiscal issues at the day of the election don't matter. Are you telling me the debt and the deficit don't matter the first Tuesday of November, Well, when you look at net inter cost, you look at borrowing costs, this is becoming a major crisis for the bond market, and there's no mood in Congress whatsoever to dramatically cut the deficit. However, I think that once we get through Labor Day of this coming year, this stuff will be irrelevant. I think attitudes harden during the summer. If Trump is well ahead, he could pull us out. But I have a feeling that Biden will come back. I have a feeling that the Democrats all of a sudden are motivated because of what happened in Kentucky. Is a path of least resistance for the former president. Another tax cut that's going to be on the agenda. You're absolutely right, Tom, and I think with the Senate probably flipping, in the House probably flipping, you're going to have a climate that will be ripe for a huge argument on whether we extend the Trump tax cuts. I think we will. I think Trump will talk about tax cutting even though the deficit is enormous. Greg, I have to wonder whether this time is different. A lot of people come on the show. We'll say dysfunction in Washington, DC is the reason why yields have been flipping and flopping and going all over the place, and then they talk about a potential government shutdown and say markets won't care. Have we reached the point where market dysfunction is going to result from political dysfunction in DC in a more material way. Well, we're going to see probably another alleged crisis on November seventeenth if there's no budget. I don't think the markets will be all that concerned about it. I do worry about the credit agencies, you know, fitch S and p downgrading US debt, not just because of the size of our debt, but because things are so dysfunctional in getting a budget. Great to catch up, Greg, appreciate your input. Greg Vally. THEFJEFF investment's gone into next year, as Ed Marangi and Emmanuel. So are you a confirmed bull? Cameron? I think that given the setup into your end, we can expect some kind of Santa claus rally just because of tax loss dynamics into the end of the year. The largest weights in the index are up the most this year, which means that you don't have eager sellers to recognize tax games. This is very different than last year, where the largest weights in the index were down a lot people sold them and you effectively puked into the end of the year. What it's the proverbial puke into the end of the year? Okay, thank you? Can we say that on radio? We just did, Cameron seriously our Warner Brothers discovery yesterday. Puke as you call it. Okay, how does that handle by tax saw selling? Well? I think that it will magnify as we go into the end of the year. You look at the areas that are down the most. This is small caps, This is cyclicals, This is healthcare some of your defensives. These are the areas where people are looking for tax sace harvesting opportunities. The key point though, is that they're smaller weights in the index or they're not part of the index. So when we just look at the S and P five hundred, that could be something that supports it into end year. So help me here. Am I buying the index the S and P five hundred? And am I looking for buying opportunities in small camps? The financials, things that have struggled? What am I doing? I think that you have to look for opportunities and things that have struggled as you go into twenty twenty four, because we know that pain trades usually are reversal trades in leadership and just at the point where everybody throws in the towel and says, well, you can't own anything but the magnificent seven. These are the names that give you optionality on AI and they have the best earnings growth. Everybody crowds into them, that's typically the moment that that's when they start to lag. And so I think we have to have the imagination that other things could do well in twenty twenty four. Other than just the narrow leadership that we've had this year, the Tilson Slock of Apollo's writing questions for us this morning. This is the question he's asking in its most recent note. Everyone who's bullish on equities and lower rated credit should ask them sound where they think the labor market will be in three months. With the Fed on hold and not showing any signs of cutting anytime soon, what's your labor market bed With that in mind, we are having the ultimate debate is if we're seeing normalization or we're seeing weakening. And the challenge is that normalization is usually the gateway drug two weakening, meaning that you see a little easing that turns into a lot of easing. But we're not yet seeing definitive data yet to say that the uplift we've had in unemployment is going to barrel higher. The key thing to remember, though, the Fed itself in its SEP the Summary Economic Projections has unemployment going to four point one percent next year and they're not forecasting a recession. So that's going to be a key question of if we get that four point one percent, does that justify them easing policy? Is it okay to sort of say we don't care for now. Down the line, whatever happens will happen. In the meantime, we can dance in the head of a pin with oil prices coming off, yield coming lower, and risk appetite still available. Yeah, because if we think going into CPI next week, remember that gasoline prices are down ten percent over the month of October. That's very different over the summer months where gas prices were up a lot. It pinched consumer spending maybe a little bit at the margin. So that does create this beneficial environment. But I think it's important to remember twenty twenty two, we priced in the earnings recession. In twenty twenty three, twenty three, we priced in the earnings recovery in twenty four. What are we going to price in twenty twenty four as we looked at twenty twenty five, are we still confident that this entire economic setup can remain very strong, that unemployment won't be an issue, consumer spending can remain robust Given the lack of certainty around some of the outcomes, the potential outcomes with the economy, How nimble are you remaining How are you remaining nimble? To be able to adjust quickly. I think we have to remain completely nimble. We saw that over thet last couple of weeks where we went from deeply oversold to deeply over to getting close to being overbought. It means that technicals become really important. We can't get too lodged into narratives because narratives would have told you everything's ending back a couple of weeks ago. Be scared. Now the narratives are saying everything is fantastic. The thing is that we are at resistance when we look at technical levels forty four hundred very important for the s and P five hundred four and a half percent very important support for the tenure. How we interact with those resistance and support levels will be very indicative of the next couple of months. Speak to the people who listened to you and said, Okay, I'm really nervous, but I'm going to participate in this market and they own tech which literally on an hourly basis, has a bid right now. What's the character of that bid on the Magnificent seven. Well, it's extraordinarily strong. But then think about the difference in the setup going into twenty twenty two Magnificent seven earnings had been cut by about twenty percent over the course of the year. Now going into twenty twenty three, over the course of twenty three, Magnificent seven earnings had been revised higher by sixty seventy percent sent on average because of the better growth that they've had. So it's a much higher bar and I think that's where the discipline is is not trying to extrapolate too much of the experience of twenty three, get too crowded, and instead look for opportunities and areas that might be more left behind. You've been talking, Cameron about how difficult it is to follow the mood because it swings so massively from week to week. How much has the move that we've seen in yields underpinned your conviction that you can lean into the rally heading into your end. It certainly has helped. We've seen it play out in the valuation and now valuations are back to about eighteen and a half time's earnings. The question is is that the right valuation even given where yields are at four and a half percent, where that equity risk premium is The challenge with valuations though, is they are terrible timing tools and that they have no predictive power on a one year forward basis. So we can look at the market and say, hey, it's expensive here, expensive there, but that may not actually show up in price action for two, three, four years. And that's where that discipline of not chasing very high valuations comes in. When you have a longer holding period, you go breaking news TK on donuts? Is that where you want to go? DONI plural don't I? Yeah? Yeah, longer going far away the way a prime broker attracted a hedge fund. We can get you shares of krispy Kreme short. There's a in the East Coast, particularly in the krispy Kreme's more southern thing, and they're a different don I than what you get from Dunkin Donuts, which is, you know, there's cultures here. John, It's like it's like Greg's, but it's like American. Okay, all of a sudden, krispy Kreme nice video on radio. You are missing the making of the Magnificent. And the answer here is krispy Kreme is looking for a partnership with McDonald's. John Tower out with this and it's a mixed story of Ibada out there. But John Tower, a city group says first bite on d n ut. It's a McDonald's partnership that we may see. Do you know what you don't know? And I know this story already because Bramo shared it with me before Bramo breaking into the news industry and Fargo years and years ago for the first Crispy Kreme shop tre Tree story, true story. I covered it and people lined up. They camped out overnight to get the first Krispy krama. I went to interview that. You can't imagine that Bramo was what Bradma was like in local news, right, just get into a fluff. It was like, it's an investive piece. What are they doing with that? Money? Is unreal? Bramo and Farco, Yeah, I'm enough of a dunkin donut, which Krispy Kreme is just two sugary and sweet. Like camera doesn't help us out here, Krispy Kreamer duncan, he's never had a donut. There is nothing better than a hot, fresh Krispy Kreme donut straight from the friar. Nothing better, all right? The scripting at me in the control room shot there. Please let's make sure we're running at nine o'clock today. Look for Cameron Dawson had Krispy Creekdnie. What you need to know is it's April of twenty eleven. There was a show then Game of Thrones Winter Is Coming was the first episode. And that's where we are right now. With the screaming success in days of Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix. I'm watching it. I can't say enough about the shocking beauty of it. It is overwhelming, how it is game changing for streaming. Keitha Raganathan knows this. She's US media analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. And I would suggest Disney knows this as well. Githa boyd A's Disney need a Blue Eye Samurai. They certainly do. And that's one thing Tom that Bob Iger really emphasized yesterday. He said he is looking to reinvent the studio. Those are the words he used, and he really emphasized quality over quantity. So you spoke about how spectacular Blue Eyed summariz that's exactly what Disney is going to go after. You know, they talked about, you know, the studio having some kind of franchise fatigue. Too many TV series created for the streaming service. They're really kind of streaming down or cutting down, I would say, pairing down on a lot of the content costs. You know, Lisa was talking about where those savings are going to come from, a lot of that is them just really cutting down on content costs. So they took down content costs from thirty billion to twenty seven billion. For fiscal twenty twenty three, they're taking that down further to twenty five billion, and that is where you get that big, big free cash flow number for them as well. Eight billion dollars is what they're projecting for twenty twenty four, or sixty percent increase from this year. Now I get it, it's anime, it's animation, but the basic idea is blue Eyed Samurai is is non diversity as we could get in twenty twenty three. Is Disney moving on from the tone and temperament of the last three or four years. Is Eiger going back to something or new to something different? I think it's a it's a combination of everything, a tom because you know, he needs to go back to the drawing board. He knows that there hasn't really been a new Star Wars or a lucasfilm movie since twenty nineteen. Obviously, the Marvels is in its next kind of iteration, if you will. So there's a lot of things that he needs to do. But the biggest thing I think for them for the Disney studio, and this has kind of been a little bit shocking. And you bring up animation, and that's a really good point because a lot of their recent animated movies have actually not performed as well as you know, some of us would have expected. And the Pixar has kind of been, you know, has had kind of this string of misfires, if you will. And the studio that is really kind of giving them a run for the money is Universal with Illumination. We had, you know, you have Super Mario, you had Minions, all of these animated movies from Universal doing really really well. So Disney obviously going back to the drawing board and kind of doing a lot of rethinking and as Bob Iger said, reinventing the whole franchise. If Bob Biker was the movie is this nightmare the same quote, that's that's a great knocking well. I mean, he tried his best. And if there is you know, any person for the job, any person who can actually fix and rebuild Disney. I think it definitely is Bob Biger and he, you know, kind of delivered signature Bob Biger kind of news yesterday. You know, lots of good news, lots of nuggets of you know, lots of nuggets of good good, you know, optimistic news for investors to kind of hang on to. Obviously, there is a lot of work that remains to be done, but we do know that there are some real growth drivers for Disney. Whether it's the parks business that is seventy percent of Disney's operating income, you know, throwing out about ten billion dollars in operating profits and cash flow. So that definitely is is a huge growth pillar for the company. And then of course it is streaming and how they're kind of going to manage that whole business. You know, we know that they're in the process of consolidating Hulu. You know, the big question is how they're going to manage the esp and transition. And you know, whether that then that Disney bundle, the streaming bundle, really becomes the competitor, a true competitor to Netflix. Is rebuilding a euphemism for shutting it down in terms of streamlining certain businesses and getting off selling the rest of it. Yeah, so he seemed to actually walk back a little bit of you know, the linear TV commentary. I know we've talked a lot about ABC and some of the other networks kind of being up for sale, but he also did say that there is a huge cost opportunity when it comes to you know, those linear networks, and so they've actually, you know, the Charter deal that they recently inked was was kind of a catalyst for them kind of you know, shutting down a lot of you know, the smaller networks networks that they are that they don't consider core, and I think that's what they're going to do. They are definitely going to streamline the business. You're absolutely right, Lisa. I'm not sure when or how the sale is necessarily going to happen, but he did Eigers seem to suggest that even if a sale doesn't happen right away, there are a lot of synergies and there are a lot of cost efficiencies that they can hopefully extract over the next few months. Okay, so this one's a tough one to answer, but explore the question with us if you can. Tom mentioned who's buying. If they're selling, who's buying Where did the buyers come from? So it could be private equity. I mean we know that there have there has been interest from certain parties Byron Island, but Byron Allen was one who kind of made a bid for for you know, the ABC and some of the networks. You know, again, private equity would always is interested in, you know, the TV assets because they do. Yes, it is an industry that is in secular decline, but at the end of the day, it does throughout a lot of cash and that is valuable. So yeah, again it's a little bit of a wait and watch. I mean there have been there has been some chatter about whether the leagues would be interested in kind of going and getting a broadcast asset. I mean broadcast assets like ABC don't come up for sale very often, so you know, maybe it is something that that the league and a leak can potentially consider for reach interesting. Gaitha, appreciate the update. You'll valuable. We appreciate your time. Geithor Reconnaz and the have Bloomberg Intelligence. Ellen Wall joining us now Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of Saudi Inc. Ellen to that point, Saudi's energy minister came out and said, it has nothing to do with demand, This is just price manipulation. Demand is still very strong. What did you make of that? Well, I think that he always has a bone to pick with the as he called him, the speculators, So I'm not surprised to see him talking about how, you know, this is all a financial thing and it's all due to speculators and it's not a you know, supply demand issue. But I think, you know, obviously there's always you know, speculation in the market, and we did see a whole lot of fund managers dumping oil off the futures this past week, so I'm sure he's focused on that. But the fact remains that the market is reacting to what it thinks is lower demand from China, and whether or not that's actually true, I think remains to be seen. It's always difficult to gauge what exactly is going on in China. What the market's reacting to was news that refining margins are soft, and you know, Chinese refineries aren't making as much, and so you know they're interpreting that as weak demand. Now, how does that translate into whether China reduces its imports, and there was some indication that they are going to be reducing oil imports. In fact, one of the interesting things that we've seen is that Iranian oil exports in September and October have been lower than they were in August. They hit a big high in August, but now we're seeing declines and there's some speculation that may be due to the sanctions enforcement, but it's much more likely due to declining demand from China. And we've got Saudi y A holding a million barrels a day off the market. I do think Saudi Arabia is in the best position to be able to gauge Chinese demand, and it may be that this Chinese demand is looking a bit soft now. But you know, Abdozi's been someone is looking at the longer picture and the longer game, and he sees that that is strong well. And with great respect to your book, which is definitive, we can take these tensions at least back to the Saudi Yemeni War of nineteen thirty four. The Ibn Saud family has dealt with this for pushing one hundred years the distance to the south. Give us the modern treatment of how Riodd and Jiada look at Yemen today. Yemen is basically a thorn in their side right now. They don't like the Houthies, any group like the Houthies has Bulah Hamas. All of those groups, while well, you might think that ideologically there are similarities and matchups there, they are essentially a threat to the Saudi monarchy. The Saudi monarchy is like, you know, they're they're like the stated old you know, conservative guy who always votes the same way and always says the same thing for breakfast. You know, they're they're the status quo. And any group that's looking to change the status quo, even if there are similarities in terms of say religious extremism or religious ideology, that's seen as a threat. And what's a bit disturbing is that despite prolonged military campaigns by the Saudis and the UAE, they haven't been able to dislodge the Whoi's from Yemen. In fact, if anything, they're more entrenched. And so I do think that given the fact that the who these are at least claiming to be involved in the Israel Hamas conflict, you'll be interesting to see if the Saudis maybe use this as an excuse to really try to get them out of Yemen once and for all, or if they'll be a bit embarrassed by somebody else taking them out. And then the conservative guy, as you call Saudi Arabia their treatment of the shades of Palestine, how do you interpret that, doctor Wald? Now that that is a big question, because what we've got on one hand is King Salmon, who is nominally the king of Saudi Arabia, and he is vehemently I mean vehemently anti Israel pro Palestinian. I mean, this is a guy who thinks that, you know, the Mossad was responsible for nine to eleven and has said so, you know, in public on television. So he is a huge barrier to any kind of reprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel. That being said, his son, who's really doing most of the ruling, the day to day ruling, seems much more inclined to use rapprochemant with Israel as a way to get what he wants or what he thinks he needs from the United States. And in fact, it seemed like that was about to be a very successful deal before this latest conflict derailed all that, and I don't think that the general battle, you know, the general lines that are drawn here are going to change. But I do think, you know, if if King Solomon wasn't wasn't there, I think we'd see a much faster progression towards Saudi Israeli normalization. I don't think we're going to see quite with the UAE or Jordan has But I do think that that he that that NBS sees it as a beneficial thing or at least a really good UH tool to get other things that he needs, like support for obtaining nuclear power and military pact with the United States. Just real quick here, how does Saudi Arabia view the production in the US. It's gotten to a record level and made all of these concerns about demand. I think that they they have kind of come to terms with the fact that the US is going to produce, with the US is going to produce, and there really isn't much they can do about it. I think they were probably pretty pleased to see that there's more consolidation in the oil industry. I think that they see that as good for production and for companies who are looking at the signs of supply and demand and aren't just pumping, pumping, pumping just to stay ahead the way that we saw in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, and so I think that they see this as you know, this is where it is right now, and it's not always necessarily going to be this high. Ell in a wonderful brief, particularly those comments on Yemen. Thank you so much, Ellen Wald. Atlanta Council can't say enough about Saudi inc. It is absolutely definitive. Subscribe to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast on Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live every weekday starting at seven am Eastern Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app tune In, and the Blue Bomberg Business app. You can watch us live on Bloomberg Television and always. I'm the Bloomberg Terminal. Thanks for listening. I'm Tom Keen, and this is BloombergSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sree Kochugovindan, abrdn Senior Research Economist, breaks down the Bank of England's decision to keep rates unchanged. Greg Valliere, AGF Investments Chief US Policy Strategist, discusses the Israel-Hamas war and its political impact in Washington. Jonathan Pingle, UBS Chief US Economist, says a slowdown in the US labor market would lead to a slowing in inflation. Geetha Rananathan, Bloomberg Intelligence US Media Analyst, discusses Disney's plan to buy Comcast's stake in Hulu. Pierre Ferragu, New Street Research Head of Global Technology Infrastructure, previews Apple's earnings release.Get the Bloomberg Surveillance newsletter, delivered every weekday. 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transcript:This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Tom Keene, along with Jonathan Farrow and Lisa Abramowitz. Join us each day for insight from the best and economics, geopolitics, finance and investment. Subscribe to Bloomberg Surveillance on demand on Apple, Spotify and anywhere you get your podcasts, and always on Bloomberg dot Com, the Bloomberg Terminal and the Bloomberg Business App. What a joy to see her in London. Sree Kachigovin and joins us right now, senior research economists at Aberdeen three. I'm absolutely fascinated by how the US stands alone, how Jerome Powell yesterday stood alone with massive stimulus leading into massive real GDP. Does the United Kingdom, where Governor Bailey stands now, do they need stimulus to keep it going? I think stimulus would probably not be a good idea at this point. Really, what we want to tackle is inflation. Now. The Bank of England have a very challenging backdrop. Growth outlook is weakening, but we still have very elevated inflation pressures. Now inflation is past the peak, it has started to decelerate. However, energy costs are still quite elevated. The headline inflation is still very high. And also we have even though those multi price based effects will start to unwind over time, we still have very sticky core services and wage pressures in place. So stimulus right now would not be a good idea for the UK. Now it's not restrictive fiscal background at the moment, but further stimulus would actually not be helpful with the Here's a fun fact from the Bloomberg News story that Lucy White wrote for US. Ben Bernanke actually attended the Bank of England's meeting as an observer. It's part of his review into the UK central banks forecasting communications. And of course this comes as Bailey has faced some criticism that they didn't move quickly enough to respond to inflation. Sree, can you compare and contrast the efficacy of communication at the BAIE versus the FED. I think, as we mentioned earlier, there was a conversation about group think. There is a split within the within the Bank of England, and I think the communication has been quite clear from the various members. We've had the arguments for staying on hold, the arguments for perhaps another an additional hike, and all of those are quite consistent actually with the data that we're seeing. But it seems that on the whole we are witnessing switch towards a focus on growth and the weaker activity data and some greater faith in terms of inflation actually passed the peak and decelerating from here. So we're also seeing there. So we have a signal from the split in the vote, and we also have that signal well, very very clear in terms of rates are going to be on hold for a meaningful period of time, even if, as we expect, the economy enters a recession, rates are going to remain quite elevated. And that's quite a burden for small companies in particular who are much more sensitive to the rate cycle. They are facing a profit squeeze. There is a bit of an issue there in terms of future business investment and so there are a number of challenges there, particularly for the smaller, smaller firms. So that's something that the Bank of England are going to have to really be wary of. Yeah, credit availability for small firm is always an issue, whether it's stateside or across the pond street. When it comes to the stimulus versus austerity debate, that time was referencing how does the Bank of England's decision to keep rates on hold for a second straight meeting and warn about a possible recession, warn about the need to perhaps raise rates in the future of inflation reaccelerates. How does that restrain or limit the government's options when it comes to supporting the economy. I think the government is also very aware, and we have heard from Sunak p at the Prime Minister. We have heard that there is a focus on inflation even within the government. Yes, they do have an election coming up, but they're worried about stimulus too soon and too much stimulus too soon. So I think they're going to pair back on any measures that are going to fuel inflation. Further, I think that's also concerned from them, get every challenging decision for them, given that there is an election on the horizon. Are all the gains in the United Kingdom focused on London? I mean, I mean, is it like, you know, the dominance of Paris and France. Are all the economic gains which you have been tangible here have they been focused on the south of England? Well, there has been a big debate for a number of years with regards to the regional disparities, and that was something that for a few years there have been some focus on what are the policies that can help level up the economic outlook. However, it has been quite challenging in order to do that with the pandemic recovery from the pandemic. And I think the leveling up policies may be, you know, they're on the horizon in the future, but right now, really the focus is quite narrow. That regional disparity, unfortunately, is still very much there. Christrie, thank you so much. Cut your govid in with us with Aberdeen joining us now. On the other points in the Wars of Washington, Gregory Vellier, he's chief US Policy Strategistic AGF Investments. Greg I believe it is November, that's twelve months away from an election. Take the drama of October in our many wars and fold it into how things change twelve months before an election. How does your world change given the pending one year out election. Well, good morning time. So many unknowns. I'd say one big one is Benjamin Netanaihu. If you saw the extraordinary story in the New York Times on Monday talking about how Israel and Netanaihu were blindsided by Hamas they got totally caught off guard. There's going to be recriminations. I think that has to be looked at very carefully. There's the FED and there's this continuing fight in the House between fairly moderate Republicans and the right wing. That fight is about to resume within days, right, But you've got a right wing Speaker of the House. Now, shouldn't that restore some order in the House. One would think Scarlet wouldn't one, But I'm not quite sure about that. I think that even a handful four or five House Republicans could block this next spending bill. And there are Republicans in the House who don't want to spend money on Ukraine, as you guys know, and some lukewarm attitudes toward Israel. But the big fights still is a budget. We have a budget deadline in about two weeks and they're not close to being done. Yeah, and so we're watching that November seventeenth deadline very carefully. I want to get your take also on what the economy means for the presidential election tries. It might The White House has been selling Bidenomics, but it's not doing very well. When consumers are feeling pretty sour. What does the current FED policy mean for the economy in twenty twenty four. Well, I think there's maybe some relief among consumers that the FED didn't raise race. But I thought you and Tom a few minutes ago hit it perfectly talking about food prices. I mean, food prices are up. What did you guys say, nineteen percent cumulative? Yeah, over three years, over three years, But that leaves an awful lot of people, maybe not us, but leaves an awful lot of people discouraged that this is not improving. Yeah. What's important there, Scarlett, is the USDA with this is really good data from the US Department of Agriculture. They say that for the have nots of America, it's not third world, but thirty percent of their compensation is going to food, which means thirty percent of their conversation is not going to discretionary spending or anything else that usually supports the economy. Greg, I want to bring it back once again to FED policy in the economy in twenty twenty four because J. Powell's term expires as FED chaer in early twenty twenty six. So whoever wins the twenty four to four election, would get to pick the next FED chair. What does that mean to you? And I bring this up because if Donald Trump wins the nomination, yes he nominated Powell as fedchair, but he also nominated Judy Shelton as a FED governor. Yeah. I think if Biden wins, obviously he'll try to keep at Jerome Powell. If Trump wins, he will fire and get rid of Powell as quickly as possible, and that will I think cost some anxiety for the markets. You know, one other quick point I would make about what we could see in the next year or so that maybe is outside of the box. I go to piece this morning on Robert F. Kennedy Junior. There's a new poll out overnight from Quinnipiac showing him a twenty two percent that I was surprised. I think a lot of people were surprised to see that. And I do think that he will take away from Joe Biden, young people, independence, African Americans, environmentalists. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is not going to be the next president, but he may determine who will be. Craig Villie, thank you so much. With AGF investments, we can rip up the script with a gentleman that worked in the macroeconomic section at the FED. Jonathan Pingle joins the course with UBS, their chief US economists, John I'm sorry, I got to go here, and Julia Cornado XBMB Perry by Macro turns his way out in front of this. Are we completely misguessing the efficiency, the productivity, the technological advancement of America? Are we just flat out to pessimistic? Well, I mean it's hard to know what the expectations are, right there aren't that many people as in the weeds on productivity, you know, on the immigration rebound as Julia, and you know, give Julia a lot of props since we were at the board together a year long time ago. But I would say two things, and Sheer Powell touched on this yesterday. One is, you know, we have been seeing a pretty impressive rebound and labor supply and that's been both the combination of you know, a significant improvement and net international migration coming out of the pandemic. In addition to you know, some groups like prime age women punching out new all time highs and their labor force participation rates. And you know, we've certainly been writing about that, and Julia's done a good job as well on the productivity stuff. Though we do have to remember that productivity was incredibly weak as we went through the pandemic and immediately coming out, so we did have a fair amount of catch up to do. And when we look at sort of the longer run trends after today's data, just mathematically you are going to be a little bit above the longer run trends. So it is good news, but you're actually really still not that far from what we were seeing pre COVID. But I will say together, I think it's right. We're seeing nominal wage gains slow, and some of that is these supply side improvements and unit labor costs dropping. You know, we were forecasting a seven to ten drop. You know that is the result of the slowness we saw in average hourly earnings combined with basically five percent GDP growth in the third quarter. So that's a good supply side story. Tell me about course services. The chairman didn't talk about it much yesterday, but are we seeing a service sector disinflation to give confidence to an outright goods deflation? We are? I mean, we've had We've had some positive news on the core services over the last several months, but I would say we're sort of not out of the woods yet, right Like, you know, I think that's one of the reasons Chair Powell yesterday, you know, and Mike McKee did a great job with his you know, trying to pin the chair down on the objective versus subjective decision. But what we want to see is a little bit more slowing in the labor market in order to see more slowing in those components of inflation, because if we look at the ECI, it does look like wage gains are still a little too risk to be consistent with sustainable two percent inflation. So I do think the Chair and Mike was just saying this, they do need to get the labor market to slow here if they are going to achieve their mandate and restore price stability. All right, this is clearly a big, big week for labor market data. You had ADP employment change jolts and of course jobless claims this morning. Unit labor costs as well in productivity. We know that the UAW has come to agreements with the automakers, but if you are an union organizer and I'm thinking of the Actors Guild, for instance, that is still on strike. What is your takeaway from the flood of data that we've gotten on the labor market right now? Well, land market's still tight, right so you know, so you know, even I mean, and I don't really think you need to look much beyond the unemployment rate at three point eight percent to say, you know, the nation's at full employment and markets are tight, and you know you've got a point here where there might be some bargaining power for workers. The other interesting thing about a number of these strikes is there are a lot of non wage issues at stake. You know, you're talking about, you know, the use of AI for the actors, you're talking about, you know, the shift to electric vehicles amongst the UAW. And that's actually been sort of an interesting aspect where, you know, a lot of these labor negotiations it's not just about the wages, you know, it's really also about sort of these changing industry dynamics that they want to protect their workers from. So how does that show up in the data, How does that show up in the economy in what's measurable, Well, we should definitely see the impact of the UAW strike tomorrow. In tomorrow's data, you know, the BLS released their strike report. You know, between the strikes the Big Three and Mac Trucks, that should be about a thirty thousand job reduction in motor vehicle and parts assemblies employment. You'll see it in Table B and B one of the employment situation release. So we should definitely see that way on the employer report tomorrow, but that'll rebound in the subsequent in the subsequent report. And I think the bigger picture is that you have put in place for some of these contracts, you know, a return to things like you know, cost of living adjustments, et cetera. So this should generally mean for these workers somewhat firmer wage gains over the next few years than would have otherwise been the case. Jonathan Tingle, thank you for the brief, particularly there quickly on advancing productivity is with UBS. I love saying this the Union Bank of Switzerland. We're going to get complicated here and straighten this out. Hulu being taken out by Disney. Brian robertson Comcast unloading the Dogkeetha Ranganathen of Bloomberg Intelligence is truly encyclopedic on this near nine billion dollar that transaction. Getha, I'm lost here. Is Comcast happy today that they unloaded the stock or is this the deal of a lifetime for mister Eiger? So this is this is, as you just pointed out on this is a pretty complicated transaction. All that we got yesterday was that Disney is definitely buying out comcast thirty three percent stake. So Disney already owns two thirds of Hulu, so we know for certain that Comcast is offloading it who Disney is buying it? Now the biggest question here is going to be price. So we know the floor value was set at twenty seven billion. Disney actually came out yes, they're saying that they do expect to make that initial payment of you know, eight it's actually nine billion minus some capital calls, which which is why you get the eight point six billion. But really the point is going to be how much greater than twenty seven billion is the valuation going to be? And that is where all of the complexity is going to arise over the next few months. I mean, John Pharaoh is addicted to Hulu. He's just you know, he like binge watches Love Island USA and the rest of it. GITHA doesn't matter who watches this stuff in this transaction or is this just people distant from what we watch every day? I mean, Hulu has forty eight million subscribers some so it is a very very successful streaming service. You're absolutely right. It has a very deep catalog of classics. It has all of us Keith, You're not going to sell surveillances audience. The Love Island USA is a classic. Continue well, it has you know, it has a lot of the must watch shows, right you brought up the Bear Only Murders in the Building is show. It has a lot of shows that come up from broadcast TV, so it's a great catch up service. And it also has kind of this live Hulu Plus live option as well. So there are a lot of different flavors that it offers. But I think the biggest thing for Disney is really the ad component of it. If there is any streaming service out there that has got advertising right, it is Hulu. We know that Netflix is struggling with that right now, so is Disney Plus. So are a lot of the established services. Amazon is looking to bring an advertising service. Hulu is the one established brand already bringing in about three three and a half billion dollars in AD revenue. So that infrastructure is a gold mine and is super valuable to Disney and for that reason, Hulu is one of the few profitable streamers. Netflix of course another profitable streamer here. But what is it about the ad packaging that Hulu has figured out. As a consumer of Hulu, it's really frustrating to see the same Tom Brady hurts commercial over and over again. No, you're absolutely right, But at the same time, I mean, this is a company, you know, obviously they have They are the ones that have ads, that have had ads on now for the longest period of time. They've built all these different they've built very a very very robust AD stack, and they've also kind of made all these different you know, relationships with advertisers. Of course, you have the larger Disney brand as well at work there, but that is something where they've really been able to crack the code. I mean, Hulu is one service where you have majority of you know, the consumers on the on the ads supported option, which is what has made it such, you know, so successful in what it's set out to do. Disney says it has enough cash and credit to buy Hulu, whereas Comcasts will be using the proceeds to boost its accelerate its stock repurchase program. When this financial transaction is completed, does it move the needle at all for either Disney or Comcast stock. I think it definitely moves the needle for Disney because this removes a key overhang. Remember, there are so many strategic questions that are still kind of pending for Barb Biger, whether it's the future of ESPN, whether it's the sale of the ABC network, and so, you know, kind of just closing this deal with Hulu and then integrating it with Disney Plus, I think just removes a key overhang for the stock. Five years out, do they mate. Do you see Hulu combined with Disney Plus to really take on Netflix as a combined adult in kids' entity. Absolutely, I think that is what the plan is. I mean, at the end of the day, they are looking to get synergies across the board in their streaming product because Disney Plus is still losing money. It is still going to lose about two and a half three billion dollars this year. But I think when you combine this we're looking at savings of at least one one and a half billion dollars. I think it's definitely going to accelerate streaming crafitability for Disney. Synergy to me means rebundling, So you're going to have to pay some big, heftier price to get all these different channels or streamers into twenty. That's what Paul Sweeney would say as well. What I'm fascinated by is when we're all said and done with this. I mean, there's Hulu and there's Disney Plus, and they're going to merge and they're gonna take on Netflix. Keitha, do you see a true duopoly out there? Is that where streaming is heading? It definitely is heading there, Tom, There's no doubt about it. I mean Netflix is far ahead of the competition. They have almost two hundred and fifty million subscribers. We do see them getting to three hundred million over you know, maybe the next few years. But yes, this is kind of very much turning into you know, Netflix versus Disney versus most probably Amazon. So yeah, maybe a tryal Max HBO. Yeah, that's a tough one, you know, Hbo Max. You know, she's got to be a second tier service, second tier look at it. She's just like, Wow, you know what's so bad about that? And this goes, this goes with Discovery Plus and Max and all that is. You know where am I going to see ninety day fiance? I know you're addicted to it. If it doesn't work, O Githa ruganof and thank you so much. I think I learned something there. Pierre Farragu wrote the Black Books for Bernstein and Technology for years. Yes, he's got a fancy title Global Technology Infrastructure at New Street, but the answer is once and forever he will always own the Black Books over at Alliance Bernstein Peer. Thank you, Pierre, Thank you so much for joining us. And you have been cautious on Apple. Is now a time to buy the shares? After the lassitude that we've seen over the last twelve months. I would have liked to say yes, but unfortunately, and the reason why I would have liked to say yes is because sentiment is very very low on the name. You know, sixty percent by ratings and forty percent sale and a neutral rating for that name. It's very very It's as low as can be, I would say. So we've had like a very slow yeer. You know, three after in a row in negative growth, we're getting back to politive growth probably on the guide, but it's just because we're hitting like the the easier compare now and so that slowdown, like the stock reacted relatively well to that slowdown. If you look at the Apple stock, it roughly tracked the NASDAK. So not much happened on the stock. And the reason why you know I wouldn't jump on board now is first not a significant pullback so valuation. You're still paying like a hefty premium for our early It's partly justified, of course, for the quality of the franchise. But you know what happens next that really creates a surprise and gets the stock to work. From here, the high kinmentalist the harder matter pere single digit revenue growth. So I went back to the pandemic and basically sales are up forty seven percent from twenty nineteen, but the free cares flow generation after that is up seventy one percent. In your caution, are you suggesting that that formula they have of operating leverage, of generating ebit, of generating free cash flow is now broken? Given single digit revenue growth. No, I think it still works. But you know, of five percent revenue growth, you don't you don't generate as much free castural growth. So the way I like to think about it is out of like you know, between three and five percent revenue growth apper it can generate you know, you know, above five percent, like six seven percent earnings DIVIDI and free casual growth on a sustainable basis through like systematic buyback, through operating leverages that there are. So there is definitely a huge amount of quality there and a very strong benitry as you just mentioned. So all that is worth su premium. When you look at Apple today, it's straight on twenty seven times, you know, for for our earnings status and plus names who grow between five and ten percent anum, the overall economics are treading on like twenty two times, So you have a significant premium. So you won't have like a evaluation surprise out of this very healthy, very high quality model. And so when you own the Stoke today, you have to to believe this premium is going to remain, which I think is fine, but you can't expect like a sudden jump and a sudden increase in valuation multiple unless you have a new growth story, and that's where it's kind of difficult to expect that to cor right. The China part of the equation is not a growth story for Apple right now. How is May sixty pro getting a lot of attention kind of stealing the thunder in many ways? And Apple bears will always point to the China demand for iPhone fifteen as a reason to not be optimistic. How does Tim Cook frame the negative headlines that are hitting Apple out of China, whether it's the sixty pro or whether it's Beijing's ban of using foreign phones for government workers or stayed owned enterprises. Yeah, so I think it's a very good question. It's a source of concern. Interestingly, I don't think it's going to materialize that quickly because like the new Qua Way phone is really like in early innings, you know, they probably don't have a strong case to be that competitive against the iPhone. But it's true that you know, in this junk you mentioned since twoenty and twenty term, a lot of that was like what we're getting out of the picture in China and Apple really like gaining about twenty million XI units iPhone units combined with an increase in a spit and so that part of the business I think is true is kind of a trick over the next couple of years. Because China, China might be able to put together alternative to the AFO, the aphone remained like an exceptional product. You know, this is the only phone at a string animeter manufacturing a note for the main shift exceptional quality, exceptional like integrated software and hardware that there are. So I wouldn't say the Chinese are going to create the fund that can compete with the iPhone, but we know that in the past about twenty million funds we are selling at Huawei, and when Huawei dies appeared that market seem to have moved straight into Apple's hands. I see, and that's that's a concern of course. So how about Apple and AI? I mean, Apple was kind of left behind when Chat, GPT and all the other AI tools you know, took over the zeitgeist. I know Apple's working on things with relaated relative to Siri, and how can incorporate more generative AI into its products? Is this something that has reached a point where investors can can model it? No, So I think on the business model of Apple, you know, with making all its profits from selling hardware and then selling like mostly subscription services over this hardware, Like you know, the kind of like magical one trick where you can chart like thirty dollars a months for a generative AI based services that does doesn't really exist. The way I see it is that for Apple, generative are is going to be more of a defensive move. Siria has never been exceptionally impressive in terms of what it can achieve in terms of voice recognition and user user service. Apoba is going to continue to do their best to enhance the overall user experience with generative AI, But I don't see that as like as a revenue enhancement for them as it could be for like a Microsoft or Google and metal and advertising and things like that. Heard you just to finish here, is the Apple such a animal like you were mugged by your kids to go out and buy more toys like bram or like food like King. I mean you're on the same game. Are you suggesting that this is a stock that treads water for five years or are you actually looking for a diminished share price? So that's I think from from here over the next five years, I think that's a stock that can compound with its earnings power or its dividend power, so you know, it can compound like in single digits, maybe high single digits, so it's not it's not too bad for a very high quality name. And then I would look at buying it only if there is a bit of a dislocation at some point, like a loss in confidence if this quality I see that Apple wasn't there all the time. And so if you see like a weakness coming out of China or things like that, and if the stock is hurt by that, I think I would be I would be baking to revisit and look at, you know, getting into the name at a more attractive evaluation because when you're talking, companding and valuation is almost everything, because that's that's what drives, you know, your ability to buy back your stock more efficiently and things like that. So I really think you need a lower melteaper to make Apple compelling, like you know, single legy companding opportunity, and then a kind of like a breakthrough opportunity, you know, an opportunity to increase prices, to increase in clevolume, to launch a new products. Difficult to see that on the horizon. To be honest, Pierre, thank you for the brief peer fargu for some real Apple caution. They're different than the fanboys that so many people speak of. Subscribe to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live every weekday starting at seven am Eastern Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can watch us live on Bloomberg Television and always on the Bloomberg terminal. Thanks for listening. I'm Tim Keane and this is Blumber HmSee 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Details are a little fuzzy, but one thing is clear: if Disney doesn't get the guest experience right in all this talk about big expansion plans they risk alienating their existing core group and the 700 million new guests they're targeting.Disney's Global Parks Expansion Plans Sound Great, But Details are Lacking and there are some Risks In the last episode, we discussed the potential future developments for Disneyland and, as if on cue, Bob Iger and Disney executives shared a little more this week about the Disney Company's future park investments around the globe. Here's what we know and what it may mean for you, the Disney traveler.The Disney Company is working on plans to increase the timing and investments in Parks, Experiences and Products globally. They plan to almost double the spend over the next 10 years to roughly $60 billion, including both American and international parks and Disney Cruise Line (not to mention DVC).Disney CEO Bob Iger and Disney Parks, Experiences and Products Chairman Josh D'Amaro met with Wall Street analysts and investors at Disney World to discuss how they plan to invest in experiences that leverage the ever-growing library of Disney stories.Which Disney Stories Will Come to Life?Not unlike Destination D23, this presentation was a lot of talking with little detail. Disney does plan to fuel future growth with stories that haven't had a significant presence in parks. We know that Frozen-themed lands are coming to Hong Kong Disneyland, Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris and Tokyo Disney Resort, and that a Zootopia-themed land is coming to Shanghai Disney Resort. But Disney specifically stated it will explore even more characters and franchises, including some they've never done before.“We have a wealth of untapped stories to bring to life across our business,” said D'Amaro. “Frozen, one of the most successful and popular animated franchises of all time, could have a presence at the Disneyland Resort. Wakanda has yet to be brought to life. The world of Coco is just waiting to be explored. There's a lot of storytelling opportunity.”No Shortage of Park Space for Disney to BuildIn a shot likely aimed at Universal, Josh D'Amaro said “We stand alone when it comes to scale and while our scale is impressive, we have no shortage of space or regions of the world in which to tell new stories.”Disney Parks has over 1,000 acres of land for possible future development to expand theme park space across its existing sites – the equivalent of about seven new Disneyland Parks.Focusing on Converting Disney Fans into Disney TravelersFor every park visitor today there are 10 other Disney consumers who've never visited a park. So DIsney has a plan to convert those 700 million Disney fans to become park guests. That's a lot of people in Disney Parks.This sounds great if you're a Disney exec, but could prove to be a nightmare for Disney travelers who sometimes have to navigate parks that are already over crowded. How they do this is critical.“Ultimately what is most important to us is the relationship that we have with every guest,” said D'Amaro. “Guests can spend a day with us at our Parks, a week with us on a Cruise, or the rest of their lives with us through Disney Vacation Club membership.”What Disney needs to consider is that every guest includes existing loyal Disney travelers. It will be a balancing act to bring in that many more new visitors, without disrupting the experience for everyone (and that includes convoluted tech processes for just about everything).Having enough hotel space is critical to making this vision work. While they did not mention hotels, they did talk about Disney Vacation Club (DVC). The DVC expansion strategy is currently to have a thousand new "keys" (aka DVC rooms) coming on board by the end of 2024. That's a lot of new DVC members.  340 DVC rooms came online with the opening of DVC Disneyland Hotel in September and  there will be approximately 360 Fort Wilderness cabins opening in 2024,  plus approximately 270 new Polynesian Villas also in 2024. Having every possible guest become a DVC member is clearly a "key" strategy for Disney.So what does that mean for the future of Disney travel and the management of crowd levels and an overall enjoyable experience? Only time will tell. For now let's focus on the positive fact that somehow somewhere, there will be a new park or parks at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.Thank You for Listening to the Disney Travel PodcastThank you very much for listening to this episode, Amelia and I hope that you enjoyed it. If you did, we would be very grateful if you could rate, review and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts/iTunes (or on whichever app you choose to listen). A brief review about what you liked most about an episode truly helps to keep the show going by exposing it to new listeners. We look forward to continue producing new episodes each week.Sharing the podcast with your friends and on social media is also extremely helpful and very much appreciated.Contact 1923 Main StreetThank you for listening to the Disney Travel News Podcast at 1923MainStreet.com. As always, we love to get feedback and questions from our listeners and to hear your suggestions and ideas for future episodes.Please be sure to follow along on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook.Thank you for listening and have a magical day!Mike Belobradic and Amelia Belobradic--Media provided by Jamendo

I'm Patricia O'Connell for This is Capitalism. Today I'm talking with Brian Lipton, who is the Chief Theater Critic for Cititour.com and the former editor-in-chief and currently a contributing editor to TheaterMania.com. He is going to take us behind the scenes at Broadway and give us a little bit of a look at what's going on with Broadway, the return to Broadway for both actors and theatergoers. Key Takeaways:   [:29] Patricia O'Connell introduces Brian Lipton, a theater critic for Cititour.com and contributing editor to TheaterMania.com, and welcomes him to This is Capitalism. [1:01] What does the closing of Phantom mean after 35 years? Is it just time? It has made its money back so many times that its lead producer, Cameron Mackintosh, could run it as long as he wanted to. With its closing notice, its grosses have soared to their highest in years. Winter is not the tourist season, and COVID-19 is still a factor. [3:01] All Broadway shows are capitalized, which is really the amount of money it takes to put the show on from start to finish: rehearsals, scenery, rent, and things up until day one. For a large musical now, $15 to $25 million is not an unusual capitalization. You have to make that money back during the run to get a profit. [3:38] Then you have the weekly running costs. The set's already done, but you still have to pay rent, actors, and union people every week, and make that money back. For a musical like Phantom, that's estimated to be in the $750,000 to $1 million range because Phantom is a very elaborate show to make every week just to break even. [4:17] If you're doing a limited run, it's often built in that you need to be running at pure capacity. Into the Woods is still at the St. James, but it was originally scheduled for an eight-week run, and the only way that could've made money at eight weeks is if, for eight weeks it ran 100 percent. It did come close to that, but it's no longer coming close. [4:45] The longer the run goes on, sometimes the less you have to make that 100 percent. But you can't do badly; you have to still pack a fair amount of the house at full-price tickets if you're going to meet your running costs. And the minute you don't do that, you run the risk of being in the red. [5:05] Discounting tickets is a major factor. If you're selling 1,000 seats at $60 or $70, you're making $700,000 a week instead of $2 million a week. The Music Man doesn't discount, so it is taking in over $3 million every week. That will help it to be profitable by the time it closes. If they discounted by 50 percent, they wouldn't have a chance. [5:51] The Music Man had the option of running after Hugh Jackman decided to leave. And he is staying a few weeks past his contract. This has been done before when you have a star who is so powerful. Maybe the wisest business move, even if you could still make money — it's an expensive show with a large cast — is to take the money and go. [6:23] Hugh Jackman is one of those rare people who is a true movie star and a true theater star even though he has only been on Broadway three or four times, most notably, of course, in The Boy from Oz, his big Broadway debut. But he has created a huge following. Some people go back to see him four to six times. [7:04] There are shows that have always done stunt casting. You'll see, for example, Pamela Anderson doing Chicago. She was quite good. But more to the point, she brought in business. She had the highest grosses for Chicago in many months, if not years. And that was a perfect example of the right way to do stunt casting. [8:08] A lot of Broadway will be dominated, especially straight plays maybe more than musicals, by star casting, whether it's stunt casting or not. In a lot of cases, they're going to look for that star power to motivate the box office. [8:27] Now conversely, the musical, Some Like It Hot, stars Christian Borle, Adrianna Hicks, and J. Harrison Ghee, who, their talents notwithstanding, are not known stars. They are banking on the property and the careers of Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman, who wrote the score. They have Tonys for Hairspray and they're very well known. [9:00] Brian doesn't think we're going to see a lot of truly original work on Broadway for a while. Everything will be based on a movie or a book or is a revival of a famous play. Theater that comes from scratch is few and far between. [9:21] This '22 to '23 will be the first “normal” Broadway theater season that we've had in several years now. I mean the 2019 to 2020 season got cut short, of course, because of Covid. What we're seeing now is a lot of flux. [9:42] This is a very unusual year in that a number of shows opened in December, including one, The Collaboration. It's an imagined conversation between Andy Warhol and Jean-Paul Basquiat. It's also being filmed simultaneously and it's coming in for a limited run. By the end of 2022, Broadway will be surprisingly full. [10:12] But January will bring the closing of Beetlejuice, after eight months. A Strange Loop, which won the Tony in 2022, for Best Musical, is closing on January fifteenth, which will make it, depending on how you count things, either the shortest or the third-shortest running Best Musical ever. There are also some limited runs now. [10:43] Phantom closes in February. But spring is usually the more prominent season than fall. Again, better weather, maybe more tourists, and closer to Tony time. Almost all of the big musical houses, The Winter Garden, the Marquis, and the St. James, are vacant for the spring. Brian wonders if the producers are hedging their bets. [11:20] Back to the Future, for example, is the kind of show that would probably have to take a million to a million-and-a-half every week just to be in break-even territory. [11:31] There is a symbiotic relationship between the New York City economy and Broadway. In the last full theater season, 2018 to 2019, Broadway ticket sales were $1.8 billion. That is more than the ten major league sporting teams in the New York City area, which is staggering, because what's more popular, sports or Broadway? [12:05] Can Broadway rely on locals? This fall, Broadway is doing surprisingly well without a huge tourist influx. There is a very strong local audience — New York City and the tri-state area, that will come to Broadway for something they want to see. The tourists augment locals in any season and are most important in spring and summer. [12:53] If we looked at a forecast and said that nobody is coming in the summer of 2023, that may be why spring producers are hedging their bet. You're never going to be able to run big, expensive shows without the tourist base. You can run Laura Linney for 16 weeks, and it's probably not a big deal because that's not what the tourists flock to. [13:37] When the tourists come, they want to see musicals. Broadway has some very long-running musicals like Hamilton, that's still bringing in insane amounts of money, Lion King, that's doing super well, and Wicked, that's still close to $2 million a week. They're there for the tourists. [14:01] A lot of tourists only come to New York once in their life and the one time they're coming they want to see Hamilton, The Lion King, and Wicked — the big, long-running shows. They don't necessarily want to see the hot, new show. Book of Mormon is running still on tourists. Chicago has run this long because tourists go see it. [14:33] What show will be the next “Phantom”? Chicago and Lion King, which opened in 1997, have run for 25 years. Will they run another ten? Lion King might. Its enduring popularity is because it is child-driven while pleasing to adults. There are always children being born. So Disney may have a chance to break the Broadway record. [15:27] Nobody would've bet on Chicago running 25 years. Chicago has the advantage of having made its money back so many times that its producers, led by Barry and Fran Weissler, if they want to just do this for the sake of doing it, they can run it. [15:34] Chicago is a very minimalist show; its running costs are very small, probably half a million or less. And so all you need to do is break that every week, give or take, and you can keep running. So those two have the chance to be the new Phantom. [15:55] We've seen recent revivals of the King & I, Carousel, Oklahoma, My Fair Lady; and South Pacific. How many of the great classic musicals are there left to recycle? The Sound of Music hasn't had a major Broadway production in around 25 years. So Brian won't be shocked if that comes down the pike. [16:35] We may be getting revivals featuring people of color or other non-traditional castings. There's a buzz for the first real revival ever of Kiss of the Spider Woman, which provides roles for three Latinx performers. Chita Rivera originated it but she was the only Latinx lead of the original threesome – we could easily have a revival of that. [17:14] All of the Lomans in Death of a Salesman, the five family members, are Black. The rest of the characters, who were always white, have remained white, which gives the play another dimension because we see interracial relationships and how that plays into the text. [17:40] There may be a way to breathe new life into “old shows” or revivals and bring new life to them in an interesting spin. Death of a Salesman is color-conscious casting. You know the Lomans are Black even though they have not changed the text. In the more popular color-blind casting, you're not supposed to think about their color at all. [18:16] There are producers that are in this for the glory and they'll produce things so they can get their Tony award. And there is the larger group of producers who treat theater as show business, not show art. They want to make money. If a particular type of play is not making money, you're not getting more of it. That's how this works. [18:45] If Brian could produce any show he wanted, with any star, in the world of show business, he would produce Audra McDonald in anything she wanted to do: Gypsy, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd. Audra McDonald and Stephen Sondheim are probably Brian's dream combination. [19:39] Patricia thanks Brian Lipton for joining us today on This is Capitalism and asks him to give our regards to Broadway!   Mentioned in This Episode: This is Capitalism Brian Scott Lipton Cititour.com TheaterMania.com Phantom of the Opera The Music Man The Boy from Oz Chicago Into the Woods Some Like it Hot The Collaboration Hairspray Back to the Future The Musical Hamilton The Lion King Wicked Beetlejuice the Musical A Strange Loop the Musical The King & I Carousel Oklahoma My Fair Lady South Pacific

Foodie Guide to Disney Holiday Gingerbread Treats and Displays 2022If you've ever been to Disneyland or Walt Disney World during the holidays, you know that the sights and smells of Disney gingerbread displays are the true showstopper. So Disney pastry teams have been hard at work bringing gingerbread holiday traditions to life for 2022. Here is everything you need to know about Disney Christmas gingerbread for this holiday season.At Walt Disney WorldAs always there are multiple gingerbread displays to discover at Disney resort hotels. The biggest and most famous of all is the gingerbread house at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. This life size gingerbread creation features clouds of cinnamon smoke puffing out of its chimney. The gingerbread for this storybook gingerbread house is made from a classic Austrian recipe. The Grand Floridian gingerbread house decked out with white chocolate, candy canes, edible snowflakes, sugar poinsettias, and 25 hidden Mickeys! On the porches surrounding the house, you'll find an 85-pound chocolate Santa, nutcrackers, toy soldiers, and snowmen that have all been hand-painted by the Grand Floridian Bakery team.This year, for the 50th Anniversary celebration at Walt Disney World Resort, the gingerbread displays feature extra colors and accents inspired by the signature EARidescent look. And of course, in true Disney style, you can even get limited edition pins, mugs, holiday ornaments, and treats! Here's what you can buy at the Grand Floridian Gingerbread House: Freshly baked, homemade Gingerbread Mickeys and Shingles, Stollen Bread, Brownie Christmas Tree, and Chocolate Peppermint Bark House-made Gingerbread Ornaments and Gingerbread Houses New items include Gingerbread Latte Whoopie Pie and Hot Cocoa Bombs There are assorted Gingerbread Cookie Bags, Marshmallow Pops, and a Caramel Pecan Fudge Bar There are also gluten-friendly, plant-based, and no-sugar-added treats The Grand Floridian Combo Box features assorted fan favorite treats, including the Chocolate Mickey Ornament, which is exclusive to the Combo Box Shop for Grand Floridian Gingerbread Bakery shirts and more merchandise.At Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge, a Life-sized Baby Gingerbread Giraffe and a Gingerbread Baby Zebra will appear (November 23). Starting December 6, you can even purchase a Gingeraffe Cookie to enjoy! At Disney's Beach Club Resort, a gingerbread holiday classic has returned. Since 1999, this resort has been home to the life-sized carousel (and it actually turns). This carousel and its horses are created with chocolate, sugar, and fondant along with hand-painted characters and hand-crafted gingerbread shingles and snowflakes decorating the display. What makes this year extra special is that all the horses will celebrate a different Disney princess.  Don't worry, there are limited edition pins, mugs, holiday ornaments and treats including: Signature Stollen Bread Candied Pecans (Plant-based) Trio of Fudge Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Snowman Crispy Rice Treat Chocolate Mickey Cookie (New)  Peppermint Bark Gingerbread Shingle Chocolate Gingerbread Cookie (Gluten-Friendly) Gingerbread Cookie (Gluten-Friendly) Nearby at Disney's BoardWalk Inn their classic gingerbread creation returns on November 17. It's a miniature, edible version of the BoardWalk Deli. Treats you can buy here include: Mickey and Minnie Sugar Cookies BoardWalk Mickey Sugar Cookie (New)  Giant Gingerbread Mickey Cookie (New)  Gluten-Friendly & Plant-based Gingerbread Mickey Cookie Artisan Peppermint Marshmallows (New)  Carnival Bark (New)  Gingerbread Frost Cocktail At Disney's Contemporary Resort the bakery team is back for its 11th year creating their holiday gingerbread display. It arrives on November 11 at 11:00 a.m. The 50th Anniversary Themed Castle Display is a Mary Blair-inspired castle designed by Walt Disney Imagineers and will feature a brand-new 50thanniversary overlay… and 11 hidden 5-legged goats! Don't forget to check for the limited-edition pins, mugs, and holiday ornaments to remember the season. Treats at the Contemporary include: 50th Anniversary Gingerbread Castle Brick (New) Family Tradition Cookie Box featuring a Coconut Macaron from Chef Jeff's family, a Sugar Cookie from Chef Kelly's family, a Butterball from Chef Amber's family, and a Kitchen Sink Cookie representing all the Cast in the Bakery coming together to bring this display back! (New)  Chocolate Peppermint Cookie Linzer Cookie Gluten-friendly 5-Legged Goat Sugar Cookie (New) Dark Chocolate Peppermint Holiday Bar (New) Hot Cocoa Bombs (New)  Frozen drinks with optional alcohol floaters:  Frozen Coquito with a rum floater Frozen Hot Chocolate with peppermint schnapps Frozen Apple Cider with a fireball floater And there's more:·       At several spots across all resorts there's a new Gingerbread Martini with Absolut Elyx Vodka, Rumchata Cream Liqueur, and gingerbread spice featuring a rim of gingerbread, freshly baked in the Resort Bakery. It's the perfect blend of sugar, spice, and everything nice. You'll find this holiday drink at the Grand Floridian Café, Cítricos, and Enchanted Rose at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, Boma: Flavors of Africa and Sanaa at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge, Chef Mickey's and Outer Rim at Disney's Contemporary Resort, and dinner at Cape May Café at Disney's Beach Club Resort.·       Also returning this year are pin signings with Disney pastry chefs! Dates and times will vary by resort.At the Disney World Parks·       The American Adventure at EPCOT will have a display beginning November 25. This unique display recreates classic monuments in America and EPCOT with gingerbread versions of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, The American Adventure building with Regal Eagle Smokehouse: Craft Drafts & Barbecue, and a Festival Kiosk.·       The gingerbread displays are not just found on land – they're also taking to the high seas with the Disney Cruise Line fleet! All five ships will continue the yearly tradition of having the pastry teams onboard build a unique atrium display on the ships. The Disney Wish will join for its inaugural holiday season with an 8-foot-tall, eight-layer masterpiece. Each gingerbread house is unique for each ship and the Disney pastry teams compete to see which Disney ship has the best house!At DisneylandInside the Haunted Mansion, Disneyland guests will uncover the Haunted Mansion Gingerbread House. The pastry team takes over 20 days to bring this nearly 300-pound creation with three moving elements to life. Starting November 14, Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa will be home once again to one of its best holiday traditions – the “Grand” Gingerbread House. This giant gingerbread replica of the hotel is a holiday highlight and a must-see in the lobby. Standing 7 feet tall and 12 feet wide, the structure is created from more than 600 pounds of gingerbread, 600 pounds of powdered sugar, 250 pounds of fondant, 1 pound of pixie dust, and features 25 hidden Mickeys!After taking in the display, you can buy a Limited-Edition Snow Globe Pin featuring Chip ‘n Dale or stop by the GHC Holiday Cart to get holiday treats, including: Mickey Gingerbread Poinsettia Cookie Snowman Cookie Christmas Cookie Hanukkah Cookie Holiday Cookie Box Assorted Macarons (New)  Kwanzaa Sweet Potato Loaf (New)  New Year's Cookie (New)  Rice Krispie Hot Chocolate Hot Apple Cider (Available with Bailey's Irish Cream, Captain Morgan, Grand Marnier, or Rumchata) Waffle Shot (Available with milk, low-fat milk, chocolate milk, or eggnog)  Waffle Shot (Available with Bailey's Irish Cream, Captain Morgan, Grand Marnier, Rumchata, Amaretto, Butterscotch Schnapps, Rumple Minze, Crown Royal Apple, Skrewball Whiskey, Fireball Whiskey, Louis the 13th)  Thank You for Listening to the Disney Travel PodcastThank you very much for listening to this episode, Amelia and I hope that you enjoyed it. If you did, we would be very grateful if you could rate, review and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts/iTunes (or on whichever app you choose to listen). A brief review about what you liked most about an episode truly helps to keep the show going by exposing it to new listeners. We look forward to continue producing new episodes each week.Sharing the podcast with your friends and on social media is also extremely helpful and very much appreciated.Shop 1923 Main StreetFeel free to visit our 1923 Main Street® Disney merchandise shop where we have hundreds of unique and original Disney-inspired t-shirts, leggings, clothing, mugs, phone cases and much more. You'll find everything from 1923 Main Street logo merchandise to custom created authentic Disney-inspired originals, including lots of great patterns for leggings and other items.Contact 1923 Main StreetThank you for listening to the Disney Travel News Podcast at 1923MainStreet.com. As always, we love to get feedback and questions from our listeners and to hear your suggestions and ideas for future episodes.Please be sure to follow along on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook.Thank you for listening and have a magical day!Mike Belobradic and Amelia Belobradic--Media provided by Jamendo

Episode 140 - Ways that Disney Brought us Together! Ways that Disney Brought us Together! Hey everyone, I'm Mike, she's Sophie, that's Brenda, and and he's Grogu, and we're On the Road with Mickey! This is episode 140 for October 3, 2022, and today our feature topic is Ways that Disney Brought us Together! Grab your favorite beverage, sit back, and relax, and tell us in the comments below what you think! Here's the rundown of what we talked about: Cheddar from the Big CheeseBrenda: Starting January 4, 2023 at Disney's Hollywood Studios, and January 9, 2023 at the Magic Kingdom, Disney After Hours events are returning! These are specially-ticketed events that allow you to enjoy the WDW theme park for an extra 3 hours, with snacks and treats included in the price, and lower crowds for catching all of your favorite attractions.Sophie: The lineup of narrators for the Epcot Candlelight Processional has been released. There are a few days that are still TBD, but I can tell you that for our day, December 3rd, we will have Whoopi Goldberg as our narrator!Mike: Our thoughts and prayers are with all of you in the path of Hurricane Ian. We are recording prior to the arrival of the hurricane, but the release date is after it is set to have moved through, so just know we are praying for all of you for safety, low property damage, and safe travels if you are moving somewhere else for the storm.Connect with us! Here's how: Facebook: https://facebook.ontheroadwithmickey.comFacebook Group: https://facebookgroup.ontheroadwithmickey.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/OntheRoadwithMickeyInstagram: On the Road with MickeyEmail: info@ontheroadwithmickey.comFeature Topic: Ways that Disney Brought us Together!Brenda: Her Momma first introduced her to DisneySophie: Daddy and Mommy introduced her to Disney. You could say that she was born into it.Mike: My Grandparents first took me to Disney.Listener Feedback:Pixie Denise had this to share with us: “I think my experience may be adjacent to your topic. I never experienced a family vacation as a child. When my youngest was 2 in 2015 we took our first family vacation. My girls have celiac disease and are on special diets. My son is hearing impaired. For the first time in my life we went somewhere (WDW) and I experienced pure magic and frustration free vacationing from the magic and ease of getting accommodations for their dietary needs with little effort. From then on it became our go to family vacation because once we entered the Disney bubble we were truly able to relax and spend time together as a family.”Pixie Stephanie had this to share as well: “I think this is wonderful! My dad definitely gave me my start! We went to Disney every single year if we could. He continued the tradition after Addy came along. We go every year at Christmas now. We really feel like he is with us when we are there . Now Ginger absolutely helped me get my start on the TA side of things. Without her I honestly don't know where I would be in my career. She was the best.”John had this to share: “Working at Disney then meeting my now wife while working there. And now we have a daughter that just loves it as much as I do.”Meghan shared a great memory! “When my son won the Year of A Million Dreams and we got to stay in Cinderella Castle. Hooked for Life!”Sheila shared about her Uncle: “My Uncle who took me to the 25th homecoming celebration for friends and family at Disneyland.”Chrissy shared this with us: “I was blessed to be born into the GenX generation which is the Disney World Resort creation and opening gen. Yep, we're old! We were the lucky ones that grew up watching all the OG creations with the magical hope and excitement of what is next as the legends and stories came to be On screen as art, not live action remakes. Every story was fresh and new. We saw the evolution of animation to CGI. So Disney was life to aspire to hopes and dreams and being heros and fairy-tale love ideals for when we came to be a...

• Did you see the video of Mike Tyson on a Plane punching the passenger behind him? You will in a moment. And did the drunk guy actually deserve the TKO? • OMG is Elon Musk actually going to be running Twitter? We're about to find out. And are you watching the doxxing war goin on there involving the Libs of Tik Tok? • So Disney was it's own government since the 60's, well not any longer thanks to Ron DeSantis. So what does that mean for the House of Mouse and will Mickey now actually have to start paying his fair share of taxes? Go Woke Go Broke • This and so much more, now on The Joe Padula Show, absolutely. • To help support freedom of speech while being entertained: https://www.facebook.com/theJoePadulashow/support - O'Connor's Irish Pub and Grill – Eat, Drink, Play https://www.facebook.com/oconnorsfun - Waterdogs SCUBA & Safety – Get away and Go Dive https://www.waterdogs-scuba.com/ - Oak Grove Racing, Gaming & Hotel https://www.oakgrovegaming.com/ - Local Clarksville Find a place to Eat Shop and Play https://localclarksville.com/

In today's episode of the podcast I talk about open and close cart – the difference between the two and why I have changed my own strategy recently.   KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST   Open/closed cart is usually for digital products/memberships/courses/coaching program Closed cart means it is not available all year round – it is only available at certain periods of time (such as 2-3 times per year) Open cart means you can buy at any point – it never closes Benefits of open cart: More accessible to your audience– you can help them when they need it. You don't have to constantly launch and put pressure on a short period of time. Don't need to worry about mentioning your digital product but your audience not being able to buy it at that point. You can have income coming in all the time. Benefits of closed cart: You don't have to worry as much about selling whilst it's closed – you do have to feed people into the funnel. Creates FOMO, scarcity and encourages people to take action. You can make a big thing about your cart opening – make it an occasion to promo. You can go really hard on your selling in a short period of time and then stop when the door closes. Negatives of open cart: No FOMO – no closed date. Some people may stay on the fence. Doesn't feel as exclusive – people may not buy as they get distracted or forget. Sometimes you can feel like you constantly have to sell it. It takes more work! Negatives of closed cart: It's hard work! You have to put in the energy for that launch. You may have a drop-off of people – retention may not be as good as people join in haste. I want to be more inclusive and give people the opportunity to join as soon as they want to and be able to support people all the time.   THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…   Having an open cart means I am always here waiting to help you, whenever you need it.   HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS   The difference between open and closed cart Open cart vs closed cart Why I have gone from a closed cart to a fully open cart?   RESOURCES MENTIONED   http://www.teresaheathwareing.com/quiz (Take my quiz!) https://teresaheathwareing.com/theclub (The Dream Business Club)   TRANSCRIPT   Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So this week, we're going to be talking about open and close cart. Now you may or may not know what I mean, but I'm going to explain it's all fine. But the reason I'm going to talk about it is because I've changed my strategy recently with my own membership. And I want to talk about why that might be and what that means and why you might consider one over the other. So what do I mean by open and close cart? So the first thing, I mean is this normally is a digital product thing. You wouldn't normally have this on a physical product, although it's not unheard of. I'm sure. So Disney who used to put things in the volts. So you couldn't buy all the films all year round. This is before the days of Disney plus, uh, when my daughter was little and you had to buy the DVDs. Um, but yeah, they used to put things in the volts, so it would make them exclusive. But anyway, so it does tend to be a digital product. So it tends to be through a course or a membership or a coaching program. And basically closed cart means that it is not available all year round. So it's only available for certain periods of time. And it tends to be like twice a year or three times a year. Maybe sometimes even once a year. If you take B school, I'm from Marie Forleo, I'm sure that's only once a year. Um, and it opens like five days or seven days, and then it closes again. And if you don't buy it at that point, you don't get access to it. So that's what a closed cart is. It's when it only opens for a set amount of time and it's not available all the time. And open...

Victoria: Hey everyone, it's Sensei Victoria Whitfield here, your journey partner in business, welcoming you back to episode 183 of the Journeypreneur Podcast. This is your source for channeled holistic stress management techniques, guidance, inspiration and motivation to stay on your path to rapid financial ascension and massive impact as a conscious entrepreneur. So in this podcast episode, I just I'm trying to contain my excitement because who I get to interview and share with you is a journey partner of mine who's been journeying with me since day one of my retreats. This woman is an incredibly juicy goddess who is a fabulous cooking blogger. She is so fanciful and wonderful and creative and brilliant. Her name is Isabel Veguilla and you can find her at CoquiCookingAcademy.com - showing her Boricua pride! Goddess, welcome to the podcast. Isabel: Thank you so much, Victoria. Victoria: This has been a long time coming. I'm so happy to get to have you on the podcast because I know over the years you've shared about your experiences with cultivating your business and coming to the retreats and healing your body and all of the fun discoveries that we've had along the way, like, over the last four years. Four years? Isabel: Four years. Victoria: So for four years we've been journeying together, and what does that mean? That means we have been seeing each other on a weekly basis for four years and going on not one, but five live retreats for all four years. So at 20 retreats, you know a thing or two about working with me. Isabel: Oh yes. I have all the notes and folders of all the information that I just keep going back to over and over again. Victoria: Amazing. You know, I don't even know where to start. So I'm just going to ask you questions because, you know, we talk about everything. We'll see how it goes. I mean, I may even need to have you back on the podcast for a second course. But what you said you do in your own words, Goddess, could you tell us? I mean, I know you're incredible. I've had the inside front row seat view on how awesome you are. At the same time, this may be the very first time that someone's seeing you or hearing about what you do in the world. Is there any way that you could tell us in your own words what it is you do? And you can also include, if you like, you can talk about the business, but you can also talk about the fact that you don't just have a business right here. You're also employed. It's entirely up to you. What could you tell us what it is you do? And especially what are the three things that you are known for? Isabel: Well, I'll start with the three things since we already know that I'm known for being a huge Disney animation fan. So Disney in particular, all things Disney, the parks, the movies, the merchandise, the experiences, everything about Disney food, I can go on and on. And I just love Disney. So I'm also known as a world traveler. I love going to new places and discovering the culture and especially the food. And that leads me to the third thing I'm known for is being a chef and a foodie in general. And then the only other thing I want to mention is that by day I'm a project manager and in I.T. and all other times I'm an artist, a writer, an adventurer. Pretty much, yes. Victoria: A real world traveler is a food world traveler. There's a special kind of awesome getting to travel, tasting the world and going to theme parks. Like, I think about your photo shoot in Japan. Absolutely. Isabel: Yes. Victoria: Incredible. Incredible. And I'm curious. So you live a really juicya life, but like, this is something well, did this kind of happen like by chance? I'm curious. Like, what was the moment where you decided to start living more of that laptop lifestyle, of creating creative projects in the business, like what happened that inspired you to to get going on this path? Is there a story there? Isabel: Oh, yes. And since the everything from writing and animation, it's called the "Inciting Incident." Victoria: Ooo that sounds exciting! I've never heard of that term before. - Let's talk about it! - Thanks for stopping by! While you're here, let me ask you a question: Do you ever feel like you're having a hard time sustaining the level of energy you need in order to keep up with the demands of your business? Or do you find yourself struggling to stay consistent with your self care - like meditation, movement, and nutrition - because you're so busy and distracted at work? Searching for safe spaces to celebrate your wins and work through your sh*t as an energy sensitive entrepreneur? If that resonates, know this: you are in the right place; in fact your intuition has lead you here to the gateway for your next breakthrough: GO HERE NOW.

How To Buy NFTs What is a Non-Fungible Token NFT How To Make Your Own NFT Best NFT InvestmentsEpisode SummaryJoining us today for another NFT interview: Fang Gang!!Guests:Fang Gang: https://twitter.com/FangGangNFTPaca: https://twitter.com/CryptoAlpacaNFTJunshi: https://twitter.com/JunshiNFTFang Gang is a collection of 8888 randomly assembled Fangsters - twisted lunatics that come out at night to throw parties, hang around in dark alleys and have fun on the streets of New Fang City.https://opensea.io/collection/fanggangnftHosts:Chris KatjeMazhttps://bitclout.com/u/mazFollow The Roadmap on Twitter!Disclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.Unedited Transcript:Hey everyone. Welcome to the roadmap. Benzingers new NFT show. We've had some great teams on our show for interviews before the teams behind pixel vault, art blocks, the Vogue collective robotics, the dos pound crypto dads, lazy lion sub duck, and more. We also did an NFT giveaway and we are planning on more NFT giveaways in the future.So make sure you like this stream and subscribe to Benzinga as YouTube channel. We have a great show today. Fang gang joins us for an interview here on the roadmap guys. This is the road.Oh, right. Everyone. As I said, this is the roadmap Ben's thing. As new NFT show. If you're new here, we air Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays, 2:00 PM Eastern time. Make sure you like the stream and subscribe so you can get more NFT content right here. Let me go ahead. Bring on my cohost mass mass. What's going on, buddy?Yo, what's up Chris, back to back, man. I love it. How are we feeling today? I know it's nice to have the, the expanded show schedule now and to have these great interviews. We've got a big one today. I also, I mean, when we started this show, we had a different background and I am still loving this new layout.So if you're new here, you can see right there on the screen. If you comment in the chat. Your comments appear on screen. So with that being said, if you have any questions along the way for mass, for myself, or for Fang gang, when they are on the stream, go ahead and comment and let us know. And we will be reading that throughout the episode and try to get to questions later on a mass bang gang, right?That is the focus of the show today. This is a project with 8,888 NFTs. The Fang stirs. Um, there is 4,100 holders, so we're looking at a pretty strong, uh, user base, right. And we have a floor price of 0.07 right now. 17,000 in their discord and over 17,000 followers on Twitter. What do you think of Fang gang?What do you know about this project? Yeah. Well, shout out to our producer, Alyssa, who has she kind of introduced us or at least my self-defined gang, uh, it's her profile pictures. So that's when I saw it, I was like, oh, they're pretty cute. You know? So they fit that aesthetic of a great profile picture. The community looks awesome.Uh, very supportive, you know, all throughout Twitter and discourse. So it should be a good episode. Definitely. We always like focusing on teams with strong communities, right? I mean, community is so important in the NFT space. If you want to make it longterm, shout out to our chat. I'm seeing lots of familiar faces that have been on lots of our shows with us.So shout out to you all in the chat and if you're new here, let us know in the chat as well. Let us know. Hey, it's my first episode. And maybe we will give you a shout out during the episode. Mass before we bring on, uh, the Fang gang team. I think we have a trailer to play, to get hyped for this interview.Should we roll that trailer? Absolutely. Anybody watching though, we need you guys to hype it up with us. Put that like button down below and let's hype this up. Let's make this intro great. These always get me hyped up for the interview.Oh, come on. Look at that. Look at that. Shout out to our producer, Alyssa for making that wonderful trailer video. I mean, math, this makes me just want to play the game. I don't even know. Uh, I mean, I know we've got the interview, but I mean, if you have not played the fan gang game yet, uh, to anyone in the chat, make sure you check that out and we're going to hear more about that game during the interview.So without further ado, let me bring on the co-founders of Fang gang. We've got pocket and June sheet joining us on the roadmap what's going on. Hey. Of course, of course. And that trailer video by our own producer, Alyssa highlighting the Fang gang game, a super exciting project to talk about. Uh, let me go ahead and kick off the questions here before we get into Fang gang.One of the things we always like to ask teams is what was your history like before you created the project? You know, were you involved in other MFTs? Did you hold NFTs or was this a completely new space to you? So I'll, I'll start with pocket here to kick things off. Awesome. So, uh, I've joined the NFT space back in March, beginning of March or, uh, end of February.And, uh, I've been, uh, I started experimenting, so I've been a designer and, uh, uh, want to be artists for all my life. And so I found a space through to try some stuff here. So I've launched, uh, uh, experimental collection. It was my first one. It, it didn't go anywhere big, uh, but it was a way to learn. And then a while later I launched my, uh, uh, the collection that actually, uh, when I got my nickname from, which is crypto or backend, uh, where I did, uh, our Packers for ID, like, uh, over 50, uh, in pixel format.So that's how I started. And then of course I started as a creator, but quickly, uh, started to be a collector as most of the artists in this space. Uh, and I met June, she along the way, uh, we, we joined the same chat room, uh, I think back in March too. And we started talking and, uh, that's what that is to creating fan gang, uh, in August.So it was a short but intense ride so far. Perfect room. Was it? Uh, it was, uh, uh, Twitter, uh, chat with a lot of artists, like, uh, people that were starting at the same time as this, uh, like crypto burbs was there, uh, June. She was there. I know, uh, uh, hash vestors was there like some names that are being talked about nowadays, uh, started with us right there.Awesome. Jinshi same question for you. Uh, what's your, uh, intro to NFTs look like here. Um, so also back in March, like Bucca set, um, my brother had told me about NFTs, uh, because of their crypto punk hype was real back then. And, um, well, as, as a, as a studying a multimedia designer artists, um, I thought I would hop in and just create some stuff.So I kicked it off with a personal collection, uh, based around doge because there was the high back down of course. Um, and I made some pixel dogies out of those. Um, after that, I started to look at more of the collecting side of things. Uh, so I branched out my collection quite a bit, um, met amazing new artists, um, and just, uh, made many more connections in the NFD space.I think that's, that's key to, uh, to anyone who's trying to hop in. So, uh, there was a lot of fun. And then I think maybe in July, we started working on fan gang and, uh, the rest is history. Awesome. Yeah. Give us some more, uh, behind the scenes, you know, you too, Matt, and then, you know, how did the idea for fan gang come to be?And, and then maybe June she talk about the, the artwork, right? What was the inspiration, how did this artwork come to be? Um, I don't know. Basically we wanted to create a, a unique character and not link it directly to a certain type of animal. It's still a mystery to our community. What type of animal?Thanks there is. And that's, that's part of the fun, obviously. Uh, so we wanted to create a unique character that is not necessarily animal. Like I said, uh, I think most inspiration for me personally came from, uh, more old timey cartoons, maybe Felix, the cat, stuff like that. Um, 'cause I love that stuff. And I wanted to incorporate that into this design and that pocket.And I went back and forth, designing the base of the character, a lot of iterations, a lot of sketches, a lot of discussing. And, uh, we ended up with this beautiful creature. Awesome. And PACA, you know, uh, same to you. Uh, you know, you met June, she, you came up with the idea, give us the behind the scenes. You know, why fan gang, why this style of artwork and project, uh, for this.Well, I think may and June, she are pretty much aligned when it comes to the, the inspirations of fanging. Uh, actually one of the things that got me here and when we were experimenting, we, we looked at that a lot, uh, was vinyl toys because, uh, when we started it, uh, we had the idea of going beyond an NFT collection, like creating an IP.And building up on that. So that's what, uh, that's, that's one of the things we wanted with the characters is that they could be, uh, they could be used in different media, different formats and, and above all, we wanted people to be able to remix them to which happens so far. So we launched a, uh, uh, an art contest, I think about a month ago.Uh, and, and, and that's, that's the confirmation we needed that we were doing what we propose ourselves to do, because people were able to, uh, to grab the, the, the, the most iconic traces of the characters and, and, uh, redo them in their own style. So I think, uh, when, when creating the characters, these, this concern we had, uh, actually, uh, worked, ended up.Love that. So pocket June sheet, let's talk a little bit about the recent airdrop that you guys sent to everyone who had delisted or listed for one Eve. Can you guys tell us a little bit more about that? Um, let's start with you, do you and cheat. All right. So we always had in mind that ever since we started the diamond facts club, which was a, I think halfway through September, uh, pocket came up with the ID to, to do this, to reward holders and active community members, especially.Um, so that's when we started to give away 0.18 or at one faster every single day, uh, to everyone who, well, like you said, the, their Franks or list above one eighth. Um, and we wanted to do something extra. I know like giving back a bit of is already cool, but we wanted to do an add drop as well. And we recently hired a new developer to work with us.Shout out to reveal if you're watching. To do ad reps and stuff like that. So that's more, uh, easy to us to do that right now. And one day pocket DME with this amazing artwork, he made it all himself, no discussing or back and forth or iterations. And he made this and I was just amazed by it by it. And I thought let's, let's add up this to our diamonds banks club members.Yeah. That's awesome. So, um, parka, why do you guys do the daily diamond fangs raffle? Um, and you know, why is this important for the committee? Uh, well, first of all, I think it's, it's a good way to keep the community engaged. And, uh, when we launched we wanted the community to be, uh, one of, uh, one of its most, uh, strong points.So, uh, we've been working, uh, on that daily, beyond the, the diamond banks club. Uh, we, we try to reward our holders constantly. Uh, like we did an airdrop on Halloween and we're trying to, uh, do, uh, games daily. We do a lot of stuff, uh, to, to keep the community engaged. So the diamond thanks club is not only a way to, to, to reward our holders, but it's also a way to express our creativity so we can do stuff like this, like the diamond, thanks to God, uh, just because we want to, and we can reward our holders with that.So, uh, it's, it's, uh, a way to do, to build on community. Love that. So speaking of community, can you guys tell us a little bit about the Fang runner week three contests, you know, the high scores in the game, what are your guys' high scores? And do you guys put a game? Yeah,I've been trying to break 15 K for a while, but I can't quite get there. It's hard. It's hard, but I mean, there's, I think, uh, the high score so far is like 24 K on the first week. And that's nuts because when, when I'm on 12 30, 13, K I'm already stressing and sweating a lot. So this is, this is, this is not, uh, but we've been having a lot of fun with Fang runner, I think.Uh, well, it's, it's another way to reward the community as, uh, as the diamond. Thanks. Uh, we, we tried when we launched the game, it's just the promotional game. It's not nothing too big yet, but, uh, we, we, we launched the game, uh, along with a pixel thanks collection. Uh, but when we, when we, when we propose to do that, we wanted to reward players and we, again, we wanted the community to be engaged with the project.So, uh, one way to do it is to rewards, uh, holders, uh, and players above all, uh, uh, every week, uh, for their, uh, crazy runs like those 24 K that I think it was invalid by gut. So we've been rewarding so far, um, with, uh, special pixel fangs, special peaks of thanks there's for the collection. We created them specially for this, uh, but, uh, we have something planned for the F for the fifth week that we can't reveal yet, but it's, it won't be an NFT.What used to be something. Uh, but you'll have to stay around the city to see it. And that's in what, two weeks you said two weeks yet. Nice. Yeah. So can you guys tell us, so will the pixel fangs be expanded then? Or is it going to be something completely different from the NFTs, like you said,I think it was talking about the price. Yeah. So in two weeks we have a physical price for any thing, runner competitors. Um, but we, we are, uh, in talks to expand the game later on. Yeah. We want to do much more with it. Uh, just a matter of time, basically. Nice man. And, uh, especial note for this one, we've been working with pixel hands on, on pixel fangs and the Fang runner game.Uh, and we actually want to keep on working with him, uh, everything pixel related because he's the pixel king. So, uh, I'm sure we will expense, uh, Uh, we've been working on that. We can share much yet, but we've been working on it. Awesome. And we asked people in the chat to drop their high scores in the chat.I saw, you know, I think, uh, 8,000, uh, 4,000. Um, but yeah, it looks like you've got a lot of people that play that game. I know I'm going to be playing it over and over now that I know what some of the high scores are to beat here. Um, but it it's just so addicting. Uh, you know, another common question we ask, right?When we have teams on is when merge. So is merchandise a part of the plan going forward and when will we get an update on the.Um, so merge was something we had in mind from basically the very first date, um, because the longterm vision for fan gang, eventually it's just expanding it into a brand, um, something much more, um, than just your avatar. Um, so merge was something really big and something we're really excited for. Uh, we often call it a premium merge merge store because we want to do a little more than most projects do a lot of projects, have a really cool merge, but we want to take it a step further and add some very exciting merge items, as well as non wearable items and stuff like that.I'm currently in the process of sketching, a lot of designs and patterns for the clothing items. Uh, so it's starting to take shape. Um, um, and I hope we can release that end of the year, beginning of next. Yeah. And actually it's still still about merge. We, when we launched banksters, uh, if I don't know if you've noticed it already, but, uh, some of the factors of, uh, some specific brands that we created for the collection, like the wild fangs, uh, and the three little piggies and, uh, uh, by 12th grade is some of them Lupa.And, uh, our idea is to expand those, uh, into the real March. So, uh, we'll probably have some wild fangs merge, t-shirts hoodies and whatnot. So that that's, that's something we planned from the start. And that's why this process is only happening now, after we launch a bunch of things, because we really want to focus on this and, and do it properly, you know, as, as June, she said, premium merge store.Awesome love that. I know there's going to be a lot of excited fans out there to get their hands on that merge. Um, you know, this show is called the roadmap. Uh, you know, so another big highlight is we always like to talk about, you know, the roadmap and what's next. So I saw a comment already in the chat from third, I won saying, can you talk about Fang city?So if you guys can share a little bit about Fang city and that roadmap, uh, for our viewers, Yeah, absolutely. Actually, I've been drawing all day for new thanks city. So I just stopped for the, this, this live stream, but it's been our focus lately. Uh, so June she has been working on Merck and I've been drawing for new thanks CD, mostly.Uh, and, uh, I think the, this started as a community project. So this, this wasn't something that was on our roadmap, uh, uh, since the beginning, but our, our current dev reel, uh, came to us with an idea of developing, uh, that, that new Fang CD we talked about before, uh, eight into a, a hub, a place where, uh, you can, uh, search for everything, uh, Fang, gang related.So, so far we have a few ideas in mind, something, and, uh, it will probably, uh, stop. Uh, just with the game room and the merge store, uh, and the two, two or three other rooms, but our idea is to expand it a long time. So, uh, when you, when you enter new thank city, you'll be able to name your faster, tell his backstory and then roam around and, and interact with other fencers.Um, but it will be a long-term project. So when we launch it, we'll probably have like three or four buildings, but, uh, as, as we go, uh, as we go down the roads, we, we could add more things. So it's, it's a dynamic websites, uh, to say, so I don't know if you want to add something. Um, and that's about it. I'm super high for it.And, uh, I can't wait to expand that as well. I think it's cool that we have stuff that we can expand later on like Fang runner is basically the core of what we wanted to make and people are enjoying it and we're having fun with it. We are rewarding the community with it. Uh, but we are expanding that and same for new fact city.It's something we want to release and people have fun with and also expand later on. Perfect. Yeah. I mean, that's awesome to hear more about what's ahead and pocket also that you're working on the artwork. Um, you know, and thanks for taking a small break to join us on the stream today. We appreciate that.Um, well, uh, another thing we always like to ask the teams, and this can be a difficult one, you know, especially for the artist, is we like to hear what are your favorite traits, um, from Fang city? So, uh, June G let's start with you. Oh man grills, grill gang all the way. Fucking grill myself. Really? My favorite.Yeah. Um, besides that I think, uh, the for code is amazing. Um, And the wild fangs, uh, all the hoodies and stuff like that. They, the caps they have on it's dopest. Fuck. I would wear that in real life. There you go. Ask me suits too. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, we got to see the fur coat here a while. We're trying to pull that up a parka.Oh, there it is. Haka over to you. Um, what are some of your favorite traits in the, in the series here? Just check my PFP. You'll see a four codes. So that's definitely one of my favorites. Uh, I'm chain gang of everything that has changed. So basically, uh, the tank top and the four coats are two of those. Uh, and then I'm a separate for bunny.Heres I love them. I think they're workout. Breeding. So check those two and then there's there's well, all the wild things, uh, merge, uh, speaks to me. I love it. Uh, and there's more, I think it's hard to pick one, you know, I love almost all of them. That's awesome. If there's one with the fur and a grills, that'd be awesome too.Oh, there's not. Yeah. There's no. Yeah. Oh man. That'd be awesome. So guys, we, you guys had a ho how a wean costs contests, uh, earlier this last month here. Uh, will there be more holiday contests coming up, you know, since we're approaching holiday season here? Yeah, man, we, uh, we have something for Christmas lined up, well, lined up where we're discussing it right now.Thinking of cool ideas. Slowly starting to work on it. Um, uh, but it's tough because we're also working on merge in New York city and everything coming out. It's, it's a lot, it's a big package, but the Halloween, uh, costume maker is definitely something we will return for Christmas, uh, and run a contest with it as well.Of course. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I can't wait to see, like Santa hats or you guys get creative with all that stuff. Yeah, that's really cool. I love that. Um, so speaking, you know, we talked to community earlier, um, discord management, right? So we know discord, depending on which discord you joined, it can be completely hectic or one of the best, you know, organized, structured communities you've been to.How do you guys manage the community? Do you do anything specific to make sure it's running smoothly? Um, well I guess that's the question for me as I am the community manager, um, I don't know, really. I think we attracted the right group of people that are very chill, very wholesome, very welcoming to everybody.So it's been pretty chill. We have moderators, but I don't think they have to do a lot of banning or warning people and stuff like that. I've been in much worse communities outside of NFTs as well. And, uh, ours is just very, very wholesome. They're welcoming, really love that. Are you guys both active on there?Yeah. Every day. Yeah. We basically live on discord. Yeah. Yeah. It's tough on like, there's so much FOMO. You leave for like an hour. You have to catch up on all these messages. And is there a favorite room in the discord that you guys like to be in? For me, basically the team chat, because that's where the goodies are, right?Yeah. Yeah. We actually launched something, uh, recently, uh, which is called the fan gout where we host game nights and such, uh, Heartland sparks. One of our mods has been taking care of it and it's actually a fun place to hang out. Like we have terrific games. We have, uh, what was the first one? Uh, we had a night of, uh, what was called the game helped me drinking, uh, party books, Jack party, Jack books, Jack Jack box.So we have, uh, that's, that's also a way to keep the community engaged. That's something we really focus on. So the hangout is also a cool place. So me and Chris are going to have to join you guys on the next game night there. Yeah, that sounds like fun. I feel like we did that here at Benzinga one time, the, the Jac games, um, the different mini games.So, uh, that, that could definitely be a fun night. So absolutely one last question about discord for you guys. So we have seen a lot of discourse get hacked. You know, they're posting these spam links, uh, anything that you guys are doing and take precaution with this and anything that you recommend to the community to just, you know, kind of as a guide, to not fall for these things.Um, I've been community managing on this good for a six or seven years now. And I've recently actually posted a thread about this because I've seen so many surfers getting a hack and a scam. Like you said, if people lose a lot of money, um, I think it's a lot of teams may be new to discord. I don't know, to like the intricate details or the useful tips you can add to your server.And basically it's all my trout. That's been to my profile page view. If people want to win the, read that all true. I've linked some very useful things in there. Okay, awesome. Yeah. We'll make sure to check that out because now more than ever, it's more important for all of these things to take precaution, you know?Perfect. Yeah. And for anyone out there watching, if you're watching us on YouTube right now, you can follow pock on Junichi on Twitter. Those are in the description of this video below. Um, so make sure you check those out as well. Um, we do have some questions here from the chat, um, which is something we always like to do here on the show.Um, we got a question from, uh, Quito, how did they meet David Horvitz and get him to do a one of one Fang stir David Horvath? Of course, uh, ugly Dallas founder. Uh, I believe, and I know ugly Dallas from having kids and they did that movie a couple of years ago. So, uh, tell us a little bit about how that came to be.Uh, well, actually it's, uh, it's a pretty straightforward, uh, they, they be joined or discord and both a bunch of factors and started sharing them. And we were astonished by it because I've been following David's work for quite a while, as you, as you've been Chris. Uh, and, and actually we reached out to him.It was the coolest dudes and just agreed to do it, like, just like that. So he is, he was a collector before he was collabing with us. So that's, that's, that's the best thing, I guess. So, and then the process was, was pretty straight forward. I'm sorry. He just picked one of his characters and it turned it into a fencer.Like we didn't have to do much because it was his style and it was a perfect match for our colors and our, our, our theme. So it was pretty straight. That's awesome. Um, so we have another question from the chat here. This one is from third. I, Juan, he's asking, do you guys do this full time? And if so, what is your daily routine?Um, yeah, I do this full time. Uh, I know PACA doesn't, but, uh, I recently, after we launched and we sold out, I made the choice to quit university and quit my part-time designer job. Uh, as I w I always wanted to go full-time NFD ever since I got into this space, because it's just so welcoming a super cool as you, as an artist, you can create so much and have such a big audience.So I decided to bite the bullet and quit uni and quit my job and go full-time fan game. I do. I actually do a lot of juggling between my day job and thinking I'm 24 7 on this cord, but luckily my job allows me to, to balance things. So, uh, I can do my day job and still be fully committed to, to thinking.So me and June, she worked perfectly, uh, with this, with this schedule. So not a lot of sleep hog guys. Yeah. Not, not really. Yeah. I feel like that was something we talked about in one of our other interviews of like, do you ever feel the need to, you know, take, take a break, maybe take a day off from the, the discord, um, you know, maybe, uh, a mental break.Is that something you guys ever do or think about, or is this just, you know, 24, 7, uh, all in no breaks. Um, I do think about it. Uh, I rarely do it though. Um, but sometimes, you know, on a Sunday you sleep in a little and, well, I mean, this is just fun. It doesn't feel like work or anything. So I do check this every day, but I don't, sometimes I take one day off or something like that.Yeah. Yeah. It's very important. Yep. Very important. Packa. How about, how about you juggling a, you know, two things right now? Um, you know, how, how do you take some mental breaks? Yeah, I probably need to take more of those. Uh, but uh, I tried to, as June, she said, I tried to enjoy a bit of the weekend, even though I'm always checking discord and Twitter, but, uh, I think I'm going to need a break, like after we release new thanks city and the March, probably some days off, but I know I won't be able to, to, to log off and, and skip on discord, but still, uh, probably less hands-on and more, uh, enjoying.I guess I have a question for you guys. I'm curious to hear your guys' thoughts on the current NFT markets. You know, since we have seen, you know, gas go up volume kind of slowed down a little bit. Uh, what are your guys' thoughts on the market right now? Let's start with you PACA. Uh, well, I think, uh, market is going through a slow days and we've noticed that on, on thinking.Uh, I don't, I honestly don't know if this is just a phase or if NFTs are starting to, to, to enter the real bear market, because so far we had like one or two weeks bear markets and then things start to spike up again. But, uh, all I know is if we keep on building communities and, and, uh, keep on working daily for those reasons, Those are the projects that will stand the test of time, you know?So we, we gotta build when things are down. So we really enjoy when things are back up. So that's, that's at least my, my way of seeing things. And that's why we haven't stopped ever since we started, uh, I don't know where, I mean, I don't know if this is, this is changing anytime soon. I hope so because I've been seeing a lot of reds on every three Twitter threads, like.Uh, but uh, people are still around. So I think that's, that's one of the things that matters the most and, and you see new people, uh, buying their first NFD every day. So I think that's, that's a bullish sign and then Christmas is coming and I, I truly believe that the NFTs are going to be these year's Christmas gifts.So who knows. Yeah. Um, I'm looking for some gifts for the family and I'm definitely gonna give NSC. I hope I get some as gifts this Christmas too. So if my family's out there watching, I'll take some out of teas for Christmas. All right. We got another question here in the chat. Uh, this one, uh, along the same, you know, broad NFT lines, a question from Brenda, um, are they into other types of NFTs, like NBA, top shot or music?Um, you know, we, we asked about your early days in NFTs and now that fan gangs going, I know you're busy guys, but you know, are there NFTs that you guys, uh, you know, collect, uh, you know, currently. Um, yeah, like you said, we're, we're busy and I was a died down definitely a little bit, but I'm still degenerate.So I still browse open, see all the time looking for new stuff, but also still supporting my friends who we came up with, uh, from back in March, uh, people like crypto pers, uh, Marco, uh, those are still grinding every single day and they put out dope stuff. So I still check those out and sometimes buy one of them.Uh, so yeah, definitely still collecting pocket. Yeah. About a top shot and music. Uh, well mainly tough shots. I was never, uh, much into it because first of all, we're in European. So, uh, basketball is not as huge as there over here. Uh, but, uh, I, I mostly collect, uh, the same stuff as June. She said, I, I do. Well, some 10 Ks.I do. Someone wants, uh, I actually liked music, but I haven't found anything that, uh, really, uh, pushed me to it. Uh, like nothing NFD related that, that, that I think was it, uh, I think we still have a long way there. Uh, I've I've played for, for over 10 years. So music is something that interests me. Uh, but I'm yet to find a proper, uh, NFT, uh, about it.I guess. I, I mean, there there's, there's good stuff. Uh, but nothing that has really spoken to me.Awesome. And one more, uh, you know, just broad question here. Um, you know, uh, another topic we've hit on a lot with this show is obviously a lot of people know the current NFT marketplaces, you know, open, see super rare, rare bull and others. We have this elephant in the room of Coinbase launching an NFT marketplace.Uh, what are your thoughts? You know, how big of a deal is this for the NFT market for Coinbase getting involved and have you guys, uh, you know, talk to a Coinbase at all about maybe, uh, getting fan gang on there? Um, yeah, we definitely want to, uh, because obviously it's a, it's a huge step. Uh, and I think it's about time to open C has got some real competition.I think it's very healthy for the market over. Um, so I think that's very good how they develop it and how it all, uh, works out. That's yet to be seen of course, but it's a very promising, uh, company to be behind an empty marketplace. I get, I think, and if anyone's in the chat or anyone out there has any connections to Coinbase, please link us up because we've been reaching out, we've been shooting emails left and right.But so far to know, I feel sadly, soawesome. Well, June she and PACA, you know, thank you guys so much for joining us on the roadmap today and also shout out to the fan gang community, joining the chat. Um, you know, we want to thank you both for taking time out of what we know is your busy days. And we look forward to following the progress of fan gang along the way.Awesome. Thank you guys. We'll talk to you soon. See ya. All right. May I ask, I mean, another great interview here on the roadmap, right? Which when we started this show, right. You know, the big things where it provides some education, talk about some upcoming projects and interview these great teams. Right.And we get that behind the scenes. Look, that's what I really like. Right. Is hearing. I mean, where else are you going to hear it? What their high scores are on this game, or, you know, how much time they spend in the discord, you know, and their favorite traits. I always love getting that. And, you know, hearing what the artist thinks, you know, are their favorite traits.What do you think mass? Yeah, one of my favorite things about these interviews is watching the chat. Now, seeing, you know, all these guys from the community, come on here and just ask questions or provide feedback. You know, I get a good sense of the community from this chat. So it's really cool to see that.And if you guys enjoy this again, make sure to leave a thumbs up subscribe. We're trying to, you know, really push this as NFC is expand. So yeah, you know, I'm glad it was a great interview, great team. And I look forward to seeing where they're at in a couple months or following up with them in the future.Definitely. And I mean, that's an exciting roadmap, right? To hear about Fang city, to hear about merge and, you know, there's this new artwork coming and also those, those, uh, costume contest, right. The Halloween one, and we got a Christmas one coming up. Um, so definitely excited. Mass before we get to the headlines, I'm seeing a, a, it looks like we got a shout out in the chat there and a tip.So, uh, thank you, mark, for your super chat contribution. And the comment is, let me go ahead and pull this up on the screen. The comment is the floor for pudgy penguins is 1.2. Ethan robotics is 0.3 for any reason not to buy at these prices. Thanks guys. Uh, mark, thanks again for the shout-out here. Um, again, not financial advice.Uh, you know, I was a former holder of robotics. Um, I do not have my Roboto any more. They just did the. Airdrop of the pet. Um, you know, and the price has come down since then. I love this artwork though. We had the team on, and this is one that I'm looking to get back in. I love the ones that have the animal is, you know, on the head.Those are my favorite ones, but 0.3, four. Um, you know, I think maybe we dip a little bit more, but you know, I sold mine at 1.5 east. So, uh, it definitely was up there and pudgy penguins, I've never been in a, you know, I missed the run on that. Um, so I can't really speak to that. Maths. What do you think of a pudgy penguins and robots here at these levels?Yeah, so great question, mark. Um, you know, not financial advice, but I think now, you know, We're kind of past that flipping phase right now, since we're kind of in a, we've slowed down a bit. So what I've focused more on is look at the community, right. And we've had the robotics team, you know, they're all docs, they're a great community there at New York, uh, you know, and the events, um, are they a great long-term hold?Absolutely. In my opinion, I think they are so kind of, I think price is a lagging indicator right now. You know, floors are thin. There's not a lot of volume. I think these will pick up over time, you know, in a year or so. Can you see this as your profile picture and not worried if it dips? Absolutely same with budgie penguins.I mean, I see them both on Twitter all the time. A lot of people use them as their profile pictures. Um, so, you know, that's the biggest thing. Can you, do you, would you hold on to this for a while? Is the community strong? Do you see the roadmap? These things matter now? A little more so than ever before in the last couple months I would say so in my opinion, I would definitely buy at these prices.They look good. They may go down even more, a bit who knows, but, um, yeah, I mean, I like that. Definitely great insight there, math, uh, you know, I always love the call-out right. That you, you see these as profile pictures, right. And that is true with penguins and robotics and the communities are huge. You know, uh, we talked about that on a past show.Robotics was that, you know, Um, and did some events there. Uh, Pablo is an amazing artist, right? Uh, shout out to Pablo. We had him on the show and they also do random airdrops different times. Um, you know, of just some of his artwork to, you know, give back. And I think, uh, after pets they've got more coming.So, uh, I could definitely see some, some longterm value there. So again, not financial advice, but that's our thoughts on the overall price right now, again, mark, you know, thanks for the shout out there in the chat. Um, and again, guys drop your questions in the chat. If you have them, we'll try to get to some let's turn to some, uh, news and headlines.Um, you know, there, there's not a ton of new stuff out there, mass, uh, but one of the big headlines I saw, you know, I, I occasionally watch, uh, late night television and I have watched Jimmy Fallon for awhile and he had people on last night. Right. So we got to hear all about NFTs, right? With people's latest, say.And one of the things that was revealed during the interview was that Jimmy Fallon is now a board ape yacht club owner. So he said that he partnered with moon paid during the interview. And, uh, we're not sure if moon pay, you know, a, it was a sponsor at all, or if they just got that shout out from Jimmy Fallon.Um, but so now I'm seeing on Twitter that based on it being through moon pay, it is most likely board ape number 5, 9, 9. If we can get that picture up here in a minute. Uh, so it is a six tray cream for eight. So 6% tray of cream for has a sea captain's hat, 3%. Uh, Navy Stripe, T3 percent and heart sunglasses, 4%.Uh, this was purchased for 46.6 east or around $216,000 on November 8th by moon pay and then was transferred to an open sea account that had just been set up this month. So again, that's the one that they think that Jimmy Fallon got, it has not been confirmed. And also in that regards mass, Jimmy Fallon has not changed his profile picture to the ape yet.So a great shout out on TV, but a well, he changed his Twitter picture, uh, to this APM. Yeah, that's a great point. You know, I have a feeling he doesn't fully understand it yet. It was just from, just from hearing him talk there. I feel like he just, how he described boom pay and how it worked. Hopefully it does.And yeah, I mean, it would make a cool profile picture, you know, I'm sure the board answer glad that Jimmy is onboard. So that's awesome. Yeah. I'm curious, you don't mask. That's a great point. I'm curious to hear what the community thinks because you know, not too long ago, we were talking about a rumor of, you know, Kylie Jenner wanting to get a board ape.Right. And a lot of people, you know, kind of shunned her, right. And now will Jimmy Fallon be welcomed, you know, with open arms and again, I mean, Jimmy Fallon, he's, he's a decent size name, right? He has a late night talk show that airs every night and mass where I get excited about this. It's not just for the eight community, but let's picture.You know, Jimmy Fallon doing an interview in the future with, you know, Steph Curry or shack or Reese Witherspoon, people who have they own NFTs. What are the ads now that Fallon's going to talk about NFTs with them, you know, during the interview, like, I feel like that's pretty exciting to think, Hey, there could be more NFT talk during, you know, a late talk show.What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure we should probably, I wouldn't be surprised if we see that I should say in the next, I would say year or two. Yeah, absolutely. We're starting to see some of those conversations happen on Twitter between celebs and between, you know, celebs and ape owners. So yeah, that'd be really cool.Yeah. Definitely. Um, so let's talk a little bit about, so cool cats teased today. They tease their pets, right? So we'll pull up a picture right now. We'll show you guys what the pets are looking like, but I'm more interested in talking about the roadmap, right? So we're kind of at a point now where a lot of projects, you know, like the apes, the cool cats, these blue chips, they're building this economy around their original 10 K profile pictures, right?So they're building, you know, utility, they're building a different, you know, you know, cartoons and pictures, and they're creating this big, you know, universe of, you know, the original 10 K. So I'm so curious to see how this evolves over the next year, right? When people come into the, you know, out of T we'll do the buy these pets as it may do, they make it a profile picture, does the cool cat universe sport, ape universe expand, you know, to all of these different things.And, you know, seeing this come to life, Cool to see. So I'm excited for that. Yeah. I mean, that artwork is looking sweet, man, uh, you know, for the pet. So, uh, this, this is pretty exciting and, you know, uh, I definitely agree, right. The roadmap is looking good. Um, for cool cats. I mean, this has been a blue chip for a while, and I know that you're in this project.Um, you know, do you think, you know, this, this has got that, that wonderful lasting touch of being, you know, one of the top blue chips. Cause right now, I mean, it's, it's a top five projects, top 10, I would say all time. Right. You know, for me, I don't look at the floor with this at all, you know, I can go up or down and I really don't care unless I'm trying to buy another one.Uh, so to me that's always a good sign personally, you know, I just liked the project. Um, I liked the community and again, the roadmap we're so early man, and all these projects are building and there's only 10,000 pieces. Right. So when let's say a hundred thousand Coinbase has what, 2 million people on the, on the way.So 2.5 million now 2.5 million, right? How many of those are going to want a cool cat? Yeah, that's a great 10,000 cats. You know, you can't, they start becoming unattainable at a certain point, but that's where the other, you know, that's where the cool cats universe comes to life, which is more bullish for these original pieces are the way I see it.So I still think it's too early to call it. You know, it's too early to say, it's going to go to the moon. It's too early to say it's going to crash. You know, we're just kind of in that in-between phase the way I see it. Definitely. Well, so math, we just talked about a robotic is doing a, a pet, uh, you know, uh, airdrop.We got cool cats doing pets. I saw another project that's launching a free pat mint. Um, this is bubblegum kids, which I think I talked about on the show, um, you know, a month or two ago. So this was one that I actually mentored. I have sold out of it, but I have seen some people on Twitter that I follow in the stock community using bubble gum kids as their profile picture.So this isn't an inexpensive one, right? I think the floor is like 0.03. And they now said that they are doing bubble gum up. Uh, so, you know, along that same lines of, uh, you know, uh, Coinbase, right, and new people getting into NFTs, I'm wondering if some of these projects can, you know, gain some traction, right.With seeing people have them as their profile picture and also having that cheaper price point. Right. Cause again, not that floors matter long-term but I think your initial people that get in that are new to the space, you're going to see some of these cheaper projects be, you know, good entry points and bubblegum kids.I like what they've done. They did some honorary ones too. Um, Steph Curry, they made one for him, Andre Iguodala, another NBA player. They also made one for Reese Witherspoon. I don't think she has it. Um, so they're kind of going that approach too, to get celebrities. And, but again, doing there's that puppy there, I mean, I actually kinda liked this, uh, you know, the artwork on it.So, and I have seen the bubblegum kids, you know, uh, and they're a little bit unique, right. That they have the, the bubble gum. Uh, what do you think maths, do you know this project at all? I don't know this project, but you know, you made a good point where when new people come into the NFT worlds, uh, you know, what are they gonna buy first?Right. So that's always interesting to see, and I guess we'll, we'll find out, but to have projects starting to prepare for that would be cool. So, yeah, definitely. Um, so Chris, we talked on, we talked, was it yesterday or talked to any of this? You know, it seems so long ago. It was just, I can't tell my base.Yeah. So the super rare board apes, uh, they're out for auction. There's actually two of them. We showed one yesterday, but I want to show this one today. This one. Dude, absolutely a banger. Um, and let's, they're both up for auction. And I think one of them has, is up for 13 Yves and the other one's for 16. Oh my goodness.Look at that. Rolling stone cover through that is so my goodness. And that's the roadmap as the backdrop. So that's, I mean, that is sick right there. Yeah. I love that. And what did, how we got to look at the price here? What are we at for let's look at the top bid for this is 16, 8, 16 Eve on the mutant. So, and I think that's actually higher.What is the, the banana board eight cover? I mean, I call it the banana cause we got the bananas floating around in the background. 14 east, uh, 14. Yeah, that mutant one. I hadn't even seen until today, mass. I completely missed that. Um, and these end, I think it is at four day. Four days. So, uh, what do you think Chris, over under 28th for both of these?Oh, you know what? I almost feel like it's gonna split. I kind of think the mute, no, get to 20. And I feel like the regular one I'll call it. I'll call it 1720 and 17. I'll call. Um, I think, I think they both break 20 considering. Yeah. I think they both got 20 days left, so these are sick, dude. I think. Yeah.Whatever ones. I'm not sure what the other one of ones have gone for, but if floor price is what like 38th right now for a board ape. I don't know. I think it breaks 20. Uh, I'm curious to hear from the chat though, which one would you guys pick? The mutant one or the regular one? Because they're both cool.So, oh yeah. 32 eighth floor. Yeah. Great question mass. So yeah, let us know right now, type in the chat. Would you rather have the board ape or the mute and ape? Um, you know, uh, just solely based on the image, not based on the price, if you had to pick one, which would you rather own mass? I, I think I got go mute here.Right? Uh, you know, that, that artwork, uh, it's dripping off the face, the roadmap in the background, which one would you rather have. I mean, the other one is cleaner though. It's just simpler and, and this one has a lot going on through their votes. Sick man. I want both of them. Let me just get both you going to play some bids right here on the show.We're going to hear it here. All right. We're starting to get some votes and we got two votes for Mueller right now. No surprise. Um, let's keep those votes comment. Oh, I mean the OJI, right? It's clean. It's clean. Oh, another vote for boards. So, I mean, we're, we're seeing it split right now. Mass. Are you surprised by this vote?They're both sick, man. So yeah, it's kind of like picking, it's kind of like picking, oh man. I think if I had to pick one probably original because looking at it now. Oh gee. But I don't know. I want this one too. They're both sick, man. So we'll, we'll update the chat when this thing is go for final sale.Cause these should probably, I think they'll. Yeah. And I mean, mass, I think if you're, if you're rolling stone and also if you're other Meg, I mean, where are the other magazines that right time magazine partnered with cool cats. Now you got rolling stone partnering with board Abe. I mean, if you're a magazine, I mean, you're watching the show right now.Stop watching. You should be on the phone. Right. You should be connecting with these NFT projects because look at this, I mean, you can get people to your space, right? You can bring new people to your magazine and you can also make some money and, you know, these just, they look so cool. And I mean, again, one of one, so, you know, mass, you just said that was cool cats, right?10,000, you know, there's only 10,000. Well, now you've got something like this, there's only one, right? Like, and you can say you own the one of one, I mean, what a flex. That is two. So, uh, another vote here for mute due to the detail, again, that roadmap behind, I mean, the parrots constantly moving to. There's just so much going on in these covers, dude.If I had this, I put it in my house and I'd have, I'd find a way to display it. Just like this all day, every day, all day people over just invite people to be like, Hey, come look at this. Got yeah. Oh man. That's awesome. So ends in four days. So we'll be able to talk about that final price next week on the show.And again, I said 20 for the mutant 17 for the board ape and mass said both we'll hit 180, so we will see, um, you know, what the final price is. Our, you know, we were pretty close with our guests is on the Southerby's board, ape auction, mass. Remember that, uh, you know, we. Um, so, you know, again, uh, just a, an educated guests here.Um, but we will see, well, we have a couple minutes left, so anyone, you know, watching this live, and again, if you're not watching this live or you're listening on the podcast, you know, that's great too. We're happy to have you as part of the. If you're watching live right now, though, uh, you know, let us know, what are you watching?Um, drop it in the chat. Are there any upcoming minster you're looking at any recent NFT purchases that you had? I do see a comment from mark in the chat there talking about the Viveve star wars drop, um, which I believe is at three o'clock today, mass. I wrote about this a week or two ago, and I, I forgot.I haven't even looked at these. Right. So Disney partnered with Vive to do star wars, Marvel and Disney related, um, NFTs. And they're they're collectibles. Right. And you have them in the Vive app then, you know, I saw, I think like a gold Bart Simpson skateboard. All right. Cause Disney now owns a Simpsons. I saw, um, you know, some Marvel ones as well.Have you looked at the Vive and FTC? No, I have not, but I think we'll pull them up right here. So we can all look at the ass C3, POC, like, look at that, like again, Disney, I mean, one of the biggest media companies in the world getting into NFTs and look at this, I mean, what a way to monetize your intellectual property, the golden moments and Ft collection with the, um, the, this is pretty sweet.Um, I might have to take a look at these because mass, if I remember right, I think you, it's kinda like a, uh, you know, like a normal NFT where you're just, you're, you're buying it and you don't know what you got until you open your pack. I think I, I feel like it's similar to top shot where, you know, you open it then, and it's an instant reveal, but, uh, I think that'd be wrong with that too.So, but that's pretty exciting too. I mean, I've got kids who love. Getting blind bags, right. Where you don't know what you're going to get until you open it. And that's kind of the thrill of NFTs too. I mean, there, you got Homer choking bar. Uh, there's just so many great ones in this collection. So walk us through this, Chris.So you pay, I'm assuming with cash or us dollar credit cards, us dollar through the Vive app. So that's a great point. Matt is another thing where, you know, maybe people new to the NFT. Get in through something like this, you know, top shop, we saw that, right? Cause they have the flow blockchain where you could, you could use a credit card.I mean, my first top shots I ever bought, you know, I was using a debit card to buy those packs. I didn't have to get a theory. Um, um, you know, to make that transaction. So here you have. Yeah. Homer and Bart. Um, yeah, so I mean, and addition, so yet, uh, 12,333. So I mean, that's still not a crazy supply. I actually thought there was going to be more of these.And that was the one thing that scared me away a little bit was like that inflated supply, but I mean, I've watched the Funko NFTs constantly sell out mass and I think Disney is going to sell all these out. So, is there a resell market for this? Or how does this work or do what, who do you think they're attracting just collectors from star wars that are going to come into this NMT?Are they attracting current NFTE people or is it a mix of both? Yeah, so I think they're going after new people and collectors. Um, and I think the resale market is right there on the Vive app. I see a comment from lane in the chat though, saying from what I understand, you still can't cash out Vive.That's an interesting comment. Um, that's something we've seen with newer apps before, right. And I think tap shot actually had that complaint for a while where you could bypass, you could buy moments, but you couldn't cash your money out for a while. Um, you know, cause again, just working out the, the processes and stuff.So if that's true, I mean that could scare some people away as well. But um, I mean, mass being able to use U S D don't you think that just brings, you know, new people to the. Yeah, I do. I, I'm curious to see kind of like meaning when we bring people on most of the time we ask them how they got into this world, they say top shot.Right. So, uh, absolutely. You know, absolutely. I'm curious to see I'm more, cause I didn't get in through top shot. I just got in through like straight Eve. So I'm curious to see how that works because like you said, yeah, it's going to bring a lot of, I'm sure a lot of Disney collectors to buy their first NFT and you know yeah.I think it's great on looking back. So in one minute, mass, if that is true, we got a loyal, loyal fan, Mexican Crip. Shout out to you. I see that name all the time in the chat. So shout out to you for joining us saying that that Vive drop is sold out mass. What are we doing? Doing the show live right now? We could have been buying some, uh, some Disney NFTs.So, uh, I, I mean, you said it that's bullish, right? If they're selling these out. I mean, and also, you know, so Disney, Hasbro, Mattel, all these companies getting in again, I just said it with the magazine companies, right? If you have not thought about getting into NFTs, what are you doing? Like, why are you not exploring how you can do it?I mean, McDonald's even right. The McRib NFT, um, you know, isn't this just an extremely bullish sign for these companies. Yeah. I mean, seeing them come onto this world is it's, it's, it's exciting. I'm curious to see how they implement it though, but yeah. Seeing a star wars side in a minute, it's pretty crazy.I want to look, is it mostly bots or how the process works? I'm going to do some research because I'm not sure we're going to, we're going to have to research that and see, and we'll have to try to get some, cause I mean, I, I'm a star wars fan. I'm a Marvel fan. Um, you know, so I wouldn't mind owning some just to collect them.Right. But I'm, I'm curious about the resell market to, you know, also there was the draft Kings NFTs, right. I was able to buy some of those and you were able to use your existing balance, right? So you couldn't just use a credit card on the spot. You had to have money in your draft Kings account, but you could just pay with that money to buy the.T. And I think that brought some new people to the space too, and those sold out, but they used to align process like top shot dead. Right? Where and Mexican Crip now saying it's mostly bots. Uh, you know, that would be the thing I would worry about. Yeah. Is, you know, if it's an instant sale and not align process, you're going to see a lot of bots get in there.Yeah, exactly. Yeah, man, these are all bullish. Just finding easier ways for people to get into that. If two worlds is exciting, I can't wait for Coinbase and see how that's going to work. If you're going to be able to use U S dollar from your Coinbase to buy NFTs. I mean, dude, that's gonna be huge. So yeah, I mean, mass with that being said, there was a rumor not too long ago, um, that open C uh, there, someone found in the code, I think visa, right.That you would be able to use a credit card. And we talked about that on the show. I know we did, uh, of how, you know, potentially that could make it easier for people to buy, but also could be scary, right. If you could. Use a credit card and start buying all this stuff. Um, you know, you think that brings more people too.And also with that being said, if, if open CCS competition coming from Coinbase could add in credit card payments, if open, see like announced that the same time Coinbase goes live, would that be like the ultimate way of, you know, trying to connect. Yeah. I mean, so there's been a lot of negative feedback for open C lately.You know, they've made a lot of money and they're not the best at customer service. So there's opportunity for another big player to come in and take over. I think that's definitely a possibility. Um, I love the competition. I think it's going to create the best product for the consumers and make it easier for people to come on.So, so game on baby. Yeah, and that's what we want to see. Right. We want it to be easier for the everyday person to be able to, you know, buy and sell NFTs. And I mean, you heard Fang gang say right. That, uh, you know, Coinbase, they welcomed the competition to open. See, so, uh, you know, I'm looking forward to Coinbase and again, you know, the, these different platforms like Vive partnering with Disney, I just think we're going to see more and more pop up and more and more ways for people to get involved with NFTs mass.I think that's going to do it. Uh, you know, it's been a great week. Uh, we'll be back next week, right? Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 2:00 PM. Eastern time. Uh, we've got some interviews, we'll be covering all the latest headlines and of course, interacting with our wonderful community here in the chat. Uh, anything you want to leave us off with today?No. The only thing is we're still early, right? We are in a slow process of NFTs right now. But once these things pick up, man, I hope everyone watching is ready because it's going to be fun. All right. May I ask, do you see this comment right now from mark? I've got a secret spider for $7, a foot for tough.Oh my goodness. We have got to look into, to even find out what this is all about, man. So next week we might have to do a whole segment on Vive. Maybe we take a look at that, but mark, that is awesome. Wonderful to hear happy for you. Um, and again, thanks to everyone in our chat for joining us today. And if you were watching this after we aired live, leave a comment on the video.Madison, I always go back. We read the comments. So just because you're not watching live does not mean you are not a loyal member of our community. We love everyone out there. So we will see you all next week.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-roadmap/donations

How To Buy NFTs What is a Non-Fungible Token NFT How To Make Your Own NFT Best NFT InvestmentsEpisode SummaryJoining us today, Mig, artist for SVS, Bored Ape Yacht Club, & Hall of Fame Goat Lodge. and Woof!Follow SVS on Twitter:Mig: https://twitter.com/notthetechguySVS: https://twitter.com/SVSNFTThe Sneaky Vampire Syndicate consists of 8,888 Vampires living their best life in The Lair - away from any burning sunlight or pesky Vampire Hunters.https://opensea.io/collection/sneaky-vampire-syndicateHosts:Chris KatjeMazhttps://bitclout.com/u/mazFollow The Roadmap on Twitter!Disclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.Unedited Transcript:Hey everyone. Welcome to the roadmap. Benzing. As new NFT show, we've had some great teams already interviewed in past episodes.The teams behind pixel vault, art blocks, the Vogel collective robots, that dose pound only force crypto dads, dizzy dragons, sub doc, and more. We've also done an NFT giveaway. Stay tuned for future NFT giveaways coming soon. We've got a great show today. Sneaky vampire syndicate joins us to talk about their project and what's ahead.This is the road. Hey guys. Yeah. As you heard me say, the roadmap Benzing as new NFT show, uh, airing Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays 2:00 PM. Eastern time. We've had some amazing interviews with some big teams and we have another one coming today. Let me bring on my cohost mass mass. It's been a long time, but it's great to see.What's up Chris we're back, man. It's been forever. It's been forever. It has no shows last week, but the big news, of course, we're expanding. We've got three shows this week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Um, so we've got some big interviews this week and I mean, man, we we've talked to some great teams, some projects with some big followings.And of course today we have SVS on and they have a huge community, right? I mean, we're talking, uh, 45,000 followers on Twitter, over 38,000 in their discord. Uh, you know, looking forward to, to SBS today as. Exactly. Yeah. I'm a big fan of the project. I know we talked about it. We mentioned it before they meant it out.Um, you know, how big the project could be. So it's great to see it come along in the last couple of weeks or so. Um, but yeah, man, I'm excited for this interview. I'm excited to be back. Let's get empties back and running. Yeah, definitely. I mean, this, this is a big one to talk about, but yeah, we have seen NFTs pull back a little bit, which we'll get into later with our news and headlines.Also. I do see a comment in the chat from Randall about my mic. Thank you. I did just fix it. So I, it should sound better. I switched over to the right mix, so we should be good to go. Uh, before we bring on a team from SVS, I know let's bring on the team. So joining us on the show today, we have Wolf the lead developer, and we have MIG the artists behind SPS and also an artist from boredom yacht club and hall of fame goes welcome to the show guys.What's going on, sir? Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. It's a great, yeah, of course. I mean, what a cool project we've been talking about this one for a while, we talked about it with our Halloween NFT focused show once before, um, we got vampires now we got bats. So we got a lot to get into and of course get into, you know, what's ahead.Right? We're always looking forward to the roadmap after all. It is the name of our show. But before we get into SVS, just wondering, you know, if a Wolf and Meg, if you guys can give us, you know, your history in the NFT space prior to this project, I'll start with you Wolf. Well, personally, I, um, my introduction and thesis it's been a while actually, but I've never made my.But I've been involved in development of with like a software program and stuff like that too, for a decade now, um, crypto since 2014, but I, uh, I've always had this interest in salute in a decentralized programming because it's like this whole new, all new, um, experience because you have to make sure everything's secure.Everything can be exploited, stuff like that. So, yeah, I've been, um, I've been buying entities like, like for a while now, just, uh, messing around with them. And, uh, personally I think it's more than just art. Um, I've also developed a ticketing system, for example, with NFTs. Um, so I think, and if these can be just more than AR and that's something I really want to go.Perfect and MIG, you know, we know you as an artist for board ape yacht club and hall of fame goat. Can, can you tell us, you know, uh, what was your experience with NFTs before those projects and then talk about creating the art for those projects prior to SVS? Um, so prior to BC, I didn't even know what an NFC was.Um, I've been a freelance illustrator for most of my life. Uh, so almost 20 years now, but, um, yeah, I had no idea what an NFT was. I didn't know, uh, anything about crypto. Uh, so it was only after, um, Basey started really taking off that, uh, I delved into it and, um, started reading up on NFTs and, uh, yeah. You know, uh, it kind of boggles the mind, how quickly things, uh, develop in the NFD space.And, um, yeah, I guess, uh, so creating the artwork, uh it's uh, SVS is pretty much the first project, uh, worked on NFT project. I worked on where I had most, uh, the most control over what's being, uh, presented. Um, I mean the guys came up and I came to me with a list of traits and, uh, and they just, um, told me to do whatever I, you know, uh, just, uh, go wild.Uh, they really didn't want to, um, You know, just, uh, hold me back. They just wanted me to go crazy with my imagination and yeah. Sort of came up with, but with, uh, with goat lodge and, um, Basey, I was on the more direction there. So, uh, yeah. Awesome. So Wolf talk to us, you know, how did the idea of SVS come to be and you know, how were you able to bring a well-known artists like MIG onto the team?Yeah, so, um, initially the idea was to create an empty, uh, well, we didn't have the idea to create an empty, but, uh, the other team members are friends of mine for a couple of years already. And one of them introduced me to me and like the whole group. And then we, uh, cause we were thinking of making something crypto anywhere like a project.And we were, we like building like everyone in my. My friend group is like, they, there, they have already had jobs in different businesses, different niches, stuff like that. Like community management, um, of course development. We have, um, we have two developers and a UX designer, like a full blown team. Like we've known them for years already.And then we got introduced to me. Um, of course he's a great artist with a great track record. So we thought, oh, that that's a perfect combo with the team. We have to create something, something special and what makes it that he had full control over the creative aspect. That's something we really wanted to keep because we didn't want to limit his creative.For example. So, so that was one of our main key points to focus on to just give me every possibility he wants to. And then he gave us like a couple sketches in the beginning and we select the one we all like liked the most. And that's how we started. We see. Perfect. So, Meg, I mean, you touched on the, the artwork a little bit and, you know, having more control versus prior projects, you were on.Talk to us about, you know, the inspiration, the artwork here. Is this something that, you know, came to you immediately was that, you know, a trial and error process, um, how many different, uh, you know, uh, variations of the vampire did you come up with? Okay. Uh, I came up with about 12 different vampires that are presented to the team and, uh, eventually set along the one that you see now, but, uh, the inspiration for it, uh, I guess.Um, Bruce, Tim is a huge inspiration. Uh he's he's the guy who created, uh, the Batman animated series in the nineties. Um, so basically just a goofy looking vampire that you would, uh, that goes well with like a Saturday morning cartoon, uh, yeah. That something goofy, not too serious. And, uh, hopefully something that appeals to a lot of people love that.Um, so there was an SVS and eight, eight collab that launched on Monday for, you know, it at eight holders and SVS holders. Can you guys tell us a little bit more about that? You know, how the project came to be? And I know there's like a staking or burning mechanism behind it as well. Um, so yeah, a today is, um, we've been talking to him for a while and he's invested in our project.Uh, he also has a whole nerd. He's like a good friend of ours. So you can say, um, Yeah. So the PR the idea between the collaboration with eight and eight is that, uh, we've dropped in a unique piece of art by me. And it's basically, uh, the sort of vampire model we use for our, um, profile pictures, but then also with a little bit of eight, eight style with it.So he's like all about this magic stuff. Like, um, like there, the X stuff, like angels, like eight and eight, stuff like that. And then we dry, we basically made it so you can claim one of these per SVS, token, you hold and eight and eight Genesis token. And then we added a game fighting aspect where you basically, you can burn through them to go to next year and then there's rewards for the seven and eight.So, um, so that's the entire collaboration is basically reborn two communities together this way, because they have to work together to get the 120. Love that. And if you get the 128, what is the reward? I think it's a, one of one drawing, if I'm correct. Or can you tell us a little more, more about that and sort of rewards is you, um, you basically have white lists for next generation.Um, also you get access for the first aid to the top tier. I think it's that. And then you get access to the ADA Genesis group, like his inner circle group, where you get always, uh, collaborations. Like you can get them for free. And then also the one of one. Yeah, I think. And did we have some, yeah, I think that, was it the one of one, a white list and access to his gender Genesis inner circle.Yeah. So I'm in the 8, 8, 8, uh, discord. And I saw that a couple of people from the SVS, they collapse, they joined forces to be able to death the 128. So that's cool to see the community come together and, you know, yeah, definitely not something we want to do because community is one of our biggest, uh, key points.Love that. So Halloween just was over. So there was a contest derivative. Right. So can you guys tell us a little bit more about some of your favorite derivative derivatives that you saw of the SVS, uh, uh, drawings, um, made you pick those, right? Uh, yeah, I picked some of them. Uh, this one, we really love this one.Uh, I mean, most of the, um, most of the, uh, competitions we've had have been just drawings, but this was special because it was a 3d sculpture by one of our community members. And we really love the effort that she took to bring this life look great. And the one to the left, uh, it just, I, uh, as an artist, I can see how much time and effort he put into this.And he adds some new references yet. I think about 20 movie references in the. An actual picture. So it had to be in there. It had to be a winner for us. Yeah. That one's sick. Look at that. You got the little clown in the background. That's awesome. How does it feel to see, you know, a lot of, you know, the community drawing, you know, these pieces, uh, to you as an artist makes it's, uh, it's pretty mind blowing sometimes, uh, to think that people are doing all these derivatives of, uh, something I've created, uh, it D you know, always put a smile on my face, no matter how, how little effort went into it, or how much effort, uh, I get a kick out of it this year.That's awesome. Um, so we, I was looking and I saw that you can stake your vampires and then you get the blood token. Can you guys tell us a little bit more about blood token, the utility behind it and how it benefits the SBS. Yeah. So the bot token will be, um, purely used for you to like it's a it's in our ecosystem.Right? So, um, for example, in our next generation, we're going to introduce a breeding aspect. Well, we kind of call it breeding as that's the pros of putting two and two together and then getting something out of it, but it won't be exactly that. So blood will be heavily use there. Um, we'll have like an increasing cost whenever you breed with one, which is already brand, so we'll go up and like use it.And then we also plan to have more, uh, in real life collaborations with blood. So you get access to that item, meaning a physical item with blood. So we have, we have one collaboration running right now, which is in progress. Uh, it takes a while to actually produce, but that's, uh, we've partnered with, uh, One of the biggest champagne creators or like most famous ones, like really good at it and stuff.I am like skilled. Um, and we'll, we'll be giving access to that champagne through blood. So that's one of the things we want to provide. Um, well, it's, we're looking to do like merged for like bloods. You can get so emerged for free, if you could just use the butter into claim it, for example. That's awesome.So I can essentially exchange my blood token from staking to get wine or apparel. Yeah, for example. Yeah. We're looking to do more, uh, fiscal collaborations, right. Ready have some stuff lined up, which will be in the later months. That's okay. Yeah. I love that. That's awesome. Awesome. Well, you know, one of the things that recently launched was you guys also did the bats.So we have sneaky bat. This was a free mint for anyone who owned SVS, a Wolf, I'll start with you. You know, why was it important to do you know, a, a free meant here for holders of SDS? Well, I think we shouldn't charge any holder who is already bought an SVS or invested in the project. I think it's fair to do a free companion drop because that wasn't our roadmap always.And it's a great way to give everyone another rare or not. So rare Coleman piece of art. And it's just fun to do, right, man. Tons of fun. MIG, talk to us about the, the artwork here, right? So not only did you get to develop the vampire, but you also got to develop this bat. Um, walk us through the process here on, you know, this cool free companion drop.Um, I just wanted to create a sort of mini and or side kick for the vampire. Uh, yeah. I went through a few sketches to get it done, but, uh, I already knew in my mind that it was going to be a very, uh, like a mischievous kind of character, um, yeah, similar to, um, Dick dastardly and, uh, muddly, you know, um, Motley is this, this kind of, he's a sidekick to, uh, Dick dastardly, but he's, he's kind of mischievous on his own.He doesn't always. And he's got that constant loft and I wanted to bring that kind of, uh, that kind of spirit, uh, into the bat. So yeah, that's the origin for, I guess. Awesome. Love that. Yeah. The old Hanna-Barbera cartoon reference there. Uh, you know, I remember watching that as a kid, definitely in my kids now are getting into that.So love the reference there. Um, you know, we got into the roadmap a little bit, right? With the staking of the blood token, you know, there's also a call for a gen two breeding, uh, you know, a vampire hunt, a vampire meetup, uh, you know, with, uh, give us the background, you know, what can holders expect, uh, as part of the roadmap, uh, any timeline updates on gen two, maybe for us as well.So of course we're doing the gen two, a mint, which will be. I dunno because of the current state of the market, we don't want to bring in their collection so fast. So we might look to delay that if needed and then we'll just try and create as much value for the Genesis collection. Of course. So we're looking to do gen two, which will then come with breeding, which will be after that.Cause Meg has to draw the R we have to settle on, like while we're going to make as a result. Cause we don't want to do, uh, just a simple like baby vampire, stuff like that. So we want to do something cool. We can eventually do something with which makes, which makes for another grave roadmap item, for example.Um, so. And then we're going to do gen two companions as the same way as our Genesis companions. We're planning to do a in real life meetups. Once you're more established, like the board app yacht club one, that was really cool to see that come into action. Um, and then we're going to do some, uh, of course they're going to keep our community contests running the art derivatives.It's cool to see every what everyone does. And yeah, that's basically what we've planned right now. And obviously there's always stuff going around, which is not on the roadmap. So the champagne wasn't on the roadmap. We have that game in development, which was on the roadmap and yeah, there's more to come.Meg, walk us through, you know, the, the gen two development process and what this means for, for you as an artist to, you know, have to create more artwork. Oh, a whole nother series. Uh, well, I actually can't say much just yet. Uh, uh, right now we're just formulating a lot of ideas, uh, gathering, um, info on what traits we want to do.Uh, but, um, yeah, once, once I get going then perhaps the limo sneak peaks, but until then, I don't really want to say too much. I want to blow the surprise. That's perfect. Yeah. We always try to get stuff out, but we understand if we can't. So, uh, one of the things we, we do like to ask, and this can always be a tough question, right?Cause it's like a, you know, picking your favorite kid is we talk about favorite traits, right? So, uh, going to the vampires, you know, uh, Wolf, I'll start with you, uh, cause it, maybe it's easier for you than the artist himself, uh, share with us, you know, what are some of your favorite traits for the SVS? Uh, So I think my favorite, um, well I have my own, well, I think the shadow skin's one of the coolest we've done, uh, personally, even though it's not the most rare.And then I really liked the whole load glasses and the laser eyes, but, uh, this one doesn't have, you know, the whole low-class. I was one of the, one of the things where we had to move our generation process entirely because they wouldn't, uh, export properly. So now that I think that was like, uh, two days before we, um, revealed or drop the collection.Oh, nice. Oh yeah. I, yeah, those are cool. Yeah. Perfect. And MIG, I mean, this, I don't know if this is a tough question for you. I'm assuming it is. Uh, but any favorite traits to call out, uh, for, for SDS here? Um, uh, I think. Uh, it's really hard to pick. I mean, those glosses that I did big, uh, those triangular glasses, uh, were from an anime called, uh, grew in Lygon, um, and, uh, really like the character to use those glasses.And I love have, uh, being able to add that into SPS. Another cool one was that actually on, on the right there, the laser moth. Um, so one of our guys, uh, 2d van came up with some of the traits and one of them was a giant moth and, uh, so out of the giant moth. And then, um, I thought, you know, why not give it lasers too?And so I put it on there and it, and it workslove that. Um, so one thing I wanted to touch on was community. So I kind of wanted to paraphrase this really quick about your guys's launch. So when you guys launched, people were able to mint three vampires, um, you know, you guys wanted to keep it as organic as possible and have the distribution spread as possible from the beginning.Um, so immediately after you met your unique holder percentage was around 52%, right? So we've seen the community, you know, it's, it's, it's very spread out. There's not just big whales that own the project, you know, there's over 45, count Twitter, over 30 K on discord. Uh, how do you manage the community and what do you love about the community the most?Um, well, we have a bunch of people who actually like active all day in our discord chat, which is amazing to see because people. They've genuinely like they started talking to each other in the DMS actually. So it's great to see people connect with each other, um, community manage wise. We have a team of malts to keep the chat in like intact, like, but the there's not really that much like need to moderate all than like spamming, like invite links, stuff like that.Um, I think the community we have right now is actually really great. And it's one of our main, main success points I think, to have as engaging community. Absolutely. Uh, how active are both of you in the district? Well, personally, I've been really busy myself working on like everything around SVS, getting these partnerships and stuff.But, uh, so I haven't been around this much in this good lately, but I used to be very active, but Meg is around daily to talk to people in the joints, this voice chats. Every, we have a voice chat with, um, with one of our community members who is really good at investing, for example, in play through end games like strategies.And he does a talk every Tuesday to like talk about investment strategies and how it helping people out. So that's something really great, which just came from the community. And we really, uh, really like that because that's how the community is supposed to work. Like they build it, they build each other and help each other.Yeah. Um, if you'll notice in a lot of the, um, NFT projects in the, in the discord, uh, a lot of the time the artist doesn't really interact with the. Uh, community members, you know, and I find that really weird, uh, and it could be a sign of a rug pool who knows, but, uh, yeah, I, I, I don't want to be a person that you can never contact.You can never interact with. I'm just this presence that's there. I just did the artwork and that's it. I want to be a part of the community on a lo I love joking around with the people there love, hanging around, uh, listening to whatever they have to say. Um, and they really, the lifeblood of any project.Uh, it doesn't matter what we do. Um, doesn't matter how many collabs, uh, we bring, uh, how many, how much new utility we bring to the project. If you don't have a strong community, then, uh, it's. Exactly. I love hearing that, man, because I've been in a lot of discourse where the team comes on, just when they want to show stuff to this, to see you guys active day in and day out, embraces the community.And I know you do weekly AMS, which is super important, you know, I've been in cool cats, they do it every week and I see the community rile up from that. So I love to see that. Um, what do you guys think of the current discord hacks? You know, are you guys taking any precautions towards that? You know, we've seen a lot of that in the last week or so.Oh yeah. Uh, from day one we have, um, we've locked. Our are down basically. So, but these hacks. Uh, I feel like they just, uh, they bribe one of, uh, members with some special permission. So a lot of these discords, they forgot, forget, like, um, make it sell malts cannot give people certain roles or announce in these general, like admin channels, like announcements, for example, where it looks really official.Um, and they also forget to disable the create webhook permission, which allows you to send a message through a web hook through these channels as well. So from day one, we've basically locked everything down except for the admin admin members. And we've forced everyone with substantial permissions to enable to have a, so that way in case someone gets hacked by some sort of malware key logger, uh, unless they get bribe, but then they don't have permissions.They can't do anything which will harm the community. Lots of see it, man. Yeah, it's been crazy. Couple of weeks, man. I've seen so many, discords get hacked. It's been crazy. Yeah. Uh, the, these, uh, people getting really sophisticated with the way they work. Uh, we actually will. Some people actually attempted the same thing on me, uh, first by, uh, getting me banned from the Basey discord.Uh, and then, uh, they going to pretend that their staff from the, uh, basically discord and attempt to fix the situation. And, uh, they'll try to get you to go either click on something or, uh, go on a video call. And, uh, once you click on the video, you know, that's when you start getting fished or hacked or whatever.Uh, so just a reminder for everyone to stay vigilant and not click on anything, uh, always use a hardware wallet, uh, yeah, just be cautious. Yeah, the suspicious definitely great warning out there from you guys. It looks like people calling out, uh, Freddy, uh, XXX Al in the chat. Um, so I'm guessing that's a member of the discord as well.There. Uh, want to talk a little, uh, broadly here? Um, you know, you mentioned maybe delaying a gen two, depending on the state of the market. Uh, talk to us a little bit, you know, where do you see the NFT market headed? Right. We saw a huge demand. We saw this big wave and now we're starting to see a little bit of a pull back as you know, the theory and price goes up and the sheer volume of NFT projects increases.So, uh, we'll, I'll, I'll start with you just overall thoughts on the NFT. So I think, um, yeah, of course, what you've noticed that the theorem price is going up as soon, like severely affected like the volume traded at empties as well. Because, uh, if you look at the gas, like constant it's, I haven't seen it drop under a hundred gray in the past week, past two weeks, maybe.So it's really, you lose so much value by just purchasing any theory right now from the like total price. So it has massively like dropped the volume of sales as well, and people are trying to get out of course, because they want to write the w the way for the price increase because they think, oh, it's going to, let's say 10 grand.So they're trying to get out. And then that drops the four pies of maybe like, I think I've seen every project go down so far. But, yeah. So I think the current state of the market, you ever, probably going to see some more downside if it keeps going and Bitcoin, of course, but I think eventually it will settle down and people, uh, reinvest their money in, in NFS because right now a lot of like good projects are like on a discount, definitely.And MIG, any thoughts on the overall NFT market here? Uh, ever every project's flaw has taken a battering? Uh, yeah, like will said, uh, crypto is pumping right now. So, uh, and if these are down, but, uh, what, what you'll see is, um, the, the teams that are really dedicated to delivering on their roadmap and just continuing to push forward, those are the projects that will outlast them.Uh, there's a lot of projects that come out every day and it's sad to say, but, uh, you know, 95, 90 8% of them, aren't going to make it. That's just the way it is. Uh, you need a good strong team to, uh, to just weather the storm and keep going. And that's what we're going to do. Perfect. And, you know, uh, on that note, you know, you mentioned that there are some projects, you know, trading at a discount and some that, you know, maybe you're fans of.So we always like to ask, you know, towards the end of the interview, are there any, you know, NFTs that you own that you want to call out or projects that, you know, you really like, I'll start with you Wolf, um, you know, what NFT projects outside of SVS for you? Um, I don't really own that many other keys sleep is the one that I really like is Kinesis art.It's one of these generative, uh, well, like program the arts. So it's like a. I think it's like our book, but it's a little different because they're all animated and stuff. And another one is EPO name. It's a, I don't know if you heard about that one. It was this, um, project where you put in any worn, for example, and then AI generates an image.I think they used Google, like images, like the 10 search results and then merged them together by day AI. And the results of them are pretty crazy. So that's the two and a few porters. I am, uh, I have some of, and I look forward to seeing what they can do. Awesome. And then MIG, you know, as an artist, you mentioned you, you weren't into NFTs prior to, you know, doing the artwork.Uh, now that you're fully into the space, you know, are there other projects that you, uh, collect or anything you'd like to call out in terms of artwork? Um, Hm. I actually still don't collect many NFTs. I only had, uh, three NFTs that I've purchased. And, um, this week I, I gave them away because, uh, the sheer amount of people getting hacked and scammed, uh, really annoyed me.So, uh, I gave them away to, uh, people from our community just because why not? You know, uh, they lost everything. They, hopefully this little token will help get them back on their feet. Uh, so I don't have any, uh, I don't have any FTEs right now, but, uh, and I don't really pay too much attention to other projects.I like to pay attention to the mistakes of other projects so we know what not to do, but, uh, if I were. To namedrop. Uh, I'd say I really like dead fellows. I'm enjoying artwork there. Um, yeah. So that's something that, that, yeah, it gets my sense. Yeah. No, that's fine. Not everyone, you know, collects all of them.Uh, you're a pretty busy guy, Meg, so we understand it. Uh, yeah, I, I, I don't collect any, I don't even own any vamps. I don't have any bases. I don't have any goats. Uh, and my reasoning for that is, um, if I were to own a vampire, for example, that would, uh, effectively take away, uh, one person away from the community.And I I'd rather have, uh, an active member of the community rather than owning about myself. And, uh, there's so many great people in the community that, uh, you know, who knows maybe that one person that joined the community because of. Um, may not owning a vampire. It turns out to be, uh, a celeb or someone who's really helpful to everyone or, yeah, just the overall good person.Yeah, definitely. All right. Well, masse, I think we've got some, uh, questions here, um, from the chat and some followers of Benzinga. So I'll let you, uh, take it away. Absolutely. First of all, MIG, you are the people's champ, man. That is awesome. Uh, we have a question from Scott here, he's asking. So what are the steps that you guys would recommend to a new project to secure their discord?Um, so first of all, make sure, like, except you like the admin role has permissions to access announcement and stuff like that. So most of you, this Corptax. Go to a moderator. I give them like 10 grand to get access to their account, maybe, or get some permissions to post in those channels. And they'll add everyone with, um, with a fake site to meet that project again, for example.So that's recently what's been going on in a lot of your SIS scores and a lot of people are falling for that. So make sure nobody has access to any like substantial, official channel to post an except like maybe the team or like you only asked the owner of this score and make sure moderators don't have access to create web hooks or manage roles.So that that's one of the, like the most steps you can take. And eventually when you're big enough, you, if you applied to discord as a discord or partner, it will force everyone to, to have a, um, so that that's another great, uh, step you can take eventually. Love that. Do you guys think some projects are taking bribes considering how frequent these are happening or is it just the same thing over and over that people are falling?Well, it seems to be the same person I've been following this personal Twitter. Um, let me find his name. So he's, uh, yeah, his name is NFP herder and he posts these treads on these discord hangs and it seems to be the same person every time who's been fooling off these hacks recently and it's discord. So, so either they're falling for the same bribe, like the moderators or, or they're being hacked.So by the same, like maybe a piece of malware, they click like a link. I don't know what the attack vector is here. Yeah. So, yeah. And it's really bad situation for the product as well because, uh, The the, your, your loose, so much trust in a team. If they, if people lose money to you through like a scam like that, if you don't like take time to properly secure to this cortisol.Exactly. And MIGS, you said that you gave some NFTs away to some of the SVS community. Did some of them get hacked through other projects they were in? Um, I'm not sure. I don't really know the full details of what happened. Uh, I just, uh, I just felt really bad for them. So, uh, yeah, I, I just want to do a little something.I don't have much. I'd just give them something to, uh, get them back on their feet. Yeah. Amazing. All right. Let's see, Chris, I think, is there more questions from the chat here? Yeah. So we've got this question from, uh, de-bone in the chat. Uh, what are some of the other pop culture, Easter eggs we can find in the SVS bat.Um, usually I like to encourage people to just look at the artwork and discover for themselves. Yeah. I mean, when it comes to Easter eggs sometimes yeah. You can't give everything away. So maybe you can share maybe one thing to look for. Uh, one of my favorite traits from the bats was creating, uh, um, a Walkman, uh, that, uh, if you've seen guardians of the galaxy style load has a Walkman, uh, that it's super ancient.And I wanted, I wanted something like that, uh, to be kind of a success of trait to the headphones that we have for the vampires. So I, I created a Walkman pretty much in inspired from stall loads. Walkman, but yeah, I couldn't use, we might get DMC aid by Sony or something, so I couldn't use the exact name.I changed it to SVS walkout wing man instead. Perfect. Well, thanks for sharing that. De-bone, there's your answer. You, you might have to look for the rest, but look for that Walkman. Absolutely. So we have another question here from Scott, who wants to know, uh, for new people coming into the NMT space as investors or collectors, what's the best way for them to, uh, do research and find quality projects versus avoiding scams or quick cash grabs.Um, so there's a couple of red flags of you see. So first of all, if I were to invest in your project, I would look at maybe like, um, like any of their like team members to see if they're well established. Of course. So, and maybe look at their website, maybe. So a lot of these ex like scams recently, um, they, um, they tend to just maintain and run off, for example.So it's really hard in, and if these spaces is not as simple as like a, like, uh, like checking a crypto Rockpool. So for an NFC space, a lot of people jump, try to jump on the hive because it's this one-time event where you can buy in this NFT, like at a really low price. So a lot of people tend to not do like their research because the event is going to happen anyway.And there's so many people getting in and you're trying to flip it. Um, but the thing is with NMT project, you're only gonna see whether it's a rug pool, like most definitely, or like in the future, because it's whether they're going to work on the project in the future or not. So it's, it's a bit harder to do here than in normal token.For example, a token you're buying through. Yeah. And of course settling, it's going to selling, it's going to be harder because you can't just go through union swap incentive there, but you have to actually find a buyer. So that's another factor you can look at. Yeah. And I've seen projects, they sell out and then these devs, they go to another project and they launch it and another one and they repeat the cycle, they just sell out and just kind of leave the community, sell out, leave the community.So it's interesting to see, hopefully we start taking more, you know, doing more research before just jumping onto the hype, you know? Yeah. It's a, it's the wild west out here. And, uh, yeah, I think what was said is, um, you should really, um, do some research on the team. Um, that's exactly what I did before I joined, uh, uh, the team.Um, so before joining SVS, I was, I was screening a lot of, uh, Proposals to me. And, uh, a lot of people wanted me to join their project. And I, uh, one of the deciding factors of joining SVS was, uh, choosing the right team who had, uh, who were well-established, who had a good, uh, Twitter presence. And, um, just the team that could get the job done and I chose correctly and, uh, yeah, so always, uh, do a bit of research on, on the team members.And, um, but other than that, uh, yeah, just always, always be cautious. Perfect. Well guys, you know, thanks so much for, for sharing insights into SVS what's to come and also, you know, just the advice for NFT, uh, people out there, right? That's something we really wanted to do with this show was bringing the interviews to talk about big projects, but also, you know, provide that education segment for people, maybe new to the NFT space.And I definitely think we, we shared some education today via you guys in terms of what to look for in projects and also, you know, managing a discord. So shout out to both of you for that. But, you know, we look forward to following this progress, you know, it's far from over gen two coming, uh, you know, I'm really excited to, to see what that looks like.So Wolf and MIG, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedules and joining us today. Thanks guys. It's a, it's been a pleasure to talk with you and, um, just, uh, share our knowledge on everything. We know about crypto and NFTs and, uh, yeah, just, uh, stay vigilant out there. It's the wild west. So keep that in mind.Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for coming on. We appreciate you and the SBS community. You guys are awesome. Yeah. And we will love to have you guys back when, you know, it gets closer to the next event. So, uh, thank you both. It definitely will be back, I think. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Shout out to, to MIG and to Wolf for joining us today on the show, and also shout out to the SVS community, showing up in full force mass in the chat, some great questions there.Um, you know, the question from Debo and of course about the Easter egg, um, you know, traits, I, I loved that loved hearing about the, the guardians of the galaxy reference there. Um, you know, I, I loved hearing about the artwork, um, right. So the inspiration, uh, you know, from some different cartoons. So this was a fun interview and a exciting project, uh, with a lot to come back.Absolutely. Yeah. You know, it's great to see these authentic projects that are really here for the community and not just trying to, you know, cash, grab everything. You can see it in the way they represent themselves and make the artists who doesn't own any NFTs. Who'd rather, you know, give his SVS to someone else that can be a part of the community.Um, really great guys, really great community. I'm excited for them. And I cannot wait to see the progression over the next couple of months. Yeah. Definitely. I can't even get all these comments up on the screen cause they're coming in fast. Um, only fangs also got a call out here, mass that we should come join one of the AMA.So, uh, we might have to try to set that up with SBS. So let's mass. Uh, another great interview here. We got more great interviews coming up this week before we leave today. Um, let's get into some news and headlines, right? We didn't do a show last week. So we got a full week, but also we saw, you know, the NFT market, uh, trading a little bit slower.Right? So, uh, we, we still have some big news out there though, but the thing we always like to start with brightest, the top 10 weekly sales volume leaders. So I do this article for Benzinga every Sunday and it's based on data from crypto slam, which tracks NFT sales via. So no surprise mass. I know you're not going to be surprised by this one.Number one in sales volume last week, ACCE infinity, $113.2 million in sales volume, and then followed by crypto punk sport, a yacht club, and then a couple of projects on the wax block chain, which actually was a surprise farming, tales and farming world then followed by art blocks. We of course had, you know, a snow fro from art blacks on the show two weeks ago.And then, uh, the one I want to talk about here though, eighth place last week up 125% in sales volume. Uh she's right. This was the project that launched using dose killer. Um, also known as leash, which is the second coin in the sheet. And ecosystem system, which we've seen, you know, S H I B the coin absolutely ripping.So this was a 10,000 Ft project. It had a sliding scale for the, for the pricing mass. I don't know if you saw that the first 3000 for 0.1, ease the next 5,000 per 0.2 and the last 2000 for 0.3. And if you own the leash, you got early access to this, it sold out pretty fast. We saw high gas. But this was in mid-October and now the floor price on this project has, has ripped.I mean, when I wrote about it, it was 1.7. Then I did an article. It was 1.9. And when I looked today, 2.25 east floor now on , um, and the top sales, we had two 50 east to sales. Um, if we can get those up on screen, the Batman and the iron man based shimbashi there it is right there, mass. Uh, that's pretty cool.Did you know this project mass? And what do you think about a Shabbos she's here? You think? Because it's the first really one tied to, um, you know, the, the ship coin that it's getting all this attention, all of a sudden, you know, it's funny. I heard it. I didn't really look into it till right now. These are pretty cool.And I do like the connection to the Sheba coin. Um, Yeah. I mean, it's holding its price fairly well. And as far as art goes, those are, they're pretty cute. They fit that PFP style. That's a trending right now. Um, I like them. Yeah. I mean, this should have been one where I think everyone could have predicted right.As ship gets hot, it looks like this NFT project is going to follow along. So it's definitely on my watch list, uh, based on the strong community behind the coin. Absolutely. You know, so speaking of community and if T Fest, you know, it starting this week or this weekend it's been going on. So I don't know if you guys saw the board ape yacht club, they had an actual.And, you know, the party looked really awesome. You know, people were partying on the yacht. It's great to see the community come together. Um, there's a couple of videos and pictures on Twitter and man, I have FOMO from it. It just, it just looks like a great time. It does, it looks like a full-on party. Right.And I really, yeah. You know, I, I had some big FOMO mez, uh, you know, not being able to be there and we, we saw it, not just board apes, right. But a bunch of different MFT projects, you know, just really rallying around this, this event. Right. Bringing your community together, bringing your teams there to meet your community.And then, yeah, I mean, who could forget the, the party on the yacht, right board, a yacht club, a full-on party on the yacht. Also, I saw some, uh, billboards, right? We always talk about, you know, the, the times square billboards, right. That costs a lot of money, but get a ton of eyeballs on them. We saw some NFTs featured on those billboards.Um, I know our friends from robotics were actually on those billboards, uh, throughout the event. And I know that they traveled to New York as well. So, uh, there, there it is right there on the billboard, uh, shout out to the robotics. Okay. You know, I wonder if this starts scaling up to like a comic con style, you know, as the years go by, you know, people come with their communities, they represent, you know, the board apes or bottles, cool cats.And it's just a cool time meeting people in real life when we just talk digitally every day. So I love saying it. Yeah. I think it definitely a trend to watch. The, the big question is, you know, will it be, you know, You know, for NFTs all together, will it be for one event at a time where we see some regional events as well?Right. And that's something with Comicons as you kind of see them spread out throughout the country, you know, are the big cities like New York, uh, you know, big meeting places like Las Vegas, are those going to be the places, you know, to host these events, but exciting times, uh, for, for meetups and, and speaking of board eight yacht club mass, I don't know if you saw this, but it, you know, the cover of rolling stone, right?We, we talked recently about cool cats getting a collaboration with time magazine. Now you have board ape yacht club on the cover of rolling stone. I mean, and a full featured article inside the magazine talking about this. If, if you're out there and you didn't think NFTs were mainstream yet, I mean, if you're a musician, you always dream about being on the cover of rolling stone and here you have now an NFTE on it.What do you think is this is a sweet looking cover. I mean, it looks awesome straight up the board API cover, like the rock stars of the NFC world and this, you know, rolling stone cover kind of a embraces that I thought it was really cool. I love the cover. Um, I love seeing more people, you know, by apes, I saw a couple of rappers, you know, they made it their profile picture.Um, so again, we see more and more celebs start buying these profile pictures and making it, you know, their identity. I think it's great. Definitely. So speaking of, you know, we talked a little bit earlier with SBS. Discord hacks. You know, there's been a lot of discord hacks, and I think we should talk about, you know, what to avoid.You know, when these projects do get hacked by, you know, however they're getting hacked, you know, what's happening is they're posting a link and people are minting through a fake website and just sending them Eve and they're just rug polling. So, you know, what are, what are the best tips that we can recommend Chris, for people watching to avoid?You know, these, these scams that are happening consistently now? Yeah. I mean, I really loved hearing from the SVS team, right? Talking about, you know, the, the discord safety. And I think the biggest thing, anyone who's been in discord for a while, you see the sheer volume of messages that you get sometimes, right?And a lot of them are invite link spam, right? Where people need, you know, a certain number of invites to get on the white list of a project. Um, you know, those aren't necessarily a, you know, a. Right at someone, you know, most likely trying to get you to join a discord, but also remember that those links are coming from someone you've never met.Um, so I would always caution that, you know, I would try to join a discord, find a community, and you can talk about upcoming projects there. And, you know, it's a lot safer rather than just clicking on links from people. Then the other big thing, you know, as, uh, Megan Wolf said, right, is that most of these projects, their announcement channel, right?It's the one that's locked just to the admin and pay attention to that. Right. They're going to update and they're going to say, Hey, this is our mint date, right? This is when we're going to mint. If all of a sudden, you know, you're getting messages saying, Hey, minting is live. And it's three days before the project's supposed to mint.That should be an immediate red flag. Right. Unless if it was a now. And you really know that that's true. It's not a stealth drop, right? This is someone looking for you to connect your wallet to that site. And, you know, unfortunately you could be a victim in this way, so I would stay away from the messages you get in discord and make sure you're following and know that it is the admins posting in announcement channels, um, to stay safe.Absolutely. You know, and they try to get you to mint emotionally, right? They create this sort of FOMO of mint now, you know, stealth drop, you know, get right away. So you don't really think about it twice. And I've realized that now, especially since the market has been slower, is we should take our time when we mint.We shouldn't just rush into things just because, you know, you get the sense of FOMO. It's okay to miss things, you know, especially considering the environment we're in, where, you know, there's so many scams going on on day to day basis. Take your time. Do your research. You know, there's always opportunities out there.Don't ever feel like you're missing out because we've seen people. You know, a substantial amounts of Eve coming into the NFT world and imagine if they're new, they're more susceptible to it. And they may just have a bad experience and not come back, you know? Yeah. And that's the unfortunate part. Matt has you, you hit it right on the, on the head there at the end, right?Is the most likely victims of this are the newer people. And with that being said, it could mean two things, either a they're probably don't have a ton of liquidity. Right. So if they mint out on one of these fake projects, they might not have money left to get into other projects. And then on the flip side, it also may turn them away from NFTs completely.Right. I mean, if I got hacked, if I was victim, I mean, I might just not want to pay attention to NFTs anymore. Right. Because it's a, you know, an unsafe market, so it's important. And that's why we try to educate people on the show. Um, so great insights, you know, from us in the education, but also you heard it directly from a team today.Right? So great segment there. Mass. I want to talk a little bit about some of the major brands, right? So we just mentioned, you know, rolling stone of course, having an NFT on their cover. But aside from that, we're seeing major brands actually launch NFTs now, and this is something that we thought was coming, you know, for months, right?Some of these big media companies monetizing their intellectual property. So Disney announced a collaboration with ViiV right. They're going to launch NFTs from star wars, Pixar, Marvel, and Disney characters. Um, you know, on that leading mobile platform, we have Hasbro is launching power ranger at FTS, right?Uh, capitalizing on that brand that they have. Mattel which owns hot wheels. They're launching hot wheels NFTs, right? Similar to Funko where you collect the digital, um, you know, the NFTs. And if you get a certain rarity, you actually get the physical version of the hot wheel as well, which is what Funko did.Right? If you got the chase version, you get mail, they physical Funko that you can only get from the NFT collection. And then mass, we got news this week, that one of the largest companies, most well-known brands in the world. Right. McDonald's McDonald's is getting into the NFT game. There it is the MC rib NFT, and these are limited.You can't just go and buy these. They started a sweepstakes, um, today through November 7th, where you can enter and only 10 people will be awarded this NFT. I'm going to go ahead and drop the article I wrote on this, in the chat. So if you're interested, um, you can see how you can possibly, uh, you know, when one of those NFTs also on screen, you can see right now the rules and how to enter, but mass, those are some big names, right?Disney, Mattel, Hasbro. And now McDonald's, I mean, it looks like we are going to make it right. Absolutely. I love seeing it. And I definitely retweeted that post and shout. You know, if we win, I already told our chick, I'm taking her out to get my grips. So hopefully there you go. There's the cloud right there with the mic rib, NFT.Think of all that you can do with that. I love that. Exactly. Um, so moving on, Chris, I don't know if you saw last week, there was a huge sale for a crypto punk. Um, there was a crypto punk that was purchased for $530 million last Thursday night. So this broke headlines on Twitter, right? So we saw that everyone was like, whoa, freaking out.But crypto Twitter was quick to point out that the sale was from authentic crypto punk, 9, 9, 9, 9, 8. Uh, so yeah, they, they kind of pointed out that it was, they sold it to themselves. They were able to get alone. Uh, they paid it back right after the sale and it just kind of created, it made headlines and it created this new, all time high price for the crypto.Uh, what do we think about that? Yeah, I mean, th this, I think is the unfortunate side of NFTs, right. And, you know, we see it in crypto. We see it in NFTs where there's always going to be talks about, you know, regulation. And I don't love seeing this cause I think it draws more attention to possibly getting regulation involved, which is one of the things that's been nice about, you know, NFTs, you know, being able to, to operate on their own.But I mean, a huge red flag, right? That this was a record price of over 124,000 a theory. Um, when the previous record for crypto punks was 4,200 a theory, I mean, that's a huge jump. We've seen some records this year, but not of this level. Um, but on the flip side, We did see crypto punks trending on Twitter.So we did get some attention to NFTs, but I think unfortunately it was the wrong kind of attention. Um, I just, I didn't love this a headline, a news. Cause again, I think it's a, a bigger negative for the space than I would've liked to see. Absolutely. Yeah. I saw a couple, you know, people on YouTube that don't normally talk about NFTs bringing us up and you know, they don't understand.And if T's, and what they were saying is just kind of looks, it's a bad look, you know, from someone on the outside, looking in, I see it as a publicity stunt, they wanted people to talk about their specific punk. Um, but yeah, it's not a great look overall, but interestingly, the. Yeah. And then I actually see a comment here, uh, on that note from a TEALS peels in the chat, I did actually see this headline as well, mass, that there was a punk listed for 4.4 EAs, um, on a most likely fat finger.Um, but that is another topic too. We saw this with board ape, where there was one sold for a significantly low price. And the question is, you know, is it a fat finger or is it a possible tax wash sale? So there's kind of this debate going on. What do you think of the low prices here? Is that a fat finger or is that a, a tax, uh, benefit here, man?And it's just, it's hard to say, but I can see the benefits of, uh, you know, from a tax perspective, you know, you accidentally fat finger and someone else buys it. You know, we don't know who that someone else is. That's where the mystery lies. Um, I would hate it for it to be a fat finger cause that would really hurt.I'm not sure, but both suck. Definitely. And then maths, uh, another interesting topic and we could probably go on this one for a long time too, but just, uh, for anyone out there who doesn't know, we saw the floor price of an NFT project, uh, get pretty much wiped out over the last 24 to 48 hours. And that is jungle freaks.So this was a highly anticipated project. And one of the big reasons that people were drawn into this was that, uh, a former artist for hustler was behind the artwork for this project. And we also saw a lot of, uh, you know, celebrities and NFT, you know, influencers, let's say right rally behind this project before the mint.So w the floor price went up a ton last night. It actually hits 0.15. Um, it looks like it's recovered a little bit to 0.3. But the reason was because decades ago, the artist who is attached to this project, uh, George, Tracy, , uh, he drew some rather, um, let's call them racist cartoons. Right. And I don't want to get into the debate of, you know, what makes a racist cartoon, but the, the debate I wanted to get into is, you know, how much influence one person can have on a project.Um, you mentioned it a little bit during the interview, Matt, you know, when developers leap from one project to the next, what it can do to a floor price and the community. Right. Well, what about something like this, where now there is just a negative cloud over this project? Can it recover or can one person, you know, ultimately just, just do them an NFT, you know, It's I think we still see volatility in this project.We'll see some highs and lows because there's just so much money to be made. And, you know, people can ski the, the, the, the, the narrative, however, it benefits them monetarily. Right? So I'm sure people holding this project, they're trying their best to, you know, damage control it. As soon as they salad, they may switch sides.But I will say that I don't, you know, anything that's, you know, racist towards anything should be, it's something I don't mess with. So I personally will not, you know, touch that, but I do see, thank people will still, uh, take the opportunity to buy and sell this project. Yeah, that's, that's a great point.Right? And it turns into a moral one. For some people I I'm with you, right. Where I just kind of want to distance myself from this project. I was never in it. Um, but you know, eh, here in the stock market world, we talk about buying the dip, right. And that's a term that passed on to cryptocurrency and now NFTs, and you could have bought the dip yesterday.But again, I just don't know if this project is going to have lasting power now with this negativity and, and a lot of the NFT influencers that were involved with this project, they've also distanced themselves, which, you know, isn't a great look. So, uh, um, we, we wish the best for teams, but, you know, I just don't know if this one is going to have a, as bright of a future as originally predicted exactly.You know, and the big thing with crypto and NFTs decentralized and, you know, kind of against cancel culture. You know, I do think that we all can all make the decision, whether we agree with it or not. I personally don't, I won't buy the project. I won't talk about the project, but you know, people are still free to do what they want, so we will see what happens.But yeah, it's unfortunate. Always do your research is what I'll say. You know, you can figure it out, cause I'm sure if you Google the artists, you know, how quick was it to find that, you know, so people may have not looked because again, monetarily incentivized, I'm not sure, but always do your research. Um, and other news though, Chris, it theory I'm hit an all time high today, man.It just keeps on pushing gas keeps going high. Oh man, what is going on? Yeah, I mean, we, we talked about this weeks ago, right? How a theory I'm hitting all time highs. Great. For anyone who's invested in a theory of bad for the NFT market. Right. And you heard Wolf and Meg talk about that too. Right? How, when the price of a theory goes up, you know, impacts the prices of NFTs, right?Because the majority of them are based in ease. I think until a pullback happens in Eve, I think we're just going to kind of see this current NFTE cycle happening, right. Where people don't necessarily want to mint new projects and sacrifice their. When he could be headed to 5,000 sooner than later, uh, what do you think mass, you know, uh, how close are we to 5,000?You know, and what does a pullback possibly mean for, for NFT? You know, for me personally, eat is eat for me still, you know, unless I plan to take profits Eve one eighth is one eighth. What I think the biggest problem is is the gas, right? The problem with the gas is that anytime you try to mint something, buy something, sell something, you're paying this enormous amount.That's not going to the dev. That's not going to the team. It's just, you know, being paid in gas fees. And I think that's been such a big disruptor in the NFT market so far. I mean, we've seen gas stay at over a hundred for the last week and a half or so. Um, but I do hope that he does stabilize and again, we're seeing what's happening.You know, we've never really been in this situation before. Hopefully eats stabilizes gas comes down a bit. Um, and then we can start seeing the real, you know, market demand for NFTE. Uh, when, when Eve two, man, we've been hearing about this for awhile for a long time, right? Yeah. The actually going to happen.And, you know, with that being said in the high gas prices, mass, I think that's something where, again, some of these other coins and platforms, like if they could really launch a great project that can, you know, eliminate gas fees or lower them, now's the time to take a theory. I'm head-on because I think you could win some fans.Um, you know, I prefer the east based NFTs cause that's where I've always been. But I know some of these other platforms, you know, have lower gas fees. Um, but man gas, gas is brutal out there. It is, man. I do hope that we see Eve too sometime. I mean she in the next hopefully year, um, but Eve is the place to be, you know, the reason we're all still here in the eighth world and that's the dominant factor it's because it's the place to be.It's where the top artists top projects are. So hopefully we do find a solution for this, but congratulations to anybody holding a theory them for the last, I mean, I remember it was $600 last year, you know, about a year ago. So congratulations. It's a great time to be in the crypto space. Great time to be in the NFT space.Uh, I'm excited for 2022, definitely. Well, mass. I love our community and our fans out here. I don't know if you saw this, uh, this comment here. Um, I'll just throw that up there on the screen again, not to start a debate about McDonald's, but a shout out to hacks in the chat for that great comment on the McRib NFT.That's going to do it for today's show. And as I said, we we've got some great interviews lined up and we actually welcome back to Morrow and we're back a team that we've had on before. And I know there's some loyal fans out there. May I ask who's going to be on the roadmap tomorrow, tomorrow. That's a great point.I'm actually not sure I haven't checked it. Who is going to be on, so we are welcoming back crypto dad, right? So the dad team, we saw moms, right. The free mint of moms. So we'll be able to talk about moms and also what's ahead on the roadmap. So a very exciting one looking forward to this one. I own a couple of dads and a couple of moms still.Um, so I'm excited. Um, but I know we will have a lively chat like we did before. Oh, yeah, one of the best communities from the get-go. Um, I'm curious to hear their perspective now that we've been in somewhat of a bearish market for the last couple of weeks. So awesome. Well guys, that is going to do it for us today.Again, we had the team from SV S on shout out to MIG and Wolf for joining us on the show. Great insight into their project, the artwork. I mean, one of the most well-known artists in the NFT space now in MIG, um, we also got to hear their thoughts on the NFT market overall, right. And discord safety. I thought that was very, very important.We don't always get that behind the scenes from the teams. So shout out to them and shout out to all of you in the chat, or if you are listening, this is also available on podcast. Um, so shout out to anyone or, you know, listening to them. As a podcast, if you are, you know, let us know you can reach out at Benzinga.Um, and we would love to hear from you if you are loving the podcast, but that is going to do it for

So Disney screwed over ScarJo's finances from her work on Black Widow, eh? Well that makes two of us. Come along with me on this unexpected journey through Mickey's fun house as I get to the ugly truth of this lawsuit war that'll leave all seven dwarves shaking in their sad little boots.

Villains make or break a movie when done correctly. So Disney should have something we should talk about...right? Also, Disney don't sue us for talking very small trash on you movies. Thanks. Please follow and vote on the next topic at https://twitter.com/PointlessDisco Music: Happy Robot Takeover by Scudpuddle https://twitter.com/scudpuddle The Talkers: Hoppocalypse https://twitter.com/hoppocalypse https://www.twitch.tv/hoppocalypse Itisdpayne https://twitter.com/itisdpayne https://twitch.tv/itisdpayne

Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the We Make Books Podcast - A podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between! This week we are talking pen names!  What is a pen name and why would you want to use one?  We know what you're thinking, practically every episode we've mentioned your website, your social media, your brand - wouldn't a pen name just make it harder to for people to find you and check out your work?  The truth is there are lots perfectly good reasons to want to use a pen name instead of your own and in this episode we get into those reason plus some of the fact and fiction of pen names (there is some really weird misinformation out there about what a pen name can do for a writer).   We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves. We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, concerns, and the best pen name you've ever come up with! We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Episode 38: An Author Called By Any Other Name Will Still Write Amazing Things transcribed by Sara Rose (@saraeleanorrose)   [0:00]   R: Welcome back to We Make Books, a podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between. I’m Rekka, I write science fiction and fantasy as R.J. Theodore.   K: And I’m Kaelyn Considine, I am the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press and—   R: But is that your real name?   K, sighing: Well, um. The acquisitions editor for Parvus Press is a suffix that I use to—   R< laughing: I was gonna say, don’t you get tired of saying the whole thing every time?   K: It is a bit of a mouthful. Sometimes I do just introduce myself as Kaelyn. So, yeah, we’re talking about pen names today in this episode. What are they? Why do people use them? Why are they beneficial? How do you pick one? All of these important aspects.   R: And what not to expect from your pen name.   K: Yeah, things that a pen name will not do for you. There’s some frightening stuff on the internet.   R: There’s some bad advice out there, did you know that?   K: Yeah, who woulda thought? Just because it’s on the internet, doesn’t mean it’s always true.   R: Yeah. Yeah, imagine that.   K: Pen names can be an important and valuable tool, so that’s what we spend some time talking about in this episode. You know, if you’re going to use one, getting the most bang for your buck, so to speak.   R: If you’re early enough in your career that you might wanna choose a pen name, I hope this is something that gives you stuff to think about. If you’re mid-career, you know, you might still decide that you’re gonna launch a new career in a different genre or something. But it’s also, you know, maybe it’ll help reinforce the decision you did make. So take a listen and enjoy!   K: Enjoy, everyone!   [intro music plays]   K: My bluejay nemesis.   R: Is back?   K: Well, here’s the thing, it turns out it was never gone! Because I found out that bluejays are actually excellent mimics, so—   R:Ohhh, yeah.   K: I saw it and it was like… it was very jarring because it was not making the normal bluejay noise. And I was like, “Oh my god!” And it… it can imitate other birds. I hate this thing so much! It’s… it’s terrible. I mean, thankfully it’s not sitting outside my window every morning screaming and waking me up like it has been in previous years. But I feel like it is tormenting me now. It is absolutely, now, pretending to be other birds.   R: Maybe that’s a courtesy to you. Like, it knows that you don’t like the jay. So you might better enjoy a chickadee.   K: Okay. I live in New York City. There’s no chickadees here.    R: Which is why I could never live in New York City. Chickadees are my favorite birds.   K: No, but apparently it can imitate hawks?   R: Hm.   K: So it’s been doing that, a little bit. And then, now I’m like thinking, “There have been other weird bird noises I’ve been hearing. Is that also this damn bluejay?”   R: Probably.   K: Oh, god I hate this thing.   R: It’s putting on a performance for you! It’s dedicated its life’s work to this portfolio of bird calls and it knows that you, alone, in the world can appreciate them.   K: I would just appreciate it if it went away.   R: Well, yes. You, alone, would also appreciate that.   K: But hey! Speaking of pretending to be other things!   [R and K laugh]   K: You see what I did there?   R: I see what you did there.   K: Today we’re talking about pen names.   R: Nom de plume!   K: And pen names are not necessarily pretending to be another person all the time. There’s a lot of reasons you could have a pen name.   R: Yeah. It’s funny because the first thing I ever remember about encountering the concept of pen names was when I learned that Charles de Lint wrote horror under another name. And I thought that was the most bizarre thing in the universe, that someone would change their name and hide their books from their fans!   Because to me, I liked Charles de Lint so much as a teenager, I read everything I could get my hands on and then I was out of books—Well, I say I was out of books, the other books I couldn’t find were out of print. And so to find out that there were more books I could have been reading! I was very upset, even though I wasn’t a horror reader. I would have gotten into reading horror because this author that I liked so much wrote it. And that was my first encounter with the concept of an author name.    K: I think we all have that jarring moment, somewhere in late elementary school when we were told that Mark Twain was not Mark Twain’s actual name.   R: Oh! Yeah, okay. So, yeah, I did know that but for some reason that didn’t count. Maybe because he was a historical figure.   K: Yeah, and also because I think we only knew him as Mark Twain. When you find out that his real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, you’re kinda like: “Oh, you know what I see why he went with Mark Twain.”   R: See, I always thought, because I knew Mark Twain and the name is so familiar, Samuel Clemens sounded like the more intriguing name, when I heard that. But the—Yeah, I guess Mark Twain wasn’t something that I read a lot of. And it wasn’t like Samuel Clemens had another collection of books that I could’ve been reading.   K: Exactly, that’s the thing is that he only wrote under Mark Twain, I think even with his newspaper writings.    R: Mhm.   K: I’m pretty sure he only wrote as Mark Twain, as well.   R: That sounds right, yeah.   K: I don’t think he ever really published much under Samuel L. Clemens. But there’s a long history of people using pen names. There’s a lot of pen names out there that people do not realize were pen names. For instance, George Orwell is a pen name. His actual name: Eric Arthur Blair. It’s not even close!   R: No, not even. And how do you come up with Orwell?   K: I… there’s a lot of things I wonder how that man came up with.   R: That—Fair enough. Okay, we’ll give you that one.   K: Jack Kirby, a famous early comic book writer and artist: Jacob Kurtzberg   R: Okay, so—but that’s gonna bring us into the whys of some of these, right? Because when he was working, there was a certain amount of prejudice against someone whose name would have been Kurtzberg.   K: Yeah. Yeah that—   R: Professionally, he would have had an easier time being Kirby.   K: Yes, definitely.   R: And that’s a shame. And that’s, unfortunately, still going on with pen names. I mean, we’ll get into some of that. But that is definitely still rampant is that there are preconceived notions of who belongs in what genre and who is worthy of respect. And people might choose a name that corresponds with people’s expectations of Greatness or Classics or anything like that. I mean, I will say I write under a pen name. You all know that.    K: We say at the top of every episode!   R: At the top of every episode, yeah! And I chose my pen name as an homage to someone who encouraged me a lot, but I also picked it, wrote it out and said, “Aww yeah that sounds like a author name!” And what does it sound like? It sounds masculine. It sounds like a white man’s name! And I’m half of that, but it was not really my intention to broadcast a masculine name that might fit better next to other masculine names on the shelf that get all the attention and draw. But to me, socially conditioned by the other names on the bookshelves in the store, I said, “Yeah! R.J. Theodore! That sounds like a real author’s name!   [K laughs]   R: I mean, honestly, if I could go back I’d pick something else. But I’m committed at this point. So.   K: So why do some people choose to write under pen names? Well, there’s a lot of reasons, obviously. Rekka just enumerated one for us. Would you call it branding, what you did?   R: Oh, definitely! Definitely. I mean, if you start a company, you name your company. And when you become a writer, if you intend to make a living at it, or at least make a career—whether or not the money is the point. But if you wanna do this for the long haul, you’re thinking about your presentation. Not just of your books and your stories, but yourself. So it is not unreasonable to sit down and come up with an author name and then because we DO NOT USE our legal signatures. Please, people. We practice the autograph of that author name and maybe even do that as part of feeling out whether you like the name and wanna stick with it. You know?   K: Branding is certainly a consideration when figuring out if you’re gonna use a pen name. Let’s be clear, right at the top, if your name is John Smith and you just feel like that’s your name and that’s what you want to write under, there’s absolutely no problem with that. You do not need to use a pen name. You do, however, need to be really good at marketing and maintaining your website and your internet presence, so that people can find you easily. Search engine optimization is going to be a key component to being successful here.   R: For John Smith, you are going to have to compete with police records, white pages, direct relistings—   K: Pocahontas.   R: That, too. You know, Florida Man. Everything is going to be a competition for you. So, you know, the elements of my pen name are not particularly unique but when you string them together and search for that, then that narrows down the field quite a lot.    K: Now, conversely, my name is very unique. I, as best I can tell, am one of the only two Kaelyn Considines in the world that spell their name this way. The other one is very clearly not me, if you punch it into Google. I will say that I have done different things, out in the world, under pen names. I am not going to say what they are or what that pen name is, explicitly because of privacy reasons.   R: Yes.   [10:50]   K: Because I have a professional life in publishing and a professional life outside of publishing. And, believe it or not, there are some things that I just don’t want intermingled all together with that. For the record, I am not doing anything nefarious or illegal. It’s just a matter of—   R: For the record, wink wink. If anyone asks...   K, laughing: Wanting to maintain some separation with different projects in my life.   R: Right. It’s privacy, but it’s specifically because you have aspects of your life that don’t need to mix. It’s not because you are trying to hide from anybody in a—it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if somebody found out the other name. But it would be annoying.   K: Well, I’ll be honest with you. When I started getting into publishing and when I came on at Parvus, I had a very frank conversation with Colin, who’s the publisher at Parvus Press, that I may need to do all of this under a fake name. Because my job at the time—I didn’t want it coming out that I was also running a side business, for a lot of reasons. And then, eventually, I decided, “Ugh, this isn’t worth it. I don’t have the energy to maintain this alternate presence!”    But the uniqueness of my name makes it so that, if you punch “Kaelyn publishing” into Google. I come up. I am the first result. If you punch “Considine” and anything vaguely associated with my name into Google, you will also find me very easily. When I started my previous job, when I was 26 and just out of grad school, years ago, I—the people that I worked with very quickly were able to punch me into Google and find all of these academic papers that I had published. That’s not a big deal, but they definitely had a lot of comments about how nerdy I was, as a result.   R: See, in the circles I run, that would be incredibly cool. So, don’t worry about it.   K: Oh, yeah, no it was kind of cool. But it was like, “Wow, you really are a huge history nerd, huh?” I’m like, “Yeah, I am. It’s you know.”   R: Mhm.   K: So, uniqueness or non-uniqueness are two factors here. In some cases, maybe your name is John Smith and you want to have something more akin to Kaelyn Considine where it’s easier to find you. Or, if you’re a Kaelyn Considine, maybe you—   R: Need a little more John Smith in your life.   K: Yeah, maybe you don’t always want to be found that easily. As we say on this show a lot, I am a pretty private person. I’m not super into social media, I don’t like to put a lot of myself out there. So I don’t like the idea of people being able to find me really easily.   R: But we should mention that just writing under a different name is not going to be enough to protect you from someone who wants to dig and find out who you are and how to find you.    K: Oh, yeah, no. It’s uh…   R: This is a very light coat of disguise. This is covering the Volkswagen bug that you’re racing with a grey cloth to make it look like a boulder. It only works because it’s a very low-fi film.   [14:21] K, laughing: Yeah, exactly. I will say—So another reason you might wanna use a pen name is maybe what you’re writing, you don’t necessarily want everyone to know that you’re writing it.   R: Right, that is definitely a possibility. Or, you know, maybe you have a family that you’re separated from and you don’t want them to know that you are writing at all.   K: Well, I will use an example from my real life. We have family friends that I grew up with and they have a daughter who’s a little older than me. Her mom started noticing that her and her husband seem to have some extra money. Not like a ton, not like a life-changing amount. They weren’t buying lamborghinis and moving into mansions, but they were—   R: Not stressing over small purchases.    K: Yeah, they put a lot of money into upgrading the house and took a really nice vacation. And her mom finally asked her, “Hey, did one of you get a raise or something?” and she said,” Oh, well you know how I wrote this book?” and she was like, “Oh! Did it start selling really well?” She’s like, “Well, no. But I kind of transitioned into writing some other things…”   Anyway, after some back-and-forth it came out that this person became one of the top ten selling erotica novelists in England for a long time. And she was doing this under a pen name. I think she kind of really nudged her way in right when Kindle unlimited was really taking off with this.   R: That’s the time, there you go.   K: Yeah. And she will not tell—we still have no idea—   R: What the pen name is.   K: Who she is, or what the pen name is! But she made a pretty decent amount of money off of it. Which, you know, good for her. But maybe you’re writing erotica and you don’t want everyone to know that you’re writing erotica.   R: Yeah, or just anything that you think you’d professionally or socially be shunned for, but it brings you joy. You know, just change the name and write under that. Again, if someone suspected it was you, it would probably be easy for them to figure out that it was. But if they’re looking for your name, this other name should not come up. As long as you’re just slightly careful about things.    K: That’s a good point, too, is when you’re deciding if you’re gonna use a pen name, one of the things you have to decide is how open you’re gonna be about this. Rekka is, for instance, very open about it.   R: Yep.   K: “I write science fiction and fantasy as R.J. Theodore.” Some people don’t ever really want you to see the person behind the pen name. Now, in the age of the internet this is very difficult to do.   R: Mhm.   K: There have been very famous writers that went their entire lives under a pen name that nobody ever—Like, Anne Rice’s name is not Anne Rice.   R: Right.   K: Her first name’s actually Howard.   R: Which is interesting. That’s a whole other conversation.   K, laughing: That’s a whole other conversation.   R: I mean, you know, again. Uniqueness. But also expectation of your genre. If Howard was a name that she chose to write with, why wouldn’t she use it? It’s because it doesn’t sound like a female-presenting name that is going to write bodice-clutching, tense semi-romantic vampire stories. There’s an expectation from readers that, you know, vampire authors are going to be female. There’s an expectation of readers that thriller authors—or at least the “good” ones—are going to be men. And then that ignores the non-binary spectrum entirely and then, what are the expectations there?   There are very cool names out there for some non-binary authors and I just think, “Wow! If I could go back and understand that gender was a spectrum not a binary, I might’ve picked a very different pen name.”     [18:43]    K: Yeah, and so that’s actually a good point. So you’re getting ready, you decided you’re gonna use a pen name. You’re getting ready to choose one. We talked a little bit before about branding and it is something to consider. Look, if you’re gonna be writing hard military science fiction, Florence Lilac deForest is probably not the best name to start writing that under. Now—   R: Although it would stand out in the field of military sci-fi, but…   K: That will certainly stand out, but emulating that is marketing at that point. Working on a pen name that you think is going to appeal to your readership. There’s nothing wrong with that.   R: If you think about it like the packaging on a box, you know, if you’re going to buy a microwave, you expect the microwave brand name is going to be of a certain ilk. You expect that the—just like there are cover expectations in genre—you expect that there’s gonna be  a photo of a microwave on the box. There are expectations and those expectations are because human brains are designed to put things into categories very quickly. So you wanna help other brains put you into the correct category. And that’s why you choose a name that matches a category, rather than going with it and hoping for the best.   K: Yeah, exactly. It’s unfortunate, but as Rekka mentioned there are some inherent biases in our brains and, you know, one of the most famous ones, J.K. Rowling. She does not actually have a middle name. Her name is Joanne Rowling and they told her, “Listen, we don’t want people to know you’re a woman.” And she said, “Okay, I can’t just be J. Rowling,” so she took K for Katherine, from her mom’s name and made it J.K. Rowling as, you know, things like George R.R. Martin. And J.R.R. Tolkein. And I think that’s a holdover from how letters in authorship used to be addressed. Used to cite off your first initial and your last name. Like, “Your Obedient Servant ___”.   So, is that a shitty, unfortunate thing about society? Yes. Absolutely. But would J.K. Rowling have been as successful as she ended up being if everyone knew she was a woman from the offset? Who knows! You know, Harry Potter came out before the advent of the internet. That said, there’s a giant fricken About the Author in the back, so.   R: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the story—I know when Oprah picked it up for the book club, the story of J.K. Rowling writing these things on deli napkins and reading it to her kids every night because they wanted a story, and then turning it into a book eventually, became part of the romance of why people flocked to J.K. Rowling as a personality and not just to the books. That’s part of the brand, though, is this rags-to-riches story.   K: That said, there are also cases of famous authors writing under pen names because they maybe want to try something new. So, like, J.K. Rowling—   R: Hey! Yeah, I was gonna say a J.K. Rowling story again.   K: J.K. Rowling published under Robert Galbraith, was the author name they used for the murder mystery novel she put out. Stephen King has written under a couple pen names. One of the more famous ones is Richard Bachman.   R: Mhm.   K: I do not know what the significance of that name is. Isaac Asimov wrote under Paul French. These were—I don’t wanna call them side projects, but they were different from things that they were known for writing, and wanted them to stand on their own merit.   R: Right. Michael Crichton also had a couple of pseudonyms.    K: Yes, yep. What does that mean, in terms of legality with an author? Now, again, in the age of the internet this is a little different because if you start digging around, looking for Richard Bachman, and this book. Through the availability of information, you’re probably gonna be able to figure out that it’s Stephen King.   R: But you have to be interested in Richard Bachman enough in the first place.    K: Yes! Yeah.   R: It’s not like you’re gonna search for Richard Bachman and the first site that pops up is gonna be Stephen King’s. I mean, that was the whole point was to not show up as Stephen King. So Stephen King’s not gonna make it easy for you to figure it out, unless he decides to debut. Like, “Oh, by the way, pulling back the curtain, that was me.”   K: Yeah, you’d really have to dig in with that. So, Rekka, how about copywriting pen names?   R: Well, so. You can’t—there’s a whole bunch of issues over trademarking names, anyway, but J.K. Rowling is bound to have that name trademarked. If not by her, then by her publisher.    K: Well also because it’s a fake name that is not her real name.   R: Right, so there may be a J.K. Rowling out there, though. That doesn’t automatically mean that person is going to be sued for signing their bank checks.   K: Or if they write, writing under that name.   R: Right, you cannot stop them from using their legal name. But—   K: Now, if your name is John Smith and you decide you’re gonna start publishing books under J.K. Rowling, you’re gonna have an issue.   R: Now you’ve got a problem.   K: Yeah. Because what you’re doing there is using a trademark to attempt to deceive people into thinking that this was written by J.K. Rowling.   R: That is something that J.K. Rowling and her lawyers are going to have to come after you for. And when I  say ‘going to have to’ what I mean is, if you register a trademark you have to defend it in order to maintain it. We’ve talked about this before. So, she’s going to have to come after you and find out, is that really your name? And if it is, how much money do I have to pay you to write under a different name, please?   K: By the way, it probably won’t even be J.K. Rowling that comes after you—   R: Oh, yeah, it’ll be lawyers.   K: Her publisher’s gonna get to you before she personally—   R: They’re gonna find you first, yeah.   K: —gets involved in this because it’s branding. That name is a commodity at this point.   R: Yes. That name has value to it that is separate, sort of, from the IP that she has created.   K: Now, that said, let’s go back to our other example, Stephen King. Stephen King is a much more common name. I know a Stephen King! I know Stephen Kings, a father and son, who are Stephen King!   So if they decided: hey I’m gonna write a book and publish it. There really isn’t anything that actual author Stephen King can do about it because you can’t stop someone from using your name. Now, as Rekka said, maybe you’re offered some incentive to publish under a pen name.   R: In which case, hey, not a bad deal! Maybe consider it.   K: Now, here’s the thing. I imagine Stephen King does not care that much. Stephen King’s publishers are going to care a lot.   R: Right, right.   K: So, now… how about just some other random person’s name. Let’s say I wanted to start publishing books under Rekka Jay.   R: I mean, I—Well, I can’t say I don’t publish books under Rekka Jay. There is one book out there with my name on the cover, of Rekka Jay. So I might ask you to not. But I don’t think I have a strong enough case to stop you.   K: Yeah, so there’s some weird legal issues that come into play here. So let’s say I wanted to start writing books and I’m gonna publish them under… I don’t know, Colin’s fair game. Let’s say I’m write books under Colin Coyle. Colin would have real, legal reason and recourse to stop me from doing that. He would have an interest in saying, “Kaelyn, we own a business together. We work together. We publish books together. I don’t want people thinking that this is me writing these books.”   That’s where all of this gets a little gray. But, as a general rule, using the names of people that you actually know is probably something to avoid.   R: I mean, the same can be said for using them for character names in your books. You just don’t wanna! This is just muddy water that you are gonna find yourself lost in.   K: Right, hold on, I gotta email an author real quick because I told him to change the names of two of his characters to Rekka. Both of them.   R, laughing: Both of them in the same book? Are they love interests, I hope?   K, laughing: Both of them are—Well, they are now.   R: But, yeah. You don’t wanna—just don’t mess with people you know. Because we don’t know how relationships are going to evolve over the years. This might be something—even if the person doesn’t care, you may just end up regretting someday. This person may end up making you grind your teeth in annoyance—   K: Now, forever.   R: —and then you’ve gotta go back to your books and those characters are named for this person, or you’ve used that pen name for your professional work. And you’re like, “Now I’m reminded of this person that I no longer want anything to do with.” To that point, some people choose pen names if they are married, just in case the marriage ever doesn’t end well. Or there’s another reason to change the legal name. If you separate your pen name from your legal name, you can detach yourself from some of these relationship issues.   K: Now, that said, here’s another really good reason to not use a pen name. If you are writing negative things about people.   R: Oh, yeah.   K: Here’s the thing, a pen name does not protect you from defaming someone.   R: No, there’s no legal protection from any laws that you break.   K: So, if you’re going, “Well, I’m gonna write a bunch of nasty things about this person, so I’m gonna write it under a fake name.”  First of all, you suck.    [R laughs]   Look, if you don’t have the guts to say negative things in public under your own name, then you probably have no business saying them. Whistleblowers are obviously a different story, but we’re not talking about that here. We’re talking about published stories.    R: We’re talking about trolls.   K: Well, we’re talking about reasons you’d wanna use it professionally for—   R: Well, okay, but to be mean to other people is not a professional reason.   K: Yes, exactly. Writing under a pen name will not protect you from defamation and slander charges. Slander is very hard to prove in the U.S., in the U.K. it’s not as hard, for instance. And there have been some pretty famous cases of internationals being taken to court in the U.K. for slander and defamation charges. A pen name does not protect you from that.   A pen name, and I can’t believe I have to say this, but this is something that I kept coming across when doing some research for this. A pen name does not protect you from having to pay taxes!   R: Oh, yes, please don’t think that there’s any reason to not behave like a normal citizen, when you have a pen name.   K: There is, in some corners of the internet—and I did find this mostly in bizarre, fringe-libertarian groups, that would come into discussions and say this—some people, for some reason, think that if you write under a pen name that means that, that person does not legally exist and therefore cannot be taxed.    R, exasperate: That’s… a theory.   K: Yeah, so this is wrong for a few reasons. One of which is, when you write a book under a pen name, you still have to sign a contract when you get it published. And you have to sign your legal name to that contract.   R: And if you’re self-publishing, the same is true for when you register the copyright.   K: Exactly, yeah.   R: And also for setting up your payment account through the various distributors, et cetera. People are gonna know your real name, so as soon as you have to write that out, it has to match your bank account. Like, have a care that this is gonna come back to you.   K: Yeah, so there’s no such thing as a pen name that just exists in a vacuum where there is no possible way to trace this back to you. The only circumstances under which I can imagine that happening are if you create a manuscript, mail it to a publisher, or I don’t know, an article getting published in a newspaper, and want nothing back in return for it. You want no money, you want no attention—   R: Or if you write the thing, sign a different name, bury it in a time capsule, and never admit. And then in 500 years someone finds it, thinks you’re genius, but doesn’t know who you were. But that’s not the kind of career most of us are aiming for.   K: Yeah, if you wanna get paid for your work, you’re going to have to associate—   R: Admit who you are so they can pay you.    K, laughing: That’s exactly… that’s my life. Just having to admit to people who I am.   R: Kaelyn it’s time to admit who you are.   K: I’m gonna have to figure that out and then I’ll get back to you. So, one last thing and, again, I can’t believe I need to say this, but apparently I do. Writing under a pen name also does not help you avoid breach of contract.   R: Noo.   K: This one’s a little less… less.. Maybe there’s a little bit—   R: It depends on how the contract’s written!   K: ...Yes. Then the taxes one. You have to pay taxes no matter what, okay? There’s no escaping taxes. But writing under a pen name does not absolve you of contractual obligations to other books. Now, there can be things written into your contract that say, “You will provide to us three science fiction books.” And let’s say you suddenly really wanna write a nonfiction military history of the Civil War.   R: You can write that!   K: You can write that.   R: The publisher doesn’t want it! They put it in their contract, they want the science fiction books.   K: Yeah, and all contracts are structured differently. Maybe you have a time frame, maybe it’s, “We get to publish the next three books of whatever you generate.”  So, you know, if you switch from military sci-fi to Civil War military history, it doesn’t matter if you’re writing that under a pen name now. They still get that.   R: Yeah.   [33:56] K: So this isn’t, again, you’re not creating a new person here. There is not now—   R: This is not your Get out of Jail Free Card to change your name.    K: Yeah, there is not now a legal entity that exists under this separate name that you created for yourself. There is no person there. It’s just another version of you.   R, laughing: Just like there’s not, not a person, there’s also not a person. Just to be clear.   K: It’s all very existential. There’s a lot of layers here.   R: So, I mean, don’t try to get out of trouble or get out of a contract you don’t like, or anything like that by changing your pen name. That’s not going to work. There are better reasons to have a pen name or not. And some people might start writing under their real name, or might start writing under a pen name and then switch to their real name. There’s also the possibility that later in life you change your mind and then all your books, again this is like Michael Crichton, get rereleased under the more popular name, either posthumously or not, because there’s a better chance that they’ll reach the audience that you’d like. I mean, he wrote in college under a pen name because he didn’t want his professors to think he had too much free time and give him more work.   K: Yeah.   R: Later in life, they changed, they re-released those books under his Michael Crichton name and that was so that people who had already read Jurassic Park and Congo and Andromeda Strain would be like, “Oh my gosh! I thought I’d never get another story from Michael Crichton, but even though he’s dead, there are ten more books I’ve never read of his!” Turns out, you can’t really go back. They were his first books and they read like them. They were not great. But, boy was I excited to think that there were more of them.   So, there’s no final answer in your writing career. You can change it at any time. And some people do choose to rebrand if the, you know, first trilogy they released just kinda didn’t make the splash that they hoped it did. Then, maybe, their publisher drops them. They get picked up by a new publisher. That new publisher may be like, “Hey! Would you consider a new pen name so we can launch you as a debut?” Because there’s a certain amount of excitement, especially in YA, the debut break-through novel is a big deal and that’s what everybody wants, is to discover the next new voice. That next new voice may have already been writing for ten or twenty years. I mean, they keep saying every overnight success is an author who’s been working at this for at least ten years.    K: Yeah. Again, just remember when you’re doing this. You’re not creating a new person. So, yes, you may be creating a new debut author personality. But this is not one of your characters, this is still you, the writer, the person.   R: Oh right, yes. So don’t cosplay as your writer.   K: Yeah, and—   R: Okay, I should actually retract that because Gail Carriger kind of does cosplay as her author self. Which is just to say that she has a visual brand, and when she goes out to conventions she’s going to dress the way that you would expect to see her at conventions. That’s different from writing a backstory for your pen name and then play-acting and half of these things are actually lies about you. If you try to convince someone—    K: Yeah, and—   R: The idea being that you want to be authentic so your readers can connect with you.   K: Do not create a character for yourself to make yourself seem more legitimate. If you’re writing a book in which the main character is a doctor and there’s a lot of medical science and medical science fiction things in there, do not pretend you’re a doctor so that people look and go, “Oh! This person came from a place of real experience!” You’re not creating, again, you’re not creating a fictitious person here.   R: Right. And don’t use it to misrepresent any part of yourself, except for your name.   K: Yeah, exactly. And, look, names are powerful things. There’s a lot of cultures around the world and through history where you maybe didn’t tell people your real name all the time because then they could use it against you.   R: Right. A name has power.   K: Yeah, a name does have power.    R: And for that reason, you may want to change the name that you were born with—not for escaping magical curses and stuff, but you may just—   K: Maybe escaping your family.   R: Yeah. But you may also just not really be totally in love with your name. And so that is a perfectly legitimate reason to just pick a different name. It might be unique, it might be all the things you want. It might be easy to remember, easy to spell, unique enough to come up in search results the way you want. It might even match your genre. But maybe you just don’t like the name. You could change it.    K: Well, I mean, I’ll use me as an example again. In publishing, I think Kaelyn’s a great first name to have. It works. In my professional life, sometimes, it feels a little immature.    R: Right.   K: I wouldn’t change it, it’s my name. I do like my first name.   R: It hasn’t held you back. Or do you feel like it might have?   K: Well, sometimes—and that’s the thing, sometimes I wonder. Now, one of the things I will say about my name is people look at it and frequently read ‘Katelyn’.    R: Right.   K: Very quickly. I—We always had a joke at my job when we’d go out, if we were going out to pick up lunch and you’d tell the people your name, I’d always give them my middle name which is Elizabeth. Because if I gave them Kaelyn, there was no way they were gonna write it down correctly—   R: Or say it correctly in that context, yeah.     K: And then whoever was reading it later was gonna then further butcher whatever they wrote down. So I’d be standing there and the guy would be standing with my sandwich going, “Uh, Carol? Kaylete? Colin?”   R: A-ha! So you are Colin, after all.   K: Oh, what was more of a “KA-lyn.”   R: Oh, okay.   K: So, I do wonder sometimes if that, it does—Now, as I’m solidly in my mid-thirties, I do wonder if it sounds like a younger person’s name. Because I do know some other Kaelyns, they’re all a lot younger than me.    R: Okay. Well there is the generational thing, where every generation has its popular name. I feel like when I was growing up, everyone was named Melissa or Amanda. And so, two years later, if you had that name it was a ‘mature’ name because that was the previous ones. But a couple years past that and it’s like a weird, old, funky name. And then it comes around again.   But, you know, these things—especially when you’re choosing a name, because you get to choose one. All of a sudden you go down rabbit holes of things to think about, all this kind of stuff.   K: Oh, god yeah. You could.   R: You can just close your eyes and be like, “What sounds good? What are letters I like? How do I string them together? Who cares if it’s actually a name?” Although, if you do make up a word, make sure you Google it to make sure it doesn’t mean something awful or sacred to a culture somewhere that you didn’t even consider.   K: So, I will say pen names I’ve made up. I have gone on Wikipedia or This Day in History and found famous people that were born or died or did something significant on my birthday.    R: Okay. Or you can pick the first day of your endeavor or something, the day you finished your draft. Stuff like that.   K: Yeah, and come up with some names that way. I’ve also taken my name and what it translates to in Gaelic, in Irish, and then picked other names—   R: With the same meaning.   K: —from other, yeah, other languages with the same meaning. That were kind of… you know what’s funny is they all kind of sound similar to Kaelyn!   R: I was gonna say. You could also do the Tom Riddle thing and just go for an anagram.   K: I have one of those. It was not easy to come up with.   R: Yeah, it depends on the selection of letters you start with.   K: Yeah, yeah. So, look, there’s lots of different ways to pick one, especially if you want it to be significant or meaningful to you. But if you’re doing it, as we said at the beginning of the episode, from an author perspective, keep in mind that you are going to be using this to sell your book.   R: Right.   [42:25]   K: And it may not be what you want to hear, but branding and planning accordingly is only going to help you sell the book.   R: Yep, yep. Meeting reader expectations. I gotta say. If you’re gonna write sci-fi, you don’t want a name that sounds like you’re a romance author.    K: Yeah. So maybe you loved your grandmother to death and she was just this beautiful, wonderful woman who encouraged you and helped you to get your start writing and so you want to honor her and make your pen name [in a v. French accent] Eleanor de Fleur.   R: Mhm.   K: That’s probably not the best name to write science fiction under.   R: Right, right. You don’t want anything that sounds too cursive. Like, it needs to be written in some sort of cursive calligraphy. Just think of the fonts faces and think of how cool the name will look written in those font faces, as opposed to what the name’s screaming out for.   K: If you’re mentally pronouncing anything with a French accent like I just did, that’s maybe not the direction—   R: Hey! There are decent French science fiction authors out there.   K: Oh, absolutely! But, you know—   R: But they all use pen names!   K, laughing: That’s because French is a very confusing language. You get words with like ten letters in them and you only pronounce four.   R: Yeah. And speaking of confusing, there’s also the pen name for joint-author endeavours.    K: Oh, yeah! That’s another good reason to use a pen name is collaboration.   R: Yeah, so maybe you don’t want both names on the cover. You’d rather just silo it and write, especially if you plan to continue this together, write with one new pen name that you pick together.   K: Yeah.   R: Then, be prepared if you are entering into a contract with a traditional publisher, that they might actually push back on your pen name. For the reasons that we’ve talked about, they may say, “This doesn’t really fit the genre. Can we fiddle with it?” or “Hey, let’s just use your real name.” I have a friend who had a pen name and when she got picked up, the publisher was just like, “Nah, we just wanna use your real name, it’s way more unique.” So…   K: And they might push back for the opposite of the reason I stated earlier. Maybe you’re writing military science fiction and you were a pilot in the Air Force for a long time. They’re gonna say, “No, we want people to look this up and see that you’re writing about stuff you know.” Like, your credentials lend themselves to your success at that point.   R: Mhm.   K: So, yeah, I mean publishers always have an opinion about everything. So, don’t think your name was gonna be—they even will have an opinion about your name.   R: They absolutely will. Although, you may be able to make a case for it. Colin did ask, like, “Are you sure you don’t wanna write as Rekka Jay?” I was like, “Well, no? I have a pen name, thank you.” I had a reason. And, you know, he was fine with it. It wasn’t like it doesn’t sound like a science fiction author’s name. But he was like, “Rekka Jay’s a cool name, so…”   K: Rekka Jay is a cool name. That’s the thing.   R: But it was a matter of, like, I would rather keep it separate from when people are searching, that they’re gonna find something other than the Rekka Jay. That was my decision, but obviously I’m not using it to hide. It is literally SEO purposes. It’s like key words. I’m choosing the keywords that people are going to find me for.    K: Yup. Yeah, so, that’s pen names. If you’re gonna use one, make sure you use one that’s gonna be to your advantage.   R: Yup.   K: Whatever reason you have for using it, there’s no reason it can’t work for you.   R: And take the time and play around with a couple different ones. This is something that you’re going to have to live with for a while. It’s not choosing a box of cereal, it’s choosing the paint for your den wall. You know? So you want to really be okay with it, before you move ahead and commit to it.   K: Yep. Hey, if you, uh—Everyone Tweet at us what your favorite, weird pen name is that you’ve come across. Or the thing that you were most surprised by, to learn was not somebody’s actual name. I think mine was Anne Rice, mostly because then I found out her first name is actually Howard.    R: Yeah, that one’s just got, like. That’s gotta be a two-parter, as opposed to just, “Oh, that’s not your name? Oh, that’s a shame.”   K: Yeah. Or you can be like Ben Franklin and all you did was write to newspapers and pamphlets and stuff under different names. Let’s see, he had Richard Saunders for a certain personality. There was Constance Dogood, yeah, clearly fake names but the point was that he was writing to newspapers exalting revolutionary American ideas, and writing trying to appeal to a certain group of people.    R: Right. Saying the things that would make that group agree with him and to sway their opinion.   K: He was saying things that he wanted everyone to hear, but knew that they would hear it better, if you will, coming from Constance Dogood versus Benjamin Franklin.   R: Right.   K: Which was very smart and insightful, especially for the time. Although that was fairly commonplace back then, to uh…   R: Which is so bizarre to me because we think of our common news production situation as being less honest these days. But you go back and like, everybody’s always been writing in under fake names and all this kind of stuff. So I say it was a matter of ego, but it was more like, “You must listen to me! And I will make you listen to me by faking who I’m speaking as!”   K: Well, it’s the same way. He’s trying to appeal to a certain group of readership.   R: Yep. So, that’s what we’re telling you. Go out and make people listen to you by appealing to a certain group of readers that can connect with the name.    And, you know, it is ultimately up to you. There are pros and cons to both. Eventually, you know, your contracts might get more intricate and having a pen name might make them slightly more difficult, but you’re probably not writing them, so that probably isn’t going to, at least, create more work for you. Just, you know, you’ll have to be more careful about reading them. But I hope you’re careful about reading your contracts anyway!   K: Yes! READ YOUR CONTRACT. I’m going to make a mug.   R, laughing: How did we come back around to that?   K: We always come back around to it, because given the option I will always state: Read Your Contract.   R: Yeah. And so, yeah, thing to remember is that just writing under a pen name is not going to hide you from the world. It’s not going to protect you from legal issues. And it’s not going to make you impossible to find, it’s just a thing that you do. It puts up  a certain measure of distance from your legal name and day-to-day personality. But it doesn’t… I mean, eventually you probably are at least going to hint that it’s not your real name. It doesn’t mean that you, say, I’m coming out as my real name. It just means, you know, eventually it’s going to get awkward to keep pretending that that’s your real name.   But if you have the right person, or the wrong person, decide that they’re gonna come after you, it’s probably not going to be enough. Because they’re gonna know where to look.   K: Yeah, look, in this day and age of the internet, there’s—Unfortunately, there’s no hiding forever. If somebody wants to find you badly enough, they’re going to. But it’s okay! Because, as Rekka said, the point of your pen name should not be to hide. If it is, maybe consider publishing.   R: Yeah, becoming a public figure. Yeah, it’s sad to say that you just can’t be an anonymous writer and collect your writing check because in this day and age, people feel like they’re paying for access to you as well.   K: Yeah, yeah. You are your writing. You are your brand. It’s, you know, go back and listen to our social media episode. We talk quite a lot about that. But pen names, they’re fun. Grab one, if you feel like it.   R: Yeah! And you don’t have to commit to it. You can still play around with just coming up with names. You might find one and be like, “I’m gonna save that. I’m gonna use that someday.” But you can relaunch your career at any point with a pen name, so if you’re happy or you’ve already started writing under one name, you don’t have to switch it if you come up with another good one. I mean, it can just be a character name. So, it’s up to you. If you come up with too many good names, maybe just use your real name and leave the good name creations to the characters in your books.   But if you find one of these reasons we’ve mentioned resonates with you, then that might be a good reason to try it. And if you aren’t published yet, it’s pretty simple to change your name at this point.   K: Yep.   R: Just change the name that you put on the byline in your next submission and you’re on your way.   K: Yup. Yeah, so, that’s pen names.   R: That’s, I think, everything we have to say about them.    K: So, um, as always. Thank you for listening. We hope, I guess, by the time this comes out… I don’t know, maybe quarantining, social distancing may start being lifted?   R: As we record this, more Starbucks stores have opened.   K: Okay.   R: I’m not sure that’s wise, but that’s what’s happening.   K: Well, we’ll go by the Starbucks metric, certainly.   R: I did hear that Disney Springs will start, I think, opening some stores. So Disney’s coming back. That’s a very telling metric.   K: Well, yeah. But the parks are not gonna open till next year, I understand.   R: So that’s… that they are even thinking about opening Disney Springs which can also be as crowded as a park sometimes. That’s pretty telling.   K: Well, we’ll go by the Starbucks metric. Society is measured based on what Starbucks is doing.   R, skeptical: Yeah… I don’t know how I feel about that.   K, laughing: Look, there’s a sad and uncomfortable truth in life that we need to face, Rekka, and that is that many people are entirely dependent on coffee in order to function as human beings.    R: I know you’re aiming that at me, but I’ll have you know that with my radiation treatment, I haven’t really been wanting coffee lately. So, uh, I don’t even know who I am anymore.   K: Oh, I can see. You’ve got a tea bag in that mug. Wow. Welcome to—   R: It’s also a throat coat because I’m gonna start having a sore throat with the radiation as well. There’s my little update, so if you were wondering how the cancer treatment’s going. I’m in good spirits, but I am ready to be done with radiation and on the other side of it and back to drinking coffee, hopefully. Although I don’t know if I will ever taste it the same again, based on the nerves they’re killing.   K: I have a feeling you and coffee will find your way back to each other.   R: One hopes. Actually, you know, if I had to choose between tasting coffee and tasting rib-eye, I think I would probably go for the rib-eye.   K: Well I knew that, yeah. I mean, yeah.   R: There’s more nutrition in rib-eye than coffee. And, you know, coffee only gets you so far. [long pause] I can’t believe I just said that. Who am I?    K, laughing: Well, you’re R.J. Theodore.   R: Oh, right! That person can drink tea and not eat steak every night and be perfectly happy.   K: Yeah, yeah. That’s what’s going on there. So, thanks everyone for listening! As always, you can find us on the socials.   R: That’s @wmbcast on Twitter and Instagram, and we are also at Patreon.com/wmbcast, where we would absolutely love your support if you’re able to. If you aren’t able to, what really helps us is to share our episodes with a friend who might find the content interesting, or just leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts. That would be super helpful.   K, robotic: Feed the algorithm, people!   R: That is the one that really, really warms our dark hearts on a cold night. So, if you could do that, we’d really appreciate it. And we will talk to you on social, or we will talk to you in two weeks!   K: Stay safe, everyone!   [outro music plays]

So Disney's Hercules film gets live action, a movie review of “Extraction” and in the new Assassin's Creed game, you lead a Viking faction. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/4-mins-2/message

The next time you're in a store to buy the latest Disney movie, you might want to double check the labels to make sure you are getting a digital copy along with your blu-ray and DVD combo pack. Some Disney fans are finding that the newest movies do not have a digital download code attached to their purchase.  Two Good Reasons to Get Rid of Digital Codes There are two good reasons Disney would make this change. This first is due to the ongoing feud with Redbox. Ever since Redbox started re-selling digital download codes to Disney movies, Disney has been searching for a way to keep the codes from falling into the wrong hands. Removing digital download codes from certain combo packs could be a direct assault on Redbox. This would make sense as some retailers have begun to implement a limit on how many products customers can buy. Some retailers are limiting the amount of movies customers can buy. The second reason Disney could be pulling download codes it due to the streaming service it will launch next year. Disney could want to move customers away from buying physical disks and towards buying only digital copies. If it works, it could be vastly more profitable for the company. One Bad Reason to Get Rid of Digital Codes That said, it looks like most of the 4K - Blu-ray combo packs have maintained the digital codes. Those are also the most expensive combo-packs Disney offers and the profit margin on those packs is likely much higher than the DVD - Blu-Ray combos. So Disney could be removing digital codes from Blu-ray and DVD combo packs to pad their profit in retail. I hate to say it, but this feels like a potential Bob Chapek move. The Disney executive is over consumer products now and is excellent at coming up with ideas that are profitable for the Disney company and a pain in the Eeyore for Disney fans. This may or may not be his brain child, but we'll keep an eye on it as the year progresses.

The future (that I don’t want): https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/05/switchs-resident-evil-7-port-is-only-playable-as-online-livestream/ The real story is that this company sells this info to Securus, a prison telecom co.: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/05/fcc-investigates-site-that-let-most-us-mobile-phones-location-be-exposed/ So Disney just wants to be the sole proprietor of entertainment in America: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/23/comcast-closing-in-on-plan-to-challenge-disneys-fox-bid/ Apple on top of it: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/23/apple-introduces-new-privacy-portal-to-comply-with-gdpr/ Less tech but interesting nonetheless: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/23/verifly-launches-a-business-insurance-product-for-gig-economy-workers/ Start investing in masks: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180522/10395139880/aclu-obtains-documents-showing-amazon-is-handing-out-cheap-facial-recognition-tech-to-law-enforcement.shtml We’ve beat this ISP fuckery horse pretty darn dead but here it is again: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180518/09350339861/verizon-begins-testing-dsl-usage-caps-it-refuses-to-call-usage-caps.shtml Spectre V4: Speculative Store Bypass https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/speculative-store-bypass-explained-what-it-how-it-works

**Waifu or Otter?** So Disney have bought the lion’s share of the Fox media empire, which means Star Wars and Marvel fans have something to be happy about over the Christmas holidays. Meanwhile, we discuss the impact this will have on the Disney Princess register. Hey! Pointless things can be important too! We’re just not sure how or why – questions which also apply to the rather conspicuous anime eyes on Alita in the trailer for James Cameron’s version of Battle Angel Alita (or Gunnm – we refuse to call it Alita: Battle Angel because it already has a perfectly good name in English). After that it’s time for some animated Christmas cheer so buckle up as we take a ride through some of the “seasonal” (and we use that term very loosely at times), cartoons, anime and puppetry that caught our attention for one reason or another. We want to thank all of our listeners for their continued support. We’ll be back in January of 2018 with more animated goodies for everyone, but until then have a wonderful Christmas and a magnificent New Year! If you've enjoyed this podcast, then please follow us on Twitter @KeyframePodcast or on other social media by searching for [The Geek Show](http://thegeekshow.co.uk). If you want to show your support then head over to [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/thegeekshow) and give whatever you can. Alternatively, we have a shop up and running so head over to [The Geek Shop](http://thegeekshow.co.uk/thegeekshop/) and partake in some of our lovely wares. Thanks, and until next time, don't watch anything we wouldn't! #TokyoGodfathers #TheSimpsons #SouthPark #TheSpiritOfChristmas #TokyoMarbleChocolate #ItsudatteMySanta #UsagiDrop #SuperSonico #BobsBurgers #EmmetOttersJugbandChristmas #TheDisappearanceOfHaruhiSuzumiya #LuckyStar #MobilSuitGundamWing #EndlessWaltz #FamilyGuy #Kanon #SwordOfTheStranger #One Piece #EpisodeOfChopperPlus #BloomInTheWinterMiracleSakura #WinterSonata #StrawberryMarshmallow #SpiceAndWolf #GiovannisIsland #Clannad #Toradora #WolfChildren #PingPong #KOn #ChronoCrusade #DiGiCharat #WinterGarden #ACharlieBrownChristmas #Animation #Anime #Cartoons #KeyFrame #News #Podcasts #Reviews #TheGeekShow

What will brands and businesses need to do in the future to be successful? Shep Hyken speaks with Brian Solis, who asserts that all thinking needs to start with the customer experience design. Design what your customers are supposed to feel at all parts of their customer journey. Think beyond the products and services that you sell. Think about the entire customer experience. The customer experience is defined as the sum of all engagements the customer has with your company throughout their lifecycle. Go through your customer’s journey and map the entire process so that you can improve their overall journey. In fact, you will find there may be more than a single journey you will need to map. This is exactly what Airbnb did when they needed to reinvent themselves four years into their existence, and just as Walt Disney did decades earlier when planning the movie Snow White. Disney had success with shorter cartoons, but he wanted to create a feature-length film with enough depth that told a complete, detailed story. So Disney used storyboarding to plan the entire journey. Similarly, Airbnb created a storyboard; a list of the emotional moments that comprise an Airbnb stay. If any one part of your customer journey fails, you can never have a 100% great experience. So we must focus on the sum of the customer engagement, and the parts of the engagement that equal that sum. This philosophy breaks down the silos of disparate business units throughout the organization and forces a single-minded focus on the customer, from beginning to end. Apple, Disney and Tesla are prime examples of companies that create a holistic customer experience design. For a fresh perspective, take a look at other popular products and services from industries outside of your own. What insights can you gain from that customer experience that you want to design into yours? For example, in writing (and then rewriting) his book, Brian looked at apps and other technology to redesign his book, rather than looking at and comparing his book to other books. Brian challenged the convention of what a book should be. He did research into how our brains process long-form content, given the short attention spans of today. After all of his research, Brian determined how the reader could have a very different kind of book experience. Besides creating a book that is rich with content, he also built in experiences with joys and pleasures, resulting in a book that you not only want to read, but also experience. As a result, Shep Hyken places X: The Experience when Business Meets Design on his list of the all-time top 10 business books. Brian Solis is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders, keynote speakers, and best-selling authors in innovation and digital transformation. His book X: The Experience When Business Meets Design explores the importance of experiences and how to design them for customers and employees. As Principal Analyst at Altimeter, a Prophet Company, he humanizes technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices