Podcast appearances and mentions of Thomas Davenport

With technology touching so many different parts of the business, companies have created so many different “Chief” officers that it now causes confusion about who is responsible for the technology vision. Would a new “Super Chief” role solve this confusion? John Spens from Thoughtworks and Thomas Davenport from Babson College, join the show to discuss this new IT organizational structure.

TLC faculty member since 2016, Thomas Davenport, discusses the importance of communication exercises and tactics that explore the range of human perspectives that impact everything from the classroom and the courtroom. Thomas takes us on an exploratory journey about standing up for others even when it's tough, developing hobbies that reduce stress, and sharing client's experiences with authenticity.

Depending on the source, the invention of the electric motor is often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, Hans Christian Ørsted, Michael Faraday, William Sturgeon, or Thomas Davenport. But the work of a Benedictine monk from Scotland, Andrew Gordon, predates them all.   In this episode Scott treks thru the history of the forgotten Benedictine inventors of the electric motor – Andrew Gordon & Jedlik Anyos. To help Catholic History Trek, please consider donating via PayPal (Kevin Schmiesing@CatholicHistoryTrek) Thank you for your support!

In an era of information abundance, organisations have immense data which could be used to inform or drive various impact initiatives. However, figuring out how to utilise data for impact is challenging. Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, despite contentions on the role they play, have already allowed the processing of data in impressive speeds that continuously help professionals generate actionable insights.Impact Intelligence, an organisation that leverages AI to help business achieve ambitious goals, speaks about using data to amplify one's impact and exploring ways in which the technology can be useful. Its Co-founder Niko Moesgaard and Program Manager Guliz Koldas highlight the importance of starting with information you already have and share use cases from their work where they help organisations achieve their impact goals.Key Moments:5:39 - Various ways in which data can be used for impact8:27 - Case studies12:48 - Taking the first step towards leveraging data for impact15:35 - The AVPN member monitor19:06 - Importance of sharing data and working together20:35 - Humans + AI24:05 - Recommended reading: All-in On AI by Thomas Davenport and Nitin MittalLearn more about the work of Impact Intelligence through their website and by going through their case studies.The Corporate Social Impact Insights series of the Money Meets Mission podcast is part of the AVPN Academy Corporate Social Impact Centre,  which was established in partnership with Johnson & Johnson, Miller Trust and Visa. The center also includes self-paced modules, a library of content, and Learning Circles, which are a monthly series of small group discussions for corporate practitioners. To learn more, visit the AVPN Academy Corporate Social Impact Centre. 

This lecture was given on July 13th, 2023, at the "Thomistic Philosophy & Natural Science Symposium" at the Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website: thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events Speaker Bio: Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P. is a Dominican friar, physicist, and philosopher. He joined the faculty of philosophy at the Angelicum in Rome in 2020, where he co-leads the Project for Science and Religion. Before joining the Dominican order he studied physics at the California Institute of Technology before going on to earn his doctorate in physics from Stanford University studying theoretical particle physics. The focus of his scientific research is writing and testing simulations for high energy particle colliders like the LHC at CERN. After joining the Dominicans in 2010, he studied philosophy and theology in preparation for his ordination to the priesthood in 2017. In addition, he earned a Licentiate in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America, focusing on the philosophy of science and natural philosophy. For two years he was an Assistant Professor of Physics at Providence College in Providence, RI, where he taught physics and restarted a research program in particle physics. He has written and spoken in a number of forums on the relationship between faith and science including contributions to the Thomistic Evolution project and organizing conferences on science and philosophy for the Thomistic Institute in Washington, DC.

American culture has made finding a dream job one of life's ultimate goals. Personal identity and professional roles have merged into one, and this entanglement can cost us our happiness, well-being, and ultimately true career success. Why has work taken such an all-encompassing role in American lives, and why is it such a challenge for us to detach from it? Simone Stolzoff is on a mission to reclaim our lives from a work-obsessed world. As a former journalist and the author of The Good Enough Job, Simone has interviewed Michelin star chefs, Wall Street bankers, overwhelmed teachers, and other workers across the American economy to expose what we lose when we expect work to be more than a job. In this episode, Dart and Simone discuss:- Challenging myths around work and identity- How work-first culture has betrayed many employees- The transactional relationship between employers and employees- Designing a sustainably productive culture at work- Why companies should encourage employees to diversify their identities - The connection between survival, employment, and government assistance in the U.S.- And other topics…Simone Stolzoff is a designer, workplace expert and consultant, and author of The Good Enough Job. His consulting clients include Google, Meta, Microsoft, IDEO, Guild, and the State of California. As a former journalist and design lead at the global innovation firm, IDEO, his work has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and many other publications. Simone received his bachelor's degree in creative writing from The University of Pennsylvania and his master's degree in journalism and multimedia storytelling from Stanford University.Resources mentioned:The Good Enough Job, by Simone Stolzoff: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Enough-Job-Reclaiming-Life/dp/059353896X Human Capital, by Thomas Davenport: https://www.amazon.com/Human-Capital-P-Davenport/dp/0470436816 Connect with Simone:www.thegoodenoughjob.com 

Thomas Davenport, OP, "Locating Heaven: Modern Science and the Place of Christ's Glorified Body," Nova et Vetera 20, no. 1 (Winter 2023): 93–114: https://stpaulcenter.com/05-nv-21-1-davenport/

Immortal Diamonds Contemporary Science And The Problem Of Incorruptibility | Thomas Davenport, OP by Angelicum Thomistic Institute

Thomistic Scientific Realism And The Modelling Of Elementary Particles | Thomas Davenport, OP by Angelicum Thomistic Institute

Artificial intelligence is the new electricity. The fifth industrial revolution. And companies that go all-in on AI are reaping the rewards. So how do you make that happen? That big question — how? — is explored by Nitin Mittal, Principal at Deloitte, one of the world's largest professional services organizations, and co-author Thomas Davenport in their new book "All-In On AI: How Smart Companies Win Big with Artificial Intelligence.” On the latest episode of NVIDIA's AI Podcast, host Noah Kravitz speaks with Mittal, who leads Deloitte's artificial intelligence growth platform spoke about how companies across a wide variety of industries used AI to radically transform their organizations and achieve competitive advantage. The book, from the Harvard Business Review Press, explores the importance of a company-wide commitment to AI and the role of leadership in driving the adoption and implementation of AI. Mittal emphasizes that companies must have a clear strategy and plan, and invest in the necessary technology and talent to make the most of AI.

Ep 427 - Working with Artificial Intelligence Guest: Thomas Davenport By Stuart McNish   “The world does not lack for management ideas [sic]. Thousands of researchers, practitioners, and other experts produce tens of thousands of articles, books, papers, posts, and podcasts each year. But only a scant few promise to truly move the needle on practice, and fewer still date to reach into the future of what management will become. It is this rare breed of idea – meaningful to practice, grounded in evidence, and built for the future – that we seek to present,” says Robert Holland, the Editor-in-chief of MIT Sloan Management Review.   “Working with AI, Real Stories of Human-Machine Collaboration” endeavours to show that the needle can and will move through the addition of artificial intelligence to the complex work of today's world. Thomas H. Davenport, one of the co-authors of the book says, “There is no shortage of commentary on what artificial intelligence will do to human jobs. It's easy to find a multiplicity of predictions, prescriptions, or denunciations. It is not so easy, however, to find descriptions of how people work day-to-day with smart machines.”   We invited Thomas Davenport to join us for a Conversation That Matters about our emerging and ever-expanding relationship with a technology that scares a wide range of people, including Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

Creation And The Big Bang | Thomas Davenport OP by Angelicum Thomistic Institute

What's more sexy: analytics or innovation? What about combining them! That sounds great, and Thomas Davenport would be so proud if you pulled it off, but the reality is that the idea of innovation through analytics is one thing, while the reality of making it happen is another thing entirely. Dr. Tiffany Perkins-Munn, Head of Marketing Data & Analytics at JPMorgan Chase & Co., joined us for a discussion on the subject! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Today I'm chatting with returning guest Tom Davenport, who is a Distinguished Professor at Babson College, a Visiting Professor at Oxford, a Research Fellow at MIT, and a Senior Advisor to Deloitte's AI practice. He is also the author of three new books (!) on AI and in this episode, we're discussing the role of product orientation in enterprise data science teams, the skills required, what he's seeing in the wild in terms of teams adopting this approach, and the value it can create. Back in episode 26, Tom was a guest on my show and he gave the data science/analytics industry an approximate “2 out of 10” rating in terms of its ability to generate value with data. So, naturally, I asked him for an update on that rating, and he kindly obliged. How are you all doing? Listen in to find out! Highlights / Skip to: Tom provides an updated rating (between 1-10) as to how well he thinks data science and analytics teams are doing these days at creating economic value (00:44) Why Tom believes that “motivation is not enough for data science work” (03:06) Tom provides his definition of what data products are and some opinions on other industry definitions (04:22) How Tom views the rise of taking a product approach to data roles and why data products must be tied to value (07:55) Tom explains why he feels top down executive support is needed to drive a product orientation (11:51) Brian and Tom discuss how they feel companies should prioritize true data products versus more informal AI efforts (16:26) The trends Tom sees in the companies and teams that are implementing a data product orientation (19:18) Brian and Tom discuss the models they typically see for data teams and their key components (23:18) Tom explains the value and necessity of data product management (34:49) Tom describes his three new books (39:00) Quotes from Today's Episode “Data science in general, I think has been focused heavily on motivation to fit lines and curves to data points, and that particular motivation certainly isn't enough in that even if you create a good model that fits the data, it doesn't mean at all that is going to produce any economic value.” – Tom Davenport  (03:05) “If data scientists don't worry about deployment, then they're not going to be in their jobs for terribly long because they're not providing any value to their organizations.” – Tom Davenport (13:25) “Product also means you got to market this thing if it's going to be successful. You just can't assume because it's a brilliant algorithm with capturing a lot of area under the curve that it's somehow going to be great for your company.” – Tom Davenport (19:04)   “[PM is] a hard thing, even for people in non-technical roles, because product management has always been a sort of ‘minister without portfolio' sort of job, and you know, influence without formal authority, where you are responsible for a lot of things happening, but the people don't report to you, generally.” – Tom Davenport (22:03)   “This collaboration between a human being making a decision and an AI system that might in some cases come up with a different decision but can't explain itself, that's a really tough thing to do [well].” – Tom Davenport (28:04) “This idea that we're going to use externally-sourced systems for ML is not likely to succeed in many cases because, you know, those vendors didn't work closely with everybody in your organization” – Tom Davenport (30:21)   “I think it's unlikely that [organizational gaps] are going to be successfully addressed by merging everybody together in one organization. I think that's what product managers do is they try to address those gaps in the organization and develop a process that makes coordination at least possible, if not true, all the time.” – Tom Davenport (36:49) Links Tom's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davenporttom/ Tom's Twitter: https://twitter.com/tdav All-in On AI by Thomas Davenport & Nitin Mittal, 2023 Working With AI by Thomas Davenport & Stephen Miller, 2022 Advanced Introduction to AI in Healthcare by Thomas Davenport, John Glaser, & Elizabeth Gardner, 2022 Competing On Analytics by Thomas Davenport & Jeanne G. Harris, 2007

Como você coleta, analisa e dissemina as Lições Aprendidas nos seus projetos e na sua Organização? Como é feita a Gestão do Conhecimento? A sua empresa está aprendendo com o tempo? Ou o conhecimento se vai junto com os profissionais quando eles deixam a companhia? Realizar uma boa gestão do conhecimento requer um trabalho cuidadoso, de coleta e disseminação de informações para que a empresa possa melhorar seus processos, evitar erros e amplificar as decisões certas! E é sobre esse tema que eu converso com o Alexandre Sonntag! Alexandre possui mais de 20 anos de experiência na área de projetos em diversas industrias como Telecomunicações, Tecnologia e, nos últimos 12 anos, sua experiência tem sido no setor de projetos de mineração. Atualmente atuando como gerente de engagement na Hatch no Canadá, anteriormente atuou como gerente de prontidão operacional e gerente de gestão de conhecimento na Vale. Alexandre é formado em engenharia elétrica pela PUC-RS, tem mestrado pela Universidade de Brasília, MBA Executivo pela Fundação Dom Cabral e doutorado em Gestão de Conhecimento pela PUC Minas. Alexandre tem paixão por ensinar, e atualmente é professor no Cambrian College no curso de pós graduação em gerenciamento de projetos, tendo também lecionado na Universidade Newton Paiva e na PUC Minas entre os anos de 2016 e 2018. E você? Como trata as Lições Aprendidas em seus projetos? Existem processos que visam reter o conhecimento na sua organização? Esse Podcast tem o apoio de Teams Ideas by Prosperi (https://www.teamsideas.com/) e da GSUP / Nexos (http://www.gsupgroup.com/). Tem curtido o nosso conteúdo? Que tal tornar-se membro do Capital Projects Podcast, apoiando o canal? Assim, podemos continuar crescendo e ajudando tantos profissionais da Gestão de Projetos! Acesse o link e confira os planos: https://lnkd.in/d8QQ6twk Acompanhe também as minhas redes: @andre_choma e https://linktr.ee/andrechoma Produção: Voz e Conteúdo – www.vozeconteudo.com.br - @vozeconteudo #capitalprojectspodcast #capitalprojects #projectmanagementinstitute #PMI #projetosdecapital #projectmanagement #gestaodeobras #planejamento #construção #engenharia #podcast #gestao #projetos #gestaodeprojetos #andrechoma #gerenciamentodeprojetos #gestãodeprojetoseobras #projectmanagementpractices #gestaodoconhecimento #liçõesaprendidas #lessonslearned #knowledgemanagement Livros citados: Livro Learning to Fly: https://www.amazon.com.br/Learning-Fly-Practical-Management-Organizations/dp/1841125091/?&_encoding=UTF8&tag=andrechoma-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=76f4e26e17c1861fd14fcfdf63eb3d2b&camp=1789&creative=9325 Livro Conhecimento Empresarial: https://www.amazon.com.br/Conhecimento-empresarial-Thomas-Davenport/dp/8535203524/?&_encoding=UTF8&tag=andrechoma-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=1f7325e10fd6cb9a73a771364021bcea&camp=1789&creative=9325

There is a widespread view that artificial intelligence is a job destroyer technical endeavour. There is both enthusiasm and doom around automation and the use of artificial intelligence-enabled "smart" solutions at work. In their latest book “Working with AI: Real Stories of Human-Machine Collaboration”, management and technology experts professor Thomas Davenport and professor Steven Miller explain that AI is not primarily a job destroyer, despite popular predictions, prescriptions, and condemnation. Rather, AI alters the way we work by automating specific tasks but not entire careers, and thus freeing people to do more important and difficult work. In the book, they demonstrate that AI in the workplace is not the stuff of science fiction; it is currently happening to many businesses and workers. They provide extensive, real-world case studies of AI-augmented occupations in contexts ranging from finance to the manufacturing floor. In this episode of Bridging the Gaps I speak with professor Thomas Davenport and professor Steven Miller to discuss their fascinating research, and to talk through various case studies and real work use cases that they outline in the book. We discuss the impact of Artificial intelligence technologies on the job market and on the future of work. We also discuss future hybrid working environments where AI and Humans will work side by side. Professor Thomas Davenport is a Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, a visiting professor at the Oxford University and a Fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. Steven Miller is Professor Emeritus of Information Systems at Singapore Management University. We begin our discussion by looking at various aspects of the environments where AI and human workers work side by side, and then discuss the concept of Hybrid Intelligence. Then we talk about the challenges that organisations are faced with while developing and implementing Artificial Intelligence enabled technologies and solutions in enterprise environments. An important question that I raise during our discussion is, are the organisations ready for large scale deployment of AI solutions. The book is full of real world case studies and covers a wide variety of use cases. We delve into a number of these real world case studies and use cases. This has been a very informative discussion. Complement this discussion with ““The Technology Trap” and the Future of Work” with Dr Carl Frey” available at: https://www.bridgingthegaps.ie/2019/10/the-technology-trap-and-the-future-of-work-with-dr-carl-frey/ And then listen to ““Machines like Us: TOWARD AI WITH COMMON SENSE” with Professor Ronald Brachman” available at: https://www.bridgingthegaps.ie/2022/06/machines-like-us-toward-ai-with-common-sense-with-professor-ronald-brachman/

This lecture was given at the Fourth Annual Thomistic Philosophy and Natural Science Symposium entitled, Complexity, Simplicity and Emergence, on July 14, 2022 at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website: www.thomisticinstitute.org About the speaker: Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P. is a Dominican friar, physicist, and philosopher. He joined the faculty of philosophy at the Angelicum in Rome in 2020, where he co-leads the Project for Science and Religion. Before joining the Dominican order he studied physics at the California Institute of Technology before going on to earn his doctorate in physics from Stanford University studying theoretical particle physics. The focus of his scientific research is writing and testing simulations for high energy particle colliders like the LHC at CERN. After joining the Dominicans in 2010, he studied philosophy and theology in preparation for his ordination to the priesthood in 2017. In addition, he earned a Licentiate in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America, focusing on the philosophy of science and natural philosophy. For two years he was an Assistant Professor of Physics at Providence College in Providence, RI, where he taught physics and restarted a research program in particle physics. He has written and spoken in a number of forums on the relationship between faith and science including contributions to the Thomistic Evolution project and organizing conferences on science and philosophy for the Thomistic Institute in Washington, DC.

Fr. Thomas Davenport OP - "Why Is The Sky Blue An Introduction To The Philosophy Of Nature?" by Angelicum Thomistic Institute

Fr. Thomas Davenport OP - "In The Beginning The Big Bang And The Theology Of Creation" by Angelicum Thomistic Institute

April 29th 2022; 6PM Instytut Filozofii UJ 52 Grodzka St, rm 13.

Fr. Thomas Davenport O.P - "Miracles and Modern Science" by Angelicum Thomistic Institute

“St. Albert the Great: Medieval Wisdom for Modern Science” Fr. Thomas Davenport, OP (Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas - Angelicum) Broadcast live from the Angelicum in Rome on November 16, 2021.

This lecture was delivered on June 20, 2021 as part of the third annual Thomistic Philosophy and Natural Science Symposium: Chance and Indeterminacy in the Natural World. For information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Fr. Thomas Davenport O.P. is Assistant Professor of Physics at Providence College. He earned his Ph.D. in physics at Stanford University. His areas of expertise are theoretical particle physics (particle colliders), philosophy of science/philosophy of nature, and the relationship between faith and science.

It looks like a small desk without any legs, just sitting there on a table, a well-fashioned rectangular wooden box containing within it a drawer that pulls out to reveal a crucifix, a journal, a spoon, bottle of white powder and sundry other items that, when attached to the device on top of the box, did something very special, or at least, that's what was claimed. The device is symmetrical and in its center is a glass column surmounted by a small cast iron skull wearing a helmet and within the glass column one can glimpse a brass bell suspended on a chain. On either side of the glass column are two black horns, much like the ones you would later see on Edison's talking machines and to their sides, a set of brass balance scales, connected to weights. Near the rear on each side are two glass Crookes solar radiometers, those little glass spheres you can still buy with a metal spinner in the center, moved by the sunlight and photons. There are other strange contrivances attached to this peculiar amalgam of technology, but exactly what the purpose of this device is was made clear by its inventor over a hundred years ago and it was so famous and its purpose so spectacular that it made the national papers and was the talk of the nation. This was purported by its inventor and his followers to be a ‘living machine,' designed and created by angels for the sole purpose of….well, we're getting ahead of ourselves. It would be best to begin at the beginning and tell the story. If you look closely at this curious device, you will see engraved in a small brass plate the words, “New Motive Power” and the name John Murray Spear. In the summer of 1818, a young woman named Mary Shelley was spending an unsettling vacation with her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron in a villa on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. During a bout of cold weather the poets decided to have a contest to see who could come up with the strangest spooky story from among them. In a fit of creative energy seldom seen in literature, 18 year old Mary Shelley created what most people consider to be the founding work of science fiction, Frankenstein. From an assemblage of dead tissue and body parts, Doctor Victor Frankenstein creates a new being, the first and only one of his kind, known only as ‘the monster'. The work was fiction, of course, but it was timely. Science was the new frontier and people, though fascinated with it, knew very little about it. Indeed, science seemed to promise everything that magic used to describe. Her work became famous on both sides of the Atlantic and in all probability fed the imagination of the protagonist of our tale, John Murray Spear. His interest in electricity, to be specific, would lead to a contraption that would be part perpetual motion machine and part Frankenstein's monster and it would all happen with the help of Heaven above. John Murray Spear was born in Boston on September 16, 1804. By all accounts, and there are many, he was brought up to be thoughtful, compassionate and mindful of his fellow man. Named after the actual founder of the movement known as Universalism, he was destined to be connected with Heavenly pursuits for his entire life, even though life wasn't easy for John and his brother Charles who had to fend for their mother and grandmother while still children after their father died. There was work in the factories of Dorchester where they worked impossible hours to make ends meet, but through the ministration of their Sunday school teacher, both the brothers learned to read and write, giving John a way out of the factory and into the position of apprentice shoemaker. Things began to look up for him, but looking up was about to change his life forever. Like his namesake, John Murray Spear felt a calling to become a preacher. He was kind, gentle, thoughtful and full of love and generosity and though he was self-taught and never attended seminary, he began preaching and was well-received. He became an ordained Universalist minister in 1830. He married and the couple had five children. Not bad for a poor boy from Dorchester. He was particularly concerned with the abolitionist movement and he gave help to those people of color who had made it north and to freedom, only to find themselves also desperately poor and in need of assistance. Spear had a reputation for doing the work on the ground, walking among the poor, and he became very respected in his community. But something happened to John Murray Spear, something dreadful. During the winter of 1844-1845, Spear was speaking out in Portland,Maine to a mass of people who raged into a mob and beat him senseless. Spear was saved by an old friend, Oliver Dennett who also carefully nursed him back to health. To what extent his injuries included some kind of brain damage, we can never know, but something was changed in the mind of Spear, and he was not in tune with other places, other beings… Shortly after Spear recovered, his friend Dennett died. One can imagine the sense of loss Spear must have felt, but even stranger what sense of wonder must have pervaded his mind when he sat and watched his hand - seemingly of its own accord and without his own volition, picked up a pen and began to write message to him from, of all people, his dead compatriot - Oliver Dennett. The first note Spear received in this way instructed him to find a man named David Vining and help him. Even stranger, the note was signed by none other than Oliver. There is a condition known to modern medicine as Alien Hand Syndrome. It occurs when a person's hand seems to have a mind of its own and cannot be controlled by the owner of the hand. It is often the left hand and according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, there are a variety of causes to this frightening condition: temporal lobe epilepsy, brain surgery, stroke, infection, tumors, aneurysm, among others. Given the fact that Spears had been beaten by an angry mob, is it possible that he had some kind of event or damage that initiated this syndrome? As with many who have suffered from it, it eventually faded and Oliver stopped writing letters, but before he did, Spears became convinced that he was in contact with the dead and that this automatic writing that was occurring came straight from the spiritual realm. But what is so strange is that David Vining was real. Time after time, Oliver directed Spear to people who needed his help. Spear was indefatigable - willing to travel far on these missions from the dead. Word of his connection to the spirit realm and his good works began to spread. In 1848, the Fox sisters, Catherine and Mararetta, began the Spiritualist movement in the United States. While still children, the sisters began to witness strange rappings in their house in the hamlet of Hydesville, New York. One thing led to another and soon, the nation was introduced to the idea that it was possible to talk to the dead, and that almost everybody could do it. Mediums could act as connections to those who had passed on and great comfort could be had about the life of the world to come simply by attending a seance and witnessing the demonstrations of the mediums. Of course John Murray Spear was aware of the movement - he had to have been. It was all the rage. And as he wondered about the actions of his hand and how the process was working, he could find no better explanation than that of being possessed by a kindly spirit, a goodly being who had taken care of him, still working from beyond the grave. Of course, we would have had no idea about anything as modern as Alien Hand Syndrome. To that end, Spear dove into the spiritualist movement. He gave spontaneous lectures where he allowed himself to be the medium through which other voices spoke. Already well-known and well-thought of, he became a celebrity of sorts. He attended seances and came to believe that he was not only dealing with the spirits of the dead, but also with spirits of a different sort altogether - angels...angels of electricity… During a deep trance among his followers, he willingly surrendered by body to that of seven spirits whose task it was to use his body as a vessel with which to construct the new motive power of the age, an age of enlightenment and of power that would flow directly from Heaven in the form of… well, we really don't know. An aficionado of magnetism and electricity, his angelic engineers conceived of a machine that would have analogues to a heart, to lungs, to all of the systems of the living body, but they would be mechanical in nature and would, once animated, move forward without any further input of energy. The machine would be built, but the spark of life would need to be imbued by another sort of power altogether. And so his followers donated over $2000, a huge sum of money in his time, and he spent the better part of a year building the Heavenly Machine from which the greatest gift of Heaven would flow. There were no blueprints. It was built from day to day, like Mrs. Winchester's house, with plans abandoned or changed or dropped at the whim of the celestial voices speaking through John Murray Spear. There was a revolving steel arm surmounted by two steel balls, both with embedded magnets. There are obvious positive and negative aspects to the machine, with zinc and copper plates - this was an electrical child being built by a man touched by...well, again, we're not sure. But as the months passed and word of his wondrous machine reached the masses, the newspapermen followed its evolution. He promised that this device would be Heaven's greatest gift to Man, a kind of Christlike telephone from which we might speak to God or at the very least, it would provide unlimited power to move the world into a new, more perfect state. The world had heard all of this kind of thing before with one singular exception: John Murray Spear had nothing of the charlatan about him. In fact, he was singularly unassailable because he had put himself on the front line for those in need, had championed for just causes and had even suffered at the hands of unruly mobs when standing for what was right. All those who came into contact with him truly believed that he was in earnest and that he was a good man who had the spiritual health of the nation in his heart. He made no money from his project. All of the funds raised went toward the construction of the device. His prayer gatherings were widely attended and for all the people knew, this man was in touch with the angels, and how the world needed such a thing was clear to them all. But the machine just kind of sat there and did nothing. No trouble, he insisted. It is but a vessel, like a human body, and it needed to be imbued with life. For that, he explained, people needed to remember that in nature, life was not perpetuated unless male met female. For this new Prometheus to come to life, a female influence would need to ignite it and for that, he searched for and wide for the child's mother. Two newspaper editors seized the opportunity to help Spear search for her. S. Crosby Hewitt and Alonzo Newton knew a good story when they saw one and they made sure there were headlines as the search progressed. It wasn't long before the angels told the world the name of the new Mary: Mrs. Semantha Mettler, the wife of a Boston doctor. She was also, not coincidentally, a medium. When she joined the room, Spear went into one of his trance states and she, like those in the room, had to ask themselves if they were in the presence of the Heavenly host itself when he spoke. The newspapers chronicle what he said that day when the mother met her child. In his trance state, the angels spoke: “How fondly, how constantly, how widely is this one beloved! How beautiful is the influence this woman exerts! Wherever she is she attracts In this particular she possesses a most remarkable character. Her friends know no bounds to their affection for this one; and there is nothing which they would leave undone to gratify her. There passes from this woman a very marked influence. It is not precisely the religious influence; it is not precisely the moral influence, it is not precisely the practical influence; but it is, so to speak, a compost of all; and these are charmingly intermingled, imparting a most adhesive influence. This medium has been commissioned to widely instruct this woman for a high purpose. There is before this woman a new and beautiful labor. At 10 o'clock tomorrow the purpose of his mission to this place will be unfolded. Let this woman be in the region of the tranquilities at that hour.” Beautiful labor: these were the words spoken by Spear while under the influence of the angels. And that was her purpose for this woman was supposed to be the conduit that would shunt the power of life from the celestial realm to the machine, spurring it into life, and in a sense, she was to give birth to it. After all, Spears had worked on the machine for nine months... The next morning, at 10 o'clock, Mrs. Mettler was brought into the chamber with the machine and went into her own trance, all while being witnessed by Spear and his followers. Soon, she began to experience all of the symptoms of labor. It was as though she was undergoing the full gestation of a child in the matter of an hour and the mechanism was designed to absorb her maternal influence. As she moved and writhed and moaned, the witnesses observed something no less than marvelous. As reported that evening in the Boston's New Era newspaper, “THE THING MOVES!” That day, the world changed. In Lynn, Massachusetts, a thing made of metal, chemicals and wood, began to pulsate like a heart. The monster had been given the spark. According to Spear, this living child would grow and soon would move the wheels of the world, replacing all other means of moving machinery. It would take over all. How strange it must have been there that day to watch the machine move. One must wonder, though, if these people had any idea how electricity worked and how copper and zinc react when a current is applied to them? The basic dynamics of a simple electric motor was not known to the world yet, but Spear may have touched upon something that a fellow from Vermont did in 1834, not many years before. Thomas Davenport invented the first battery powered electric motor to power a small printing press. A well-read man like Spear may have heard of Davenport's achievement, but may not have understood the forces involved. Electricity seemed magical, moving things with unseen forces. Perhaps Spear was correct in that one day, electricity would power the world, overwhelmingly moving the machines of industry, replacing water power and that of the steam engine. Certainly this extraordinary claim seems pretty commonplace today, but in his day, no one knew that. Perhaps it was nothing more than the movement of a metal plate responding to a magnetic field. People believed that invisible spirits could rap and tap and communicate through mediums. Why not build a machine to channel the power of God? News of the movement of the new machine spread throughout the land, but those who did not take to communicating with the dead and the ways of the spiritualists had no use for such practices. To a mainstream religious American audience, this might even have hinted of witchcraft and magic. Instead of being divinely inspired by the angels, was this some Devil's work? Reports claim that John Murray Spears' machine was destroyed by an angry mob, tearing it to pieces and trampling it beneath their feet. Spears faded into obscurity after that. He never thought to rebuild the machine and his hope to tap into an invisible power that might move the machines of the world was forgotten. Except it wasn't. An invisible force does move the machines of the world - electricity. He must have believed it would work and in his own way, he was right. It wasn't a hoax, as far as the idea goes. Given the knowledge of his age, we might even look back upon him, strange as his sensibilities seem to us today, he really did want to gift the world a very real power. Just not what he thought it was. And his machine? We thought it was destroyed - it was reported as such, but in 2019, in Greely, Colorado, a Miss Akerman passed away and her home, full of hoarded objects, was being cleared when the machine showed up resting in her attic. It must have sat there for one hundred and fifty-six years. If it isn't the real machine, even though it is clearly labeled, it certainly looks like the God machine of John Murray Spears. Whether or not it works remains a mystery, but then again, such things as this beg for speculation and make us wonder, “what makes it tick?” For that matter, what makes one want to know? Better to ask how a persons' hand might write messages of its own volition and how this alien hand could lead to a machine that claimed to be a robotic body for God. Sources John Murray Spear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Murray_Spear https://uudb.org/articles/johnmurrayspear.html http://www.danbaines.com/blog/john-murray-spears-mechanical-messiah-discovered-in-colorado-attic/3/7/2019 Alien Hand Syndrome The National Library of Medicine - Alien Hand Syndrome

It looks like a small desk without any legs, just sitting there on a table, a well-fashioned rectangular wooden box containing within it a drawer that pulls out to reveal a crucifix, a journal, a spoon, bottle of white powder and sundry other items that, when attached to the device on top of the box, did something very special, or at least, that's what was claimed. The device is symmetrical and in its center is a glass column surmounted by a small cast iron skull wearing a helmet and within the glass column one can glimpse a brass bell suspended on a chain. On either side of the glass column are two black horns, much like the ones you would later see on Edison's talking machines and to their sides, a set of brass balance scales, connected to weights. Near the rear on each side are two glass Crookes solar radiometers, those little glass spheres you can still buy with a metal spinner in the center, moved by the sunlight and photons. There are other strange contrivances attached to this peculiar amalgam of technology, but exactly what the purpose of this device is was made clear by its inventor over a hundred years ago and it was so famous and its purpose so spectacular that it made the national papers and was the talk of the nation. This was purported by its inventor and his followers to be a ‘living machine,' designed and created by angels for the sole purpose of….well, we're getting ahead of ourselves. It would be best to begin at the beginning and tell the story. If you look closely at this curious device, you will see engraved in a small brass plate the words, “New Motive Power” and the name John Murray Spear. In the summer of 1818, a young woman named Mary Shelley was spending an unsettling vacation with her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron in a villa on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. During a bout of cold weather the poets decided to have a contest to see who could come up with the strangest spooky story from among them. In a fit of creative energy seldom seen in literature, 18 year old Mary Shelley created what most people consider to be the founding work of science fiction, Frankenstein. From an assemblage of dead tissue and body parts, Doctor Victor Frankenstein creates a new being, the first and only one of his kind, known only as ‘the monster'. The work was fiction, of course, but it was timely. Science was the new frontier and people, though fascinated with it, knew very little about it. Indeed, science seemed to promise everything that magic used to describe. Her work became famous on both sides of the Atlantic and in all probability fed the imagination of the protagonist of our tale, John Murray Spear. His interest in electricity, to be specific, would lead to a contraption that would be part perpetual motion machine and part Frankenstein's monster and it would all happen with the help of Heaven above. John Murray Spear was born in Boston on September 16, 1804. By all accounts, and there are many, he was brought up to be thoughtful, compassionate and mindful of his fellow man. Named after the actual founder of the movement known as Universalism, he was destined to be connected with Heavenly pursuits for his entire life, even though life wasn't easy for John and his brother Charles who had to fend for their mother and grandmother while still children after their father died. There was work in the factories of Dorchester where they worked impossible hours to make ends meet, but through the ministration of their Sunday school teacher, both the brothers learned to read and write, giving John a way out of the factory and into the position of apprentice shoemaker. Things began to look up for him, but looking up was about to change his life forever. Like his namesake, John Murray Spear felt a calling to become a preacher. He was kind, gentle, thoughtful and full of love and generosity and though he was self-taught and never attended seminary, he began preaching and was well-received. He became an ordained Universalist minister in 1830. He married and the couple had five children. Not bad for a poor boy from Dorchester. He was particularly concerned with the abolitionist movement and he gave help to those people of color who had made it north and to freedom, only to find themselves also desperately poor and in need of assistance. Spear had a reputation for doing the work on the ground, walking among the poor, and he became very respected in his community. But something happened to John Murray Spear, something dreadful. During the winter of 1844-1845, Spear was speaking out in Portland,Maine to a mass of people who raged into a mob and beat him senseless. Spear was saved by an old friend, Oliver Dennett who also carefully nursed him back to health. To what extent his injuries included some kind of brain damage, we can never know, but something was changed in the mind of Spear, and he was not in tune with other places, other beings… Shortly after Spear recovered, his friend Dennett died. One can imagine the sense of loss Spear must have felt, but even stranger what sense of wonder must have pervaded his mind when he sat and watched his hand - seemingly of its own accord and without his own volition, picked up a pen and began to write message to him from, of all people, his dead compatriot - Oliver Dennett. The first note Spear received in this way instructed him to find a man named David Vining and help him. Even stranger, the note was signed by none other than Oliver. There is a condition known to modern medicine as Alien Hand Syndrome. It occurs when a person's hand seems to have a mind of its own and cannot be controlled by the owner of the hand. It is often the left hand and according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, there are a variety of causes to this frightening condition: temporal lobe epilepsy, brain surgery, stroke, infection, tumors, aneurysm, among others. Given the fact that Spears had been beaten by an angry mob, is it possible that he had some kind of event or damage that initiated this syndrome? As with many who have suffered from it, it eventually faded and Oliver stopped writing letters, but before he did, Spears became convinced that he was in contact with the dead and that this automatic writing that was occurring came straight from the spiritual realm. But what is so strange is that David Vining was real. Time after time, Oliver directed Spear to people who needed his help. Spear was indefatigable - willing to travel far on these missions from the dead. Word of his connection to the spirit realm and his good works began to spread. In 1848, the Fox sisters, Catherine and Mararetta, began the Spiritualist movement in the United States. While still children, the sisters began to witness strange rappings in their house in the hamlet of Hydesville, New York. One thing led to another and soon, the nation was introduced to the idea that it was possible to talk to the dead, and that almost everybody could do it. Mediums could act as connections to those who had passed on and great comfort could be had about the life of the world to come simply by attending a seance and witnessing the demonstrations of the mediums. Of course John Murray Spear was aware of the movement - he had to have been. It was all the rage. And as he wondered about the actions of his hand and how the process was working, he could find no better explanation than that of being possessed by a kindly spirit, a goodly being who had taken care of him, still working from beyond the grave. Of course, we would have had no idea about anything as modern as Alien Hand Syndrome. To that end, Spear dove into the spiritualist movement. He gave spontaneous lectures where he allowed himself to be the medium through which other voices spoke. Already well-known and well-thought of, he became a celebrity of sorts. He attended seances and came to believe that he was not only dealing with the spirits of the dead, but also with spirits of a different sort altogether - angels...angels of electricity… During a deep trance among his followers, he willingly surrendered by body to that of seven spirits whose task it was to use his body as a vessel with which to construct the new motive power of the age, an age of enlightenment and of power that would flow directly from Heaven in the form of… well, we really don't know. An aficionado of magnetism and electricity, his angelic engineers conceived of a machine that would have analogues to a heart, to lungs, to all of the systems of the living body, but they would be mechanical in nature and would, once animated, move forward without any further input of energy. The machine would be built, but the spark of life would need to be imbued by another sort of power altogether. And so his followers donated over $2000, a huge sum of money in his time, and he spent the better part of a year building the Heavenly Machine from which the greatest gift of Heaven would flow. There were no blueprints. It was built from day to day, like Mrs. Winchester's house, with plans abandoned or changed or dropped at the whim of the celestial voices speaking through John Murray Spear. There was a revolving steel arm surmounted by two steel balls, both with embedded magnets. There are obvious positive and negative aspects to the machine, with zinc and copper plates - this was an electrical child being built by a man touched by...well, again, we're not sure. But as the months passed and word of his wondrous machine reached the masses, the newspapermen followed its evolution. He promised that this device would be Heaven's greatest gift to Man, a kind of Christlike telephone from which we might speak to God or at the very least, it would provide unlimited power to move the world into a new, more perfect state. The world had heard all of this kind of thing before with one singular exception: John Murray Spear had nothing of the charlatan about him. In fact, he was singularly unassailable because he had put himself on the front line for those in need, had championed for just causes and had even suffered at the hands of unruly mobs when standing for what was right. All those who came into contact with him truly believed that he was in earnest and that he was a good man who had the spiritual health of the nation in his heart. He made no money from his project. All of the funds raised went toward the construction of the device. His prayer gatherings were widely attended and for all the people knew, this man was in touch with the angels, and how the world needed such a thing was clear to them all. But the machine just kind of sat there and did nothing. No trouble, he insisted. It is but a vessel, like a human body, and it needed to be imbued with life. For that, he explained, people needed to remember that in nature, life was not perpetuated unless male met female. For this new Prometheus to come to life, a female influence would need to ignite it and for that, he searched for and wide for the child's mother. Two newspaper editors seized the opportunity to help Spear search for her. S. Crosby Hewitt and Alonzo Newton knew a good story when they saw one and they made sure there were headlines as the search progressed. It wasn't long before the angels told the world the name of the new Mary: Mrs. Semantha Mettler, the wife of a Boston doctor. She was also, not coincidentally, a medium. When she joined the room, Spear went into one of his trance states and she, like those in the room, had to ask themselves if they were in the presence of the Heavenly host itself when he spoke. The newspapers chronicle what he said that day when the mother met her child. In his trance state, the angels spoke: “How fondly, how constantly, how widely is this one beloved! How beautiful is the influence this woman exerts! Wherever she is she attracts In this particular she possesses a most remarkable character. Her friends know no bounds to their affection for this one; and there is nothing which they would leave undone to gratify her. There passes from this woman a very marked influence. It is not precisely the religious influence; it is not precisely the moral influence, it is not precisely the practical influence; but it is, so to speak, a compost of all; and these are charmingly intermingled, imparting a most adhesive influence. This medium has been commissioned to widely instruct this woman for a high purpose. There is before this woman a new and beautiful labor. At 10 o'clock tomorrow the purpose of his mission to this place will be unfolded. Let this woman be in the region of the tranquilities at that hour.” Beautiful labor: these were the words spoken by Spear while under the influence of the angels. And that was her purpose for this woman was supposed to be the conduit that would shunt the power of life from the celestial realm to the machine, spurring it into life, and in a sense, she was to give birth to it. After all, Spears had worked on the machine for nine months... The next morning, at 10 o'clock, Mrs. Mettler was brought into the chamber with the machine and went into her own trance, all while being witnessed by Spear and his followers. Soon, she began to experience all of the symptoms of labor. It was as though she was undergoing the full gestation of a child in the matter of an hour and the mechanism was designed to absorb her maternal influence. As she moved and writhed and moaned, the witnesses observed something no less than marvelous. As reported that evening in the Boston's New Era newspaper, “THE THING MOVES!” That day, the world changed. In Lynn, Massachusetts, a thing made of metal, chemicals and wood, began to pulsate like a heart. The monster had been given the spark. According to Spear, this living child would grow and soon would move the wheels of the world, replacing all other means of moving machinery. It would take over all. How strange it must have been there that day to watch the machine move. One must wonder, though, if these people had any idea how electricity worked and how copper and zinc react when a current is applied to them? The basic dynamics of a simple electric motor was not known to the world yet, but Spear may have touched upon something that a fellow from Vermont did in 1834, not many years before. Thomas Davenport invented the first battery powered electric motor to power a small printing press. A well-read man like Spear may have heard of Davenport's achievement, but may not have understood the forces involved. Electricity seemed magical, moving things with unseen forces. Perhaps Spear was correct in that one day, electricity would power the world, overwhelmingly moving the machines of industry, replacing water power and that of the steam engine. Certainly this extraordinary claim seems pretty commonplace today, but in his day, no one knew that. Perhaps it was nothing more than the movement of a metal plate responding to a magnetic field. People believed that invisible spirits could rap and tap and communicate through mediums. Why not build a machine to channel the power of God? News of the movement of the new machine spread throughout the land, but those who did not take to communicating with the dead and the ways of the spiritualists had no use for such practices. To a mainstream religious American audience, this might even have hinted of witchcraft and magic. Instead of being divinely inspired by the angels, was this some Devil's work? Reports claim that John Murray Spears' machine was destroyed by an angry mob, tearing it to pieces and trampling it beneath their feet. Spears faded into obscurity after that. He never thought to rebuild the machine and his hope to tap into an invisible power that might move the machines of the world was forgotten. Except it wasn't. An invisible force does move the machines of the world - electricity. He must have believed it would work and in his own way, he was right. It wasn't a hoax, as far as the idea goes. Given the knowledge of his age, we might even look back upon him, strange as his sensibilities seem to us today, he really did want to gift the world a very real power. Just not what he thought it was. And his machine? We thought it was destroyed - it was reported as such, but in 2019, in Greely, Colorado, a Miss Akerman passed away and her home, full of hoarded objects, was being cleared when the machine showed up resting in her attic. It must have sat there for one hundred and fifty-six years. If it isn't the real machine, even though it is clearly labeled, it certainly looks like the God machine of John Murray Spears. Whether or not it works remains a mystery, but then again, such things as this beg for speculation and make us wonder, “what makes it tick?” For that matter, what makes one want to know? Better to ask how a persons' hand might write messages of its own volition and how this alien hand could lead to a machine that claimed to be a robotic body for God. Sources John Murray Spear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Murray_Spear https://uudb.org/articles/johnmurrayspear.html http://www.danbaines.com/blog/john-murray-spears-mechanical-messiah-discovered-in-colorado-attic/3/7/2019 Alien Hand Syndrome The National Library of Medicine - Alien Hand Syndrome

The buzz surrounding A.I. cognitive strategy, technology, data, and analytics has many companies excited, but what does a business do with the information available? In his book, The A.I. Advantage, Thomas Davenport offers a guide to using artificial intelligence in business. Tom and Greg discuss how companies can leverage available technologies for their competitive advantage. Check out their discussion on IBM's Watson's attempts to cure cancer, and learn how legacy companies integrate AI despite layers of approval and current processes.You won't want to miss Tom's backstory, as he shares his journey from being a sociologist to an analyst. Finally, make sure to take notes on his views on A.I. ethics, including how to set up systems with human decision-makers and how academics can improve courses with A.I. tools, data, and analytics.Episode Quotes:Which is easier, teaching business skills to technical people or technical skills to business people?I don't think that either of them is particularly hard to teach. If the motivation is there, I think that's the key element. You run across many data scientists who couldn't care less about what business they're working in. What motivates them is fooling around with algorithms and finding the best fitting one, and so on. But, most of those algorithms are not going to get deployed successfully. Certainly, you have way too many business people who don't want to learn enough about technology. Now. I think every business succeeds based on its use of technology. Neither of them is that hard to learn. You gotta want it.”How do you get the best data, and how do you make the most out of it?When I first got into this consulting firm, there was a strong focus on using data to make decisions. But in general, it became a very technical field, and people were only worried about what type of data warehouse to use and what software to use. And there was very little about what difference it made to the business. I think in general, and we're finding this a lot in AI and analytics, it's the people who can connect the numbers to the business —the analytics outcomes that are driving the success.Is there a way that business schools can reinvent themselves in terms of using data in their business model like admissions and curriculum?I have a book that I recently got called Big Data on Campus. Full of examples of schools that are starting to use analytics for things like admissions and fundraising. It works well for keeping students from leaving and identifying potential traders. Educationally, I think we probably need a new business model in business schools and maybe in general. Universities have gotten way too expensive for many people. And this idea that you learn everything you need to know in four years and then never have to go back to school is totally nutty.Show LinksGuest ProfileTom's Official WebsiteTom Davenport's Profile at DeloitteTom Davenport on LinkedInTom Davenport on TwitterHis WorkThe AI Advantage: How to Put the Artificial Intelligence Revolution to Work Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart MachinesAnalytics and Big Data: The Davenport CollectionBig Data at Work: Dispelling the Myths, Uncovering the OpportunitiesKeeping Up with the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding and Using AnalyticsJudgment Calls: Twelve Stories of Big Decisions and the Teams That Got Them RightAnalytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better ResultsCompeting on Analytics: Updated, with a New Introduction: The New Science of WinningThinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performances And Results from Knowledge WorkersInformation Ecology: Mastering the Information and Knowledge Environment

Course Listening for Lesson 11 - "Science and Faith"

This lecture was given at Queen’s University on March 22, 2021. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P., received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University in 2010, working in theoretical particle physics and subsequently entered the Order of Preachers. He has written and spoken on the relationship of faith and science in a variety of venues, including being a main contributor to the Thomistic Evolution project. He was ordained to the priesthood in 2017 and is currently studying Philosophy at the Catholic University of America.

IMA's website: https://www.imanet.org/International Management Accounting Day: https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/international-management-accounting-dayFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:00) Welcome back everyone and happy International Management Accounting Day. Each year, IMA celebrates International Management Accounting day on May 6th. This global day of recognition commemorates the important role management accountants play within their organizations. Around the world, finance and accounting professionals work to bring insight and help their organizations realize untapped opportunities and operate more efficiently. While this work happens every day of the year, on May 6th management accountants are publicly recognized by IMA. So to celebrate and support the public recognition, Count Me In has a special bonus episode for you featuring IMA's President and CEO, Jeff Thomson. Jeff spoke with Margaret Michaels, IMA's Manager for Brand Content and Storytelling about the future of finance and accounting. Keep listening to hear them discuss the valuable ongoing efforts of management accountants and the race for relevance in a digital age. Margaret: (01:03) Digital transformation enabled by automation, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and other technologies has been the headline story when people talk about the future of finance, but you often bring up the fact that these are really not new technologies. Can you elaborate on that theme and talk a little bit about how the foundational concepts in competing on analytics and other texts laid the groundwork for the transformation we see today? Jeff: (01:41) Sure Margaret. Great question and two related, but somewhat different concepts. So these technologies have been around and developing for some time. Artificial intelligence, has been around for some time, blockchain has been around for some time. But what's different is that all industries have been impacted by these technologies and the applications have been exploding. You know blockchain, for example, the use cases for blockchain were just a few several years ago, but now blockchain use cases have absolutely exploded. You know, blockchain was something we've heard about several years ago, primarily in the financial services industry, but now blockchain applications are permeating many, many industries including education, non-for-profits, and when we think about artificial intelligence, it's not just artificial intelligence in certain industries, it's artificial intelligence in many industries and many applications, so the question is our ability to leverage all of these wonderful uses of these technologies. Now, and then when we think about, RPA robotics process automation, robotics process automation has actually been around for nearly a decade. So when we talk about new technologies, the technologies really aren't that new, but it's the application and comprehensiveness of these technologies across industry verticals that are new. Now, moving to your other question competing on analytics, it's actually the book, Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning, by Thomas Davenport and Jean Harris. It's actually a book in 2007 that really laid the groundwork for the transformation to data analytics that as you said, we're seeing today. And when you think about it, imagine it was written in 2007 and when you think about the science of winning in the marketplace, what do you think about? You normally think about cool apps, things that consumers see in front of them. Like I said applications, products and services, things you can touch and feel. You don't think about nerdy things like analytics, but if you fast forward today, analytics is the thing we're talking about. Data scientists, data scientists are the number one sought after job because data analytics is how we get to know our consumers and their needs and their wants. They’re how finance team professionals offer insight and foresight to their CEOs, to their boards of directors. So that is the competency and skillset that we as finance team professionals must really aspire to and really accelerate our competencies.   Margaret: (04:59) Great. Now you often say the race for relevance to describe the current iteration of digital transformation in accounting and finance as technology evolves faster than the skills of the people who need to use it. What are the skills finance and accounting professionals need to focus on to keep up and what competencies really stand out to employers in a time when skills are increasingly commoditized?   Jeff: (05:28) Yeah so another great question Margaret you're on a roll today. Yeah, so there's going to be the infamous hard skills and the softer skills, so we are in an absolute environment of disruption. In fact, we often talk about the VUCA world that we're in, and no it's not a Hungarian goulash, it's VUCA volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, VUCA. And we were actually in that environment before COVID-19 tragically struck the world with non-traditional competition, climate, and I can go on and on. So when I think about behavioral characteristics for finance team professionals and CFOs, I think about agility and I know we're going to be talking about agility perhaps in a bit later. I think about adaptability because if you don't have the ability to deal with new situations, stressful situations, totally unexpected situations that your best planning could not have possibly anticipated then you're not going to be able to adjust and deal with the situation from a risk management perspective or a planning perspective. So agility, adaptability, but also being anticipatory. Having that radar at ability to plan the best you can, so from a behavioral perspective, what I call the three A's; agility, adaptability, anticipatory skills. From a harder skills perspective, and again this is for the finance team, strategic planning, strategic thinking and then of course data analytics, data science, everything data, data transformation, digital transformation. Now I don't want to lose sight of the table stakes because as we thinking about the progressive CFO and the CFO of the future, we have to be clear that there are table stakes. There are things that the CFO team must do with excellence that are expected. Things like risk management, internal controls, an ongoing and continuous commitment to ethics, leadership, executive maturity, executive presence, and the like. So we can't lose sight of what got us there and that's a unwavering and relentless focus on, as I said, ethics, internal controls, accurately and fairly representing the financial condition of the enterprise. And then we can offer that insight and foresight and having, enabling the organization to do great things and create great products and services that will change the world.   Margaret: (08:38) That makes a lot of sense and I'm glad you mentioned agility and resilience because COVID has certainly highlighted the need for leaders to help their people become more agile and resilient. How do you define agility and resilience? How equipped are finance and accounting professionals to deal with uncertainty while continuing to innovate and improve processes?   Jeff: (09:04) So agility is, and again, this is a, perhaps a Thomson un-scientific definition, but maybe those are the best. They're not particularly scientific, but agility in my mind, Margaret is the ability to quickly move employees and resources, human resources, and other types of resources, technology resources into new roles or areas of the organization to support changing business needs. And the quickness is really very important because things could change on a dime or a nickel or a penny as the case may be so ability to quickly move employees and other types of resources and the new roles or areas of the organization as conditions change. Resilience or resiliency is perhaps viewed as the physical, social, emotional, and financial wellbeing of employees. Think of it as the shock absorber weathering the storm, hurricane Sandy and the Northeast is a literal interpretation of weathering the storm. COVID-19 around the world and other examples. And when I think about, going back to agility, you know, there's a kind of a company responsibility and a company opportunity to deal with agility, attracting and attaining diverse employees, creating an inclusive culture, identifying employees with digital skills, career pathing, workforce ability offering, and providing technology and communication tools, remote collaboration, but there's also an employee responsibility to improve agility, building your competencies, building skill sets and strategy and data science and data analytics, so it's a dual responsibility when it comes to agility, both an employer and employee responsibility.   Margaret: (11:18) That makes a lot of sense. And as organizations and economies recover from COVID, what do you think the new normal will look like? And what role will management accountants play in helping their organizations recover?   Jeff: (11:34) Well, I think we as a society, Margaret are playing a role in what the new normal will look like. And look, there's no doubt about it, in some sense, tragically COVID-19 impacted lives and livelihoods, closed down small businesses, 3 million deaths, cases, hospitalizations, but the human spirit is strong we learned so much. We learned so much about ourselves, how to cope, learned about how technology can enable, learn so much about how we could deal with tragedy, how we could educate ourselves and lift the human spirit. And we also learned about the new normal of work. So we educated ourselves in so many ways we became a learning society, a world that is transformed forever. So, the new normal in many ways is a new learning world and certainly we've learned that our profession, for example, is one that is a profession that is stronger in many, many ways. It's more, we've invested in new technologies, we've learned that we don't need to be in the office nine to five, we don't all need to be in the office at the same time. We do need to be in the office some of the time, we do need to build and nurture relationships, but you know what, we can close the books remotely, we can create budgets remotely, we can close the books remotely. And so that mix we'll figure out together. We did invest more than we ever have before in data science, we've invested more than ever before in digital transformation across the value chain. Organizations are investing in new hybrid models in terms of remote work, like two-three-two, two days in the office, three days away from the office or in your home office, and then two days of time with the family or other types of models, investing in all types of technologies that enable the consumer to do great things, investing more in ESG to enable the planet to be greener and cleaner. And so, we've learned an awful lot about society ourselves, and our organization. So that is a really, really good thing and I think the new normal will be better than the old normal.   Margaret: (14:28) I agree. I do look forward to a full economic recovery and seeing everybody prosper after such a difficult year.   Jeff: (14:38) I agree, you know, IMA conducts a quarterly global economic survey, as you know, with ACCA, another prominent global accounting association. We've done it for the better part of 60 years. One of the largest quarterly economic surveys of its kind, and there's nothing but optimism in terms of global economic survey. In fact, by the end of this year, we might return to pre-pandemic conditions. You know, if things go well, it's a bit of a race between vaccinations and the variants. We need to be careful and smart in terms of not, you know, going back to relapses and things like that. But if we're smart and cautious, we might see a nice recovery.   Closing: (15:34) This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like what you heard and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website at www.imanet.org.

Course Listening for Lesson 6 - "Science and Faith"

Fr. Thomas Davenport joins The Pat Flynn Show to discuss how after he obtained his PhD in theoretical physics he was drawn to the Dominican Order. The conversation then wanders across various topics, from what implications the beginning of the universe has (if any) for God's existence, what Fr. Thomas thinks of the intelligent design movement, and whether humans are nothing but a swarm of particles!  The Pat Flynn Show If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to me if you could subscribe to, and leave a review for, The Pat Flynn show on iTunes HERE or Stitcher HERE. Reading your reviews and hearing your feedback is what keeps me fired up to make The Pat Flynn Show happen. Thank you!

Donald Farmer is a data artist and Jedi of sorts.  His BI wisdom is unmatched and he shares this knowledge as we cover his early interest in computers (and the power that they gave the user), the history of PowerPivot from one of the former "faces of Microsoft BI", and so much more!  It's so very easy to respect this venerable figure of the data world.  Here's Donald's website, Treehive Strategy References in this episode: Thomas Davenport's Competing on Analytics Donald's Treehouse Donald As PowerPivot Yoda Donald As Qlik Yoda Rob's Blog Post Featuring Alison Farmer's Artwork Episode Timeline: 3:45 - Donald has had the data itch for a very long time and discovered power at an early age. It's a heck of an origin story! 11:15- The guys share some Donald Farmer stories, Tom's Donald inspired epiphany, and the Data Mining Add-In 20:00 - The history of Project Gemini AKA Power Pivot, the death of ProClarity, and the importance of tools of choice 39:45 - Data Artistry, some great Bill Gates stories, remote working 58:45 - The Community of purpose, and Power BI's features vs the competition, and the Treehive

This lecture was given to UC Berkeley on February 8, 2021. For more information on upcoming events, visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the Speaker: Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P. is a Dominican friar, physicist, and philosopher. He joined the faculty of philosophy at the Angelicum in Rome in 2020, where he co-leads the Project for Science and Religion. Before joining the Dominican order he studied physics at the California Institute of Technology before going on to earn his doctorate in physics from Stanford University studying theoretical particle physics. The focus of his scientific research is writing and testing simulations for high energy particle colliders like the LHC at CERN. After joining the Dominicans in 2010, he studied philosophy and theology in preparation for his ordination to the priesthood in 2017. In addition, he earned a Licentiate in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America, focusing on the philosophy of science and natural philosophy. For two years he was an Assistant Professor of Physics at Providence College in Providence, RI, where he taught physics and restarted a research program in particle physics. He has written and spoken in a number of forums on the relationship between faith and science including contributions to the Thomistic Evolution project and organizing conferences on science and philosophy for the Thomistic Institute in Washington, DC.

Tom Davenport has a very easy way to focus in on what's needed -- see the picture with the article. Divide the needs between 3 time periods: past, present, and future. And divide between known and unknown. Most products I've seen are good at past and present knowns -- think data visualization DOMO or Tableau. Great reports and Dashboards. If you want to dig into the unknown past (like why did this happen?), then you'll need something like Splunk or other logfile miners. Something to crunch a lot of data and connect the dots, usually by time stamps or other machine data that's hard for humans to notice quickly. Future Knowns are what most people sell as analytics -- think more excel sheet analytics. If this continues like it has been, then this will happen. If we keep driving, we'll run out of gas in 23 miles type of analytics. Nice but limited in value. Unknowns -- this is where all the fun lives. Past? root cause analysis. Present unknowns? Think retail -- what's the best next action? What do I suggest now? And everyone's favorite: Future unknowns -- think predictive and prescriptive. Given a wildly variable future, what's likely to happen and what should I do. This is the land of AI -- learn for me and guide me --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/greg-dyche/support

Stay connected to the scripture readings from today's Mass with these homilies from the Dominican friars of Providence College.

Stay connected to the scripture readings from today's Mass with these homilies from the Dominican friars of Providence College.

This talk was given as part of the Thomistic Institute Conference "Thomas Aquinas on Creation and Nature" held at the Angelicum in Rome on 3-5 October 2019. Prof. Karin Ingegerd Öberg is a Swedish astrochemist. She is a Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University and leader of the Öberg Astrochemistry Group at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Öberg serves on the board of the Society of Catholic Scientists. Fr. Thomas Davenport, is a Dominican friar from the U.S. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University.Areas of Expertise: Theoretical Particle Physics (Particle Colliders) Philosophy of Science/ Philosophy of Nature The relationship between Faith and Science.

This lecture was given on April 9th, 2019 at Williams College, and was co-sponsored by Williams Catholic. For more information about upcoming TI events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events About the Speaker: Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P., received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University in 2010, working in theoretical particle physics and subsequently entered the Order of Preachers. He has written and spoken on the relationship of faith and science in a variety of venues, including being a main contributor to the Thomistic Evolution project. He was ordained to the priesthood in 2017 and is currently studying Philosophy at the Catholic University of America.

Pelo que a disputa é maior hoje: pelo seu dinheiro ou pela sua atenção? Confira nesse episódio com Amaury Pontieri, comunicólogo, comentando o livro "Economia da Atenção" de Thomas Davenport e John Beck.

Sue Bethanis hosts Thomas Davenport, one of the top three business/technology analysts in the world, one of the 100 most influential people in IT, and one of Fortune’s top 50 business school professors. Tom is a world-renowned thought leader and author, is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, the co-founder of the International Institute for Analytics, a Fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and a Senior Advisor to Deloitte Analytics. He teaches analytics and big data in executive programs at Babson, Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan School, and Boston University. He pioneered the concept of “competing on analytics” with his best-selling 2006 Harvard Business Review article. An author and co-author of 20 books and more than 200 articles, he helps organizations to transform their management practices in digital business domains such as artificial intelligence, analytics, information and knowledge management, process management, and enterprise systems. In his new book, The AI Advantage: How to Put the Artificial Intelligence Revolution to Work, Tom recommends enterprises avoid AI moonshots and instead look to advance AI more incrementally. Tom and Sue discuss: -How AI technologies are being used - How to become a cognitive corporation - How AI will impact jobs - How to manage the organizational, social, and ethical implications of AI - Leading case studies and top strategies to make the most out of AI implementation

This lecture was given by Fr. Thomas Davenport, OP (Providence College) to the Yale undergraduate chapter on 11/14/18. For more information on upcoming events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org

Learn about Vermont's historical figures through the eyes of fourth graders.

Learn about Vermont's historical figures through the eyes of fourth graders.

Thomas shares and explores his greatest fear of loosing a loved one. We also discuss religion and culture. Thomas Davenport is a musician and model.

This talk was offered by Fr. Thomas Davenport on June 6th, 2018 as part of the Thomistic Institute's Symposium on "Thomistic Philosophy and Modern Science"

This lecture was given at MIT on Nov. 3rd, 2017 by Fr. Thomas Davenport OP.

Only 8 percent of CPAs believe that the profession is future ready, according to CPA.com’s study Welcome to the Fast Future. This is a rather concerning statistic because the future is coming, and it might be closer than you think.   Bill Sheridan, Chief Communication Officer at the MACPA, is on the front lines trying to prepare CPAs for the future, and he recently published a new white paper that every CPA should read: Human Work in the Ages of Machines: Five Steps for Building a Future-Ready Finance Team.   Basically, the paper asks what happens when more and more of the things that accounting and finance professionals are trained to do are being done by machines, and what does that mean for our profession?   Because these technological changes are going to happen whether we like it or not, there's nothing we can do except learn how to do the things that machines can't do and work with them (or go out of business).   We have to go beyond being just number crunchers and become number interpreters; we have to be able to understand what we're viewing and become better communicators.   The futurist Peter Sheehan puts this another way: we've entered an age when humans should only do work that only humans can do, and everything else is going to be automated.   This means that CPAs will need a new set of eight core skills, if they want to remain relevant going forward: Communication Leadership Critical thinking and problem solving Anticipating and serving evolving needs Synthesizing intelligence to insight, or providing the insight to the numbers Integration and collaboration Tech savvy and the ability to analyze data Functional and domain expertise.   6/8 of these skills were also identified in the Horizons 2025 project. We tend to ignore stuff like that until it's almost too late – until the stuff that is on the horizon suddenly gets closer and is threatening to steamroll us.   We waited, and now it’s crunch time.   Bill doesn’t believe that the problem with CPAs is that we’re too introverted to learn these soft skills. Bill believes the big problem holding us back is that accounting is a rear-facing profession. We've been trained to look in the rearview mirror, and so that's what we've done for decades and decades.   Now we're at a point where we have to start looking through the windshield a little bit more and learn how to become a more forward-facing profession, which means figuring out what we need to do to stay relevant tomorrow rather than just accounting for what happened yesterday.   Bill developed the Five C’s for staying relevant through the change: Context - What are the big changes going on around us? There’s three hard trends converging: technological advances, changing demographics, and new legislation. Certainty - What can we be certain will happen? The futurist Daniel Burrus says your odds of succeeding go up and the risk of failing goes down, when you start basing your strategy around things that you know are going to happen. Capacity - It’s going to take time for us to learn how to become future ready, and we're all busier than ever before. But we make time for the things that are important to us. Competencies - As discussed previously, we're going to have to learn an entirely new set of skills. Key among them is anticipation: learning how to spot future trends before they happen and position our organizations to take advantage of them, before the competition, is actually a skill that you can learn. Core Values - In a world where everything seems to be changing around us, it's really kind of comforting to know that there are some things that should never change: our core values. The core purpose of this profession, as established by Vision Project, is to make sense of a changing and complex world.   How to Take Your First Steps Towards the Future   Trying to become future ready all at once is overwhelming, and more or less impossible. However, now is a great time to start building future-ready habits.   Bill suggests you start with a simple exercise: schedule one hour a week for yourself, and actually put it in your calendar. During that hour, do something like read a book that will help you prepare for the future, or ask your team what productivity apps they like and start implementing them.   In the resources below, you will find a number of valuable books and resources to learn from during your weekly time block, including Human Work in the Ages of Machines.   Resources: Connect with Bill on LinkedIn Human Work in the Ages of Machines: Five Steps for Building a Future-Ready Finance Team The Second Machine Age by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson Humans are Underrated by Geoff Colvin Only Humans Need Apply by Thomas Davenport and Julia Kirby The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab The 2020 Workplace by Jeanne C. Meister Traction by Gino Wickman Thank You for Being Late by Thomas Friedman Brain Rules by John Medina -- Production & Development for Improv Is No Joke by Podcast Masters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julia Kirby is the co-author of "Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines," which documents how nearly everyone is vulnerable to being replaced by artificial intelligence and machine learning, and was a Financial Times best book of 2016. Kirby talked to AFP Conversations host Ira Apfel about her book, co-authored with Thomas Davenport, and what treasury and finance professionals can do to prepare for the technological revolution.  Thanks for listening to AFP Conversations. Please give it a review on your podcast app of choice -- it will help other listeners find the show, and host Ira Apfel will read your review on air.  

In this podcast we take a look back on some of the interviews I did in 2016 and listen to some of the past guests talk about key issues they feel are shaping the workplace of the future. In 2016 I had a lot of great conversations with a wide variety of senior leaders. Last week I took a look back on the 2016 podcast interviews and discussed six lessons I learned from my guests last year. This week I wanted to let the guests speak for themselves, so I gathered up some highlight clips from last year’s podcast interviews and put them into one podcast mashup.The subjects range from how innovation is changing to automation and AI to the six reasons why we work. The first interview I looked back on was the one with Jeff Wong, the Global Chief Innovation Officer at EY. In our discussion we talked about innovation during a disruptive era and one of the main points was about how innovation is changing. Wong said he believes that innovation is changing a lot and it is really driving companies to think about themselves differently. Companies are now forced to pay attention to things like training, environmental and community impact and inclusive capitalism in order to be successful. Wong says companies need to think about whether they are “training a workforce for the future, or are you training a workforce to do the function of today”. He believes that his job as a Chief Innovation Officer requires him to “do old things in new ways”. One of the fascinating topics I touched on with a few guests last year, was the subject of People Analytics and how it is revolutionizing the way we think about employee experience. Ben Waber, the President and CEO of Humanyze, talked to me about what makes up people analytics. He said that while survey data is useful, “it is not data about behavior, it is data about perception”. Because you cannot survey people every single day, you lose the ability to accurately get a picture of the day to day workings of your office. With People Analytics you are able to get real world data in real time which allows you to fix issues as you go instead of waiting for the end of the year. Ellyn Shook, the Chief Leadership & Human Resources Officer at Accenture, talked about the problem with annual employee reviews which points to why the topic of people analytics is so important for the success of a company. She says the problem with annual reviews is just that; they are only done once a year. She says “very little works in annual cycles anymore”. We are a society that is used to immediate feedback, so telling employees to wait a year to see how they are doing at work is not realistic. Shook says that her company realized that they were putting a lot of time and effort into their annual reviews, but they were receiving very little value from them because they “spent too much time talking about their people, instead of talking to the people”. In order to get the best results you need “forward looking, real time and on demand” data and feedback for your employees. Employee experience was another hot topic I discussed with several guests last year. Some of the guests who touched on the subject were Monika Fahlbusch, the Chief Employee Experience Officer at BMC Software, Francine Katsoudas, the Senior Vice President and Chief People Officer at Cisco and Karyn Twaronite, the Global Diversity & Inclusiveness Officer at EY. In our discussions we defined what employee experience is, how large companies are able to scale employee experience across a wide range of languages, locations and cultures, and the importance of focusing on diversity and inclusiveness. Fahlbusch says that to create employee experience you first must listen to your employees. Your employees will help you find the overarching problems, or “pain points” if you learn how to listen to them. You also need to look at your individual company and figure out what experiences you should be focusing on. To do that you need to understand things about your company such as what are your values, what are you trying to celebrate, where are you trying to go in the future? Katsoudas talked about scaling employee experience across hundreds of countries and thousands of employees. She says Cisco’s belief is “one size fits one”, meaning they understand that the ideal employee experience in India will not be the same as that in England or the US and that’s okay. Twaronite gave an example of why it is so important for senior leaders of companies to not just list out the available benefits for employees, but they should also be role models who walk the walk. She shared a story about the EY Chairman and CEO, who was giving the keynote for a company wide event, and during his speech he apologized to everyone and explained that he would be leaving the event early in order to honor a commitment he made to his daughter. In doing this he was transparent, authentic and helped employees feel that the work flexibility benefit was not just a bunch of empty words. One subject that I am always fascinated with is technology dealing with robots, AI and automation. Three guests I spoke with who got into this topic of discussion were Robin Hanson, Thomas Davenport and Mihir Shukla. Robin Hanson, who is the author of “The Age of Em”, the Associate professor of Economics at George Mason University and the Research Associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University, spoke about the extremely futuristic topic of what an Em is. Hanson discusses the fact that there are two different scenarios that could happen to get us to a point where we have robots that are as smart as humans. One way would be to “slowly write and accumulate better software on faster and cheaper machines”. This is what we are doing now and if we continued on this path it would take several centuries to reach this point. Another way would be to port the “software” from our brains into an Em. If we find a way to do this, the Em age could happen within one century. Thomas Davenport talks about how there are two camps of people today, those who are opposed to the move towards automation and those who are embracing it. The people who are opposed are scared about the implications of automating jobs. They feel that this shift in our economy will create chaos and wipe out jobs for humans. The camp of people who are embracing it feel that automating certain jobs could be a good thing and that we will always find a way to create new jobs for humans. Davenport believes that reality is somewhere in between the two camps. Mihir Shukla talks about how software bots can complete mundane tasks, and also tackle more complicated problems as well. Many employers want their workers to complete today’s problems while thinking about tomorrow’s challenges using yesterdays technologies and approaches. Processing invoices, verifying documents, generating reports, data entry, and other mundane tasks still need to be completed, but by humans or bots? Introducing mundane and complex tasks to the digital workforce allows the human employees to think, create, discover, and innovate; basically doing things that humans do best. Other subjects that are touched on in this episode include recruiting millennials, whether or not open workspaces are the next best thing, how to identify a Superboss, the six reasons why we work, how to drive behavior change and entrepreneurs vs. freelancers. Looking back at the guests from this last year it is easy to see that there are a lot of changes happening in the workplace and I am excited to see where we go from here. I am working on lining up a great list of podcast guests for this year, so be sure to stay tuned and keep listening to the weekly future of work podcast!   (Music by Ronald Jenkees)

Thomas Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College in Massachusetts. He is an author, the co-founder of the International Institute for Analytics, a Fellow at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and Senior Advisor to Deloitte Analytics. He has spent the last 30 years focused on the Sociology of Information, studying and teaching about how people and organizations use information. He currently teaches MBAs at Babson College about Analytics, Cognitive Technologies, Big Data, and Knowledge Management. Thomas is the co-author of the new book, Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines. In the book Thomas and co-author Julia Kirby discuss the rise of job automation and how humans can secure their place in the workplace in the midst of this shift by using the 5 alternative strategies they lay out. The move towards automation in the workplace, while not new, is a controversial subject that is becoming a large part of our current work economy. There are two camps of people today, those who are opposed to the move towards automation and those who are embracing it. The people who are opposed are scared about the implications of automating jobs. They feel that this shift in our economy will create chaos and wipe out jobs for humans. The camp of people who are embracing it feel that automating certain jobs could be a good thing and that we will always find a way to create new jobs for humans. Thomas talks about how reality is somewhere in the middle of the two camps. While automation could cause some jobs to be at risk, it may not be as perilous as some people may think. He talks about how most jobs have several tasks to them, some of them are automatable and some aren’t. In the podcast he gives an example explaining how automation could help lawyers cut down on the time they take to search through documents and contracts for items pertaining to a case. This process probably only takes up about 20% of what lawyers actually do, so as Thomas mentions, this automation wouldn’t completely replace lawyers, but perhaps in a law firm of 10 lawyers, the automation would relieve the workload to the point where they can do with 8 lawyers instead of 10. In an Oxford study done in 2013 they estimated that 47% of U.S. jobs are automatable. People such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have been very vocal about their concerns with the future of human jobs and our very existence in light of this rapid shift to automation. However, when you look at jobs that have already moved towards automation, such as bank tellers, it shows that the move may not be as rapid as they think. In the 1980s there were a half a million bank tellers, and today, there are still half a million bank tellers despite the invention and implementation of ATMs. While automation may not take over human jobs at an alarmingly quick rate, it is still something we need to be aware of. Automation, bots, and software are getting to the point now where they are becoming more capable of taking over knowledge jobs, whereas before they were only taking over labor intensive jobs such as manufacturing. Because of this, Thomas and Julia felt it was important to write their book that, first of all, encourages augmenting human labor with smart machines as opposed to completely replacing humans with machines and, secondly, shows people five ways to make themselves irreplaceable in the workplace. What you will learn in this episode: Is automation a new thing? Whether or not jobs are in jeopardy because of the growing use of automation and bots 5 steps you can take to be sure your job is secure The kinds of jobs that will be affected by automation and which ones will be safe Some encouraging examples of automation being used today In the move towards automation, what does this mean for organizations? What does it mean for individuals? How we can prepare for automation The timeline for automation and when automation will become mainstream Where the future of automation is going Links From The Episode: tomdavenport.com/ Only Humans Need Apply On Amazon.com   (Music by Ronald Jenkees)

Smart machines are coming, so what are we doing about it? Instead of cowering in fear, what if we took a proactive approach? What if there were a playbook we could use to anticipate and thrive in an increasingly automated world? In his book, Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines, Thomas Davenport, offers ways to accomplish that goal. His book is a guide for employees and students who want to know what they can do to work successfully with smart machines. Tom is a Professor in Management and Information Technology at Babson College and co-founder of the International Institute for Analytics. He is also a Fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and a Senior Advisor to Deloitte Analytics. He teaches analytics and big data at Babson, Harvard, MIT, and Boston University and has written over 17 books In this interview, we talk about: What the number of bank tellers working today can tell us about smart machines 10 reasons to look over your shoulder for smart machines in your own work What separates humans from machines The 4 markers of machine smartness and which one we are living now Why employers should aim for augmentation vs automation wherever possible How smart machines can liberate us to do more creative and valuable work Augmentation at its best in freestyle chess How we can step in with machines in the workplace Why we would want to step up with machines in the workplace What it looks like to step forward with machines in the workplace How we might step aside with machines in the workplace How some are stepping narrowly with machines in the workplace Why every organization needs an Automation Leader Why we need to get past STEM as the only solution The important role organizations play in providing professional learning Why Tom argues against universal basic income How companies can be more resilient in a digital age with increased competition The fact that so few of our political leaders are talking about this big shift Selected Links to Topics Mentioned @tdav http://www.tomdavenport.com/ Oxford Study on The Future of Employment Bricklaying Robots Ex Machina Freestyle chess Former WaMu Risk Officer Stretch by Karie Willyerd 2020 Workplace Report If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening! Thank you to Emmy-award-winning Creative Director Vanida Vae for designing the Curious Minds logo, and thank you to Rob Mancabelli for all of his production expertise! www.gayleallen.net LinkedIn @GAllenTC

Nearly half of all working Americans could risk losing their jobs because of technology. It's not only blue-collar jobs at stake. Millions of educated knowledge workers—writers, paralegals, assistants, medical technicians—are threatened by accelerating advances in artificial intelligence. The industrial revolution shifted workers from farms to factories. In the first era of automation, machines relieved humans of manually exhausting work. Today, Era Two of automation continues to wash across the entire services-based economy that has replaced jobs in agriculture and manufacturing. Era Three, and the rise of AI, is dawning. Smart computers are demonstrating they are capable of making better decisions than humans. Brilliant technologies can now decide, learn, predict, and even comprehend much faster and more accurately than the human brain, and their progress is accelerating. Where will this leave lawyers, nurses, teachers, and editors? In Only Humans Need Apply, Thomas Hayes Davenport and Julia Kirby reframe the conversation about automation, arguing that the future of increased productivity and business success isn't either human or machine. It's both. The key is augmentation, utilizing technology to help humans work better, smarter, and faster. Instead of viewing these machines as competitive interlopers, we can see them as partners and collaborators in creative problem solving as we move into the next era. The choice is ours.  We were joined by Thomas Davenport co-author of the book Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines. To learn more about Thomas Davenport visit: www.thomasdavenport.com Personal Finance Cheat Sheet Article: http://www.cheatsheet.com/personal-finance/how-schools-can-improve-their-personal-finance-education.html/ Financial Advisor Magazine Articles: http://www.fa-mag.com/news/advisors-stay-the-course-amid-monday-s-market-drop-22864.html?section=3  http://www.fa-mag.com/news/on-it-s-80th-anniversary–advisors-consider-social-security-s-impact–future-22784.html?section=3 You can listen live by going to www.kpft.org and clicking on the HD3 tab. You can also listen to this episode and others by podcast at: http://directory.libsyn.com/shows/view/id/moneymatters or www.moneymatterspodcast.com #KPFTHOUSTON #Juliakirby  

There's no question automation is taking over more and more aspects of work and some jobs altogether. But we're now entering a "third era" of automation, one which went from taking over dangerous work to dull work and now decision-making work, too. So what will it take to deal with a world -- and a workplace -- where machines could be thought of as colleagues? The key lies in distinguishing between automation vs. augmentation, argue the guests on this episode of the a16z Podcast, IT management professor Thomas Davenport and Harvard Business editor Julia Kirby, who authored the new book Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines. But the argument isn't as simple as saying humans will just do the creative, emotionally intelligent work and that machines will do the rest. The future of work is complex and closely tied to the need for structure, identity, and meaning. Which is also why linking the discussion of things like "universal basic income" to the topic of automation isn't just unnecessary, but depressing and even damaging (or so argue the guests on this episode).

APQC CEO Dr. Carla O'Dell interviewed the quintessential Big Thinker/Big Idea man himself, Dr. Tom Davenport on what the future will be like for knowledge workers. Tom has written or co-authored 16 bestselling business books and is one of Harvard Business Review’s most frequently published authors.   He has been named one of 10 “Masters of the New Economy” by CIO Magazine and the third leading business-strategy analyst (just behind Peter Drucker and Tom Friedman) by Optimize Magazine. He is also a friend and on APQC’s Board of Directors.

Alors que le méga et le téra sont devenus familiers, les plus grands data center sont aux échelles du zetta ou du yottaoctet. Derrière le terme populaire de Big Data, il y aussi de nombreux enjeux scientifiques. 15 pétabytes, soit quelques 3 millions de DVD, c'est ce que produit l'accélérateur de particules LHC en un an de collecte de données. Jim Gray, décrit le Big Data comme une nouvelle vision du monde, un nouveau paradigme pour les sciences. Comment ces capacités de traitement et de stockage des données massives ont-elles changé la vie des laboratoires ? Les biologistes ou les physiciens ont de nouveaux acolytes : les data scientists. Invités Marc Gelgon, professeur à l'Université de Nantes, animateur de la thématique « science des données » au Lina. Jérémie Bourdon, maître de conférences à l'Université de Nantes, chercheur au Lina, Laboratoire d'Informatique Nantes Atlantique, dans une équipe de bio-informatique. Ressources – The Fourth paradigm, Tony Hey, Stewart Tansley, Kristin Tolle, Microsoft Research, 2007.Ouvrage collectif de référence disponible en libre accès sur Internet. Bonne illustration de la manière dont les traitements de données sont devenus des outils centraux dans le réflexions scientifique. – La stratégie Big Data, Thomas Davenport, Pearson, 2014.Ouvrage complet sur les bouleversements économiques du Big Data et les façons d'en tirer profit. – Combien valent vos données ? Quel prix peut-on donner aux informations concernant votre vie privée ? Le Financial Times vous propose un simulateur capable d'en donner une estimation. What is your data worth ? – Un moteur de recherche, méta-moteur qui regroupe les résultats des autres moteurs en les anonymisant.Duckduckgo. – Big data, entreprises et sciences sociales – Usages et partages des données numériques de masse, un colloque en podcast du Collège de France. – tosdr.org : un site qui vous explique les « terms of services », ces contrats que – presque – personne ne lit. Crédits Une émission animée par Pierre-Antoine Rault et Guillaume Mézières.

In this episode of Bloody Angola, Woody Overton and Jim Chapman tell you some stories you will have to hear to believe regarding inmate of Louisiana State Penitentiary who were sentenced to DEATH ROW getting exonerated after DNA evidence or other substantiating evidence cleared them of their crime and saved them from getting the needle.#DeathSentence #DNA #InnocenceProject #BloodyAngola #PodcastFULL TRANSCRIPTJim: Hey, everyone. And welcome back to another edition of Bloody-Woody: -Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making. Woody: The complete story of America's bloodiest prison. Jim: And I'm Jim Chapman. Woody: And I'm Woody Overton. Jim: And we're going back to our roots, Woody Overton.Woody: Right back inside the wire. Jim: Back inside the wire. Just when you thought we got out. Just coming back here. Woody: Yep. [crosstalk] They made me come back in. Jim: That's right. Look, we talk a lot on this show about the advancement, especially DNA, something you've worked with in the past many times. Woody: Yeah. This is a huge testament to DNA. When I started, it was really coming in its own. Now it's so much more advanced. I remember putting rushes on murder cases, and it taken six months to get the results back. Jim: That's crazy. Even back, we talked about Sean Vincent Gillis, and that was really probably one of the first times they were ever able to really rush something to the point where it really helped because you had to get that serial killer off the street. Woody: Derrick Todd Lee too. Still, even the rush back then took a long time. Not like it is now. Jim: Right. Woody: You know what? I'm totally for it. And let me do this real quick. I want to give a shout out to all our patrons. We love and appreciate each and every one of y'all. We love all you listeners, and bloody shooting to the top of the charts. It's because y'all are listening, liking and sharing. Please continue to do so. And we love y'all very much. Back to the DNA, it's just come leaps and bounds that continue to change every day. We always tell you Bloody Angola is going to be different, and this is different. You would think, oh, hard ass like me, lock everybody up, I don't believe in that. I believe if you're innocent you're innocent. Jim: If you're guilty, lock them up.Woody: If you're guilty, you- [crosstalk] Jim: Don't wait [crosstalk] Woody: [crosstalk] -you'll pay hella jail. Jim: [laughs] Hella jail, that's right. We did want to preface this episode with some of these guys were exonerated from DNA. Some of them, it was other reasons. And we're going to get into that. The intriguing thing about today's episode is many of these guys that we're going to tell you about were actually serving in death row. They've been sentenced to death. Woody: Today, we're going to be talking about people or convicts who were exonerated and released from Bloody Angola.Jim: Yes. We want to kind of start this off. I'm just going to tell you about the Innocence Project. The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck, y'all, familiar with him through OJ. It was basically formed to assist incarcerated individuals who could be proven innocent, primarily through DNA testing. Although sometimes they find so many holes in a case, they'll pick up a case where there's so many problems that they take that case on and look for exonerations in those cases. The average prison sentence before they'll take on a case is 14 years before their exoneration or release. And so, it's a process, even with those guys, but we're going to them to it. Woody: They don't just take anybody, right? Jim: Yeah. Woody: One of the ones I can tell you about if-- ready to get started?Jim: I'm ready. Woody: Is John Thompson. John Thompson was from Orleans Parish. I'll just read you some of the facts of the case, some of the highlights, and what ultimately ended up happening. Shortly after midnight on December 6th, 1984, Raymond Liuzza was shot several times in the course of an armed robbery just around the corner from his New Orleans, Louisiana apartment. When the cops arrived, they found Liuzza laying on the ground, but he was still conscious. He told them he was robbed and shot by an African American male and then took him to hospital and he died. On December 8th, responded to tip, the police arrested two men in connection with the crime. John Thompson and Kevin Freeman. Photos of the two men were published in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and soon afterwards, police received a call from a family that had been carjacked several months earlier, claiming that Thompson looked like the person who had robbed them. Thompson was charged with the murder. Meanwhile, Freeman agreed to testify against Thompson in the murder trial, and in return, prosecutors charged him only with being an accessory to the murder. He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. We're talking about Freeman, y'all. The world-famous New Orleans district attorney, Harry Connick, Sr,, not Junior, that's his son, the singer and actor, decided to try Thompson for the carjacking case first, knowing that a conviction could be used against him in the murder trial. Based primarily on the eyewitness testimony of the three carjacking victims, all of whom were minors, Thompson was convicted on April 4, 1985, and sentenced to 49 years in prison. That is for the carjacking. Y'all, always told you that eyewitness testimony is the worst testimony there is, but doesn't mean it's not true. At his murder trial, held shortly thereafter, the prosecution demonstrated that Thompson had at one time been in possession of both the murder weapon and a ring taken from Liuzza's finger. Thompson decided not to testify in his own defense because if he did, his felony carjacking charge would have been admissible to the jury. As a result, he was unable to tell the jury that Freeman had sold him the murder weapon and the ring. Freeman, the main witness for the prosecution, claimed that he and Thompson had robbed Liuzza together and that Thompson had shot him. This testimony was contradicted by the statements of eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen only one man running from the scene of the crime. Richard Perkins, who had originally called in the tip implicating Thompson and Freeman, also testified for the prosecution, claiming that he had heard Thompson make incriminating remarks. Thompson was found guilty and sentenced to death on May 8th, 1985. Fast forward a whole bunch of years, y'all, and events took a dramatic turn in April 1999, 30 days before scheduled execution, an investigator discovered that there was a blood stain from the robber on the clothing of one of the carjacking victims and that this evidence had never been disclosed to the defense. It's Brady, y'all. If they had it, they got to give it up. The prosecutor had ordered testing to determine the blood type of the stain, and in fact, they had rushed the test. But when the blood type was determined-- I guess this was before DNA. Blood type was determined and was different from Thompson's. They concealed it. Defense attorneys then obtained an affidavit Michael Rielhmann, a former district attorney, who said that five years earlier, in 1994, Gerry Deegan, one of Thompson's prosecutors, admitted on his deathbed that the blood evidence was intentionally suppressed and that he left a report about it on the desk of James Williams, the lead prosecutor. Williams denied ever seeing the report. Defense attorneys also learned that Perkins, the witness who testified that Thompson had admitted the murder, had received $15,000 from the Liuzza family as a reward. When this evidence was presented to the trial judge, he granted a stay of execution and dismissed Thompson's carjacking conviction, but he denied Thompson's motion for a new trial on the Liuzza murder. In 2001, however, he reduced Thompson's death sentence to life in prison without parole. Jim: Wow. Woody: Pretty crazy, right? Jim: Very crazy. Woody: In July of 2002, the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal overturned Thompson's murder conviction and remanded the case for retrial, ruling that the false robbery conviction obtained by deliberate government misconduct had deprived Thompson of his constitutional right to testify on his own behalf at the murder trial. Y'all, I'm not against that. I mean, give him a new trial, if it was messed up. At the second trial, Thompson was able to explain that he purchased the murder weapon from Freeman, and the defense called several new witnesses who claimed to have seen only one man fleeing the scene of the murder. They said that the man did not look like Thompson, but did resemble Freeman who, in the meantime, had been killed in a shootout with a security guard. On May 8, 2003, a jury acquitted Thompson after deliberating for 35 minutes, and he was released from prison the same day. Y'all, 35 minutes is for conviction? That's outstanding. But for exoneration, I mean, that's unbelievable. It normally takes hours--[crosstalk]  Jim: They were pretty convinced. Woody: Yeah, they want to make sure. In 2008, Thompson won a $14 million civil suit against the District Attorney's Office. That judgment was reversed by the US Supreme Court in March 2011 on the grounds that the misconduct in the case was not the result of a deliberate policy or systematic indifference by the New Orleans DA's Office. He got $330,000 in state compensation. But you know what? That's a long time to be on death row, and you didn't do it. Jim: He's a good example of someone that it wasn't necessarily DNA evidence that exonerated him, but it was the facts of the case. Woody: I have heard this case before, and actually, I think it's pretty well documented-Jim: Thank you.Woody: -but what's right is right and what's wrong is wrong. But you know what the sad thing is? In 2017, Thompson died of a heart attack at age 55. Jim: Yeah, man. And you nailed it when you're talking about those bloodstains. Back when he was convicted, it was '85. There was no DNA. Woody: I think it was like '92 when the first time it was used successfully. Even then, most prosecutors thought it was junk science. So, it had to be used over and over again successfully and tested and tested and tested and it grew to what it is today. Jim: That's right. Let me tell you about another case out of death row in Angola that was actually-- Woody: That place you don't want to go.Jim: No, you don't want to go there. But was actually reversed over DNA, and that is the case of Ryan Matthews. So, Matthews was 16 years old, y'all, at the time he was sentenced-- or arrested rather, and was 17 when he was sentenced to death for shooting of Tommy Vanhoose, who was a convenience store owner in Bridge City, Louisiana. You familiar with Bridge City? Woody: Yeah. That's where the juvenile prison used to be. Jim: There you go. So, in April of 1997, a man wearing a ski mask entered the store and demanded money. When Vanhoose refused, the perpetrator shot him four times and fled, taking off his mask and diving into the passenger seat of a window of an awaiting car. Several eyewitnesses viewed the perpetrator's flight. One woman was in her car and watched the perpetrator run from the store, fire shots into her direction, and leap in the car. So, these guys were hightailing it. They done shot somebody four times. When she was later showed a photographic array, which is like a six pack, y'all, she tentatively identified Matthews as the assailant. By the time of the trial, she was sure that Matthews was the gunman. Two other witnesses in the same car watched as the perpetrator shed his mask, gloves, and shirt as he fled. The driver claimed to have seen the perpetrator's face in his rearview mirror while he was being shot at and trying to block the escape. The witness and his passenger were brought to a show-up hours later. The driver identified Matthews. His passenger was unable to make an identification.As per our previous case, identifications not very reliable now.Ryan Matthews and Travis Hayes, both 17 at the time, were stopped several hours after the crime because the car they were riding in resembled the description of the getaway car. They were arrested and Hayes was then questioned for over six hours. His initial statements to investigators, Hayes claimed that he and Matthews were not in the area where the crime occurred. Hayes eventually confessed that he was the driver of the getaway car. He stated that Matthews went into the store, shots went off and Matthews ran out and got into the car. Both boys were described as borderline intellectually disabled. In 1999, based mainly on identifications, Matthews was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.Woody: There you go. Jim: Hayes was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Matthews had maintained his innocence since the arrest. The defense presented evidence that forensic testing of the mask excluded both Matthews and Hayes. A defense expert also testified the car the two boys were driving, the reason they were stopped, could not have been a getaway car because the passenger side window that Matthews allegedly jumped through was inoperable and could not be rolled down. How do you get around that? I don't know, but they did. Other witnesses to the crime described the shooter as being much shorter than Matthews as well, which that's not necessarily that reliable. Height is hard to determine. Woody: You can put four people in the room and four people may get the different height and weight or whatever on. If it's a correct identification, basically you can bring them back two weeks later and they can still pick out the facial features.Jim: That's right. So, y'all ready to hear how this person got exonerated? Well, DNA testing in another murder case proved to be the keys to proving Matthews' innocence, another murder occurring shortly after Vanhoose's death in the same area. A local resident named Rondell Love was arrested. He pled guilty, and Love bragged to other inmates that he also killed Vanhoose. And that happens, y'all, you'd be surprised. Woody: Street cred. Jim: This got back to Matthews' attorneys, I'm sure, through Matthews, and they began to investigate Love. DNA test results from the second murder were compared to the results from the Matthews' conviction, indicating that Love had been wearing the mask that was left behind in the Vanhoose's murder. Testing on the mask, gloves and shirt had already excluded Matthews and Hayes, but they became conclusive after Love's profile was included. Woody: There you go. Jim: So somehow, even though they were excluded from all that DNA in the first trial, there was no one to necessarily pin it on. So, it got pinned on them. Well, you can't get around it when someone else's profile shows up. Over a year after this information was discovered, he was granted a new trial. He wasn't released. He was just granted a new trial. But he did eventually get released. The new trial, he was found not guilty and became the 14th death row inmate in the United States proven innocent by post-conviction DNA testing. Woody: That's crazy.Jim: After two more years of legal battles, you'd think he'd get out right away?Woody: They got to make sure. Jim: Yeah. Travis Hayes was released in December 2006 and exonerated in January of 2007. You may think that someone in this position, they must have got a ton of money. I mean, you sentenced to death, for Christ's sake. He received $252,000 in state compensation and another $133,000 from the federal courts. To tell you how resilient this cat is, in 2019, Matthews graduated from Texas University with his bachelor's degree. Woody: Cool. Jim: I get chills from that because, man, look--Woody: They were going to kill him.Jim: They were going to kill him. Woody: I get it, not to get into death penalty arguments, whatever, but I'm telling you this I'm glad John Thompson got off death row, and I'm glad he got off a death row, but I promise you, there's some monsters up there deserve to be there.Jim: Oh, there's no doubt about it.Woody: Don't deserve [crosstalk] to breathe. Jim: Well, it's like you always say, just make sure you get it right. That's the important thing.Woody: Yeah, that's it. If you're going to do it, do it right. Especially when you're talking about taking somebody's life. That's why they have the appeals process the last 20 plus years before they kill them. Let's talk about Glenn Ford. Glenn Ford from up in Caddo, that's where Hugo Holland-- Jim: That's right. Caddo--[crosstalk]  Woody: He was another one, y'all, sentenced to death. He was convicted in 1984. But let me tell you about it. On November 5th, 1983, a 56-year-old Isadore Rozeman, a jeweler and watchmaker, was found shot to death in his shop in Shreveport, Louisiana. His pockets were pulled, and items were missing from the store. One of the first people to be questioned was 34-year-old Glenn Ford, an affable man who did yard work for Rozeman. Ford denied being involved in the crime, though he admitted he had been near the store at some point earlier in the day and witnesses told police they saw him near the store. In February 1984, items from Rozeman's store turned up in a pawnshop and a handwriting analyst said that Ford had signed the pawn slips. Marvella Brown told police that her boyfriend, Jake Robinson, Jake's brother, Henry, and Ford were at her house on the day of the crime and left together after Ford asked "if they were going." Brown said Ford was carrying a brown paper bag. When the men returned later that day, Ford was carrying a different bag and had a gun in his waistband. Jake Robinson also was carrying a gun. Brown said Jake showed her a bag containing watches and rings. That is suspicious.Ford, along with Jake and Henry Robinson and a fourth man, George Starks, were charged with capital murder and conspiracy to commit armed robbery in February 1984. November 1984, Ford went to trial. And Ford was represented by two appointed defense attorneys, neither of whom had ever handled a criminal trial, and one of whom had never handled a criminal case of any sort. That's kind of bad. Jim: Yeah. That's not the attorneys I want to represent--Woody: Right. When you're on trial for your life. Jim: Oh, my God. Woody: If you're in Livingston Parish, you want Jasper Brock handling your business. [crosstalk]  Jim: Yeah. This is a death penalty trial. Woody: If you're anywhere else over on that side of Louisiana, you want Thomas Davenport out of Alexandria to handle it, because that's what they do. These guys had never even handled a case like this. Jim: It's crazy. Woody: Anyway, Brown fell apart on the witness stand and said on cross-examination that detectives had fabricated her responses and she had lied in her testimony. She said she had been shot in the head earlier in her life and the bullet was never removed causing difficulty with thinking and hearing. Jim: Makes sense.Woody: Several witnesses testified that they saw Ford near the victim's store on the day of the shooting, but no one testified that they saw the crime. A gunshot residue expert testified for the prosecution that after Ford had voluntarily come in for questioning, he recovered gunshot residue on Ford's hands. A fingerprint analyst said he lifted a single fingerprint from a paper bag found at the scene. He said that the print contained a “whorl” type pattern and that Ford had such a pattern, while the Robinson Brothers did not. Dr. George McCormick, Caddo Parish coroner, testified that he had analyzed the scene of the crime, including the position of Rozeman's body and a duffel bag found next to the body with a bullet hole in it. McCormick said he concluded that the victim was shot by someone who held the gun in his left hand. Ford is left-handed and the Robinsons are right-handed. Not looking good for Ford.Jim: No, not at all. Woody: McCormick also said that Rozeman had been dead for as long as two hours by the time the body was discovered, a time when witnesses said they saw Ford near the store. Ford testified on his own behalf, which most of them don't, but he testified and denied his involvement in the crime. He admitted selling items to the pawn shop, but said he'd got them from the Robinson brothers.On December 5th, 1984, the jury convicted Ford of capital murder and conspiracy to commit armed robbery. Following the jury's recommendation, Ford was sentenced to death on February 26th, 1985. After Ford was convicted and sentenced, the prosecution dismissed the charges against the Robinson Brothers and Starks. Jim: Let me just say this, okay, the inexperience of the lawyers that you mentioned is glaring when they allowed him to testify in his own defense in a death penalty case. Holy crap.Woody: I don't know when they changed the law, but I know Jasper Brock in Livingston Parish-- [crosstalk] Jim: Yeah. Jasper Brock would say, "He ain't talking." [chuckles] Woody: And I know Thomas Davenport, they're certified in death penalty cases. You have to actually get certified to defend somebody in death penalty cases now.Jim: Yeah. Probably, this case caused it.Woody: Probably one of them I mean, they should've known this shit was going to get done the way--[crosstalk] Jim: That's crazy. Woody: Still, I believe everybody has the right to a fair trial. Ford goes to death row. His appeals were unsuccessful until 2000 when the Louisiana Supreme Court ordered a hearing on post-conviction petition for a new trial filed by the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana. At the hearing in 2004, a defense expert testified that McCormick's attempt to reconstruct the crime had no connection to known facts and were speculation at best, and I agree with that, they're talking about the coroner. You can't tell somebody's left-handed from a bullet hole and a duffel bag. Anyway, another defense expert said that the gunshot residue evidence was meaningless because it was gathered more than a day after the crime and that Ford could have easily picked up the residue merely by being in a police station where such residue is extremely common.Another defense expert said that the prosecution's fingerprint expert misidentified the fingerprint on the paper bag, and it could have been left by the Robinson Brothers. All very, very true. Ford's lawyers at the trial testified that they were very inexperienced in criminal cases. Jim: Even the lawyers. Woody: [crosstalk] -Jasper and Thomas Davenport. And had no training in capital defense. If I was Ford, I'd be raising hell. I'm like, "You got me two guys that are wet behind the ears. Give me a pro."Jim: Crazy, man. Woody: Jasper Brock or Thomas Davenport. They're even saying that he deserves--Jim: Yeah. They go on the stand and say, "Yeah, we pretty--" [crosstalk] Woody: One of the lawyers who specialized in oil and gas law had never tried a case to a jury, either civil or criminal. That's like my brothers. One's a tax lawyer and one's a maritime lawyer. They've never been inside a courtroom. The extent of his prior criminal work was handling two guilty pleas. That's easy enough. The other lawyer, who was out of law school less than two years and was working at an insurance firm handling personal injury cases. Both said they were unaware they could seek court funding for defense experts, shocker, and didn't hire any because they couldn't afford to pay out of their own pockets. Both were unaware of how to subpoena witnesses from out of state. So, Ford's family members, who lived in California, did not testify for Ford at the guilt or punishment phase of the trial. The defense presented numerous police reports that had never been disclosed to the defense.The report showed that Shreveport Police had received two tips from informants implicating only Jake and Henry Robinson in the robbery and murder. Other police reports showed that some detectives had falsely testified at Ford's trial about statements Ford made during his interrogation. Testimony that the prosecution should have realized was false, the defense claimed. Moreover, other police reports that were withheld from the defense contained conflicting statements by Marvella Brown and by the witnesses who said that they saw Ford near the store at the time of the crime. Reports could have been used to impeach the witness testimony at trial. Jim: Wow. Woody: But still, the post-conviction motion was denied. In 2012, the Caddo Parish District Attorney's Office began reinvesting the case, and in 2013, disclosed that an informant told authorities that Jake Robinson had admitted shooting Rozeman.Jim: Oh, wow.Woody: So, the honorable and right thing to do, in March 2014, the prosecution filed a motion to vacate Ford's conviction and death sentence in light of the newly discovered evidence from the informant. On March 11th, 2014, a judge vacated Ford's convictions, and the prosecution dismissed their charges, and Ford was then released. Jim: How about that? Woody: Even after all that, they'd fallen so hard in the second trial, etc. They came forward-- I think, you know what? I don't know if Hugo Holland was still the prosecutor up there at the end. I'll have to look it up. Maybe I'll ask him. He just messaged me last night. But that's an honorable thing to do. But in March 2015, a Caddo Parish district judge denied Ford's request for state compensation. Judge ruled that Ford knew the robbery was going to happen, did not try to stop it, that he attempted to destroy evidence by selling items taken robbery, and that he tried to find buyers for the murder weapon. Unfortunately, in June of 2015, Ford died of lung cancer. Jim: Yeah, that's a good kind of segue for a second, Woody, just to talk about, look, not all the guys we're going to tell you about today are Citizens of the Year. Some of them definitely committed some crimes or may have withheld some evidence, like in this case. But that's a long jump from being sentenced to death for a murder you didn't commit. Woody: Look, we have our legal process for a reason. A lot of my cases are bad cases where the witnesses are like really shady people or they're criminals themselves. Well, guess what? A lot of these crimes don't happen with a bunch of choir boys. You know what I mean? You're not running with choir boys when you're going to murder somebody and steal the jury. Jim: You're going to put them to death--Woody: But having two inexperienced attorneys and all the other stuff and the guy saying about-- whatever, that's not enough to kill somebody.Jim: That's right. We're going to give you a two for one right here. And you're not going to believe this. Woody: Let me tell you real quick, I know I keep talking about [unintelligible 00:31:23]. I don't know if this is-- we'll have to get him on. This part, he's a part of this Innocence Project, but I don't think it's the same one. Barry Scheck is another one. He got a guy off a death row. Jim: Wow. He'd be great to sit down and talk to.Woody: He got a guy off a death row. He told me about the case, and I was like, "Holy shit." But I think it was out of Missouri. He's in all federal courts and everywhere else, Thomas Davenport, but he believes everybody deserves a criminal defense. And I agree with that. If you're a cop and you got it right, you got them right. Don't sentence them to death, don't send them away for life on some bullshit. Jim: That's right. We're going to tell you about Michael Graham and Albert Burrell. Now, both of these gentlemen were sentenced to death back in 1986.Woody: I was 16 years old. Jim: That was a long time ago. Long time ago. On the night of August 31, 1986, 65-year-old William Delton Frost and his 60-year-old invalid wife, Callie, were fatally shot in their two-room home in Downsville, Louisiana, which is almost like a plantation area of Louisiana, very rural. The front door had been smashed in and police believed the motive was robbery because Frost didn't trust banks and was believed to keep cash in a suitcase in his home. A lot of older people, especially in those times, they didn't put money in the bank. They put money everywhere but the bank. The shots appeared to have been fired through a window and their bodies were discovered a couple of days later.Now, six weeks after the murders, in October of 1986, Janet Burrell told police that she had met with her ex-husband on the night of the crime and that he had $2,700 in $100 bills and blood on his boots. That don't look good. She said he admitted firing the shots and she saw Frost's wallet on the front seat of his car. Wow. That's dead to rights. So, Burrell was arrested within the hour. Not long after, Kenneth St. Clair, another witness, told police that he had come to Louisiana with Michael Graham to find construction work. St. Clair told police that on the night of the crime, Graham and Burrell left the trailer where Graham was living near St. Clair about 8:30 PM returned, Graham had blood on him, St. Clair said. Now, you've got another person seeing that blood. At the time, Graham was in the Union Parish Jail on forgery charges for stealing a checkbook from a woman who hired him in St. Clair to do some work and then cashing about $300 worth of checks. Woody: Like you said, everybody in these stories aren't angels. Jim: Yeah. On October of 1986, Graham and Burrell were each indicted on two counts of murder. Two days later, Graham's cellmate, Olan Brantly, told authorities that Graham had admitted he and Burrell committed the crime [crosstalk] [chuckles] that's it. And that Burrell had fired the fatal shot. So, Graham goes on trial in 1987 in the Union Parish Courthouse. The state's key witnesses were Janet Burrell, who we told you about, and Brantly, we also told you about. So, they got him dead to rights although police reports said that Frost's wallet was recovered in his home. A deputy testified that he believed Burrell had returned to the Frost home and put the wallet back because he suspected his wife had seen it the night they met. Woody: That makes a lot of sense, right? Jim: Yeah. Woody: Why wouldn't you just throw it the fuck out-- [crosstalk] Jim: Yeah, that's a stretch and a half right there.Woody: If you go back to the murder scene to put the wallet back, you got to think, "My wife might have seen it." Jim: [chuckles] Yeah. You're dumping it in the ditch or something. You're not putting it back. Another witness, 14-year-old Amy Opiel, who had spent the night of the crime with the St. Clair Family testified that she saw Graham Burrell sitting on the couch of a trailer with a suitcase and stacks of money. So, Graham was convicted on March 22nd, 1987, and sentenced to death. Burrell went on trial in August of '87, and he was also convicted and sentenced to death on pretty much the same evidence as Graham. Five months after Burrell was convicted, Janet Burrell, who by then was remarried to Burrell's brother James, I told you this was a good one, recanted her testimony, Woody Overton. She said she lied because she wanted to get custody of their child, which had been awarded to Albert Burrell prior to the murders. That's called motive to lie. So, the Louisiana Supreme Court, they grant--Woody: That's cold hearted.Jim: Yeah, that's cold.Woody: [crosstalk] Jim: That's as cold as you can get.Woody: How shitty of a mom does she have to be for the dad to get custody in the state of Louisiana? That's a rare deal. Jim: Well, somewhere along the line, her conscience weighed on her and she admitted she lied. The Louisiana Supreme Court granted Albert Burrell a hearing. A hearing. But at the hearing, Janet Burrell changed her testimony back, she's figuring it out, "Uh-oh. I might get in trouble for this," to her original story. The motion for a new trial was denied. Eventually, the conviction and death sentence got upheld by the Louisiana State Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Graham, don't forget about him, his case was also sent back for a hearing in motion for a new trial because of all this going on. His lawyers, they continued to get extension after extension, and they began to cover new evidence. By 1995, Janet Burrell shows up again. She says, "I'm going to recant my testimony again."Woody: She's unreliable now. Jim: Yeah. The crazy thing was, the execution date was in August of '96, she recants it in 1995. The lawyers, closer it gets to that execution date, they're 24 hours a day trying to get you a stay. 17 days away from his death, Burrell's lawyer obtains a stay. In 1998, Amy Opiel shows up again and recants her testimony, claiming she was pressured to lie and that it was St. Clair she saw with blood on his clothes and counting money. It wasn't Burrell. Okay, so Graham, he finally gets a hearing in 2000 where lawyers present all these recanted statements, as well as evidence that prosecutors failed to turn over, exculpatory evidence and impeachment evidence, including that Brantly had cut a deal with prosecutors on a pending charge, and then he was taking medication to control his mood swings. So, Brantly had a little bit of an anger problem, probably. On March 4th of 2000, Graham was granted a new trial after the Third Judicial District judge, Cynthia Woodard, ruled that prosecutors have misled the jury and failed to turn over exculpatory evidence. Woody, what is exculpatory evidence? Woody: Anything that could possibly make the jury find them not guilty.Jim: Yeah. On December 28th of 2000, they dismissed charges against Graham, and he was released from prison. This is a man that was 17 days from getting the needle. Woody: From executing.Jim: Yes. On January 2nd, you may wonder, "What about Burrell?" January 2nd of 2001, charges against Burrell were dismissed and he was released. Now, in 2016, a state appeals court upheld a lower court ruling denying Graham and Burrell compensation from the state of Louisiana. Burrell and Graham filed a federal lawsuit, but a jury ruled against them.Woody: They never solved the crime now. That's a cold case.Jim: Cold case. And here's the interesting thing. You may wonder why they're denying this money. Woody: It's hard. It's almost impossible to get a nickel for being wrongfully convicted.Jim: Exactly. Especially when you don't have DNA evidence to back it up, because basically that was so many inaccurate statements, but it didn't necessarily mean you didn't do it. It just means the people that said you did it were lying.Woody: A lot of times, if they have find gross negligence, they have to prove that DA actually did what they said that you did or whatever. Jim: That's it. Woody: Really, people don't really care about people that are exonerated, basically in paying--Jim: Those are two for one right there for you. Woody: A lot of states have a set amount. If you get exonerated, it's just whatever, which is crazy. There's no amount of money worth being on death row. In Angola, much less on death row. Jim: Yeah, the guy that was the singer that we did the episode. Woody: Yeah, Archie. Jim: How can you give that guy enough money? Woody: You can't. Jim: And he was exonerated on DNA evidence. He did not do it. Woody: You cannot give him enough.Jim: You can't give him enough. So, why are you putting a ceiling on it? Because every situation is different. Someone like that, you can't give them enough, but Goddang, you need to give them millions. Woody: They should never have to work or do anything.Jim: Period. Woody: Y'all, we will tell you another one, and this one is a rape and a murder. It's the case of Damon Thibodeaux, which is a good, strong Cajun name. And another Louisiana man that was sentenced to death row at Bloody Angola. On July 19th, 1996, at around 05:15 PM, 14-year-old Crystal Champagne left her apartment in Marrero, Louisiana, to walk to a nearby supermarket. When she didn't return home as expected, her mother went looking for her. At around 6:45 PM, her father and 21-year-old stepcousin, Damon Thibodeaux, also went out to look for her, as did several neighbors. The search continued until the following afternoon, when friends of the family heard that a girl who looked like Crystal had been seen walking on the levee. Y'all, if you're not from South Louisiana, levees are manmade walls that hold back the rivers or the bayous or whatever. Said Crystal been seen walking on the levee in previous evening. Not long after, Champagne's body was found near the levee. She was partially naked and had been strangled with a wire.Before the girl's body was found, JPSO investigators began interviewing people who had been with Champagne before she disappeared. An officer was interviewing Thibodeaux, who had been at the Champagne's home when Crystal left for the store. When he was informed that her body had been found, a homicide detective then took over the questioning. Thibodeaux initially said he knew nothing about the murder. He agreed to a polygraph test, which police said indicated deception regarding the girl's death. Uh-oh. Jim: And you being a former polygrapher--Woody: I'm still a polygrapher, actually-- it's just so hard. Basically, at that point, the polygraph is an interrogation tool. It's hard to clear somebody who's accused of murder if you're not good as fuck like me.Jim: [laughs] Woody: No, seriously. You got to set the questions, the questions that they lied to, their response has to be stronger than, "Did you rape and murder this girl?" Well, fuck you, you're in the hot seat. You're looking at a death penalty. It's hard to do. So, they failed him, whoever it was, I don't know who it was. They failed him on the polygraph, which, let me tell you, the polygraph is a long process, but it's basically made to break people down if they're guilty. And it's five or six hours. But I always said a good homicide interrogation doesn't even begin until after five or six hours. That's when you really start to get in that ass. Eventually, after nine hours of questioning, Thibodeaux said that he had raped and murdered Crystal. He was arrested and charged with both crimes. After he was allowed to eat and rest, Thibodeaux quickly recanted his confession, but was ignored. At Thibodeaux's 1997 trial, the prosecution built its case around his confession to the rape and murder. Dr. Fraser MacKenzie of the JPSO Coroner's Office, who performed autopsy on Crystal, testified the girl had been strangled to death and had injuries to her right eye and forehead consistent with getting hit by a bat or a rock. He noted bruises on the girl's buttocks, which he said indicated a struggle. He estimated Crystal had been dead about 24 hours before she was found. Separately, Dr. Lamar Lee, a professor of entomology at Louisiana State University, testified about the insect samples taken from Crystal's body. He said flies will lay eggs on a carcass within a couple of hours after death but will not lay eggs after dark. He said that the eggs were laid before nightfall--Jim: That's true?Woody: Yes. Jim: [crosstalk] as hell.Woody: Came out of the body farm originally out of Tennessee, but I didn't if they used maggots and the generation of flies, and they could tell you how long a body's been down like almost within 15 minutes. Jim: Damn.Woody: On July 19th, 1996, and calculated the age of the fly larvae or the maggots at between 24 and 28 hours old. They eat until they turn and fly, die and have more babies in cycle. There was no physical evidence linking Thibodeaux to the crimes, and though Crystal was found undressed, they found no semen on her body and no other physical evidence that she had been raped. A police officer testified that the semen could have been eaten by maggots. I guess.A week after the crime, detectives questioned two women they found walking on the levee. Both said they saw a man pacing and acting nervously on the evening of the murder. Both women picked a photo of Thibodeaux from a photographic lineup, and both identified him at the trial. Thibodeaux's attorney argued that detectives coerced the confession and suggested facts of the crime to him during their interrogation. On October 3rd, 1997, a jury convicted Thibodeaux of first-degree murder and rape. He was sentenced to death.Jim: Oh, my God.Woody: It's another one of our boys going up to death row.Jim: Death row. Woody: So, fast forward ten more years, in 2007, the JPSO district attorney's office agreed to reinvestigate the case with the Innocence Project and other lawyers who volunteered to work on the case. Now, DNA testing as well as other forensic testing was performed, and investigators interviewed numerous witnesses. The investigation revealed that the women who identified Thibodeaux as the man they had seen pacing near the crime scene had seen Thibodeaux's photo in the news media before police showed them the photo line-up. Moreover, the date of the sighting turned out to be the date after the body was found, when Thibodeaux was already locked up.Jim: That could be a problem. Woody: Right. Well, you know what, you got to give props to JPSO DA's office for even trying to reopen and look at this, because most of them are like, "Fuck you. I [crosstalk] conviction."Jim: Yeah, you did it. Woody: And he's on the death row. But extensive DNA testing on items recovered from the scene of the crime failed to detect any trace of biological material connecting Thibodeaux to the murder. Tests also showed that despite Thibodeaux's confession to rape, Crystal had not been sexually assaulted. And DNA testing on the cord used to strangle Crystal identified a male DNA profile that did not belong to Thibodeaux.Jim: Uh-oh.Woody: Well, doesn't totally excuse him. It could have been anything. Somebody else could have held the cord, and Thibodeaux could have been wearing gloves, we don't know. But the reinvestigation established firmly that Thibodeaux's confession was false. He claimed to have raped Champagne when in fact, no rape occurred. He said he strangled her with a gray speaker wire he took from his car, when in fact she was strangled with a red cord that had been tied to a tree near the crime scene. The prosecution consults an expert in false confessions who concluded that the confession was the result of police pressure, exhaustion, psychological vulnerability, and fear of the death penalty.Jim: Wow. Woody: Yeah. I mean, it can happen, y'all. I hope every day that I didn't get the juice from somebody on the wrong level, and I don't think I did. Anyway, on September 29th, 2012, he was released from death row. Thibodeaux later filed a federal civil rights lawsuit that was put on hold in January 2017. Like most of our guys, he died in August of 2021.Jim: Wow. Woody: But you know what? I know false confessions do happen. It's a real deal.Jim: Yeah. You'll confess to anything if you're tired enough.Woody: You had your ass [unintelligible 00:49:06].Jim: Yeah. Woody: [laughs] -eight, nine hours not eating, I mean, you're going to get the needle, da, da, da. It might have been, "Help me help you. You tell us what happened, we're going to tell that you cooperated." But the fact that he confesses and then they give him some food and he's like, [crosstalk]Jim: Yeah. All right, we're going to give, y'all, one more today. We're going to tell you about a guy that definitely did not do it, was exonerated by DNA evidence, and that is Mr. Rickey Johnson. I saved this one for last today because he was in prison a long time for a rape he didn't commit. Matter of fact, he was in prison 25 years. Woody: That would suck. Jim: Yeah. One day in prison for something you didn't do, it sucks. All right, imagine 25 years. Let me tell you about the crime. In the early morning hours of July 12th, 1982, a 22-year-old woman awoke in her Northwest Louisiana home to find a man holding a gun to her head.Woody: Wow. Jim: The man raped the woman twice, stayed at her house for four hours. He told her his name was Marcus Johnson, and he mentioned several details. He claimed they were about his life. He claimed to be looking for an ex-girlfriend of his from Many, Louisiana. He said he was on probation. He was from Leesville, Louisiana. He even said he had relatives in the town of Natchitoches and Monroe. The weird thing is, he raped this chick twice and then he starts telling her his life story. It's almost like he felt like, "Now, we have a connection." Woody: Yeah, I got this special nut dumping connection.Jim: Yeah. What do you think the victim did? Woody: Pillow talk. Jim: She reports the rape the next morning, and at which point she told police her attacker was an African American man. He was between 5'6" and 5'8", and he weighed about 140 pounds. He had facial hair and a scarf tied around his head. A detective from the Sabine Parish Sheriff's Department contacted the Leesville Sheriff's Department to ask if they had a man named Marcus Johnson on file. There was no record of Marcus Johnson, but Leesville officers did tell detectives about Rickey Johnson. They said, "Well, we got another Johnson here. His name is Rickey. He's African American," and he was on probation for a traffic violation, a misdemeanor. Rickey matched some of the details that the lady provided of the perpetrator. He was from Leesville, he did have a child with a woman in Many, and he had relatives in Natchitoches and Monroe. So, he becomes a suspect. Nothing wrong with that. Police showed the victim a six pack, but it was actually only three pictures in this one. So, we're going to call it a three pack. Woody: Three pack. Jim: Yeah. It had Johnson's photo, which was at the center. Woody: I don't know how you get away with that.Jim: That picture was eight years old, and it was in the center. That's important. Mentally, you go to the center picture first. The victim told police that she had ample time to see the perpetrator's face and she identified Johnson as a perpetrator, even though he had a prominent gold tooth, which was never part of her description of the attacker. If a guy rapes you or a girl rapes you and they have a gold tooth, you're probably going to mention they had a gold tooth. Woody: You mentioned facial hair and everything else, and the gold tooth would stand out. Jim: Two days later, what do you think they do? They go arrest Rickey Johnson and they don't even investigate any other suspects at this time. They think they got their man. Johnson asserts his innocence. He says, "I didn't do any of this crap." Six days later, they conduct an in-person lineup with five individuals. Again, Johnson, they put in the center. And again, the victim identifies him as the assailant. The lineup was not presented at Johnson's trial because it was ruled inadmissible since Johnson did not have an attorney present at the lineup. I mean, it happens. Doesn't mean he didn't do it. Tests at the Shreveport Crime Lab determined that evidence collected from the victim at the hospital included sperm and serological testing that showed Johnson and 35% of the African American population could have been the contributor. So, that's basically no evidence. Too many people. Woody: Too many people are-- [crosstalk] African American. Jim: 35% of the entire population. Johnson was charged with aggravated sexual assault and tried before a jury in Sabine Parish, Louisiana. The victim identified him at trial saying she was positive. Woody: Game over.Jim: Positive that was him, and there was no question in her mind. She said the apartment was dark until about 15 minutes before he left. Prosecutors presented the victim's photo ID of Johnson and the serological evidence that his blood type matched the blood type of the perpetrator as determined--Woody: Back then, they didn't have DNA. They could give you blood types, basically. Jim: That's it. So, long story short, he gets convicted by the jury and he's sentenced to life without parole. Woody: Bloody Angola.Jim: Bloody Angola, baby, that's where you're going. So, Johnson contacts the Innocence Project at the suggestion of a guy named Calvin Willis, who was also a fellow inmate at Louisiana State Penitentiary. Willis was exonerated in 2003 after the Innocence Project secured DNA testing that proved his innocence. He basically called his boy and said, "If you really didn't do this, I got some people you need to talk to." Now, in late 2007, that DNA testing was performed on the sperm from the perpetrator of the crime. Remember, we said they had sperm. And the results proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Johnson could not have been the attacker.Woody: Wow. Jim: This is the first DNA exoneration using the new technology with DNA at this time called Mini-STR, which allows labs to accurately test degraded or extremely small samples. First time. [crosstalk] In January 2008, they do what anybody would do, they took that DNA profile and now they have a database in 2008.Woody: CODIS.Jim: Uh-oh. Woody: They got somebody else.Jim: They got a hit, Woody Overton. And John McNeal, who was already in prison serving a life sentence for rape committed in 1983 in the same apartment complex incidentally as the crime for which Johnson was convicted.Woody: How the hell do you not investigate that?Jim: It's crazy, ain't it? He's already in prison for that rape committed in the same complex. And so basically, they offer their apologies. After 25 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit, Rickey Johnson was released and exonerated in 2008 after 25 years in prison. The state of Louisiana later awarded him $245,000 in compensation. That ain't even close to what he needed. Woody: Did Johnson go beat that other guy's ass? [crosstalk] Jim: [chuckles] That's a good question. I couldn't find the answer to that. I'm sure he wanted to. Woody: [crosstalk] -find, you could. Jim: He would've got some inmate justice. Woody: Yeah. "Bitch, you knew I've been here all this time for this," and you know they all know what they're down for. Jim: Oh, yeah.Woody: You get your David Constance been in there lying, saying, "My wife put me up, but not on rape charge."Jim: No. Woody: [crosstalk] Jim: In the same apartment complex.Woody: No doubt. That is crazy. Jim: It's freaking nuts. You would think that guy's already serving another life sentence. Why not just come clean and say, "I raped that girl"? Yeah, that's exactly right. Woody: Even convicts don't like rapists. Jim: That's right. Woody: Especially kid rapers and all that. Jim: That's right. So, long story short, he got $245,000 from the state of Louisiana. A federal wrongful conviction lawsuit was settled confidentially in 2011. So, he did get some money federally. Doesn't say how much. [crosstalk] Look, we hope y'all enjoyed these. Woody: We got to do more of these. Jim: Oh, yeah.Woody: These cases you find, criminal mind is always fascinating to me, but this shit is--Jim: Love it. Woody: Hey, we're all about the Gerald Bordelon getting executed for raping and killing Courtney LeBlanc. We're all about--[crosstalk] Almost every one of these, except for Rickey Johnson was on death row. Jim: Yeah, something. There's been actually, for those of you out there that are playing trivia games, there's been 11 people released from Angola alone from death row based off of either DNA evidence or strong evidence to force an exoneration. Woody: I get that why people are against it. They say, "Oh, you kill one wrong, it's too many, shut it down." You haven't sat across the table or looked at the dead bodies and shit that I've looked at and looked in the face of evil. But hey, I'm a champion, and would go on-- As you know Jim, after my law enforcement career, I went on and defended people that were innocent, that I believe they were innocent. So, it is what it is. We're not totally one sided, but hell or jail or freedom. Jim: That's it. Woody: It's another great episode. Jim: Yeah. We loved it. Thank you, patrons, couldn't do it without you. Woody: Yes. Jim: If you're not a patron member, go join Patreon. We may do some of these just for patron members. Woody: Patrons get commercial-free, early release episodes and locked up episodes, which we probably have more locked up for Bloody Angola than I have locked up for Real Life Real Crime, so a bunch of them. All different kinds of stories. So, y'all go check it out. You can go to patreon.com and type in "Bloody Angola."Jim: Yep. /bloodyangolapodcast will pull you right to it. We appreciate it. We love each and every one of you. And until next time-Woody: I'm Woody Overton.Jim: And I'm Jim Chapman, your host of Bloody-Woody: Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making. Woody: The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison.Jim and Woody: Peace. [Bloody Angola theme]Our Sponsors:* Check out Factor and use my code bloodyangola50 for a great deal: https://www.factor75.com/ Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy